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“Luce! Lucy!” Lockwood was following me up the steps at speed, making my hasty retreat somewhat futile. I’d managed to avoid this conversation throughout the whole night-cab ride home, on account of Holly’s presence. Turned out that she was good for some things after all. Lockwood had looked as though he intended to have our discussion right then and there anyway, Holly be damned, but I’d glared him into submission. The true extent of my “extraordinary” talent, as Lockwood liked to call it, was my personal business, and I got to choose who to share it with.
Holly Munro was most certainly not on that list.
But now the cab had delivered us to the doorstep of Portland Row and departed again, Holly and the conversational buffer she represented still inside. I reached for the doorknob, but he grabbed me by the elbow, turning me to look at him.
“What the hell was that, Lucy?” he demanded.
“I’m tired, can we talk about this tomorrow?” It was an admittedly feeble attempt.
“It already is tomorrow!” he was right. The midnight hour had come and gone while we tended to Mrs. Wintergarden’s ghostly problem.
“I just…” he still held my elbow in his grip. “I could feel how scared he was, how alone. I just didn’t want him to be alone anymore.”
“You were ghost-locked!” he exploded. “Lucy, you intentionally allowed yourself to get ghost-locked! And — what do you know — by a malevolent spirit! He tried to get you, Lucy! You, specifically, because you all but sent him an engraved invitation! If it wasn’t for Holly, well — I thought—” he cut himself off, swallowing. Good thing, too, because I was already talking, yanking my elbow back out of his grip.
“Holly shouldn’t have even been there! That was a dangerous psychical investigation that she has neither the training nor experience to be on in the first place! But no, Holly did another amazing thing, somebody alert the presses!”
“I told you, no psychic connections! You promised, Luce, you agreed it was too dangerous. Maybe we should leave you behind next time. At least Holly doesn’t endanger her teammates in the field!”
I took a step back. To my shame, I could feel tears starting to well up in my eyes. I tried to speak through it, but my voice broke almost at once. “I’m sorry,” I tried to say, and then half turned away from him, swiping the sleeve of my jacket across my traitorous eyes.
The fight went out of him then. In a year and a half of living together, I don’t think he’d ever seen me cry before. It’s not something I make a habit of, but I was so tired, so overwrought from the ghost’s psychic imprint on my brain, the loneliness and pain and all-consuming rage. I had nothing left to handle being scolded by Lockwood.
“Lucy, what — no, Lucy,” he babbled, going down a step but also, paradoxically, reaching for me. A hand landed on my shoulder, and the other hung awkwardly in the air near my face.
“Like I said, I’m tired,” I managed through hiccupping breaths. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”
“Luce, I’m sorry,” his hand was on my shoulder still, his thumb just brushing up against my bare neck. “But you almost died. You were ghost-locked, and then you went over the bannister, and—
“Right,” George said, brushing past us to unlock the door. “It’s not exactly sunup yet, is it? Let’s not linger on the doorstep.”
I pulled away from Lockwood and followed George inside, wiping at my eyes again. We all stood in the hallway for a long moment, the boys politely ignoring my sniffles. It was Lockwood, of course, who eventually broke the silence.
“Look, the most important thing is that everyone’s alright, yeah? You are alright, aren’t you? You were ghost-locked for a long time before we got to you.”
I nodded. “I just want to go to bed.”
“Of course,” he said. “Of course!” He was exuding his usual Lockwood charm, but there was an odd flavor to it. “Only, well,” he paused and gave a mildly forced smile. “I don’t think you should be unsupervised, er, alone right now.”
“What?” I scoffed, mustering the barest trace of indignation from somewhere deep within. “You think I’m going to hold a seance like a one-woman ghost cult? I’m too tired to talk to anyone right now, including you two!” I gestured at them both and they stared back head on. George intently, Lockwood mulishly.
“No, it’s not that,” he said placatingly. I hate being placated. “Just, you were locked for so long, I just want to make sure there aren’t any lasting effects.”
“He might be right,” George said, picking a definitive side. “Besides, we brought the source back with us, and you know this wouldn’t be your first incident with a previously secured source of a vengeful spirit who’s taken a special interest in you.”
I rolled my eyes. My head ached. “All I want to do is have a shower and sleep for twelve straight hours. Put the source in the basement and I promise I won’t go looking for it.”
“Come on, Luce,” Lockwood wheedled. “I’ll sleep on the floor, you’ll hardly even know I’m there! But if you need me— or, rather, need help,” he gave another patented Lockwood smile, the soothing kind he used on clients. “Then I’ll be right there.”
“This is ridiculous!” I said, still embarrassingly teary. I’m sure that wasn’t helping my argument that I could make it through the night on my own. “Nothing’s going to happen! I’m not going to need help, and no one’s sleeping on my floor!” And with that I spun and marched up the stairs. Lockwood, of course, followed like an irate sheepdog, and George trudged along behind him.
