Page 90 of Vicious Hearts

"Please," I say, pouting. "Please let me come."

"You're so sweet," he sighs, pushing back inside me, "yetsoneedy. Just as well I want to give you my cock as much as you want to take it."

I'm not listening. I'm rubbing my clit, chasing the orgasm that is so, so close. Ben's breathing comes in harsh gasps as he speeds up, pounding my little hole.

"I'm gonna fill your ass with my come," he says. He slaps me again and again. "You pretty little ass slut. It's all for you. Every fucking drop."

He grabs my legs and slams into me, tipping me over the edge. My asshole twitches around him as he empties his load into me, my pussy spasming as it gushes fluid over his cock. A wave of ecstasy surges through my body, almost painfully sharp as my fingers still move on my clit.

For a minute, neither of us can move. His hot breath mingles with mine as he slumps over me, and I wrap my arms around his back.

Ben rolls off me and pulls the duvet over us. I snuggle into his warm chest.

He debased me. It made me feel dirty.

I never felt more cherished in my life.

"You really are a sorceress," he whispers. "I'm blessed to love you."

33

One month later…

Ben

"Did you read it all?" Landon asks. "I couldn't get through it."

There are few people at the precinct today. Most officers are on crowd-control duty at the courthouse.

Oliver Buckley's trial was surprisingly brief. He didn't try to defend himself or deny liability for The Dollmaker killings or for anything else he did. He was so excited to tell the world about his genius that he couldn't stop once he started.

The newspapers fell over one another to offer him deals, trying to get the rights to serialize the memoirs he began writing while awaiting his day in court. They really want the scrapbook police found in the Farraday's basement. The one I'm holding now.

"I read every word of it," I say, putting the book on the desk. "I kinda felt I had to. While I was keen to understand why Buckley did those things, I wasn't gonna give him the satisfaction of asking. The bastard wants people's interest. I hate that he's getting it."

"Wait and see," Landon says. "Your girlfriend got through her cross-examination like a champ, and so did you. She told me the judge has allowed her to give a personal statement before the sentencing, and I'd say she more than deserves that opportunity."

I frown. "She never mentioned that part. I was supposed to meet her afterward, but she said she'd be in the public gallery."

He shrugs and taps the scrapbook's cover. "So, what did you take from all this?"

"It shows what loneliness can do to the mind," I say. "The young Oliver was shuttled between different foster parents. He was never with them for long enough to feel a connection, and he hated the kids in those families."

That's putting it mildly. There are whole passages in the scrapbook about him bullying the biological children of his foster parents, beating and molesting them. He was moved on quicklybecauseof this behavior, but that never occurred to him.

"Look here." I flick to a page filled with newspaper clippings. "He found his biological mother. The information on her is sparse, but when he was twenty, he discovered the identity of his father. Buckley felt this was the sign he'd been looking for—that he was destined to be an important figure."

"He doesn't say what happened when he and Adrian Coffey first made contact," Landon says.

"No, but whatisclear is that although they kept the connection a secret, the senator didn't push his son away. He must have recognized some of his own deviance in the kid. Narcissists think of their children as extensions of themselves, and Adrian Coffey was keen to bring his son into his perverted world. But he didn't know what he'd unleashed."

I flip to a double-page spread written in whatappearsto be red ink. A blotch of crimson was in the top right corner, which was snipped off for forensics to check. They confirmed it was human blood, probably from Buckley's first victim.

"It says here that Senator Coffey left a child alone in a room with Oliver, telling him to do whatever he liked. I'm not gonna read the next bit aloud–"

"Yeah, I had to skip that too," Landon interjects.

"I don't blame you," I tap the page, "but here's the part where Oliverkillsthe kid. He and Adrian argue, but then a deal is struck, and a decade-long symbiotic relationship begins. The senator's victims are silenced, and Oliver gets to scratch his murderous itch. In the meantime, Oliver becomes a philanthropist, and Adrian Coffey marries Moira. The poor woman had no idea what she was getting into—the man was twenty years her senior, with a son not much younger than her."

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