Chapter Text
-----
The first body was discovered on the eighth of September, propped up at a bus stop in the outer suburbs of Whitfell. Found by a drunken teenager on his way home from the pub.
You got the phone call from the detective inspector in the ultra-black hours of the morning. The time of night where not even the waxing moon hung in the sky, its habits as sibylline as any nightcrawler lurking red-eyed at that hour. Yourself included.
Not alone, though. You had found yourself a lurker, one that would arrive unannounced in the pitch black and disappear before the sun broke over the low-rise city skyline. Exactly what you needed. If he were any more of a fixture in your life, you would have grown to loathe him. You were like that with everybody; you could handle people in doses — fixed, controlled, prescribed doses — and beyond that their very presence became as abrasive as sandpaper. Fork-on-plate grating enough to make your ears bleed.
It was a defense mechanism. That’s what all the pseudo-analytical armchair psychologists would tell you, anyway. Something you could work to overcome, like it was a problem in the first place. That you just needed to become one with yourself , and the right person would slot into your life like a jigsaw piece.
Tommy slotted in just fine, for now.
A little wonky, one of those unsolvable pieces that you had to squish in, in itself an indication that it didn’t belong where you had put it — but it would suffice. Having the hole filled was satisfying enough. Looked more complete when you took a step back.
He was uncanny, not quite all there. Offbeat in a way you were drawn to.
There wasn’t much to him. He simply offered his cock to you when you wanted it, and he didn’t burden you with the social obligations of a well-adjusted man. No wine and dining, no meeting the parents, no cooking breakfast. He told you very little, and you liked that about him.
You knew his name was Tommy, that he was from Manchester, and that he was a lorry driver for some packing or logistics company — you learned that when you first met him at the petrol station checkout. Knew that he’d be gone for weeks at a time driving up and down the island, only visiting Leeds for a quick fuck and a cigarette, and he’d be gone again. You knew he served in the special forces in his twenties and was discharged due to injury, and you only discovered that because you mindlessly asked him about a scar on his back. You knew his tattoos apparently didn’t mean anything and he got them to piss off his dad when he was eighteen.
He arrived at your flat just after three in the morning.
You had been growing roots into the sunken cushion of your sofa when he knocked on your door, television playing a box set of Grey’s Anatomy with the volume two notches above mute. You knew it was him, he always knocked the same way — two hard knocks with the back of his knuckles, a third too much effort. Loud enough to startle you. Ever impatient.
You opened your door with a twist of the handle (rarely bolted it, a careless habit). Greeted him in your oversized t-shirt, with no underwear on and your legs unshaven. You weren’t expecting him, but you knew he paid no mind. He’d sink his cock in showered or otherwise. Simple man.
He stood cladded in his rough canvas work jacket, day-old sweat embedded in his stubbled cheeks, cropped wheaten hair scruffed up and pointy. Greasepaint creased in the wrinkles of his sockets, once said it prevented sun blindness during his long hours on the road. Pinched a lambent cigarette between his scarred lips, amber glow catching a glint in his brown eyes.
Took up the whole doorframe, fucking behemoth that he was. The jacket made his goliath shoulders even bulkier, such a thing somehow possible.
“You smell good,” is all he said, as he pushed forward into your flat and swung the door shut behind him. Voice as hoarse as ever, the growl of an old dog, cords shrivelled by cigarettes and dragged raw over gravel.
“You don’t,” you answered frankly, turning to sit back on the sofa. You had unfinished business with a rum and diet coke that you left dripping on the coffee table. “Smell like petrol.”
He huffed, vaguely amused, hasn’t stopped you before remaining unspoken. He shucked off his jacket and dumped it on your cluttered kitchen counter, a grimy wifebeater the only layer underneath it. Came to sit next to you on the couch and landed in it with a grunt. The old springs sank deep under the weight of him and his sheer gravity pulled you in his direction.
You got down one sip of your drink before he scooped you up — with two dinner-plate hands on either divot of your waist you were swiftly lodged in his lap, ass nestled against him as though you were made to fit. He had your legs hooked over his, thighs wedged open, and you got a little splash of spiked coke down your front in the motion. You leaned forward to set the drink down on the coffee table, before he reeled you back in.
He was a taker, Tommy. Liked to pick you up and plonk you down as he wished, and didn’t like a fuss. He wasn’t rough about it, at least. He was a utilitarian, simply preferred convenience.
Fine by you. You were a pedant in most facets of your life — needed a tight grip of everything, always, or else you’d implode like a dying star. Some might have called you a control freak, under their breath and behind the cover of your inattention.
Not with sex, though. Sex was the only act wherein you could willingly relinquish all control. It was liberating, in a way — the ability to shut your brain off, cantankerous as it was, and for once let another person pull your bullied strings.
Tommy never checked, never asked. Sometimes he’d fuck you and leave without a word exchanged.
A wide hand bunched up the bottom of your t-shirt, pulling it up to your belly, and the other bent up and over your shoulder — he hucked up a lump of saliva into his salty fingers, and smeared it against your spread pussy with little fanfare. He was generous with his fingers, sometimes, at least well practiced — began by pushing a thick middle finger inside you, hooking and raking it against your outward wall, kneading into the gummy flesh below your bladder because you told him once that it felt good that way.
The rough heel of his palm grinded against your clitoris as his fingers coaxed your cunt to drool for him, a little harsher than would be most comfortable, but you would never say so. Telling him to do anything would defeat the purpose.
Once he got you warmed up, it didn’t matter. When your clit blushed under his attention, pink and alert, he’d redirect his focus. Would drag his finger out of you, coated in your watery slick, and paint stripes with it over your pulsing bead. Up, down, up, down. Nothing fancy, but you liked consistency — he’d expose your clit from under its hood with every upward stroke, the calloused pad of his finger directly touching the raw nerves would make you twitch. His fingertip would travel back downward every odd moment, scooping up more of your syrup before returning to its job.
Before long you were panting, sweat beading on the nape of your neck, and your head rocked back over his shoulder. The television was rendered nothing more than a lightshow in the dark sitting room, bouncing blue and white off the walls and ceiling. His iron-hard length pressed into your lower back, straining against the fly of his jeans, and he bucked his hips to make certain you could feel it. You could.
You enjoyed it when he dragged it out. When he had nowhere to be, so took his time. It wasn’t uncommon for him to rush, to fuck you hard and hurried and leave before your pussy was even warm. Whenever he was gone for a long while, though, he’d savour every minute. The longer he was gone, the more you looked forward to his double-knock on your door.
With the way he was indulging tonight, you’d have thought he had been gone for two months.
You saw him last week.
