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.