Chapter Eleven
N ever mind finding oblivion in sex. Telfer’s brain momentarily blanked out just from kissing Laodice.
He’d imagined this in a half-dozen idle fantasies brought to more painful life by her proximity these last few days, but nothing could have prepared him for the softness of her lips, the hot sweetness as she opened her mouth to him. He was off-balance, leaning over the stupid brass coffee table, and immediately dizzy.
The coffee table was a problem. It was a barrier between them, where there should be no barriers, but he didn’t want to let go of her long enough to get around it.
He scrambled over it instead without breaking contact, and Laodice squeaked, then laughed against his lips. He didn’t care if she was laughing at him, he could touch her, he had permission to touch. He let his eager hands rove over her body, feeling her shift and sigh as he stroked the curves of her back. He gripped her ass, loving the way his fingers sank in as he pressed her closer against him, and she broke away from his mouth.
“Are you hard already?” she asked, sounding amazed.
“Don’t sound so surprised. I’ve been hard for you all week.”
“You have?” Laodice marveled, and then he had to grind against her so she could feel the proof. He had to kiss her again, thrusting his tongue deep so that she could know how much he wanted her, how badly he needed to be inside her. He slid his hands up under that T-shirt she’d been wearing in bed, felt soft flesh press into his palms, and could have stayed there for a while, except Laodice was grabbing the hem and yanking it over her head, wriggling enthusiastically.
Telfer found himself staring at a pair of beautiful full breasts. There were rosy nipples surrounded by soft areolas. There were blue veins tracing through the pale skin. They were breasts , which were never disappointing, but in this case were so impressive he felt himself drop several IQ points just looking at them.
“Wow,” Laodice said, looking pretty entranced herself. “This pink lighting is doing great things to me.”
“I’m going to do great things to you,” Telfer promised, and put action to words as he hefted her breasts with his hands and dove in.
“Oh, wow,” he heard Laodice say, as his mouth closed over her breast. “Yep, that’s—” she squeaked again as his teeth scraped gently over her nipple, and he was suddenly sucking on a hard nub that had tightened against his tongue.
Telfer’s experience was mostly in one-night-stands or brief flings, high in desire and low in emotion. Generally speaking, he’d heard, sex was better once you knew a partner’s body and rhythms, the things to include and the things to avoid. He’d always shied away from getting to that stage of intimacy, but he still wanted sex to feel great for everyone involved. So he’d studied, and when he put theory into practice, he paid attention to what his partners responded to. Even the most reserved person would betray what they liked and disliked, if you observed closely enough.
And Laodice wasn’t the least bit reserved.
“Fuck, yes,” she said, and her hands slid into his hair, clamping his head against her chest. “Who taught you that, Terzi?”
He flicked her nipple with his tongue in answer, and she moaned. His hand was busy on her other breast, stroking the soft skin of the underside, his thumb strumming over the nipple.
“Okay, we have to get to bed ,” Laodice said, sounding sex-drunk and dazed, and she pulled away.
Telfer let her go for long enough to shuck his shirt and padded towards where she was scrambling backwards up onto the bed, her breasts swinging with the motion.
Her eyes widened as she took in his shoulders, his abs, the sparse hair that thickened to a dark line pointing straight down his belly. “You have an incredible body,” she said.
“Thank you. It’s at your complete disposal.”
She grinned at him, and beckoned him forward. “Great. Do that thing with your teeth again.”
“Your word, my command,” he said, and did.
***
If distraction was what she was after, mission well and truly accomplished, Laodice thought. Five minutes ago she’d been aware of every scrape and strain. Now those pains were fading into the background while other, distinctly more pleasant sensations took center stage.
The bed was soft, the covers were smooth, and Telfer was braced over her as he licked and sucked, that thick hair in easy grabbing distance. What a pleasure it was to get her hands in there and direct his attentions.
Not that he needed much direction. She liked her breasts, but nipple play had never done much for her, maybe because the sensations had so much boob to travel through. Now it turned out that what she’d really needed was someone to really go for it, with a lot of enthusiasm and a little bit of teeth. She jerked when he bit down, and jerked again when he immediately pressed his tongue against the spot, soothing. The tease was going directly to her pussy, where everything was humming and heating up nicely.
And they still had half their clothes on! No one had even got their hands on the really good stuff yet!
“Lose the pants,” she ordered, with as much authority as she could summon under the circumstances: sprawled topless on a bed, while Telfer Terzi— Telfer Terzi!— absolutely devoured her tits.
He growled against her—oh, wow, the reverberation was really something—and tucked his thumbs into the waistband of her yoga pants. He went backwards on his knees, yanking her pants and panties down her thighs, over her knees, and then out of sight. She had the impression he might have flung them somewhere.
