John ran a finger along Anna's back but she barely moved. He bent over to kiss a line across her shoulder blades and she only sighed. Even the tiny shiver that ran through her when he moved the covers off her body was not enough to wake her. That just made John smile as he carefully traced his line of kisses down to her leg. The same leg he lifted so he could place a delicate kiss at her core.

Still, Anna only hitched her breathing but did not wake.

He grinned, running just the tip of his tongue along her to taste the wetness there. Wetness remaining from their activities after breakfast, perhaps. Whatever it was from, John hoped a particularly erotic dream, it only fed his desire to continue running his tongue along her in longer and slower strokes before spreading her to press deeply into her center. She whined and John dug his tongue deeper to taste more of Anna until she gasped.

Tilting onto his side, his hand clutching at her thigh to keep it at his shoulder and his head between her legs, John used his other hand to let his fingers join in the fun while his tongue sought out her clit so he could suck it hard. Anna's legs tightened around his head and her nails dug furrows in his scalp. But John continued until Anna muffled her shrieking finish with one of the pillows.

John placed a final kiss just above Anna's hip before he extricated himself from between Anna's legs. He ran his hands slowly over her legs as he waited for Anna to calm. Once her body slowed its quivering, John leaned over and put his hands on either side of her head.

"Good morning." He dipped down to kiss over her cheeks before stopping at her lips. "Are you going to open your eyes?"

Anna's hands moved up John's chest and put her palms to his cheeks to bring him back for another kiss. "No."

"No?" John laughed against her lips, continuing kissing Anna as he shifted his hips against her, and groaned as Anna's fingers flexing in his hair again. "Why not?"

"Because if I do," Anna tried to kiss him again but John avoided her, almost grinning at her pout. "Then I'll actually be awake."

"Why would that be a bad thing?" John adjusted to kiss down the column of Anna's throat, grinding his hips into hers.

"Your mother," Anna hissed at him, her fingers digging behind his ears to guide him to her breasts. "Is just down the hall."

"And if she didn't hear us earlier," John taunted, running his tongue around her nipple. "Then this won't bother her either."

Anna's legs tightened around John's hips as her hands moved to his shoulders. It took John a second to realize Anna's contortion put her under him before one of her hands grasped him tightly. He bucked in her grasp and let out a moan when Anna finally opened her eyes.

"This might bother her." Anna angled her hips and John maneuvered under her direction to bring them together. "I intend on being loud."

John could not stop himself kissing Anna as she rolled her hips against him and they started to move. The dig of her nails in his shoulders and at the back of his neck almost enticed John to drive recklessly forward, to thrust with abandon. And when Anna bit down on his ear before whispering that exact desire, John gave himself over to the punishing piston of his hips to meet the vice-like grip of her knees on his hips and the clench of her vaginal walls around him.

Even with the risk of the bed frame knocking against the wall and the springs under the mattress creaking with their efforts, they moved together. With no finesse and few words punctuating between their muffled moans or hissing breaths. John's hands alternated between running over Anna's body and holding to the mattress to try and increase leverage. Anna's nails dug into his shoulders, his sides, and his ass as she guided his movements before calling out when John's mouth went to her breasts. And her fingers snaked between them to run over herself, bringing John over the edge when she touched him in the process.

They sagged together on the bed, the light of day filtering through the blinds to paint them with intermittent color, and John moved to the side. Anna tried to grab for him but John caught her hands, kissing at them before smiling at her. "I didn't want to crush you."

"I doubt you'd do that." Anna sighed, sitting up slightly and putting a hand through her hair as she looked at the clock. "You woke me up far too early Detective. Far too early."

"I didn't want to rush what is a very delicate process." John traced the line of Anna's leg, running toward her hip before dipping between her legs a second. "I had to make sure you were satisfied."

"I don't think that's ever a true concern for you."

"No?" John blinked up at her, his fingers moving lower as Anna twisted to put herself within his grasp and bent to kiss him.

