Chapter Text
Crime and Funishment
Chapter 1
The parking lot behind the Piggly Wiggly smelled like hot asphalt and the dumpster's slow rot. Tally had her cruiser nose-out toward the highway, engine idling, AC cranked to a setting that couldn't quite keep up with Mississippi in May. The air through her cracked window was wet enough to chew, thick with diesel from the loading dock and something sweeter underneath, the green funk of the bayou fifteen miles south. She'd been parked here an hour running radar on Highway 3, and nothing had come through faster than a grain truck doing forty-two.
She was sweating through her uniform shirt. The khaki clung to the small of her back, to the band of her bra, to the place where her gun belt dug into her hips. She'd unbuttoned her collar an hour ago and felt guilty about it, which made her feel stupider, which made her sweat more. Five years of wearing this badge and she still got flustered about an undone button. Biloxi Academy would have been real proud.
The side door of the Piggly Wiggly banged open.
She saw him in the side mirror first. A little shape, blonde and small, moving fast. Shaggy hair the color of old straw, bouncing as he walked. Clothes that hung off him like they belonged to someone three sizes bigger, the sleeves of his shirt past his wrists, his jeans cuffed and re-cuffed and still dragging at the heels. Sneakers that flapped when he stepped. He had something under his shirt, bunched against his stomach, both arms holding it there, and he was walking fast toward the alley between the store and the laundromat next door.
Tally watched him for three seconds. Then she got out of the cruiser.
The heat hit her like opening an oven. She cut across the lot, boots on cracked asphalt, and caught him at the mouth of the alley. He had his back to her, still walking fast, still clutching his shirt.
"Hey. Hold up."
He froze. His shoulders went up around his ears. He didn't turn around, didn't run, didn't drop what he was holding. Just stopped, like a rabbit that heard a hawk.
"Turn around, sugar. Let me see you."
He turned. He was small. Came up to her hip, maybe, and she wasn't tall. His face was the kind of face that belonged in a painting somewhere, pretty in a way that made you want to do something about it. Big blue eyes, wide-set, the color of creek water in February. A small nose with a bridge that turned up just slightly at the end. Lips full for a boy's, the lower one fat and pink, the upper bowed. A dimple in his left cheek that showed even when he wasn't smiling, a permanent crease in the soft skin. His hair was gold, not brown-blonde but actual gold, shaggy and too long, falling into his eyes. He hadn't been to a barber in months.
He was crying. Not loud, not the way kids usually did in parking lots, screaming and kicking. Silent tears running down his cheeks, his chin wobbling, his eyes red at the edges. He knew he'd been caught. He knew what came next.
Something moved in Tally's chest. A pull, quick and sharp, right behind her sternum. He was so little. So pretty. So clearly broken in some way she couldn't see yet but could feel, the way you feel a cracked tooth with your tongue.
Stop it.
She tamped it down. She was the sheriff. He was a shoplifter. She'd processed shoplifters before.
"What's your name, sugar?"
"B-Beau." His voice was small, thin, a reed bending. "Ma'am."
"Beau what?"
"Broussard."
The name landed in her chest like a slap. Broussard. She knew the name. She'd been seeing it on her windshield for two years, in Rodney Broussard's careful lawyer's handwriting on the back of his business cards. You look tired, let me take care of you. A woman like you shouldn't be alone on a Friday night. She'd thrown every one of them away. There was a drawer in her office full of them, because she couldn't throw away evidence, even evidence that made her skin crawl.
She looked at the boy. Really looked. And there it was, right in his face, plain as daylight. Rodney's jaw. Same strong line, same wide set, though on the boy it was soft, still padded with baby fat. The brow, too, the way it sat heavy over the eyes, gave him a serious look that didn't match his age. And the coloring, that golden hair, could have come from either parent. Lucinda was blonde, had been in that courtly, fragile way Southern women sometimes are. But the eyes were hers. Bluer than Rodney's, wide and clear, set deep under lashes that were almost too long for a boy.
Goddamn. Rodney Broussard's kid. Rodney, who called her sweetheart and left cards on her car and looked at her like she was a steak he hadn't decided to order yet. Rodney, who was handsome in the way that made the looking worse, because you couldn't dismiss it. Silver-templed, broad across the shoulders, that Mississippi grin he broke out for judges and waitresses in equal measure. A man who'd been born with the right face in the right town and had used both to get everything he wanted. And here was a little version of him crying in a parking lot.
But the boy didn't act like Rodney. That was the thing. Rodney had never said "ma'am" to her in his life unless he was performing for a jury. This kid said it like it was breathing. He was gentle. Scared. Respectful in the way that comes from being taught young that adults are dangerous. Nothing about him reminded her of his father except the bones of his face, and even those were softened, made sweeter by whatever Lucinda had contributed.
It annoyed her. She couldn't say why, exactly, except that it did. Rodney's face on a boy who was nothing like Rodney. It felt like a cheat.
"You got money for them peaches, Beau?"
He shook his head. The tears came faster, his breath hitching in little gasps. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I'm sorry. Please don't tell my maw. Please don't tell my paw. He'll — he'll —"
He couldn't finish. His face crumpled, his mouth pulling into a shape that wasn't quite a scream and wasn't quite a sob, something in between, and his whole body shook with it. The peaches and the bag of jerky slipped from under his shirt and hit the asphalt with a dull thump and a rattle.
Tally looked at the cans rolling in the gutter. Then at his face. Then at his wrists, thin enough to circle with two fingers. His sneakers were held together with duct tape. The collar of his oversized shirt had slipped to one side, showing a collarbone that was too sharp, skin that was too pale.
"Pick 'em up," she said.
He blinked. Wet-eyed, sniffling. "Ma'am?"
"Pick up what you stole. You took it, you carry it back in."
He scrambled to obey. Cans of peaches, the bag of jerky, clutching them against his chest with both arms. His hands were shaking. She put her hand on his shoulder. She could feel the bone through the fabric, no meat on him at all, just skeleton and skin and that too-big shirt.
She walked him back through the side door and into the Piggly Wiggly. The AC hit them like a wall, cold enough to make his wet face shine. The store was mostly empty. A couple at the register buying lottery tickets and a gallon of milk, an old man by the beer cooler reading a racing form. The floors were linoleum, scuffed and buckling at the seams. The fluorescents buzzed overhead, casting everything in that flat, institutional light that made everyone look tired.
"Where's your manager?" Tally asked the girl at the register. Sixteen, maybe, acne on her chin, a name tag that read DESTINY.
"Uh, in the back, I think? Mr. Costello?" Destiny looked at Beau, at the peaches clutched to his chest, at the sheriff's hand on his shoulder. Her face did the math. "Oh."
"Go get him, would you, sweetheart?"
Destiny disappeared through the stockroom door. Beau stood next to Tally, shaking, staring at his feet. His breath was coming in short hitches, trying not to cry, failing. A tear dropped onto the top of a peach can and sat there, catching the light.
The manager came out. Dale Costello, fifty-something, bald, built like a man who ate his own inventory. He had a Piggly Wiggly polo stretched across his gut and a key ring on his belt that jangled when he walked. He saw Tally, saw the boy, and his face went through something complicated. Surprise, then recognition, then a kind of softening that settled into pity.
"Sheriff Garrity." He looked down at Beau. "This the one?"
"Caught him in the parking lot with two cans of your peaches and a bag of jerky. He didn't get far."
Beau held the items out in front of him like an offering, arms straight, head down. His hands were trembling so bad the cans rattled together.
"I-I'm sorry, sir. I'm sorry. I won't do it again. I'm sorry."
Dale Costello took the peaches and the jerky from the boy's hands. Looked at them, looked at Beau, looked at Tally. He set them on the counter.
"You hungry, son?"
Beau's head came up. His face was a mess, wet and red, snot on his upper lip. He nodded, once, a tiny motion.
"Yeah." Dale scratched the back of his neck. "Yeah, I figured." He looked at Tally. "Sheriff, I ain't gonna press charges on a kid. You know that. But —" He crouched down the way she had, bringing himself to Beau's level. "You listen to me, okay? You don't steal from my store. You get hungry, you come find me, I'll find you something. But you don't steal. You understand me?"
Beau's chin wobbled. "Y-yes sir. Yes sir, I'm sorry."
"Go on, then. Sheriff's gonna take care of you."
Dale stood up, knees popping. He gave Tally a look that said more than he was going to say out loud. Something about the boy's weight, his clothes, his duct-taped shoes. Something about Chêne Morte and the people in it.
"Appreciate it, Dale."
"You have a good evening, Sheriff."
She put her hand on Beau's shoulder again and walked him out through the side door. The heat was worse after the cold of the store, a slap of wet air and diesel. Beau squinted against the sun, his face still wet, his nose still running.
"See?" she said. "That man was real nice to you. You remember that. You steal from people, you make enemies. You ask nice, sometimes people surprise you. Hear?"
He looked up at her. Those blue eyes, Lucinda's eyes, wide and wet and searching her face like he was trying to figure out what she was going to do to him. Like kindness was a trap he hadn't figured out yet.
"Yes, ma'am."
She walked him to the cruiser. Opened the back door.
"Get in, Beau. Backseat's where the bad boys go, and you did a bad thing today."
His face crumpled again, fresh tears. But he climbed in. He didn't fight, didn't grab for the door, didn't try to run. He just crawled onto the vinyl seat and sat there, hands in his lap, looking at his duct-taped shoes.
She shut the door. Walked around to the driver's side. Got in. Adjusted the mirror so she could see him in the back.
He was looking out the window, tears still running, his breath fogging the glass in small puffs. He wasn't looking at her. He was looking at the Piggly Wiggly getting smaller as she pulled out, like he was memorizing it. Like he wasn't sure where she was taking him, but he knew it wasn't going to be good.
She pulled onto Highway 3. The cruiser's AC rattled. Pine trees blurred past the windows. The sun was getting low, cutting through the trunks in long amber slashes.
In the backseat, Beau Broussard cried quietly and didn't ask where they were going.
She looked at the road. Her brain did the thing it did when she was alone in the car, the chewing, the going over. Five years in Chêne Morte. She'd graduated Biloxi Police Academy in the spring of '21, into the crater. The whole country was tearing itself apart over what cops were and weren't, what they should and shouldn't be, and nobody was hiring. Defund, reform, purge. She'd applied in Gulfport, Jackson, Hattiesburg, Mobile. Chêne Morte was the only posting that called back. A town of six hundred and forty people on the Louisiana border, one sheriff, one deputy who was also the fire chief, and a jail with two cells. She'd taken it expecting to stay a year. Get some experience on paper, move on to somewhere that had a Starbucks.
That was five years ago. The porch on her trailer still sagged. The window unit still could barely keep up with May. And the town had done what small towns do to a woman with a badge. The mayor suggested she smile more at town meetings. Guys at Earl's leaned on her cruiser with their beers and called her sweetheart. Rodney Broussard left cards on her windshield, two years of them, that careful lawyer's hand. You look tired, let me take care of you. A woman like you shouldn't be alone on a Friday night. She kept them in a drawer because she couldn't throw away evidence, even evidence that made her want to scrub her own skin.
She was a lawwoman. She'd gone through the academy, passed the exam, worn the badge. And this town treated her like a pair of tits with a gun belt.
In the mirror, the kid wiped his nose on his sleeve. Sniffed. His shoulders were drawn up tight, making himself small, like he could fold himself into nothing if he tried hard enough.
Rodney's kid. She let that thought sit. Rodney, who'd been circling her for two years, patient and slimy, the way a man circles when he knows he's got time and no competition. Rodney, who was handsome in the way that made it worse, because you couldn't just dismiss him. Silver at the temples, that easy smile he broke out for judges and waitresses. A man who'd never been told no by anything in this town.
And she had his kid in her backseat.
She wasn't planning anything. The thought didn't have a shape yet, wasn't anything she could hold up and look at. It was just a warmth, low in her chest, a small dark coal. She had something of Rodney's. He didn't know it yet. After two years of cards and "sweetheart" and looking at her like she was something he'd order off a menu, she had his son in the back of her cruiser, and Rodney Broussard had no idea.
She pulled into the lot behind the station. Cut the engine. The heat pressed in immediately, the AC gone, the air thick and wet. She opened her door.
"Come on, Beau. Out, boy."
He climbed out of the backseat. His legs were unsteady, like a foal's. He stood in the parking lot, looking at the building, the brick front with the faded sign that read CHÊNE MORTE SHERIFF'S OFFICE in letters that had been white once. His face was puffy from crying, his eyes swollen at the edges. He looked like he was trying to be brave and failing at both.
She took his arm. "This way."
The office was three rooms and a bathroom. The front room had a desk with a computer that still ran Windows 7, a filing cabinet, and two plastic chairs for visitors. A water cooler in the corner with an empty jug, the kind of detail that told you everything about the budget. The walls were painted cinder block, government gray, and the fluorescent overhead buzzed at a frequency that lived right behind her eyes. It smelled like old coffee and bug spray and bleach from the mop she'd run over the linoleum that morning.
"Stand up against the wall, Beau. Hands where I can see them."
He pressed himself against the cinder block, palms flat, fingers spread. His whole body was trembling. She came around behind him.
"You know what happens to boys who steal?"
He shook his head. A tear slid down his cheek and dropped onto the cinder block.
