A/N: Life is finally getting back on track so hopefully I’ll go back to updating every other week or so. J enjoy ;)
“Who is she?” Hunter asked as the patrol officers worked fast to tape off the area. It was dead in the middle of the night, his groin still ached from leaving Emma at his door, and the biting air was doing nothing to cool off his heated temperament.
All in all, he was pretty fucking pissed off. No murder in over a century and the god damn fucking idiot had to choose this night, of all nights, to do it?
Robbie, the only detective that had any experience with murder – and it was because he’d moved here from Ontario to be with his wife – strolled up to him with a grimly set expression on his face. “Jennifer Woods, the eldest daughter. She was just about to fly out to the States to start some
graduate degree at some fancy ivy-league crapshoot in the fall.”
Hunter gave a curt nod. “Her stats?”
“Twenty two, a hundred and thirty pounds, five-four, strangulation marks across her throat.
She’s also got bruises on her wrists and ankles. Looks like the sick bastard had her tied up.” It wasn’t lost on either of them whose stats those closely resembled. Neither of them said anything.
They had been out here for over an hour now, and the night was only just beginning. Despite the town being so small that you could basically walk from one end to the other, it had taken Hunter a good twenty minutes to drive to the crime scene. A late night jogger had found the girl and had called it in. The guy had been running alongside the shore and had taken a detour to climb the Southside hills to grab the infamous view that Harbordale was so famous for. It was this little cliff that jutted out above the ocean, high enough that the town looked like a sprinkling of little lights in the distance but not so high that it was impossible to reach. The place was a hot spot for teenage hook-ups, photo-ops for traveling photography enthusiasts and now, apparently, murder.
“She’s a blonde though,” Robbie broke the silence, and voiced what both were thinking. “If he’d
been after someone that looks like… well, her, he’d have gone for darker hair.”
“It looks like a shit dye job from here,” Hunter shifted and folded his arms across his chest. “You can see her roots.”
“Shit. I missed that in the dark.”
“When does the detective get here?”
“Tomorrow morning. Newmarket station is waiting for your call to confirm the go-ahead though.”
Hunter sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, “Ok. Well, make sure to get forensics to finish collecting all that they can and to have the photos in my office by tomorrow morning. I want you to contact her family, and Dania to learn anything and everything about her by 11AM. We need to find out how she got here. Let me know when forensics is done, and when they move the body.” This was going to be a long night. And Day. And Week. Harbordale was officially, and had been for years now, completely unequipped to deal with murder cases. The protocol was to immediately dial in and share the investigation with Newmarket Police, who would then send in their own detectives to assist. There was a reason nobody from Harbordale spoke about Newmarket. Everyone who lived in Newmarket were assholes.
He turned around to head back to his car. He had to begin documenting, and prepare a strategy for this moving forward. News channels would be all over this the moment the story broke out, and he had to do damage control. He’d grown up in this town, and he could already imagine how they’d react.
Let’s just say it wouldn’t be fucking pretty.
“Sir, uh…” Robbie’s voice caught him and when he turned, he already knew what he’d say.
“Deny it.”
“But any average Joe will be able to put two and two together.”
Dania, who’d been circling the body for about forty minutes now, finally waked over to the two of them at the sound of their conversation. “Do you think we could dye her roots? Hide the fact she was a brunette?”
Hunter almost laughed at the absurdity of it. “Illegal. And also disrespectful.”
“I’m sure the girl would appreciate it,” she took a swig of her coffee, “God knows that if I died and I hadn’t had my roots done, I’d love it some sick bastard colored my hair so I look good for my funeral.”
“Jesus Christ,” Hunter gave a dry laugh, sounding empty. “Listen, as easy as it is to jump to conclusions, let’s not go there until we’re certain of some sort of connection. The last thing we need anybody talking about is that some sick fuck murdered a girl because she looked like Emma.” “People in Harbordale are crazy, but I never thought this crazy,” Dania sighed, giving a slight tremble because of the cold. “Should we maybe increase her patrol? Get someone to follow her at all times so we can see if anyone’s tailgating her.”
“There’s no need,” Hunter fished in his phone to silence the vibrating phone. It had been going off every two minutes. His brother. His aunt. His dad. Everyone else in the town who had heard about this already. “I’m keeping her at my house for the time being, and I’m aware of her whereabouts at any given time. Only someone with a death wish would come looking for her there and she’s surrounded by people when she works at the bar.” He ignored the annoying jab of possessiveness. “I’d rather we have our search team go back to her house and see if anybody’s gone back there. See if they’re searching for anything, or wanting something from her.”
Dania looked unconvinced, “I think they just want her to leave, boss.”
“A part of me doesn’t understand why she just doesn’t,” Robbie added. “I mean, what’s she got here, anyway?”
