Page 36 of Antihero
“But I only accept ‘true’ or ‘false’,” he coos, like I knew he would.
I can only brace myself as his breath sweeps over my chest, tongue finding the sensitive and primed peak of my nipple. My fingers curl against his bare chest, nails biting, but he doesn’t care, taking his time to graze his teeth over me as my breath pants out. Then he sucks, drawing me into and then out of his mouth slowly, making the sensation somehow more and more intense as heat floods between my legs. He does it again, and I whimper, arching involuntarily towards his mouth, my bodyand breath trembling as he flicks his tongue. Right when I think he’s going to end the exquisite torture, his mouth closes over me a third time, slow and languorous. My head tips back, my sex throbbing. If he so much as brushes me with his thigh now, I might combust.
Then, mercifully, when I’m wondering if I could come from just that after all, he stops.
“Take it off,” he growls, “Now.”
I do as he says, wriggling out of the tight one-piece, my skin embracing the freedom of the water, the new heat it seems to hold. He’s close again, and I realise he’s already naked, thanks to the way his erection pokes me hard in the stomach, then the thigh, as his hands on my hips float me higher, bringing my chest level with his mouth. “No more lies, sweet,” he murmurs against my throat.
Part of me wants to bite back that he’s changing the rules as he likes, anyway. Yet another, cowed but horny part, wants to preserve what’s left of my self-control. Then he lifts me, high enough that my butt comes up over the lower edge, sitting me in the two inches of water over the shelf. The air is cool, but I’m so heated from within that it doesn’t affect me. He pulls my legs wide, knees brushing the sides of his shoulders, and I lean back as his lips graze my navel. “You don’t want me.”
“True,” I say, clearly lying.
He bites below my breast, sucking briefly before saying, “I’m going to taste you.”
My breath hitches. “False.”
His tongue sweeps beside my bellybutton, sucking, bruising. My head tips back.
“What’s your favourite colour?”
If I wasn’t so distracted, so close to falling apart already, I’d laugh. His mouth is already moving lower, hands sliding my knees onto his shoulders. “Green,” I say, leaning back onto myelbows, not caring about the cold shock of the tiles as his warm bite finds my upper thigh.
“What kind of green?” his voice muffles, then his mouth is on me. He finds where I’m the most sensitive and sucks, causing a cry to catch in my throat and my hips to buck up to meet him.
I lie back completely as he softens the pressure, turning it into only pleasure. I hand myself over to him, seeing only the stars and dark clouds roiling above. “Green,” I gasp, “Green like… your eyes.” I know it's corny, and I don’t know if it’s even true. But right now, as I look into the colourlessness of the night, feeling only his mouth, this heat, it’s the only green thing I can picture.
I give in utterly, give him everything. Before long, I’m trembling, breathing his name, coming apart.
When the stars are coming back into focus, Tristan pulls me back towards him, sliding my hips off the shelf and into the water. As the warmth heats my skin, I realise how chilled the air really was, something I was numb to before. My legs open around his torso as he slides me between him and the pool wall, hands on my waist, across my back. He stills as his palm finds my lower back, across my spine, and the waterproof bandage there. I can sense him frowning in the dark, his touch feathering lightly over the bandage. “What happened—” he starts to ask.
But I reach out, finding his soft lips with my fingers, stopping him. “Please. Not now. I only need this right now.”
For a moment he says and does nothing, and I wonder if I’ve lost his desire in this moment. Trading it for curiosity mingled with concern instead. I don’t want to leave this moment for that one, earlier today in the examination room, the pain even through the numbing shot.
But then he does as I ask. Tristan pulls me all the way into the water, belly to mine, hips flush. His erection is a hard rodbetween us, throbbing slightly at my body’s pressure on it. My hand falls away from his chin, mouth finding his lips instead.
Then he’s buried inside me, and neither of us has any more questions, any more words.
***
Needler
When I emailed this Marion woman, I don’t expect her to actually answer, much less agree to meet me. Then once the spot is chosen, a private booth at a café in Feston, I don’t expect her to show up.
Marion Lester. Harry’s wife. The one who was, for whatever reason, out of town when Paige was at their house gearing up to murder her husband. As the only definite and living victim of the Wraith so far, I figure my best bet at finding Paige’s motivations, and therefore her future victims, is through him.
I spot Marion as soon as she steps into the café, and watch her as she’s directed to the booth I’m waiting in. She’s a classically good-looking, late middle-aged woman, with big gold earrings underneath soft-looking silver hair.
Sliding in across from me, her sharp eyes fix on my notebook, where she thinks I’ll be taking notes on what I asked her here for— Harry’s criminal charges. Hence, I’m surprised she showed up. All of the charges against him were dropped, leading to no convictions or criminal record against him. Each and every one of the claims came from young women who’d crossed his path at one time or another. I found the court records and the report onit in the Tregam press. All brushed away due to Harry’s status as a member of high society, not to mention being on a number of councils, including the White Rock Island council twenty to fifteen years ago, while he was lead surgeon at Eternal Light.
I shake her hand, and she settles into her seat, outwardly relaxed, though I catch the way her eyes dart around, checking who's watching.
“You’ve been in contact with the alleged victims?” she asks, getting right to the point.
“Yes.” It's true, I emailed a couple of them. The reports seem to share too many commonalities between victims to be coincidence, to have been ideas each woman came up with out of sheer imagination.
“You believe them?”
