“The female victim was found by a dog walker at nine this evening.”
Nine, that was just before Erin left the office. She felt sick with fear. Her horny thoughts were gone, replaced by cold, terrified ones.
Had she left the office earlier, the latest victim could have been her. It could be her body being pored over by forensic detectives, her face looking forlorn out from televisions as a cautionary tale for all young women who dare to walk alone at night.
“The attack was believed to have occurred in West Town.” The broadcaster explained.
West Town. The location hung in Erin’s mind, adding to her nausea.
“That’s right by our offices,” she said aloud, her voice small and fearful. Sean looked at her, the flirtatious look in his eyes replaced by a more stoic one.
“You were out there in the bushes, did you see anything?” Erin asked him as she waited at a traffic light. They were approaching Central; soon he would be home, back in his own apartment, and Erin would be alone.
The thought of going back to her small house on the outskirts of town under the cover of darkness suddenly terrified her. The killer was clearly still at large and could be lurking anywhere, searching for their next victim. She imagined waking in the night hearing a strange sound, going to investigate it and breathing her final breath as the killer attacked her, having been lying in wait.
“I didn’t see anything,” Sean replied, his face unreadable. “I was out of it until you showed up.”
“I can’t believe there’s been another murder,” Erin shook her head in disbelief. “Those poor girls.”
But it wasn’t the girls she cared about, it was herself. Until the killer was discovered, she was in danger. The victims were always women, out alone. Living alone, Erin was often by herself. She’d long left her home town and its small sensibilities behind in the hope of making a new, exciting life for herself.
Yet since the murders began, she yearned for her old home, for the small town where she knew everyone by name. She missed the familiarity of the streets; the way you could leave your door unlocked and not worry about someone stealing from you. Life in the city was so different; strangers were always regarded with suspicion. Erin no longer felt safe in the life she’d made there. A part of her knew it was only a matter of time before the killer came for her, in a strange way she’d known ever since the story of the first murder broke. It was only a matter of time until Erin’s name became embroiled with it all.
Above her, the light finally turned to green and she stepped on the gas.
Sean ran a hand across his face and watched Erin out of the corner of his eye. As she drove down Central, she noticed that he was beginning to fidget more in his seat, as though unable to keep still.
Spots of perspiration appeared on his forehead as he kept squirming within his seat. He looked as though he were battling some invisible opponent. Feeling unnerved, Erin tried to focus; they were nearly at his apartment.
The radio announcement about the latest murder had concluded and been replaced by some more rock music. Erin tried to listen to the melody, to let the pattern of it distance her from her thoughts but it didn’t work.
Beside her, Sean placed his hands upon the dashboard and began to drum along furiously to the song, smacking his palms on the plastic in time to the beat. It was frightening to watch. Suddenly, he had boundless energy and was struggling to reign it all in.
“Sean, are you okay?” Erin asked nervously, suspecting that he was on drugs and that this was all a bi-product of being high. She was angry at herself for not realizing that he was intoxicated sooner. She should have seen the signs; he’d awoken in a bush with no recollection of how he got there. Blatantly, Sean was doing drugs.
Erin frowned in annoyance. She’d been so attracted to him, so desperate for him to be perfect yet he had turned out to be just another shining example of how she always picked the wrong guy.
“Sean?” she said his name again when he didn’t answer. This time he heard her and ceased banging on the dashboard. Turning his head slowly, he looked at her and there was a hunger within his eyes. He scanned Erin up and down with a longing that both terrified and tantalized her.
Parting his lips slightly Sean showed his teeth and for a surreal moment, Erin thought he might growl at her. Not that she’d be adverse to that, she enjoyed a good bit of role play under the right circumstances.
But he was on drugs, nothing else. Erin shook her head, not allowing herself to be taken in by his handsome looks and dangerous nature.
“You always like the bad boys,” Erin’s mother had stated sadly when Erin was a teenager, having been caught sneaking back in to the house yet again after taking a ride home on the back of a boy’s motorcycle.
“They’re not bad, Mom, they’re misunderstood,” Erin would protest, pouting beneath her black lipstick and glaring out at her mother from behind too much eyeliner.
“No, they’re just bad,” her mother would sigh with dismay. “And they’re going to drag you down with them, just you wait and see.”
The teenage Erin would ignore her mother’s warnings, shut her bedroom door and drown out any negative thoughts with music from The Smiths and The Cure. Looking back, Erin knew the boys she hung around with were bad news. Most of them had police records and did drugs of some kind, but she didn’t care. She was drawn to them because they were dangerous. Her life was so safe, so settled; they offered her an escape from that.
Even now, while driving Sean home, Erin was unable to escape her teenage preference for boys of a bad nature. She knew she should just drop him somewhere and leave his drug-addled mind to fend for itself, but she couldn’t do that. Her eyes kept drifting to his crotch as she drove and she knew that her attraction to him was blinding her from making the safe, logical choice.
“Sean, are you high?” Erin demanded when he still failed to respond to her and instead just looked over at her with deep, intense eyes.
“No,” he told her, his voice sounding almost like a purr. He continued to watch her with intense interest.