Had Robbie always been this annoying, or was he just tired? Hunter clenched his jaw, forcing himself to bite his tongue. “At this point, I think she’s helped us realize there’s a twisted, sick fuck living amongst us so rather than wonder why she hasn’t gone off running, we should thank her for doing us a favor. Whoever did this needs to be behind bars. Now, if there isn’t anything else, I need to go to the office.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned around and headed back to his car, feeling grumpier than he did one point five minutes ago. He hadn’t wanted either Robbie or Dania to point out the obvious, even though he’d been thinking about it since the very beginning. So it only pissed him off even more that they had. Yes, the girl resembled Emma and yes, he had a sinking suspicion that this was connected to her.
At the thought of her, he clenched his hands as the familiar rush of adrenaline rushed through him. How as it possible to hate someone yet want them so much at the same time? She was so stubborn that he wanted to shake her, until he’d broken that steel armor she kept erected so closely around her. Watch her drop her defenses, disarm her arrogance, and lock away that irrefutable sense of defiance that she held up against him at all times. She was rude, socially awkward as hell, and too insolent for her own good.
Yet at the same time, her arrogance challenged him and kept him on edge. Her stubbornness made him feel alive. She met him toe to toe, eye to eye. It was amusing to finally talk to a woman who not only was confident in her own intelligence, but believed herself to be smarter than he was. For years, ever since he’d gone through puberty in high school, girls swooned and bent over backwards for him. It’d become boring. It was the very reason he was almost thirty and still single. He’d gotten tired of boring after he’d been named Prom King in grade twelve and had dated the most popular girl in University.
Emma was the opposite of all of that, which is what made this so fucking confusing. If logic were working here, he should’ve let her go after that first night when she’d crashed on his couch. But it’d been instantaneous. From the first encounter. Her nerve at barging in on his house at 3AM had riled him up and she’d gotten under his skin ever since.
Every time she turned her back to him, it was a jab at his ego, which only made him want to break past her barriers even more. So that she could give him that attention that the little part of himself craved, the one that she’d neglected in the first place. It was beginning to feel like an addiction. An unhealthy one at that. It wasn’t even that he wanted her. It was that he wanted her to admit that she wanted him. Was that twisted, or what? Her defiance made him want to figure out what made her so insecure in the first place, that she’d resorted to locking herself away to a place where nobody could get in. He wasn’t stupid. You don’t just move to a small town in Northern Canada because you need some time to make some cash. Sure, he believed that was part of the reason, but he also believed she was running from something – whether she realized that or not.
Fuck, it was back. He’d just stared at a dead body for over an hour but thinking about her for five measly minutes had made the tightness underneath his zipper return to a point that was almost unbearable. What was even more unbearable was that she didn’t even know. It was painstakingly obvious that she had no idea how god damn beautiful she was. From the slight curve of her waist, to her lush breasts and those plump lips that he just wanted to devour. Her doe-eyes gave off a deceptively innocent demeanor to her face, as if she was little red riding hood wandering into a den of wolves without even knowing it.
He adjusted himself and then turned on the ignition. He needed to distract himself, or he wasn’t going to get through the rest of the night. That, and he had a murder investigation to get started on. x.x
Emma woke up to the sound of an alarm going off somewhere in the house and she fumbled around to turn it off. Belatedly, she realized it wasn’t an alarm but the sound of the door opening downstairs. Creaking open an eye, she realized it was almost five in the morning, and that it was probably Hunter coming back home.
She yawned and closed her eyes, too tired to even process that piece of information right now. She had stayed up pretty late in an attempt to wait for him, but the previous day’s exertion had begun to take a toll on her and she’d barely been able to keep her head up let alone keep her eyes awake. The initial thrill of his ‘proposal’ had kept her going for a while, but when her body decides it’s time to shut down, not even the apocalypse could keep her awake.
She rested like that for a good fifteen minutes, drifting in an out of sleep peacefully. Despite how much she had resisted coming here to Hunter’s house, one thing that she couldn’t deny was that the guest bed was a thousand times more comfortable than the stone cold mattress that she’d been sleeping on back at her own house. Regardless of the stress, her muscles were definitely happier and that cold she’d been fighting off actually felt like it had backed off to bay. The wonders that good, proper sleep could do were amazing.
It was around five thirty that her eyes stayed open and she rolled onto her back to listen to the sounds going on downstairs. He had spent some time in the kitchen, microwaved something and filled a glass with tap water. She’d heard the sound of a chair scraping against the floor and then radio silence from then on. He hadn’t come upstairs because the galley lights hadn’t gone on, and she could always hear him in the room beside her.
Lying there, she began to feel a little antsy. Not just because of the reasons he had left, but because of what he’d said before he’d gone too.
All I can think about is bending you over my kitchen table and making you beg for me to finish.
She covered her face with her palms and let out a silent scream.
Ok – yeah, she was pretty awake now.
She stayed like that for a good fifteen minutes, hoping that she could fall back asleep. But there was no way. He had said they were going to finish the conversation the moment he was back. Well, he’d taken a hell of a time to come back and she’d fallen asleep, but God knew she’d be lying if she said she didn’t want to go downstairs right not to see what he had to say. Or do.