“Um,” she said, because she’d meant he should lose his pants, but Telfer looked at her splayed in front of him as if he were a starving man offered a banquet, and she decided that this was fine, actually.
“Can I taste you?” he demanded, looking crazed and Laodice realized that all she’d really done was be there and that was still driving him this wild.
She could probably lie back and let him do all the work. That sounded great .
“By all means,” she said sweetly, and his eyes narrowed, all intense focus and desire, and she had enough time to think uh-oh before he hooked her knees over his shoulders and buried his face between her thighs, and she stopped thinking much at all. She was only just aware of the bedclothes wrinkling underneath her clutching hands, of the high, muted noises she was making, of the way her head was burrowing back into the pillows as he pushed her up the bed with his sheer drive.
But mostly she was pure sensation radiating from her core, stoked to white hot heat in an instant by his tongue, by his hands holding her open, by the way she could give in and give up.
She came fast and hard, shaking as she tipped over the edge, but he didn’t move away. He pressed his tongue against her fluttering pussy and waited until he got some signal from her breathing or her muscles relaxing and began gently, carefully working her up again, this time all slow caresses and teasing strokes. He pulled back a little and blew on her clit, a soft puff of cool air, and she’d never have thought that could do anything, but he went back to that slow tease again, and the third time he pulled back and blew, she felt the orgasm swelling. Not an explosion, this time, but something that flowed up her body and down again in slow shivers as he teased her with the tip of his tongue, an orgasm she felt fill her body and ebb away like the tide.
Telfer sat up and inspected her face.
Laodice felt, dimly, that she should try to be cool about this, but that was hard when her vision was fuzzy and every cell in her body was vibrating to some kind of cosmic rhythm. “Holy shit ,” she said. “That was amazing .”
Telfer grinned. He would have had every right to give her his trademark smirk, but instead it was a wide, boyish smile she’d never seen before. He looked proud and happy, a man who’d done a great job and thought he deserved some praise for it.
Which he did. His tongue , what the hell was happening there, how was he getting so much out of a simple muscle that was really kind of gross whenever you stopped to think about it?
“What are you thinking about?”
“How gross tongues are,” Laodice said absently, and when he flinched she sat up and reached for him. “Wait, no, not yours. Your tongue is gorgeous, it gets a gold star, come here.”
She kissed him thoroughly, feeling her body hum, not desperate for another orgasm, but definitely willing to explore the possibility. She could taste herself in his mouth, salty and musky.
Telfer himself seemed perfectly happy to keep necking, but Laodice was getting pretty curious about his whole pants situation. She let her hand drift down his body, and from the way his hips jerked forward, pushing his cock into her palm, she thought he was into it too.
But it was worth checking. She kissed her way up to his ear and whispered, “Hey. Wanna fuck me?”
Three seconds later she was flat on her back, while Telfer simultaneously shoved his pants down and produced a condom, looking wild around the eyes.
“Wait, I want to see ,” she said, and he froze. She sat up again and looked him over. The pants situation was—yes, that was an impressive cock right there, jutting out of a thatch of dark curly hair. He sure as hell didn’t skip leg day. The muscles in his thighs were tight and defined, twitching with harnessed energy as she scanned him.
“Give that here,” she said, and held out an imperious hand for the condom. He gave it up, something clenching in his jaw while she carefully—and maybe a little theatrically—tore open the packet and pulled out the little latex sleeve. He grunted when she rolled it down his cock, with a movement that wasn’t quite a thrust, and stayed right where he was. Laodice reclined back amongst the pillows, arranging them under her head and hips.
If this was all it took to make Telfer biddable, maybe she should have slept with him years ago.
“All right,” she said, when she was settled to her satisfaction. “Go ahead.”
It was like she’d blown a whistle at the start of a race. He was on her at once, one hand busy at her breast, his mouth on hers as if he’d die if he had to spend another second before kissing her. His other hand was busy between them, aligning their bodies, and then his hips jumped and he was inside her.
“Oh,” Laodice said, and wrapped her legs around his lower body. “Yes, that’s good.”
He rocked into her, eyes fixed on her face. She’d been expecting an explosion of frantic motion, but he was appallingly controlled, sliding in and out with a pace that tightened everything inside.
But he didn’t look happy about it. His jaw was still set, his eyes determined… oh . The idiot was holding himself back. He was trying to get her there again, when all he really wanted was to let go.
She wrapped her arms around him too, so that she was hanging on with all four limbs, and bit his earlobe.
“Fuck me,” she said in his ear, and used the power in her legs to yank him deeper. “Fuck me hard .”
He grunted, almost as if she’d hit him, lost all control and went for it. He pounded into her, wet slapping sounds and the heady smell of sex rising around them, and she snarled at him to go harder, go faster, more. He somehow found a touch more space, seated himself in her body just a little more deeply, and then his eyes, fixed on hers, rolled up into his head and he collapsed on top of her, shuddering as he came.
