“Come for me, Megan.”
She moaned at his command, but knew it wasn’t that simple. She was enjoying being taken by him, in a way she had never enjoyed sex before, but she needed just something a little more to be taken over the edge.
“Come for me, Megan.” He said it again, this time, more forceful.
Despite her fear of the questions it might bring to light, she reached for his hand, slid it up her body, over her breasts, and rested his palm at the base of her neck.
“Choke me.”
Evan, too far out of the gate to deny her request, lightly wrapped his fingers around her neck, and pressed his fingertips into her skin.
“Harder.”
He continued his thrusts as he put more pressure into his grip.
“Harder.” Her cries were labored as she was struggling to breathe, but he wrapped his fingers tighter still.
Megan found his other hand and guided it up to join its counterpart.
“Megan…” Evan whispered, feeling a slight bit uncomfortable at her request.
“Harder.” She cried yet again.
Evan felt his body speed up. He was about to explode. He needed her to be there with him.
So he wrapped both of his hands around her neck and continued to slam into her as he choked her. He watched as her face paled. Without her prompting him, he squeezed harder. Her eyes rolled back. He squeezed harder. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. He squeezed harder. Her eyes closed. He squeezed harder.
His hands flew to the air as he pulled out of her, allowing himself to gush all over her stomach. As her breath came back to her, Megan screamed out before her body went limp.
Evan fell beside her, his body drained. Neither said a word to each other, but they both knew they had crossed a line they would never be able to uncross.
Evan looked at his hands. They were shaking, but it didn’t feel wrong. He had taken her over the edge, he had dropped her down a pit, and then just before life left her body, he brought her back. He had done that. He had the power, and it felt good.
It felt too good.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Quietly, Megan lifted her hips to pull her panties back up her legs, and sat herself up, off her back. She hopped off the tall butcher-block table, knelt down to retrieve her dress, and began to slip back into her clothing.
“What are you doing?” Evan finally spoke, coming up on his elbow.
“I should go.” She didn’t look at him. She couldn’t.
“No.”
“What?”
“No. You can’t go. I want you to stay.”
She felt her skin prick with uncertainty. She kept her head down. “This was great, but…”
“Megan, stop. This was not that.”
“Excuse me?”
Evan sat up, dangling his feet off the table. “This night…it wasn’t just about us having sex. This wasn’t some sort of one-night stand.”
“Oh.” It wasn’t as though she told herself it would be a one-night stand, but subconsciously she had assumed as much. What even were they? What could they ever possibly be? He was rich and powerful, and she was coming off a nine-year stint in prison. When people stared at them, it was for very different reasons. People admired Evan and his ability to run his father’s company so seamlessly at such a young age, while those same people were still not convinced that Megan hadn’t murdered her psychology teacher. At most, she assumed that they were a dream to each other, a lost opportunity, eleven years in the making. They met at a time when their hormones were raging and every other thought in their heads was about stripping each other naked. It was fun then, innocent even, but it was only a dream. Once that dream was fulfilled, it would be over, but apparently she was wrong.
“Are you serious? Do you really want to go?” Evan was getting upset.
“I…I…” She wasn’t sure. She had made up her mind and decided it was time to leave. That was what she should do. It made sense. It was logical. But…she hadn’t thought about what she wanted. It had never been about what she wanted.
Evan hopped down, his feet landing firmly on the floor. He confidently stepped in front of Megan and placed his hands on her shoulders.
“Stay with me, Megan.”
“Evan, this can’t work.” She spit out the only words that continued to play over and over in her head.
“I don’t care what you say this can’t do, because right now, it does.”
He pulled her into his chest, wrapping his arms firmly around her small frame. “I need you, Megan.” He whispered in her ear. “Need me back.”
Need me back.
With those words, she allowed her body to collapse. Her heart sank, and her stomach tumbled. She mirrored his embrace, urging him to pull her tighter.
She sighed into his chest, feeling all the weight that she had been carrying for so many years begin to lighten. Her eyes dampened with the onset of tears as she let him hold her longer and tighter into his body. Together, they sunk to the ground, finding comfort with their backs against the butcher block. Evan laced his fingers in Megan’s, and she felt his energy radiate within her body. She took a deep breath, wanting to hold onto that feeling as long as possible. It was a feeling of comfort, a feeling she hadn’t felt in so very long. He did that for her. She needed to do something for him. Without altering her straight ahead stare, she decided to do what he asked, to need him back.
“Before tonight, I have never been with someone I wanted to be with.”
