But now, it seems like it's taking on a life of its own. Like they're building up to a full out novel. Maybe I'll put them together into a nice book, and publish it for all of you. Of course, I won't put the ending here; there's got to be SOME reason for you to buy the book, right?
Anyway, I think Moriarty is keeping her game up, and it looks like Leland is coming along nicely...
Holmes sweet Holmes
“It’s
loaded this time, Molly.” He pulls back the hammer, making the noise that every
human seems to instinctively recognize, the sound that sends a shiver of fear
even down my spine.
“Are
you going to shoot me, Leland?”
His
eyes are cold, distant, but look a bit more shining than usual. Are those the beginning
of tears? He nods. “If I have to,” he says. “You need to be stopped.”
I look
at him and paint a seductive smile on my face. “Do I?” I try to make my voice
sound innocent, but I think I’ve forgotten how. Maybe coy will do. “Why?”
“You’ve
killed people, Molly.”
I
shake my head. “I have not.”
“You
blew up the rapist and murdered the serial killer.”
I bite
my lip, then shake my head again. “Even if that was true,” I say, “wouldn’t that just make me a vigilante working
for the side of good? It would mean these people –who deserved to die- now can’t
hurt anyone else. Isn’t that a good thing?”
“That’s
not how the law works,” he says, his hand steady. His eyes are drying though. I’m
not sure if that means he’s steeling his heart to shoot me, or if it means he’s
having second thoughts.
I
raise my hands, just in case. “It should be though, shouldn’t it? Isn’t right
and wrong more important than legal and illegal?”
“You’re
a thief,” he says. Good, he’s changing the subject. “And you ruined my life.”
The
laugh that inspires isn’t forced. “Really, Leland?” I almost drop my hands, but
the way his arm tenses when I start to lower them makes me stop. “You really
want to say that I ruined things for you?”
“You
did,” he insists. “You destroyed my reputation and ruined my career.”
I nod.
“And I provided you with a new one. A better career and a better reputation.
You were a second rate author, and now you’re a first rate detective. You’re
making more money. You’re happier. Don’t even try to claim that isn’t true.”
“It
wasn’t up to you to decide how I live my life.”
I
raise an eyebrow at the use of the past tense. Does he mean to suggest that now
it is up to me? Is he finally coming
around?
“I know you, Leland. Knew you better than you knew
yourself. I’m just trying to help you.”
Now it’s his turn to laugh. Rage flies across his face,
but it’s chased away with confusion before the mask of calm reasserts itself. “How
can you possibly expect me to believe that? You’ve done nothing but fuck with
my head for months now.”
“I showed you who you really are,” I say. “You know you
could’ve backed down any of those times I made you submit to me. You know you
could have refused.”
“I did refuse!”
his voice is getting louder and more angry, but his grip on the gun is getting
looser. I don’t think it’s pointed directly at me anymore. Ah, the war between
the conscious mind and the inner self.
I smile. “You refused out loud, but you submitted just
the same. You just needed to be able to tell yourself you had no choice. But
you did have a choice. You always had a choice.”
“You threatened to kill everyone in the bank.”
“But I didn’t.”
“You did kill
the rapist with the grenade.”
I shake my head. “Nothing to do with your submission.”
That confuses him, and he lowers the gun. It’s just for a
second, and he has it back up, pointed at me with a steady hand, long before I
could have acted even if I wanted to. I don’t even take a step closer. I just
stay where I am, a good and safe distance away from him. “You made me strip
naked and lick your boots.”
I nod. “And then you offered to lick the soles,” I say. “You
even asked if you could.”
“To get more questions!”
“And what made you follow those rules in the first place?”
“You said you were going to kill him.”
I roll my eyes. It’s meant to just look like I’m getting
bored with the conversation, or like I’m annoyed with him. It also tells me
that the window is three steps away, but locked, and the door behind him is the
only other way out of this room. I probably should have planned this better.
“Did playing my game change anything?” He shakes his
head. “Then you can’t blame the situation. You played the game because you
wanted to.”
“I never want to.”
I laugh. “Really? You didn’t want me on my knees in the museum?
You didn’t want me to” I look him hard in the eyes and enunciate the next words
“suck. Your. Cock?” I smirk at him, knowing that the rush of blood those words
sent through him were not making him angrier.
“You put a zip tie around my cock when you finished,” he
says, his voice steady but with a hint of laughter in it, like an old friend
sharing a memory. I smile and slowly lower my arms just a little, so my elbows
touch my sides and I can take a pose of seductive surrender, rather than one of
actual surrender.
