Page 43 of Spade

I let go of her throat and trailed my hand down, palm flat on her chest, feeling the heart pound against the bone. The urge to hit her—hard, just once—was like a static charge between my teeth. Instead, I got up, undid my belt, and used it to pin her thighs down against the mattress.

She writhed, but not in protest. More like she was checking the perimeter for cracks.

I knelt on the bed, got my hands under her ruined shirt, and took one nipple between my teeth. I bit, not quite drawing blood, but enough to make her yelp. Her back arched again and she said, “You call that rough? I’ve had worse from parking meters.”

I ground my knuckles along her ribs, the old-fashioned way my father used to knuckle my head when I talked back. She grinned, her mouth shiny with spit, and let out a low growl.

I got my hand under her jeans, found her wet already. I pushed two fingers inside, slow and unhurried, my thumb on her clit. She bucked but didn’t beg. Instead, she said, “You ever get tired of being the only one holding the leash, Detective?”

I didn’t answer. I worked my hand until her breath turned shallow and fast, then I pulled out, wiped my fingers across her cheek, and forced them into her mouth.

“Suck,” I said.

She did, biting down just enough to hurt. I pulled my hand away, letting her teeth drag along the knuckle, and watched a drop of blood bead up on the skin.

It was my turn.

I got off the bed and stripped. The air was cold, the room colder, but I was past caring. I stood over her, hard and angry, and jerked myself until I came, painting her from the cheekbone to the chin in one long arc.

She grinned up at me, eyes gleaming. “Messy,” she said.

I took the key from my wallet and unlocked the cuffs. She flexed her wrists, the skin angry and red. I handed her the cuffs, an unspoken dare.

She sat up, licked her lips, and with two fingers scooped a streak of cum off her jaw. She pressed her fingers to my lips.

“Clean them off,” she said.

I did.

She moved fast. In one motion, she had the cuffs around my wrist and then behind my back, both hands trapped. She pushed me down onto the mattress, face-first. I felt her weight straddle my ass, then her mouth on the back of my neck, biting hard enough to break skin.

She rolled me onto my back, hands still cuffed. She climbed on top, lowering herself onto me. It was a different rhythm than I was used to: slow, relentless, almost mechanical in its control. She fucked me like she was taking a pulse, counting down seconds.

Her hand went to my throat, the other bracing on my chest. When she came, she let out a long, low sound, almost a growl, and slammed her open palm across my face, once, then again, then twice more, each one timed with her pulse.

She slid off me, breath ragged, and then—eyes locked to mine—she pissed, a hot stream across my cock and balls, the wet pooling under my hips and running down my thighs. She watched my face the whole time, daring me to flinch.

I didn’t.

When she was done, she released my hands, wiped her mouth, and lay back on the mattress with her arms folded behind her head, perfectly still.

For a full minute, we didn’t speak. The only sound was the fan in the bathroom and the drip of liquid off the edge of the bed.

Finally, she said, “You bleed easy, Detective.”

I touched my lip. The skin was split and still bleeding.

“You hit harder than most perps,” I said.

She rolled onto her side, propped her head on her hand, and smiled in that way that didn’t reach her eyes. “Guess you’ll have to come back and try again.”

We cleaned up together, her first, then me. She tossed me a damp towel, and I wiped down the sticky spots, careful not to look too long at the bruises already forming on my wrists.

She watched me the whole time, silent. When I finished, she took the towel, rinsed it in the sink, and hung it over the shower rod like it was just another night in a place that had seen a hundred worse ones.

I stood in the doorway, not sure what to do with my hands.

She turned to face me, chin up. “What now?”