by Lime Craven
Finally, a knock sounds on my door, and Leo slips in carrying a tray of sandwiches and juice. For a moment, I sit back in my chair and pretend she's a waitress in a mythical but very-much-worth-exploring restaurant where you get to bang your server for dessert.
"Has your morning gone as slowly as mine?" I ask as she deposits the tray beside my corner couch. Then I ease back in my chair, giving her space to sit on my desk.
"It started at about five a.m. when the reporters woke me up." She feigns a glare; I can tell, in a way, that she's enjoying all the attention. There's something of a split personality about Leo—half is disgusted with the world and everything in it, but the other half, the little girl...she's in awe.
As I get to my feet and stand over her, my fists flexing at my sides, that little girl is never more visible. She peers up, sucking at me with her black button eyes. I trace down her cheekbone and push my thumb across her glossed lips. Mess them up like she's been naughty. Every inch of my body feels stretched tight—my cock toward her, my gaze bolted to the tilt of her chin, my skin flayed out to melt on hers.
"Did you miss me?" she asks.
"Very much." I walk my fingers back to fist her loose hair, and she tilts with them, her eyes closed rapture. White teeth sink down into her bottom lip.
Leo breathes in and out real slow, her head back as she revels in my touch. "You ever think we're like a cut? We split apart, go our separate ways, but then both sides of the wound keep trying to knit back together."
"Smart mouth," I manage, before falling into a crush of a kiss that I don't even remember initiating.
The world snaps shut. Her taste, her mouth; we're swimming in dark oil. I'm vaguely aware that my cell is ringing, which is unusual at this time of day. Not that I give a fuck.
"Should you answer that?" she says against my shirt collar. Her breath warms the valley between the fabric and my flesh.
"No."
"Oh. Good." Her soft, warm tongue makes its way up my throat. "You want lunch?"
I drag her hand down over my cock. It twitches right into her palm, throbbing and pulsing and making me feel nauseous. "Sweetheart." I haven't fucked her in the office—was trying to avoid it, in case I get carried away—but screw that.
A soft, satisfied mewl spills from her mouth. She clutches me between her finger and thumb, as if making sure I measure up. "Hmm. You want to see your pretty picture?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I do." There's a heaviness to my voice that I don't recognise. Desire and obsession contort it, taking it down to the edge of sin.
Leo releases me and turns to bend over the desk. I practically limp to my bag for the medikit; in the front pocket, my cell flashes with a missed call from Tommy Chavez. He knows to email me. He's an idiot.
While she waits, Leo steps out of her heels; she's more on my level without them, her ass positioned perfectly beneath my hands. I peel up the skirt of her black dress, holding my breath as her panties come into view: pale silver lace against tan skin. Gorgeous. She's wearing them rolled down a little at the hip so they don't disturb the gauze dressing—I swear, if there's a bright side in my life, it's right under there. I pull her panties down regardless of the fact that I don't actually need to—I love how obscene they look bunched around her thighs.
When I start to peel the tape away, she whimpers.
"Shh." I stroke her other buttock, caress it in smooth circles. "I won't be long. Just hold still." And she does. She obeys me.
Don't think I didn't notice, back in Blue River Kitchen, that Leo didn't argue when I called her parents cunts. Don't think I haven't noticed how she never talks about them; how the sole evidence of their existence is a single Polaroid stuck to her refrigerator. There are some people in the world who simply need to be taken care of, though few of them earn it; Leo has earned it from me. She earned this privilege when she laid herself down and shivered beneath my knife. So her parents didn't look after their little girl right—who knows this better than me? See the perfect, clean heart shape I carved upon her, and tell me I'm not taking care of my girl.
"It's healing real clean, baby," I sound like a kid at Christmas—the kind you see in commercials. "I'm going to wipe it and dress it again, okay?"
"Okay." She wiggles her ass at me.
"Don't tease me." I near enough groan as I tear off the wrapper of an antiseptic wipe.
"But it's fun."
"I swear, you do that again and I will not be responsible—"
"Hmm..." She backs into me, wiggles her ass again.