“I didn’t make it too tight, did I?” I try to put as much
apology as I can in my voice. That’s how people make others forgive them. A bit
of tease, a bit of apologetic tone; it can do wonders. “You were able to get it
off.”
“Took a while,” he says. “Needed to get safety scissors.”
“Is that why you carry them with you now?” I ask. “So you
can cut yourself out of bondage if I tie you up again?”
He blushes, doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to.
I was kind of hoping he’d ask how I knew he carried them.
Then again, maybe it’s better that he doesn’t. If he thinks that I can actually
notice the bulge they make against his wrist, maybe he’ll start assuming that I
know everything, that nothing he does can ever escape my attention. That’s a
good quality to have in a submissive. If he thinks you’re really a goddess, if
he thinks you can’t be fooled and that he needs to always be perfect, just in
case you’re watching, then he’ll be more obedient. I think Jeremy Bentham wrote
about that. He was talking about prisons, not sex, but they don’t have to be
mutually exclusive.
“I’m not letting you go.”
The way he says it tells me that it’s not true. He is
going to let me go. I just have to give him what he wants first. I have to give
him a reason to let me go. I smile. “Do you just want another blow job?” I ask,
a little laugh in my voice. “Does the gun mean you want me on my knees?”
“I want you in prison, Molly.”
I shrug. “Someday, maybe. For a little while, at least.”
I would like to escape from prison some day. Of course, that would require that
I be caught, tried, and sentenced. I don’t think I’m ready for that. A long
court case just sounds so incredibly dull.
“If you don’t want me on my knees in front of you, if you don’t want to look
down into my eyes as I slide my lips around your cock,” I smirk again, “then
what do you want?”
He adjusts the gun, as if taking aim again. Completely
unnecessary. I’m getting to him. “I told you,” he says.
I hold up my hand. “Please don’t say you want me in
prison again, Leland. It’s not true, and we both know it.”
“You don’t know as much as you think you do.”
I laugh. “Of course I do.”
“The mask, the Incan one you stole from Peru? It’s a
fake. I had them switched as part of a sting to try and catch you. There’s a
tracking device in the mask.”
I shake my head. “That’s not true.”
“It is true. The bug sends out a GPS pulse randomly once every
twelve hours. It’s not constant, so you can’t check for it.”
I open my mouth and let my eyes go wide. “Why, if that
were true,” I put my hand in front of my mouth as if covering up my shock, “that
would mean they know where my secret hideout is. They’d be searching it even as
we speak.”
He nods.
“And they’d probably bring a demolitions team in case I
had the place booby trapped.”
He nods again.
“And you would have warned them that there might be fail
safes, and backups, and backups to the backups. Booby traps that are only set
when the old ones are diffused.”
He smiles.
“So that would mean that there are dozens of cops there, right now, focusing all their attention
on getting enough evidence to convict me of something.”
His smile fades a little at the laughter in my voice.
“Which would mean that the boys from the tenth precinct,
the one right next to the diamond exchange, would be too understaffed to
respond to what could very easily just have been a glitch in an alarm system.”
I smile. “You know, seeing as how the alarm only went off for about a minute
before the line was cut.”
He frowns. “What did you do?”
I try to look innocent again. I really should work on
that. Maybe another acting class. “I didn’t do anything, Leland,” I say. “I’ve
been here the whole time, safely held at bay by a stunningly handsome man with
a very scary and intimidating gun.” I wink at him. “Feel free to quote me about
the ‘stunningly handsome’ thing.”
He takes his finger off the trigger. He opens his mouth,
but the words don’t come. He swallows and tries again. “You’re using me? As an alibi?”
“Is that so bad?” Never mind innocent. Coquettish. Coy.
Those I can do.
He lets out an almost pained sigh and lowers the gun,
putting the hammer back in place. He could still raise his arm and shoot me,
but I’m more and more convinced that he isn’t going to do that. “Why do you do
this, Molly?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re a beautiful woman.”
I smile and do a little curtsy, then twirl around like a
ballerina, using the twirl to move half a step closer to him without him
noticing.
He rolls his eyes. Still doesn’t put the gun away. I
might have to take it from him. “So why all the elaborate ruses? Why the
crimes? Why ruin my career? If you knew so much about me, if you knew you liked
me, why not just come out and ask me on a date? Why not just have a
relationship? Why do you have to make everything so,” he gestures with the gun,
searching for a word, “complicated?”