Feeling too restless to even shut her eyes, she slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the bathroom at the end of the hall. Being quiet so that he wouldn’t hear her walking, she washed her face with warm water to calm herself down and then drank some ice cold water from the bathroom tap to avoid going into the kitchen.
It was on her way back that she did it. It was on a step right by the bannister, just before her room. A floorboard that needed replacement because it was on its way to caving in. She stepped on it, and creaked loudly, sounding magnified in the hushed, quiet house.
She heard the ruffling of papers stop and she closed her eyes and sighed. Well. He knew she was up now.
Standing there, she debated what to do.
It was only after she decided that she wouldn’t be able to avoid this situation forever – and she didn’t even know if she wanted to, frankly – that she swallowed her nervousness and went down the stairs.
She found him sitting at the kitchen dinette table, right by the counter where he’d kissed her for the first time. His hair was tousled, his five-o-clock shadow looked like an eleven-o-clock shadow, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He looked up sharply from his papers, and despite the all-nighter he’d pulled, his eyes were as bright as ever.
And heated. He shamelessly looked down her body, taking in her bare legs that were tucked under a pajama shirt that reached mid-thigh.
She tried not to quiver right then and there.
“There’s fresh coffee in the pot,” he said hoarsely, putting down the papers he was holding. He leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking under his weight.
“Thanks,” she squeaked. Fuck. Her heart was pounding.
She poured the coffee into a mug silently, knowing that he was watching her the entire time.
Did he have to do that? Watch her all hungry-like? It was distracting.
“You must be tired,” she finally said as she took a small sip of the coffee. It was almost too bitter for her taste, harsh on her lips. She looked at the floor, not knowing what to say. “Who died?”
“You wouldn’t have ever met her. She lived on the other side of town.”
“Do you know who did it?”
“No, not yet. We’re running the tests. If the person left any prints, we’ll know soon.”
“Hm,” she was by the sink, almost as far away from him as she could get. She didn’t know what it was about him, but she sometimes forgot to breathe when he was near. Had this just started happening? Or was is it just because of the anticipation of what was going to come? Not breathing was never good.
He seemed to be enjoying himself. Was that smugness, amusement or a hint of enjoyment?
“How long did my brother stay?”
“They stayed until midnight or so. Jessica wanted to put the kids to bed.”
“Right,” he paused, “And you?”
“And me, what?”
Something in the room had changed, almost instantaneously. How had that happened so fast?
She’d just gotten here. She could feel it though. A change of dynamic. An electricity in the air. Whatever papers were lying in front of him, they were long gone and forgotten about. “What time did you go to bed?”
“Late,” one word answers were all that she could muster at this point. “One.”
“You stayed up?”
“Mmhm,” it was barely a whisper.
The silence stretched between them for what felt like an eternity. Emma had no idea what to say, and didn’t think she could even if she wanted to. Her heart had taken to drumming as a profession and she wasn’t sure words would make sense at this point. And Hunter? His smugness almost made her mad. He just sat there, calmly watching her.
“Come here,” he said quietly, his face serious.
Emma made sure to take her time to take a long swig of her coffee before she did anything. She was freaking out to the tenth degree, and her body was near trembling with anticipation, but she’d rather die than let him see that. When she was sure that she’d steeled her nerves, she placed the coffee on the counter and then walked over to the table.
When she reached it, he clasped her wrist and tugged her forward. With his other hand firmly on her thigh, he maneuvered her onto his lap so that she was straddling him. Her face flushed immediately, and she swallowed. Her mouth was suddenly dry.
His eyes were lidded as he nestled her closer. With only his jeans and her pajama shorts separating the two of them, it was hard to mistake the thickness that was pressing up against her. He rocked her gently, just once. She gasped involuntarily, betraying herself without wanting to.
His arms locked her in and for the first time that night, she realized that Hunter wasn’t as calm as he had initially appeared to be. His breaths were choppy, and his muscles were tense under her palms. She realized then, that he wanted her, just as much as she wanted him.
He leaned forward and kissed her gently on the shoulder, and she craned her head to the side to allow him more access. He left slow, excruciatingly slow, kisses across her collarbone, trailing them up her neck until he reached her mouth.
He didn’t move, and neither did she.
“Are you sure about this?” he muttered, and in that moment, she knew that it was taking Hunter all the self-restraint he had in himself not to kiss her then and there.
She slowly flattened her hands on his chest and smoothed them over the taut muscles she could feel under his shirt. “Hunter,” she whispered, moving closer to his ear. She gave his lobe a barely-there nip, “I’ve been ready since you walked through those doors this morning.”
x.x
A/N: Don’t kill me. *hides*
If it helps, I’m pretty excited to write the next chapter. Not sure how graphic I’m allowed to get on this website? Any words of advice before I approach this?