Longline #2
Harper moans as I withdraw to the crown of my cock and then push an inch farther than before, taking my time, just like she wanted. “Give me more.” Another shudder racks her body, sweat gathering beneath my palm as I slide it across her back. “Give me everything.”
She doesn’t just mean my full length.
She means all of me.
I can hear it in the dark notes of her voice.
She wants my body, my secrets. My soul. And maybe once she believes that she’s consumed me completely, she’ll be ready to let the last of her ramparts fall.
I push deeper and deeper until she takes every inch of my cock.
I pause there, letting her adjust to the sensation, waiting as she finds her breath. I lean down and kiss her shoulder, whispering words of praise into her skin. “You were fucking made for me, Harper. This tight ass couldn’t be more perfect. You’re mine, always.”
I pull out to the tip and slide back in again. And then I pick up a rhythm.
Slow strokes, each one careful, to the very tip of my erection and back in again.
I keep the steady cadence, and Harper moans with pleasure, growing more confident with every moment that passes.
I take my time, fucking her languidly, savoring the way her body grips me back.
And then she grabs my hand, squeezing it with surprising strength.
I wonder if I’ve hurt her, but it’s not pain I see in her face when she glances back at me. It’s desperation. She nods toward the panty vibe I set next to her on the couch, and I turn on the app before passing it to her.
“Fuck me like I’m unbreakable,” she says. “But try anyway.”
She presses the vibe to her clit, and I slam into her hard.
Harper hisses a string of curses as I grip her shoulder and thrust. I push in as far as her body can take me.
Her moans grow louder. She works the toy over her sensitive nerves.
And I let her come to the edge of unraveling before I slow my strokes and start all over with long, slow thrusts.
Again and again, I take her to the point of coming apart, fighting my own urges to spill into her as I relish her grip on my cock.
I want more. More moans. More pleas. More sweat on her skin, more ragged breaths.
And it’s only when she begs me that I finally give in.
“Please, Nolan,” she whispers. “I’m ready to break. I need it.”
I lose all control and fuck her wildly.
Her ass clenches around my length as I thrust and thrust and thrust. She screams my name as she comes apart, her body trembling, every muscle tightening across her back.
And I’m right there with her, falling into an abyss.
The electric hum builds at the base of my spine and pleasure rolls through me as I spill into her, surging ropes of cum into her ass.
When the orgasm finally passes, my legs are shaking, thunderous heartbeats ringing in my ears. I struggle not to collapse over her, carefully pulling out before I fall apart and take her with me.
“Are you okay . . . ?” I ask as I turn off the vibe and run my palm across her ass, a blush dappling her flesh.
“We’re doing that again,” she says through ragged breaths. “Soon.” I let out a huff of a laugh and pivot to retrieve the tissues and washcloths I left on the side table, but Harper grasps my wrist before I can move away. “Thank you, Nolan.”
“You don’t need to thank me. Trust me.”
“No. I do.”
There’s more she wants to say, but before she can convince herself out of it, I smile and walk away.
When I’ve got her a little cleaned up, I wrap her in a fresh robe and scoop her up into my arms, taking her to the bathroom where I set her on the edge of the tub as it fills.
I change playlists to something soothing.
Bring her water and a glass of wine. Light some candles.
And when the tub is full, I honor her. I lay one of the masks she loves over her face and then run a sponge over every inch of her skin.
Arms and legs. Fingers and toes. Her pierced nipples.
Her sensitized clit. I can tell by the hitch in her breath that she would let me haul her out of the bath and fuck her on the tile floor, soaking wet and shivering, if I wanted to.
My cock hardens at the thought. But though I might love to fuck her brutally, I care for her reverentially.
Because I love her deeply. And even though she might never say it back, I think she loves me too.
I finish my ritual, then step away before my desire blossoms into something unstoppable.
I make dinner while Harper finishes her bath.
We eat together like we do every night. Then she falls asleep with her head on my lap as we watch Surviving Love.
I lay a blanket over her and slip away, driving to the Ballantyne River as the sun sets behind a thickening mist. I park not at Arthur’s burial ground, but by the entrance of the overgrown trail farther upriver where Jake’s final remains lay buried in the bank.
I strip his tibia along the water’s edge, letting what’s left of the decaying flesh float away in the rolling current before I close the hole and bring the bone back to the cottage.
It’s a few hours later when I return and wake Harper with a kiss. “Time to get going,” I whisper in her ear.
Within thirty minutes, we’re driving through the dark, a deep fog settling on the streets of Cape Carnage.
It’s nearly midnight. We see only a handful of people as we pass through the mist, most of them faces Harper says she doesn’t recognize.
But just to be safe, we park a few blocks away from Harborside Road and walk the rest of the way to Wallie’s.
“You said there aren’t any cameras, right?
” I ask as we cross the road to the small shop, the scent of the sea and the creak of boats at the nearby marina rolling toward us on the fog.
WALLIE’S WATERSPORTS is carved into a wooden sign that stretches the length of the blue-and-white storefront.
Only emergency exit lights are on inside, illuminating a store packed with wetsuits and clothing and boards and paddles.
“Not where the lockers are,” Harper says, leading the way toward the back of the building.
“Why does that not fill me with confidence . . . ?”
We stop at the corner of the store, pulling on our gloves as Harper leans forward to peer around the edge. “There’s just one to take care of.”
Fucksakes.
I’m about to make an argument about thinking this through further when Harper darts around the corner, pulling her top off as she goes.
I hiss her name, but she ignores me, jumping to toss her shirt onto the camera that’s pointed toward the shop door.
