Fun in the Den Read online

  Of course, they were dubious the entire time I talked about my assailant. I had known that the news had never mentioned anyone dead besides Karli. Apparently the police report didn’t mention the assassin either. But they didn’t object when I talked about the mysterious assailant. They believed me.

  Okay, I also fudged a few details when I discussed my flight. I didn’t want to give them any more details than I already had about my home in the Italian Alps. But they only really cared that I tell them the correct airport. I also didn’t offer details about Donald, my past lover and past victim whose home I’d stopped in so I could lose my tail.

  I kept going into the previous night, how I trailed Dawes to the bar. How I’d seduced her without giving myself up (or so I’d thought at the time). I wanted to ask Dawes what had given me away, and when she’d known that I was, in fact, a world class thief. I had a feeling she knew early on, at least by the time we were fucking. That would explain how wet she was—she’d been excited not just about fucking me, but also about catching me.

  But they insisted I keep telling my story. They wanted to know when I knew that Dawes knew. Which, frankly, had been when I woke up naked in bed with Fowler standing over me. Maybe I’ve lost a little equilibrium, because that’s far too late.

  Once my story was finished, Fowler and Dawes looked at each other for a minute, staring into each other’s eyes. I considered whether they had some code worked out by the twitching of their eyes or something of that sort, but, honestly, I think they just knew what the other was thinking from long experience.

  Finally Dawes nodded. Fowler, without saying a word, stood, grabbed his coat, and left the apartment.

  Dawes turned to me. “Thomas will be investigating for a while.” She kept staring at me, but she didn’t speak, not for a minute, not for two. I tried to pay attention to the books on their shelves, but it was hard to do, knowing her eyes were boring into me.

  I finally gave up wait. I sat in the chair they’d told me to take an hour before. I crossed my legs at Dawes, knowing that my robe would let that maneuver reveal what was between my legs.

  Dawes didn’t bat an eye. I suppose she’d had a better view last night.

  “So what do we do?”

  “We sit here. We wait.”

  “Really? Isn’t there something we can do? Isn’t there something you should do, at least? You’re a detective, should you be detecting? Failing that, shouldn’t you open up your office?”

  I knew about the place. They nominally had an assistant to greet potential clients and take down a little information if neither Dawes nor Fowler were present. But they shared that assistant with a psychic down the hall. It was a weekday, so there would be clients. Paying clients—unlike me. Don’t get me wrong, I would gladly have paid if Dawes and Fowler asked—I would double their usual fee and more. But they didn’t want to take money from a criminal.

  Dawes didn’t respond. She kept staring.

  So I stood and walked out of the room. Dawes followed me. It was clear she was going to keep a close eye on me. It was also clear that I shouldn’t even think about leaving. I was to stay put, at least until Fowler returned. I could have overpowered Dawes, probably—at least enough to escape. But I wanted her cooperation. I needed it.

  So I sat at the kitchen table and grabbed a few leftovers. Dawes sat down opposite me.

  “Is this all you’re going to do today?” I asked as I popped a grape in my mouth. “Just sit and stare at me?”

  Dawes did not respond.

  I wanted her to say something. To do something. Anything. Those eyes staring at me felt like an invasion of privacy. And, hell, if she wanted in on my private space, I wanted more than her eyes to be involved.

  “Do you normally send Fowler out to do the work, while you stay at home, play the housewife?”

  Dawes laughed. But she didn’t respond.

  “Come on. Why are you here, just watching me??”

  “I am working. I want to make sure our one good lead doesn’t flee.”

  “I need your help. I’ve made that clear.”

  “We also need to make sure you don’t steal anything, or hack into our computers.”

  “Yeah. And you had to stay and babysit me?”

  “Thomas is not exactly your biggest fan. If you hadn’t noticed.”

  I half smiled. I’d pissed him off this morning, but only because he was ready to be pissed off. I leaned across the table, wishing I was wearing less than I was. “And you are?”