"They go to jail." She pulled the cuffs off her belt. Steel, standard issue, the weight of them familiar in her hand. "You know that, right? You know what jail is?"
"Y-yes ma'am." His voice was a thread.
"You ever been to jail, Beau?"
"N-no ma'am."
"You want to know what it feels like?"
His face crumpled. His mouth opened but nothing came out, just a thin wet sound, and his whole body shook harder. She took his wrists, one at a time, and brought them together behind his back. The bone under her fingers was so small she could have circled it with her thumb and middle finger. She put the cuffs on, double-looped because his wrists were too narrow for a single pass, and the ratchet clicked in the quiet room, each click louder than it should have been.
The metal was cold on his skin. She saw him flinch at the weight of it, the way it sat on him wrong, too heavy for his frame, like putting a ship's anchor on a rowboat.
She came back around to face him.
"This is what it feels like, Beau. This is what happens when you're a bad boy." She held his eyes. "You end up in cuffs. You end up in a cell. You understand me?"
"Y-yes ma'am." The words were half-swallowed. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I won't do it again, I p-promise, I won't —"
"Sit down."
He sat. His cuffed hands pressed between his back and the plastic chair, uncomfortable, shifting to find a position that didn't hurt. He couldn't find one. His face was wet, his nose running, and he couldn't wipe it because his hands were behind him. He tried rubbing his face on his shoulder, a small animal gesture, and failed.
She watched him. The kid was suffering, genuinely, and the scare-straight was doing what it was supposed to do. He was scared. He was crying. He'd remember this.
But there was something else. Something under the professional satisfaction of a job done. She'd done scare-straight before, with the teenage boys who'd stolen dirt bikes and the ones who'd broken into the Methodist church. She'd cuffed them, put them in the cell, let them sit. It was routine. She'd never thought about it beyond the doing.
This was different. She was watching this kid's face, his wet eyes, his red wrists, the way his shoulders curled in, and something in her was paying attention in a way it shouldn't. The coal in her chest, the one from the drive, was warmer now. She liked seeing him like this. Pretty and small and cuffed and hers to do with as she pleased.
She caught it. Named it wrong on purpose, filed it under "stern," and moved on.
"Stay in that chair. Don't move."
She crossed to the front door and turned the deadbolt. The lock thudded home, heavy and final. Then she went through the door to her office, a narrow room with her desk, a chair, a window that faced the parking lot, and a filing cabinet that held every case she'd worked in five years, which wasn't many. She shut this door too, all the way this time, and sat at the desk.
The intake form was already printed, blank boxes waiting. She filled it in. Juvenile offense, shoplifting, retail value under $20. Name: Beau Broussard. Age: 6. Date of birth, address, parent or guardian. Her handwriting was neat, the letters small and square, the way they'd taught her at the academy. Narrative: "Subject observed exiting Piggly Wiggly, 4:15 PM, with concealed merchandise (2 cans Del Monte peaches, 1 pkg Jack Link jerky, combined value $14.47). Subject apprehended in parking lot, returned merchandise to store, manager declined to press charges."
She picked up the phone. Dialed the Broussard house from memory.
It rang twice.
"Well, well. Sheriff Garrity." Rodney's voice had that texture, warm and slow, the sound of honey poured over gravel. The voice of a man who'd never had to raise it because everything in his life had come easy. "You finally calling me back, sweetheart?"
Something in her jaw tightened. "Mr. Broussard, I've got Beau down at the station."
A beat. The warmth cooled. "What'd that boy do now."
"Caught him walkin' out of the Piggly Wiggly with peaches and jerky stuffed under his shirt. Couple cans of fruit, a bag of meat. Value's under twenty dollars, but I still got to process him, and I need a parent here before I can —"
"Sheriff, I'd be much obliged if you could keep this quiet." The favor-voice. "No paperwork, no blotter. You know how things get around in a town like this."
She let the silence sit. Rodney Broussard was asking her for something. After two years of cards and "sweetheart" and looking at her like she was on a menu, he was asking. In the South, that was currency. Favors were how everything ran, whose name went on what, whose kid got into whose school. And Rodney Broussard, who had everything in this town, was asking her for one.
"I can do that, Mr. Broussard. I'll keep him in a cell overnight. Scare him straight some."
"Yeah, good. That's probably good for him. Needs to learn." Ice clinked in a glass. "Good, actually. I've got a dinner in Natchez this evening, so this works out fine. I'll pick him up in the morning. And Tally — we appreciate you."
The line went dead.
She held the receiver for a second, listening to the dial tone. Then she set it down.
Rodney Broussard owed her. She'd kept his kid off the blotter, out of the paper, out of the system. That was a favor, and in Chêne Morte, favors had weight. He'd have to think about that next time he put a card on her windshield. Next time he called her sweetheart. He couldn't just keep circling, because now she had something on him.
She picked up the intake form. Looked at it. Her neat handwriting, the boxes filled in, the narrative precise and professional.
She tore it in half. Then in quarters. Dropped the pieces in the trash.
First time in five years she'd had anything on Rodney Broussard.
She opened the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. The cards were in a manila envelope, rubber-banded together. She didn't take them out. Just looked at the envelope, then closed the drawer.
She stood up. Went back out to the front room.
Beau was where she'd left him. Cuffed, small, face a mess of tears and snot. He looked up when she came through the door, and his face did something awful. A flicker of hope, like maybe she was coming to tell him it was over, that someone was coming to get him, that this was done.
She pulled the other plastic chair around and sat in front of him, knee to knee.
"Beau. Look at me."
He raised his eyes. Wet, red, searching.
"I talked to your daddy."
His chin wobbled. A sound came out of him, high and thin, the sound of a kid who already knows the answer to the question he's about to ask.
"He's not coming?"
"Not tonight. He's got a dinner in Natchez." She kept her voice level. "But you're not in trouble anymore. I talked to him, and we worked it out. No charges. No record. This isn't going on your name."
He blinked. "I'm not in trouble?"
"No. You're not in trouble with the law. But your daddy and I agreed you're going to stay here tonight. In the cell. Think about what you did."
His face crumpled. "In the cell? All night?"
"All night. You're gon' sleep on that cot back there, and you're gon' think about stealin', and whether you wanna keep bein' a boy who does bad things or a boy who does good things. You hear me, child?"
"Y-yes ma'am." He was crying again, breath hitching. "Can I call my maw?"
"Not right now, Beau. It'll be okay. I'll be here. You won't be alone in the building."
He nodded, but his face said what his mouth wouldn't. Nobody was coming to get him. The hope that had flickered when she walked through the door was gone, and what was left was something too old for a face that young.
She looked at him for a moment. The dark satisfaction from the call was still there, sitting warm in her chest. But sitting this close to him, knee to knee, she felt the other thing too, the pull from the parking lot. He was so small. So scared. So used to being left.
She put it away. Stood up.
"Alright, Beau. Before I put you in that cell, I gotta search you. Standard procedure. Make sure you're not carrying anything else. Can you stand up for me, honey?"
He stood. The chair scraped. His legs were shaking.
She came around behind him. Jacket pockets first. Nothing. The jacket was nice, too big, bought deliberately oversized, the kind of thing you'd pick up at the Belk in Natchez if you wanted a kid to look put-together without anyone seeing what was underneath. She moved to the waistband of his jeans. Same strategy, baggy and oversized. She ran her fingers along the inside of the band. Nothing. Her hands went to his thighs.
The right thigh, nothing. She moved to the left.
Her hand stopped.
Something was there. Against his thigh, running down the inside of his pant leg. Thick and warm. It gave slightly under her fingers, then resumed its shape. She pressed again, slower, rubbing along the length of it through the denim to figure out what she was dealing with.
It stiffened. Under her hand, through the fabric, the thing grew, thickened, hardened, pushed against her fingers. Not a weapon. Not contraband. Something alive.
She pulled her hand back.
"What is that?"
Beau's ears went red. Not pink. Red, from the lobes up through the tips, spreading to his cheeks. His whole body tightened, shoulders drawing up, chin dropping to his chest.
"That's, that's my naughty place, ma'am." The words came out fast, rehearsed, like he'd been practicing for the moment someone found out. "Please don't. I'm sorry. It's a bad thing. Please don't be mad."
Tally frowned. Naughty place. Kid talk for private parts. Every Sunday school teacher in Natchez County hammered that phrase into children before they could spell their own names. Boys had private parts. She'd patted down a hundred men and boys in five years. What was this kid so worked up about?
"Beau, calm down. I just have to check."
She reached for his waistband.
He flinched. Pulled back, shoulders hitting the wall, the flag rattling in its bracket. "No, please, you're gonna see it, you're gonna be mad, I'm sorry, momma says I gotta keep it hid, please don't look at it, please—"
Her hand shot out and caught him where his shoulder met his neck. She pinched. Hard. Her thumb and fingers digging into the soft spot just above the collarbone, the place where a whole bundle of nerves runs close to the surface. She'd learned that one at the academy. Compliance through discomfort. It didn't take force. It took the right spot.
Beau's whole body locked up. His face screwed tight, a thin whine escaping through his teeth, his shoulders hunching up toward his ears.
"Beau." The cop voice. Flat. Final. "Stand still."
She let go. He stood still. Trembling. His face crumpled, the fat lower lip shaking, the dimple in his left cheek deepening as his jaw clenched. He looked like he was waiting for a spanking.
Tally dropped to both knees. The linoleum was cold through her khakis. She leaned down, settling back on her heels, and from this angle she was looking up at him from just below his belly button. His little belly was visible through the gap where his oversized shirt had ridden up, the fabric hanging loose off his small frame. She could see his ribs. He was skinny in the way that kids whose parents forget to feed them are skinny. Not starving, just forgotten.
His jeans were low on his hips, barely held up by the belt she'd already loosened. She reached for the button. The zipper. She undid them both.
Beau made a sound. Small. Strangled. His eyes squeezed shut.
She pulled the waistband down. Slowly. Her hands had forgotten how to move fast. The fabric slid past his hips, past the sharp bones of his pelvis. Lower. The fabric caught on something, bunched, then slid free.
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Three years ago, on a Tuesday afternoon in October, Rodney Broussard was driving home from a deposition in Natchez. He'd won. He always won. The F-250 was new, black, polished, the kind of truck that announces money in a parish where most people drove things that rattled. A bottle of bourbon in the cup holder, a good day behind him, and the road ahead long and straight.
County Road 9 cuts through the swamp south of town. The pavement gives out after a mile and becomes dirt, and the trees close in on both sides. That's where Mamère Delphine lived. Since before the town had a name. Her property sat on a spit of dry land between two bayous, and she kept a fence of palmetto posts and chicken wire, and a shrine to Saint Expedite beside the gate. The shrine was old. The paint was peeling. The statue of the saint had a crack running through its face. Mamère Delphine lit candles there every Monday and Thursday, and people came to her for gris-gris bags and healing teas and things they didn't say out loud in church.
Rodney's truck went through the fence. He wasn't looking. Or he was looking and didn't care. The palmetto posts splintered, the chicken wire wrapped around his front axle, and the shrine, the statue, the candles, the little pile of offerings, all of it went under the tires. He stopped forty feet past the gate.
Mamère Delphine came out of her house. Small, old, dark-skinned, wrapped in a shawl that had been blue once. She was screaming. The French came out fast and thick, patois barely sounding like language, but the meaning was clear. She was cursing him. Not in the way Rodney understood cursing. In the other way.
Rodney laughed. Sat in his truck with the bourbon in his hand and laughed at her. "Crazy old hag. I'll send you a check for your fence. Better yet, I'll sue you for obstructing a public road." He backed out through the wreckage and drove home.
He never sent a check.
Six months later, Lucinda was giving Beau a bath. He was four. She was washing him the way she always did, soap and a rag, and her hand went between his legs, and she stopped. His penis had gotten big. Not a little big. Way too big for his toddler frame. She pulled back the washcloth and stared at it. Eight inches, soft, hanging against his little thigh, the circumcised head exposed, fat and dark. Beau was playing with a rubber duck. He had no idea anything was wrong.
Lucinda screamed for Rodney.
The doctor in Natchez said macropenis and referred them to a specialist in Jackson. The specialist said idiopathic and referred them to an endocrinologist in Memphis. The endocrinologist took blood, ran panels, measured, and said he'd never seen anything like it. No tumor. No hormone abnormality. No genetic syndrome. The boy was healthy in every measurable way except for the thing between his legs.
It kept growing. Eight at four. Ten at five. Lucinda stopped bathing him. She'd fill the tub and leave the room. By six, twelve inches. It stopped. As if it had reached its purpose.
The Broussards were social people. Rodney had built his practice on handshakes at functions, Christmas parties, hunting club dinners. Lucinda was a society woman. Beau was supposed to be the cute kid at the firm's holiday party. The photo on Rodney's desk. The grandson Lucinda's mother wanted to show off at the garden club. Instead, he couldn't wear normal clothes. The thing was visible in anything that fit. People stared. Women whispered. Men at the hunting club made jokes Rodney pretended not to hear. The Broussard image, the one Rodney had spent fifteen years building, cracked.
Lucinda couldn't take him anywhere. Not to church, not to the firm Christmas party, not to the garden club luncheon where all the other wives brought their children in little polo shirts and khakis. She started leaving him home. "Not this time, baby. You stay here and watch your shows." She'd buy him clothes two sizes too big and tell him he had to keep it hid, it was a bad thing, a naughty thing, don't let anyone see it. Say it nicely enough that it sounded like protection. It wasn't.