It lands perfectly over the device, and Harper spins to face me in her sports bra and leggings.
“Voilà! Job done.”
“You’re fucking chaos, you know that?” I whisper as I stride toward her, trying to convince my cock to get the message that now is not the time to fuck her against the wall.
“You’re welcome,” she says, and her little smile tells me she knows exactly what I’m thinking. When I stop in front of her, she rises on her toes to press a quick kiss to my cheek, then takes a key from the pocket at her thigh and unlocks the door. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”
I let the door close silently behind me, then follow the glow of Harper’s flashlight as she makes her way to the office.
It’s a cramped space, the desk littered with papers and binders that Harper starts sifting through.
I head to the small window that faces the curve of Harborside Road.
The lights at Nightfog are barely visible in the distance through the mist. I don’t see anyone on the street, but I can’t escape the feeling of being watched.
“Got it—locker sixteen.” She closes a binder, then starts searching the desk drawers for the padlock key.
I’m about to help her when I stop at the whiteboard calendar that’s tacked to the wall next to the window. “Fuck me.”
“What is it?”
I shine my flashlight on the calendar, concentrating the light on tomorrow’s schedule. Yates, 9:00 a.m., the entry says. “Looks like we’re doing this right on time.”
A shiver racks Harper’s body. Her enthusiasm from finding the locker information is all but gone. She doesn’t say anything about my observation, resuming her search with a furrowed brow. I’m about to look through a filing cabinet along the far wall when she says a quiet “Found it.”
We stride from the office, making our way back out into the night, glancing at our surroundings as we go.
Locker sixteen is near the end of a row of tall, narrow lockers, the teal paint chipped and peeling from the constant battle with the harsh coastal climate.
Harper opens the padlock and shines her flashlight on the wetsuit hanging from a hook and the fiberglass longboard resting inside.
“Perfect,” I whisper, draping the wetsuit over my shoulder. Next, I pull out the black-and-white board and lay it on its deck. “Stand on the board for a minute.”
Harper does as I ask, and I cover one of the distinctive checkerboard-patterned fins with the wetsuit to protect it from suspicious marks before I give it a solid kick with my steel-toed boot.
It shatters off in a clean break at the base.
I slide the fin into my backpack and place the wetsuit into my bag.
In only moments, we’ve stashed the surfboard in the shadow of some bushes, returned the locker key, and retrieved Harper’s shirt.
And then we’re jogging single file in the dark along the narrow path to the cape promontory.
“Do you think they’ll find the evidence?” Harper asks when we slow to a walk up the steep incline. “They still haven’t found McMillan’s shirt at Loon Lake, have they?”
“No,” I reply, and it’s something that’s been weighing on me just as much as it must be nagging at her.
“Volunteers can miss things, though. I’m going to rotate a couple of the crews tomorrow.
I’ll put Bert and a few others on Melmurby Beach.
Bert’s already primed to be thinking of evidence related to Sharkimedes.
And I’ll send a new crew out to Loon Lake, see if they might have better luck with the shirt. ”
Harper only glances back at me long enough that I can see her lip slide between her teeth, and then she turns away.
It takes nearly ten minutes to make it to the highest point of the path, where it intersects with a wider path that leads to the tip of the cape. Melmurby Beach stretches before us, the fog peeled away to reveal black water and a crescent of sand.
“Wait here,” I say. “Keep watch. Any trouble, give me a call. You’ve got a good view of everything from here. When we’re done, we’ll get the car and grab the surfboard.”
Harper gives me a weak smile. “And then have a beer and watch Surviving Love.”
“Or just sleep for a thousand years.”
“Deal.”
I kiss her forehead and lay a hand on her arm, capturing her eyes. “Your plan is a good one, Harper. This’ll work.”
I wait until she nods, and then with a final squeeze, I make my way down the switchback path.
Though I focus on my destination and the plan I need to execute, I still feel the line back to Harper on the hill.
To what I need to do to keep her safe despite a world that seems always ready to tighten its grip and pull her away.
The path ends at a dry section of the beach, and I take off my shoes and socks to wade into the water so I only leave a brief trail of footprints behind that will be easy to sweep away.
The crash of the waves and the cold kiss of the water and the scent of the sea dominate my senses.
I keep my flashlight off as I make my way down the beach in the dim light.
When I’m nearly halfway down the beach, I stop and withdraw the cloth from my backpack, unwrapping Hornell’s bone fragment that I defleshed. I dip it into the water, raking it over the sand at my feet as I think back to the night that I killed him.
Rage can be sweet when time dulls its sharp edges.
I still feel it when I think back to the way he was watching Harper from the shadows.
But I also feel the bliss of that moment and how cathartic it was.
His pleas to me that went unanswered. The glorious pressure of his flesh against my wire.
The scent of hot blood spilling into the night.
And now, I rise with his bone in my hand and walk through the shallow water to throw it onto the sea-smoothed stones where the highest tides reach.
The last piece of a man who deserved to die, tossed on the shore like forgotten driftwood.
I smile.
Next, I make my way back toward the cape promontory, staying in the cold grip of the sea. When I’m a distance away from the bone, I take the surfboard fin from my bag. I baptize that too, letting tendrils of seaweed drape over the shattered fiberglass. Then I drop it at the high tide line.
I look up the beach to the switchback path that leads up the cliff, my gaze landing on the figure standing on the edge. I can’t see Harper’s features through the distant dark. But I feel her. I’m tethered to her. Through death. Through destruction. In vengeance and lies. In shadows and light.
I walk through the water, reeled in by her phantom longline.