by W. Winters
“A touch for a touch?” he asks, giving away his position which is only inches from me.
“Yes.” The single word falls from my lips both light and heavy, with an eagerness and yet with apprehension.
His heat wraps around me as he leans in closer, the rough pad of his thumb tracing the curve of my breast and then the other. I whimper, my thighs tightening and my needs climbing higher.
“I have to warn you, Delilah,” he whispers and the roughness of his stubble scrapes against the curve of my neck. It’s then I can feel his bare skin against mine, my forearm pressed against his chest. Sweeping my hair to the side and exposing my back, he nips my neck and presses his hand against my upper back.
My head lowers in a bow, my ass still raised. “I’m going to take my time with you,” he says and with the dizziness of a lust-filled cocktail flooding my veins I moan in response. My cheek brushes against his thigh. I’m not naïve. He’s naked on the bed and his cock is near. I part my lips, willing and ready and lift my hips to accept him, but his hand bears down firmly against my shoulder blades, pushing me against the sheets.
The sound of him stroking himself is followed by the head of his cock being pressed against my lips.
“Lick it clean,” he commands and my tongue darts out to taste the salty bit of precum that’s waiting for me.
He strokes his cock again, his knuckles brushing against my skin.
“I’ll have every bit of you,” he says but it’s almost as if it’s a promise to himself. I take his words for what they are, a hell-bent eagerness for this man to consume me.
“Yes,” I say and breathe out, feeling everything slip away. My sanity included.
It’s not until he places his lips at the shell of my ear to tell me, “But you didn’t beg,” that I think it won’t happen. He won’t thrust himself inside of me and take what he wants.
I open my eyes only to stare at my own grip on the edge of the bed. The sound of his footsteps rounding the mattress is barely heard over my pounding heart.
“I told you that you’d beg for me, that you’d feel deprived without me inside of you,” he says and my response is right there, so close and so wanting to be heard, but I can’t speak.
“It’ll be fun to play with you, though.”
He keeps his promise, taking his time until I’m wrung out and begging. Even then … he still doesn’t take me.
According to him, I didn’t beg fast enough, and I don’t crave him enough. Yet.
Even when I whimper that I need him, it’s not enough.
Delilah
The ache between my thighs is unrelenting. Even in the hard chair of the interrogation room, I can barely sit without feeling him. His fingers played with me, toying and testing. Leaving me satisfied, aching, but wanting more.
My cheeks are stained with a heat that would reveal a harlot to anyone who dared to pry. The sarcastic huff notes the ridiculousness of my thoughts. Given that I’m sitting across from a man who’s attempting to pin a murder on me, my focus needs to be anywhere but on Marcus.
“My mother?” I ask Detective Skov. His dark brown eyes are just slightly lighter than his thick hair. It’s grown out an inch at the top and not at all tamed. Along with his overgrown stubble, on the cusp of being a beard, the man looks like he doesn’t give a damn about rules and regulations. I’ve given him my explanation more than a handful of times now. Each time he asks nearly the same questions.
What time was that? Did you hear anyone? Did you see anything else? Can you describe … on and on. I know the tricks of the trade. He’s looking for any chance to cast doubt on what I’ve said. To see if I’m lying.
“She’s not coherent,” he says and I exhale in frustration. I begged her this morning, telling her if she wanted to say something, to just cry instead. It’s better for her to appear unstable than to give them an alternative version of the story.
It’s not lost on me that if she slips up, if she goes weak, I’m fucked.
They’ll know I lied and charges will be pressed; I’ll be disbarred. It’ll be the end for me.
“She wasn’t coherent when I found her either,” I tell Skov again. Two hours in and I’m only repeating myself now.
I can take it all day long. I don’t know that the same can be said about my mother, though.
Glimpses of her disheveled state flicker in front of me and I pick under my nails rather than look back at the man I’m certain doesn’t believe me. He knew my father and by association, my mother and me and my sister. Only by name, though.
“Is this a normal reaction for her?” he asks and I glare up at him.
“A normal reaction to finding her husband dead? My father,” I say but my voice breaks and I force my eyes closed. “I’m sorry,” I whisper and with both elbows on the table I hang my head in my hands. “I just … I’m sorry,” I say, apologizing again.
“For what?” he asks and if I wasn’t truly destroyed from everything that’s happened, I would smile at his idiocy. My story is ironclad. It’s all up to my mother.
“For my shortness,” I tell him and take in a steadying breath. “I’m usually more … Talkative and approachable and … I’m usually better.” My voice cracks again as I speak and I shake my head. “I just don’t understand or believe it. He can’t be dead.”
Believe your lies and everyone else will too. I’ll never forget that phrase from Criminal Investigations 450 written on the chalkboard in a room full of expectant, soon-to-be lawyers. So long as they passed the bar.
“I should have …” I let the statement trail off and close my eyes. My mind drifts, wandering back to the front door of the home I grew up in. My throat’s tight as I remember opening it, the creak and the ominous silence that greeted me.