Rodney figured it out. He'd driven through Mamère Delphine's fence. He'd laughed in her face. And six months later, his son's cock started growing. Rodney was a lawyer. He didn't believe in curses, but he believed in causation, and he couldn't put those two facts in the same file and not see the shape between them. He never told Lucinda. She thought it was a medical abnormality. A freak thing. If she knew it was his fault, she'd leave, and she'd take the house, and she'd take the money, and Rodney would be just another divorced lawyer in a small town with a ruined name. So he carried it alone. He knew what he'd done. He knew why his son was like this. And he couldn't look at Beau without seeing the receipt for his own arrogance.
The curse took what Rodney valued most. His family name. His heir. The image he'd built. And it made them unshowable. The punishment was designed to spread. Every woman who encountered the cock would feel it. A pull, a warmth, a gravity that bypassed the brain and went straight to the body. The shame would extend. The sin would reach outward through the women it drew in.
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Tally was still pulling the waistband down.
The fabric cleared his hips. Cleared the bony ledges of his pelvis. She saw the root first. The base of it, thick, the shaft starting where it met his body, wider than her wrist. Then more shaft. Veined. The circumcision scar visible, a pale line circling the girth, everything above it flushed a deep color that didn't belong on a child. The fabric kept going and the shaft kept going.
The waistband was at his thighs now. And there was still more.
Then the head came free.
It sprang up. The weight of it, released from the fabric, swung upward in a heavy arc. The head, fat and dark, the ridge flared and prominent, circumcised, the exposed skin flushed pink edging toward purple, caught her under the chin. Bumped her jaw. Her cheek. It bounced, the shaft flexing, and settled.
Twelve inches of boycock rested in her hair, heavy and warm, pulsing against her scalp and her ear. The head lay against her earlobe, the shaft draped across her temple, and she could feel his heartbeat through it. Fast and scared. A six-year-old's racing pulse, transmitted through tissue and blood and skin, beating against her skull through twelve inches of cock in her blonde hair.
She didn't move.
The pull hit her. Not a smell, nothing she could name, more like a gravity that started where his cock lay against her hair and rolled inward. Through her scalp, down her neck, spreading across her shoulders. It moved through her jaw and the space behind her teeth, settling into her chest as a warm pressure between her ribs. And lower, between her legs, a heavy liquid heat that had nothing to do with thought and everything to do with proximity.
She was on her knees with her badge on her belt and her gun on her hip, the sheriff of Chêne Morte, Mississippi, and a six-year-old's cock was in her hair. The pull was telling her to turn her face, to open her mouth, to be closer.
Her thoughts were going slow, like wading through something thick. She could still hear the fluorescent buzz and feel the linoleum under her knees and see the small body standing above her with his ribs visible through the gap in his shirt and his hands cuffed behind his back. All of that was receding, becoming background, and the foreground was the warmth and the pulse and the weight.
Beau was looking down at her with eyes wide and wet, the blue too bright against red-rimmed lids. Tears tracked down his cheeks, into the dimple, off his chin.
"I'm sorry, ma'am." Barely a whisper. "I'm sorry it's ugly. Please don't be mad. Please don't be like momma."
She wasn't mad. She wasn't like momma.
The pull tightened, a warm pressure behind her sternum and a liquid heat between her thighs, her mouth going wet. Her lips parted. It wasn't a choice, it was a response.
"Lord have mercy," she breathed. The words came out soft and thick and barely audible, and they didn't sound like hers. They sounded like they belonged to someone else, someone who wasn't a sheriff, someone who wasn't kneeling on the floor of her own office, someone who wanted.
His cock pulsed in her hair. The head shifted against her ear, warm and fat and alive.
She turned her face. It slid from her hair to her cheek, heavy and warm, pulsing with his heartbeat, and the pull rolled through her like a low tide. She pressed her lips to the shaft, felt the heat of it against her mouth, and dragged a slow kiss from the middle of the shaft toward the head. The skin was smooth and silky, tighter than it had any right to be on something this thick. She could feel the veins against her lip, one fat one running the length of the underside, branching toward the head.
She pulled back just enough to look at it. Holding it in her hand with her fingers barely meeting around the girth, the head flared and dark, flushed a deep pink that was darkening toward purple. It looked obscene against her face. She turned it, pressed it flat against her cheek, let it rest there. It reached from her jaw to her temple. Twelve inches on a six-year-old, against a grown woman's face, and it was bigger than her forearm.
"What are you doing, ma'am?" His chin was trembling. She could hear it in his voice without looking up.
She didn't answer. She opened her mouth and took the head in.
The taste flooded her. Salt, skin, warmth, and underneath it that sweetness that the curse put there. Her tongue found the slit, pushed into it, working the precum out, and a bead of it pulsed onto her tongue, sweet and warm. Her eyes closed. A moan came out of her, muffled around the head, and she sucked harder, cheeks hollowing, pulling more precum out of him.
"It feels weird." Beau's voice was high, thin. "It feels funny, ma'am, please, what are you—"
She pulled off long enough to say, "Shush," then took the head back in. Her tongue worked the ridge where the head met the shaft, circling, and she felt him twitch in her mouth. She licked a long stripe from the ridge down the underside, base to head, tasting every inch of him, and his hips jumped.
She wrapped her hand around the shaft and held it steady while she mouthed the head, tongue swirling, lips sealed around the ridge. Her other hand cupped his balls, large and tight in their sack, and she rolled them gently. He was making sounds above her, whimpers that caught in his throat, and his cock kept leaking that sweet precum onto her tongue.
Then his hips drove forward. Not a jump this time, a thrust, hard and involuntary, his body chasing the pleasure, and the head hit the back of her throat and kept going. She gagged, hard, her eyes bulging, and pulled off coughing. A thick string of spit hung from her lower lip to his cock, swaying. She wiped her chin with the back of her hand, breathing through her mouth.
She put her palm flat against his chest and shoved. His shoulder blades hit the cinder block wall with a dull thud.
The cop voice came out like a reflex. "None of that. Hold still." He froze, every muscle locked, trained to obey that tone. "You move when I tell you to move. You hear me, child?"
"Yes, ma'am," he whispered. "Why, why are you puttin' your mouth on my naughty place?" His voice cracked.
Something about the way he said it, the shameful word for it, the way he made it sound like something that shouldn't be touched, sent a jolt through her. She moaned around the head, sucked harder, and took another two inches. Her hand worked what her mouth couldn't reach, twisting, and drool ran down the shaft, down her wrist. She kept her other hand on his hip, pinning him to the wall, fingers digging into the bone when he twitched.
She pulled off, gasping, a string of spit connecting her lip to the head. "Bad boys get searched, Beau." She licked the shaft, base to tip, a wet stripe that made him shudder. "This is what happens when you steal." She sucked the head back in, popped off. "And when they got a bad thing like this on 'em..."
He was trembling. "Please, ma'am, it's a bad thing, you don't gotta—"
"Hold still." She swallowed the head and three inches of shaft, her tongue flat against the underside, and started a rhythm. Bobbing, sucking, her hand following her mouth. Each time she pulled up she swirled her tongue around the ridge, and each time she pushed down she took a little more. Five inches. Six. The head nudged the entrance to her throat and she paused, breathed through her nose.
he pushed forward. The head wedged against the opening of her throat and her body rebelled, muscles clamping, gag reflex firing before she'd even gotten past the gate. She pulled back coughing, drool spilling down her chin onto her shirt.
She wiped her mouth, looked up at him. His face was a wreck, tears and snot, mouth open, breathing in shallow hitches. She went back down. Slower this time, controlling it, breathing steady through her nose. The head pressed against her throat entrance again and she felt the resistance, the clamp, her body trying to reject him. She pushed. Her throat protested, the muscles fighting, and she pushed harder, bore down, and then the head squeezed through and the shaft followed, sliding easier now that the gate was open. Her throat stretched around him, the walls conforming to his girth, and she could feel the outline of it against her neck from outside. Her eyes watered. Seven inches. Eight. The head was deep, pulsing against the walls of her throat, precum leaking straight into her gullet. Her lungs burned. She pulled back, gasping.
"You like that, don't you, boy." Not a question. She was looking at his face, the flush on his cheeks, the way his hips kept pushing forward on instinct. "Bad boys like that." She took him deep again, felt the head wedge at her throat, pushed through the resistance faster this time, the muscles yielding quicker, and slid down. Nine inches. Her throat distended around the girth. She held for three seconds, pulled back. Gasping. Drool everywhere, on her chin, on her shirt, on his thigh.
"Ma'am." His voice was a whimper. "Ma'am, something's happening. Something feels—" He didn't have the word. Something was building in his belly, warm and huge, and he didn't know what it was. "It feels, it feels really—"
She knew what was coming. She pulled back to the head, lips sealed around the ridge, tongue working the slit. She wanted to taste it.
The first burst nearly drowned her.
His hips drove forward before she could pull back, his body overriding every command she'd given, chasing the pleasure that had built past anything he could control. The head rammed into the back of her throat and the first burst came thick and hot, filling her mouth faster than she could swallow. The angle of it, the pressure, shot cum out her nose, both nostrils, bubbling out, dripping from her upper lip. She pulled back coughing, eyes streaming, and a sound came out of Beau, high and girlish, a cry that bounced off the cinder block. The second burst caught her full in the face, a thick rope across her nose and cheek, splattering to her jaw. The third hit her chest, her collar, the khaki soaking it up, a thick white streak across her badge. He was cumming hard, his body jerking against the wall, cuffed hands rattling, hips bucking on their own, face screwed up, mouth open. That same high cry came again, breaking in the middle, half sob, half something he had no name for.
She recovered. Grabbed the shaft, aimed the head, sealed her mouth over it. The fourth burst came heavy and she swallowed. The fifth, thicker, she swallowed, her throat working. Her hand stroked the shaft, milking, coaxing, and the sixth came weaker but warm and she took it. She kept sucking gently, kept stroking, until the pulses slowed to twitches and the twitches slowed to nothing.
When he was done, she went deep. One last time. She pushed her head down, inch by inch, her throat opening around the girth, the stretch burning. Seven. Eight. Nine. Her neck distorted, the outline of his cock visible through her throat. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Her nose pressed against his belly, the root of his cock buried in her throat, and his hips thrust forward again, involuntary, his body driving the last fraction deeper. She looked up at him. Her eyes were red, watering, cum still on her face, her nose, her cheek. She held there for five seconds, feeling him pulse in her throat. Then she pulled back. Slow, inch by inch, her lips tight around the shaft. The head came out of her mouth with a pop. His whole body shuddered, a tremor that shook his knees, and he slid an inch down the wall.
She sat back on her heels. Looked up at him.
He was wrecked. Face wet, knees trembling. His cock still stood out from his body, hard and glistening with her spit, and his eyes were glassy. Something had built up inside him and exploded and it was better than anything he'd ever felt in his life and he didn't understand it. He didn't understand why it felt good when he was scared, why his body did that, why she did that to him. He was six and something enormous had happened to him and he had no framework for it.
"I'm sorry, ma'am." His voice was barely there. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I don't know what—"
She stood up. Her knees ached. She looked down at herself. Cum on her face, her nose, her cheek, her chin. Cum on her chest, the khaki soaked from collar to pocket, a thick white streak across her badge. She swiped two fingers across her cheek, scooped the cum off, and put them in her mouth. Sucked them clean. Sweet under the salt. She did it again, the other cheek, sucking her fingers with her eyes half-closed. Then her chin, then the trail on her neck. Each time, her fingers went into her mouth and came out clean.
She looked at him.
"You ruined my clothes, young man!"
The sharpness made him flinch. His chin dropped, shoulders pulling in. Then the voice dropped. The cop register. Low, quiet, the one she used in the interview room. The temperature went with it.
"You came all over a sheriff's uniform, Beau." She stepped closer. "That's assault on a police officer."
"I'm sorry, ma'am, I didn't, I don't know what happened, I'm sorry, please, I didn't mean to—"
"I didn't charge you for stealing. I was trying to help you. I even called your daddy for you." She swiped her fingers across the cum on her collar, scooped it, and put them in her mouth. Sucked them clean, slow, looking at him. "And now you've gone and done this."
His lower lip was shaking. "I'm sorry. I'll be good. I promise I'll be good."
"Then we're going to have to make you a good boy."
She unbuttoned the cum-stained shirt. Pulled it off, dropped it on the floor. Her undershirt next, pulled over her head. Her breasts settled heavy and pale, freckled across the chest. She kicked off her boots, unbuckled the gun belt, laid it on the desk. Unzipped the khakis, pushed them down, stepped out. Her underwear last, plain cotton with a dark patch at the crotch.
She stood in the station naked, cum on her face and chest. She picked up the cell keys.
He was still shaky against the wall, knees not fully trustworthy, and she didn't ask him to walk. She bent down, scooped him up. One arm under his back, one under his thighs, his cuffed hands digging into her forearm. He weighed nothing. She settled him against her chest and his cock fell forward, heavy and warm, resting in the valley between her breasts. She could feel it pulsing against her sternum as she walked. He looked up at her face, then down at his own cock nestled between her tits, and didn't know what to do with any of it.
