Page 321 of The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The Second Collection
“Who has you, girl?” I whisper against her temple as I rock gently in her.
She clutches at me, her arms and legs trembling. “You, Sir.”
“That’s right.” I lift up enough to look into her glazed eyes and let her see how pleased I am with her. “Your Sir has you. Am I letting you go?”
“No, Sir.”
“No, I’m not. I’m not letting my girl go. My wonderful, wonderful girl who trusts her Sir not to let her go.”
“Please,” she whispers. “Please stay in me, Sir.”
“I will, my girl. I will until you fall asleep. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Even though you’ll be sorry tomorrow when you can’t sit down. You want your Sir’s cock filling up your ass, don’t you?”
“Yes. Yes, please, Sir.” She tips her hips slightly, probably trying to keep me in her now that I’m going soft. If she wasn’t going to be asleep in a matter of seconds rather than minutes, I’d have to disappoint her, but I can feel her muscles going lax already, hear the slur in her soft voice as she sinks.
“That’s my girl. I’m right here with you, my girl. I have you.”
“Ankusrr.”
She’s going fast and I keep her enclosed in my body until she’s completely out, her body limp and heavy. She doesn’t even twitch when I gently draw out of her and clean us up. I flick on the night light I’ve asked Logan to put in the guest room since I’ve noticed she always sleeps with the bathroom light on, pull on a T-shirt so I don’t stick to her, and climb back into bed, rolling her onto her good hip and spooning in behind her. I tug the covers half off her, so she doesn’t overheat, and close my eyes. Despite the stresses of the day, I have a feeling we’ll both sleep well tonight.
At first, it looks like nothing has changed inside Shameless Studios. Same gloom despite the bright day outside. Same, gum-cracking, bored girl behind the counter. But, as I stand in the reception area, letting my eyes adjust to the dinge, I register some differences. First, I can clearly hear the buzz of the tattoo machine. Sounds like Mad Bob’s in residence. Second, there are more designs up on the walls and I can see without close inspection that they’re Brenna’s. No matter what the subject, her art has a certain style to it.
I think through the designs I saw in her sample book and remember a pair of intertwined dragons around a spinning globe of water. I liked it enough to contemplate asking Bren to add it to my sleeves. Mad Bob has a simple, almost crude dragon design up on the wall and I pace over to it, unpin it from the wall, and carry it over to the desk.
“Hi,” I say to get the girl’s attention. She didn’t look up when I came in, or while I took the design down from the wall, butnow she does, finally dragging her attention away from another fashion magazine. “Do you have any designs like this, but with two dragons?”
The girl cracks her gum. “Yeah, maybe.” She pulls a thick, zippered binder out from under the desk. As she unzips it, I see hundreds of pages within, each in a plastic sleeve. Some of the sleeves still have a strip of binding at one edge, where they were torn out of Brenna’s sample book. That fucker.
The girl flips to a sticky note labeled “Dragons” in a scratchy hand and flips through them. She pulls out two designs, one of which is the dragons and water globe I remembered.
“Yes, I like that,” I say. “Can I look through the other dragon designs, just to see if there are any I like more?”
The girl chews at her pierced, lower lip. “Bob said these aren’t to leave the desk.”
I give her my best, blue-eyed smile. “I’ll be right there.” I nod at the sagging couch. “I won’t ever leave your sight.”
“Oh, okay, I guess.”
She pushes the sheaf of dragon designs into my hands. I take them and carefully sit on the couch so she can see me and spread the designs out on the chipped coffee table.
They’re all Brenna’s.
I pick a random design, shuffle the rest back into a pile, and take them back to the desk. “I really like this one,” I say, showing it to her. “But now I’m thinking maybe I’d like a wolf as well. Any wolf designs in there?”
She nods. Before she starts pulling out wolf designs, I hold out my hand. “Here, I’ll look through them.” When she hesitates, I tip my head at the couch. “I’ll be right there.”
Glancing between the folder and the, evidently engrossing, magazine, she nods and hands me the binder.
I take it to the couch and flip through the whole thing. All of the designs are Brenna’s. I don’t remember her sample book wellenough to say if any are missing, other than the ones up on the walls, but this is the bulk of her hard work.
I linger, pretending to consider this design and that design. The girl behind the desk takes a call, apparently from her boyfriend, and they devolve into some kind of teen-speak that I wasn’t able to follow even when Naomi was speaking it. Something about a cat in a dress. She completely forgets about me. I lift my wrist to my face, pretending to scratch my chin, and speak into the microphone Logan’s clipped into my sweatshirt sleeve.
“I’ve got the book and a chance to run. Take it or confront Mad Bob?”
There’s a click in my ear, then Logan’s voice. “Take it.”
“Coming out,” I say.