When you came on his fingers with a breathless whine, your thighs strained desperately to clamp shut around his hand, but he kept them jammed open — even readjusting his own legs to open you wider. Selfish. He candidly relished in the pained sobs you would let out when he persisted in vexing your sated clit, once the nerves in its peak were cloyed and inflamed. Sometimes he’d press it like a button, or pinch it tight between his fingers, just to hear you yelp in the shock. You felt his grin when he did it.
His turn, then. With a forearm hooked around your waist, cutting into your belly, he lifted you — reached underneath your bottom with a wet hand and tore down his fly, tugging out his cock and holding it upright like a sword, fist around the hilt.
He gracelessly impaled you on him without warning, yanking you downward onto his lap and making you squeal like a cat with its tail stepped on. Far from the first time you had been speared on him, but you never grew accustomed to the size of it — it stretched you open and burrowed itself among your organs, taking up so much space you could hardly breathe around it, became an organ of your own. Even with your doctorate you failed to imagine how your bowels could rearrange themselves to fit him.
With arms like boa constrictors coiled around your belly, fingers boring into the flesh of your waist, he raised you up and tugged you down again — it was as though you weighed nothing to him, he could lift you up and down like a doll without toil. Fucked you like he was jerking himself off with your body.
“Only good cunt,” he grunted deeply into the back of your neck, where his teeth grazed your skin. So low that you felt it rattle in your chest, as though he thought you could not hear it. “No wonder.”
The shit he said was always gibberish. Uttered as low as a secret, always referring to something he never made you privy to. You never bothered asking. You just liked the sound of his voice.
“Wan’ another one?” He asked roughly, as a pair of fingers creeped over your mound and resituated themselves at the crux of your pussy. Almost gibberish, but you understood quite clearly this time.
“Yes please,” you softly purred, a little breath.
Hearing your obsequiousness aloud was always painfully shrill. Such a needy little sycophant the moment a cock was inside you. Embarrassment would settle heavy and thick later, once you were alone, and the thrumming heat twisted up in your core had unwinded.
He touched you differently with his right hand — left-handed, you supposed — would smear circles over your clit with the palps of his fingers, lazy and imprecise. Used the rutting of his pelvis to guide his motion, as he hammered into your cervix with the thick head of his cock. You’d be sore later.
As he sped himself up, blindly chasing the acme of his own pleasure like a dog after bone, and you chewed on your lip like meat—
Your phone rang.
Glowed bright white from where it sat on the couch beside you, the piercingly loud marimba of the ringtone as jarring as a smack to the cheek. You blinked over your shoulder to look at it.
D.I. MacTavish.
You never saved his contact, but you knew the number by heart. Could determine the caller the moment you saw the incoming call on your screen. Very rarely came with good news.
Expecting that Tommy would snap at you for being distracted by it, you shut your eyes again and turned away, focused on his busy fingers and the cock in your guts — but, to your shock, he slowed.
“Better get that,” he grumbled.
You groaned childishly, the back of your head knocking against his collarbone as you slumped back into him. “I don’t want to.”
“Pick it up,” he said rigidly.
Short-fused man that he was. Request better be followed by action in the first instance, or he’d ignite quicker than a match in petrol. Never got physical with you, at least. He’d just grit his teeth and leave in a huff.
You all but mumbled fine as you leaned over to grab the phone from the cushion next to you, but with a tug he kept your hips riveted to his lap, and his cock skewered in you to the root.
There was something deeply depraved about picking up the phone to speak to the detective while being fucked by another man, but you didn’t think too much of it in your come-drunk haze. You wanted to avoid the inevitable fit of rage that would erupt if you made a fuss. Hoped for a short conversation.
“Hello?”
You weren’t very good at phone calls. Not well versed in the formalities. You silently waited for him to elucidate the reason for his bothering you at such a ludicrous hour — but, given the shared nature of your professions, you could hazard a guess. Doubly inappropriate that you had a dick inside you, in that case.
“Did I wake ye?”
Been a while since you heard that voice. A month, at least. It made your chest a little warm to hear it, lilted and deep as it was, even through the tinny phone speaker.
“No, I—” You hiccuped as Tommy moved his hips, and his cock raked pointedly against your constricting walls. You felt his hot breathing against the nape of your neck and tried to ignore it. “—I’m just watching telly. Something happen?”
“A body’s been found in south Whitfell,” he said bluntly.
Not a friendly call. You reached back and patted Tommy on the shoulder, implicitly telling him to stop moving as though you couldn’t feel him. You could keep it together if he stayed still and let you breathe steadily.
“Do - do you need me there tonight?” You asked, voice stiff, struggling to sound at ease while you were stuffed full.
“I’d love a visit,” he said, and you couldn’t tell whether any humour was webbed in his tone. “Need ye to take a look in situ.”
As you opened your mouth to speak, Tommy brusquely bucked his hips, and his stone-hard cock pummelled into the plug of your womb brutally enough to force a piercing squeak from your throat.
That was enough to make you angry. It flared hot in your belly and made your jaw clench up, and you twisted your spine to spitefully jab him below his collarbone, holding your breath when his cock mashed against your organs.
He was smirking vindictively, pupils blown wide, ravenous as a shark. You hadn’t taken him for an exhibitionist, but with the context of the phone call painfully clear, you weren’t going to let him use this as the opportunity to explore it.
You unhooked a leg to get yourself off of him, and his grin dropped from his face so abruptly it was as though you had flipped a switch.
Cold dread needled down the back of your neck.
His huge hands kept you bolted to his lap, cock grinding into you as if to spite you.
It dawned on you then the precedent you had set — allowing him unfettered ingress to your body and not once disputing mid-act. He had the size and strength to keep you pinned to him for as long as he wished to; a fact that would normally excite you, that now only frightened you.
Only when you scowled at him with enough ire to turn him to stone, smacked him on the chest and again attempted to get off, did he finally and reluctantly acquiesce. His glower was gelid, venomous, and his disdainful fingers clawed over your thighs as you stood yourself up. His slick cock tugged out of you and landed against his hirsute stomach, leaving a wet patch on the white cotton of his wife-beater. In any other situation you’d mourn the emptiness.
You brought the phone back to your ear with a clear of your throat, as you timidly wandered away from the couch towards your bedroom.
“Must get excited when a cadaver shows up, MacTavish,” you said coyly, flustered, wiping an errant hair from your forehead. “Gives you an excuse to see me.”
A beleaguered sigh grumbled through the phone. “That’s no’ funny.”
Johnny’s gallows humour was a quirk of his you enjoyed, even though he routinely used it to get a rise out of you while you did the work they paid you for. So, his uncharacteristic severity made clear that there would be no such persiflage this time. You didn’t know how to act toward him when he was serious. It made your skin itch.