“Luce, please,” Lockwood was saying. “This is just a safety precaution, it has nothing to do with it being you.” That was a lie. “I’d do the same if it were George!”
“No.”
I reached the landing and swung open the door to the bathroom. I had a tiny little bathroom upstairs in the attic, but the hot water wasn’t working. I kept leaving reminders on the thinking cloth for Lockwood to look at it, but he hadn’t gotten to it yet.
“If it’s having me in your room that’s the problem, we could all kip down in the front room. We have enough pillows and blankets to make it proper cozy. George could make his cocoa. It would be like a company campout!”
“No.”
“Lucy, I can’t let you—”
“Lockwood,” I snapped, rounding on him, backlit in the door to the toilet. “I’m going to take a shower now, and you are going to go…somewhere else!” Admittedly not my best, but I was bone tired. He opened his mouth to say something else, but I stepped back and slammed the door in his face.
The shower was hot, and steamy, and for an indeterminate period of time I propped myself up against the wall and drifted, the tile cool as I leaned my overheated cheek against it.
I didn’t really wash, just let the water run over me and made a brief token effort with some soap. Holly had bought us new towels recently. They were large and soft and fluffy, the kind you could just swaddle yourself up in. Mine were a sort of shit brown color, of course, but at that moment I truly did not care. I wrapped myself up tight and, hair still dripping all over my shoulders, stepped out onto the landing.
I’d been planning on beating a hasty retreat to the hopefully Lockwood-free attic, but there were voices down in the front hall, and I couldn’t help but peek over the railing to see.
Holly was standing shivering by the door while both boys doted attention on her.
“It’s no trouble at all,” Lockwood was assuring her. “You can have Lucy’s room.”
Was Lockwood really going to go as far as giving Holly Munro my room whilst making me sleep on the couch? He wouldn’t, would he?
He would, a snide little voice in the back of my head muttered. It sounded rather like the skull. Why shouldn’t he? She’s clever, and pretty, and oh-so-good at her job. What have you brought to the table recently?
“Oh, no, I’m sure I couldn’t,” Holly demured below.
“Nonsense, of course you can,” Lockwood said, taking her coat.
“Are you sure it’ll be okay with her?” she asked, all wide-eyed innocence.
George glanced up and locked eyes with me. “Lockwood…” he said warningly, but Lockwood steamrolled right over him.
“We were going to keep her under supervision tonight anyway, after what happened earlier, so it’s no bother. “
“Is that really necessary?” Holly asked skeptically.
“Well, you were there,” he said conspiratorially. “You saw what happened as well as—”
“Lockwood!” George hissed, elbowing him and jerking his head up to where I stood dripping all over the landing.
“Ah, there you are, Luce!” Lockwood called brightly. “Holly here couldn’t get home — DEPRAC’s cordoned off every possible route. Everything in Chelsea, you know, and the protests. You don’t mind lending her your room, do you?”
I had been waiting all this time for a surge of outrage or righteous indignation, but I was too tired to feel anything at all it seemed. I turned and stumbled up the stairs to the attic.
I stared at the wall in an exhausted stupor before finally remembering that my pyjamas were in the drawer (Holly had cleaned) and that drying off the rest of the way and putting them on were prerequisites for actually going to sleep.
I was standing in the middle of the room a few minutes later in a ratty long sleeved T-shirt and decidedly unattractive grey pants when Holly’s anxious face appeared over the top of the stairs. The attic didn’t actually have a door on it. The boys had developed a system of stomping loudly up the stairs in their boots if they needed me for some reason, walking slowly and loudly so that I would have plenty of time to shout at them to wait if I were, say, in my pants. Holly Munro, of course, would never do anything so uncouth as stomping, so her appearance startled me half to death.
“Hi,” she said meekly. “I really do appreciate this, you know. You can change your mind, though. It’s not too late for me to swap to the sofa.”
I was all ready to tell her that yes, her sleeping on the sofa was a great idea, and I would very much like to go to bed now, but Lockwood appeared then, oddly full of energy, to retrieve me. He blushed a little when he saw me, and spun to face the wall. We’d both of us seen George in his pants a hundred times before, but somehow this felt different.
“Right!” he said, still gallantly examining the wallpaper. “I know you’re exhausted, both of you, so finish getting dressed, Lucy, and I’ll show you where you can sleep.”
I was too tired to argue any more at that point. If Lockwood presented me with a surface that was more or less horizontal, I would crash on it.
I dug out a pair of pyjama shorts, dumped my wet towel on the floor and, with a sort of grimace at Holly, followed him back down the steps.
I expected him to take me down to the front room or the library, like he’d offered before, but instead he opened a door on the first floor landing and led me into his own room.
