It was already well after dark by the time Fay arrived home from the station. Fay opened the door to her dilapidated apartment. Clean but cheap was her rule, and on a detective's salary that was probably a good thing.
"Hello?" No answer. Apparently Alexander was out.
She still didn't know why her longtime boyfriend put up with her. Especially between the long hours, the dangerous line of work, not to mention her often salty attitude given the horrors she saw. She knew she wasn't always an easy person to be around, and a case like Ranesha's murder only compounded Fay's already admittedly short fuse.
As she walked through the living room and into the kitchen, the beautiful blonde detective decided to skip dinner. The kitchen wasn't much more than a tiny cubbyhole, but then again, when did she have time to cook anyway? Pulling out a bottle of red wine from the fridge, Fay smiled ruefully.
"Yep. It's definitely been one of those days." Uncorking the bottle, she poured herself a glass. Then, striding into the bedroom with glass in hand, she took an initial sip. Not bad.
As she swirled the wine in its glass, she thought about her next move. She needed to talk to someone in Southside Rain who would give her some answers, but the Russian gang wasn't a group to be taken lightly. These men were cold, hardened killers, and they'd been led by a former Russian oligarch whose brother and eldest son were every bit as ruthless as he was. The question was, with the oligarch's body not even cold yet, who would succeed him?
That was the person she had to approach, if she wanted answers. No one else in an organization so tightly wound would actually talk. Unless...no, she couldn't even entertain that option.
"It can wait until tomorrow," she said aloud, reminding herself, forcing herself to relax for once. Fay always had a problem with detaching from her work. Then again, the 28-year-old hadn't become the youngest detective on the force by cultivating a healthy work-life balance. Just the idea made her grin.
'Yep, workaholic bitch, that's me,' she thought as she set her wine glass on the nightstand and began to strip out of her clothes. In no time, she was completely naked. She waltzed into the bathroom, her feet padding along the ivory tiles. Turning on the shower, she wandered back to the bedroom to take another sip of the wine while she waited for the water to warm up. Were it not for the sound of the shower, perhaps she would have heard her front door opening. She proceeded to set her glass down and was about to saunter back into the bathroom towards a now steamy shower when a shadow fell across the wall beside her.
In less than an instant, Fay dove for her nightstand, pulled out the hidden pistol, and aimed for a kill-shot.
She was greeted by the shocked face of her boyfriend, Alexander, his hands raised as high as they could possibly go.
"Dammit, Alexander, why the hell did you sneak up on me?"
"I thought you heard me call your name when I came in," he protested mildly. His heartbeat slowed from breakneck thudding to something that hopefully wouldn't end in a heart attack. Now he paused to appreciate the situation.
Fay laid the gun aside and just looked at him staring at her. Naked, Fay Gracey was every bit as sexy as a woman on the cover of Vogue - or any of half a dozen other glamorous magazines. But Fay's beauty wasn't typical. It wasn't soft or feminine in the traditional sense. There was a hardness to her, an edge. Her medium-sized breasts were perfectly shaped, the curves of her body sculpted to perfection, but there were also hard lines of muscle - along her arms and along her legs. Fay's face was delicate, her small nose in particular, but they belied the grim cynicism behind her Scandinavian-blue eyes and the stubborn set to her jaw.
"I could have blown your head off," Fay muttered darkly.
"And I'm very glad my sexy girlfriend didn't murder me today," Alexander replied with a chuckle. He dropped his briefcase, yanked off his tie, and stepped up to her. His lips captured hers easily. His arms wove about her back. One hand reached lower, cupping her ass.
She broke the kiss and elbowed him hard in the chest, which sent Alexander sprawling onto the bed.
"Get your clothes off. I want you naked and laying on this bed by the time I get out of the shower. Understood, slave?"
There was a pause as Alexander took in her command. This was part of their relationship, an integral part of their sexuality - he the sub, and she the dom.
