He slid a hand to my chest and held me tight to his front, and then he pressed into me, his cock slick and bare. His skin caught on my rim the way a condom wouldn’t. He was so fucking hot against my flesh. I moaned.
“Tyler—”
“No,” he said harshly in my ear, and I almost swallowed my tongue. His tone was rough and guttural—and really fucking didn’t sound like the guy I’d low-key been thinking of as my boyfriend. It scared the fuck out of me. My cock throbbed at the strange exhilaration that powered through me. Hot precum dribbled from the end of my dick. There was a pressure around my neck that got steadily tighter. He must be using his teeth on the blindfold, and for some reason that had me on the brink of coming. I scrabbled at the bed as he let loose—the same way he had the first time he’d fucked me.
His cock hammered my hole, and my hard-on rubbed against the bed and pressed tight to my stomach as he fucked me so hard I bounced. Not long later I was spraying my load, and my vision whited out at the unexpected punch of bliss.
“Fuck yes, you do it for me. Come on my cock. Do it. Say how good this was in the morning. Describe it in detail. Call and say how much you loved it. Leave a message.” He laughed and drove himself deep inside me.
The sensation of being split open had me gasping, and another fierce wave of heat sliced through me that didn’t force jizz from my nuts but felt as good as unloading. When he pulled out, cum leaked from my hole. He rolled from the bed, and I was too stunned to do anything other than bask in the sensations flowing through my body.
After a while the front door opened and closed, and while I was disappointed, I couldn’t exactly argue with this type of goodbye. Maybe he’d gotten a call from work. Groaning and smiling in sated satisfaction, I curled up under the blankets and tried to get a few more hours of sleep.
7
Tyler
Nilsson stoodin the doorway of the small kitchen in the back of the Quicksilver Coffeehouse with his shoulder shoved against mine. He had the back of his hand pressed to his mouth, and his already fair skin had paled considerably, leaving two bright splotches of red on his cheeks to go with the sunburn on his forehead and the bridge of his nose. Wisps of golden hair had slipped out of the bun he had it pulled into on the back of his head to dance around his cheeks. He panted for air through his mouth, and I got the idea it was probably to avoid inhaling the visceral reek perfuming the room. Death didn’t smell pretty, and old death was even worse—especially when ruptured intestines and blood rot entered the mix.
“Tyler, I’m not a noob. But I might go….” Nilsson gagged delicately and his nostrils flared. He shot a sad look my way that reminded me of why I liked my partner. He could be a dick, but he washuman.
“Do what you gotta do, buddy,” I said, giving him a hearty pat on the back that made him bend forward. He nodded and spun back into the main part of the café, which was gore-free. The techs inside the room looked up from their various tasks cataloguing the evidence and shared smirks with each other as the sounds of Nilsson’s retching carried to us.
My gut was queasy, too, but as I stared at the bloody mess, I didn’t get a sense of shock. Something about sharing this body with Abe made me immune to the horror, probably because I’d seen it happen. Caused it. I’d simply been avoiding consciousness. I still wasn’t entirely sure how the mechanics of the mind Abe and me shared worked, and right now wasn’t the time to get into it.
A female torso was missing both arms and the stomach was ripped open. The head and appendages were scattered around near the silver industrial dishwasher across the room. Her insides had been scrawled into a decorative pattern around the torso, reminiscent of a demon’s wings. Directly in front of me near a steel prep table, on the sparkling white tiles spattered with old brown blood, lay the piece of roadkill that was formerly Mr. Enoch. His fluids had pooled at the back of his body, and he wasn’t looking too hot with his blue-tinged skin. Deep bruising ringed his throat. His swollen hands appeared ready to pop. I wanted to be well out of here by the time someone decided to move him. His face was speckled with tell-tale red dots that were ruptured blood vessels. For my professional money, the biggest indication of strangulation, other than the bruises on his neck, was the fact that Enoch’s chin was scraped up, as if maybe he’d hurt himself trying to use his face to get the hands off his neck.
Two hands that had slowly squeezed the life out of Enoch, the way he’d wanted to hurt my Noble. Satisfaction swelled in my chest and brought Abe and me into a swift alignment that gave me a strange rush.
Clearly Enoch hadn’t succeeded in survival, but Abe never missed his mark when he decided to kill someone. I unclenched my fingers from the fists they’d balled into. I tried to make myself care that Enoch, who I’d been informed had three daughters, was dead. Since I’d set Abe loose on him… sympathy wasn’t happening.Good riddance.
Nilsson stumbled back to my side and leaned the bulk of his weight against me, which would have knocked over a smaller man. I slung my arm around him for a second before patting his shoulder hard.
“Were there security cameras rolling?” I asked.
“If only.” Nilsson grimaced. “There are cameras, but Enoch didn’t maintain them for security purposes. They’re closed circuit, and they were running but not recording. I think he used them to watch his employees when he was parked on his ass in his office.”
“That’s too bad,” I muttered as relief surged through me. “Would’ve made our jobs a hell of a lot easier.”
He straightened. “You think it’s the Park Strangler?”
I laughed and every person in the room focused on me for a few seconds before they went back to work. “Doesn’t he deserve a better name? We’ve had a lot of bodies and zero leads in the past year. We can do better than Park Strangler. Damn it all, he could be another Zodiac Killer, and we don’t want to be on documentaries in twenty years forthe Park Strangler. Besides, half the time the vics are decapitated. Heads popped off like daisy petals. Where’s your sense of style, Nilsson?”
He gave me a pained smile, though his bottom lip trembled and he kept a hand on his stomach. He got points for making an attempt at normalcy. “Guess we could call him the Executioner. But the FBI said we weren’t supposed to give killers fun nicknames because it only encourages copycats.”
“Eh, fuck them. The Executioner is a great name.”
Nilsson chuckled, but I was unsettled as a tech gave us a nod, and we stepped through the doorway into the room together. The dead woman had been unnecessary collateral damage, and that was what I got for letting Abe loose, I supposed. I did feel bad for her. “We’ve never had two vics at once,” I murmured. “This is a deviation from his pattern. Maybe ramping up the kill quota. Maybe one isn’t cutting it anymore.”
Nilsson burped and thinned his lips into a line as he nodded.
Four crime scene techs worked around the edges of the room, and I assumed if they hadn’t cleared the spot we were standing in already, they would’ve yelled at us. I studied them, three men and a woman from the Homicide Unit, and could’ve kicked myself. I had been so busy with Noble I didn’t come back here and snoop around to clear out any evidence Abe might have left. This room wasn’t like the park. There were a ton of eyes and not a lot of space. I’d been having such a good time with Noble, and the blindfold seemed to have worked. Abe was far less interested in his slice-and-dice games without Noble’s eyes showing, and it gave me the possibility of a long-term future I hadn’t previously dared to imagine with anyone.
Surely I could get him to spend a lifetime blindfolded? Not likely, but I could potentially come up with another fix before this one wore thin. I had hope for the first time in forever, and it gave me warm goodness to hold on to, even in the midst of the horror I’d technically been responsible for.
But this Quicksilver Coffeehouse business was a fucking mess. I ran a hand over my face and sighed. I tried to dissociate from the bodies in front of me, even though I felt that made me less capable of connecting with whatever kept me reasonable and able to pretend to be human. I didn’t want to empty my guts like Nilsson while Abe cackled in my head.
I walked around the perimeter of the room to stare down at the dead girl’s head. Somehow, in spite of the violent way she’d died, her headphones were still over her ears. Her long, shiny brown ponytail curled around her severed neck. “What a waste.”
