Burn . . . Erotica Volume 2

by Jade Stone

  About three days later, around the same time, there was another knock at the door. This time I did ask who it was.

  “Detective John Carlyle,” came the reply.

  My heart leapt into my mouth. With hands shaking, I opened the door.

  “Come in,” I stumbled.

  John said the offender had been caught and arrested. Apparently, it was a guy the woman worked with, who had become obsessed with her. Again, he asked if I remembered hearing or seeing anything, and again I said I did not.

  “Perhaps if I took you out for a drink... would that refresh your memory?” he asked me, in a direct, husky voice that I would get to know too well. And flashed that quick but stunning smile again. His eyes seemed to pierce straight into my inner being. Cop eyes. Only a cop can look at you like that. I had to swallow twice before I could answer.

  “I think it might...” I replied, ignoring the heat that had engulfed the area between my thighs.

  “Tomorrow, seven o’ clock, at the White Sands bar,” he said, tipping his hat. “See you there.”

  He let himself out. I had to drink a glass of cold water to calm myself down.

  The night after, I went to the White Sands bar, where he wined and dined me. After which he fucked my brains out. And everything went from there.

  Just thinking about it now excites me. And exhausts me. Now that I am ten years older, I am able to see far more clearly. That the man behind the commanding presence, the suave smile, the sexy uniform, was troubled down to his core. His raging passion for locking up sexual predators came from somewhere deep inside, from somewhere dark in his past. But he would never, ever tell me what, or who, had caused it.

  Our marriage was a train wreck. We were married after six months of dating. I was a starry-eyed twenty-two-year-old, with no idea what I was getting into. Within one month of our wedding, almost straight after the honeymoon, John shut me out. I couldn’t even touch him. It started when he had a horrendous nightmare in bed one night. I had to wake him from it. When I asked him what he had been dreaming about, he said he couldn’t remember. That was when he started sleeping on the couch. We went from having sex every day to having sex about every three weeks, which then turned into six weeks... One time it was seven weeks. He told me it was because of work, that he was too tired and distracted.

  We started arguing over the most outrageous things. We once argued over a piece of cake. I cut him a slice of chocolate cake I had baked, and he criticised me for cutting it too thin. I told him he could cut his own damn cake, then. We ended up in a screaming match. I called him an ungrateful bastard, and went to thump him on the chest. He caught my hand, and next thing I knew, we were fucking on the kitchen bench. Nobody has ever fucked me the way John could. I came twice before we knocked the cake over and it fell on the floor, smashing the plate. After he ejaculated, he kissed me and said he had to go to work, then didn’t talk to me for three days. I became convinced that he was seeing someone else, and had affairs of my own. I rubbed his face in it; I would go out in the evenings dressed to kill, and I would come home reeking of another man’s cum. I wanted him to hurt the way I did. But apart from one nasty argument when he called me the town slut, I was met with utter indifference. After two years of marriage, I moved out. I didn’t say good bye. I just left him a note on the kitchen counter.

  I received a text the next day. I’m sorry, it read. You deserve better. I hope you find happiness.

  His lack of emotion ripped me apart. I wanted him to scream at me, so I could scream back. But there was nothing I could say to that message. I never replied. Instead, I filed for divorce, and spent the next ten years working as a barmaid in a different city, getting drunk and getting laid. I tried to meet other people, but the ghost of my husband would not leave me. Eventually, I moved back to our old town, finding a job in a local bar. It was a small town, and I knew that eventually I would run into him. And for the first time in ten years, I was ready to see him again...

  Then it finally happened.

  He was in uniform. It was Friday night, and it was crowded, and you could feel the hush go over the crowd as the cop entered and made his way to the bar. It wasn’t just the uniform, or his incredible good looks—it was that arresting presence that drew you in, that would completely disarm you and render you utterly defenceless to his command.

  Even after all this time, I was thunderstruck, frozen to the floor as the man I had left so long ago, but never stopped thinking about, made his way toward the bar. My colleague, Ann, got to him first. She almost melted under his gaze.

  “Can I help you, officer?” she beamed, eyelashes fluttering.

  “I just need to ask a few questions about a certain patron who was here last night,” he replied.

  “Ask away,” Ann replied, oozing her desire toward him.

  But I felt John’s eyes on me, and I avoided eye contact as I served other customers. I’m not sure when he first saw me, whether it was when he walked in or when he got to the bar. He may have already known I was working here... John had an uncanny ability to know most things. He was a brilliant cop with a lot of contacts; he very likely knew I’d returned to town and was working in this bar. He probably could have sent a colleague in his place, but he had come to do the job himself. I saw Ann join him in a booth. She sat there for about fifteen minutes, while I tried to concentrate on serving my customers.

  “He wants to talk to you,” Ann stated on her return.

  I took my time serving some Bloody Marys before I excused myself and made my way toward my ex-husband. My feet felt like concrete as I walked toward him. I felt a bizarre cocktail of emotions that was overwhelmingly dread mixed with excitement. And rage. I realised that the rage still hadn’t quite left me.