“Sorry,” you said awkwardly into the phone, through teeth. Well rehearsed. He left a silence harsher than nails on a chalkboard before you brought yourself to speak again. “S’it look like a homicide?”
“Body was sitting at a bus stop. Young lad spotted it,” he replied stiffly. It didn’t sound like him. “It’s — it’s wrapped in clingfilm.”
“Oh,” you hummed. That was new. “Kid didn’t see anyone?”
“Nobody,” he answered. “He hasn’t been much use, though. Lad was steamin’. ”
You rummaged around in your chest-of-drawers as he spoke, phone wedged between your shoulder and cheek. Shoved your bare legs into your jeans once you found them, and stuffed some changes of clothes into your Nike gym bag. Homicides always necessitated an overnight stay.
“Any decomp?” You asked clinically, “might have been dead a while. Soft tissue intact?”
“Dunno, Bones. I didnae look that close. That’s your job.”
You always cringed a little when he called you that. He decided it was your nickname upon first meeting you, and persisted even after you told him that television’s beloved Bones was a forensic anthropologist and not a forensic pathologist. The difference was lost on him. Expressing any displeasure only made the name stick.
Still, it was evident something had gotten under the detective’s skin. It made you viscerally uneasy, and he wasn’t even in the room with you to give you that toothy look of heavy-browed discomfort.
The human mind was an enigma to you. A labyrinth of dark hallways and trapdoors. You always found yourself turning the wrong corner and hitting a dead end, or losing your footing and tumbling into a spike pit. Your own mind no exception.
Bodies were much easier. You knew what there was to be found and exactly where to look for it. Skin, flesh, organs, bones, teeth. No constituent variance between one person and another, no discrepancies to account for.
Saying the right thing was a more difficult undertaking than autopsying a corpse.
“Everything alright, detective?” You felt obliged to ask, when the silence stretched too long, and your ears began to ring.
A long sigh. His muteness only endured, but he finally spoke after a pruritic pause. “Sorry. I’m — just — s’good to hear yer voice.”
You bit down on nothing as you marched out of your room and towards the door to your flat, only to find it ajar and the sitting room utterly empty. Glancing around for a moment, you checked for Tommy — not in your bathroom, not in the kitchen — just gone. Must have stormed out in a temper. For the best.
“Didn’t answer my question,” you said edgily, as you grabbed your keys from the table by the door.
“I’m fine, bonnie,” he grunted. “When’re ye getting here?”
You stuffed your feet into your boots, yanked your long black coat from the rack by the front door.
“I’m on the way,” you said.
The drive to Whitfell would normally have taken around two hours, but you drove a steady five miles an hour over the limit, and got there ten minutes sooner. Cumbria Constabulary could just as well find a pathologist in their own region — you were sure there would be at least one — but they had an affinity for calling on you at wild hours, likely because you never refused. Not to mention the hardly vocational reasons their detective inspector had for liking you.
The roads were dead empty that early in the morning, just after four. The asphalt was glossy with autumn dew and reflected the odd streetlight in stripes. Mostly empty motorway and rural hills between there and Leeds, but the pseudo-city you headed to had a decent population that was only expanding, and the sprawl of freshly built flat-pack condos proliferated beyond its borders every year.
By the time you arrived at the scene it had been cordoned off with tape, the suburban street blocked by four flashing patrol vehicles, a CID van, and the mobile morgue. A few night-robed slipper-wearing bystanders hovered around the barricade, too sleepy to be a bother but curiosity compelling them to get out of bed and poke their noses around at the drama outside their houses.
A plethora of crime scene investigators pottered about, taking photos and lifting prints and swabbing surfaces, the odd constable there to oversee it and write their aimless notes. Screens of grey canvas had been propped up around the scene, shielding the cadaver from your sight and that of the bystanders, but the floodlights within projected the shadows of every CI working behind it like a puppet show.
The detective spotted your car as you pulled in to park, immediately sauntering towards you and squinting in the glow of your headlights. Thick mohawk cresting his skull as scruffy and unprofessional as ever, he stood dead still with his hands in the pockets of his black duffle coat as you killed the engine. He wore his authority like a nice jacket, standing tall and brandishing it proudly, a fact you always found amusingly juxtaposed to his boyishly crude character.
You flashed your warrant card at an approaching officer as you got out of the car, and they left you be without a word.
“Got ‘ere quick,” he called to greet you, and you shoved your card back into your pocket as you walked over to him.
“Sounded serious,” you answered bluntly, perplexed by his surprise.
He nodded, lips in a line. “Sorry if I was a wee bit blunt,” he said grimly, wintry grey eyes as piercing as you remember, even under the dim orange glow of the streetlight above him. “Bit shaken up, I s’pose.”
“Doesn’t sound like you, Johnny,” you teased, quirk in your brow as you leaned slightly to the side to see past him.
“I’m no’ made o’ stone,” he gibed, finally baring his pointed teeth with a grin, silver-capped canine glinting in the light of the street lamp. “It’s no’ nice to look at, I’ll tell ye that.”
“I’m sure,” you said.
“Get on yer gear,” he told you. “Come take a look. Need yer noggin on this one.”
You gave him a nod and hurried around your car, popping open the boot and digging around the rubbish for the PPE kit that was a permanent fixture among your belongings. Climbed into disposable white coveralls and smoothed down the velcro-close front, tugged a pair of fresh teal latex gloves from their cardboard box and bullied your hands into the floppy rubber, plucking the band around your wrist to ensure a good seal. Three-ply mask, shoe covers, palm-sized notebook in tow.
Returning to the detective, he flicked his head towards the scene, and you followed him at the heel like a duckling. Your heart fluttered high in your chest, buzzing a keen anticipation that always swelled inside you whenever a homicide was in question. Likely inappropriate. Not a secret you’d share.
“There she is,” he grumbled, far more sombre now that the cadaver was in his immediate line of sight. He sniffed, held the back of his hand under his nose as if to stifle a retch.
She indeed. A woman, quite clearly, sitting upright on the bench under the bus shelter, across the road from a quaint little play park. A double layer of clingfilm wrapped snugly around the body from head to toe — meticulously done, each limb individually swathed, the plastic corset-tight around the waist. Dark nipples were visible through the glossy film, breasts squished flat by the tautness of the plastic. The head was less visible, face only determinable up close — bandaged up by multiple layers of film, turned greenish in the thickness, nose and eyes smushed up underneath it.
“Jesus,” you muttered, and for the moment that was all you could muster.
Johnny nodded. “Aye,” he agreed morosely. “No’ somethin’ ye see everyday.”
“Have any of the CIs touched the plastic?” You asked resolutely, focus already needle-pointed and honed in. “Taken any off, moved it at all?”
“No’ that I know of,” he said.