Laodice held him, stroking his hair with one hand. He kissed her shoulder and the side of her neck.
“That was—” he said, and then shook his head and kissed her mouth.
“It was very good,” Laodice said. “Nice work, us.”
The longest scrape along her forearm twinged then, and she remembered that Jesse was dead. It was a less demanding thought that it had been before. The oblivion granted by sex couldn’t last forever, but she couldn’t dwell on the chill, pathetic corpse she’d touched when she was holding a warm, sweaty body in her arms, very much alive.
And a bit heavy, honestly. She tapped at his shoulder and wriggled until he got the hint and withdrew, taking care of the condom. Laodice found her yoga pants and panties tangled up together and hanging from a lamp clear on the other side of the room, and hopped into the panties. She considered putting her tshirt back on too, but was modesty really a consideration here? She climbed back into bed while Telfer hit the shower, and was almost asleep when he came back to bed, snuggling up behind her and wrapping one arm around her waist.
Telfer Terzi was a cuddler. Who knew?
“Laodice,” he said, and there was something in his voice, some uncertain note she should pay attention to. He’d said he had to tell her something. Well, they couldn’t handle a real conversation now, not after the day they’d both had.
She patted his hand, the one resting lightly on her stomach. “Thank you for the excellent orgasms,” she said. “Good night.”
***
After Telfer woke, he spent some time wondering what the hell had happened. Last night he’d started out doing his usual great work, with perhaps slightly more attention to detail. Laodice had gone off like a rocket, which had made him feel… Good. Happy. And then she’d drawn him inside her, hot and wet and welcoming, and commanded him to go hard.
And he had. This morning there was a tightness in his left glute that could have come from that scramble down the bank yesterday, but he strongly suspected he’d simply fucked himself into a muscle strain.
It had definitely been worth it, for sex that good. Maybe some of the best sex of his life. Laodice had been on his mind for a long time, much longer than any of his other occasional partners. When the reality of Laodice’s generous enthusiasm had been even better than the fantasy, of course it had been impressive.
Reality wasn’t usually better than fantasy. That was the appeal of fantasy. You could enjoy it, and tell yourself real life could never be that good.
Maybe that was why he’d woken up so early, his mind whirring in the way that suggested some kind of panic dream in his subconscious. Maybe that accounted for the tightness in his chest as he lay behind her with his hand on her belly, breathing in the scent of her hair and feeling the rise and fall of her sleeping breath.
Detective Bernard had said they shouldn’t change their plans, that they should stay until Saturday. Last night, that had seemed like an unappealing proposition. Now he was contemplating the next four days with more equanimity.
True, his initial offer had been for a one-night-stand, and Laodice had taken it up for the explicit purpose of momentarily wiping Jesse’s death from her mind…but maybe he could propose a second round. Or a third. A four-night stand wasn’t a significant commitment, and the circumstances were surely unusual enough to justify it.
Then they’d go back to Olympus and be colleagues again, and then one of them would get the editing job, which would put an end to the possibility of any further intimate contact. They were both far too professional to pursue a relationship between a manager and a direct report, even if it hadn’t been expressly forbidden.
This should have been a reassuring thought, a reminder that even if their liaison was longer than a single evening it had a definite end date. For some reason, Telfer preferred not to dwell on it. He shifted a little closer to Laodice, removed a strand of her hair from his mouth—her hair was magnificent, but it got everywhere—and wondered whether she’d mind if he woke her up.
Fortunately, she stirred before he could give into temptation. And unlike yesterday’s waking, she didn’t startle awake and then get away from him as fast as she physically could. She murmured something, and then rolled over onto her side, so that they were face to face.
And this time, she was smiling. Looking very pleased with herself, in fact. “Hey.”
“Hi,” Telfer said. He was aware his answering smile verged on foolish, but it was hard to care. “How are you feeling?”
She stretched, and the sheet fell to her waist, exposing her breasts. They lay stacked on top of each other, molded by gravity into two soft pillows that he, for one, just kind of wanted to snuggle into.
Laodice noticed. Her eyes turned wicked. “ Most of me feels great, thank you.” She touched a wound on her forearm, covered by a long strip of plastic bandage, and winced. “Some of me, less great. How are you?”
Telfer considered this. “No regrets, but I might have strained a muscle in my ass.”
“Well, you have so many muscles in there to strain,” Laodice said demurely. “Hey, what did you want to talk about last night? I’m sorry I put you off, but I’m not great at conversation after good sex. My brain kinda goes wheee and refuses to consider anything else.”