"No," Her fingers traced the lines of his face. "You're far too good at this to leave me anything but satisfied."

"Am I?"

Anna nodded before patting his cheek, "Don't let this go to your head, but I don't think any of my foreign acquaintances were quite as efficient as you. Many of them knew the tricks but not the trade, if you get the meaning."

"I understand that completely." John nodded seriously, his fingers moving deeper. "That being said, would it not make you the victim of a gross many unsatisfactory encounters?"

"They were pleasant enough and, given the times and places, exactly what I needed." Anna moved again, giving John a frown when she wrapped her fingers carefully around his wrist to draw his hand away from her. "But, like time and experience, I'm ready for something a little more these days."

"Like when you can afford good wine."

"Exactly." Anna's smile almost turned into a leer as she pressed on John's shoulder to encourage him to shift further down the bed. "And there is one trick that I want to teach you."

"You're assuming I don't know a few tricks myself."

"I know you do." Anna moved behind his head, her knees impacting his shoulders as she bent over to kiss him. "But I want to make this one of ours."

"I'm at your mercy." John arched his back to kiss at Anna's breasts before she stretched over him. "Whatever you want I'll give you."

"What a lovely thought." Anna raised up, "For now, just repeat your performance from this morning."

John followed her instructions, using his fingers at her hips and ass to bring his lips to her. The taste of her, almost elevated by the combined scent of them together, had John licking and sucking at her harder than he did to ease her awake. And even harder when Anna's mouth wrapped around him.

For whatever time John worried he needed to recuperate between his orgasms, Anna proved that false. It was almost like being a teenager again. Except the difference, John tried to elucidate on to himself as a means to stop himself jerking and bucking helpless into Anna's mouth, was that instead of his hormones it was Anna. Her influence kept him ready and waiting as if all she need do was twitch her finger and he was ready for her.

A fact she proved when, as John finished sucking at her clit, Anna's body quivered and trembled over him. It took a moment for John to try and drink it all but Anna did not allow him to finish. Instead she shifted forward, slinking almost like a cat to crawl over his body and sheath him in a single motion.

John's fingers clutched into the rumpled sheets before he held desperately to Anna's hips. Where earlier she encouraged him faster, now she rode him slowly. The gyration of her hips set to the pace of a tune John could almost hear left him struggling to breathe. And with her back to him, all John could do was follow the lead she set with almost imperceptible cues with her motions. The ones that had him sitting up and pivoting them so his feet could rest on the floor.

If the bed springs squeaked when their whole weight was on it, then the squawking of it with them hanging off the side was almost an alarm. One they both ignored as John's arms wrapped around Anna to hold her closer as his hips found the leverage he needed to thrust deeper into her. His hands kneaded at her breasts and obeyed when Anna pried one away to move between her legs with hers. Their fingers interlaced as they moved and they almost came in the same moment, trying to bury the sounds in a kiss they broke early so John could grunt his finish into Anna's shoulder and she covered her mouth with her hand.

They calmed, the room almost stuffy from their exertions and practically reeking with the scent of sex, and laid back on the bed. Anna took her turn to slip from John this time and they lay together as their chests rose and fell with the synchronization of their breathing. Their fingers sought blindly over the sheets to for another and interlaced again until John sat up.

"We should get ready."

"Yes." Anna sat up as well, "We've both got to get dressed in clothing that's not from yesterday or someone might notice."

"I think Robert's already noticed." John bent to the floor, retrieving Anna's things and handing them over before finding his own. "At least he thinks he knows that there may be someone."

"Trust a detective to notice when another one's wearing the same white shirt two days in a row." Anna managed a little snort as she took the offered dressing gown. "But your mother surely knows."

"I think she's a little happier knowing you're a nice girl instead of fretting that I might be spending my time and money with prostitutes."

"They're not all bad."