She carried him past her office, to the back. The cell with the cot. She kicked the door open with her foot, carried him in, and kicked it shut behind them. The lock clicked. She stood in the cell with him in her arms, his cock warm between her breasts, his small body trembling against hers.
The bed was a cheap metal frame with a sagging mattress, the kind bought at a surplus auction, pulled a couple feet from the wall. A thin blanket bunched at the foot. She laid him down on it, on his back, and the frame groaned under even his small weight. His cuffed hands were pinned between his back and the mattress. His legs hung off the end. His cock stood up from his body, hard and wet.
She climbed onto the bed, straddled him, her knees bracketing his narrow hips. The frame creaked. She looked down at him. He looked up at her, wet-faced, terrified.
"You're going to learn to be a good boy, Beau." She reached back between her legs. "And I'm going to teach you."
She wrapped her hand around him. His cock pulsed against her palm, warm and fat, and she could feel his heartbeat racing through the shaft. She notched the head against her opening and held it there, feeling the size of him, the impossibility of what she was about to do. Then she started to sink.
The head pushed in and she gasped. He was thick, thicker than anything she'd had in years, thicker than anything she'd ever had. Her body resisted, clenched, and she had to breathe through it, lowering herself by fractions. An inch, two inches, the stretch burning deep, a radiating ache that made her thighs shake. She could feel every ridge and vein of him sliding along her front wall.
Below her, Beau's face changed. His eyes went wide, his mouth fell open, and his whole body locked rigid. His hands clenched behind his back, his toes curled, his stomach drew tight. She could see his ribs standing out as his chest hollowed, every muscle seizing at once. The sensation of her wrapping around him, hot and wet and gripping, was flooding his nervous system faster than his body could process it. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. His cock was so sensitive that every millimeter of progress sent another wave through him, and his body responded the only way it knew how: by freezing.
She sank lower. Three inches, four, five. A wet sound started, heavy and rhythmic, echoing off the cinder block. Air escaped around his shaft, pushed out by the seal of her body against his impossible thickness. Six inches. Seven.
She hit the wall.
Her cervix. The head of his cock pressed against it and pain shot through her pelvis, sharp and deep, a cramping ache that froze her in place. Her face tightened and she sucked air through her teeth.
Beau felt her stop. His eyes found hers, wide and glazed, his face twisted with something he didn't understand. "Sheriff? Did I, did I hurt you?"
She looked down at him. Six years old, cuffed, pinned under her, frozen in pleasure, and apologizing for the size of his cock. She felt something dark and satisfied uncoil in her chest. "Yes, you did," she said, her cop voice, tight and controlled. "You're too big, baby. Too big for the sheriff. A good boy wouldn't hurt me like that."
His face crumpled. "I'm sorry, Sheriff. I'm sorry. I'll be good, I promise."
"I know you will." She put her hand on his chest, felt his heart hammering under her palm. "Hold still. Don't move. You move when I tell you."
He was already holding still. His body hadn't given him a choice. But hearing her say it made something settle in his face, relief mixed with the paralyzing pleasure, and he went even limper under her, surrendering to both her command and the sensations crashing through him.
She pushed down. The head ground against her cervix and the pain flared bright. She bit her lip, tasted copper. Beau whined beneath her, a thin helpless sound, his hips twitching once, a single involuntary buck from a spike of sensation. She felt it and her eyes snapped to his face.
"I said hold still, Beau."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"
"Don't move." She waited until he went rigid again, his body locked, his breath coming in shallow hitching gasps. Good boy. Holding still like she told him.
She pushed harder. Something gave. The head slipped past her cervix and her whole body jolted, her eyes flying open, her mouth dropping. He was somewhere she'd never felt anything before, past where anything had ever been, deep in her womb, and the fullness was so total and absolute that her brain went white.
"Sooo close…," she breathed, and it didn't sound like her voice.
Beau was staring up at her, his face a mess of confusion and fear and pleasure he couldn't name. "Sheriff? Am I, am I being good?"
The smallness of his voice broke something open. Him asking that, frozen under her, cuffed, his cock buried in her womb, asking if he was being good while she used him. The fullness and the submission and the trust in his eyes collided in her belly and she tipped over.
"OH…. FFFUUUUCCCCCKKKKKK!!!," she gasped, and it wasn't her cop voice, it was raw and breathless and it echoed off the cinder block. Her whole body seized and her hips ground down against him without her permission. She bit her lip, trying to swallow the sound, but another one escaped, a strangled moan she couldn't catch. Her insides clamped down on his cock, rippling, squeezing, and she could feel every inch of him inside her, the head buried past her cervix, thick and warm, throbbing with his frightened little heartbeat.
Beau's body convulsed under her. The sudden clamp of her orgasm around his hypersensitive cock sent a jolt through him that locked every muscle he had. His mouth opened but nothing came out. His eyes rolled back, his hands clawed at nothing behind his back, his toes curled so hard his heels lifted off the mattress. The pleasure was a white blast in his skull and he couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but endure it while she ground against him in tight circles.
She rode the orgasm out, her hands on his chest, her head dropped forward. It lasted longer than she expected, rolling through her in waves, each one making her clench and squeeze around him. Beneath her, Beau was making tiny sounds, high and thin, his body twitching with aftershocks. When it finally ebbed, she was shaking. Her thighs were trembling. Sweat was running down her temples.
She opened her eyes. Beau was staring up at her, his expression a tangle of confusion and fear and something he couldn't name. "Sheriff, did, did I do that?"
"Yeah, baby." She was breathing hard. "You did that."
"Was I good?"
Something tightened in her chest that had nothing to do with the pull. "Yeah, Beau. You were good. You were a good boy."
His lip trembled. He looked like he might cry, but different. Relief. He'd been good.
She wasn't done. The pull was still there, settled deep in her belly, and he was still hard inside her. Five years of nothing and one orgasm wasn't going to fix it.
She started to move.
Slow at first. Lifting her hips, letting him slide out until just the head was inside, then sinking back down. The wet sound was heavy, echoing off the cinder block walls. She could feel him moving inside her, the fat head dragging along her front wall, then pushing past her cervix again on each downstroke, that white-hot moment of fullness that made her eyes flutter shut.
Under her, Beau lay frozen. Every downstroke dragged a sound out of him, a gasp or a whimper, and his body would tense and twitch, his hips jerking once before locking again. The sensation of her sliding up and down his cock was too much input. His nervous system couldn't process the friction and the heat and the pressure and coordinate movement at the same time. So he lay there, seized up, his face twisting with each stroke, his hands clenching and unclenching behind his back, his body reacting to the pleasure without his permission.
She built speed. Her thighs slapped against his small body, the sound sharp in the cell. The bed frame creaked, metal on concrete, matching her pace. She put her hands on his chest and rode, grinding down on each stroke, forcing him as deep as he could go.
"Sheriff," Beau whimpered. "Sheriff, it's, it's doing something, I don't, I don't know what—"
"I know, baby. I know. You hold still. Let me do it."
She leaned forward.
His face disappeared under her breasts. She was big-chested and he was tiny, and when she leaned down his whole head was swallowed by her cleavage. She felt his hot breath against her skin, damp and shaky, his face pressed between her breasts.
"Beau." Her voice was low, breathy. "You suck on the sheriff now. You be a good boy and suck my nipple."
He made a muffled sound against her breast, confused. "Wh, what?"
"Suck. Like a baby. You open your mouth and latch on and you suck." She shifted, guiding his face with her hand until his lips found her left nipple through her bra. She reached back, unclasped it, pulled it off, and brought his mouth back to her bare skin. "That's it. Open."
He opened. His mouth closed around her nipple, tentative and clumsy, and the wet heat of him sent a jolt through her, straight from nipple to womb. He was still frozen everywhere else, his body locked in pleasure, but his mouth worked because she'd told it to, his tongue nudging against her nipple in hesitant rhythms.
"Harder. Use your tongue."
He suckled, finding a rhythm, his tongue pressing and pulling. She held the back of his head, kept him latched, and started riding again, her hips rolling, grinding down on each stroke.
The combination undid her. His cock buried in her womb on each downstroke, his mouth sucking her nipple, his small body pinned under hers, cuffed and frozen and compliant. She ground down hard, her body slapping against his, her thighs shaking, her belly tight.
The second orgasm built slow and deep, gathering in her lower back, spreading through her hips. She moaned, couldn't help it, a low sound from her chest that echoed off the walls. She pushed down, took him to the root, felt the head throb deep inside her, and broke.
Her whole body went rigid. She clamped down on him and he whimpered against her breast, his mouth still latched, his body convulsing under hers as her orgasm milked his hypersensitive cock. She held his head against her chest and ground through it, the pleasure rolling through her in thick pulses, each one squeezing him, drawing a messy wet sound from between them. Beau was keening against her nipple, a continuous high sound, his body twitching uncontrollably, the sensation of her clenching around him too much for his nervous system to handle.
When it passed, she was shaking. She lifted off his face and looked down at him. His eyes were glassy, unfocused, his mouth wet from her nipple, his cheeks dark red. He wasn't scared anymore. He was somewhere past scared, in a place where his body was drowning in sensation and his mind was floating somewhere above it, untethered. His cock was still rigid inside her, still twitching, and every time she shifted her hips he made a small broken sound.
"Good boy," she said.
She sat up and started riding again.
Upright now, her hands flat on his chest, her hips rolling fast. Her juice ran down his shaft and pooled on his belly. The wet sounds were constant, heavy and rhythmic, filling the cell. She watched his face as she rode, watched his expression shift and contort with each stroke, watched his body jerk and seize beneath her. His hips bucked once, involuntarily, and she stopped moving.
"What did I say, Beau?"
"I'm sorry, Sheriff, I'm sorry, I can't, it just—"
"Hold still."
She started again. He went rigid, his body locking, his face twisting. She rode him harder, faster, chasing the third, the big one, the one that had been building since she put her mouth on him in the office. Her thighs burned. Her lungs burned. She ground down on him, taking him to the root, feeling the head push into her womb on each stroke.
Beneath her, Beau was gone. His eyes were open but he wasn't seeing anything. His mouth was moving, forming shapes, but no sound was coming out. His body was seized, locked, trembling continuously, every muscle tensed and shaking. The pleasure had overrun everything. He was just a vessel for it now, a small body filled with sensation it couldn't process, couldn't resist, couldn't understand.
"Sheriff," he managed, his voice thin and strange. "Sheriff, it's, it's doin' the thing again, the pressure, it's gettin' big, I don't, I don't know what—"
"I know, baby. I know." She was close, so close. "You let me have it. You be a good boy and give it to the sheriff."
"I, I can't, it's, I don't know what—"
"Give it to me, Beau."
She rode faster. The wet slapping got louder, mixing with the creak of the bed, the bang of the frame, her breathing and his thin whimpers. She was right there at the edge.
His body seized. Every muscle contracted at once, his back arching off the mattress, his hands clawing behind his back, his mouth open in a silent shout. His cock swelled inside her, the head flaring fat and rigid in her womb, and then it kicked. The first burst hit deep, thick and hot, flooding her, and she felt the warmth spread through her core like something molten poured into her belly.
She broke.
The third orgasm ripped through her from the inside out, starting in her womb where he was cumming and radiating through her whole body. She couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but grind down on him and take it. Pulse after pulse of his cum flooded her womb, thick and hot and impossibly much, and each one triggered another wave in her, her insides clamping and releasing and clamping again, milking him, drawing every drop out. She heard herself making sounds she'd never made, low and animal, bouncing off the cinder block.
Beau was silent. His mouth was open, his eyes rolled back, his body arched and frozen in a sustained contraction. His cock jerked inside her, pumping on reflex, his body operating without him. Each burst was accompanied by a full-body twitch, his hips bucking once and then locking again, over and over, a machine cycling through its program.
She could feel her belly distending, the amount of cum too much, the warmth pooling deep where no man had ever been. The pulses weakened, spaced out, and finally stopped. His body went limp under her, all the tension draining out at once, his back settling against the mattress, his hands going slack behind him.
She collapsed on his chest. Her breasts pressed against his small body, her face in his neck. She could feel his pulse against her lips, fast and erratic, and his cock still twitching inside her with the last echoes, weakening, softening fraction by fraction as his body finally wound down.
They lay there. The cell was quiet except for their breathing and the settling of the bed frame.
He was limp under her, breathing in small hiccupping gasps, his face against her neck. Not crying. Blank. His body had been through something it didn't have words for, a pleasure so far past anything he knew existed that it left him emptied, his eyes half-open and seeing nothing, his mouth slack. His cock was softening inside her, the last twitches fading.
She lifted her head. His face was flushed and sweaty, his hair plastered to his forehead, his eyelids heavy. Underneath the blankness, underneath the confusion and the not-understanding, pleasure was still humming through his small frame, and worry too, about whether he was good. His eyes tracked to her face, slow, searching. Trying to figure out if it was over. If she was going to be mad. If he was good.
She brushed his hair off his forehead with her fingers. Damp, stuck to his skin.
"You were a good boy, Beau."
His lip trembled. Something let go in his chest, something that had been holding tight since she put the cuffs on. Relief. He'd been good. After the cuffs and the cell and the things she'd done to him, he'd been good.
She lifted her hips. Slow. She watched his cock emerge, wet and shining, inch by inch, softening now, the head fat and dark even as it shrank. It popped free with a wet sound and rested against his belly, twitching faintly.