“Then what’s wrong?” Erin asked. “You’re all over the place. It’s…distracting.”
Sean smiled wickedly at the comment, enjoying her discomfort.
“Are we even close to your place? You haven’t given me any directions!” Erin stated desperately, aware that she’d been driving through central for a number of minutes without exactly knowing where she was going. Luckily the streets were deserted enough to enable her to idly drive around.
“I think we should go to your place,” Sean stated and Erin felt her entire body start to tingle with anticipation.
Why did he suddenly want to go to her place? Did he want them to have sex? Did he feel the same magnetic attraction between them as she did?
The dream lingered deliciously at the front of her mind with renewed intensity, suddenly it might become real. Erin felt her breath grow short and struggled to maintain control of the wheel as she turned the car around and headed back in the direction of her own small house on the outskirts of town.
“Back to mine, but why?” she asked, realizing she should have delivered the question before turning the car around. She seemed too keen.
“The story on the radio,” Sean gestured to the stereo system in her car. “It made me worried about you. I don’t want you going back to an empty house at this late hour, at least let me check it out before you go in.”
Erin smiled at the sweet, selfless sentiment of what he’d proposed. It had been a long time since she’d had a guy look out for her. The problem with bad boys is while they might be sexy and alluring, they weren’t there for you when you needed them.
***
As she grew up, Erin had watched her school friends settle down, get married, and have children. Each time she met up with them, they asked her that same inevitable question;
“When are you settling down?”
The question drove Erin crazy. She didn’t want what they had; the perfe
ct home with the white picket fence, a life full of diapers and school runs. She wanted adventure, a life without limits.
But Erin didn’t have that. Instead, she had a job in an office which drove her crazy and a small house where she lived alone.
One by one, Erin lost contact with her old, settled friends. They didn’t understand her, couldn’t see that she was waiting for something. She didn’t want the life she was leading to be all that there was. She still needed that element of danger, of excitement that only her bad boys could give her.
It was when the nightmares started that Erin really started to question her choices. Each night, when she woke doused in her own sweat, terrified within the darkness of her small bedroom it chilled her to find her bed empty. She’d have given anything in those moments to awaken to a familiar, reassuring face that was looking out for her. When terror gripped her on those nights, Erin regretted holding out for excitement and a part of her wished she’d just settled, as at least then she’d be safe.
But she hadn’t settled; she kept chasing that elusive something that even she couldn’t describe. Yet when the murders started, she felt a strange sense that she would somehow be connected to them all. That the thing she’d spent her whole life chasing and waiting for was suddenly imminent.
“You need to find yourself a nice boy and settle down,” her mother would state, her voice pleading as Erin sat on the sofa, drinking tea from a cup and saucer.
“But I want a different life,” Erin would explain, aware how terribly vague and without purpose that sounded.
“I just don’t want you to waste your life waiting for something that may never come,” her mother would sigh, staring sadly into her own cup.
Erin hated to see her mother sad, which was why she ceased visiting as often as she once did as her presence only seemed to bring the old woman grief.
Once, her mother was taken ill by a cold which developed swiftly in to a viscous fever. Erin had rushed to the hospital to be by her mother’s side but when she arrived, the old woman was delirious from the medication and didn’t want to see Erin.
As she approached the hospital bed, smiling and bearing flowers, Erin’s mother began to lash out, yelling at her daughter to get away from her.
“Mom, it’s me,” Erin said, dejected, pausing at the foot of the bed.
“You cannot be here!” her mother hissed.
“Mom!”
“You bring the darkness with you, Erin, you always have! I tried to get you to fight it, but you never could, you let it in! You must leave, you cannot bring it here!”
Distraught, Erin had turned and fled, consoling herself with the fact that her mother was on medication and didn’t know what she was saying. Then the murders started and with them came the nightmares and soon Erin found herself wondering if there was any truth to her mother’s laments. Had she let darkness in to her life? Would that darkness now define her?
***
Erin turned in to a small side street and drove down the familiar road to her house.
“Is this where you live?” Sean asked, glancing out at the neat, tidy lawns and small, smart houses.
“Yeah.”
“It’s nice,” he stated kindly, turning to look at her. The agitated angst no longer danced in the back of his eyes. He now appeared calm and composed. Erin assumed that his drug-induced trip had merely concluded, much to her relief. She’d witnessed firsthand what happened to people who overdose; it was an occupational hazard of being a bad boy addict. Erin didn’t want that to happen to Sean. Even though she barely knew him, she felt drawn to him.
Pulling in to her small driveway she stopped the car and turned off the key in the ignition. For a moment they sat in the car, in the dark stillness of the night. Erin could hear the steady rhythm of Sean’s breath, it was a comforting sound.
Sean turned and faced her within the car, bringing his body closer to hers and causing her skin to prickle with excitement.
“Do you want me to go in and check that everywhere is safe?” he asked her, his voice delicate yet intense. He gazed deep in to her eyes, finding his way down to her soul making her feel completely vulnerable and naked before him.