"No, they're not, but I don't intend on catching a VD to go with this." John slapped his right leg. "I think the damage I've already got is more than enough for me to not want a disease."

"Fair." Anna paused, "What did your mother think of you bringing a girl here? We are, after all, not married."

"I think she'd rather we were married but given she didn't bang on the wall or interrupt us I'll assume she didn't mind as much as I thought her Catholic upbringing might insist."

"You've got a Catholic upbringing."

"I'm also divorced." John selected his clothes, "I'm not exactly living the life of a devout Catholic."

"Or me." Anna examined the room. "But I'm Anglican so the rules are slightly different for me than you I think."

"Could be." John cracked the door, checking the corridor before leading Anna into the washroom. "But I've not investigated."

"Maybe you should." Anna shrugged, checking the taps for the water. "Make sure that you now exactly what rules you're helping me break."

"I'm sure fornication's a sin no matter which translation of the Bible you're reading." John hung his clothes from the hook at the back of the door and grabbed for his shaving kit. "And we've done a fair bit of that."

"True." John tried not to turn at the sound of Anna slipping into the water. "But do you suppose there's a discounted punishment if you ensure you didn't enjoy it as much as you thought you would?"

"Any complaints about performance Ms. Smith?" John caught Anna's eye in the mirror as she emerged from dunking her hair under the water.

"Not from me." Anna shrugged, "But there've been others, in the past, that I wonder even counted as sins given how much I didn't enjoy it."

"Were they-"

"All consensual." Anna put up a hand before returning to scrubbing at her hair. "Just not all as pleasurable as I was hoping when I started."

"And you'd like a refund for your 'sin tax', is that it?" John dragged the razor down his face, concentrating and careful as he scraped the shaving cream clean. "Because if that's the case I'd like to submit my marriage to the Catholic Church for annulment and get a refund on another wedding."

"Have you tried?"

John shook his head, moving to the other cheek. "Some things are better left forgotten and dead. Given how long it took just to secure the divorce I'd rather not the headache of it all again."

"Fair." John finished shaving and wiped his face with a warm cloth before turning at Anna's next words. "Care to wash my back?"

"We both know that's not a good idea."

"I think it's a wonderful idea." Anna nodded at John's abdomen. "And at least part of you agrees."

"You naughty girl."

"I fully intend to be until someone manages to tie me down for marriage."

Moving to the edge of the tub, John leaned over it to put his mouth close to Anna's. "And are there contenders for your hand that I'll have to fight off if I want to continue keeping you as my naughty girl?"

"None thus far." Anna made as if to kiss him but ducked low and John's hands almost slipped on the sides of the bath when she wrapped her lips around his growing arousal. It only took a few sucks, and the play of her tongue at his slit, to have John almost crying for mercy.

"Please… I-"

"Then join me." Anna drew back, taking the offer of John's lips this time. "The water's fine."

John climbed in as Anna drained some of the water, turning the tap on again to rinse through her hair, and immediately straddled him. The repeat performance of their earlier experiments in her bath mixed with the sensation of Anna taking control of their experience only pushed John to the edge faster. Not that he needed any help there when Anna was involved.

But she took him all the same. Her lips covered his and she controlled the kisses. Her hands moved his where she wanted them. Her body writhed and moved over his like an overexcited animal in heat. It only made John want to do whatever she wanted and he did. Everything she whispered in his ear about speed, depth, where to touch her, how to kiss her, when to hold her was his next action. All of it moving as she wanted until she came with a cry in his ear.

It took almost nothing for John to follow. Anna sighed in his ear as he did, her hips shunting into his to take the last desperate jerks as a conservation of energy. When her fingers moved more softly through his hair, John could only smile as she kissed down his throat.

"Easily the best I've ever had."

"That was?"

"With you, is." Anna pulled back, dunking herself under the water once more before standing up to allow the sluicing effect to almost leave John speechless again. "But we've only so much time."