His cum followed, thick and white, dribbling out of her in a slow stream that ran down her thigh and dripped onto the thin mattress. She watched it pool on the wool blanket, a dark wet spot spreading under her. He was still beneath her, breathing in small hiccupping gasps, his face against her neck, his body limp. Not crying. Dazed. His eyes were half-open, his mouth slack, his cock softening against his belly, wet and spent.
She stayed on him for a long moment. The cell was quiet. The fluorescent buzzed. The bed frame had stopped creaking. She could feel his heartbeat against her chest, slowing, and the cum inside her, warm, settling deep. The pull was quiet now, a low hum, sated for the moment.
She lifted her head and looked at him. His face was flushed, sweaty, his hair stuck to his forehead. His eyes found hers, half-focused, searching. She didn't know what he was looking for. She didn't know what she was going to say.
She said nothing. She pushed herself up, her arms shaking, and swung her leg over him. The air hit her wet thighs and she shivered. She stood on weak legs, his cum running down her inner thigh, and looked down at him. Small, spent, soft, on a filthy mattress in her jail cell. His wrists were still cuffed behind his back, the metal glinting under the fluorescent.
She pulled her spare khakis from the office locker and stepped into them, no underwear, the fabric sticking to her wet thighs. Clean shirt, tucked in, belt buckled tight. She picked up the gun belt from the desk and buckled it around her hips, the weight settling familiar against her side. The badge caught the fluorescent light for a second before she turned away.
She came back to the cell. He hadn't moved. She reached down and pulled his baggy jeans up over his hips, tucking his soft cock down, wrestling the waistband up, zipping him in. He lifted his hips for her, automatic, the way a mother dresses a toddler, and the ease of it made something twist in her chest. She didn't look at his face.
She slid her arms under him and lifted. He came easy, his cuffed hands behind his back, his head lolling against her shoulder. He smelled like boy-sweat and cheap laundry soap. She carried him through the office, past the desk, past the phone, and unlocked the front door with one hand.
The night air was warm and thick, heavy with pine and the drone of cicadas. Her cruiser sat at the curb under the streetlight. She opened the back door and set him on the seat, and he curled against the door with his knees pulled up, his cuffed hands pressing into the vinyl.
She got in the driver's seat and pulled out of the lot, turning onto County Road 12 with the windows down. The pine air moved through the car and the road was dark ahead, headlights cutting through tree trunks, nothing else. Frog noise rose from the ditches on both sides.
She looked at him in the rearview. He was watching the trees go by, his face pressed against the window glass, his breath fogging a small circle on the pane.
"Sheriff?"
His voice was thin, muffled by the glass.
"Yeah."
"Where we going?" He paused. "I thought I fixin to stay in the cell."
She kept her eyes on the road. The headlights caught a mailbox, a ditch, a patch where the asphalt crumbled. "My place."
He didn't say anything for a long time. She watched him in the mirror. His brow was furrowed, his lips moving slightly, working through something he didn't have words for. His fingers were picking at the vinyl seat behind his back where the cuffs pressed in.
"Is that, is that still the punishment?" he asked. "Or..."
She glanced at him in the mirror. He was looking at her now, his face small and confused in the reflection.
"No, Beau. It ain't punishment."
"Then why come I'm going to your house?"
"Because I said so."
He went quiet again. He put his head against the window and watched the trees. She could see him processing in the mirror, his reflection flickering between the trunks as they passed. He didn't ask again. He was six. He'd go where she took him.
She drove. The road was straight and empty. She knew every dip, every pothole, every mailbox. She'd driven this road a thousand nights, alone, going home to a place she'd told herself was temporary. Five years of temporary.
Gravel popped under the tires as she turned into her drive. The porch light was on. She always left it on. The trailer sat at the end of the drive, small, older, the porch sagging on the left side where the support beam had rotted. But the yard was mowed short, the fence line trimmed, and along the walkway there were marigolds and zinnias she tended every Sunday before church.
She killed the engine. The quiet was thick, just bugs and the tick of the engine cooling. She sat for a moment. Through the window she could see the kitchen, clean, the counter wiped down, the magnet on the fridge visible in the porch light. "Bless Your Heart" in cursive. Her mother gave her that. She could see the edge of the flower curtains she'd sewn from a dollar store pattern, drawn against the dark.
She got out, opened the back door, and lifted him. His head came to her shoulder, his cuffed hands behind his back, his legs dangling against her thighs. She carried him up the porch steps, the left one bowing under her weight, and pushed the door open with her hip.
The AC hit them first, cool and dry, and she felt him shiver against her, his skin going tight from the temperature change. Then the smells: coffee from the pot she'd left on that morning, the lavender candle she'd burned before work, lemon cleaner on the counters. The kitchen was small, spotless. She walked through it with him in her arms, past the fridge with the magnet, past the counter with the dish rack, into the living room. A couch with a throw pillow, a TV on a stand, a bookshelf with paperbacks she'd read twice each. Everything clean. Everything in its place.
He was looking around. She could feel him turning his head against her shoulder, his eyes moving over the space. She wondered what he saw. Probably not much like his parents' house. Probably smaller. But cleaner, maybe. Warmer.
She carried him down the narrow hallway. The bedroom was small, the bed made up with the quilt her grandmother had stitched by hand, blue and cream squares, folded back where she'd left it that morning. Pillows fluffed. Flower curtains drawn. The room smelled like her fabric softener and the sandalwood candle on the nightstand.
She set him on the bed. He sank into the mattress and his face changed, something involuntary, the comfort registering through the fog. His shoulders dropped. His breathing slowed. The cell cot had been metal and wool. This was a real bed, soft, the kind that holds you. His fingers found the quilt and ran over the stitching, tracing the squares.
She came around behind him and uncuffed his hands. The metal was warm from his body. His wrists were raw, the skin abraded red where it had dug in for hours. She took his wrists in her hands and rubbed them with her thumbs, working the blood back in. He winced, his fingers curling, but he didn't pull away.
"That hurt?" she asked.
He shook his head. "No, Sheriff."
She rubbed his wrists longer than she needed to. The skin was hot under her thumbs, his pulse fast in the thin veins. He was looking at the quilt, turning his face into the pillow, breathing in deep against the cotton. She watched his shoulders drop, his body going soft against her bed, and she felt something loosen in her chest that had nothing to do with the pull.
She lifted his hair off his forehead. His face was flushed, his eyes red-rimmed and heavy, his lashes wet and clumped together. He looked up at her, searching her face for something, his brow furrowed, his lower lip caught between his teeth. He was trying to figure out if he was in trouble. If he was good. If this was over.
She kissed his forehead. His skin was warm and damp and tasted like salt. He closed his eyes at the touch, his face tilting up toward her, and something in her chest pulled tight.
She kissed his mouth.
He went still under her. His lips were dry, slightly parted, and she lingered there for a moment, feeling his breath against her chin. Then she kissed him again, harder, her hand coming up to the side of his face, and his mouth opened a little under hers. He didn't know what to do. He'd never been kissed like this. His body went rigid, then slowly, tentatively, his lips moved against hers, clumsy and soft.
She pulled back and looked at him. His eyes were wide now, not half-closed, his mouth wet, his face confused. "Sheriff?" he whispered.
She put her hand on his chest and pushed him down against the quilt. He went, his back hitting the mattress, his red wrists falling to his sides. She pulled his shirt up over his head, working it over his hands, and he lifted his arms for her, automatic. His ribs were visible, countable, his chest bare and small against the blue and cream squares of her grandmother's quilt.
She unbuttoned his jeans and pulled them down over his hips, down his legs, off. He lay there in nothing, small and flushed, his cock soft against his thigh, and she looked at him. Her bed, her quilt, this naked boy with the raw wrists and the confused face, and the pull was waking up in her belly, slow and hot and patient.
"Just relax, baby," she said. "Let me look at you."
He lay still, his hands at his sides, his fingers curling and uncurling against the quilt. He didn't know where to put his hands. He didn't know where to put his eyes. He was looking at the ceiling, then at her, then at the ceiling again, his lower lip caught between his teeth.
She reached for the hem of her own shirt and pulled it over her head. She dropped it on the floor. He was looking up at her, his eyes on her body, wide and uncertain, and she reached down and wrapped her hand around him and stroked. Slow, deliberate, her thumb running along the thick vein underneath. His cock filled her grip in seconds, fattening, stiffening, the head flushing dark pink. He gasped and his hips lifted off the quilt without him choosing to lift them.
"There you go," she murmured. "That's it. Getting nice and big for Sheriff."
She stroked him, slow, feeling him thicken in her hand, feeling the heat of him against her palm. He was responding fast, his cock swelling, the head puffing up dark, and his hips were moving in small, involuntary pumps, his body chasing her grip.
She leaned down and licked him. Base to head, one long, slow stroke of her tongue along the underside of his shaft, tasting salt and skin and something warm underneath that she couldn't name. He jerked, his hips bucking up, and a sound came out of him that was half gasp and half whine.
"Ma'am," he choked. "Ma'am, what are you—"
"Shh." She licked him again, slower, tracing the vein with the tip of her tongue. His cock jumped in her hand. "I'm making you feel good, baby. Just let me."
She took the head in her mouth and suckled, soft, her tongue circling the rim, her hand still stroking the shaft. He made a sound that had no words in it, just air and vibration, and his hands grabbed the quilt and twisted. His hips pushed up, his body seeking more of her mouth, and she took him deeper, hollowing her cheeks, working him with slow, deliberate suction.
"Oh," he breathed. "Oh, oh, that's, that feels—" He couldn't finish. His thighs were trembling, his stomach clenching, his face flushed and open. "Ma'am, please, I don't, it's—"
She sucked steadily, her hand pumping the base, her mouth working him with a slow, patient rhythm. He whimpered, high and thin, his head turning side to side on the quilt, his fingers twisting in the fabric. She could feel him throbbing against her tongue, his cock hot and rigid, and she pulled off. His cock stood rigid, wet from her mouth, the head fat and dark and pulsing.
"That's enough of that," she said. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "I got other plans for you."
She pulled her bra off, dropped it on the floor, stepped out of her khakis. His eyes were still on her, wide, glued, like he couldn't look away now even if he wanted to. She didn't care if he looked. She was thinking about where she wanted him.
She climbed onto the bed and straddled him. His small body sank into the mattress under her weight. She reached between her legs, wrapped her hand around his cock, and guided the head to her entrance. She was still slick from the cell, slick from the drive, slick from having him in her mouth. She rubbed the head against her opening and his hips bucked up, his body chasing the sensation before his mind could catch up.
"That's it," she said. "Right there. Sheriff's gonna take care of you now."
She eased down.
The stretch hit her and she groaned, a low, guttural sound she didn't plan. Her body had opened for him once already in the cell, but that was an hour ago and the ache had settled in, a raw, tender soreness that the head of his cock was pressing against now. She lowered herself by fractions, feeling every inch, the fat crown stretching her open, the shaft following, thick and rigid and unyielding. Her thighs trembled. She winced, her breath hissing between her teeth.
"Shit," she whispered. Heat crawled up her neck. She'd just cussed in front of a six-year-old. The embarrassment flickered through her, there and gone.
She looked down. His cock was halfway in and she could see the outline of it through her lower belly, a thick ridge running from her pubic bone upward, the shape of the head visible against her stomach wall. It was tenting her from the inside, rearranging things, and the visual of it, the sheer impossibility of what she was doing, sent heat crashing through her gut and tightness clamping through her chest at the same time, both pulling in opposite directions, and the heat won.
She sank the rest of the way and her breath came out in a long, shaky exhale. He was so deep she could feel him past her cervix, settled in her womb, and the ache was enormous, a deep, spreading fullness that was almost too much. She sat still, breathing through it, her hands flat on his chest, his heart hammering under her palms.
His face was flushed, his lips parted, his eyes half-closed. A small, breathy "ma'am" leaked out of him.
She started to move.
Slow at first, grinding in circles, working him deeper, her body adjusting to the ache. She rolled her hips and watched his expression shift with each stroke, his mouth falling slack, his eyes going unfocused, his hips starting to twitch up to meet her.
"Move with me," she said. "Work, Beau. Make the sheriff feel good."
He pushed his hips up. Clumsy, unpracticed, his rhythm uneven. He was trying, though, his small body straining under her, his cock pushing up into her each time she ground down. She could feel him experimenting, testing different angles, his body searching for the motion that made her react.
"There you go," she said. "Keep doin' that. Good boy."
His hips found a stuttering rhythm, pushing up when she came down, and the friction caught and built. She rode him harder, her thighs squeezing against his narrow hips, the wet sounds heavy and rhythmic in the quiet trailer. His breathing was ragged, punctuated by small whimpers that came every time she ground down on him, sounds he didn't seem to know he was making.
"That's it," she said. "Right there. Don't stop."
She felt it building, a slow heat in her core that spread outward, tightening her stomach, her thighs, her fingers gripping his shoulders. She chased it, rolling her hips faster, pushing him deeper, and his hips kept up, his body locked into the rhythm she'd taught him.
"Harder," she said. "Push up when I come down. There you go."
The heat crested and broke, her first orgasm hitting her in a hard clench that made her gasp and grind down. She rode it out in slow circles, her head thrown back, her eyes closed, her thighs shaking against his hips. He made a thin, confused sound underneath her, feeling her clench around him, not understanding what was happening but knowing something had changed.