“What would be the fun of doing things like normal
people?”
He laughs, incredulous. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding
me. You did all this just to make our relationship more interesting?”
I raise an eyebrow and adjust my footing. “Are you saying
we have a relationship?”
He shakes his head, but there’s half a smile on his face.
“You’re insane.”
I shrug. “Border between madness and genius is very
narrow,” I say.
“So is a prison bar.” His points the gun at me again, as
if remembering why he was here in the first place.
I roll my eyes. “And neither one can hold me,” I say.
“We’ll see about that,” he says. “I’m still going to take
you in.”
I let my shoulders slump and shake my head at him. “You
disappoint me, Leland. I thought we were really connecting.”
He pulls a pair of handcuffs out of the holster on the
back of his belt. That’s new, police issue. Interesting. He shows me the cuffs.
“We can connect when you’re in prison,” he says. “I’ll come visit.”
“Promise?”
He smiles and closes his eyes just half a second longer
than he should have. The tendons in his neck tense. He was expecting me to make
a move. When he opens his eyes and I haven’t moved, he looks relieved. His
smile looks so tired. “I promise,” he says. “Now are you going to put these on,
or do I have to do it for you?”
“As much as I love you serving my every whim,” I say,
smirking, “this I can do myself.”
I hold one hand up, not out, so he can toss the cuffs
rather than hand them to me.
He steadies his aim with one hand, and moves to toss the
cuffs. “Behind the back,” he says.
“You like it from behind,” I say. “I remember.”
He rolls his eyes as he tosses the cuffs.
More distraction than I need.
I catch the cuffs and throw them back in one quick
motion. He raises his hands instinctively to protect his face, and I slip one
foot behind his, one hand on his elbow, the other on the wrist holding the gun.
I twist, and he ends up on the floor with a heavy thud.
He looks angry, more at himself than anything else, and
glares up at me.
Right down the barrel of the gun.
I pull back the hammer and watch him freeze. “Should we
see if you were bluffing about it being loaded?” I ask. The way he shakes his
head tells me that he wasn’t. I wonder if he would really have shot me?
“This is not how I pictured this going,” he says, sighing
and looking up at me. He settles back on his hands, pretending not to worry
about the gun.
I smile at him. “Me either,” I say. “I always picture you
on your knees, not on your ass.”
Then I wave the gun at him. “In fact,” I say, “Why not
get on your knees like a good boy?”
“Or what? You’ll shoot me?”
I shrug. “Maybe. Maybe I’ll just fire the gun near your
ears and deafen you on that side. It’ll be temporary, but it’ll hurt like hell.”
I smirk at him. “And I do so love making you suffer.”
That’s more threat than he needs.
Once he’s on his knees, I pick up the cuffs and put his
hands behind his back. But I do it myself, gun pointed at him but not pressing
against him. Once they click shut, I slip a hand into his pocket for his keys,
letting my fingers trail against his leg on the way out.
“What should we do?” I ask, stepping around to stand in
front of him. “I’m not wearing the same boots, but you could clean them if you
want. Or maybe I should make you go down on me. I do have a gun, after all.”
“We could have just had a real relationship, you know.”
He shifts a little. “Before you crossed the line and made all that impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible, my love,” I say. I squat down so
that I’m looking him in the eyes. “I would have hoped you’d learn that by now.”
I sigh, run my hand through his hair. I grip tight,
smiling at the wince he makes. I kiss him, and he kisses me back, his tongue
almost throbbing with frustrated passion. I can practically taste the war
between his mind and his – let’s say ‘heart.’ He doesn’t want to like this.
Doesn’t want to enjoy the way I manipulate him, the way I break down his will.
He doesn’t want to enjoy every second of our conversations, doesn’t want to
love when I turn the tables.
But then, if he really
didn’t love all that, he wouldn’t have let me talk in the first place. He would
have just cuffed me and brought me in.
Maybe next time.
I break the kiss and let go of his hair. I pat his cheek
and unload the gun in front of him. I toss the keys over his shoulder, to land
between his legs. If he’s been practicing how to get out of handcuffs, I’ll
only have a few seconds. But that should be plenty.
“Next time,” I say, winking at him.
“Next time, I’m going to arrest you.”
“Promises, promises,” I say over my shoulder.
I’m gone before he can chase after me.
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