006. Soft
Every day, she looks him in the eye and misleads him, pretends his hand brushing against hers doesn't send sparks up her arm and down her spine.
Straight to her core.
He likes this, likes her lack of response, because he can continue playing his game. He wants to see how far he can push her before she lashes back. He wants to see her angry, irritated, uncharacteristically flustered.
He likes knowing that only he can do this to her.
What he doesn't know is this: The gentlest touches make the deepest imprints.
Soft fingers caress her in her dreams.
007. Hold
Her grip is firm.
He can't remember the last time she touched him (he thinks eight—no, ten days), and he feels pathetic for welcoming her skin like a tweaker in dire need of a hit.
Contact as potent as crystal meth.
Even as she draws him away from a piece of evidence (fucking work) and releases his arm, she's imprinted him, and the double shift he'd been assigned suddenly feels like a ten-year sentence.
But he'd made the proper accommodations, steeled himself for the possibility, been more than prepared for this development.
He'd known it'd be no holds barred.
008. Shackles
He's restrained. She binds his mind like a pair of fresh handcuffs around unwilling wrists. Stainless steel encircles criminal flesh.
He struggles, but the chains only tighten, choking out bruise after bruise. A permanent indentation carved into olive skin.
He's marked.
He wants to ask her to rub his booboos, but even in his head, it sounds hysterical. He wishes for inebriation, alcohol-induced stupors, so that he could speak regretful words and commit sinful acts without the suffocating guilt.
He admires her nonchalance, knows he can't hide his lust as well.
The truth is, though concealed, she wears shackles, too.
009. Broken
She walks into (his embrace and she's pulling) the lab, takes a seat (on his lap and he's lifting) in audio-visual, pretends to be buried in (his neck and she's biting) surveillance tapes of the robbery.
He enters (her and she's moaning) behind her, leans against (the backboard and he's thrusting) the table, watches (her face and she's panting) a nameless stranger whip out a pistol and pull the trigger.
Over and over again (until ohGod!).
When she tires, she'll leave, but not before she's broken (down in his arms but none of this is real) his heart in two.
010. Precious
He has never seen her cry.
She casts a thick metallic box around her heart, superglues her tear ducts shut. Crying is for pansies, for imperfect people who allow anxiety to suffocate them. She's not weak, has control.
Refusal and denial make her tears rare, and scarcity precedes preciousness; isn't that what supply and demand are all about? He's never liked economics.
Chemistry, however, he understands. He wants to make her cry just to study her teardrops. He muses about its density, viscosity, boiling point.
He wonders what it would be like to taste tears kissed off her heated cheeks.