“You can take the bed,” he said. I registered for the first time that he’d also changed into his pyjamas, a white undershirt and soft looking grey trackies. “I’ll be quite cozy on the floor.” There was a second bed on the floor, hastily assembled from couch cushions and musty looking blankets.
I crawled into the bed without acknowledging him, on the far side from where he’d assembled his little nest, and kicked my way under the duvet. I hadn’t expected it to feel so…intimate, being in his bed. Between his sheets, where he slept every night. Even without him in it the bed engulfed me in his smell, and the sheets were soft against my bare legs.
“Alright,” he said, flicking out the lights. “Just let me know if you need anything, I guess.” He paused for me to say something. I mushed the pillow into a better shape and shut my eyes. “Well, goodnight then, Lucy.”
I was in the deepest of sleeps within seconds.
It seemed that it was only moments after that when I was roughly shaken.
“What,” I mumbled, my mouth exceedingly dry. Lockwood looked pale and worried.
“Are you alright?” he said urgently.
“Fine,” I mumbled, fighting to keep my eyelids open. “What happened?”
“You were just so still,” he said.
“I was sleeping,” I said, and then rolled over and got back to it.
If the first bit of my sleep had been only minutes, the next seemed to stretch out for hours and hours. It started innocently enough, with Norrie and I sitting on her bed, just being together the way we had a million times before, but then her eyes were glazed over and I could feel my heart pounding hard in my chest.
I grabbed her stiff body off the bed, and dragged her by the armpits back through the dormitory door—
—and out into that dark, rusty factory. I could hear the dying screams of the others, off in the distance, and no matter how hard I hauled Norrie’s stiff body, or how loudly I screamed for Mr. Jacobs, I was still utterly alone, just a scared little girl who had failed her friends.
I came awake all at once with a nasty jolt, heaving for breath. Lockwood was kneeling over me this time, fully on the bed, looking frantic.
He calmed down a little when he saw my eyes were open. His hands had been on my shoulders, shaking me, but they came up now, cradling my head. He stroked the damp clumps of hair out of my face. I only realized I was crying when his thumbs swiped across my cheeks, wiping the tears away.
Norrie’s hands had been so cold that night. Lockwood’s were warm. I grabbed at his wrist, his forearm, tugging it to my chest and trying to curl my body around it, turning away from him in the same movement. I couldn’t let him go, but I didn’t want him to see me like this.
He let me tug at him, leaning in closer so he was half-lying sideways across the bed, his arm pulled over my body. The rhythm of his breath was loud and even, and I tried to match mine to it. I don’t know how long we lay like that, breathing in the small dark bubble of his room. It must have been terribly uncomfortable for him.
It was early, yet, the red numbers on the digital clock on his bedside table hadn’t even hit four. All told we’d probably slept less than two hours by then.
Eventually, Lockwood gently started to pull his arm away, but I clamped down tight on it. I couldn’t stand the thought of being left alone.
“Sh, Lucy,” he said, like he was gentling a horse. “Everything’s okay now. It was just a dream.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I said, dangerously close to crying for the third time in as many hours. “No, it’s not.”
He shifted closer to me, propped up on one arm and craning his neck over my shoulder. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I was clutching his arm so tight I doubt he had any circulation left. “It was Norrie,” I managed, but that was all I could get out.
“Okay,” he whispered. “I’m right here. Tell me if it’s too much, or if you want some space.”
I kept my death grip on his arm, holding it around my body, and fell back asleep trying to match my breathing to his.
I woke some time later when he tugged his arm free. I made a questioning noise in response.
“Sh,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m just readjusting, my arm’s asleep.” He curled his body more firmly around mine and I slipped back into my twilight sort of stupor.
Time stretched oddly after that. We shifted often, humming and mumbling at each other in lieu of actual talking. At some point he gently rearranged me so that I lay across his chest, my head resting over his heart. Sometime after that I tossed a leg over his hips. It was odd, sharing a bed with Lockwood. I’d shared plenty of times before, with my sisters and a couple of times with Norrie, but this was different. So comfortable, so right, and yet also so, so awkward.
“Lucy,” he whispered at some point.
“Hmm?”
“Lucy.”
I opened my eyes and craned my neck to look up at him. The sun was making a feeble show of rising, watery light only just beginning to dilute the darkness outside his window. His room faced the back of the house, so the ghost-light didn’t shine in here. I could just make out his eyes, but I couldn’t tell what expression he wore.
I was reminded of the day I’d been possessed by Annabel Ward, way back in my first days with him. The way he’d looked at me while I gasped and choked, trying to get my breath back after George had thrown the curtains open. Something tender, something scared, something in the twitch of his brow saying that he was sorry he’d asked me to do that.
“What is it?” I mumbled. He probably wanted to go back to the floor, to stop holding me like the gigantic baby that I was.
He kissed me.
