Eli braces on the frame of the open door and we both go still as we try to recover in the boneless, breathless aftermath. It’s a long, silent moment. There’s only my heartbeat. The sound of cars in the distance. The quiet of deepening night. The soft buzz of the toy gripped in my hand.

Eli pulls away and I stay as I am, bare ass in the air and the toy still humming until he turns it off. He goes to the front seat to rummage in the center console and returns with soft, dry cloths to wipe us both clean. I take one from him and do the same for the toys as he completes his careful, almost sacred ritual of reverential strokes across my skin. Eli asks me to stand when he’s done as much as he can in this position, and places a gentle kiss on my hip as though the beast within him is satisfied, its thirst sated for a while.

But that is a lie. It’s one he tells himself. That the beast can be caged behind bone. The truth is, he is mine as much as I am his. And his beast now answers to me.

I back off the seat. I stand and turn to face him in the darkness. He moves to finish cleaning me now that gravity will pull our arousal down my legs, but I rip the cloth from his hand and toss it behind me onto the back seat of the car.

“So where are we going first?” I ask as I lift the hem of my dress so he can watch me insert the vibrator back into my pussy. I take the anal plug next, and turn to bend over so he can watch my slow and teasing little show. I know how much he loved a similar view in his office. He took his time. So I take mine, sliding the pointed silicone tip through the cum gathered at the entrance. I push it in, gently, carefully, oh so slowly, until it’s lodged to the jeweled handle. Then I slide my thong back into place and straighten, letting my dress drift down as I face Eli once more. “I suggest we find a club.”

Eli stands motionless in stunned silence, a dark hunger rising to the surface in his eyes. “Who are you?”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet, Dr. Kaplan? You may think you have a demon in you…” I say as I step toward him. I place my hands on his chest and rise up on my tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “But I’m the devil he worships in the night.”

OceanofPDF.com

29

OceanofPDF.com

ELI

If Bria Brooks is the devil, I will gladly burn in hell.

That’s my first cohesive, post-caffeine thought as I sit at the little round table in our cabin with a cup of coffee in my hands, probably looking as harried as I feel. I’ve never felt this mix of satisfaction and need before. It’s as though the euphoria of release fights with a coiling knot of desire in a constant push and pull. And Bria puppets these sides of me around like I’m pieces on a chessboard. I’ve never been so torn apart by a woman. Never so ready to both fall at her feet in worship and tie those ankles wide on my bed and fuck her until I die.

Except those feet are…not here.

When I woke, there was no Bria. Her side of the bed was cold. Just a note on the pillow. Direct and no fluff, just like the woman who wrote it.

Running. Back soon.

I check my watch. Seven. A needling worry twists in my guts. We didn’t fall asleep until nearly three. After the parking lot we did find a club, which was surprisingly packed, though I guess it’s not that shocking as the selection is limited in a city the size of Ogden. But the dance floor was dark, the music deafening. No one noticed as I lifted the hem of Bria’s dress when she was grinding into me. No one saw me pull my zipper down and slide my rock-hard cock into her ass. No one heard her say my name as I bit down on her neck. Funny what people don’t see when it’s right in front of them. Or if they do, they never say a word.

Christ, the thought of last night makes me hard.

But the realization that Bria is gone and has been for a while sends the blood rushing back up to my brain. I stand and look out the window. Nothing but trees and more trees. I check my watch again. Only five minutes have passed, but it feels like thirty. Time crawls at an agonizing pace and my worry only grows.

Ten minutes later, Bria breezes in, her skin pink with a dewy glow. Her expression is blank and unreadable until she meets my eyes and smiles, pulling out her AirPods. I feel like I can breathe again, and I realize how hard my heart has been pounding in my chest.

“Hi,” she says simply as she tilts her head and scrutinizes my features. She seems to work out that I’m relieved. “Did you not see my note?”

“Yeah. But I was getting worried.”

Her head tilts the other way. With her piercing intellect shining through her cool gaze, it brings back Fletcher’s words from the faculty kitchen. Bria the Velociraptor. She can and does eviscerate me. And I like it, when it’s not my heart she’s shredding.

“You could have been eaten by something,” I say, moving to the kitchenette to pour her a coffee.

“Eaten? By what?”

I shrug. “Bears.”

“That’s why I went on the road. Bear avoidance strategy.”

“That’s even worse, Bria. Some lunatic could have picked you up.”

Bria laughs, the sound so wonderfully exotic in this simple cabin that I halt the motion of passing her the cup just to watch and listen. “At this time? On a Saturday morning?”

Good point. But still. “Possibly. Do lunatics operate by limited hours? Do they have morning curfews?”

Bria takes the mug and raises it to her lips, blowing across the steam with a devilish gleam in her eyes. She doesn’t even blink when her hand snaps out, quick as a viper, and grasps my wrist. “How’s the hand, Professor?”

I’m riveted, spellbound as she gives me a charming smile and raises my hand, pressing my knuckles to her lips. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“Kiss? Well, I was thirteen, and there was this boy—”

“No,” I say, rolling my eyes as Bria’s smile turns teasing. “The self-defense. It didn’t come from some overpriced class at a gym. Your reaction time is too fast. It’s a martial art, isn’t it? Which one? Is it karate? Krav maga? Jiujitsu?”

“Yes.”

I blink back my surprise. Bria’s expression hardens, just a little, like armor shifting into place. That teasing smile is still there, but there’s no softness in it. “That was an either-or type of question, Bria.”

Bria’s eyes hold on to mine with a clinical curiosity, as though I’m a specimen in a lab. “I’m aware.”

“You know them all? How?”

“Like I said, Samuel valued a well-rounded education,” she says after a shrug. I wait for her to elaborate. My eyebrows climb in an unspoken request to give me more. But she doesn’t. “I’d better shower. We have to leave in forty-five minutes.”

Bria walks past me, her hands curled around her mug as she heads to the bathroom. I watch as she closes the door.

I just stand there a while, watching that door as though it might give up some revelation about the woman behind it. And in a way, it does. I realize now just how much she closes herself from view. What do I really know about her? What has she given up? Very little, really. Even on the long trip here, when I reflect on our conversations, the little anecdotes, the questions and responses, none of it gave me much insight into who Bria Brooks really is. If anything became too deep or invasive, she would redirect the questions to me. I knew she was doing it, but I didn’t want to scrape beneath those scars. But those brief glimpses into her shadows only make me want to cloak myself in her darkness.

Maybe it’s time to reach a little further into the absence of her light.

“How” is another question entirely.

That question haunts me as we eat breakfast. It follows me as we drive to the Hilton where a small meeting room has been reserved for the next three days. It drifts through my thoughts as Bria sets up her equipment and we review our notes. It only leaves when our first interview subject arrives, escorted by Agent Langille.