The friction sends static electricity shooting along my thigh.
I grit my teeth, my cock throbbing in the grip of heat, and I bring the wipe straight down hard on her cut...where it will sting to hell.
Leo's giggle drops into a yelp. "Ow! Jesus, you—you cockwomble."
"What?" I take the wipe away and lean down to blow over her bare skin, chuckling to myself. "What the fuck, Leo?"
"You are. You're a complete and utter cockwomble."
"It made even less sense the second time you said it."
"Wanker, arsehole, twat, nonce, knobhead, gobshite...cockwomble." She exhales in exasperation. "It's a natural progression, obviously."
"You do realise that British swearing is still swearing." I squeeze her right buttock, crush the flesh into my palm. When I let go, blood clouds beneath the skin to form a mark the shape of a scrunched butterfly. "Not very ladylike."
"But bent over a desk is ladylike?"
"Bent over a desk should be your default setting." I let my fingers trail down between her thighs to the little pink bulge of her pussy. She moans when I part her lips. "Wet already, huh? Anybody would think—"
A deafening wail sounds above us, and immediately, echoes spring up in distant offices and far-off halls.
The security alarm.
"Fuck." I jump back, nearly knocking the medikit off the desk.
Leo follows me, shimmying her panties back up while glancing around, her fine features wrinkled in confusion. Outside the office, voices strike up in curses and shouts.
Then my office phone starts to ring.
We lock eyes.
"You'd better get that one," she utters.
I reach over and swipe it up, shoving a finger in my free ear to block out the siren of the alarm. "What?"
"Sir." Harvey's voice, gravelly and urgent. "We have a situation."
"So I gathered." My heart begins to thump. The alarm has never gone off for anything other than a drill. Leo watches me, absentmindedly running her hand up and down the small of my back. "Harvey, what the hell?"
"I need you to stay in your office. Don't move until we come for you."
"Are you serious?"
"I—" He jerks away from the phone as somebody else beckons him. Their dialogue is muffled and sparse. "Sir?"
"I'm here," I call over the incessant bleat of the alarm.
"There's a woman at reception asking for you. We'll contain her, but I need to know..."
My heartbeat migrates to the base of my throat where it pummels like a drunk boxer. "Rachel Fordham," I cut in.
Beside me, Leo goes rigid.
"That's the name she gave, yes. Who is she? I need to know—dammit, Jenson, will you leave it! Don't talk to her!—Sir, who is she to you?"
"Don't move a fucking muscle," I find myself saying. "I'll be down in a minute. Tell her I'm coming."
"No. Aeron, she's—"
I hang up. Despite the noise, the world is suddenly very quiet. My ears feel blocked and strange. My hand finds Leo's.
"So Rachel's downstairs," she says, her tone low.
"Asking for me."
"It's not you she wants to speak to." She drops my hand, begins to scratch at the back of her neck and blink nervously. "It's me." Then she starts backing toward the door, wincing at the brush of her dress against her undressed wound.
"Harvey wants you to stay here. I'll take care of it." My voice gets louder with every step she takes. "Sweetheart, the fucking alarm'
s gone off. It's not safe."
But she runs.
You'd think a fit guy like me could take a little doll like Leo, huh? Adrenaline does strange things to the body. It makes you thunder down a hallway after your barefoot girlfriend while she disappears into the elevator; it makes you flip the finger at your secretary as you run past, while she gapes at you like a crazy person. It makes you hammer on the closed elevator doors when you get there just three seconds too late.
"Fuck!" I yell, slamming my fists down on it. The alarm still blares, and twenty bemused faces are peering at me from the open door of the news room. "Get back in the fucking room!"
I have to stop Leo from confronting Rachel. Fast. If it wouldn't mean flying down sixteen flights of stairs, I'd take the old-fashioned route, but instead, I hurry to the elevator at the other end of the hall and throw myself into it, bashing the Ground Floor button and sinking back against the mirrored wall.