He pressed forward, eager yet soft, and his lips covered mine.
We were at an odd angle. Me craning my neck up to reach; him holding his head up off the pillow in a sort of curl that had to be killer on his neck.
He pressed forward, rolling me onto my side, and I shuffled up so that our heads were even, pulling one leg back up over his hip.
His hands gripped hard at my waist, pressing in with enough pressure that it almost hurt, but it was good. This wasn’t a ghost, or a dream. It was real, and it was here, and it was warm, his fingers slipping under my shirt to meet the bare skin of my back, up to my shoulders, back down my sides to my waist.
“Is this okay?” he whispered, pulling back a little and pressing his forehead to mine. I kept my eyes closed and nodded. There was a pause, a hesitation of sorts, and then his lips were on mine again. His hands were warm on my back, and suddenly I wanted to feel that too. I tugged impatiently at the hem of his shirt until he pulled back and whipped it off over his head, tossing it away somewhere. His arms came back around me then. They were surprisingly muscular. I knew he was strong, of course, had watched him wield his rapier for hours a day, had been pulled to safety by him multiple times before, but he was so long and skinny that my mind had a hard time reconciling his lanky, buttoned up exterior with the ropy muscles wrapped around me now.
I could feel that he was hard against my hip, which was odd. The only person I’d ever kissed before was Norrie, and that wasn’t a reaction she tended to have in this sort of situation.
It had been scientific, at first, with Norrie. We’d both wanted to know what kissing was like, and then wanted to practice, so we could be good at it when the time came. The excuses only got flimsier after that, until one of us only had to quirk an eyebrow at the other at the other in question before we were safely snuggled in her bed, mouths soft and exploring.
This was exploring too, but whatever had been soft in it at the beginning was gone now. He touched me like it hurt him not to, pulling me so close that it felt like he was trying to pull my body inside his own.
My shirt was rucked up around my ribs now, and I fought against him for a moment to pull back and awkwardly wriggle out of it. He didn’t want to let me go at first, making muffled noises of discontent against my lips and squeezing his arms even tighter. He was plenty happy to oblige, though, once he caught on to what I was doing, helping me pull it off my arm, which I’d somehow managed to get it tangled around. He threw it to the ground with extreme prejudice, and then was on me again, eager and intense. I loved the feeling of having his bare chest pressed to my own, all that skin. His chest was so flat against mine. It was so strange, but still so good.
His fingers were playing closer to my hips, now, flirting with the waistband of my shorts. It hadn’t been said, but it was clear to me now where this was going, so when his hands slipped under the shorts and thumbed questioningly at the edge of my pants, I rolled onto my back and lifted my hips, letting him pull them both down in one movement, leaving them somewhere down at the foot of the bed.
I was naked, on my back, my legs sprawled open so he could kneel between them. There was a pause, then. We were both breathing hard, pale skin gleaming in the darkness. There was an odd look on his face, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I was beginning to feel self-conscious, exposed and chilled with the loss of the blankets and Lockwood’s body heat. His eyes were running over my body, and I had to fight the urge to cover my body with my arms.
Luckily, he leaned back down then. He moved slowly, planting his hands next to my shoulders and gently resting his weight on my body. I coiled my arms around him, pulling his warmth close. He still wore his pyjama bottoms, but I could feel that he was hard underneath them, pressing insistently against me.
He rested most of his weight on me, but also on one bent knee and elbow, not entirely crushing me. His free hand was everywhere, tangling in my hair, squeezing my boob, digging under the small of my back.
I was impatient, suddenly, to get to where we were so clearly going.
He wasn’t kissing me now, instead sucking down the side of my neck, which felt almost surprisingly good.
I couldn’t get over how odd it felt, being naked with another person. Not like changing in a shared dressing room or stripping hurriedly out of ectoplasm covered clothing, but actually fully naked, with another person’s bare chest pressed to my own.
He lifted up a bit, and then his hand was on my thigh.
“Can I keep going?” he whispered. We’d both been whispering and murmuring this whole time, though I wasn’t sure why. The darkness pressed in on us, and it felt like if we spoke too loudly reality would reassert itself and we’d be once more living in a world where this sort of thing didn’t happen.
“Yeah,” I said, forcing myself to splay my legs open wider. I wanted to make myself vulnerable to him, but had conditioned myself for years to hide any trace of vulnerability away.
His fingers, though they had felt warm only seconds ago against my body, were cool as he slid around looking for my clit. I’d touched myself there before, of course, often when I was trying to sleep after a job, needing a way to unwind and force my body to relax, but his fingers were bizarre and alien, probing and unsure. They were shaped differently than mine, and he was approaching from a different angle.
He slid over my clit, but then slipped off. He found it again, but was just slightly to one side. I tried to subtly shift my hips to get him in the right spot and got myself nicked with his fingernail for my trouble.
