Chapter 24 Transfer Evidence
TRANSFER EVIDENCE
LILA
He keeps me in his lap, one arm still firm around my waist, the other tracing the line of my thigh as if he’s noting every reaction I have, storing it somewhere he won’t forget. “You like being tied up,” he says finally.
It’s not a question, just a silent acknowledgment that leaves no room for denial.
His fingers grip the loosened tie. “I’d like it too, I think.
” He slips it free, eyes never leaving mine.
“Something about the idea of having you completely at my mercy,” he lets the silk run through his fingers, “mine to do whatever I want with. It’s something I have wanted in a way that almost feels instinctive. Inevitable.”
He shifts beneath me, guiding me back against the pillows. The tie hangs from his hand, a dark line against his skin, and I can’t take my eyes off it.
“Hands up,” he says. It’s a quiet demand.
My body obeys, willing and eager, wrists settling against the headboard. The silk slides around them in even passes, his fingers tracing each loop as he goes. He doesn’t pull it tight, just enough for me to feel the promise of restraint.
When he’s done, he studies his work with that same focused intent he uses everywhere else, except his voice has dropped even lower, the edge of a smile hiding in it. “Apologies for the improvisation,” he says, running his thumb along the knot. “I don’t have ropes. Yet.”
Yet. That promise in that single word is everything.
He leans in, close enough for his breath to whisper against the shell of my ear. “I’ll get some. Learn to do it right.” His mouth curves against my jaw. “Because there will be a next time, Lila. I’m already sure of it.”
I don’t know what he’s planning, but the anticipation is already its own kind of ache.
“Eyes closed,” he says.
Theo is so much more than I imagined.
He’s usually so composed. This version of him feels damn near impossible.
I couldn’t have dreamed it up, no matter how many different ways I imagined us together. I’m still dizzy from a few minutes ago, my mind and body trying to catch up to reality, and now, here I am completely, recklessly, willingly compromised while he—
“Theo. Fu— Fuck.”
The sound he makes when the toy starts up is nothing short of appreciative. He teases it across my chest and circles each of my nipples while his other hand slides up the back of my calf, guiding me wordlessly until my knees bend and my thighs spread for him.
“I’ve thought about my face between your thighs every goddamn night for a year, Lila.”
I want to respond, to tell him I have thought about it just as often, but when he runs his flattened tongue along the seam of my pussy, words aren’t a thing I’m capable of anymore.
He slides his middle finger inside me and presses exactly where I’ve never managed to get it right myself. The firm, unhurried slide of his long, thick finger is enough to make my toes curl.
He takes his time with me. Every movement is purposeful, patient, all-consuming.
My body’s already begging for release while he acts like he could keep this up forever. I can’t stay still; every nerve feels lit, twitchy, desperate, and he just keeps at it—licking, nipping, sucking, never giving me any one thing quite long enough to push me over the edge.
I let out a small, broken sound, and he pauses just long enough to say, “Awh. Poor baby.” The way he says it is taunting. Amused.
I could cry.
I might actually already be crying.
I should’ve known he’d be a little evil in bed. But when he finally gives me what I need, it’s worth every second of the torture.
My body seizes. I’m clawing, arching, unsteady—overtaken by it.
There’s a kind of awe in the way he handles me. He grips either side of my waist while I recover. But the moment I start to come down, he climbs up beside me, presses himself against my side, and kisses me like he needs it to live.
“You make me crazy,” he whispers. “You drive me mad, Lila. You’re tied to our bed, shaking, overwhelmed, and I’m still nowhere near satisfied. I want to make you come once for every time I fucked my hand while thinking about you when I couldn’t have you.”
He grinds his thick cock against my hip, and I feel how hard he is. How desperate.
I’m also reminded of exactly how fucking big this man is.
I am impossibly wet, and I realize that may have been his goal all along.
We’re going to need it.
“I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you,” he says. “And I don’t just mean like this. I mean everything. You with your morbid little lectures. You, grumbling in the morning without coffee. You in my bed. In my life. I want it fucking all.”
I can barely breathe. Not from the way my body is stretched taut, still tied to the headboard. From him.
“Tell me how to stop wanting you, and I’ll try,” he says suddenly, raw and wrecked and honest. “But I don’t think I can.”
He climbs off the bed and stands at the edge, working to undo the buttons of his shirt.
I can’t move—literally can’t—and somehow that makes it worse. Or better.
The fabric falls away, one piece at a time, until all that’s left is him.
Strong lines, defined shoulders, a body that looks built to fuck.
It’s unfair, the way restraint suits him. Even fully naked, he looks composed, self-contained, like he’s already decided exactly how this will go.
I can’t stop staring. The way he holds himself. The patience. The size.
The—oh my actual fucking god his cock is pierced.
He smirks at the way my mouth falls open as he strokes himself, thumbing the barbell at the head of his cock, and I need an embarrassing amount of time to remember how to close it.
“You don’t have to want what’s already yours,” I whisper. “Fuck me, Theo. Please.”
The last of his composure burns out in his eyes.
It feels a little like I just signed my own death certificate.
Death by D. Calla’s words pop into my head.
You know what? I will make a beautiful cautionary tale. And I am completely fine with that.
He surges forward, kissing me. His hands skim down my sides, worshipful and a little rough, undoing the ties just enough to free my wrists.
He doesn’t rush. Doesn’t slam into me. He presses into me—unhurried, deep, with a groan ripped from somewhere behind his ribs.
“Oh my god,” I gasp.