Rachel was always harmless. The only weapons she ever had against me were three words: he cut me. Is she waiting down in the lobby to throw them like daggers? Talk about the ultimate mood killer. Jesus fucking Christ.
It seems like the elevator takes centuries to open, but when it does, I shoot out as if catapulted, careening around the corner and into a bunch of security guards—including Harvey, who has Leo in a thick-armed headlock. She's clawing at him, her British swearwords clamouring between her teeth.
Up ahead, there are several members of staff sitting on the floor, their bags clutched in their laps, pained looks on their drained faces. And beyond them, a woman is bent across the reception desk, speaking quietly with the attendant and pointing to something on the screen.
When she sees me, she eases up. Almost floats.
Rachel in slow motion: still small, still fragile, dark hair and pale skin and accusatory silence that deafens any alarm. She cocks her head at me. Shrugs.
And that's when I see the gun in her hand.
"Aeron!" Leo calls, still trying to yank off the lump of muscle that is Harvey Bell. "Will you get this shithead off me?"
"Hands off," I say through my teeth, still staring at Rachel. Now I've made eye contact with her, it feels dangerous to lose it.
"The woman is armed." Harvey spits each word. "Sir, you need to go back to your office, and Miss Reeves here needs to—"
"Let her go, Harvey. For fuck's sake." I peel his fingers from Leo's shoulders one by one. "I can take care of this." I have to—before the little bitch talks.
Rachel keeps the gun trained on me, a canvas bag dangling from her other hand. Slowly, I walk toward her, Leo just a few steps behind.
"Stay back," I hiss over my shoulder.
She ignores me. Her expression is unsettling, her black eyes blank.
"Leo. I'm serious. Back the fuck up."
"No," Rachel calls, and we both twist to face her.
Tremors rock her body, rolling down through her arm to make the gun shake. Perhaps she isn't sure which of us she'll shoot first, or maybe she's just shitting bricks because let's be honest—you don't walk into a public building, throw a gun around, and get away with it—and God knows, she was always such a goody two shoes.
I used to talk her down from ratting on me by stroking her belly. Kissing her neck. A fuck lot of good that would do me now, but even then, she's a gauzy ghost of the girl she used to be, narrow and shivering. Blood rushes in my ears, an undercurrent I can't sail away from.
I hold my hands up. Flat palms. My shirt sticks to the valley of my spine, viscous with nervous sweat. "You asked for me."
She may as well be staring right through me. "I—I guess I did."
Leo tries to walk forward, but my arm reaches out of its own accord and wraps around her waist, pulling her in.
"Rach, I'm sorry," she whispers. I doubt the girl hears her over the alarm echoing around the high ceiling.
"Rachel, I swear to God, you hurt her and I'll make you suffer."
"You already made me suffer," Rachel spits. Again, the gun wobbles; she brings it up, aligns it with her narrowed eyes.
"Can we talk?" Leo presses. "We can go somewhere, anywhere..."
"I've been begging for that for so long, though." Rachel's voice cracks. She shakes her head. "Too late. No. Way too late."
"You know I can clear this up," I go on. "If you don't hurt anybody, all of this can go away."
Rachel snorts, and I swear Leo vibrates with a similar sound.
"You want to give me the gun?" I hold my hand out and edge forward, slowly nudging Leo aside.
Rachel's still shaking her head. Her shoulders. Her hand. The girl's like a record that keeps skipping, and the whole lobby aches with it, this tight atmosphere that swings from the muzzle of her gun.
"Give me the gun." I put on my softest persuasive tone, the one I use with Ash. "Come on, princess. I won't bite."
Rachel's jaw trembles so hard that her skin ripples white with it.
A beat. She drops the bag, kicks it toward us. It skids to a halt at Leo's feet, a flurry of papers spilling out across the polished floor.
"I still love you," Rachel yelps over the alarm. "No matter what you did, don't forget that."
The next few seconds happen in flashes.
Her arm jerks.
The gun goes off.
The shot echoes around and around, a painstaking pause between the clatter and the boom.