I’d been told a million times, by various sisters and dormmates, that you had to speak up for yourself in bed, had to tell boys what is was you did or didn’t like, but the idea of telling him to do something else was almost paralyzing.
“Uh, a little higher?” I tried anyway.
“Oh, uh, yeah, of course.” He adjusted. “Like that?” The spot was better, but the pressure was off somehow, both too hard and too soft at the same time. And he was rubbing side to side. I usually did little circles.
“Yeah, that’s great,” I said. Speaking up for myself once was more than enough.
“Okay.” He swooped down and kissed me again, still rubbing side to side intently. Was I supposed to be making some sort of sound? I tried a sort of a moan against his lips. He hummed in response, his tongue firmly inside my own mouth, something that was both odd and quickly becoming familiar.
My hands were splayed out on the bed, where they’d fallen at some point. I wrapped them around his shoulders, then ran my hands down the taper of his back to his waist. I skimmed them back up, and then down again, this time dragging my nails down lightly over his skin, causing a sort of whole body shiver. I liked knowing that I could inspire that kind of reaction in him. I did it again.
I didn’t want to wear out my new trick too quickly, though. I slipped my hands under the waistband of his pyjamas and over his arse to the tops of his thighs, then slowly around towards his hipbones.
He paused then, helping me tug the trackies down as far as mid-thigh. Hesitantly, I reached out and grabbed his cock, wrapping my fingers around him. My chipped nail polish was dark against his skin. I stroked up and down a few times, softly, unsure of what to do with it.
Lockwood took care of it for me, lowering himself back down onto my body. There was some fumbling, and something hot and blunt against my entrance.
He pushed forward, into me, which…hurt.
“Ow!”
He froze. “You okay?” he said, face hanging over mine.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s supposed to hurt at first, right?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, keep going.”
He did, but it still hurt. I tried to hide it, but he heard my sharp inhale and pulled out again.
“It’s okay, Luce,” he said, stroking a strand of hair out of my face and pressing a quick kiss to my lips. “Let me try something, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice high and breathy. He kissed me again, quick, and then scrambled down the bed, still between my knees. He locked eyes with me, and shot me a signature Lockwood smile. He dropped a kiss to the bottom of my stomach, just above my pubic bone.
And then hot, wet warmth was covering my vulva, causing an entirely undignified squeak to escape my lips. My legs tried to close on instinct, but he caught my thighs with his broad palms and pressed them back open again.
Everything I’d ever read said this was the end all be all of sexual pleasure, but mostly it just felt warm. I couldn’t stop worrying. Did it taste okay? And oh, God, what was the smell like? And should I have shaved? I should have at least trimmed it, right? Was I suffocating him?
But then he licked hard, from my hole all the way up to my clit, pressing down firmly with his tongue.
“That!” I managed. “Do that again.”
I could feel him grin against me, but he did as requested. I was fast approaching a peak of some sort, but he pulled back for breath, then, and it was gone. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then crawled over me again.
This time, when he pushed into me, things just seemed to…glide. The pressure as he pushed his entire length into me was intense, but it was a pressure that felt good. Each thrust caused me to gasp a little, the jabbing, pushing feeling felt like it was pushing the air out of my lungs fraction by fraction.
His body was against mine, inside mine, around mine. I felt caged in by his arms, which were planted on either side of my head and shoulders, but I didn’t feel trapped. I felt…protected, I guess? I’d gotten used to being protected by Lockwood since I’d joined the agency. I couldn’t count the number of times he’d jumped in front of me, rapier whirling, or yanked me back while he tossed a magnesium flare in the same motion. I liked being protected by him. I liked this too. I really liked this.
The room was quiet. No grunting and moaning like you’d see on telly. Just the rustling of the sheets, the sound of heavy breathing, and the wet sounds coming from in between our bodies. I turned my head to look him in the eyes. His pupils were wide, the shadows under his eyes pronounced, and his mouth hung slightly open. I brought my hand up and pressed it to the side of his face. He leaned into it a little, like a cat seeking love.
I tried wrapping my legs around his waist, but then I worried that the extra weight would be too heavy for him and unwound them again.
I was overtaken by a sudden determination, then. This was my first time ever having sex, and it would set the precedent for all the rest of the sex I’d have in my life. This was my first time ever having sex, and I would orgasm during it.
I slid a hand between our bodies, heading directly to the point where we were joined. It took him a moment to figure out what I was doing, but when he did he sat back on his heels. His knees slid under my thighs, so that my legs dangled over his.
My fingers slid into my cunt, rubbing furiously at my clit. Just the right pressure, and in circles the way I was used to. Something was still different, though. I’d never done this while someone watched before, and never with anything inside of me. Particularly nothing hard and warm and moving.