  I slid into the booth. I held my chin up as I looked into his eyes, hiding my shaking hands underneath the table. His eyes did what they had always done to me: stripped me naked, and set me on fire between my legs.

  “Hello, John,” I finally said.

  He didn’t answer immediately.

  “How are you?” he finally asked.

  “Yeah, I’m great,” I lied. “And you?”

  “Fine,” he replied.

  Neither of us said anything further as he scanned his phone. The awkwardness started to get a bit suffocating.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked.

  He looked up, but took a while to answer, studying me with his steely blue gaze. Cop eyes.

  “How long have you been back?” he asked.

  “Just a couple of months.”

  “When did you start working here?” he asked.

  “About three weeks ago,” I replied. “Why?”

  “That figures. I’ve been in here a few times, but I’ve never seen you here before.”

  “Can you tell me what you want? I’m supposed to be working.”

  John pulled out a photo of a guy, asking if I’d seen him a few nights before. This time, I did know who he was, and told him so. John informed me the guy had allegedly raped a woman over the weekend, after spiking her drink at this bar earlier in the evening. I felt the bile rising in my mouth, a realisation hitting me.

  My ex-husband’s eyes bared down on me, penetrating through to my inner core. He could already tell I had recognised this creep.

  “How do you know this guy?” he asked me.

  It took me awhile to answer.

  “I went home with him two weeks ago.”

  For a second, I saw a flicker of emotion cross his face. His jaw tightened, followed by a bulging vein in his neck. Then it was immediately replaced with the familiar mask of indifference. The same mask I had come to hate and resent so much, so long ago.

  “Did you have sex?”

  I glared at him.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “Was it consensual?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Any unusual sexual activity?”

  “No.”

  “Was he rough?”

  “No
.”

  “And you willingly drank with him earlier?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How much did you drink?”

  “Not enough to make me unaware of what I was doing, but it was a lot...”

  John absorbed this. And I absorbed it, too, knowing that the conversation we just had could be dismissed in court due to the obvious conflict of interest that we used to be married, and we were discussing another man I had slept with. John obviously didn’t plan on using the information I’d just given him as evidence, just for his own personal use...

  John showed me a photo of a woman. I immediately recognised her as well.

  “Yeah, he was hanging around her that night,” I told him. “They didn’t appear to be a couple, though...he was just following her around like a bad smell. Is she the one who made the accusations?”

  John nodded. Then he showed me another photo. I gasped. It was of the same woman, but she was almost unrecognisable. Her face was so bruised and beaten, one of her eyes was almost swollen shut.

  “You reckon he did it?” I asked him.

  “Yeah. We’ve already obtained CTV footage of him using the bathroom at a gas station afterwards, where he tried to clean himself up. He tried to flush his shirt down the toilet, and blocked the drain. When we got it, there were splashes of her blood through it. If the results come back as a match, we’ll go in for the arrest. If not before.”

  I swallowed hard, feeling sick to my stomach. Not only had I gone home with this piece of shit, but that could have been me. I tried to remember more about the bastard, but nothing unusual sprung to mind, except that it was a very forgettable encounter.

  “Isn’t this a conflict of interest, you questioning me?”

  “Yes, but I wasn’t expecting to hear what you just told me.”

  There was a judgemental tone in his voice.

  “What I do is none of your business,” I said sharply.

  “I’m just saying that when I asked you about him, I wasn’t expecting to hear that story.”

  “Well, best you assign another cop to the case, then. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to go back to work.”

  I rose from my seat and slid out of the booth. I still felt sick. I’d just found out I’d slept with an alleged rapist, and the man who’d told me was the love of my life. It felt extremely fucked up.

  “Carey,” he said.

  I stopped short, my breath catching in my chest. The sound of him calling my name was something I hadn’t heard in a very long time. And I’ll admit, I had craved it all this time. I slowly turned around. His eyes drew me in, the same way they always had. But this time, I saw something I hadn’t seen before. Or at least noticed before. They revealed pain. It was only there for a second, then it was gone. Frosted over by the mask, and the piercing blue gaze. Cop eyes.

  “You’re looking good,” he said. And that smile. Brief, but just as arresting as it had always been.

  “Thanks,” I replied, quickly leaving.

  He spoke to a few more people, and when he finally left, I didn’t look his way. I felt all the eyes on him as he left. At forty-three, John was looking damn fine. It was a contrast to myself. I knew I looked older than my thirty-three years, with more lines than I should have. Ten years of boozing and smoking will do that to you. And lamenting for ten years over a man like that will also do it to you. I probably looked at least five years older. As he left, I hoped I would never see him again, but somehow I knew I would. And I also knew that I wanted to see him again... Something had made me go back to my hometown. Something had made me apply for a job at this bar. This bar which, twelve years later, was still called The White Sands ...

  When I got home that night, I fell straight into bed, naked, where I had vivid dreams about John, but none which I could recall when I woke up, except that I was wet with sweat. Especially between my thighs.