  Dawes laughed. She didn’t reply.

  “I know he enjoyed the orgasms I gave him during our last meeting. It can’t be that,” I said. “I think he accepted that I was playing him while seducing him, since that was the same thing he was trying to do to me. And, in the end, I wasn’t a good enough player to steal your client’s art collection.”

  Dawes remained stoic. At least her stare wasn’t as constant any longer.

  “What then? Did he really care that I fucked you? It’s not like he hasn’t had his own chance with me. And it’s not like you don’t have permission to sleep around too.”

  Dawes sighed. “He dislikes how your last encounter ended.”

  “I thought I already covered that.”

  “No. He can’t believe how easily you walked away. How friendly you made the last conversation. He assumed you were going to come back, to try again.”

  “I know when I’m beat. Plus, I got a bad man arrested.”

  “He doesn’t trust that that’s all.”

  “That’s not my fault. I may be…” I caught myself about to admit I was a burglar before their recording devices and restarted. “I may not be an angel. But I’m not just a devil either.”

  “Yeah, well. And then you turn up like this, as if you’re trying to get caught. Thomas just can’t trust you at this point.”

  “For once I’m being honest.”

  “About what you’re willing to say.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t know what else to say, so I went back to the food that had been left on the table. It was cold by now, some of it was dried out. But I was hungry, and I didn’t have anything better to do. At least, it didn’t look like I had much that I would be allowed to do.

  I wanted to get to the investigation. I wanted to look at Dawes and Fowler’s files on this case. Preferably with their permission. Maybe with one or the other looking over my shoulder if that was necessary to make them feel comfortable.

  But I didn’t get to look. Not yet, at least.

  “You want to fuck while we wait?”

  Dawes looked at me, about to roll her eyes, when she realized I wasn’t joking. “Really?” Dawes said.

  “We had fun last night.”

  “But the situation has changed. I was fucking you for the job.”

  “Well, we could fuck again. For fun this time.”

  Dawes raised an eyebrow.

  “Come on,” I said, nodding in the direction of the bedroom.

  “Do you really want to fuck me? Or are you just looking to pass the time?”

  “Would that be so bad?” I said. “Look. We’ve both got libidos. We’re not exactly strangers at this point…”

  “No,” Dawes said, before I could keep going with my pitch. “Last night I was fucking you to keep you from running away, while my husband looked into you and returned so we could deal with you together.”

  I raised an eyebrow. I knew full well that there was more to the situation than that. She was definitely into me, enjoying my body while she did that work. But it wouldn’t help to argue. If I wasn’t getting laid again, I wasn’t getting laid.

  “Then could you stop staring at me all the time? Could we work while you make sure I don’t flee? I’m going to grab my bag and get a tablet so I can check up on a few things, see if there’s anything more that I can learn about Karli’s murder. All right?”

  Dawes didn’t give me the okay, but at least she didn’t stop me either.

  It wasn’t like there
was much I could learn without their files. But I needed to be doing something to keep from going mad.

  Fowler came in and, shortly, nodded to his wife. They dragged me back to the library for another interview. I still didn’t sit down. I stood behind the chair.

  “Your story checks out.” Dawes spoke as if Fowler really had let her know by telepathy, and not just a nod letting her know that Fowler had decided my story was the truth, or close enough.

  “I spotted someone waiting for you at your hotel, at least,” Fowler said.

  “And…” Dawes prompted her husband.

  “The story that we’ve been hearing from the German police doesn’t quite add up; we were suspicious before you arrived. Plus, we received a tip. I’d assumed it was from you, trying to throw us off the trail. Albeit, by fingering yourself. That no longer made sense when you showed up here.”

  “But now…”

  “We still don’t trust you. You have a lot of money to throw around. You could be hiring people.”

  “However,” Dawes said, “your story is certainly the most likely explanation.”

