“Big and fit,” Bonds says. “And looks like he’s wearing something over his head. Like a helmet or something.”
“Yeah. And he’s wearing body armor,” Burgess says. “Something that adds bulk.”
The brainstorming behind me fades to murmurs as I imagine the crime scene. The dead body is waxy, like a mannequin staged at a desk, and the blood looks black.
When the vision takes me, everything around me falls away.
I’m back in a world with no light and a huge and hovering presence behind me. A dark shape made of shadow takes the form of a man. The UNSUB? I smell whiskey, then that chemical scent that might be traces of knockout gas, and then nothing but a rich, subtle cologne.
* * *
I should feel triumphant.I got the first big break on the case. But the moment I set foot in my townhouse, loneliness sets in.
What does it matter that I’m using my abilities to solve the murder of a rich man? There will only be another murder to solve tomorrow and another after that. And my time is running out. I’ve had visions of my death, and since moving to New Rome, I have the sense it’ll be soon.
I thought I’d resigned myself to it, but right now, the bleakness of my life rises up and threatens to rip me in half.
My place still smells like Italian food. The scent mocks me with memories of dinners around the family table.
I haven’t eaten anything since lunch, which consisted of a limp chicken sandwich I scarfed while reviewing every second of the security tapes, but I’m not hungry.
I’m not tired, either. I’m in the zone I enter when hunting a murderer. Wired, alert.
I pace the rooms. I’ll never be able to sleep like this.
There’s a sound, and I freeze. It’s muffled but close. Has my neighbor returned? I put my ear to the wall, and when that gives me nothing, I head outside to scope out their door. The same pieces of junk mail are still sticking out of the mailbox. My senses tell me no one is home.
I’m about to go back into my side of the duplex when an explosion of fluttering sounds has me stick my head around the corner. Someone’s installed a bird feeder outside my kitchen window. Or maybe it’s been there all along, and I’ve never noticed it. It’s topped up with bird seed, and a pair of chickadees are gorging themselves, taking turns with a few drab little sparrows. In the tree beyond, I see a flash of red—a cardinal.
It’s so charming. I sit for a bit and sketch them. The pages fill with birds in flight, birds on a telephone wire, and finally, a tiny bird nestled in the powerful hand of a faceless man.
I force myself to put the book away. All I want to draw ishim.More than that, I want to lose myself in a dom who will tie me up and put all my racing thoughts to rest.
But I have to forget him. My scene with him was a one-off. It’s over and done.
Right?
The temperature has dropped, so I change into flannel pajamas, the kind you need to survive a brutal Midwest winter night.
I do my nightly routine and make sure my gun is on my bedside table. I crawl into bed and try to get comfortable, but my pillows are too flat, my sheets too scratchy.
But the real problem is my overactive brain.
Images roll through my head—the murder scene, the scene at the club, the clip of the UNSUB jumping onto the fire escape—until they’re all jumbled, and I fall into the space between sleep and wakefulness.
In a half-dream, I’m the victim tied to the chair, inhaling the killer’s cologne as the bitter traces of the gas fade away. He’s cloaked in darkness, towering over me with a knife in his hand. Instead of slitting my throat, he uses the weapon to slit open my shirt.No touch?he asks, and his voice is dark and lovely. He uses a crop to prod my bra-covered breasts.A pity.
I open my eyes with a gasp. My sex is swollen and slick, my breasts so sensitive the flannel chafes them unbearably. I tear off the shirt so quickly that a button pops off.
Topless, I sit panting as heat blooms through me before I kick off my pajama bottoms and slide my fingers between my folds.
My clit only needs a few strokes before my climax sparks and fizzles. I shove a few fingers inside me, needing more stimulation to drive the orgasm on. Make it more satisfying. The pressure on my inner walls feels so good I clamp my legs together for more.
All too soon, the orgasm fades.
I wait for a wave of shame to come, but it doesn’t. Instead, more heat, more need. My clit is itchy, needy.
An orgasm isn’t enough. I need a scene.