Telfer filed that away for later consideration, and refocused. What had he wanted to talk about? He’d had the impulse to make some sort of general apology, to ask if they could wipe the slate of four years of petty disputes and stupid arguments and start again. They knew each other better now. He liked her, as a person, and she’d indicated, even in the middle of their latest fight, that she was starting to change her mind about him.
“I think Jesse might have been murdered,” he said.
“Yeah,” Laodice said, going serious all at once. “Me too. If he’d had both shoes on, or a flashlight…”
“And the cops think the body was moved. Were the bushes broken before you went through them?”
“I don’t remember. Maybe.”
“I don’t remember either,” Telfer admitted.
“Well, if it was murder, it was probably someone at Halcyon,” Laodice said. “Only about ten percent of all homicides are committed by strangers.”
“Sometimes your statistics are morbid,” Telfer said.
Laodice shrugged. “I’m just saying. The people in this building weren’t strangers to Jesse.”
“What did the cops ask you?”
“They wanted to know the last time I saw him, whether he’d seemed all right, whether I’d moved the body.” Laodice grimaced. “They didn’t ask about whether he had any enemies, but I bet that’s coming next.”
“Good luck to them going through that motive list. Blackmail, attempted espionage, emotional abuse…”
“Can you really imagine Carrick killing him?” Laodice asked. “Or Patrick, or Samuel?”
Telfer shook his head. “How did Hazel seem? Women who don’t see any way out have murdered before.”
“Not Hazel. She was destroyed.” Laodice sighed. “And she still hadn’t gotten around to admitting that maybe he wasn’t the best husband. I don’t think it was her. But then, Manny would never have thought his uncle capable of killing his dad. Hm. What about if Jesse worked out the wage-skimming and threatened Sarah?”
Telfer considered it. He could see the appeal of the theory, but… “That’s a motive for her to buy him off, not murder. She wouldn’t want the police looking into this place.”
“Which is why she moved the body,” Laodice suggested.
“By herself? He’d be a heavy burden for someone her size. And besides, Hazel might have reported Jesse as a missing person. Why would Sarah take the risk?”
Laodice’s voice was tart. “You’re assuming Sarah makes good decisions.”
Telfer shrugged, acknowledging the point. “At any rate, I don’t think we should be ruling people out because we like them. You’re right, I can’t imagine Carrick killing someone, but that doesn’t make it impossible.”
Laodice’s nose scrunched. “Alma would have a motive, if Jesse did find out about Erik’s secret identity. Honestly, I think she could kill.”
“That’s pure speculation,” Telfer said firmly. “We don’t know that he discovered anything of the kind.”
Laodice looked at him for a long moment. “But we’re going to find out, aren’t we?”
“We shouldn’t,” Telfer temporized. “We’re not investigative reporters. We’re wedding writers.”
Laodice grinned. “Yeah. But we’re wedding writers who have been entangled in a story about crime, money, and love. We’re going to snoop.”
Telfer abandoned himself to temptation and grinned back. “Yes, we are.”
Laodice pursed her lips. “Hey, I know we said it was only one night, but—”
“These are unusual circumstances,” Telfer said. “I think we can define a one-night-stand as covering the remaining period of our stay.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” Laodice said, her voice rich with approval, and Telfer looked at her breasts again. Still there. Still spectacular.
Five minutes later, Laodice was hovering over him on all fours with her incredible ass in easy reach. Her hand leisurely stroking his cock, while her cotton panties dampened under his exploratory fingers. Telfer slipped one finger under the elastic to touch slick, hot flesh, and was rewarded with a gasp.
“Good morning,” Sarah’s voice said.
Laodice groaned and clambered off him, flopping onto her back. Telfer thumped his head into the pillow, twice.
Sarah’s voice was tentative, for once, lacking the determined enthusiasm she normally adopted. “As you know, there’s been a terrible tragedy,” she continued. “The authorities have asked us to remain on site and there are a few things to discuss. I’d appreciate it if everyone could meet in the gallery room in half an hour.”
Laodice looked at the burner phone. “Well, at least she waited for a decent hour,” she said.
“I can’t say I give her timing much credit,” Telfer said. His cock had wilted a little at the sound of Sarah’s voice, but all he had to do to regain his erection was look at the astonishing banquet of a woman lying beside him. “Still, we’ve got half an hour. Not really time for my best work, but if you don’t mind a little urgency…”
Laodice looked tempted, but she shook her head. “It wouldn’t be appropriate for us to turn up at breakfast looking fucked-out.”
“Sure it would,” Telfer said, reaching for her, but she slipped out of bed, warm and laughing.
“And I need to wash my hair.”
“I could help?” Telfer said, seized by a vision of Laodice wet in the shower, water beading on her skin as he carefully soaped every inch of her.
“Later,” she promised. “Can I say? I am very into how into me you are.”
“I’d love to be into you,” Telfer said, but he said it to the closed bathroom door.