His chest was heaving, the pale sunlight starting to creep over the horizon illuminating him. I’d have thought it would make him look angelic, but instead he looked more normal than ever. Skinny, but muscular. Dotted with moles and freckles.
I was making involuntary noises, little snippets of high pitched whines. I think it must have sounded like I was in pain, or else like a begging puppy. I couldn’t quite get there, not while he watched me. I reached for him with my free hand and he caught it in one of his own, lacing our fingers together. I tugged on our linked hands until he fell towards me. My arm was awkwardly trapped between our bodies but I didn’t care, even as my wrist started to cramp.
I mashed my face into his shoulder, positively whimpering. I was so close, so close, but couldn’t get any closer. I planted both feet on the bed and pushed my hips up, wanting him deeper. Lockwood, the absolute fucker, chuckled into my hair. My forehead was still pressed to the bare skin spanning the space from his neck to his clavicle. He used his other hand to cradle the back of my skull, holding me in place while I whined and panted and he pressed kisses to my temple, my hair, my cheekbone.
And then it hit me like a train, all at once. My body curled up, spasmodically, clenching down, muscles locking.
Lockwood certainly wasn’t unaffected either. He dropped his weight onto me, and groaned in my ear, hips stuttering. I thought for a minute that he was done too, but he lifted up after a brief still moment and began driving his hips cock into me again.
His hands ran over my body, focusing on my hips. He lifted them so that my lower body was entirely off the mattress, propping me up with his knees. He groped at my arse, squeezed my hips, and ran his fingertips over my lower stomach.
I tried to enjoy the sensations, but the skull’s words kept echoing in my head, about Lockwood saying I needed to lose a little weight from my hips. Every movement of his hands made me more acutely aware of my deficiencies or, rather, surpluses in that area.
Finally, when I couldn’t take it anymore, I grabbed his hands and redirected them to my boobs, a change he seemed more than pleased with.
It was odd, sex post orgasm. It still felt good, but I wasn’t building up to anything anymore, not really. It was a much more even ride, and I was mostly just waiting for it to end. Was there something else I was supposed to be doing? Was I being an active enough participant? I didn’t really want to participate more. I was warm, and sated, and I liked the feeling of his hands on my body.
I remembered then the way he’d shivered when I ran my fingernails over his skin. I reached for him, my hands coming around his solid waist, to the small of his back. I wondered how hard I could scratch before it would hurt. He had liked the gentle skimming of my nails over his skin, had done a pleasing sort of full-body shiver in response. Would more pressure equate to a greater reaction?
I dug my fingernails in below his shoulder blades and dragged them down over his back. He made a funny sort of sighing sound, and then suddenly drove hard into me, slamming his length into me over and over and over again. I was starting to think that if he kept this up I might be able to come again when he stilled, pressing deep into me.
He sort of folded down after a few seconds, as though his limbs could no longer support him. His weight pressed me into the mattress as he lay in the cradle of my hips. I could barely breathe, but I didn’t want him to move. I liked the weight of him there, liked being covered by his body.
Neither of us spoke. My hand was idly playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. I didn’t know what to say, what to do now. What did this mean?
We couldn’t stay in that stillness forever, though. He pulled out of me, which led to a mildly disgusting rush of warmth between my legs.
“Stay here,” he mumbled. It might have been a trick of the darkness, but it seemed like maybe he wasn’t meeting my eyes.
He pulled his trackies back up and clambered off the bed. He was only gone for a moment, though, ducking out onto the landing. When he returned he bore a damp flannel he must have grabbed from the loo.
I’d pulled my knees together in his absence, awkward with my nudity and the vulnerability it brought with it, but he spread my legs again with gentle touches. The flannel was for me, as it turned out. He cleaned off my inner thighs, which felt perhaps more intimate than the actual sex.
I was about to sit up and find my shirt when he crawled back into the bed, tossing the blankets over both of us.
He was only a couple of inches away, but it felt like there was a wall up in between us. I was still so tired, I started drifting back into that twilight place again.
“Lucy,” he said apprehensively, snapping me back out of it. “Do you, er, well,” he sighed, turning onto his side to look at me. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, still on my back. I hate sleeping on my back. “‘Course.”
“Okay.”
Silence.
He reached for me, after a minute, tugging until I curled towards him, pressing my face into the hollow of his throat. Our legs tangled together, and his hand rested on my lower back.
It was odd, being naked while he was at least partially dressed, but if I got up and searched out my clothes I might not have been able to get back into the bed.
I started to drift. Not asleep, but secure in that feeling of pre-sleep, happy to close my eyes and breathe and wait for it to take me.
“I don’t want you to regret this,” Lockwood said into my hair at some point.
“I won’t.”
He stiffened in response. I think he thought I was asleep. That he never actually intended for me to hear those words.
He didn’t say anything more, though, and we both slept.
There was more kissing, at some point during the morning, but it was lazy, and only resulted in us falling back asleep.