  I loved to watch them bickering. I would have liked it to go on and on, if there wasn’t more important work to do. I sat down in the chair they wanted me to sit in. I’d cooperate, since they finally were. “So what has happened?”

  Dawes took over. “The police received an anonymous call from a woman that sounds something like you. But not perfectly. It came in almost two hours after you said you left.”

  “Uh-huh. No alarm.”

  “The signal must have been redirected.”

  “They found Ms. Hofmann’s body as you described, but no one else inside. No other bodies. Not even any blood stains. Not even any traces. However, her art had been stolen.”

  “It was staged to look like me?”

  “Except the Wolf has never killed before,” Dawes said.

  “That anyone knows of,” Fowler interjected.

  “I’ve never killed anyone,” I insisted.

  Dawes just nodded. “But it definitely set everyone looking for a thief. Those are the big contradictions with your story. There are others, of course, but those are the big ones.”

  I questioned them a little more. I wanted to know what Fowler had learned when he left us. It turned out that he had found the person who had trailed me through London. He showed me a picture, and I confirmed that it was the same man. Fowler said he was a local private eye. Not a top one, but someone who could follow a suspect as well as the next private dick.

  Not quite a dead end. Dawes and Fowler could try to figure out who hired him, but it would take awhile.

  But there was also what Fowler had been doing while leaving his wife alone the last few days, trying to look for me. Most of it had been spent looking for clues, hitting up underworld contacts who didn’t have a clue about the Wolf’s identity. The ones who recognized me from the sketch Fowler showed clammed up. At most they laughed at the idea that the woman they knew was the Wolf. But they certainly wouldn’t reveal where I was even if they had a clue.

  Fowler would have pressed, if he thought any of them had seen me recently.

  He did have a chance to review the scene of the crime, but he didn’t think the police had missed anything. At least, he couldn’t see any evidence still remaining that the police had missed. He didn’t like to admit that the police might be corrupt, though he also didn’t believe that they would be so thorough, normally, as to not leave even a small stone unturned.

  After that, he tried to trace my exit. My car had been seen heading through the village, on the way to Munich. He could follow my car to the airport, but not to the hotel I’d stayed in, or my flight out. It had looked like a normal dead end case involving the Wolf. It had looked like I was too cunning to leave anything for the police or detectives, even those at the top of their game.

  It was clear that Dawes and Fowler needed a breakthrough. They needed my information if they were going to accomplish anything of value with this case.

  “Satisfied?” Fowler asked.

  I didn’t have any more questions. Fowler was thorough in his story. But that didn’t mean I was satisfied. “Can I see the files?”

  “We’ll give you copies.”

  I did not read the files immediately.

  While they handed over a drive with those files quickly, they also offered plenty to distract me. Not intentionally, mind you. We moved to the living room. They sat on the couch next to each other, while I picked an easy chair and started to load the files onto my tablet.

  But Dawes and Fowler were looking at each other, leaning in close, whispering. I could practically see the hot breath hitting each other’s faces.

  And then Fowler kissed his wife. Not just a polite peck on the cheek, or even a chaste kiss on the lips. He nibbled on her neck.

  And she returned the favor by licking his ear. Fowler had to stifle a moan.

  “Are you two serious?”

  “You’ve apparently kept my wife wet,” Fowler said.

  “And we don’t have any intimate secrets to come from you.”

  “But…” I started to object. But, frankly, I didn’t want them to stop. I liked the idea that I’d had Dawes wet all day while she kept watch on me. I like the idea that she was tempted to whole time to get naked. She’d denied her interest in licking my pussy again, but clearly she’d at least been a little bit interested the entire time, while I was just wearing a robe and not even trying to make sure it covered me.

  I hope that Fowler’s hard on was also inspired, at least in part, by me.

  I had to watch, though, as they kissed each other, their hands started to roam across each other’s arms.

  They did not, however, engage in exhibitionism.