You grunted irefully. “Well, they better not have. You need to keep a better eye on them, detective. If they pissed around with—”
“They’re well trained, doc.” He said, more pointedly, and you sensed that he was gently chiding you for assuming their idiocy. The subsequent chagrin made you shrivel up like a prune.
“How long since it was discovered?” You asked dispassionately, changing the subject.
“‘Bout two hours,” he answered. “Lad said he called triple one straight away once he found it.”
“Mh,” you considered aloud, crouching down beside the bench. Clicked your pen and flipped open your notebook.
Your eyes scoured every inch of the corpse — legs, knees, feet, genitals, stomach, ribs, arms, hands — anything that was visible without having to touch or shift it from its position, you made a note of.
Contusions visible on: right hip, right shoulder, left side of neck, left clavicle. Blood (?) present on the inside of the clingfilm, around stomach and throat areas. Partial lividity (?) on outer left thigh and arm. Pocking/marbling (?) visible on: both thighs, lower stomach, chest, both arms, left foot.
Positioning — sat upright, neutral positioning. Hands flat on thighs above knees. Head leaning slightly to the left, otherwise neck neutral. Legs spread at ~30°, feet flat on ground. No shoes. Evidently nude beneath clingfilm. Hair apparently intact, tied up. Eyes open.
“You’ll have to get your team to analyse the clingfilm,” you muttered flatly, more a spoken thought than a directed statement.
“Huh?” Johnny queried, right behind you. He liked to watch you while you worked. Surveyed like a hawk every anomaly you pointed at, every note you made in your book. Always overly curious about your movements.
“The plastic,” you repeated, glancing up at him over your shoulder. “Get your team to look at it. The brand, or something — it just, it doesn’t look like the stuff you’d get from Tesco, does it?”
“Don’t it?”
“No, it’s — it’s thicker, see? It looks sturdier. Here, look.”
Johnny pursed his lips. “Dinnae need to get any closer, hen.”
A knit pulled in your brow. “You’re being weird,” you said, the irony of your comment not lost on you. “It’s just a body. You’ve probably seen more of them than I have.”
“Callin’ me old?” He chided, an uneasy smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth, dimpling his cheek.
“No, I mean—” You quickly corrected yourself, panicked that you had insulted him. “From, you know. Being a soldier, or whatever.”
“Ah,” he nodded. “I ken. This is hardly like that, though, eh? Dinnae see anything as fucken’ horrific as this out there. This is — ah. S’like a horror movie. I don’ like horror movies.”
You smiled at that. “Little wuss,” you murmured impishly.
“What d’ye think, then?” He asked.
“Of horror movies?”
“Of the fucken’ body, Bones, Jesus.”
You nodded tightly. “Oh, uh—” you looked back at your notebook, “hard to say without taking off the wrapping. But it looks like it was taken from somewhere else and put here recently. Tonight.”
“Mh,” he warily hummed. “How can ye tell?”
“Um—” You bite your words, wrangling them into a comprehensible sentence opposed to unintelligible medical jargon. “There’s blood pooling, on the left side, which suggests it was initially on its side post-mortem. But it’s, it’s not fully settled. I’ll have to look more closely in the lab.”
“Anythin’ else?”
Your eyes raked over the cadaver in front of you, new notes buzzing in the air around you like insects. “It’s pretty intact. Hardly any decomposition. Doesn’t really smell, does it?”
“Cannae say I’ve sniffed it.”
You snorted. “Well, there’s — oh.”
“What?”
Stare hitched on something you hadn’t noticed while you were focusing on the flesh beneath the plastic — water.
Little puddles underneath where the cadaver sat, pooled around its feet. Then you observed droplets, mostly evaporated but what was left trickled in rills down the thighs and chest, atop the plastic.
“It’s wet.”
Johnny chuffed, disquieted. “S’it leaking?”
“No—” You leaned closer, squinting, and laid the back of your gloved hand against the body’s belly. Frigid cold. “I think it’s freshly thawed.”
“Shite,” he grunted, visibly perturbed. He was sharp, the detective, and the realisation of renewed urgency was quick to settle. “Alright, let’s rush ‘er to the fridge then.”
You’d have liked more time to assess the body in situ, but MacTavish wasn’t wrong to want it in storage as soon as possible. The more quickly the body was able to thaw, the more posthumous changes might disturb the secrets it retained from its murder. You stepped back from the bench as the detective whistled over some hazmat-clad drones to bag and tag the cadaver and haul it into the mobile morgue.
You began your shed — pulled off your mask, plucked off your gloves, took down the hood of your PPE suit and let it puddle around your neck. Let out a breath of relief once the most abrasive layers were peeled from you.
“Y’want me to do the post tonight?” You asked impassively, when Johnny returned his attention to you.
His eyes were solemn, overcast, and he stiffly shook his head. “Nae, hen. Save it for the morn, eh?’”
“You sure?” You puzzled, frowning, “I should do it now. Now that it’s not frozen, it might—”
“Och, stop,” he dismissed. “Not havin’ ye look over a body like that if you’re knackered. Yer notes will all be gibberish.”
A curl twisted in your lips. “I’ll be fine. I’ll just have a RedBull.”
“No,” he said. “Tha’ one’s an order.”
“You can’t order me to do anything, detective,” you jeered. “I’m not a cop.”
He let loose a wide grin. “I can do what I damn well please.”
You snickered, rubbing the heel of your palm into an eye — only after he mentioned it did your exhaustion make itself known. It pulled on you like sinking stones, made your legs heavy as lead. The sun was probably not far from rising, and you hadn’t yet slept a wink. Had been far from a relaxing night, in fact.
“Fine,” you grumbled. “I’ll be at the lab in the morning. Or, y’know, in a couple hours.”
He nodded, the buck of his head a salute.
“Will ye crash at ma bit?” He asked, kept his hoarse voice low, as if a secret.
Would be far from the first time you’d have stayed at his flat. He invited you every time you were forced to stay the night near the lab, though the first few offers you had modestly declined.
When you finally capitulated it innocently started with you on his couch, but that only lasted a night. It was only a formality, really, to even pretend that you would sleep in his sitting room — by the next night he had skulked down the stairs and approached you in the dark, allowing you just enough time to squeak his name in shock, before he pulled you by the ankle and buried his mouth in your pussy through the loose leg of your little sleep shorts.
For a while, it was something of a tradition. You’d park in his driveway, put on your pyjamas out of courtesy, dither about whether it was improper, before he inevitably had his cock in you and you were knocked out in his bed. Forced to comb it all out and appear unfrazzled when you arrived at the lab the following morning.