When I really woke up, sometime past noon, I was half underneath Lockwood, sprawled out face down with his left shoulder laying on top of my right, and his arm tossed over my waist.
He was snoring softly, a fact that was frustratingly endearing. I strained my hearing for signs of life, but the house was more or less quiet. George was probably still asleep, and Holly was probably out running errands or something. I lay there for a while, harboring fantasies of one of them walking in on us, finding Lockwood and I sprawled out naked in his bed, the sheets down around our waists, showing off all that bare skin. I think I wanted it to happen because it would have forced Lockwood to acknowledge what had happened in the darkness, to bring it with us into the daytime. As long as only the two of us knew I could have made the whole thing up, but as soon as an unrelated third party got involved then there would be no taking it back.
I didn’t want him to take it back.
But nobody came, and I had to pee.
I wriggled myself out from under Lockwood’s bulk and tiptoed around looking for my clothes. My shirt was easy enough to locate, in a crumple on the floor, but my pants and shorts were tangled up in the bed somewhere, and I couldn’t have hunted for them without waking him up. I stole a pair of hids pants instead, from the bureau. Getting them over my arse was a bit of a stretch, but they only had to get me up the stairs.
I snuck out and raced up the stairs as quick as I could. Getting caught in bed with Lockwood would have been one thing, but alone and dressed in his boxers, exposed on the staircase, would have been entirely another.
I was sitting on the loo in the attic (Holly had indeed already left. She had made my bed.) I had to use a wad of loo roll to clean what had essentially become crusty goo out of my vagina, which was not a pleasant experience. It was then that a few important details clicked in. Details that had potentially life altering implications. Looks like I was due a trip to the chemist’s.
Outside, the day was covered by the persistent sort of grey drizzle that dominates winter in London. The chemist was a two kilometer walk away, which I spent with my head hung low and my hands shoved in my pockets.
The chemist was grumpy, and the pill was expensive, but the transaction only lasted a few minutes and then I was heading back home. I was turning onto Portland Row when I heard someone shout my name, and turned to see Holly jogging towards me across the street. Great. Exactly what I needed.
“You alright, Lucy?” she said, a bag of shopping in her hand.
“Yeah, fine, thanks.” The standard answer fell unconsciously from my lips. “You?”
“Good, yeah,” she’d obviously been home at some point to change. “I got us some stuff for breakfast. The kitchen was looking a little bare.”
Oh, no. Not her whole grain vegan whatever waffles. Didn’t I already have enough to deal with today?
“Lovely,” I managed with a grimace.
“Lucy,” she said apprehensively. “Are you sure you’re alright? After everything last night…”
For a moment I thought she was talking about me and Lockwood, did she know somehow? But then I remembered the ghost.
“I’m fine,” I said. “It was just ghost lock. Happens to field agents all the time.” Not that you would know I added snidely in my head.
“If you’re sure,” she said, doubtfully. “Lockwood seemed to think something bad might happen to you.”
“No, I’m good,” I tried to convince her. She was going to say something else, I could tell. “Any good cases coming up?” I asked before she could. I held the gate open for her, we had reached number 35. She was starting to say something about a potential lurker when the door opened and Lockwood stepped through. He was dressed in his usual suit and tie, but he looked disheveled, as though he’d gotten dressed in a hurry. He froze when he saw us.
“Lucy,” he said slowly. “Holly.”
He was blocking the doorway, so the two of us were stuck partway up the steps. “Good morning!” Holly said brightly, but she didn’t get a response. Lockwood and I were trapped in some truly awkward eye contact. “Lucy, where—” he started to say, but then stopped. “Are you…”
Holly glanced back and forth between us a few times. “Lockwood,” she said. “Could you help me get these groceries to the kitchen?” She didn’t wait for a response, depositing the shopping bag in his arms and skirting around him into the house. “Come along!” she called. Lockwood was still looking at me, but I broke eye contact and studied the row of iron tiles instead.
With a sigh, he did as instructed and followed her into the house, leaving my path clear to escape to the attic. I found myself in the highly uncomfortable position of feeling grateful for Holly Munro.
Ugh.
I got distracted on my way across my room by my reflection in the mirror. I knew, intellectually, that I could look no different now than I had yesterday, but I had to look for myself anyway.
Well, actually, I guess I did look a little different now. That bruise on the side of my neck was certainly new, and if I were to pull off my shirt I’d most likely find scattered bruises and hickeys littering my collarbones and breasts.
Lying in bed with Lockwood an hour ago I’d been entirely unable to go back to sleep, but now I was desperate for it. I was getting that sick feeling in my stomach that came from sleep deprivation, the way I usually felt on the third night with less than four hours of sleep at any one point. I was covered in old sweat, and my head ached in that way that wasn’t actually a headache.
