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It’s a challenge to keep my focus on the officers with her plastered to me, flushed and breathing fast. I’m pretty sure she’s flustered because of my proximity and not because of the officers. They can’t intimidate her anymore, she’s safe with me, and she knows it. Nothing can touch her as long as I breathe.
Her long lashes are cast down, but I sense it–she’s aware of my attention.
“His parents did when they couldn’t reach him,” the officer eventually says. An urge to punch him in the face rises from the pit of my stomach. I guess tolerating people breaking through my tender moments with Justine will become a problem.
“Our tech team traced the signal to the bottom of the Norton Lake. They’re on site right now, working on retrieving it.”
“Well, I suppose you’ll find your answers then. Clearly, if his phone is at the bottom of a lake, either you have a crime on your hands, or Dean does, and he’s trying to cover his tracks. Either way, it’s hard to believe that Miss Pracht could have gotten rid of someone of his size, don’t you think?” I cock my head to the side like a vulture examining possible prey. “It’s stupid, if you come to think about it.”
“Miss Pracht had a motive, Mr. Royales,” the big guy spells out, frowning those bushy eyebrows at me like hairy leeches. “He humiliated her publicly by spreading revenge porn in group chats. I need to know if there has been any subsequent meeting between them, in which the break-up was discussed.”
“We didn’t discuss any break-up,” Justine spits out. She’s shaking now, the memory of that night clearly disturbing her. I tighten my grip on her shoulder, giving her support, anchoring her. “What was there to discuss? Things were as clear as could be the night of the party.” She bites her lip before she asks the men if they know about me trapping her against Dean’s body and then forcing an orgasm on her, making her rub herself against my leg.
That’s her problem, she needs to know what people think about her, so that she can calibrate her image according to that. Me? I don’t give a fuck. I’m a disturbed son of a bitch, and I don’t care about sugar-coating any of that. And soon, she’s going to stop caring, too. I will have corrupted her so thoroughly that she will break all of the stupid boundaries she’s set around her self-expression.
Justine believes that whatever regard I might have held her in has been torn to pieces, died a painful death when I discovered her dirty side. It’s what I thought too, in the beginning, because I didn’t entirely understand my attraction to her. But my want for her only deepened. I started craving more of the raw Justine, I wanted to see how deviant she could become until she was entirely herself. The breathtaking work of art that I’ve intuited inside her, like a sculptor seeing the finished masterpiece in a clump of clay.
That’s why I felt drawn to her from the moment I saw her like a tiger to the scent of blood. Why I couldn’t stay away after I got the first taste of her. I wanted to crush her under me, watch her come apart with pleasure while I left strings of cum all over her. But at the same time, I hated myself for the erotic satisfaction it gave me to tarnish her.
When I saw her so torn in Mel’s bathroom after the party, it felt like someone replaced the heart inside my chest with a voodoo doll they kept sticking needles into. With every passing hour, those needles crept their way up to my head, and soon I was going crazy. The thought that she might want to harm herself, maybe lethally, because of what Dean and I did drove me over the edge.
I went out to the rocks in the forest, where I once pondered ending myself after Romano’s trainers had gone batshit crazy on me. They wouldn’t hold back anymore, he’d ordered. I was old enough to get the training necessary in case I became a prisoner of war. I was fourteen when the mock executioner, the man in the iron mask, started carving my face as an incentive for me to find a solution, a way out of the chains that tied me to his chair. I didn’t move fast enough to escape the scar on my eye, but when I did get out, I made sure he’d never perform another mock execution again.
“Occupational risks,” were the last words I said to him before I sliced his veins open. Properly. I called the ambulance and set a timer next to his head so he’d see the seconds ticking before they got to him. Just like I’d calculated, he came within an inch of losing his life before the paramedics saved him.
The second time I came to the spot was with the intention of making myself bleed for Justine. So I took a jagged rock and cut into my palm, watching the blood coat the boulder under it. Putting up with the pain was easy. I was doing it for her, after all. Then, the tortured voodoo doll inside my heart sang–I would write poetry for her in my own blood. An offering to the goddess I’d hurt.
“So you had no more contact with Mr. Rowland since that night?” the officer probes.
“I haven’t seen or heard from him since.” She pushes her small chin out, a finality to her tone specific to a woman who feels safe enough to defy. I smirk, reveling in being the cause of that.
I rest my other arm on the arched back of my seat, my face stony, silently daring the officer to continue the interrogation. His throat bobs, even though he tries to hide it, which would normally amuse me enough to smile. I might not be the bulk of muscle that Carlton is, but I’m a large bastard, and the brutal build of my body intimidates people. Especially policemen, for some reason. My face? It’s made warlords tremble. My skills? Let’s not even get into that.
People can sense predators, they smell us. It’s not even a matter of wealth and influence. Humans’ ancient instincts aren’t designed to pick up on those or even to take them into account. But appearance, sound, smell? They tell a complex story, and the officers are now immersed in it.
“If that is all, officers,” I say flatly, my attitude raising a wall.
“There are, if you don’t mind, a few more things I would like Miss Pracht to–”
“I do, in fact, mind,” I deadpan, holding his stare. Only when he starts fidgeting and wipes his hands on his uniform, unsure what to do with himself, do I continue. “It’s common sense, really. If Dean’s phone lies at the bottom of a lake, chances are, you’ll find his body not far away. Now, Dean Rowland might be an asshole and a wimp, but he’s much bigger than Justine. There’s no way she could have knocked him out and dragged him to the lake.”
“There are ways–” he tries, but I cut him off again.
“Even if that’s the case, her orchestrating something like that would have left traces. There would be signs. People would be talking about seeing them together, and why not address the elephant in the room? She would have needed help.Someoneto assist her with the necessary brute force.”
The two officers behind have hunched their backs far enough that I don’t expect them to make another sound, but the one in front of me still doesn’t seem convinced. At least he doesn’t dare taint Justine with even another glance. He’ll let this go because I won’t give him an option, but he’ll be sniffing around in the future.
“I suppose we’ll take our leave now.” He obviously hates that he has to say it, but his colleagues seem relieved. They’re already backing away when he turns to us one last time with his mouth open to say something. I speak before he gets to.
“Thank you for your visit, officers. I hope you don’t find Dean’s body at the bottom of that lake. But if he got himself into trouble, you might want to consider searchingallthe lakes in the Norton forests. You should certainly do that before you come interrogating my Justine again.”
He nods and turns away, his colleagues’ steps shuffling quickly down the hall. A few beats pass between Justine and I, my eyes trailing after the officers, before she rips herself away from me, putting distance between us.
I wince. That fucking hurt, but when I meet her face, a hammer slams into my gut.
Tears fill her eyes, and she’s shaking. There isn’t any rage there or hurt or spite, but pure fear.
“What the hell, Sade? What was that? What do those people want, are they gonna come after me again? And where the hell is that fucker Dean?” She sounds hysterical, a few people peeking from around their screens. Usually, the glass doors between the actual library and the alcove hallway are closed, but right now, some of them are open for air circulation. Ever since the university went green, it doesn’t rely on the ventilation systems as heavily.