“Um, yes, yes please,” Erin fumbled nervously in her purse for her house keys. She got out of the car and was thankful for the cool evening air which blasted her and helped clarify her thoughts, blowing away the cobwebs of thoughts of the past which clung to her mind.
She watched Sean get out of the car and saunter over. He looked so amazingly handsome in his trousers and shirt. He stood at least a foot taller than Erin. She looked up at him and smiled nervously. They were now standing dangerously close to her home, to her bed. To the bed where she’d fantasied about his ravaging her, to the shower where she had climaxed as she touched herself and thought about him.
Placing the key in the lock, Erin turned it and opened her front door, wondering how she was going to cope with Sean on her own. She could feel her body already pulsating with desire as he stood so irresistibly close to her. What would he do if she just threw herself at him? Is that perhaps what he wanted and the checking over the house suggestion was just a rouse? She hoped so.
“Come in,” she entered the hallway, flicking on the light. Sean followed her in, shutting the door behind him.
Erin stared at him, feeling her heart start to race. She’d invited Sean and his mysterious darkness into her home and all she could think about was tearing his clothes off. Perhaps her mother had been right about her all along.
***
“Nice house,” Sean commented as he glanced around, peering in to the small living room, the furniture hidden from him, shrouded in darkness.
“Want me to check the rooms for you?”
The question surprised Erin. She had been hoping that checking the house had merely been a pretense to come over. She smiled, trying to hide her disappointment.
“Yeah, sure.”
Sean nodded, flicked on the light switch in the living room, and began checking behind the sofa and the curtains. As Erin watched him, her eyes were drawn to his tight, firm butt which was perfectly hugged by the line of his trousers.
Sensing her eyes upon him, Sean straightened and turned back to her, smiling.
“Are you watching me?” he asked as he took a confident step toward her.
“What…um…no,” Erin fumbled her response, feeling nervous. Sean looked her up and down, suddenly seeming ravenous. She felt unsteady beneath his hungry gaze and leaned against the open doorframe for support.
“You sure you weren’t looking at me?” he asked again, drawing closer to her. Erin tried to calm her nerves but the way he was looking at her made her heart dance a manic medley within her chest. It was as if he was undressing her with his eyes and she liked how it felt.
Standing only inches in front of her, Sean paused, holding her steady in his unblinking gaze. Erin wanted to do the right, proper thing. She wanted to tell him that no, she wasn’t looking at him and could he please continue his search of her house. Then when he had concluded, she would thank him, call him a cab, and then bid him farewell. That’s what her mother would want her to do, what the rational side of her wanted to do.
But when she looked into Sean’s eyes, any logic or rationale was immediately cast to the wind, left to float away, no longer needed. She saw the hunger burning beneath his eyes, the same yearning echoed in her own. She wanted him, she needed him, and she had to have him, no matter what.
They both stepped forward and Sean pulled Erin in to his arms. He leaned down and kissed her hard on the lips. Erin opened her mouth and he slid his tongue in and began massaging hers. The kiss was hot, intense, and passionate.
As they kissed, Sean’s hands skillfully slid down her body and began unbuttoning her blouse. Hot with desire, Erin followed suit, reaching forward and unbuttoning his trousers.
Blouse undone, Sean pulled it from her and cast it aside. He then whipped off her bra in a move he had clearly done many times befor
e. He gave her now exposed breasts an appreciative glance which turned Erin on, making her grow moist and desperate for him. He cupped her left breast with his strong, rough hand and then gently licked the nipple. Erin groaned with pleasure and pulled down his trousers.
Sean stepped out of his trousers, threw off his own shirt and was now only wearing his designer briefs. Erin looked hungrily at the bulge within them, delighted to see that he was just as excited by their union as she was.
He looked as good out of his clothes as Erin had imagined he would, if not better. He had a strong, muscular chest and strong, sexy arms. Watching him, a mischievous smile played on her lips as she unbuttoned her skirt and seductively stepped out of it.
Smiling at the gesture, Sean took off his briefs, revealing his giant throbbing penis. Erin glanced down at it and tried to hide her shock at its enormous girth. As she took him all in, he approached her and pushed her back on to the staircase of her small house. He started kissing her, feeling his way around her mouth with his tongue. Then he moved to kissing her neck, traveling down to her breasts, taking time to gently suck and tease each nipple as beneath him, Erin writhed and groaned in pleasure, fearing she might come before he was even in her.
Sean continued to kiss her body, planting his lips down her chest and along her stomach until he reached the obstacle of her panties. Deftly, he reached up with his strong hands and slid them off, throwing them behind him where they landed softly on the floor. As he kissed her hips and inner thighs, he used his hands to touch her, to gently finger her clitoris. He felt how wet she was and groaned with desire.
On her back on the stairs, Erin was panting, certain she was about to climax. Sean knew just where to touch her, the right spots to apply pressure. He was an experienced lover and she was reaping the rewards of all his practice.
Then, Sean ceased fingering her clitoris and instead kissed her directly on it. Erin gasped aloud at the sudden sensation, which felt unbelievably good. No one had ever made her entire body tingle the way Sean was.
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