In recent months, though, your visits became fewer and further between — MacTavish’s department had proved somehow too effective, and homicides had become atypically scarce. You could acknowledge the senselessness of bemoaning that the detective was too good at his job, but in some petulant way you held it against him. It meant your paths only crossed once a month, if that, when you were called in.
You had been withholding yourself from him, for the last few visits. Motivation eluded even yourself. Perhaps out of spite, or shame, or an inexplicably renewed concern about the appropriateness of the trysts while you were ostensibly in the city to investigate a murder. Maybe you just couldn’t get past the notion that you had been busy fucking another man, saddled with the certainty that he would not be pleased if you were to tell him, even if you couldn’t sympathise with the jealousy.
“Not tonight,” you answered, and he looked like you had just kicked a puppy.
“Why not?” He all but moaned, reaching his burly hand toward you and brushing your jaw with his thumb. You suddenly felt like people were watching. “We don’t have t’do anythin’, bonnie. We can just sleep.”
You almost snickered at that, because you knew how vastly unlikely that would be. Instead you gave him a pleasant smile and a noncommittal shrug, hoping he’d leave it at that.
He didn’t. “Are ye mad at me?”
His hand was on your shoulder, then, at the crook of your neck. Johnny was like you, in that way — had to have his hands on you, craved the tangible like a carnivore craves meat, ever-chasing the succor of touch.
“No, Johnny, I’m not mad at you,” you said mildly, through a placid smile.
“Y’sure?” He asked. “Y’been prickly, lately. Have I done somethin’ tae upset ye?”
“I’m always prickly,” you muttered, now defensive, broke your eyes away from his interrogative glare to look at the asphalt of the footpath beneath you.
“Aye, ‘n ye ken I like yer prickles,” he said with a smirk.
“I’m sorry,” you huffed. “I’m just gonna get a room at the Travelodge.”
“You’re avoidin’ me,” he said edgily, hooking his hands onto his hips.
Possessive brute he was. Yet another reason you’d avoid revealing your escapades to him, even though he had absolutely no right to claim you as his own nor to bemoan your sexual habits.
“I’m not,” you said. “It’s not my fault we’re hardly ever in the same city.”
“Got another fella, do ye?”
Your brows pulled tight. “No. I don’t.”
It wasn’t in your nature to lie, and you weren’t good at it. It didn’t help that the detective’s entire being was built to hunt for the truth, he could scent a lie like a bloodhound could a fugitive. His brows were low and hard and cast a shadow over his eyes, dimples deep in his carved cheeks as he chewed on your fib.
“He do it for you?” He asked derisively, jealousy thick as tar lacquered every word.
“Stop it, Johnny,” you sternly implored, shrinking into yourself like a snail. “I’m just here to do my job.”
“Mh,” he mumbled, contempt in his throat. “Prefer the company of dead bodies, do ye?”
You pouted unwittingly. “Don’t be mean.”
He let out a huff of potent disappointment, wiped down his cheeks with a wide, stiff hand.
“Sorry. I’m sorry,” he said gingerly, hand returning to you with a brush of your cheek, a sweep of your hair behind your ear. You never begrudged his touchiness, it made your skin tingly. “I just miss ye, s’all.”
You bristled when he said that, irrationally. He missed your cunt, that was what he meant. He missed you warming his bed. More likely, he didn’t miss you at all. He’d call you in more frequently if he did, wouldn’t he?
“I know,” you said, hands in your pockets. “I’ll see you tomorrow, though.”
“Alright, hen,” he said with a nod, hand retreating. “See y’in the morn.”
The snippy receptionist at the Travelodge managed to check you into a room on the first floor of the three-storey building, built in the eighties with those hideous chocolate-square bricks. The room itself was without frills, a double bed with teal and brown sheets, a little bench with a kettle on it and one wrinkly teabag remaining in the rack. The bathroom fixtures were all yellow-faded with specs of green mould stuck under the caulking at the edges. A nice view of the parking lot out your window, when you peeled back the sheer polyester curtains to have a look.
It was a precarious decision to have a bath as sleepy as you were, but you were all sticky after a half-fuck and the excitement of a fresh homicide. You lay in the water for half an hour, made use of the little bottles of budget soap that sat in the shower caddy.
Once you were done you dried yourself off with the provided towel and left it scrunched up over the rail, and you climbed into the crisply-made bed stark naked — you forsook pyjamas when you could, because they twisted up tight when you tossed and turned and you found it maddeningly overstimulating. Checked your phone before you went to sleep, and you had a text from Tommy; another number you hadn’t saved, but you hadn’t memorised that one yet. Only realised it was him when you opened the messages and saw the older one before it.
23/08 02:21: Need some cunt.
08/09 05:03: You gone?
You didn’t reply.
The sun had risen just before eight, and you woke up with it. A short and spasmodic sleep, more of a nap than a true slumber. You came awake on a gulp of air with sweat on your nape and your arm dead asleep. It was limp and heavy when you pulled yourself out of bed and got yourself ready for a day at the lab.
You poured yourself a black coffee from the instant machine once you got there — a subterranean wing of Whitfell General Hospital, inconveniently situated a ten-minute drive from the police headquarters. Everything in there was rubbery, wrapped in linoleum and vinyl, crisp white or speckled teal. Far less flash than the crime labs you were used to in Leeds. Block fluorescents lined every corridor and the hum always made you twitchy, despite your years of experience underneath them. You always had earplugs in while you were working to escape it.
The reek of rubbing alcohol and hospital-grade hand soap permeated every surface of the wing, and it made your nostrils flare. The smell of challenge. One that always had your heart fluttering with an admittedly twisted exhilaration — especially today, knowing how many secrets were wrapped up in that body, you were itching to read whatever stories it had to tell.
You greeted Jenny, the lab assistant, as you elbowed through the swing door into the mortuary, and she waited for you by the unmanned reception. Wiry wee girl that she was, riddled with neuroses that even you found unreasonable.
“Sleep in this morning, doctor?” She asked with a thin smile, and you wondered how long she had been waiting there for you. Her lime-green coffee mug was just about empty.
“Yep,” you grunted, sweeping the lanyard she had left for you off the reception counter and hanging it around your neck. “You made a start?”
She shook her head as she gestured for you to follow her. “No, ‘course not. Not allowed to start without you.”
“Mh.” You took a pacifying sip of coffee from your foam cup.
“I have prepared everything, though,” she said curtly, marching ahead of you, scrubs billowing with her haste. “The tools are all laid out and I have the chiller on extra cold. I also requested some scissors specifically for the clingfilm.”
“Fabulous,” you said wryly.