Shrieking, everywhere. The sour stench of a shot. Leo crumpling against me; my arm sagging in shock.
Rachel on the floor next to a smoking gun, her legs tangled awkwardly, and a receptionist painted in oily red spatter, screaming at the top of her lungs.
I can't catch my breath. It won't come, won't go down, and I swallow and swallow but it's all dry. I shake Leo like a can of her fucking pop, desperate to see her eyes roll open.
She clutches at me and lets off a horrible, defeated wail. "Me," she weeps. "She was talking to me."
SIX YEARS AGO
Mom's house
Aged 26
"Oh, look at that." Mom glances up as I let myself into the living room. She's pacing the tiled floor, Ash in her arms, his burping cloth tossed over her shoulder. "Your brother has decided to grace us with his presence."
I roll my eyes. "Nice to see you too."
"He's very busy these days," she mutters to Ash, still pacing. "Such a man of the world. Look at him—thinks he's a big swinging dick, doesn't he?" She freezes, tipping Ash to the side as if a freaking toddler could appraise me for this very specification. "Not everyone inherits a big fuck-off chunk of life insurance, I guess."
Ash blows a bubble at me, his big brown eyes widening with curiosity.
I drape my suit jacket over the purple velour couch and glance around the new apartment. Mom's been here a few months now and the place is very luxe, very modern chic; pretty sure she came into some life insurance of her own. There's so much...beige.
"I did that for him, you know," she goes on, pacing again. She navigates stuffed toys and building blocks with ease. "I made sure he came into a little cash. All it took was a plastic bag and a—"
"Mom!" I don't mean to shout, but she brings it out in me. It's why I avoid her. "He's a kid, for fuck's sake. Don't say that shit to him."
Ash recoils into her arms and buries his squidgy face in her peach cashmere sweater. Something inside me blisters and grows taut, preparing to snap at the next sharp word.
It's best I change the subject. "Did you see I'm bidding to buy from Murdoch?"
"Whoop de fucking do, Aeron."
"Right." I gulp. Mom is never impressed by my achievements; I should stop coming here like a puppy desperate for approval. No, desperation isn't the right word; it's a slow burn in my veins, a heat that makes my limbs feel boneless and heavy at the same time.
"You know what I did see? That ginger whore you're dragging around these days." She lets off a bitter laugh, stroking Ash's cheek as if petting a kitten. "How long before I have to pay off her folks, huh?"
&nbs
p; "I paid you back every penny," I say through my teeth.
"I guess that makes it better." She laughs harder.
Yeah. Because the whole Fordham scenario has always been hilarious. Nothing about losing my canvas—my only outlet—was ever funny.
Mom plants a kiss on Ash's head. "You're not gonna to be such a pansy, are ya, sweetie? You're gonna be a contender."
Ash stares at me from beneath his mussed-up shock of hair. I know how soft that hair is; some nights, he falls asleep on my shoulder and I rest my chin on his head just to make sure he's still breathing. Something about that kid makes me feel peaceful. He's not like me and Mom. He's untampered with, unchanged, and the more he looks at me, the more he seems to say, what did this crazy bitch do with my daddy?
I don't know, I want to tell him. But I've got a pretty fucking good idea because she did the exact same thing to mine.
"You know what your brother is, Ashley? A disappointment." She rests her strange, spaced-out Mom eyes on me. "A failure. I mean, I tried with him. I really did. But there's something not right about that kid."
Anger crawls along my skin. "I could say the same about you, Mom."
"His problem is, he doesn't know how to hide. Keeps climbing out of his shell like something's fucking chasing him—"
"Mom. I am asking you to stop."
"And he doesn't know what he cost me. All those lessons, I worked so hard...and hey, pretty boy, you had potential, didn't you? But not as much as little Ash here."
"You shouldn't mess with him," I grind out. My temper scrapes broken nails down my spine; it wants to come out and play.
"Shouldn't, shouldn't, shouldn't...what about the things I want, Aeron?" She sighs theatrically. "Look at you, getting all worked up. You were always too quick to fly off the handle."