Quintic (68 page)

A touch of
skin
against her lips was enjoyable
enough, as were teasing with her tongue, licking the crown, the
slit but nothing more. She couldn’t make herself close her mouth
around the shaft. Oral sex brought back too many flashes from that
dreadful night. Simply put, she did not want to suck the
gun.

The night of
the second creepy encounter, Lemieux had let her play. Knowingly.
Patiently. Until she could, once more, lap and taste and swallow
and
suck
. She had almost thrown up on him her first tries, but
Lemieux had not relented until she was over her aversion. Her
nights with him may not have cured her, but they did help her move
forward.

From
the foot of Christopher’s bed, she crawled
between his legs under the covers, kneeling at his
crotch.

“
Patricia,”
he warned in a whisper. He didn’t stop her, though.

She
lowered her mouth to his cock, feeling its heat
through the fabric of the briefs. It was firm, long, warm. She
softly tongued the head and nibbled it with her teeth.

“
Fuck,
Patricia,” Christopher cursed from somewhere outside her coverlet
cocoon. Still, he did not push her back.

Trying to
sleep, was he? She smiled as she nuzzled his groin. He smelled of
soap and something raw. She lavished the tip with her tongue until
both her saliva and his precum soaked the fabric. He was so stiff
already. How could he be so hard and not moved?

She wanted
him to slam into her
but knew he
wouldn’t, even if she asked. He had been fussing over her since the
club incident. She tugged his shorts down and sucked the head into
her mouth once before releasing him with a playful pop.

Even now she
had an overactive gag reflex but, thankfully, had learned her
limits. She put her hands firmly on his inner thighs, her knuckles
brushing his testicles. His flesh and muscles tensed under her
hands; was he resisting?

Her palms
imprinted his skin in an unconscious ready to push
back if needed stance. She shielded her teeth
with her lips and closed her mouth around him once more. She sucked
gently and forcefully in turn. Up and down. Not deep but deep
enough for him it seemed for he let out a low growl.

She teased
the crown
with her tongue, licking
softly. Licking hard. How could he taste this good? Her sex was
throbbing, its wetness soaking her panties. She wanted him to come
in her mouth. She wanted him to come into her. How could he not
rock into her mouth? She pressed her thighs together to alleviate
the pressure.

She
unshielded her teeth and brushed them against his shaft.
Damn
, she wanted to take a bite. He was
at her mercy. Immobile. Her pants filled her ears, the bedding
cutting out any sounds from the outer world. She gently slid her
hands to the sides and pressed against his testicles. Her thumbs
drifted over his balls, tracing small circles as he had done to her
earlier. He had had her already wanting just with his damn
thumbs!
C’est mon tour
maintenant, mon chéri
.

H
er tongue followed the sensitive
slit, his pulse beating fast against her skin, or was it her own
heartbeat? If he didn’t let go soon, she might climax before he
did. She lifted her head back, his shaft slipping out little by
little until her lips circled the thickness of the crown, the oh so
soft skin of the corona. She held just the slit in her mouth, her
tongue toying while her thumbs relentlessly drew
circles.

“
Take me
back in,” he ordered, his voice hoarse.

She smiled
around his shaft. She used one hand to brace herself, one hand to
fist the oh so hard root. Still, he did not move his hips, didn’t
thrust into her mouth, but he propped his upper half on his elbows
and curled his torso above her. When a hand brushed her head, she
froze. The caress was gentle, nor pushing nor demanding, before the
hand followed her spine tenderly over the covers. A vertebra at a
time, the hand reached her bottom, and long fingers pressed between
her butt cheeks. Strong fingers reached her folds.

Between her
thighs, the digits searched, probed, grazed over the covers, her
clothes. They rubbed at her sex with the layers of fabric. She lost
her rhythm, moaned around his shaft, half-sucking, half-choking.
The palm of his hand pushed against her sex, his fingers hard
against her, the fabric chafing.
Harder, please. Come into me, please, mon chéri. Please,
Christopher
. She climaxed as salty fluid
filled her mouth.

H
is usual cop controlling mode
had reached full force after that, and he had pampered her all
afternoon as if she was some delicate porcelain doll, exquisitely
fragile. How she thought it so infuriating! How she should have yet
hadn’t that afternoon. She did not consider herself delicate nor
fragile. She was tough, wasn’t she? Sort of. Well, maybe not so
much tough as resilient and damn stubborn. Or too crazy to stay
down.

What
next?
Without Christopher hovering over
her, she could think more clearly and weigh her options. Since she
had decided she was not afraid of the creep anymore, she had to do
something. Take care of it. Take care of
him
.

The first
item on her
what-next
list was finding the creep, but where? As she
knew first-hand, the man was crazy. If indeed he was Lemieux’s
killer and-or the stripper, chances were he would return to a club,
perhaps not right away but his arrogance would lure him back.
Thankfully, the team was covering that angle. Besides, no way was
Christopher going to let her in on the investigation. The Big guy
had not shared what he had in mind, but she was positive his plan
wasn’t pretty.

Christopher
always did the right
thing, but his sense of rights and wrongs wasn’t always legal.
Strange for a cop, wasn’t it? However, he was a good cop, go
figure. Since a cop gun-to-gun confrontation was too terrible to
imagine, she
absolutely
needed to find the
creep before he did. What she would do to the
salopard
once she got
her hands on him remained unclear. Kick him surely, but after? She
didn’t know yet, although for now, the possibilities were
(extremely) tantalising if somewhat a
tad
vicious.