The first door into the lab was something of an airlock, a vestibule with a window into the autopsy room, providing room to cover yourself in PPE from head to toe and take a deep breath before you made your way in. You wore casual clothes under the crunchy blue tyvek suit — same pair of jeans as yesterday, and a woolly sweater to keep yourself warm under the blisteringly cold aircon in the sealed laboratory. Layers on layers — two pairs of cloves on each hand, shoe covers, sleeved plastic apron atop the coveralls, N95 respirator, face shield, a cap to cover your hair. You were fastidious about it; every inch covered, protected, sealed up.
You swallowed a breath as you entered the lab, anticipating the familiar stench of death and formaldehyde — hit instead with only bleach and the faint smell of raw meat.
The plastic mummy lay flat on the steel dissection table in the centre of the room, gleaming under the blinding overhead lamps above it.
Surreal to look at.
You had seen and cut up many corpses in your profession and studies prior — never one presented like this, awaiting being opened like a gift at Christmas. It looked like a practice doll until you approached it, and the human parts became plainly visible through the shiny film.
You had Jenny assist you in carefully slicing through the plastic wrap, peeling it back as gingerly as possible, exceedingly careful not to nick the skin. The plastic stuck firm to the epidermis, moist underneath, and it made a foul gooey noise as you peeled it away. Even once the seal was broken, the odour of decomposition was not nearly as fetid as you were used to; almost as if it were a fresh death, but your gut told you that it was far from.
Unwrapping the head was a morbid ordeal. The face was milk pale, the bulb of its nose coal-black with frostbite, the skin both stodgy wet and shrivelled in texture. From her features you’d have guessed the woman was in her forties.
What your eyes pinned to, though, was the perfectly round hole in the centre of the forehead. You could look through it and see straight down to the shiny steel underneath. Precise but not clean, skin and flesh feathered out from the orifice.
Gunshot. FIred cleanly from the back of the head, you guessed, but you’d need to roll the body over to confirm.
Once the plastic was finally removed entirely — which took almost two hours — the rest of the autopsy was fairly routine. With all of her quirks, one thing Jenny was exceptionally good at was taking note of everything you uttered aloud. You could say a single word and she could translate it into a meaningful report. You dictated everything as you found it.
Interrupted lividity on left side. Cadaver was left on left side for <1 hours prior to freezing. More recent posterior lividity, consistent with storage positioning post-thawing.
Severe cell damage from crystallisation, major damage (pocking, marbling on epidermis) consistent with being frozen >2 weeks. Digestive tract empty, suggestive of a lack of food intake for 24-48 hours prior to death.
Major contusions on: ribs (left - blunt force damage to ribs 4, 5, 6, consistent with tip of shoe - possible kick to ribs), medial back (blunt force - crushing injury? Possible stomping, consistent with shoe sole size 12.5-13).
Ligature marks on neck and throat, and both wrists (wide restraint - possibly tape/duct tape). Petechiae present around eyes, cheeks, mouth. Consistent with asphyxiation, non-lethal.
No evidence of sexual activity or genital trauma ante-mortem. No evidence of defensive wounds.
Gunshot wound centre cranium, external bevelling anterior. Significant internal bevelling posterior, consistent with weapon fired against back of head, suggestive of execution — “Yes, Jenny, write that down.” — bullet wound ~1cm in diameter, consistent 9mm semi-automatic pistol. GSR present in neural tissue, no bullet present. Clean entry/exit.
Toxicology results pending. DNA analysis pending.
Estimated PMI: <1 hours prior to freezing, 3 or more weeks since death.
Cause of death: Gunshot wound to the head.
Manner of death: Homicide.
Jenny obsequiously aided you in suturing up the large Y-shaped incision you had made to open up the chest cavity, punctilious as she was. It was always a little disappointing to return a body to the fridge unidentified and with no next-of-kin. Nobody to relay the details to, no curiosity to assuage.
You liked to do a final comb-over once the assistant had left the room to make copies of the preliminary autopsy report — Jane Doe, case number: 0187 — if only to quell the writhing inquisitiveness that permanently riddled you.
You checked the hands, checked every crease and line, noted the colour of nail polish: berry-red, chipped at the free edge. The soles of the feet: clean, hardly calloused, no running through mud. No tattoos, only the earlobes pierced, no earrings. Teeth square-straight — braces as a teenager, no doubt — freshly cleaned aside from the discolouration of decay, likely a recent appointment at the dental hygienist before death.
Only as you peered into the open mouth, squinting in focus, did you spot something abnormal — a scratch mark, on the inside of a molar, previously hidden by a fat grey tongue. The powdery ivory enamel was stark white where it had been carved into, clearly inscribed post-mortem. Maybe even moments before the body was dumped at the bus stop.
You frantically scoured the lab for a mirror, anything reflective; came up short with a small steel tray, but it was smooth enough to see a blurry reflection. Furiously tore out your notebook, and immediately scribbled down what you saw when you tucked the tray behind the teeth and tilted it to the right angle.
Mandibular teeth: #20 - R, #17 - O, #19 - U
Maxillary teeth: #13 - S
The killer had left a message.
Who for?
It took D.I. MacTavish less than seven minutes to get to the lab. You imagined he screamed through the traffic on his siren-bedecked motorbike many miles per hour over the limit. He came thundering down the corridor and you heard his approach before you saw it – you were disrobing in the antechamber, dumping all of your disposable PPE into the biohazard bins, washing your ungloved hands with antiseptic soap in the large steel sink.
He bulldozed in through the push-door, panting like a dog, clad in a sweaty grey button-up with his black holsters around his shoulders, secured with a strap across his chest. Carried unease in his eyes and his blazer in a fist.
“Show me,” was all he said, ragged and impolite.
It was poor practice to re-enter the autopsy room without your PPE on — you made the detective put on some latex gloves and a respirator, at least, as you allowed him inside to look more closely at the body. He stuck an imprudent thumb behind the teeth on the lower jaw, hooking it open to widen the mouth as he peered within.
“What the fuck,” he muttered, under breath, evidently disturbed by what he saw — you wanted to say told you so , but held your tongue. “R, U… what is that, O?”
“There are four,” you explained impersonally, “R, O, and U on the bottom, and S on the top.”
“What,” he said, stopping to think. “Sour?”
“Yeah, could be.”
“Y’don’t think so.”
“No,” you gritted, “can you get your finger out of there now?”
He nodded, pulling his hand from the mouth and standing straight, gesturing for the two of you to leave the room. Lucky that Jenny wasn’t there to reprimand the both of you. You waited with your arms crossed, leaning against the double-glazed window into the lab, watching as Johnny plucked off his gloves and dumped them in the rubbish along with his mask. He raked up his sleeves with a grunt and began washing his hands in the sink.
“We got more comin’, don’t we,” he said grimly, back to you.
“More letters?”
“Bodies, hen,” he clarified.
You swallowed a shaky breath, the air suddenly harsher on your throat. “Yes,” you uttered cautiously. “I think so.”
