Nocturne

by Karina Halle

He steps closer, and I catch that scent again—amber, tobacco, and that undefinable something that makes my senses heighten. That makes my blood run hot. Makes my legs want to squeeze together.

Grief has funny ways of haunting you, my doctor had once said. But I’d done my grieving.

What am I doing here? Am I investigating Elizabeth Short’s murder, or am I stalking Lena Reid? The line between professional interest and personal obsession has blurred dangerously.

The thought of owning her, claiming her, while burying myself deep inside her is enough to send me over the edge.

This fixation isn’t like me. I’ve always prided myself on compartmentalizing, on keeping professional distance. Yet Lena Reid has somehow breached those carefully constructed walls without even trying.

Yet as I drive home, her image remains before me—proud posture, knowing eyes, secrets written in the curve of her lips. And beneath it all, the nagging sense that Lena Reid is somehow key to understanding not just Elizabeth Short’s murder, but something about myself. Something about who I am.

There’s nothing professional about what’s happening between us. Nothing appropriate about the raw hunger that rises when I think of her. And nothing rational about the certainty that she feels it too.

“Because I know the man beneath the monster,” I say simply. “And that man is worth fighting for.”

God, she’s so fucking beautiful. In the darkness of the room, in these quiet hours in the middle of the night, she feels like sunshine, the only kind I can bear. The kind that gives life.

Twenty years together, and he still worries. Still protects. Some things never change, even as the world transforms around us.