"Yes, Mistress."
Fay turned and sauntered into the shower. She stepped into its embrace of heat, letting the warm spray melt away the cares her job threw at her almost every single day.
It hit her then, though not for the first time. No wonder Ranesha's murder case was bothering her more than the others. There was a strong sexual component to these murders, one rooted in dominance-aggression.
'If I was a little more messed up in the head, could that be me? Could I ever do something like what those two psychos did to that poor girl?' she wondered inwardly. Of course, the answer was, she could never truly know. What she did know was that those two men were sick and needed to be brought to justice. What she did know was that sexuality and aggression came in all shapes and sizes. In some forms such sexual aggression was almost natural, healthy even. What she and Alexander had, that was an example of healthy aggression - healthy sexual dominance. She and Alexander loved each other, they had trust in each other. They tested but also respected each other's boundaries.
What those two pathetic dregs of humanity had done to Ranesha involved none of those things. And yet...
Somehow, Fay still couldn't shake that uncanny feeling that the tiny spark inside of her that made her want to dominate and punish her partner for sexual satisfaction also shared something in common with the two men she was hunting. Was there a little bit of the devil in every human being? She had seen too much as a detective, even during her relatively short career, to think otherwise. Still, to be forced to consider herself personally as part of that equation, to acknowledge the devil that personally dwelled inside of her - that was still unsettling, even for a detective who had seen her fair share of humanity's underbelly.
As she stepped out of the shower, toweling off and wiping down, the words of her partner, Vick, leapt into her mind.
'Don't beat yourself up, kid. There's a little good in every bad guy, and a little bad in every good guy. That's life.'
Somehow, remembering Vick's stupid platitude helped put her mind at ease. She was nothing like those men. Whatever impulses she had, they were controlled and channeled. They didn't leave death and destruction in their wake.
"Have you been a well-behaved slave?" Fay said as she stepped out into the bedroom. Her hair was still damp, but she was otherwise dry - well, except for the gathering wetness between her legs.
Alexander looked at her with obvious lust. His cock sprang upright as she reached into the nightstand's bottom drawer. Within a minute she had strapped his arms tightly to his torso with a dark leather strap, cinching it in place. Then she retrieved a three-tailed whip. The gorgeous blonde girl let the long, bead-studded nylon strands drift seductively across Alexander's muscular chest.
"I asked you a question, slave."
"Yes, Mistress. I've been well-behaved. I did as you asked."
SMACK. The sound echoed like a bomb blast as Fay slapped the whip across Alexander's pectorals. The man grunted, and then his mouth hung open in a mixture of agony and bliss as she grasped the base of his penis with her other hand. She began pumping her hand up and down his engorged cock.
"You think this big dick deserves to be nestled in the warmth of your Mistress' pussy? Hmm?"
"Yes, Mistress."
"Wrong answer," she growled, slapping him in the face. It was more of a startling slap, not designed to cause any real damage. She slapped him a second time, and then a third time.
"Your cock will never be worthy of your Mistress' cunt. Never forget that, slave. NEVER." So saying, the slender blonde leaned over. As her hand still languidly pumped his hardened shaft, she leaned down even further, licking each of his swelling testicles. The naked man groaned as Fay continued to stroke his cock with her hand, her fingers squeezed in a tight grip. She stood up and just watched him now. She stared at his face contorted by the potency of sensation as she gave him the most cruel, thorough hand-job any man had ever received. The blonde woman waited until her boyfriend's cock was leaking pre-cum, glistening with fluids as a wet sound of suction accompanied her hand's now swift movements up and down, up and down, as she admired the hard length of his cock.
She leaned down again.
"Don't you dare cum without permission, slave. Don't you dare."
"Yes, Mistress. Uhh!! Oh please!" Now, leaning over, she sucked on each of his heavy testicles, one at a time, her slurping joined by the sounds of her hand sliding up and down his glistening manhood.