  Just after I showered, there was a loud knock at the door. I was still naked. I pulled the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around myself before I headed to the front.

  “Who’s there?” I called.

  “Detective John Carlyle,” came the reply.

  He had tracked down where I lived. The feeling of déjà vu was almost overwhelming. But I knew I didn’t have to open the door. As my ex-husband, he wasn’t supposed to be talking to me about the case. I could have told him to leave and send someone else...

  I opened the door. I was immediately transported back to twelve years ago. There he stood, still wearing the same uniform, looking the same, like a doppelganger of Paul Newman, those blue eyes boring into me. The smell of his cologne hit my nostrils. He was wearing the same cologne. If he was wearing it last night, I hadn’t noticed, but I sure as hell noticed it now. It wafted into my nostrils and stung me on all my soft, sensitive regions. He finally spoke, breaking the awkward silence.

  “Just wanted to ask you a few more questions. Mind if I come in?”

  I stepped aside. I felt like I was floating as he walked passed me, his arm brushing mine, the sweet smell of his cologne engulfing me. I closed the door and followed him in. I watched him from the kitchen as he took a seat on the sofa in the living room. I finally managed to speak.

  “You want something to drink?”

  “Yeah, that sounds great,” he replied in his husky, smooth tone. In ten years, it hadn’t changed.

  “What would you like?”

  “You really need to ask?”

  “It’s a little early for Jack on the rocks...” I said.

  “Why’s that? Neither of us are going to work any time soon...”

  My heart skipped a beat. What was that supposed to mean?

  “Why are you here in uniform, then?” I asked.

  “Just finished the night shift.”

  I looked at him as I pulled down the bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the shelf. I’d had that bottle for about three years. I barely drank the stuff. The memories of whom I used to share it with just weren’t worth it. My heart fluttered as he gave me that smile again, causing me to look away as I grabbed a block of ice from the freezer and started to hammer it with an ice pick. I did not try to disguise how hard I was hitting it, concentrating on the shards of ice that sprang off the edges. Suddenly, I felt him right next to me. Before I could wonder how he had gotten so close to me without my noticing, his hand covered mine.

  “Allow me,” he said. I had no choice but to drop the ice pick. My joints had gone limp.

  He expertly knocked the ice off the block. Even with twelve years of bartending experience under my belt, he was still better at it than I was. He poured the whiskey into the tumbler glasses, half full, as he always did. Before I could raise the glass to my lips, he clinked his own against mine.

  “Cheers,” he said.

  I set my glass down.

  “John, what exactly are we toasting to? And what exactly are you here for? It’s pretty obvious it isn’t police business.”

  “I just wanted to see you,” he replied. “I knew you were back in town, so I thought I’d stop by. But if you don’t want me here, I’ll leave.”

  He used to do this when we were married. Give me some attention after days of indifference, but act as though everything was cool when it never was. Then he’d walk away when I got ‘difficult,’ always after saying something awful that would cut through me. Today I knew he was going to be no different.

  He went to put down his drink. And I didn’t stop him.

  “Well, might see you ’round,” I said.

  This was the first time I had not tried to stop him walking away, or yelled at him in frustration, or desperation, at his coldness and lack of affection. And he wasn’t used to it. He actually glared at me. I could see change in his eyes. The mature cop was starting to transition.

  “Nice to know my ex-wife is still the proud town slut,” he spat.

  I laughed.

  “So that’s what this visit is about?”

  He slammed down his drink. The transition was complete.

>   “You always have to fuckin’ ruin everything, don’t you? I just wanted a quiet drink with the love of my life, whom I haven’t seen for ten years, but clearly nothing has changed. I’ll let myself out.”

  He went to grab his hat. Gone was the cool, calm, and collected cop whom I had spoken with last night, who also walked into my apartment five minutes ago. In his place was the petulant asshole I had been married to. All the sexual chemistry between us evaporated in one second. But he was wrong. Things had changed. Because I had changed.

  “Sit down, John,” I commanded.

  He must have been stunned at the tone of my voice, because he stopped short and turned to look at me. Still holding the sheet around myself, I lifted my tumbler glass and took a long sip of whiskey. I had been preparing for this moment for a long, long time. I gestured back to the couch.

  “I don’t want you to leave,” I said. “Sit down.”

  For a moment, the face of frost was gone as he stared at me...glared at me. In his eyes was the brief look I recognised from the night before, a look that was full of emotion. In hindsight, it had always been there, but I had been too young to recognise it, or understand what it was. Almost immediately, it was covered again by the familiar steely gaze, followed by the old cold demeanour. As I walked back over to the couch, I handed his glass back to him on the way. I almost did not expect him to follow me, but he did. When I sat down, he sat down, too. I sat facing him, swirling my drink in my hand.

  “You just called me the love of your life,” I said. “You’ve never called me that before. Why now?”

  He took a while to answer, looking into his drink, swirling it in the glass, the same way I was doing.