A mutter, “Christ.”
“Yep,” you said. “I’ll grab you a copy of the report.”
“Gimme the spark notes, please,” he grunted, already exasperated — he turned to face you, leaning on the sink, and he wore that worn-out look he always did at the end of a long day (eyes heavy, jaw tight), despite the fact it was only half-three in the afternoon. “I’ll read the lot with the team later.”
You let out a tight breath as you considered which details to give him.
“Well, the victim was a middle-aged woman,” you started, “I’d say late forties. Wealthy, too.”
He nodded. “Cause and manner?”
“Definitely a homicide, but that wasn’t really in question,” you started. “She was shot in the back of the head, I reckon with a nine-millimetre. It — it seems like it was an execution. Like the killer had the victim face down and pressed the barrel against the skull before firing.”
“Clean freak?”
“Maybe,” you shrugged. “Certainly would lend an explanation to the clingfilm and the freezing.”
“Mh,” he thought aloud. “So he has ‘em in cold storage. Why’s he only dumpin’ them now?”
“He?” You asked, a quirk in your brow, and he suddenly looked agitated.
“Not a rogue assumption,” he argued. “S’always a man, with this shite.”
A smirk tugged at your lips. “S’pose so,” you admitted. “I’m guessing they — he — has something to say, right? Leaving messages in the teeth — that’s zodiac shit.”
“Sour,” he repeated, lost in thought. “What else.”
“The victim was asphyxiated, but the ligatures around the throat are pretty minor compared to the airway damage. My guess is suffocation with plastic, given our guy’s affinity for it. Victim was alive when she was shot, though — maybe he suffocated her to subdue her.”
He was in front of you, now, hands hooked on his hips, tip of his thumb anxiously rubbing his brow.
“Fuckin’ animal,” he huffed.
“We’ve swabbed all over for DNA,” you said, some clinical effort to comfort him. “He’ll have left something behind.”
“He better ‘ave,” he said, looking briefly at his shoes, and his unease radiated from him, made your mouth taste like metal.
“You alright?” You asked, less gently than you had intended.
“I’m fine,” he said, vaguely defensive.
He eyed you for a moment, sharp silver rings with their pin-prick pupils inspecting your face as though analysing the minutia of your features. You shuffled uncomfortably, looking at your fingernails to evade them.
“What’re ye doin’ for dinner?” He asked, more warmly, and the whiplash made you cock your head back in disbelief.
“What?”
“Y’heard me,” he said.
“I’m—” you stammered, bewildered. “I haven’t thought about it yet.”
“Grab a bite with me,” he said with the sternness of an order. “We can sit down somewhere. Have a real chat.”
“Johnny, that—” you groaned, “that doesn’t seem like a good idea.”
“For fuck’s sake, bonnie,” he barked, and you flinched at his sudden intensity. Not quite aggression but certainly encroaching on it.
“What?” You growled, recoiling, back pressed against the window behind you.
“I’m sick of it. Y’been fucken’ cold to me, and I haven’t done nothin’ to deserve it.”
“I’m not — I’ve not been cold. ”
“No?” He snapped, “y’wont even look me in the eye for more than a damn second! Last time y’didn’t even say good-bye when ye left.”
Riled annoyance flushed high on your cheeks, thrummed in your temples as you curled your tongue in search of a retaliation.
“We’re not — there’s nothing here, Johnny. I don’t owe you anything. You can’t — you can’t expect me to worship you.”
“ Worship me?” He asked incredulously, “I don’t need ye tae worship me, hen, Christ — yer just so fucken’ icy I can’t focus on anythin’ at all when yer here. Like i’m walkin’ on eggshells everywhere I go.”
“If I’m that distracting then you should find another pathologist,” you spat. You didn’t have a bone of de-escalation in your body; made entirely of kindle that took far more energy to snuff out than to ignite.
He wiped down his face with white-knuckled hands, eyes rolling into the back of his head in pure frustration. Sometimes you simply enjoyed riling him up, but this time you only sought to get him to leave you alone.
“Yer bein’ cruel,” he grumbled, and you could hear the swelling anger roiling in his throat.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” you hissed. “If you need to let off some steam so badly go stick your dick in someone else.”
His eyes turned dark, you watched his pupils distend right before you.
“Don’t want someone else,” he murmured coarsely.
You gritted your teeth. “That’s too b—”
Cut off by a gasp as his body suddenly rammed against you, he used his weight to smother your disputes as a needy hand grasped at the button of your jeans, tugging and wriggling it vigorously to break it loose.
“Johnny—” You belted, throat plugging up in the shock.
You swung back a hand and threw it viciously into his cheek with a bullet-loud slap — but aside from the white-hot handprint you left on his face, he was utterly unperturbed. He deftly seized your assailing hand by the wrist and grappled it tightly, wrangled the other one while you were distracted and pinned it to your chest with a fist.
You balked as he yanked your right hand towards him, planting his mouth in your palm; his breath was blistering hot, made your hand all clammy as he pressed his slovenly lips into the hollow.
“Miss ye,” he grumbled into your skin, wetting your palm with his tongue, no doubt it tasted like latex and soap. Didn’t seem to faze him, as he slid the tip of his tongue between the valley of two fingers, before taking your pinky finger in his mouth. Wet, and warm, enveloped it hole — the rough texture of his taste buds on the pad of your finger made your hairs stand on end, needle-sharp tingles down trickled your spine.
“God’s sake, Johnny,” you breathed, dyspneic; tried to wriggle free the hand he had riveted to your sternum, but he only secured his grip of you. “This is — n-not here.”
“Don’ care,” he muttered, after releasing your finger from his maw; dragged his mouth hastily down your wrist, then your forearm, catching in the knit of your sweater. Found purchase once it reached skin again, took your febrile neck between his teeth and suckled there, basely relishing in the saltiness of your sweat.
“John — please,” you chirped, when he bit your thickest tendon, and you felt your scruples begin to melt like butter. “I’ll go to d-dinner with you, just — this is so—”
His messy lips were on your jaw, then, but he never made his way to kiss you; as if kissing you on the mouth was too intimate, too severe a violation to commit, more so than anywhere else on your body he could have planted his mouth.
“After,” he mumbled into your cheek, and his hands sunk to the button of your jeans, undoing it with a pop. Kept you wedged against the window into the autopsy room with his hips against you, gargantuan mass nearly squeezing the air from your lungs in an effort to keep you still.
“Made me wait too long, bonnie,” he slurred, mouth on your collarbone, most of your exposed skin now wet with the marks of his saliva — hardly kisses, tastes instead. “Look what y’done to me.”
