The next morning, at the beginning of his shift, he drove toward Mrs. O'Shea's house for his meeting with her daughter.

He felt jumpy, restless, and kept trying to scan through his list of interview topics, hoping it would help him stay focused. Keep his mind off Leona. But, as important as this interview was, he kept dwelling on Leona's heavy-lidded, curious eyes when she'd asked him why he couldn't tie her up. She'd run her fingertip down her throat, watching him. Reading his every thought.

She was so clever, so fearless. She'd zeroed in on something he could never have said aloud, something he could barely stand to admit to himself. Small wonder she terrified him. And now...

He loosened his grip on his steering wheel, all too aware of how big his hands were, how breakable the world around him was, even his old cruiser. He sipped his lukewarm coffee and told himself to stop shaking. In a way, nothing had changed. He'd known from the beginning that she was out of his league. That they could never be what he wanted.

The fact that he was a freak, and that she had figured him out so quickly, was just the last nail in the coffin.

His GPS binged at him. The next turn was Mrs. O'Shea's house. He had to concentrate, push aside all his fucked up longing for Leona. He owed it to his former teacher, and to his town.

Simon pulled into a rutted dirt driveway that led him down into a shadowed grove. A flagstone path led him through the grove to the front porch, where Mrs. O'Shea's daughter, Penelope, stood alone, gripping the chipped porch railing and staring into the distance. She had pulled her curly red hair back into a severe bun. It made her look older, her strong features harsher.

"Miss O'Shea? This still a good time to talk?"

She glanced at him, her eyebrows tightening. "Officer Labelle. Yes, of course." Tendrils of hair escaped from her bun. She opened the front door, and they went into a dark kitchen. A few empty boxes and bags lay untouched in the center of the floor.

"I can't bear to start packing it up," she said quietly.

"I understand," he said. "I'm very sorry for your loss. She seemed like a very special woman."

"Yes, she was," Penelope O'Shea said, sitting down at the kitchen table and gesturing for him to join her. Apart from the darkness, the place was cheerful and homey, with country linens and wood cabinets and lots of little knickknacks scattered around. Wooden farm animals and such. It suited the Mrs. O'Shea in his memories and made her absence that much more striking.

Simon had done many interviews over the years, but not many as emotionally fraught as this. He started slowly, for her sake, asking open-ended questions about Nancy O'Shea's life, her interests, her last few weeks. Eventually, he turned to the day of the accident.

"Did she always jog along that road? She didn't consider it dangerous?"

"She never believed that bad things could happen, to her or to anyone," Penelope replied, scrubbing her face with her hand. "She's—she was such an optimist. I never understood it, myself. She used to tease me about being a pessimist, and I'd say, 'I'm a pragmatist, that's all.'"

He smiled ruefully. He'd had plenty of conversations like that himself.

A few silent seconds passed. Simon steeled himself to ask a pragmatist's question.

"You understand, Miss O'Shea, that I have to ask you..."

She glanced at him sharply, then stood up and turned slightly away, hugging her arms to her chest.

"Was there anyone who might've wanted to hurt your mother? For any reason?"

"I know you have to ask," she said softly, her voice a little thick. "And, truly, I don't know. I can't think of a single person who disliked her. How could anyone not have liked her?" She sucked in a breath. "And before you suggest otherwise—my father is a good man, and they've been on great terms since the divorce. There's no way—" She shook her head. "Just no way."

"I understand." He got to his feet. He'd have more questions for her later, but for now, he was unwilling to trespass any longer upon her grief. "Thank you very much for your time, miss. If you think of anything else, please let me know." He started toward the door.

"Are you going to solve this?" she asked suddenly. "Whether it was an accident or... It's still a—a crime either way, right?"

"It's a very serious crime, yes." At minimum, the driver had left the scene of a fatal accident. If they'd been driving negligently or recklessly, the State's Attorney could charge them with involuntary manslaughter.

"Are you going to solve it?" she asked again. "Because the bombing—the vet's office—"

He flinched, suddenly understanding the meaning behind her question. She didn't just mean the department—she meant him, specifically.

"We're going to do everything we can, miss," he said. "I promise." God help him, he would not let Mrs. O'Shea's death go unsolved. He wouldn't be able to live with himself if he did.

He excused himself and left Penelope standing alone in the darkness, gazing out of her mother's kitchen window. Small crystalline snowflakes had started to fall during his interview, and they crisscrossed the roads in glittering white strands as he drove back to the station, still turning the interview over in his mind. Her question ate at him—but so did her swollen eyes, the quiet anguish in her expression. Sometimes it was worse to see someone so proud end up so broken. Like they had further to fall, and would break harder, more completely.

Back at the station, Bryan Keene and Kyle O'Malley were standing in the main office, sipping coffee and shooting the shit. O'Malley, a former Army medic with a newborn son, looked half-asleep as usual. Keene, meanwhile, was eternally his huge, brash, loud self. He'd been a senior at Simon's tiny high school while Simon was a freshman and had ended up at Grenton PD after a stint in the Marines. Simon, who had joined the department after getting a bachelor's degree in criminal justice, was the only one besides Jack, the rookie, who wasn't military.

