Page 44 of Pure Killers

Hips stilling, his mouth trails up the side of my throat. “Can’t what?”

“Be quiet,” I confess in a rush.

He chuckles. “Alright.”

"Fuck, fuck," I breathe, back arching, hips tilting, pulling him deeper. Then he's filled me, and that sensation of him flush against me, his cock deep, is all-consuming.

"You're a noisy one, huh?" he murmurs, and I feel as much as hear his grin against my ear before his hand creeps over my mouth, muffling my panting moans as he starts to grind against me. "That's okay."

In my absence of thought, in losing myself to the long-denied sensations, I forget myself, and my fingers reach for his face. I barely brush his cheek, rough with stubble, before he snatches my hand away, then my other, and pins them up above my head. "Don't break our rules now," he grates, pressing faster, rougher, for one thrust.

He lets go of my hands, his fingers gripping over my mouth and sliding down to my throat. I can’t touch him, and I don’t try again, but somehow that only elevates my need, a burn deep inside me that grows hotter each time he slides in deep. My legs wrap around his hips in response, moving with him, squeezing in time to his thrusts to feel them more, my head falling back against the pillow.

"God, don't stop that," I gasp.

His laugh cuts short, hand tightening incrementally against the sides of my throat. “Oh, I won’t.” I curse a hiss through my teeth, feeling the anticipation of climax build up into my chest. Feeling it too, he growls in my ear, “I need to feel you come around me. You're already squeezing me so well. Don't you stop," he adds the last as I falter, drawing back from the precipice, and pulls me right back in.

Then everything is here, gripping me and I grip him, absorbing his soft curse as my world falls away and all I know for those moments is this thing in the darkness. My moan of pleasure and relief is muffled through his mouth as he swallows my cry.

As sense comes back, the pleasure still at a high, I'm able to wonder how I went so long without this, and then, as thesensation turns intense, almost too much, I gasp through his rough peak, and an earlier thought returns.

I'm definitely going to hell.

But if any place is almost there already, it’s Tregam.

***

In the light of day, the night seeming far away; I step out into my living room to see Olivia dragging a suitcase out of her room, a large sunhat shading her face from the fluorescent light.

I press my palm to the side of my head, squinting. I feel hungover even though I didn't touch a drop. "Going somewhere?"

Olivia looks up, balanced on canvas wedges, her skinny white legs sticking out of the bottom of a yellow sundress. She seems so incongruous, so out of place in this grey and dreary world, that I can only stare, trying to coax myself to wakefulness. "Yeah, I'm going away with Shane, remember?"

I stare at her while she beams back at me, oblivious to the fact that she is the only thing standing between me and regular visits from a serial killer. Shaking my head once, I say, "Oh yeah, right." I clear my throat since my voice has faded to nothing. "Yeah… how long, again?"

"Little over two weeks," she tells me brightly.

Swaying a little, I clear my throat again. "That'll be lovely."

"Give you the run of the place for a bit!" she winks. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"

Blinking, I suddenly have to wonder if I already have.

***

Today is a Cocooner case day, thank goodness. I don't think I could have handled sitting there watching Chloe present aslideshow on Needler. The merge of that with thoughts of last night, how good everything had felt when it really shouldn’t have. I should probably lay a trap for him. That would be the smart thing to do.

Even as it is, I have trouble focusing. Any thought toward my husband turns my stomach. But Needler didn't… I mean, he might not be the one to have killed him. There’s got to be another explanation.

"El? You with us?"

I jolt back to the present, away from the feel of his breath under my ear, the burning release… Dirk has raised an eyebrow at me. "Not sleeping well still?" he asks.

I shake my head. Chloe is waiting on a slide, face bright and ready. Dean and Howie, over at the other desk facing the projector wall, look almost as drained as I feel, sparing a grimace at the slide. It’s not the most gruesome one, but the thoughts it leads to… It’s a flow chart of how we think Cocooner kills their victims. Knocking out, tying up, slow plastering, wrapping in bandages, plastering over them again to make a smooth shell from the feet up. Arms down, if it’s the cocoon style, splayed wide if it’s a later stage. The face, then nose and mouth, are always last. The suffocation, drowning in plaster, still going on while they're strung up.

I look away. God, what kind of place is this? To birth someone who could do that.

"You're looking pale, El. We've seen all this before."

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