Chapter 16 #2
She spat in my face, a perfect arc that landed just under my right eye. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
I let go of her throat and trailed my hand down, palm flat on her chest, feeling the heart pound against the bone. The urge to hit her—hard, just once—was like a static charge between my teeth. Instead, I got up, undid my belt, and used it to pin her thighs down against the mattress.
She writhed, but not in protest. More like she was checking the perimeter for cracks.
I knelt on the bed, got my hands under her ruined shirt, and took one nipple between my teeth. I bit, not quite drawing blood, but enough to make her yelp. Her back arched again and she said, “You call that rough? I’ve had worse from parking meters.”
I ground my knuckles along her ribs, the old-fashioned way my father used to knuckle my head when I talked back. She grinned, her mouth shiny with spit, and let out a low growl.
I got my hand under her jeans, found her wet already. I pushed two fingers inside, slow and unhurried, my thumb on her clit. She bucked but didn’t beg. Instead, she said, “You ever get tired of being the only one holding the leash, Detective?”
I didn’t answer. I worked my hand until her breath turned shallow and fast, then I pulled out, wiped my fingers across her cheek, and forced them into her mouth.
“Suck,” I said.
She did, biting down just enough to hurt. I pulled my hand away, letting her teeth drag along the knuckle, and watched a drop of blood bead up on the skin.
It was my turn.
I got off the bed and stripped. The air was cold, the room colder, but I was past caring. I stood over her, hard and angry, and jerked myself until I came, painting her from the cheekbone to the chin in one long arc.
She grinned up at me, eyes gleaming. “Messy,” she said.
I took the key from my wallet and unlocked the cuffs. She flexed her wrists, the skin angry and red. I handed her the cuffs, an unspoken dare.
She sat up, licked her lips, and with two fingers scooped a streak of cum off her jaw. She pressed her fingers to my lips.
“Clean them off,” she said.
I did.
She moved fast. In one motion, she had the cuffs around my wrist and then behind my back, both hands trapped. She pushed me down onto the mattress, face-first. I felt her weight straddle my ass, then her mouth on the back of my neck, biting hard enough to break skin.
She rolled me onto my back, hands still cuffed. She climbed on top, lowering herself onto me. It was a different rhythm than I was used to: slow, relentless, almost mechanical in its control. She fucked me like she was taking a pulse, counting down seconds.
Her hand went to my throat, the other bracing on my chest. When she came, she let out a long, low sound, almost a growl, and slammed her open palm across my face, once, then again, then twice more, each one timed with her pulse.
She slid off me, breath ragged, and then—eyes locked to mine—she pissed, a hot stream across my cock and balls, the wet pooling under my hips and running down my thighs. She watched my face the whole time, daring me to flinch.
I didn’t.
When she was done, she released my hands, wiped her mouth, and lay back on the mattress with her arms folded behind her head, perfectly still.
For a full minute, we didn’t speak. The only sound was the fan in the bathroom and the drip of liquid off the edge of the bed.
Finally, she said, “You bleed easy, Detective.”
I touched my lip. The skin was split and still bleeding.
“You hit harder than most perps,” I said.
She rolled onto her side, propped her head on her hand, and smiled in that way that didn’t reach her eyes. “Guess you’ll have to come back and try again.”
We cleaned up together, her first, then me. She tossed me a damp towel, and I wiped down the sticky spots, careful not to look too long at the bruises already forming on my wrists.
She watched me the whole time, silent. When I finished, she took the towel, rinsed it in the sink, and hung it over the shower rod like it was just another night in a place that had seen a hundred worse ones.
I stood in the doorway, not sure what to do with my hands.
She turned to face me, chin up. “What now?”
I shrugged. “You tell me.”
She picked up the handcuffs from the bed, weighed them in her hand, then set them on the nightstand.
“Next time, bring some with spikes on them,” she said.
I got dressed, pulled my jacket on over the blood and sweat and cum. My wrists throbbed, my lip pulsed with every heartbeat, and I didn’t care. The world outside felt quieter now, the weight in my chest replaced by something hotter, more dangerous.
I let myself out without saying goodbye, the hallway still empty and waiting.
I stood there much longer than I should have, my mind spinning.
I’d missed out on an opportunity with Spade.