With a soft “hmm,” Evan quickly took in what she was trying to tell him. He realized that he hadn’t truly thought about her circumstances before that moment. He knew what had happened between her and his uncle, but then had just assumed over the next eleven years, she had been in consenting relationships, like he had. But…he mulled over his thoughts…nine of those eleven years were in a women’s correctional facility. A consenting relationship might have been hard to find.
“So my uncle?”
She let out a small, nervous laugh. “He was the first.” It felt weird to say it out loud.
“But not the last?”
With a single exhale of breath, she admitted. “Not even remotely close to the last.”
In as few words as she could manage, she explained to him exactly what she had to do to make it though nine years in that place. They kept their sights set in front of them, both too uncomfortable to share eye contact, but they were still open, honest, comforting. There were no barricades between them. Megan had never told anyone what she was telling Evan, and while it was debilitating to relive, for the first time, she didn’t feel alone.
“So the choking?”
She fiddled with her fingers. “It started as a punishment…that and slapping, and throwing me against the wall, or pulling my hair, or biting me…umm, but after awhile I couldn’t feel anything else, so it was…necessary.”
“And your wrists?”
“Kind of along the same lines…but these were me. I did this to myself.”
Evan nodded, beginning to grasp the entire picture. He felt it was time to take the attention off of her. She was crying for an escape. “I’ve never done anything like that before.”
His admission made her turn to him. “Evan, I am sorry. I really am.”
“Don’t be.” He angled toward her as well, taking her other hand in his. “It was…freeing.”
Megan cocked her head to the side, hoping he would continue.
“I’m not as ‘put together’ as you think.” He collected his thoughts. “You said that you thought I was too good to be true, and that thought does have some clout. I’m not true. But doing that, with you…the choking thing…” he took a stunted breath. “For the first time in my life I felt as though I was in control. I wasn’t afraid to test the limits.”
Megan didn’t know if should be happy or concerned. She had subjected him to a part of her life that wasn’t as “normal” as a partner might want it to be. She made him do something that brought hi
m out of his comfort zone, and yet, he seemed to get as much pleasure from the act as she did. If they were to continue their sexual escapades, this situation would seem ideal.
But right off the bat, Evan had almost made her pass out. She saw the fire in his eyes when she stopped saying “harder” and allowed him to escalate on his own. Had he not released in orgasm at that precise time, she was fairly certain he would have taken it farther; he would have kept choking her. And she wouldn’t have stopped him. She would have let him see how far he could go, no matter what the outcome.
Maybe the pairing wasn’t as perfect as it seemed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“You have to be kidding me!” Megan was livid, her blood boiling.
“Sorry Coulis, this is where everyone starts.” Chief Davis brushed his mustache with his fingers.
“In the dungeon?”
“It’s the evidence room, Coulis. Not a dungeon.”
“Tell me one person who got a better score on their exam.”
“It doesn’t matter, kid. This is how we do things here. The faster you prove your worth, the faster you get promoted.”
He placed a binder in her open hands. “Normally I’d have someone train you, but we’re a little short staffed, and from what I’ve seen, you pick up things quickly. Here’s everything you need to know about our system of cataloguing evidence. If you have any questions, you can ask anyone, because as I’ve told you, everyone starts right here.”
He smugly smiled and gave her a wink before he went back up the stairs, leaving Megan alone in the dungeon.
She kicked the wall out of frustration, and kicked it again just because. She had asked to be assigned to the Cold Case Department. She hoped it would give her access to the case file from Dr. Covington’s murder. From there, she planned on doing her own police work to find the real killer. It didn’t matter to her that she had been acquitted. What mattered was that there was a person out there who had spent the last ten years thinking they had gotten away with a crime. She had paid the price for that person’s mistake. Even if it killed her, Megan was going to make sure that person paid the price for all the years of her life that she had lost.
But she couldn’t do that from the evidence room. Evidence from a ten-year-old unsolved crime was packed up in a box and sent upstairs, to be revisited only by the Cold Case Detectives.
Megan sat down on the swivel chair and placed the Evidence Lockup Binder on the desk in front of her. She opened to the first page, stared down on the three-hole punched paper, but her mind began to wander. She began to do math.
If I stick this out and prove my worth for the next three months, I might then be promoted to an upstairs desk job—maybe answering ‘anonymous tip’ calls. Let’s say I’ll spend another three months there before they put me on traffic duty. I’ll probably spend six months writing tickets before I finally get to be a Patrol Officer. At that point, I might be able to have my request granted to be assigned to Cold Cases. I don’t need to be a detective; I just need to be in the department. Being in uniform is more fun anyway: less paperwork, so more time to work on my own case.
She shook he head from her thoughts. If she had to make an educated guess, it would be an entire year before she was granted access to the Cold Case Files. It would be an entire year before she would be able to start going after the real murderer.
