Chapter 13 #2
I put my phone on the walnut shelf. She turns toward me, still holding my injured hand. I put my other arm around her and draw her close enough to kiss. Her coat slips from one shoulder. I ease it away and lay it on the opposite seat, giving her my full attention at last.
She tastes like peppermint and the last of the workshop's tea.
I kiss her deeper, careful with my left hand, and use my right to find the pearl buttons at the front of her dress.
They give one by one. Dark green fabric opens over her bra, then further, until I can push the cups down and take her tits in my palm.
She gasps into my mouth when I pinch her nipples.
“Quiet,” I murmur against her lips. “They're just outside.”
Her laugh is soft and wicked. “Then don't make me loud.”
I pinch again, harder. She bites my shoulder through my shirt to keep from moaning, and the sound she still makes goes straight to my cock.
I slide my right hand up under her skirt, find the heat of her pussy through damp lace, and push the fabric aside.
She's already wet. Two fingers sink into her easily.
I work her like that on the back seat, thumb on her clit, fingers curling, while she holds my injured hand in her lap as if she can keep me gentle by holding on.
I am not gentle.
I fuck her with my fingers until she's rocking onto them, forehead against mine, breath shaking. When I withdraw, she makes a small protesting sound that I swallow with another kiss.
“Come here.”
I free my cock and guide her to straddle me. The reading lamp catches the flush across her chest, the open dress, the diamonds of her eyes. She sinks down onto me in one slow, greedy slide, pussy stretching around my cock until I'm buried to the hilt. For a second neither of us breathes.
Then she rides me.
Hard. Impulsive. The leather seat creaks softly under us. I grip her hip with my right hand and let her use me, watching her tits bounce as she takes every inch. When she tips her head back, I move my right hand from her hip to fist it in her hair and pull just enough to make her look at me.
“That's it,” I tell her. “Take what you want.”
“I want you.”
She says it like a dare. I spank her ass once beneath the skirt with a sharp, muffled crack, and she clenches around my cock so sweetly I almost lose the last of my control.
I spank her again. She rides harder. The car smells of leather and her perfume and sex.
Outside, a shoe scrapes on the pavement. Neither of us stops.
I lean in and bite her shoulder, careful not to mark her where the dress won't cover, and she comes with a broken whisper against my neck, pussy fluttering, thighs shaking around my hips.
I hold her through it, then tip her carefully onto her back along the seat, still inside her, one of her legs hooked over my shoulder.
The space is narrow. I make it enough.
I fuck her deep and steady, right hand braced beside her head, left kept out of the way against the seat back.
Her green dress is open and rucked to her waist. Her pussy takes every thrust, slick and greedy.
She pulls my hair and whispers filthy encouragement into my ear until I bury myself and come hard, cock pulsing as I empty into her, hot and thick, keeping our hips flush until it's done.
We stay locked for a few breaths. Her cheek is warm against my throat.
I ease out carefully, feel the wet slide of my cum threatening to spill, and help her sit up.
She laughs softly, stunned and glowing, then straightens her underwear and settles her bra before fastening the pearl buttons with fingers that aren't quite steady.
I fasten my trousers, straighten her skirt and smooth her hair. I kiss the corner of her mouth once more while the curtains keep the street out.
“Still not ready to go in?” I ask.
She's still smiling when my phone lights up on the walnut shelf.
Alison Durham's name makes me reach for it. Tessa sees the screen and straightens beside me, brushing a loose strand of hair back from her face. I answer before the next ring.
“Did any of your venues host private autumn portraits last October?” Alison asks. “Separate appointments, possibly through an outside event agency.”
I look at Tessa. She's stopped moving.
“Send me the agency credit. I'll have the office check.”
“I'll send what I need checked. Is Tessa with you?”
I confirm it and switch to speaker so Tessa can answer for herself. The curtains are still shut, the doors closed. Outside, Matvei's silhouette moves briefly across the narrow gap at one edge before he passes out of view.
Alison asks whether Hem & Havoc supplied costumes for a woman's portrait session in October last year. The name she gives is Flora. Tessa repeats it softly, then shakes her head.
“I don't remember her. Peggy can check our old bookings. What happened?”
There's a pause long enough for me to hear the faint movement of paper at Alison's end.
“She went missing after the session. She was later found murdered. I'm reviewing her case alongside Beatrice's.”
Tessa's fingers close around the edge of her seat. I move nearer, wanting to put myself between her and the voice coming out of my phone. There's nowhere to stand that will do it.
I'd expected a question about the print from Bellquay Rooms, perhaps another list of people who handled the cloak.
Last October belongs to a time before Tessa wore red at my club, before Luka tried to use her phone to bargain with me.
A dead woman from that autumn changes the size of what we're facing.
“The same photographer?” I ask.
“We haven't established who took Flora's portraits. The credit names an event agency. It's different from the agency on this season's promotion. I'm tracing who did the actual work.”
Tessa looks at me when Alison says it. The women use photographers and promoters across jobs, carrying their costumes into whichever room has been booked. A different name at the top of a page doesn't necessarily mean different people beneath it. It doesn't prove they're the same people either.
“Do you think whoever killed her is after me?” Tessa asks.
The question comes out steadily. I hate that she has to ask it while sitting beside me.
“I don't know yet,” Alison says. “The photograph you received made me look again at cases involving portrait appointments. Please keep the original booking records. Peggy can call me when she has them.”
I tell her she'll have the venue records too. When the call ends, Tessa reaches for her bag and takes out her own phone. Her first message is to Peggy, asking her to preserve last October's bookings and speak directly to Alison before closing the shop. She lets me read it, then presses send.
I draw back the curtain and lower the side window to call Matvei over. Tessa remains beside me while I give him the new information and tell him to pass it to Klim. He listens without interrupting, then checks that Peggy's escort is still with her.
Only when he confirms it does Tessa put her phone away.
“Flora,” she says. “She would've picked out something she wanted to look beautiful in.”
I think of the silver veil laid carefully in its box. Tessa's hands smoothing the tissue so a woman can open it on the day she's planned. I've been looking for the person who brought murder into my club. Alison is asking about someone who may have done this long before he walked through my doors.
Tessa reaches for my hand again. I give her my right one and hold on as Matvei opens the car.
For the first time, I wonder how many women came before Beatrice.