Begrudging in his agreement, John finished getting ready and took the buses Anna needed to return to her building. There they shared what began as an innocent kiss that Anna would not allow to finish without bordering on the publicly criminal. But she drew back, winking at him with a salacious promise in his ear, and left John grateful for the cold of the street.

The detour, however, left John a few minutes late in meeting Robert at the station. Robert looked him over as John took a seat at his desk, busying himself immediately with files, and snorted before turning another page in the paper. "Even if you're in different clothes than yesterday, I'd recognize that walk anywhere."

"What walk?"

"The walk of a thoroughly satisfied man." Robert tucked his paper in half and tucked it away before grabbing a cup on his desk. "I won't ask, since you won't tell, but I will say that you'd better snap out of your afterglow."

"Why, we found something?"

"More like who we didn't find." Robert tapped his desk to get John's full attention. "Your Mr. Barrow, the one you sent over from the hospital, never arrived."

"He what?"

"And with poor Mr. Kent passing in the early hours of this afternoon," Robert stood, grabbing for his hat and coat to signal John do the same. "We've got to track the poofter down."

"Who's…" John's eyebrows raised. "Mr. Barrow is…"

"It's not like we don't know they exist but the rumors are too many and too broad not to be true so even if Mr. Barrow weren't guilt of a whole lot of other things we'll have to book him for, we'll have to get him on that too." Robert shook his head, "It's criminal is what it is."

"That's why we'd have to book him, Robert."

"Oh that?" Robert scoffed, "If I'd cried 'blue' every time I was solicited at Eton I'd've been hoarse in a day. No, I don't give two shits who they want to blow them or suck them or even enter their back door in a dark alley somewhere. Let that sort of thing lie because it's not my business."

"Then what's criminal about it?"

"That it allows people to use and abuse others. Boys sold into the industry, people blackmailed, and most of the people without titles because those with money are allowed to get whomever they like without risk." Robert shook his head, "This job, for all the justice I think it does, sometimes misplaces its efforts when it should focus on bigger issues."

"That's very broadminded of you."

"They're not foul for being who they are, John." Robert shrugged, getting into the driver's seat of his car. "It's everything else about it that's foul."

"Then let's find Mr. Barrow before someone else does and we can ensure he's only going to prison for the crimes he's actually committed instead of the crime of being who he is."

They drove to the Cerulean, avoiding the dinner crowd by moving to the back alley. An alley still cordoned off from the public but for a few bystanders ogling the scene as they arrived. When Robert and John came they scattered and Robert shook his head. "It's like roaches under the light."

"Or we're like the Reaper." John moved around the cordon, nodding at one of the constables, and noted the blood on the cobblestones. "Has anyone told Laing's family about what happened?"

"Flintshire visited them today. And there'll be a funeral once we've clear this mess." Robert motioned to the alley before leading John to the back door of the Cerulean. "Let's find Mr. Barrow and get back to where we're needed."

But even with the lighter dinner crowd after two separate death-related events, there was no sign of Mr. Barrow on the premises anywhere. John rejoined Robert near the front door, shaking his head. "He never reported in for his shift. None of the waitstaff's seen him."

"I've also noted a lack of presence from his counterpart." Robert pointed back toward the red-headed woman at the bar. "Remember Laing mentioning how Ms. Parks over there was almost deathly afraid of their head waitress, Ms. O'Brien?"

"I seem to recall a woman with a rather sour expression who shared the running for the title 'Guy Fawkes'."

"She's not here either. Both missing from their posts."

"It's not as if they'd have much work to do." John surveyed the light crowd. "It's almost a shame that this place'll be collateral damage to someone else's greed."

"The innocent are usually the victims." Robert pursed his lips before shrugging. "We could always try him at his flat. They'll have his address."

"Get it." John nodded before putting a hand on Robert's arm. "But I think we should check that back room. Could be he's scarpered and taken his ill-gotten gains with him."