She didn't stop. She kept moving, but slower now, grinding through the sensitivity, each stroke making her twitch. The overstimulation was almost too much, a raw, electric buzz that made her jaw clench, and she had to push through it to build back up.
She needed more.
"Push up harder," she said. "Come on, Beau. Work for me."
He pushed, his rhythm going uneven as she changed her pace. She met his thrusts, grinding down hard on each upstroke, and the angle shifted and his cock ground against her front wall and the friction lit her up. She rode him faster, chasing the second one, her hands gripping his shoulders hard enough to leave marks on his small frame.
"Keep goin'. Don't slow down."
He was whimpering now, steady, small sounds pushed out of him with each stroke. His hips were pumping up under her, his body locked into the rhythm, his cock hitting that spot inside her over and over. She could feel the heat building again, slower this time, deeper, a heavy warmth pooling in her stomach and spreading between her legs.
"Harder, Beau. Make the sheriff feel good. Come on."
He pushed harder, his face screwing up with effort, and his hips slammed up and the depth made her vision blur. She ground down against him, her clit pressed against the root of his cock, and the second orgasm rolled through her in long, slow waves, deeper than the first, squeezing his cock in pulses she couldn't control. She heard herself making sounds, low groans, his name mixed with words that didn't make sense, and she rode it out until the waves faded and her thighs were shaking.
She slowed. Her breath was ragged, sweat gathering at her hairline, running down between her breasts. His face was flushed, his lips parted, his eyes half-closed, his hips still moving under her in slow, involuntary thrusts he couldn't seem to stop. His cock twitched inside her, the ache in him building with nowhere to go.
She wasn't done.
She started again. Long, deep strokes now, rising until only the head was inside and then sinking back down. Rolling her hips on each descent, grinding her clit against the root of him. The friction rebuilt in slow, stubborn layers and she could feel the fourth one out there, waiting, heavier than the first three, taking its time.
"Ma'am," he breathed. His voice was thin and unsteady. "It's... it's doin' that thing again. The pressure."
"I know, baby. Don't worry about that. Just keep movin' for me."
He pushed his hips up, slow and unsteady, his body remembering the rhythm. She ground down on each upstroke and the friction caught. She closed her eyes and rode, her hands flat on his chest, his ribs under her palms, his heart hammering.
"Good boy. Keep goin'."
The fourth orgasm took longer to build. The first three had come fast, pulled out of her by hunger and novelty. This one she had to work for. She ground in tight circles, pressing herself against him, feeling the tension gather in slow increments. His hips were tiring, the upstrokes getting weaker, and she reached down and twisted his nipple, sharp, a hard little pinch and a quarter-turn.
He shrieked, his hips slamming up, his back bowing off the mattress. The sudden depth jarred through her and she gasped, the head of his cock punching against something deep.
"There," she said, breathless. "Like that. Do that again."
He pushed, the sting of the twist still burning in his chest. Two thrusts, hard, desperate. Then his hips faltered and slowed. She ground down on him and the friction was rebuilding but he was fading underneath her, his rhythm dissolving.
"Come on, Beau. Keep pushin'."
Three more weak thrusts. His face was getting red, flushed from exertion, his breathing loud and ragged through his open mouth. His hips stuttered and stopped.
She slapped him. Light, open palm, across the cheek. Not hard, but the sound was sharp in the quiet trailer. His head turned with it and his eyes went wide, wet, startled.
"I said keep movin'."
He started moving. His hips pumped up, frantic, four thrusts that used something he didn't have, and then they quit. His chest was heaving. His face was crimson. Tears were running from the corners of his eyes into his temples.
"Beau!" She snapped it, loud, her cop voice, the voice she used on perps who wouldn't cooperate. "I said MOVE!"
He flinched at the volume. His hips jerked, one useless thrust, and then nothing. His whole body was trembling under her, exhausted, wrung out, and his face was turning to the side, his jaw clenching, and his hands came up and pressed against her hips.
Not pushing. Not grabbing. Pressing. His small palms flat against her hip bones, his fingers splayed, trying to create space between their bodies. Trying to lift her off.
"No," he said. Small, thin, cracking. "Please. I'm tired. It hurts. Please stop."
She looked down at his hands on her hips. His fingers were trembling, his fingertips pressing into her skin, pushing upward, and her body didn't shift. His arms shook with the effort. His palms slid a fraction on her hip bones and caught, dug in, pushed again. Nothing moved. He pushed harder, his face clenching, his breath coming in thin hitches through his nose, and her hips stayed exactly where they were, planted on his, a hundred and twenty pounds of cop and bone and muscle that his sixty-pound body had no answer for. His chin was wobbling. His eyes were wet and wide and jumping between her face and his own hands, watching himself fail to move her.
She grabbed his wrists. Pulled his hands off her hips and pinned them above his head, one hand holding both, his arms stretched up on the quilt. He strained against her grip, his thin wrists twisting in her fingers, his shoulders bunching, his face going tight with the effort. Her hand didn't move. Didn't shake. Didn't budge. He pulled harder, his back arching, a small grunt pushing through his teeth, and her grip stayed exactly where she'd put it.
I should stop. Look at him. He's terrified.
She didn't stop.
She leaned down and kissed him. Not gentle. Her mouth on his, hard, her tongue pushing past his lips, claiming. He made a muffled sound against her mouth, his body going rigid under her, his wrists pulling against her hand. She held him there, kissed him until he stopped fighting, until his body went slack, until his mouth opened under hers.
"No," he said. Small, thin, cracking. "Please. I'm tired. It hurts. Please stop."
She pulled back. His face was wet, his eyes wide, his lips parted. She looked down at him.
"Stop fightin' me, Beau. I ain't hurtin' you. I'm gonna straighten you out, you hear me? You settle down and let Sheriff do her job."
He stared up at her. His chin trembled. He didn't nod. He didn't agree. But he stopped pulling against her grip.
She let go of his wrists and sat up. His arms dropped to the mattress, heavy, limp, too spent to hold themselves up. They lay at his sides, palms up, fingers half-curled. He didn't have the strength to move them and he didn't have the will to try.
She started riding him again. Harder now, faster, chasing the fifth. His body was limp under her, his hips not pushing up anymore, just lying there and taking it. His face was turned to the side, his eyes closed, tears running down his cheeks into the quilt. Small sounds came out of him with each downstroke, thin whimpers pushed out by the impact, "nnh, nnh, nnh," rhythmic and helpless.
She ground down on him in tight circles, pressing her clit against him, feeling the tension build in slow, stubborn waves. She was close. She could feel it right there, just out of reach, and she rode harder, chasing it, using his body for the friction she needed.
His hands came up from the mattress. She saw it and grabbed his wrists again, pinned them to the mattress beside his head, and his face crumpled and he started crying openly, his whole body shaking under her.
"Please," he said. "Please, I can't, it's too much, please—"
"Easy now. Almost there, baby. Quit squirmin' and let me finish."
She rode him harder, his wrists pinned, his body shaking, and the fifth orgasm built and built and finally broke, a sharp, intense peak that made her cry out and clench around him. She ground down in tight circles, riding the waves, her breath ragged, her thighs burning.
When it passed, she was spent. Her thighs were shaking. Her arms were shaking. She released his wrists and collapsed onto his chest, breathing hard.
He was still crying. Quiet, steady, his face turned to the side. His hips gave one more weak twitch and then went still.
She lay on him for a moment, her breathing slowing, her body heavy and satisfied. She could feel his heart under her cheek, fast and panicked. She could feel his cock inside her, still hard, the ache in him building with nowhere to go.
She lifted her head to look at him and realized his hips had stopped completely. Not slowing. Stopped. His body was rigid under her, not moving, not pushing, not trying. Just still. His eyes were open, looking up at the ceiling, wet and blank.
She raised her hand.
He flinched. His whole body cringed, his eyes squeezing shut, his face turning away, his shoulders pulling up to his ears. Waiting for the slap.
"W-why do you hate me?"
She stopped. Her hand hung in the air.
"I'm s-sorry," he said. His voice was barely there, stuttering, hiccupping through the sobs. "I'm sorry. I'll be g-good. I'll try h-harder. I p-promise I'll be good. Why do you, you hate me? What did I d-do wrong? I'm sorry. I'm s-sorry."
His voice cracked and he was sobbing, his face red where she'd slapped him earlier, his whole body trembling under her. Not fighting. Not running. Apologizing. Begging her to let him be good.
The ice water hit her and ran down to her gut.
Earl Costa. Last July. His stepdaughter had come into the station with belt welts across her back, and Tally had driven the girl to the hospital in Gulfport herself because she didn't trust anybody else to do it right. She'd held the girl's hand in the ER. The girl had looked up at her and said "thank you, Sheriff" in a voice so small it barely existed, and Tally had felt, for the first time since she'd taken this job, like she was actually doing what she'd signed up to do. Like she was a real cop. A protector. She'd booked Costa herself, looked him in the eye across the interview table, and known exactly what he was. A man who hurt children and called it discipline.
She was on top of a six-year-old in her bed with her hand raised and he was cringing away from her, asking her why she hated him, promising to be good.
She got off him.
His cock slid out, wet, hard, the head fat and dark and pulsing against his belly. She could see the tension in his body, the pressure that hadn't released. She wasn't looking at that. She was looking at the handprint on his cheek.
She lay down next to him. Pulled him against her, his small body curled into her side, his face against her neck. He was shaking and she held him, her hand on the back of his head, his damp hair between her fingers.
"I don't hate you, baby," she said. "I don't hate you."
He sobbed against her neck. She held him, her hand on the back of his head, and she didn't move, didn't touch him, just held him while he shook.
After a while, his sobbing slowed. His breathing went ragged, then uneven, then quiet. She could feel his heartbeat against her ribs, slowing down. He was still trembling, but the worst of the shaking had passed.
She looked down at him. His face was puffy, his eyes swollen, his cheek still red. He was still hard. His cock lay against her thigh, rigid, pulsing gently, and she could feel the tension in his small body, the pressure that hadn't released, the ache that he didn't understand because nobody had ever told him what it was.
"Beau," she said, quiet. "Baby. Are you feeling bad, or are you just tired?"
He swallowed. "I don't know. I'm tired. I feel funny."
"Funny how?"
He shifted against her. "Like... like there's something. In my tummy. And my, my thing. It feels full. Like it needs to do something. And it won't stop."
"Does it hurt?"
"No. It just... it's there. It won't go away."
She ran her hand down his back, slow, soothing. "Wasn't I making you feel good, baby? Didn't that feel nice?"
He was quiet for a moment. Then, small: "Yes, ma'am. It felt... it felt really nice. But then it got confusing. And then you got mad."
"I wasn't mad at you, Beau."
"You hit me."
She closed her eyes. "I know. I'm sorry, baby. I shouldn't have done that."
He didn't say anything. She kept her hand moving on his back.
"Beau. Can I tell you something?"
He sniffed. "Yes, ma'am."
"Sheriff's been feeling full too, baby. Not like you, but... in her own way. For a long time. A real long time. Years. And it made me cranky. Made me mean sometimes. You understand?"
He was quiet, listening, his face still pressed against her neck.
"You helped me with that tonight. More than you know. You emptied me out." She kissed his temple. "Now I wanna help you. Fair's fair, right?"
He nodded, small, slow.
"Beau. That full feeling, that pressure in your thing and your tummy. That's because the good feeling didn't finish. It got close and then it stopped. You know how that feels? Like you need to let something off?"
He nodded against her neck.
"Sometimes things you need to do hurt a little on the way. Like when you got a splinter and your momma's got to dig it out. It stings, but then it's better. You understand?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Do you want me to fix that pressure for you? Make it go away?"
He pulled back enough to look at her face. His eyes were searching, cautious, trying to figure out if this was a trap. "Are you gonna hit me again?"
"No, baby. I'm not gonna hit you again."
He looked at her face for a long moment. Then he looked down at his own cock, rigid against his belly, the head flushed and leaking a thin clear fluid. Then he looked back at her.
"Okay," he said. "Please fix it."
She smiled. It was a real smile, not the cop smile, not the smile she gave the mayor. Something softer. "Okay, baby. Come here."
She rolled onto her back. Pulled him on top of her. He was so light, so small, his body covering maybe a third of hers. She reached between them, took his cock in her hand, and guided it to her entrance.
"Push, baby. Slow. Slide it in."
He pushed. His hips tilted forward and his cock sank into her, straight in, full length, no curve, no adjustment, just twelve inches of rigid flesh sliding home in one long, unbroken stroke. The angle was different from when she rode him. Steeper. Direct. His cock lined up with her canal and went straight to the back of her, the head pressing through her cervix and into her womb, and the depth hit her like a fist in the stomach.
"Daaammn, boy," she groaned, the words dragged out of her before she could catch them. Her abs clenched. Her hands gripped his hips, fingers digging into his small sides. "Jesus, Beau. You're... damn."
She hadn't expected it to feel like this. When she rode, she controlled the angle, the depth, the pace. She could manage him, take him in doses. This was different. This was him pointing straight into her and going deep, deeper than she'd let herself feel before, and her body seized around him in a spasm that was half pleasure and half shock.
She pulled his head down to her chest. His face settled between her breasts, his cheek against her skin, and she held him there, one hand on the back of his head, the other on his hip.