With a nod hello at his coworkers, Simon crossed through the cluttered main room toward his own small office at the back of the station. He sat down at his desk with his thoughts still a jumble of amorphous concerns and his body heavy and sluggish with sadness—both borrowed and his own.

"Hey." Keene sauntered in uninvited and squeezed into one of the chairs opposite Simon's desk. "How'd it go with Mrs. O'Shea's daughter?"

Simon shrugged. "Standard. Not much info. Doesn't think anyone would've done it on purpose."

Keene's eyebrows rose. "Do you think that?"

"Dunno." He hoped not, but the darkest, most pragmatic part of him told him he could not rule it out. "No cameras on that stretch of road, no witnesses to the accident. Just got to wait to hear from the collision reconstruction expert and the forensics lab."

"How much longer for that?"

"Weeks, probably. Months."

Keene grunted. "Slow fuckers."

"Guess it's complicated," Simon said, with a slight, sad smile, running a hand through his hair.

"Nah," Keene said. "They just don't care as much as you do."

Simon glanced at Keene in surprise.

"It's not a bad thing." Keene sipped his coffee. "Why else do you think the Chief assigned you to the case?"

"Dunno." He just knew the Chief shouldn't have. Penelope's question was proof enough of that.

Keene shook his head, exhaling. "Ray Waller's doing good, the pastor says," he said. "He's been sober the last couple days."

Simon just nodded. It was hard to muster much enthusiasm, when they both knew how quickly Ray would fall off the wagon again.

"You doing any better?" Keene asked.

"I'm fine."

"Yeah, you look fucking great."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean you're wasting the fuck away. Even you need to eat and sleep occasionally, Labelle. I meant what I said about penance. Sometimes cases just don't get solved."

"I eat," Simon said, though he couldn't actually remember, off the top of his head, when his last meal had been.

"If you say so." Keene sighed. "Talk to me sometime, buddy. All right?" He peeled himself out of the chair and left.

#

Simon stayed late, flipping through documents long after he'd stopped seeing them. When he finally went home, he sat down at his own dark kitchen table and drank a beer, worn out and heartsick. He wished he had someone to come home to, someone he could talk to—truly talk to. He liked Keene and the rest of the guys at the station, but they just didn't think about things the way he did. Keene could accept that sometimes a case just didn't get solved, but Simon couldn't. It ate at him that he'd fucked up the bomb threats investigation, that he could've done better, could've stopped somebody from getting hurt.

Leona was right about him—he was a control freak.

He slumped in his chair, thinking about their charged argument in her apartment, their thrilling, overwhelming hookup, their painful conversation on the porch swing.

His doorbell rang, and he jumped about half a foot.

Leona stood outside in the pale glow of the Christmas lights, holding a six-pack. He stared at her in shock.

"I was hoping we could talk," she said. "Just talk, to be clear. No sex, or miscellaneous sexy things." She lifted the six-pack. "I brought beer, if that helps? I realize it's a terrible bribe, since it was literally the easiest thing I could get you. Sort of like if you brought me ice cream. Although, honestly, anytime you want to bring me ice cream, you should go for it. I always—"

He interrupted her, unintentionally, by laughing, pinching the bridge of his nose. It was the first time he'd laughed all day. He passed his hand across his face and took a breath. "I didn't think you'd..." He shook his head, his heart racing. "Come in. Please."

With a smile, she walked inside and set the six-pack on his kitchen table. Simon hung up her coat, then opened a beer for her and a new one for himself. Leona plunked down on his couch, holding her beer next to her crossed legs. Dressed in jeans and a plain black top, with her long hair falling loosely around her shoulders, she looked girl-next-door for once. Which she was, sort of.

"So...I'm really sorry about what happened," she said. "It's been a couple years for me, and I'm rusty. I should've realized that I was moving too fast." She tapped her fingers on her knee, while Simon had unhappy visions of Leona handcuffing other men. "I should've talked to you, done a better job of sussing out your experience level, before we did anything. But I didn't, and I'm sorry about that. And now...I guess I feel like I've opened up a can of worms for you. And I don't want you to feel like you have to deal with it on your own. So...that's why I'm here."

"Can of worms," he echoed, pressing his sweating palms into his knees. Of course she hadn't just figured it out. She wanted to talk about it, too, and dredge it up into the open—the last place where it belonged.

"It seems to me that talking about Domination and submission has got you thinking about something that you want," she said. "Something that you fantasize about, but are afraid of."

"I can't...I can't." Just thinking about it made his skin crawl.

"Simon...you're not going to shock me. Do you want me to tell you some of the stuff I've done?"

"No." But he did. He wanted to know absolutely everything.

"All right," she said. "If you aren't going to tell me, then I'll guess."

Filled with dread, he stared at her. She gazed calmly back at him.

"You're secretly kinky. Very kinky. And you have a fetish. Something to do with the throat or neck. A choking fetish?"

He wanted to yell at her. He wanted to tell her that that was the sickest thing he'd ever heard, that she was crazy for saying it, that he had no idea what she was talking about.

"It's okay," she insisted. "It's just a fetish. There's—"

"Just a fetish!" He lunged to his feet and paced his apartment. "I'm a fucking cop—I can't go around choking women!"