"It's worth a look." Robert agreed and they separated. Robert to get the addresses and John to reach the backrooms. He had both doors unlocked but unopened by the time Robert joined him, holding up the pieces of paper with the neat scrawl giving numbers and streets. "Mr. Carson was more than happy to let us be messengers to inform our 'persons of interest' that they're not welcomed back to this establishment."

"For being late?"

"Dereliction of duty was his wording." Robert opened the door to the storeroom with the false crates of alcohol and John flicked the switch for the light. "Mary mother of-"

John moved past Robert to the hanging body and turned it enough to nod. "It's Mr. Barrow."

"Explains his not coming to give a statement." Robert took a step into the room. "His guilt must've-"

"I don't think it was guilt." John tested a stack of crates before risking the second it took him to ascend them and snatch the piece of paper tucked into Barrow's vest. "This was tying up loose ends."

"By strangling a man to death and hanging him from the rafters?" Robert shook his head, "We'll need Dr. Smith for time of death."

"But not motive." John showed Robert the paper. "It's a warning. We're to stay away or the same'll happen to us."

"You're assuming this is for us."

"Who else would…"

As one John and Robert left Barrow's storeroom for O'Brien's. The back wall was already removed, the gaming tables in shambles, and O'Brien hanging over the remains of the largest one with the same note. John checked the handwriting and nodded. "Same writer."

"Then it is a warning for us."

"No." John shook his head, waving the two notes stacking in one hand. "They're… They're for whomever else was sitting at that table. These are signs to anyone else who might be getting feet cold enough to consider talking to us."

"Given they've already killed four of the six people at the table that night," Robert paced the length of the room. "That leaves your ex-wife, her new paramour, and whoever that last man was."

"You interviewed the men, what was his name?"

Robert shrugged. "I don't recall his name. I wrote it down but he was… Not the blandest person I ever interviewed but he never stuck out."

"But those are the only three left."

"It would seem." Robert sighed, "At least we're not arresting Mr. Barrow."

"I don't think this was the better end." John flicked his gaze up at O'Brien's hanging body. "For either of them."

"I'll call it in. Get the Forensic Team here for the analysis and Dr. Clarkson for the bodies. Give them an autopsy and a burial." Robert let out a breath, "I thought I saw despicable behavior in the war."

"So did I."

John waited at the rooms as Robert went for the phone before the silence drove him to the alley. Even in the night, with the lack of daily traffic clogging the streets, he basked in the lack of silence. Or, as he might consider it, the silence of the night. The silence peppered with little noises and quirks that made it less suffocating than the silence of death quite literally hanging in the backrooms.

He pushed himself to pace the alley, stopping only when he reached the alcove where they confronted Jimmy just the night before. An eternity and four lives ago. A time when…

John dug back through the rubbish and found the crate. As the sirens of the trucks and the constabulary cars approached, John rescued the crate and carried it to Robert's car so he could tuck it away. Tuck it away for safe keeping and more exploration before it got lost in the melee and mess of documenting and archiving and inventorying everything in the rooms where two bodies hung as sentinels.

Returning to the rooms, John found Anna checking over Barrow and nodded at her. She gave him only a small smile before returning to her work. John moved into the corridor and tapped Robert on the shoulder.

"We need to take another look at that crate."

"It's in the-" Robert motioned toward the alley, now swarming with constables, but John shook his head.

"It's in the car. Once we've finished here, we need to look at it ourselves."

"Drawing a bit outside the lines here aren't we?"

"We've had four bodies drop in the last two days. And the body that started all this is already back in Ankara." John shrugged, "We've not got much else we can do but draw outside the lines now."

Robert sighed, "I was hoping this kind of day wouldn't come."

"What day?"

"The one where your badge becomes a shackle and you're the one wearing the handcuffs." Robert shook his head. "This is the day when I'm supposed to retire. To leave before I do something incredibly stupid."

"Doesn't seem like you."

"No. No it doesn't." Robert walked with John to his car. "Let's do something stupid then."