"Okay," she said, and her voice was thicker than she wanted it to be. She cleared her throat, softened it. "Now. Push. Slow. In and out. Let the pressure build."
He pushed. His hips moved, hesitant, stuttered. One thrust, then a pause, then another, uneven and clumsy. His body didn't know what to do with the agency. He'd been passive for so long tonight, lying there while she rode, and now she was asking him to move and his muscles didn't know how.
"That's okay, baby. Try again. Slow."
He pushed again. Two thrusts, then his hips stuttered and stopped. His face screwed up with concentration. He pushed again, found a rhythm for three strokes, lost it. His hips hitched, stalled, restarted.
"Good boy," she murmured. "Keep trying. You're doing good."
He pushed, and pushed, and his breathing changed, got faster, thinner. Something was clicking. His hips found a groove, stumbled out of it, found it again. The pressure was building in him, the ache driving him, and his body was figuring out what to do with the steering wheel she'd handed it.
"Harder, baby. When it feels like it's getting big, push harder. Make the pressure build all the way up."
He groaned against her chest, a sound too deep for a six-year-old, and his hips slammed forward. She gasped, her back arching off the mattress, her hand flying to the quilt and gripping it. He was hitting something deep, something raw, the head of his cock ramming into her womb with each stroke, and the pace was erratic, arrhythmic, his hips stuttering and surging, and it was jolting her in ways she couldn't predict or prepare for.
"That's it," she breathed, and her voice cracked on the second word. She swallowed, steadied it. "Good boy. Good boy. Keep going. Don't stop."
His hips stuttered, regained, sped up. His cock swelled inside her and he made a sound like he was falling. "Sheriff, I, it's, it's gonna, I can't—"
"Let it go, baby. Let the pressure drain away. You've been such a good boy. Let it go."
His hips bucked hard, three, four times, and then his cock pulsed inside her and he came. Thick, hot, flooding her, his hips jerking with each pulse, his face pressed between her breasts, his whole body shaking. He cried out, high and thin, "ahh, ahh, ahh," and she felt each throb of his cock, each burst of heat jetting into her womb, and the pressure of it, the fullness, the heat spreading through her core, tipped her over. Her orgasm crashed through her, sharp and sudden, her back arching, her legs wrapping around his small hips, her heels pressing into his thighs as she clenched around him in waves. She heard herself moan, a low, broken sound, and she pulled him tighter against her chest.
He collapsed. His arms gave out and his full weight dropped onto her, his face between her breasts, his mouth open against her skin. His hips gave two more weak twitches and then nothing. His cock softened inside her, then slipped out, followed by a warm flood that was thicker than before, the accumulated loads of the night rushing out of her in a slow, heavy stream. Her womb felt packed, dense, the lower curve of her belly rounded and tender with the weight of everything he'd deposited there. She could feel the warmth gathered inside her like a stone, heavy and low, and when the trickle eased, the sensation remained: full, bloated, aching.
His breathing was ragged, then slow, then deep. His body went limp against her, every muscle releasing, his face between her breasts, his hair damp with sweat.
She held him. Her hand in his hair, her other arm around his narrow back. She could feel her own heartbeat slowing, the adrenaline draining out of her, the orgasm's aftermath settling into a heavy, liquid warmth that spread through her limbs.
"Hush, baby," she murmured into his hair. "Rest now. You did so good. Close your eyes."
He made a small sound against her chest, something between a sigh and a whimper, and his body got heavier, his breathing going deep and even. His hand, which had been resting on her ribcage, slid down to the mattress and went still.
She lay there, holding him, listening to his breathing slow. The tree frog sang outside, a long, steady trill. The AC hummed. The window unit rattled in the other room. Sounds she heard every night, alone, in this trailer. Tonight they sounded different. Quieter. Further away.
Her breath slowed. Her body was heavy, every muscle spent, the ache between her legs settling into a deep, dull throb that matched her heartbeat. The warmth in her lower belly was still there, the fullness, the weight of him. She could feel his breath on her chest, slow and warm and regular.
Oh my God, what have you done, Tally? You better think real hard about how to keep this boy quiet. Because if anyone finds out, you're not the sheriff anymore. You're the one in the cell.
The thought surfaced and floated there, cold and sharp, but her body was too heavy to hold onto it. The fear drifted, spun, dissolved into the hum of the AC and the tree frog's song and the weight of the boy on her chest.
Her eyes were closing. She couldn't stop them. The last thing she felt was his hair against her chin, his breath on her skin, and the distant, sleepy certainty that she was going to figure this out, that she had time, that Monday was two days away.
Sleep took her.
────────────── ✦ ✦ ──────────────
Beau
Everything hurt.
That was the first thing. Before I opened my eyes, before I figured out where I was, everything hurt. My wrists were sore and raw like I'd been scratching at them. My cheek was tender, like when I fell off the porch that one time and Momma put ice on it. My naughty place ached, a dull throb that went all the way up into my tummy. And my legs were heavy, like they were full of sand.
I opened my eyes.
This wasn't my bed. My bed was hard and bumpy and the sheets were scratchy and smelled like the laundry room. This bed was soft. Real soft. There was a heavy blanket on top of me that had flowers sewn into it and it was warm and it smelled like lavender and something else, like wood, like the candles Momma used to burn before she stopped burning them.
I didn't know where I was.
The ceiling was low and white. There was a window with curtains that had flowers on them too, and the light coming through was yellow, like morning. I could hear something humming, like a fan but steadier. And something else, outside, a sound like a bird but not a bird, something that went on and on.
I sat up and the soreness got worse. My tummy felt weird. Not sick weird, but full weird, like when you eat too much, but lower. In my private place. The ache was there, pulsing with my heartbeat, and I didn't know why it was there.
Then I smelled it.
Butter. And something sweet. Pancakes.
And then I remembered.
Sheriff Garrity.
The memories came in pieces, like when you drop a puzzle and the pieces go everywhere and you got to pick them up one at a time. Her face above me. Her weight on me. The scary feeling when she was mad and her voice got loud and her hand came down. The funny wrestling. That's what it was, it was like when Caleb at school sits on you and pins your arms and you can't move, except this was different because it felt... it felt...
It felt really good. That was the confusing part. The wrestling felt really good in my naughty place, better than anything I ever felt, and I didn't understand why. There was pressure, like something building up in my tummy and my thing, and then it went off, like a firecracker but inside me, and it felt so good I couldn't breathe. But it was also scary because I didn't know what was happening and she was so big and I couldn't get away.
She was mean. She hit me. She pinched me and told me to keep moving and I was trying but I couldn't and she hit me. My cheek hurt where she hit me and I touched it and it was sore and warm.
But then she was nice. After she hit me, after I cried, she was nice. She held me and said she didn't hate me and her voice was soft and her hands were gentle and she put my head on her chest and I could hear her heartbeat and it was slow and steady and I fell asleep.
I didn't understand. Was she mean or was she nice? She was both. How could she be both?
The smell of pancakes got stronger and my tummy growled. I was hungry. Real hungry. I couldn't remember the last time I ate. The peaches. The peaches I took from the store. I didn't even get to eat them.
I got up. The floor was cold on my feet. I was wearing my shirt but my pants were on the floor and I pulled them up, and my naughty place was sore when the fabric touched it and I winced. I looked down at it and it looked the same as always, big and ugly, hanging there. I tucked it away fast, like Momma taught me. Keep it hid.
I walked down the hall. The floor was linoleum, cold and smooth, and my feet stuck to it a little. The trailer was small. The hall had two doors and then the kitchen. The walls had pictures on them, flowers and a picture of a beach and a picture of a lady who looked kind of like Sheriff Garrity but older.
The kitchen was tiny. There was a stove and a sink and a little table with two chairs and a window over the sink that showed trees, just trees, going on and on. The counter was clean. There was a plate with pancakes stacked on it and a bottle of syrup and a glass of milk.
She was at the stove. She had on a t-shirt and shorts and her hair was down, all yellow on her back, and she was humming something I didn't know. She looked different without the uniform. Softer. Not like a sheriff. Like a lady.
She turned around and saw me standing in the hall and she smiled.
"Hey, baby. You hungry?"
I nodded. I was real hungry.
"Come sit down."
I sat in one of the chairs and my feet didn't touch the floor, same as the station. She put three pancakes on a plate in front of me and poured the syrup and it was warm and the syrup pooled on the plate and the smell was so good my mouth watered. I picked up the fork and started eating.
The pancakes were real good. Fluffy and warm and sweet. I ate fast, too fast, and the syrup got on my chin and I didn't care. I ate all three and she put two more on my plate without me asking and I ate those too.
She sat across from me with a cup of coffee, watching me eat. Her eyes were soft. Not the cop eyes from last night, the ones that went hard when she was mad. Soft eyes.
"You were hungry, weren't you, baby?"
I nodded, my mouth full.
She reached across the table and wiped the syrup off my chin with her thumb. Her hand was warm. She touched my hair, pushing it out of my eyes, and her fingers were gentle, and something in my chest got tight.
Nobody touched my hair. Momma used to, before, when she'd brush it in the morning. But she stopped. She stopped touching me when the thing got big. She stopped a lot of things.
"When's the last time you ate a real meal, Beau?"
I thought about it. "I don't know. Maybe... maybe Tuesday? Momma made spaghetti."
"It's Saturday, baby."
I looked at her. I didn't know what to say to that. I just didn't eat sometimes. Momma forgot or Daddy was home and they didn't want me in the kitchen so I stayed in my room. I got food when I could. From the store, from the lunch line at school, from Dale at the Piggly Wiggly sometimes when nobody was looking.
She got up and refilled my milk glass. Set it back down in front of me. "Drink."
I drank.
She sat back down. She was quiet for a minute, drinking her coffee, looking at me. Then she set the cup down and folded her hands on the table.
"Beau. We need to talk about last night."
I went still. The fork stopped halfway to my mouth. My tummy did a flip, the bad kind, like when you're in trouble.
"What we did," she said. "The wrestling. The stuff that felt good. You can't tell anybody about that. You hear me?"
I nodded, slow. I didn't know why, but I knew. It was like my naughty place. Things you don't talk about.
"That's our special thing, okay? Just you and me. If you tell your momma, or your daddy, or anybody at school, they're not gonna understand. They're gonna be real mad. You might get in trouble. You might get taken away."
My eyes got big. Taken away? Like, to a home? Like Justin at school whose daddy went to jail and they came and got him and nobody saw him again?
"I won't tell," I said. Real fast. "I promise. I won't tell nobody."
"Good boy." She reached over and squeezed my hand. Her hand was warm and big and it covered mine all the way. "That's a good boy."
I felt the tight thing in my chest again. The good kind this time. Good boy. She said it and I felt it, warm, like the pancakes.
"Now," she said. "Your daddy's gonna pick you up at the station this morning. I got to take you back there in a little bit. You can sit in the office and wait for him."
My face fell. Daddy was coming. Daddy was gonna be mad. He was always mad. He'd call me that boy and that brat and he wouldn't look at me and he'd put me in the truck and drive me home and Momma wouldn't look at me either and I'd go to my room and that would be it.
"I don't want to go," I said. I didn't mean to say it. It just came out.
She looked at me. Her eyes were soft but thinking, like she was working something out.
"Beau. You want to do things like we did last night again? The wrestling and the good stuff?"
I didn't know what to say. The good stuff felt... it felt really good. Better than anything. But the mean stuff was scary. She hit me. She pinched me. She made me keep going when I was tired and it hurt and I couldn't stop. I started to cry when I thought about it and I pushed the tears back because crying makes it worse.
"Are you gonna be mean?" I asked. My voice was small. I heard it and it sounded like a baby's voice and I hated it but I couldn't make it bigger.
She didn't say no. She looked at me for a long time and then she leaned forward, her elbows on the table.
"Beau. You know how you've been running around town all day, stealing things, getting into trouble?"
I looked at my plate. The syrup was pooling around the last pancake. "Yes, ma'am."
"That's what bad boys do, baby. Bad boys steal. Bad boys run around with nobody watching them. Bad boys don't listen to anybody. And you know where bad boys end up?"
I shook my head.
"Prison. Jail. The cell you were in last night, but for real, for years and years. You don't want that, do you?"
I shook my head again. I thought about Justin. I thought about the cell last night, the cot and the toilet and the door that closed with the big click. I thought about being in there for years and years and my tummy flipped again.
"No, ma'am. I don't want that."
"Of course you don't. You're a good boy, Beau. You just need somebody to teach you how to be good. You need discipline. That means learning to listen and do what you're told, even when it's hard, even when you're tired. You understand?"
I nodded. I thought I understood. Discipline meant doing what you were told, even when you didn't want to. Even when it was hard. That made sense. I didn't always do what I was told. Maybe that was the problem.
"Sheriff can help you with that," she said. "I can teach you how to be good. And I can make you feel good, like last night. The good stuff. You remember how that felt?"
I remembered. The pressure building, the firecracker going off, the way my whole body went tight and then loose, and the feeling was so big I couldn't think. I remembered and my naughty place twitched under the table and I blushed.
"Yes, ma'am," I whispered.
She was quiet for a second, looking at me. Then she reached across the table and took my hand.
"Beau. Last night, you did something real special for me. You made me feel better than I've felt in years. You know that?"
I looked at her. I didn't know that. I didn't know I did anything except lie there and get scared.
