She wasn’t going to tell him — it would never have crossed her mind to. It wasn’t any of his business, and it was for her, not him.
harsh breath in her ear, humid with Johnnie Walker; grasping, groping, ungentle; body dwarfed by one much bigger than hers; pushing, crushing, an orgasm howled in a voice she’d forgotten she owned
The jellied, wobbly feeling in her thighs, the throb of the bite mark on the back of her left shoulder — these things, rough in their origin, paradoxically give her the calm and stillness she needs to concentrate on the work before her.
The work: a dozen files — photographs, notes, evidence — laid out on the large table in the empty fourth-floor conference room where she’d gone to be undisturbed. These had nothing to do with 2:00 a.m. in a stranger’s apartment; these are the opposite of making it personal.
What’s your name?
… Rose.
Well, Rose — I guess that makes me Jack.
The heat in this building is ridiculous. Her blazer was already draped over a chair, and now she absently rolls up her sleeves. Walks around the table, moves items here and there as she considers various links and through-lines. She bends to make a note in the margins of a call log, idly probing with her tongue the abraded place on the inside of her lower lip.
feisty little bitch, aren’t you
maybe I need to be tamed
Three photos pulled from three folders — she places them side by side, puzzling out their timeline, feeling that satisfying mental click of pieces fitting perfectly together. Her hands go to sift through another pile, purposefully now.
Then the parallel tracks in her mind both halt — someone’s opening the door. She looks up across the table; it’s him, of course it is.
The ache in her scalp, the fingernail scrapes hidden by her hair: a secret source of power that helps her stand straight and meet his eyes with cool equanimity.
He’d evidently been expecting something else — challenge? defiance? anger? Worse: forlornness, longing? appeasement? No matter. She waits for him to explain himself; he’s placed them on opposite teams, and she sees little reason to play ambassador to his.
“Scully, where have you been?”
The nerve. The nerve of him, demanding her whereabouts as if she were a servant he’s caught slacking off.
“Here,” she says simply, in a voice coarsened enough to be read as evidence if one listened with the right kind of attention.
“Yeah, I can see that,” he sneers, and she decides she’s given him enough of her time.
two spent condoms, a persistent good dark ache down deep that anchors her body and frees her mind …
She goes back to scrutinizing, grouping, rearranging, thinking.
He doesn’t take the hint and get out. Instead, as is his wont, he strides in and shoulders his way around, sucking the oxygen out of the room — scoffing, huffing, shaking his head at the things he sees. She knows this bullish, bullying energy of his; he’s building up to a demand, some importunity he has no right to exert on her.
He’s behind her and to her left; she hears him take a breath, he’s actually got his mouth open to argue something when the air rushes out of him and he half-gasps, “Jesus, Scully! What happened to your arm?”
His hand, unasked for, takes her left bicep and he plants his thumb directly in the center of the stinging, raw, oval-shaped scrape on the back of her elbow. She hisses in pain and yanks free of him. Turns to face him, takes a rude and obvious step backward.
“What the hell is that?” he brays.
Ownership. Entitlement. One-way trust. It ends now.
She shows him the left again, then its twin on the back of her right elbow.
“Rug burn. And there’s a matching set on my knees.”
She watches him as understanding dawns; his mouth works, but no sound comes out. Finally he turns on his heel and leaves, his attempt at door-slamming defeated by the hydraulic closing mechanism of the heavy wood.
slickness, sweat, slip; clenching, shaking, unbearable release; the familiar taste of her own come, dripped into her mouth from a stranger’s fingers
Her concentration returns without delay; she stitches bits together on the table with a large needle and a gauge of thread that even They won’t be able to pull apart.
One of my favorite thing to do in small town Athens, Ga is to go exploring with my trusty sidekick. Sadie is her name and shes always down to clown. The train tracks are usually the best place to go as there is no lack of things to see and smell and piss on.
