When he finally pushed his considerably wide cock inside her, she just laughed softly, pulling a hand back through her hair.
“You know how to make a girl receptive to your advances,” she murmured, moving her hand along the sinewy muscles of his left side, where a long scar marred the otherwise white marble perfection of his skin.
“Oh, ‘advances’ is what we’re calling him?” William joked. “I always through I’d call him Sir Richard.”
Anne laughed as all the tension released from her body. It only returned a few moments later for an encore of the pleasure before. A little quake. An aftershock. And she clenched around him as his brow furrowed, and he tensed all over, letting out a deep groan.
After going slack again, he laid himself beside her with one of his smirks on his lips. She looked at him with a lazy fondness. She couldn’t even make herself be ashamed. It was impossible to stop herself when he was around. He was like an addiction. And like any good addict, she made every excuse to get her fix. Otherwise, why would she be here?
He rose, and she grabbed for him, ordering him to stay. William waved her off, and returned with washed hands and a few wipes for her to clean up with. So fastidious. Then he lay beside her again and reached for the nightstand.
“I love this,” he said softly, toying with her long chestnut hair that had fallen around her head, mussed and sweaty. “You’re like Goldilocks.”
“You’re like Goldilocks, with your blond curls.”
William rolled his eyes and slipped the ring he’d left on the nightstand onto the index finger of his left hand, where it usually always rested. “Goldie was never so butch. Imagine a fairytale princess with a crewcut.”
“Or a mohawk,” Anne suggested. She took his hand and stroked her fingers over the back of it, feeling his skin, memorizing every line, and the little scar just above his knuckles. The garnet of his ring caught the glint of the lamp.
“Hey! Annie!” Jeffers snapped his fingers in front of her face.
“Don’t call me Annie,” she responded automatically. Then she shook her head and held her hand out. “Gimme an evidence bag.”
Jeffers crouched down beside her. “Whatcha got there?”
“Evidence,” she snapped. “It’s a ring. Obviously, it wouldn’t fit any of our vic’s fat fingers.”
“Woman’s ring?”
“It’s a man’s design,” she said in as neutral a tone as she could muster.
But neutrality had never been Anne’s strong point when it had come to William Oscar Spencer.
***
By the time they’d returned to the precinct, the tension had bunched Anne’s shoulders up so tightly that she could barely turn her neck. It had been years since she’d seen William, and now his ring had been found at a crime scene. It was hard to imagine that he’d ever be that sloppy when it came to doing a job. But he had been put away for smuggling and felony tax evasion, and that was just facts. He had been caught, once.
Never mind that William had been a grifter and a thief at best, a pathological liar at worst. He’d never killed anyone, to Anne’s knowledge, but he’d had his lovely fingers in everything that could be gotten into back then. Anne knew as well as anyone on the force that involvement in crime only begat more crime. Couldn’t keep your hands clean when you were already elbow deep.
If only he’d still been behind bars when this murder had occurred. Then, she could’ve written him off, and Jeffers could go get his testimony about what had happened to his ring. But he had gotten out on appeal a little over a month ago, so she was compiling a list of suspects with William’s ridiculously British name at the top.
Jeffers came over and set a cup of coffee in front of Anne. He slumped into his own chair with a grunt. His hair was sloppy, as per usual, and his shirt wrinkled beyond salvaging.
“Got a long list there?”
“My list for leads is longer than my list of suspects.” Anne sighed. “We’re going to have to jump on this yesterday, before the smart ones have the sense to get out of town.”
“My kingdom for a time machine.”
Anne scowled at him and went back to her list. “We do some legwork while we wait for Shaw to finish up the autopsy.”
“No doubt about the cause of death though.”
Anne rolled her eyes. “Obviously, but there might be evidence on the body.”
She shouldn’t have to explain things like that to Jeffers. He was six years her senior and had been a detective for two years already. Though, he could be teasing her. Most of the detectives weren’t overly thrilled to have someone her age among their number.