The End Of Desire: A Rowan Gant Investigation by M. R. Sellars

squeal begins behind her as he
struggles, only to be interrupted by her careful method of bondage.
I hear a metallic snick and watch as she slips the cigar cutter
over his pinkie finger at the second joint.
    “The same thing we are going to feel when I
do this,” she says and punctuates the sentence by bearing down and
squeezing the cutter closed.
    The stir that had been
wriggling deep inside my body flared in that exact instant. No
longer was it simply extreme arousal; it was now tickling nerve
endings I didn’t even know I had. The
result was a pleasure so intense as to be literally excruciating in
its scope. I now knew the true meaning of having something feel so
good that it hurt.
    The room began to spin and then everything
went completely black.
     
    I opened my eyes and the acoustically
textured ceiling filled my field of view. I felt spent in a way I
had never experienced before, and to say I was confused wasn’t
doing my current state any justice. I was completely addled. I was
in agony deep inside, but it was a pain born of emptiness. An ache
that called out, begging to be filled by the pleasure once
again.
    With a groan, I started to sit up but felt a
firm pressure pushing me back down. I fell back and my head thumped
against the floor.
    I blinked.
    Now I not only saw the ceiling but Annalise
as well. She was leaning over me, one high-heel encased foot
pressing down on my chest and holding me to the floor.
     
    “Tell Felicity I want it back,” she said.
“All of it.”
     
    In that moment everything shifted, and the
three-dimensional quality of the vision flattened then faded in a
bloom of light. I was still squatting next to the bed, staring
directly ahead as I had been at the beginning. I did notice,
however, that I was holding my breath. I let it out with a heavy
sigh. My eyes were itching and dry, so I closed them, but the
moment I did so I feared I would regret the action. It seemed that
blinking was getting me into a lot of trouble right now. Still, I
knew that sitting here forever with my eyes closed wasn’t going to
get me anywhere, so I steeled myself in preparation for the
onslaught of another round and allowed them to flutter open.
    The vision was still gone.
    I stood up, rubbed my eyes, then turned and
started back toward the small room housing the vanity. I had only
made it two steps when I caught myself and came to a halt.
    An unbelievably intense feeling
of déjà vu overwhelmed me as
recent memories flooded in. Though the hollowness still ached deep
inside, my rational brain pushed through the fog and assumed
control once again. I decided not to bother with a repeat of the
trip to the sink that I wasn’t even sure I had really made. I
simply needed to get out of here before leaving became
impossible.
    Turning, I headed toward the front of the
room, skirting around the end of the bed then reaching the door in
two quick steps. Any sense of stealth and caution to which I had
earlier subscribed was now depleted. I pulled the door open and
stepped out into the night, almost forgetting to tug it closed
behind me. Starting up the walk, I broke into a jog, trying to put
distance between the scene and me as fast as I could.
    I gave my watch a quick glance and figured
that I’d only been in the room for a little over twenty minutes. It
had seemed like much longer, but that was the way of things with
ethereal visions. They seemed to run by a clock all their own.
    Nearing the office, I fished the room key out
of my jacket pocket and popped it through the mail slot, barely
stopping as I did so. Turning, I started on an angle across the lot
toward my car.
    I had only made it a few steps when the
authoritative voice hit my ears.
    “FREEZE! POLICE! LEMME SEE YA’ HANDS, RIGHT
NOW!”
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER 7:
     
     
    M y arms were starting to
go numb.
    Of course, since my hands were still cuffed
behind my back, I don’t suppose I should have been surprised by
that fact. I shifted slightly forward in