He’s thick. Stretching me to the edge of what I can take. Every inch feels impossible, too much. And then not enough when he pulls out before thrusting back in just a little more each time.
I try to breathe through it, but he just keeps going, deeper, deeper, until I swear I can feel him in my throat.
“Breathe, sweetheart,” Theo grits out. “We were made to fit together. I know you can take it.”
I whimper, and he pauses, buried almost all the way inside me. “You’re so tight. So fucking perfect around me. Taking every inch, even when it feels too big. Look at you already shaking again. You’re doing so good. Letting me in. Letting me have you like this.”
My body clenches involuntarily, and he groans again, low and feral. “That’s it. Fuck. I’m not even all the way in yet.”
Oh my god.
He pulls back just slightly, then thrusts deeper, surely all the way this time, until I feel full in a way that borders on unbearable. Until I forget my own fucking name.
“You feel—fuck, Lila. You feel like heaven. You are heaven.”
He finds a rhythm that’s maddening in its tenderness, each thrust a demand.
I feel every inch of him, every withheld thought finally poured into the way he moves—stretching me open, splitting me in half in the best possible way.
It hurts, but it’s the kind of hurt I crave, the kind that makes me feel ruined and worshipped all at once.
“Mine,” he mouths the word against my throat. It’s like he can’t say it enough, like maybe he is trying to convince himself it’s finally true. “Every sound you make. Every time you fall apart for me. It’s fucking mine.”
I moan, nearly scream as he angles just right.
“Say it for me, Lila,” he groans, hips stuttering. “Say you’re mine.”
“I am,” I pant. “I’m yours, Theo.”
He slows, pushing in deep and holding there, our brows pressed against one another.
“This isn’t just sex,” he says, almost as if he’s afraid I’ll argue. “You know that, right?”
I nod, too wrecked to speak.
Because I do know. It’s not just the way it feels. Or the way he fucks me like I’m something to be studied and worshipped. It’s that every part of me—every fracture, every scar—feels safe in his hands.
When he comes, it’s with a shudder and a soft curse, burying himself in me. I follow seconds later, losing myself beneath him, pleasure crashing through me in waves I didn’t know I was still capable of riding.
We stay like that for a while. Breathless, hearts pounding in sync, the world reduced to the square footage of this bed and the air between our mouths.
He presses one last kiss to my temple, soft enough to undo me all over again, before he pulls away.
“Let me take care of my mess,” he says before disappearing into the bathroom.
I lie back, feeling every beat of my heart like a soft drum against the inside of my ribcage.
He returns with a damp washcloth, crouching beside the bed. I sit up and he presses the cloth to my skin, wiping sweat from my neck, my arms, my thighs.
I think he’s going to clean the mess from between my legs. His hand trials down my stomach in a way that makes me full-body shudder. But when he gets there, he tosses the washcloth to the side. Doesn’t wipe anything away.
He dips two fingers in his come that’s leaking out of me, and works it back inside.
I try to swallow and can’t, heat flaring all over again. He watches my reaction closely, eyes heavy-lidded and dark with something that feels a lot like pride.
“You are so beautiful and so perfect, Lila. There’s no part of me I wouldn’t give you,” he murmurs. “Do you like being full of me?”
I nod, groan at the slide of his fingers when he pulls them out, pushes them back in again.
He kisses the inside of my thigh. “God, you’re so fucking pretty. I could keep you like this.”
When I shiver, he tugs the blanket up over my shoulders and climbs in beside me again, pulling me gently into the curve of his body.
“I meant it,” I say once I’m settled. “What I said. I’m yours. I have been for a long time. It just took me a while to finally admit it to myself.”
He swallows, and for the first time since I’ve met him, he looks a little overwhelmed. “You have no idea what that does to me.”
My lungs feel too full. “I think I do.”
He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear and kisses my temple. “You did so good,” he praises. “I just… I want you to always feel safe with me. Especially after. No regrets.”
“I do,” I whisper. “With you, I do.”
His eyes darken. “Good. Such a good girl for me. You are everything.” He says each sentence between kisses.
It wrecks me a little. The praise. The heat behind it. The way it settles low in my belly and spreads like wildfire.
Maybe it’s the way his words land between us like they’ve always belonged there. But suddenly I can feel it—feel us—in a way I haven’t let myself before now.
The evidence has been there all along.
In every glance that lingered too long. Every charged silence. Every time he looked at me like I was already his and just... didn’t say it.
It was in the way we argued. The way we worked. The way we touched. It always meant something.
It’s not just lust. It’s not just timing.
It’s us.
Undeniable.
Traceable.
Proof that this isn’t some sudden combustion. It’s been building.
Locard’s Exchange Principle.
It’s one of the first things you learn when studying how offenders interact with environments.
It’s the framework everything else is built on. It means that whenever two objects come into contact, there’s a transfer. Always. No matter how small or fleeting or careful someone tries to be. Something gets left behind.
A fiber. A fingerprint. A fleck of dirt.
We build entire cases around it. Reconstruct timelines. Catch killers. Because it’s the one truth we can count on: there is always evidence. The trick is knowing where to look. How to interpret what you find.
Every contact leaves a trace.
It’s the foundation of everything I believe. The rule I’ve never once questioned.
And I feel that same certainty now.
Theo has touched my life, and there’s no undoing it. He’s there in the way I breathe. The way I think. The way my pulse spikes when he says my name. His presence is written into the softest, most hidden parts of me. Etched into my very being. Settled beneath my skin.
I’m just as sure of him—of the evidence of us—as I am of Locard’s principle.
He’s left his mark on me.
And I don’t want to scrub it clean.