After spending nine years behind bars, one year in front of them wasn’t that bad. She settled on the fact that, although she wasn’t happy in the dungeon, she could wait a year. After three thousand, two hundred and sixteen days in a prison cell, she could wait another three hundred and sixty-five.
Megan switched her focus back the binder, but not before reminding herself that she would need to start bringing a book to work. It was a small town. The amount of “evidence booking” she would be doing was sure to be minimal.
She finished reading the entire binder in under an hour, which also meant she had the entire binder memorized in under an hour. The organization process was childish, laughable, but workable. She could easily take the whole practice under her wing and update it, but she had a small fear that if she did that, Chief Davis would have her trapped in the dungeon for the foreseeable future, and she couldn’t risk that.
She had a plan.
So instead, she read a book. And then she read its sequel.
And then she read a different book. And then she read that different book’s sequel.
And she did that for seven and a half weeks.
Megan’s phone began to buzz. She instinctually looked around to make sure no one was coming down the stairs, which seemed silly, because no one was ever coming down the stairs. Still, every time her phone buzzed, that’s exactly what she did.
“Hey you.” It was Evan. It was always Evan. The two had become practically inseparable.
“When are you coming over?”
“After work. I told you that, Silly.” She even allowed herself to flirt a little bit.
“I know, but I don’t want to wait any longer.”
“Don’t you have work to do?”
“I did it.” He proudly announced.
“You did all the work?”
“It’s a light month.”
“It’s never a light month.” She teased.
His booming laugh came over the phone. “Fine, you caught me. But I can’t concentrate on work when I’m thinking about you.”
She sat up in her chair. “That’s fine by me: think away. But don’t you blame me when your company goes under.”
There was a brief silence on the other end of the line, followed by a sigh. “Okay, fine. I’ll go work.”
“Good boy.” She pacified him.
“Dinner tonight?”
“Sure, what are you making me?” Any night she spent with Evan was absolutely unbelievable, even if they ordered pizza or Chinese take-out, but there was just something about his cooking that made her weak in the knees. Watching him get so passionate about something he was creating made her feel…whole. It was like the past eleven years hadn’t happened, and they were a couple of fifteen-year-old kids just trying desperately to keep their hands off each other.
“It’s a surprise.”
They giggled for a few more seconds, but when Megan looked up, Chief Davis was standing in front of her.
“Hey, I have to go.”
Even mocked excitement. “Wait, someone actually came down to the dungeon?”
“Bye.” Megan insisted.
“Bye you.”
Megan quickly dropped the phone to her side.
“Sir, I am so sorry.”
“And to think…I was going to tell you we have a new guy coming on, so I was going to promote you to the phones.”
Megan stood. It had only been seven and a half weeks, just shy of two months. Was he promoting her earlier than she had anticipated?
“Sir, I promise, that won’t happen again. You have my word.”
He threw two clear bags of evidence on the desk in front of her. “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood. Go ahead and book these for me- there’s already a box with some other things. When you come back on Monday, I’ll have you train the new guy, and as soon as you sign off on him, I’ll have a desk for you upstairs.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much, sir. You won’t regret this.”
“I better not.”
He scratched at his mustache as he headed back up the stairs, away from the dungeon.
Megan was beside herself. She wanted so badly to call Evan and tell him the news, but she had just promised never to be on her phone again. Although it was a ridiculous promise, she figured she shouldn’t test her luck only seconds after giving him her word.
Megan grabbed the bags and read the name attached to the case file.
Covelli
She walked down the first aisle, passed Aberthy, and Allen, and Barnard, and Blighton, and Clasper, until she came upon the box labeled “Covelli”. She pulled the box from its height and care
fully set it on the floor. She quickly threw off the lid, peering down at the previous evidence. There was cash, a wallet, a bottle of cologne, and a small digital recorder. The bag containing the digital recorder had a pink post-it note attached to it, with a date from three months prior. Megan couldn’t help but read the handwritten note attached to it:
No evidence box made for this case
Note to self: make box on Monday
“I guess no one made a box on Monday.” Megan laughed as she talked to herself. “Now where do you actually belong, little tape recorder?”
She lifted the post-it to see the name attached to the case file.
Dr. William Covington
Megan stood there frozen, stunned. She wasn’t just holding any old evidence. She was holding the evidence that got her released from prison.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Evan? I’m here.”
Megan called into the darkness. The house was pitch black; she could barely see her hand in front of her. She wondered to herself where he would be. They had spoke about her coming over straight after work. It was 6:32. He should have been home.
Unimaginable Page 10