She
asked Super Mario to track the creep down. Her
friend Mario was
feu
-Joshua’s most loyal buddy and
faithful right-hand man. Compared to Mario, Frédéric looked normal.
The morbidly obese recluse Mario never left his apartment. He lived
in front of his computers and had everything delivered,
electronics, food, women.

She
had offered herself to him a few times. Out of
friendship, out of pity, it was nothing really. Their lovemaking
strictly equated to hand jobs as in her fist around his cock. Mario
was too fat to stretch down on beds, let alone have sex on one
hence she hadn’t slept with him. He enjoyed her touch, and the task
never took long as he was, hum,
premature
. No need to undress, no
need to stroke or shake or anything, grabbing was enough. Perhaps
Christopher was right; they were all fucked up, all of them, her
included, her perhaps the most. Anyhow, Mario had ways to access
everything.

One did not
ask Mario for help directly. Her means of communication with the
paranoid Mario were varied and
always
more twisted than a circumvolution. Tonight, she left her friend a
cryptic message on her own writer personae’s blog, a blog she knew
he often visited.

“I need some help,” her message read. “Small baking job.
Piece of cake. With Super Mario on it.
”

I need some help
was clear
enough.
Baking
meant hacking. For
Cake
, Pattycake, Babycakes,
Cake, all were pet names Joshua and Co had granted her then.
Super Mario
was obviously Mario. He would understand and get in touch
with her, call, text, email, asked her to visit, depending on
whether he felt safe, nervous, paranoid or lonely. She knew the
creep’s name, and some aliases and nicknames he had used in the
past but didn’t dare wrote them in her message. Mario’s distrust
might have been a teeny bit contagious.

Her
friend
called her later that night at the
hotel. Had he sensed something was up? The man rarely if ever
called.

“
Direct
calls are risky,” Mario had warned her repeatedly. “Every single
governmental agency and terrorist organisation on the planet lurks
on hard lines.”

She took his
word for
it. On the rare occasions she
had called him direct in the past, her enormous friend had felt
compelled to change location in a panic. Needless to say, the move
had not gone smoothly.

Since the
creep was not an emergency − yes, he was dangerous but not
immediately threatening, had she not kicked him viciously? − the
call surprised her. His voice comforted her, though.

“
So, Mario,
can you help me?”

“
Yes, of
course, my pleasure, no problem, kitten.” Damn nickname.

“I remember some of his
names.”

“
Not over
the phone line. Text me the names, separately. I’ll send an email
with the address.” Smokescreen. “Here’s where you go to pick it
up.” More smoke. “It’s an Internet café, public place, very
busy.”

“
Okeydokey.
Another thing. I might need a couple of gadgets from the king. Is
he still around?”

The king,
the least
appreciated of Joshua’s
knights, had a knack for providing loaded toys. She had never been
comfortable with the king. Of Joshua’s friends, he was the only one
she didn’t get. Back then, she had thought him gay, in love with
Joshua, or perhaps just plain crazy, but he proved useful in
locating all sorts of things. If she was to confront the creep, she
wanted to be prepared.

“
Like what?”
Mario wanted to know.

No names
over the lines but on weapons, Mario had no objections. Weapons
were not his department hence not his crimes. “A stun gun, pepper
spray, handcuffs, a gun, whatever.” She would not confront the
Creep empty-handed.

“
Your
cop-
man won’t help?” Mario pointed out
not too subtly.

Christopher
knew how to get
tools. He kept
unregistered guns in his safe and probably had an additional
arsenal stashed somewhere. He had lent her a gun before, guns
actually, and would have gladly given her another one had she
asked. “I want tools coming without the third-degree option.”
Over-the-top protective Christopher the cop would not merely hand
her a gun, he might also have her followed or worse, lock her up
until he found and taken care of the creep his way.

“
Told
you
the cop’s no good.” Forever and ever
in Mario’s eyes, she remained Joshua’s queen.

“So you’ll ask the king?”

“Yes.”

After her
string of text messages
had been sent,
all she had left to do was wait. Wait for the location. Wait for
her gear. Until then, she didn’t have to decide, did she? She could
pretend not to know what she was going to do next. She wasn’t all
that good at waiting, though, so hopefully, Mario and the kind
wouldn’t keep her on hold for too long. Especially since
Christopher was keeping a close watch on her. The Big guy was good
at guessing her.

Tomorrow
, I’ll finish
Christopher’s report as he has asked
. Her
personal version of a decoy. Her account would explain the past
events’ chronology in detail. She would state the creep’s name in
bold letters; she did have to give Christopher that one name, did
she not? He probably knew it already, or at least, thought he did.
Since the creep was a devious
bâtard
, the name he had given
might have been that of his partner, another ugly fat dirty cop to
throw to the wolves if the pack got too close.

After that,
she was going to wait without giving any thoughts on anything
relating to Lemieux, the ugly fat cop or even Joshua until she
found the creep. Keep busy. Write. Walk. Draw. Write. Bus tables
and pour coffee at Vitto’s. Write. Draw. Work on her diner case.
Write. Wait. And find a way to, somehow, keep Christopher oblivious
to her plan.

Her Plans for the
Future

A
s it turned out, she had no
trouble keeping Christopher away for he did that all by himself. In
fact, he kept the entire team busy. At no other time in police
history had cops covered that many stripper clubs. The only time
she saw the team was at the office when she went back to finish the
damn report, and then at Vitto’s when they stopped late in the
afternoons for coffees and quick
hello
s.

For his
part, Christopher sneaked into her place at around three each
night, took a quick shower before slipping into bed next to her. He
left before she woke in the mornings. He hadn’t commented on the
report. Except for the creep’s name in the header, she never once
mentioned his name in the statement, referring to him as the
policeman. Christopher hadn’t remarked on that either.