“It was supposed to be a girls’ night,” I say and my words are etched in agony as I stare up at the detective and let the pain of it all be revealed in the statement. “That’s what we should be doing right now. We should be out having fun while my father attends a conference.”
“As far as you know, there isn’t anyone who would want your father dead.”
Just as I’m about to respond by bringing up his cases from years ago or disgruntled former business partners, the door opens and Skov’s partner, Gallinger, comes in. The two are complete opposites. The clean-shaven, pristine cop is at complete odds with Skov’s disheveled state.
Even his polite smile and nod, plus the way he whispers to Skov, appear to be in direct conflict with the man’s appearance.
“How are you, Delilah?” Gallinger asks me, pulling out a chair and sitting across from me.
“It feels like everything is coming apart,” I say, making the admission because it does. And it adds to the testimony.
“You have to know how this looks,” Gallinger says while gesturing with his hand, sympathy in his gaze. Skov turns, still standing and paces behind him.
“I do. Trust me, I do,” I tell him and my heart beats harder, wondering what change brought him in. Did my mother say anything? Please, God, please, I will do anything.
“We found a note at the crime scene, did my partner tell you that?”
A flicker of hope lights with me like the small flame of an ancient furnace. “He didn’t, no.”
I was beginning to think Marcus never left it. Or it simply wasn’t found.
The small slip of paper flitters across the table and I make great effort to only touch the plastic edges of the evidence bag it resides inside.
Bad men die.
I don’t have the ability to read past the first line. My breath is stolen from me as my blood runs cold.
It’s Marcus’s handwriting.
He didn’t try to hide it. He’s pinning it on himself.
“We’re running forensics,” Gallinger starts to say but my head spins and a ringing in my ears drowns out his voice.
I can’t breathe. I can’t focus as the man speaks. Leaning forward slightly, I manage to control my breaths. In and out, in and out.<
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“Are you—”
I cut off his question, but I can’t complete the statement as I say, “I recognize …”
My throat is tight. With my eyes closed, all I can see are the glimpses of last night.
“Recognize what?”
He had to have known I would recognize it from the cases. Analysis will point them there. To my cases. The unsolved ones that the fucking reporter brought up only a month ago.
“I got my father killed,” I blurt out and I don’t know why it sounds so truthful to my ears.
My hands shake at the thought of this all leading to me. Shoving them in my lap, I try to decipher Marcus’s intent. Why lead them to himself? To cases I’ve worked on? Other than to keep me as a suspect or involved in some way.
“This is bad. I need …”
I can’t think straight as my head swarms with the onslaught of coincidence.
I come into town.
The handwriting of the note matches my cold cases.
I kept my mother from coming in, who now isn’t speaking.
The heat that runs along my skin is fire, but still I feel cold as ice.
“You can tell me whatever it is you need,” Gallinger presses and I don’t fail to notice that Skov has stopped pacing, watching me intently.
“I need Cody Walsh,” I tell him and focus once again on breathing in and out. My palms press against the metal table just to feel something in this moment. “When you run forensics, you’ll find they match cold cases. They’re our cases from years ago. We suspected a serial killer named Marcus.”
“You think he killed your father?”
“Or he’s framing me.” I whisper the fear at the same time a realization comes over me.
“According to the mortician, he was dead hours before you arrived,” Skov says, piping up. “Gallinger filled me in a moment ago. If someone’s trying to frame you—”
Gallinger cuts off Skov, saying, “Which is why it doesn’t make sense that the killer waited hours after the murder before fleeing the scene when your mother says she found your father.” He’s quick to find a hole in the story.
I’m silent, processing the evidence they have.
The logical side of my brain pieces together my own defense first. Footage from the gas station, the toll pass stations on the highway … there’s enough to keep me away from the time of death.
A sense of calm comes over me, but only for a moment.
“My mother isn’t a killer. This signature—” I start to say, but stop myself. The expectant gazes of two men searching for more stare back at me.
All I have to do is be quiet. There isn’t enough evidence to convict my mother or me but there’s also evidence to the contrary. Evidence that points to a killer.
But there’s one little statement I want to deliberately let slip. “You think he was going to kill my mother too? He was waiting for her and then I arrived? Or was he going to kill me?”
I’ve never been the best actress. I can put on a show for a courtroom, but tears? Real tears? Those are hard to come by under normal circumstances, let alone this.
“If he took off when you showed up …”
In this moment, though, it’s easy to cry, mourning for my father and also shedding tears of relief for my mother. “I saved her from being killed?” I let the question fall in between us, my voice full of hope as I stare wide eyed across the table at the man who knows damn well I didn’t do it. I’d bet my last dollar he’s eager to get a taste of the cold cases instead of pinning my father’s murder on a woman he’s known for years.
With a tap on the steel table, the one detective leaves and then the other follows.