"That's a gift, baby. What you got, your naughty place, everybody told you it's bad, right? Ugly? Shameful?"
I nodded. My ears were burning.
"They're wrong." She squeezed my hand. "Most folks don't have that kind of gift. You can make frustrated ladies feel better. Feel good. Real good. Like you did for me last night. You should be proud of that, not ashamed. Your momma and daddy, they don't understand. But I do. Sheriff understands."
I looked down at my plate. The syrup was making a brown lake around the pancake, and I stared at it because I didn't know where else to look. Nobody ever told me my naughty place was good for anything. My whole life it was the reason Momma wouldn't touch me. The reason Daddy couldn't look at me. The reason I wore big clothes and kept it hid. And here was Sheriff saying it was a gift. Saying I should be proud.
"Really?" I whispered.
"Really, baby."
Something was happening in my chest. The tight warm thing, the one that came when she said good boy, but bigger. Fuller. Like my naughty place wasn't just a bad thing attached to me. Like maybe it was something good. Something that mattered.
I didn't know what to say so I just nodded.
"But you got to listen to everything I say. Everything. I'm the sheriff, baby. I know what's best for you. Your momma and daddy, they got their own things going on, they can't teach you right. But I can. You come see me at the station, you be my good boy, you do what I tell you, and I'll take care of you. Feed you pancakes, teach you how to be good, make you feel real nice. You understand?"
I understood. I thought I understood. She was offering to take care of me. Nobody took care of me. Momma and Daddy didn't want me. They didn't even come get me last night. Daddy had a dinner in Natchez. He didn't care. She cared. She made me pancakes. She wiped my chin. She said I was a good boy.
"Does that mean you're not gonna be mean no more?"
She was quiet for a second. Then she said, "Sometimes I got to be strict, baby. That's what discipline means. But I'll never be mean for no reason. I'll only be strict when you need it, to teach you. And after, I'll be nice. I'll hold you and tell you you're a good boy. You understand the difference?"
I thought about it. Mean was when she hit me and pinched me and made me cry. Strict was... was when Mrs. Landry made you sit in the corner. It was for your own good. It wasn't being mean, it was teaching.
"Yes, ma'am. I understand."
"Good boy." She squeezed my hand again. "So. You want that? You want to be Sheriff's good boy?"
I looked at her face. Her eyes were blue and soft and she was smiling, a little smile, like she was waiting for something she really wanted. And the tight thing in my chest was there, the warm one, the one that happened when she said good boy.
"Yes, ma'am," I said. "I want to be your good boy."
Her smile got bigger. She stood up, came around the table, and kissed the top of my head. Her hand was on my hair and she held me against her tummy and I could smell her, coffee and something flowery, and I closed my eyes and leaned into her.
"Good boy," she said. "Eat your last pancake. We got to get you to the station."
I ate it. She washed the dishes and I watched her and the kitchen was small and warm and the sun was coming through the window and the pancakes were in my tummy and I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time. I didn't know the word for it then. I know it now. It was safe. I felt safe.
She drove me to the station in the cruiser. I sat in the front seat this time, not the back. She put the radio on and it was country music, a man singing about a truck, and the windows were down and the air was warm and the trees went by and I watched them and thought about pancakes.
She pulled up to the station and put it in park and we both went inside. The office was the same as last night, the gray building with the flagpole, but it looked different in the daytime. Less scary. Just a building.
She sat me in the plastic chair. My feet didn't touch the floor. She went to her desk and started doing papers, writing things, flipping through folders. The fluorescent light was buzzing the same as last night and the office smelled like coffee and bug spray. Everything was the same.
But I was different. I was sitting in the chair and my cheek was sore and my wrists were raw and my naughty place ached and I was thinking about pancakes and her hand on my hair and the way she said good boy and the way it made my chest feel warm.
She looked up at me from her papers. "You doing okay over there, baby?"
I nodded. "Yes, ma'am."
She smiled and went back to her papers, and I sat in the chair and I swung my feet and I waited for my daddy to come, and the whole time I was waiting I was thinking about how to get back to her.
────────────── ✦ ✦ ──────────────
Tally
The truck pulled into the station parking lot at ten minutes past ten. Rodney's F-250, black, polished, the kind of truck a man buys when he wants everyone to know he can afford a truck but doesn't need one for work. It was spotless. Rodney kept it spotless the way he kept everything spotless: by paying someone else to do it.
Tally watched from the office window. He got out, adjusted his sport coat, and walked toward the front door. His walk was the same as always, the easy stroll of a man who'd never been in a hurry because nothing in his life had ever required one.
She looked at Beau. He was in the plastic chair, feet swinging, and when he heard the truck door his face changed. Not fear, exactly. Something older than fear. The face of a dog that hears its owner's car in the driveway and doesn't know if today is a good day or a bad day.
"Your daddy's here, baby."
Beau stood up. He didn't say anything.
The front door opened and Rodney came in, all smiles. "Sheriff Garrity. Tally. Thank you so much for watching the boy. I hope he wasn't too much trouble."
His hand landed on Beau's shoulder. The grip looked casual from across the room. Tally saw the knuckles go white.
"No trouble at all, Mr. Broussard. He was a good boy last night."
Rodney's smile widened. "Well, that's good to hear. Isn't that good to hear, son?"
Beau looked at the floor. "Yes, sir."
"We're gonna have a talk when we get home, aren't we, son. About stealing."
"Yes, sir."
Rodney's hand tightened on the shoulder. The pleasant voice didn't change. The pleasant voice never changed. That was the thing about Rodney. He could say anything in that voice, and it always sounded like a favor, always sounded like warmth, and the threat was never in the words. It was in the hand.
Tally leaned back in her desk chair. "Actually, Mr. Broussard, I wanted to talk to you about something while you're here."
She came around the desk, leaned against the front of it, arms crossed. Casual. Friendly. She'd practiced this voice in the mirror before she took the job. The voice that said I'm not selling you anything.
"He was a real good boy last night. Listened well, followed directions. You know, most kids that come through here, they act up, they cry, they give me grief. Beau here was polite as they come."
Rodney's eyebrows went up. The pleasant surprise of a man being told something nice about a chair he forgot he owned.
"I run a junior cadet program here at the station," she said. The program didn't exist. It existed now. "For kids who need direction. Keeps them off the street, teaches discipline, gives them structure. Nothing formal, just something I put together for kids who need it."
She paused. Let it breathe.
"I could take him off your hands during the day if you want. Mornings to late afternoon. I'll keep him busy, teach him right. You'd be doing me a favor, honestly. I could use another cadet."
Rodney's eyes sharpened. Not with suspicion. With interest. She could see the gears turning, the lawyer's brain running the cost-benefit analysis. A law enforcement program. The sheriff personally requesting his boy. Something to mention at the club, at the firm dinner, at the golf course.
"Well now," he said, rubbing his jaw. "That's... that's a real generous offer, Tally. You really think he's got potential?"
"He does. Good instincts, listens well. I think with the right guidance he could be a real standout."
"Junior cadet," Rodney said, tasting the words. He looked down at Beau. The hand on the shoulder loosened, just a fraction. "How about that, son? Sheriff thinks you got potential."
Beau looked up, surprised. Nobody had ever told him he had potential. Nobody had ever told him anything good. He looked at Tally and she gave him a small nod.
"Thank you, ma'am," he said.
"Monday morning, eight o'clock," Tally said. "I'll have him back by five."
"Now hold on," Rodney said. "I'll need to tell Lucinda. She'll want to know the schedule."
"I can give you a card with the details. Drop-in program, flexible hours. Nothing to sign, nothing formal. Just a sheriff doing her part for the community."
She went to her desk, grabbed a blank card from the drawer, wrote the hours on the back. Handed it to Rodney. He took it, looked at it, folded it into his sport coat pocket.
"Well, I appreciate this, Tally. Truly. It'll be good for the boy to have some structure. His momma spoils him, you know how it is."
Tally didn't know how it was. She'd seen Lucinda once, at the grocery store, and the woman had looked through Beau like he was a display she didn't care for.
"You're welcome to drop him at the house too, if the station's out of your way. I'm on County Road 12."
Rodney waved this off. "Station's fine. I'll bring him Monday."
He shook her hand. The grip was firm, practiced, the handshake of a man who shook hands for a living. He steered Beau toward the door with the hand on the shoulder, and Beau went with him, small and compliant.
At the door, Rodney paused. Turned back. "And Tally, I am very much obliged. You know that."
"You're welcome, Mr. Broussard. Anytime."
They walked out. Tally watched through the window. Rodney opened the passenger door of the truck and Beau climbed in. He was so small in that big truck, his feet barely reaching the edge of the seat. Rodney walked around to the driver's side, got in, started the engine.
The truck backed out of the lot. As it turned toward the highway, Beau looked through the passenger window. His face was there for a second, looking back at the station, looking back at her. Then the truck pulled away and he was gone.
Tally stood at the window until the truck was a dot on the highway. Then it was gone and the parking lot was empty and the station was quiet.
She went back to her desk. She sat down. She looked at the phone. She looked at the filing cabinet where she kept Rodney's cards. She looked at the plastic chair where Beau had been sitting.
She opened her laptop and started a new document. She typed "Junior Cadet Program" at the top. She made up a schedule, a list of activities, a permission slip template. She printed it out and put it in a folder and put the folder in her desk drawer.
Monday. She had him Monday.
That night, she sat on her bed with the laptop open. The quilt was fresh, she'd changed it, washed the other one. The trailer was quiet. The crickets sang in the bayou.
She was shopping.
She had one toy. A vibrator she'd bought in Biloxi during the academy, pink, seven inches, the batteries had been dead for six months and she hadn't replaced them because there hadn't been a reason to replace them. It was in her nightstand drawer, next to the Rodney cards she'd never thrown away.
She scrolled through a website. The internet out here was slow, the kind of slow where images loaded in strips from top to bottom, and she waited for each one to render, feeling ridiculous. Dildos, vibrators, plugs, restraints. The selection was enormous and her cart was empty and she didn't know what she wanted.
She knew what she wanted. She just didn't want to type it into a search bar.
She added a vibrating wand to her cart. Then a set of restraints, soft, adjustable. Then she stopped, stared at the screen, and added a training plug set, three sizes, graduated.
Shipping: seven to ten business days.
Seven to ten days. That was two weeks. She had Beau on Monday.
She closed the laptop. She picked up her phone. She stared at it for a minute. Then she scrolled to Dee's number and called.
Dee answered on the second ring. "Yeah?"
"Hey. You busy?"
"Watchin' the LSU game. What's up."
"LSU softball. I swear, I don't know how you ended up not bein' a dyke, watchin' and playin' softball all the time."
"Cause I love big cock too much, that's how. Shame there ain't none of that round here. What'd you need?"
"I need to ask you something."
"Shoot."
"You know how you were telling me about your collection?"
A beat. "My collection of what, Tally?"
"You know what."
"Say it."
"The toys, Dee."
"The toys. Okay. What about the toys?"
"I need to borrow some."
Silence. Then a sharp laugh, the kind that comes out like a bark. "No shit! You got a fire going, Garrity? Finally?"
"Shut up. I just need some things, and shipping takes forever out here."
"What kind of things? I got a whole closet, girl. Name it."
Tally closed her eyes. She could feel the heat in her face. She was the sheriff of Chêne Morte and she was blushing on the phone with the PE teacher about sex toys.
"The weird ones."
"The weird ones."
"Stop repeating me."
"I'm repeating you because I'm savoring this. Tally Garrity, by-the-book Tally, never-touches-anybody Tally, is calling me on a Saturday night asking for the weird toys." Dee's voice was getting louder. "This is the best night of my life."
"I'm hanging up."
"No, no, no. I got you. I got you." A pause. "You mean the kinky ones."
Tally's face was on fire. She pressed the phone against her chest, took a breath, put it back to her ear.
"Yes. The kinky ones."
Dee made a sound that was half laugh, half whoop. "Yes. Yes, you can borrow them. I brought a whole bag from Hattiesburg, and it's been sitting in my closet collecting dust. Nobody out here's worth the batteries, you know what I'm saying?"
"So you have them?"
"I've got a wand, I've got plugs, I've got a strap-on that's never been out of the box, I've got restraints, I've got a collar and leash set that's real pretty, purple, and I've got a couple things I don't even know what they are because I bought them online drunk at two AM."
"Bring them Monday."
"I'll bring them Sunday. And you're telling me everything."
"No."
"What do you mean, no?"
"I mean no. I'm not telling you anything yet. I'll talk when I'm ready, and I ain’t ready."
Dee was quiet for a second. "You're serious."
"I'm serious."
"You're calling me on a Saturday night to borrow kinky sex toys, and you won't tell me who it is?"
"That's right."
"That's cold, Garrity."
"I know."
"You owe me pancakes."
"Fine. Sunday. Coffee and pancakes. You bring the bag; you don't ask questions."
"Ah’m gonna ask questions."
"Ask away. I'm not answering."
"You're a piece of work, you know that?"
"Love you too, Dee."
"I didn't say it yet."
"You were going to."
A pause. "Yeah, I was. Love you, girl."
"Love you, too."
She hung up.
She set the laptop on the nightstand and turned off the lamp. The trailer was dark except for the blue glow of the window unit's display. The tree frog sang.
She smiled.