"I never said that you should. But if you wanted to try something with me—"

"No. Never." He shuddered.

"Simon, come here."

Her soft command made him stop pacing. But he still couldn't bring himself to go to her.

After a moment, she came to him, taking his elbows in her hands and steering him gently toward her until they were facing each other, just a few inches apart. "You've never done it before, right?"

He started to pull away. She tightened her grip on him.

"My first girlfriend," he said reluctantly. "I put my hand on her neck, and she panicked. That was the only time."

The memory still hurt. He hadn't even realized what he was doing. He'd always had these fantasies about...leather and ropes and God knew what else. Weird shit. But he'd never intended to act on any of it, and certainly not with shy, skittish Mallory. They had just been making out behind the high school; it had been perfectly innocuous, except that he couldn't stop looking at her throat. That smooth, delicate skin had just been so beautiful...so vulnerable. Without thinking, he'd wrapped his hand—already big for his age—around her neck, enfolding it almost completely in his fingers.

Mallory had jerked away from him, her eyes huge and scared. Later, she'd asked him if he was a freak. Instead of telling her the truth, he'd called her crazy and broken up with her on the spot.

"So, that time," Leona said carefully, "when you touched her neck, did you squeeze?"

"No! Of course I didn't. I wouldn't have. I would never."

"Okay. I know." She rubbed his arms, as if he were going to catch a chill. "So, when you fantasize about this, what exactly happens with your fantasy woman that turns you on? Is it the way she struggles for air?"

She asked the question so earnestly that for once he actually thought about it, going back through the shameful fantasies that broke through his barriers right when he was about to come.

"She can always breathe fine," he said. "It's just my hand there. The wrongness of that. Because I could hurt her, but I don't. Because I wouldn't."

Leona's mouth quirked up. "I thought so."

He flinched. "It's not—it's still fucking sick. Even if I'm not choking someone 'til she passes out."

"It's completely different from that," she said. "Look, breath play—cutting off air supply—is really dangerous, right?"

Breath play. She made it sound so nice, almost ethereal.

"But what you want—it's still a little dangerous, but I think you could find ways to do it relatively safely—"

"No—no."

"Just listen, Simon." She laid one hand across his throat, her fingers cool against his skin, her thumb gracing the underside of his jaw. "Is this enough for you? If you did it to me."

The thought alone made his cock swell. Why was he like this?

"It would be enough," he managed. "But I still won't—"

"I wouldn't do it during sex itself, in case you lost control and accidentally squeezed," she continued. "But during foreplay, you could do it to me, or I could do it to myself, if that works for you."

She brought her same hand to her own throat, cupped her jaw, tilted her face upward. Simon had a sudden, vivid fantasy of sliding his thumb between her teeth. His heartbeat roared in his ears, and his already aching, swollen cock strained against his work pants.

Dropping her hand, she took a step back.

He shook himself, trying to get a grip. No sex tonight. He knew that.

"I bet you'd like it if I wore a collar," she mused. "Because I could wear that the entire time."

"A collar?" His head was still fuzzy with lust. "Like a dog collar?"

"Sort of." She smiled. "The good thing about a collar is that it's in a fixed position. You can play with it, but you probably can't accidentally strangle somebody with it."

"Oh, good," he said bitterly, his erection flagging. "Leona—why doesn't this scare you? Why don't you think I'm a monster?"

"You can't help how your brain is wired." With a shrug, she fetched her beer from his coffee table. "Anyway, as far as I can tell, this is not about hurting people, if that's what you're afraid of. It's about Dominance—the power you have over your partner, and your own self-restraint. It's just another way of saying you're mine."

You're mine. That was exactly what he wanted to say to her. And yet, with Leona the sometimes-Dominatrix... "That doesn't bother you?"

Her smile turned wicked. "It gives me a lot of power over you, too, you know. All I have to do is this..." She brought her fingertip to the smooth curve of her throat and drew it downward until she reached the hollow of her collarbone. He swallowed a groan.

"Very sexy," she purred, watching him.

He turned away, and this time, she let him go. He ran his hands through his hair, breathing hard. Could there really be a safe way to act out his desires with her? He already wanted her so badly. If she was truly willing to do this for him, or better yet if she was into it—

But it was still wrong, wasn't it? It was creepy and domineering and weird, and there was no way it was safe. At least, not safe enough.

"I don't know," he said. "It's just so..."

"It's a lot to think about. You need some time to mull it over." She set down her beer and picked up her handbag. "It's getting late. I should go. But I'll check in on you—"

"Can we go out again? Dinner or something? We never did go to that Thai place."

She drew her arms together. "Oh. Sure. That would be nice."

Her tone was guarded, cautious. He didn't know why he'd asked. She'd said she was interested in trying out a few dates, but it seemed pretty clear that she wanted him for sex. He probably should've been happy about that, but he wasn't.

Too late to back out now. "How about Friday?"

"Perfect." Her expression softened, and he felt a little better. "See you then."

******

What do you think--was this was you expected? 

Come back next week to see what happens at the Thai restaurant...

Thank you so much for reading!

London