They make me wait for at least forty minutes; the only noise to keep me company is the click of the heater turning on and then back off.
All the while I pray my mother doesn’t say anything. Not a word.
She promised. I told her this morning, it was all she needed to do to keep us safe.
With the fears of the unknown by my side, I startle when the metal door opens again. Raking his hand through his unruly hair, Skov tells me I can go. And that he’s sorry for my loss.
It dawns on me that he’s said it more than three times now and I wonder how close he was with my father. Not enough to ask, though. Not enough to create more dialogue than needed.
“My mother?” I ask him. “Is she okay?” The thudding in my chest is heavy and refuses to go unnoticed. I only hope I can silence it.
“She needs help,” he says and his thick brow furrows.
“Is my sister here? She’s waiting for her? I’m sure you know she’s a—”
“Yes, we’re aware and your sister is on her way.” Skov’s lips part to say something else, his hands on his hips and I can imagine the accusations. That I shouldn’t have kept my mother away last night. That I should have known she needed help.
That I’m part of the problem.
The corners of my lips are weighted down like the lead in my chest keeping me where I am until he repeats that I’m free to go.
“Thank you.” My whisper grants me a nod from the man and I mentally prepare to see my sister.
Remorse isn’t the word I’m feeling. It’s so much more than that.
I know what she walked into alone, dreading what she’d find.
People move about me in blurs of blue and white. The phone at the front desk never stops ringing. Somehow I manage to continue moving along, taking one step after another.
I speak at the appropriate times, thanking someone at the desk as I wait in the lobby.
Through the windows of the front doors, the parking lot is clearly in view. Several cop cars are lined up in front with an assortment of random cars on the left.
I can just imagine how the red and blue lights would have hit the house late last night. How they would have shined bright against the brick. All the while, my sister was alone.
The doors open and the freezing cold air blows in. There’s not a soul here I recognize.
I busy myself checking my phone. Texts from my sister, asking where I am and then others … all that would prove my sister didn’t know where I was or why my mother and myself weren’t there.
Texts from Cody. He was worried. It’s only then that I realize he would have gotten the news that my father was shot dead and my mother and I were missing.
The streams of texts and messages flood my soul with guilt.
What the hell is wrong with me?
There aren’t enough apologies in the world, but it’s what I start with: I’m so sorry. I’m okay, I swear, just shaken up.
It’s not a lie but it feels like it is. I don’t know what I’ll tell him when I see him. That’s the worst part.
As I’m holding my phone, a new text comes in. This time from Marcus.
I want you to meet me at an old barn.
The red barn on Cannon Road.
I respond:
I know it. Why there?
My father used to meet his friends there to work on tractors and other machinery. It was a hobby of his. I don’t have time to mourn the memories because two things happen at once.
My sister cries out, a purse dangling from the crook of her arm and her coat hanging from her shoulder as she runs toward me.
“Baby,” my mother calls out behind me and the two pass just to my left, hugging each other with tears streaking down their faces. I stand there alone, feeling my phone go off. Glancing down, I see it’s both Marcus and Cody.
I can’t even begin to think of a response to Cody. I’m depleted and I have a pile of lies to explain to him, none of which I want to … and a million apologies on top of that. I don’t know what to say to him and that’s become a staple in our relationship.
Again the doors open and all that hugs me in this moment is the chill of the autumn wind.
“Cady cat,” I say and I don’t know why the weakly spoken nickname comes out like that. I haven’t called her that in years.
Slowly, her
grip loosens on my mother and she peers at me, the kohl liner around her eyes making them look even larger than they are. She readjusts her black wool coat before pulling me into a firm hug.
My grip on her is tighter than I consciously allow. I can’t let her go even if I wanted to.
“It’s going to be okay,” she tells me, but I’m not sure I believe it.
Marcus
Nineteen years ago
He looks just like the rest of them. There’s nothing at all distinctive about his features. Maybe the reddened cheeks would set him apart if it were any other day. But with the festival, all the adults with beers in oversized plastic cups have red cheeks.
He smiles too, just like them. His isn’t as white and polished, though. Years of smoking took its toll. Maybe his skin is slightly more yellow too, although it’s hard to tell from this far back.
Slipping my hands into my jean pockets, I keep my distance, slipping down the cracked sidewalk between rows of people cheering on the green floats. My shoulder brushes against the brick wall and occasionally there’s a bump from someone stepping back or trying to get around the crowd.
“Hey, watch it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, kid.”
“Where’s your mom?”
I ignore them all, keep my head down and smile. I’ve found if I just point ahead and keep walking, no one stops me. They don’t bother to get a response before turning their back to me and carrying on.
It’s warmer down here than it is at the barn. It took me three days to get here although it’s only hours if you take the highway. I learned that from my last hitchhike.
From the barn and my safe place, all the way to a different small town I grew up in, is only three hours away. Three long hours down the highway carved into the mountains.