How many times had I had fantasies running through my head, only to forget them when I was with a woman?
Spade wanted a man on the edge. Sure, she was her own woman, but I sensed she wanted something more from a man than a little kinky tryst that ended with her pissing on him.
That was the moment I technically handed in my badge, because I turned around and just as I was about to knock, the door opened.
Spade stood naked, watching me, waiting, waiting for a man on the edge. I moved forward and pushed her back, slamming the door.
She giggled, and that unlocked the man who’d been hiding behind a badge for far too long.
“There’s no stopping, you little cunt,” I said.
“Nobody’s asking you to.”
I pushed her face down into the couch cushion and moved behind her.
“Lube,” she said.
I spat on my dick and shoved it into her ass. She went flat onto the couch, and I followed, my cock driving deeper.
Spade
My whole world flickered red, then white, then absolutely nothing as he rammed into me.
The air in my lungs left in one soundless howl, like a tooth punched out; everything below my waist spasmed, then went gorgeously numb.
His hands pushed on my shoulders, pinning me down, and I let go of the last lever of control, just for now.
The cheap couch burned my skin, every thread prickling alive, and I crawled my fingers into the torn upholstery, so I’d have something left to shred.
I’d been fucked in ways the DSM would have trouble classifying, but this was different. There was no game in it anymore, no performance, no strategy. Just a man who’d finally stopped pretending and a woman who’d stopped waiting.
“Harder,” I managed, and the word came out mangled against the cushion. My ass hurt like a motherfucker, but I didn’t care.
He obliged. The bastard obliged like he’d been saving it for years, like every case he’d ever closed was fuel for this one thing. His cock split me open, dry enough that the friction sparked something electric along my spine, and I bit down on the fabric until I tasted foam.
Then his hand slid under my throat, pulled my head up, and I gasped air that tasted like his skin.
“Look at me,” he said.
I did. The lamp from the bedroom threw his face half in shadow, and his eyes were the kind of flat I recognized—not empty, but full of something he’d stopped naming.
His lip was still bleeding, a slow bead working its way down his chin, and without thinking, I twisted my neck and caught it with my tongue.
He shuddered. I felt it travel through his hips into mine, and something inside me cracked open.
“Don’t stop,” I said, and meant it in a way I hadn’t meant anything in a long time.
He shifted, one hand still under my chin, the other braced on the armrest, and changed the angle.
The new position dragged him across something inside me that made my vision go bright and then dark, like a camera flash going off behind my eyes.
I clawed at the couch, felt the fabric give, felt the cheap stuffing spill under my nails.
“Tell me what you want,” he said. Not a question. A demand.
“Everything.” The word fell out of me before I could catch it. “I want everything you’ve been holding back.”
His laugh was low and rough against the back of my neck. “You sure about that?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself.”
He pulled out—slow, deliberate, letting me feel every ridge—and I hissed through my teeth. Then he flipped me onto my back in one motion, my head hanging off the edge of the couch, my hair pooling on the floor. The blood rushed to my face, making my cheeks burn.
He looked down at me, upside down, and I watched his expression change. The flatness softened into something rawer, something that looked almost like grief, and for a second I thought he was going to stop. I thought he was going to remember who he was and what he’d left behind and pull away.
Instead, he bent down and kissed me. Not the hard, closed-mouth thing from before—this was slow, almost tender, his split lip smearing copper across my mouth. I tasted him, and something broke loose in my chest, something I’d welded shut a long time ago.
“Shaw,” I said against his mouth.
“Don’t.” He pulled back just enough to look at me. “Don’t say my name like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like it matters.”
I reached up and grabbed his jaw, my thumb pressing into the cut on his lip, reopening it. “It does. That’s the problem.”
He went still above me, breathing hard, and I watched the war play out behind his eyes.
Duty and desire and fear and want, all of it colliding behind the flat surface he wore like armor.
I’d seen men look at me like that before—like I was a grenade they couldn’t decide whether to throw or hold—but this was different.
This wasn’t a calculation. This was a man watching the last wall come down and knowing he couldn’t rebuild it.
“Look at me,” I said, echoing his own words back to him. “Really look.”
He did. His eyes dropped to my mouth, my throat, the tattooed hands on his face, and then back to my eyes. Something shifted in his expression—a crack, then a fracture, then a full collapse.