“I wasn’t…” you faltered, breathless, as he dropped to his knees hard enough that you winced at the thought of his kneecaps hitting the solid floor.
The sound of your fly being torn down was harsh, ear-piercing; you squeaked in panic when he took the undone waistband of your jeans in his fists and yanked gracelessly them down your hips, dexterously taking your underwear with them.
Hadn’t even shimmied them to your thighs before he keeled forward and took your cunt in his mouth, lapping at the seam of you like a dog on water, planting mushy kisses at the top of your slit as though greeting a lost lover.
Your protests turned to liquor on your tongue, inebriating — your head spun with it, ceding every modicum of agency to his charge, the responsibility now his to orchestrate you, the onus on him to steer you. He knew you well, the detective, could read you like the pages of a book. Knew how rarely you’d give, only hoping he’d take.
And take he did, fucking glutton that he was — ate you like an animal, hardly even trying to prevent his sharp teeth from grazing your labia as he sucked your clitoris into his mouth, laving it with the voraciousness of a hound starved — suckling down your slick and letting it run down his chin, smear over his mouth and cheeks, eager to drown himself in you — you could only sputter and mewl in surrender, skull donging against the hollow glass of the window behind you as your head rocked back from your shoulders.
“Johnny—” You hiccupped, aimless, hurling his name into the overcrowded air of the stuffy vestibule as though hoping it would stick to something. Your hands clawed at the veneered sill of the interior window, scraping off the polyurethane, you could feel the shards under your fingernails.
Your clit burned under his tongue, pebbled and swollen and throbbing like a heartbeat — slithering rapture coiled up tight in the base of you, made your vision blurry and your mouth wet — on a cry you came, it ricocheted out from your perfervid clit in shockwaves that turned your vision white, and you did your best to stifle your cloying noises with a fleshy palm between your teeth.
Legs went weak with it, nearly buckling if not for the hands that held you up by the hips, and he finished his meal with a gentle swipe of your anguished clit, flat tongue.
Not like Tommy, he didn’t mock you for your orgasm, didn’t chortle and torment you with pokes or pinches just to make you squeal. Johnny was grateful for it, reverent, took his time to breathe in the heat of your rapture directly from its source, exhaling cool air on your glowing pussy as if to comfort it.
“Ah, fucken’ needed that,” he vented, panting, forehead on your belly. “Ma perfect kitty, mh, couldn’t wait any longer, bonnie.”
You thought he might bring himself to stand, pull up your trousers for you, perhaps apologise for the incursion in a place as depravedly inappropriate as this — but, he didn’t. He instead tore your jeans down your thighs with unhampered haste, past your knees, hoisting up your ankle to yank the pant leg from your foot.
That was all he needed, evidently, once your legs were no longer tethered by your trousers; he stood up and had you by the thighs in an effortless ascent, adroitly hooking your legs around his waist and wedging you against the window. His fist tore at his belt, and it clinkled as he unbuckled it — followed the flick of a button, the zip of a fly.
“You’re a degenerate, Johnny,” you puffed, with a whine, and he all but chuckled at you.
“M’just a man,” he grunted, cock unsheathed in a blink, you felt it smear against your sodden pussy and saturate his shaft with your needy syrup. “Y’won’t let me take y’out, won’t let me call ye, won’t let me—”
Bitten off by a groan as he nestled the blunt head between your folds, broke through your entrance without pause — sunk deep as he fell against you, and you bleated as he split you open — he was thicker than Tommy, the girth a painful shock every time you let him in, and you didn’t believe your cunt could ever be inured to the stretch, it could only rip itself to fit him.
“—Fuck ye,” he groused, low voice breaking as he sealed his lips to your neck. “Christ, bonnie—”
You only whimpered, turned stupid, as you hung your arms over his shoulders and clawed at his back, nails catching in the stiff straps of the holster that cladded his scapulae. Herculean shoulders worked facilely to hold you up, thick and straining against the thin cotton of his shirt. His thrusts were steady, hard, bounced you up and down against the glass — your sweater rode up with every rut, until your bare back smeared against the cold window, you felt it grow damp with the condensation of your sweat.
“Feel tha’, hen?” He growled, the resonance of his ragged voice wracking through you like a quake. “Fucken’ made for me, eh? Perfect fit—”
So greedy, insatiable, he fucked you with a simmering rage, one that had been bubbling under the surface and whose temperature had only risen with every visit you turned him down — one, two, three months since you last let him inside, figuratively and literally — and he let you know of his spite, fucked you with the ferocity of a man boiled over, you worried that he’d push you through the window and the shards would cut you to pieces.
You bit down on little cries with each rut, the upward curve in his cock had his rigid head battering your bladder from inside you to the point of ache, and it turned you pudding soft — all defiance siphoned from you, pooling around the base of his cock until it went foamy in his bed of trimmed dark hair.
He groaned, feverish and needy, and you knew what that sound portended.
“Agh — fuck , can I—”
Come inside you went swallowed, because he was too close, and he wouldn’t have had time to pull out if you were to say no.
His teeth chewed reverently at your shoulder and he moaned into your skin, bucking in, to the hilt, ruts turning erratic and volatile. His cock jolted hard within your constricting walls when he finally reached his climax — spurting scalding hot come into the depths of your cunt until you were glutted with it, filling you up to the fornices, and you could almost taste its brine on your tongue.
A slow whimper leaked out from behind your teeth, perhaps a moan of relief, now that he was hopefully surfeited — he slumped into you with a puff of air, kissed your shoulder where he had bitten you, chased a final thrust to squeeze out every drop.
“Been too long,” he purred, winded, humid with sweat. “Dinnae make me wait like that again, eh?”
“M’sorry,” you slurred, fucked drunk, brain knocked against your skull one too many times in the last twenty-four hours for it to make much sense of what had happened.
You felt stuffy, filled up to the ears with come and confusion, and you wanted nothing more than to climb out of the corpse-ridden basement he had just fucked you in and take a breath of real air.
He slipped his cock out of you once it had marginally softened, and a glub of come oozed out of your cunt and dribbled down your thigh. You groaned as you bent down to put your jeans back on — but to your surprise, he helped you. Took your foot (sneaker still on) and fed it through the leg of your underwear, then your trousers, pulled them up both your legs with a shimmy, fixed them over your hips.
Even did your button back up for you, pulled up your zip fly as if he was undoing the damage he had done.
“There, hen,” he said gently, petting your cheek as if to praise you. “All better.”
In your stupor you could only be grateful. “Thank you.”
“Will y’come get a bite with me, now?”
You were dizzy. You needed to put Jane Doe back in the fridge. You needed to give him a copy of your pathology report. You needed to send the toxicology samples to the forensics lab.
Maybe you could leave it all for Jenny.
“Okay,” you said.
-----