My bed called to me, but I still had to shower and take that pill, and I should probably be proactive and fill up my hot water bottle first.
Of course the moment I took my shirt off was the moment I heard boots stomping up the stairs.
“George?” I called out.
“No, it’s me,” said Lockwood. Normally he would have waited then for the all clear from me, but today he just marched straight up, finding me in the middle of the room in just my sports bra and jeans.
“Do you mind?” I said. Unlike last night, he didn’t even bother turning to face the wall.
“Don’t you think it’s maybe a little late for modesty, Luce?” he asked with a crooked half-grin, but something was off. His eyes were dull, flat.
“What do you want, Lockwood?” I said. “I need—”
“Where’d you go this morning?”
“I got up. You were still asleep.”
“You could have woken me up,” he said. He was trying to hide it behind his typical flippancy, but I could tell that me leaving him in bed that morning was bothering him. It had probably hurt his massive ego somehow.
“Yeah, I guess I could have,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Did you want me to?”
“Well, I…Where’d you go?”
“What?”
“You left, you weren’t anywhere in the house and then I went to find you, and you were out with Holly?” He kept falling back into that half smile, but then lost it every time.
“Lockwood!” I said, stopping him before he could work his way into a diatribe. “Think! Where do you think I might have gone this morning, after…” I gestured vaguely between the two of us.
“I don’t—” he broke off. “I don’t know! Were you…” he paused, and swallowed heavily. “Were you at Fittes?”
“Oh, you are such an idiot sometimes,” I snapped. “Do you remember using a condom last night? Asking if I was on any kind of birth control?”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. I was at the chemist’s. Needed the EC pill.”
“The…”
“Emergency contraceptive, yeah.” I shouldn’t have kept riling him up, he was clearly tired and confused and upset, but so was I, and I was really not starting to feel good. “Or do you suddenly have a burning desire to haul a baby around with you on psychical investigations?”
“Luce,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, really, let’s not fight. Can I…can I pay you back for the pill?”
“What, like getting reimbursed for a business expense?” I scoffed. “No, it’s fine.”
“Isn’t there — Is there anything I can do? For you?”
I wanted to just send him away, take my shower and pill, and go to bed, but he looked earnest and concerned, and I kind of wanted to ask him to hold me again, like he had after my nightmare. I split the difference instead. “Can you, er, boil the kettle? And fill this up for me?” I turned and crossed the room, rummaging through my drawers until I found my hot water bottle. It was old white plastic and, embarrassingly, was covered in an ancient bunny shaped cozy.
“Yeah, yeah, ‘course,” he said, taking it. It looked ridiculous, him standing there in his suit with the rabbit shaped water bottle.
“And, er, could you get me a glass of water? I still have to take it.”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“Okay, um,” I wrapped my arms around my bare midriff. “I’m gonna take a shower now. I’ll be quick.”
“Right. Good.”
“You should—” I started to say, gesturing at the stairs.
“Right!” he turned. “Yeah, of course.”
The water pressure was weak, and the water didn’t get fully hot, but I got the sweat and various crusted fluids off me, which I counted as a success.
Lockwood was waiting for me when I stepped back out, water bottle in one hand and a cup in the other. I was only wearing a towel, still, although it fell past my knees. He handed me the cup and I grabbed the package off my nightstand, ripping it open.
There was just one little pill wrapped up in layers of plastic and cardboard and foil. I tossed it back with the water. “Can you turn around, so I can change?” I could have just asked him to go back downstairs, but I found that I didn’t want to. Selfishly, I wanted him to stay.
He did as he was told, still clutching the bunny shaped water bottle. My favorite pyjama shorts were still down in Lockwood’s room, but at this point did it honestly matter if he saw me in my pants? I pulled some on, with a t-shirt I’d stolen from Paul, once upon a time, and then crawled into bed.
He was still facing away from me, staring at the wall.
“I’m good now,” I said, awkwardly.
“Do you want me to stay?”
“You don’t have to, I’ll be fine. People take this pill every day.”
“Yeah, but do you want me to stay?”
I shrugged. “If you want to, that’s fine.”
“Okay then.” He sat down on the bed next to me, on top of the covers, still in his suit. We were silent for a while. “What’s this for?” he said eventually, gesturing to the hot water bottle in his lap.
“Cramps,” I said. I was lying on my side, facing the wall. “It’s the most common side effect.”
“Oh. Here, I guess,”
There was a warm weight on my shoulder which turned out to be the rabbit, held in his hand. I took it and held it to my stomach, curling my body around it.
I knew we should talk about what had happened between us, what it meant, if we were going to do it again. If we should do it again, considering the sake of the agency. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to hear him say that it had been lovely, but probably it was for the best if we went back to the way things were before. We had time. We could have that conversation later.
“I’m gonna try to sleep now,” I said.
“Okay,” he said softly.
And so I did.