Archie’s mouth feels like sandpaper. The heat in his groin is almost overwhelming.

“It’s going to be the best sex you’ve ever had,” Gretchen tells him. “Then you can go back to work, relaxed and ready to focus.” She glances at the box spring and arches an eyebrow at him. “Do you want me to lie down?”

Archie’s eyes move down her body. “Not on the bed,” he says. “Against the wall.”

She gives him a wicked grin and then saunters to the wall and puts her back to it. He walks over to her quickly, already unbuttoning his pants. By the time he reaches her, he has his cock in his hand.

She glances down at him approvingly. “It looks like you’re ready to go,” she says.

He kisses her, all the while acutely aware of the bed behind him, of the fact that he isn’t the only one with a key to the crime scene and that anyone can walk in at any time, of the smell of decomp that still permeates everything. He knows that he will still stink of it when he gets home, and that the smell will remind him now of this, of Gretchen.

He can feel Gretchen’s breathing quicken and her nipples harden under his hands. She lifts one knee and tucks her hips forward and he slides into her, and they both groan. He can feel her clinging to him as he begins to thrust.

“I want to try something,” she says breathlessly in his ear. “I think you’re going to like it. Will you let me?”

He nods. He would agree to anything in exchange for this.

She reaches behind his head and a moment later he feels a stinging pain at the base of his skull. He reaches up and tries to pull away, but she has her hand in his hair, and her foot hooked behind him, holding him inside her. “What the fuck?” Archie says, his cock softening. His hand touches blood.

“Stay inside me,” she tells him. “Breathe.”

It hurts.

“Do you feel it?” she asks him. “The endorphins from the pain. They heighten sensual pleasure. It’s just a nail. I’ve got it pressed into your skull. It won’t go in any farther.”

A nail?

“Feel it?” Her eyes are shining.

She is rocking against him, and he can feel it. She’s right. Everything is amplified. He can feel himself hardening inside her again, and he can’t help himself, he has to push deeper, to keep thrusting. He lifts her knee higher.

The pain is still there, but it is diluted by his mounting arousal. He shudders, almost dizzy, pleasure coursing through him.

“Can I stab you again?” she asks, out of breath.