  “We’re going to the bedroom,” Dawes said. “You won’t run away, right?”

  “We have cameras, with feeds we can pull up in the bedroom,” Fowler added. I’m not sure if he was bluffing even though I hadn’t seen any such thing the night before. “So don’t try to steal anything.”

  I wasn’t interested in running away, so it didn’t matter if they were bluffing.

  “Why don’t you have me join in? Then you’ll know I’m not up to anything bad.”

  “No,” Fowler said. “Definitely not.”

  Dawes smiled at me, as if to say, were it up to her alone, I could join in. Except I’m not sure that was the case at all.

  “Come on, I’ve fucked both of you individually. What’s the harm in doing it together? I can play second fiddle. I can warm you two up, play with whatever you want to get you two good and going. You don’t even have to worry about my pleasure. I can be your fluffer.”

  Fowler got up and helped his wife up. They walked hand in hand out of the room. They just ignored me.

  Fuck, it was hard to get them to sleep with me again, now that we were all being honest with each other.

  Once they were out of sight, I stood and followed behind them towards their bedroom. I wasn’t going to get any work done right now, was I? But even if I kept out of sight, Dawes and Fowler both were trained to listen for people following them. They could hear me moving after them.

  “Don’t try to follow us in, either,” Fowler said. “We’re closing the door.”

  I didn’t care. Oh, I would have liked to watch. That would have been a consolation prize. But I’d listen at least. I knew how Dawes liked to moan, how Fowler rocked the bed.

  As promised, the bedroom door was closed when I came up to it. I shucked off the robe and sat down on top of it, spreading my legs. I tried playing with myself a little, but I couldn’t get into it. I could barely hear the sounds of Dawes and Fowler through the door. So far they were just kissing, maybe caressing. Nothing that made much sound; what sound it did make hardly inspired the imagination.

  Maybe I should have just pulled up some porn on my tablet and got off to that.

  But, as I knew would happen, their activities started to be apparent from behind the closed
down. They called each other naughty names and told each other what to do. Fowler was clearly ravenous for his wife’s pussy. I heard him begging to be allowed to lick it.

  But the best parts were when they talked about me. I had to strain to hear when they spoke my name. I wished I could calm my beating heart. But they were talking about how they both enjoyed my body. After I made my offer, Fowler could only think about getting naked, kissing his wife standing up, while I knelt between them, alternately sucking his cock and kissing Dawes’ pussy.

  It would have been more fun if Fowler had agreed to my proposition. But I could play with myself to the imagery. I could think about seducing them later. Or fantasize about them just giving in.

  And, as their sex went on, they forgot to stay quite when talking about me.

  “You’re better than she was, last night,” Dawes said. “You’re a better cunt eater.”

  “You’re just saying that to make me feel good,” Fowler said. But then he did something to try to prove Dawes’ point, because in a moment she practically howled.

  Maybe I should have busted in and suggested we have a competition to see who was better at giving head, if they wanted to question it. I wouldn’t care that Dawes would be a biased judge, that she would pick her husband no matter what, so long as she actually gave me access.

  But even if they were still just enjoying foreplay, I was much further along. My fingers were moving with a mind of their own across my clit.

  “Moan her name for me.”

  “Oh, God, Evie.”

  I came, even though that’s not my real name, or one I use often. I came because I’d heard her crying that out last night, genuinely (her orgasms were genuine, even if our excuses for fucking each other weren’t.)

  After I finished myself, I went back to working on the files. I thought about staying by the door, maybe hoping they would come out and find me a hot mess when they took bathroom breaks after the first round, but, with my libido subsiding, I knew that was just fantasy. And I knew I needed to get to work, even if Dawes and Fowler were distracted. For a while the distance between the bedroom and the living room was enough to keep me from getting distracted. But Dawes and Fowler really weren’t trying to hide their moans anymore. It was like they actually wanted me to hear their fucking.