Drowning in Desire (Part 1/?) [FanFic]
Title: Drowning in Desire (Part 1/?)
Author: Tooks
Pairing: Team, Strauss, OCs (Strauss' family)
Rating: FRM
Summary: A case with ritualistic killings leads the BAU straight into Erin Strauss' personal life and past.
Notes: Spoilers all the way up to the end of Season 6!! The UNSUB's a necrophiliac so, while not graphic, consider yourself warned...also he has not so wholesome thoughts about his mother. There's also cursing and some violent imagery and discussion. Nothing past FRM...not yet at least, haha! This is a first/test chapter in a new case-fic I'm working on. Thanks pink_siamese for the beta, you rock!! So...lemme know what ya'll think! :D
Aiden watched his mother from the balcony as she floated light and free on her back in the center of the pool. He leaned over the porch barrier to get a better look: back straight, arms out, each peak and valley of her body encased in black spandex, standing out against the ripples of sun-glazed water. Her hair looked like a halo. The boy was entranced.
He’d been sent by Big Sis to ask for money. But now, now that he was there, he didn’t want to disturb his mother. She looked too perfect, drifting as lazily as the cotton-candy clouds overhead.
“Aide, what’s taking so long?”
His mother slipped under the water in a swift movement that startled before she reemerged, standing up out of the water. He frowned some.
Erin walked towards the edge of the pool, wiping the water from her eyes and nose as she did. “Aiden, Cindy. Did you need something?”
“Cyn, Mom." Polite, formal, but stern; it was a firmness that could only come from a Strauss female. "Or Cynthia, I guess."
Aiden didn’t understand why Cynthia insisted on being called something else now. She never used to mind being called Cindy. Maybe, he thought, once you hit your teens you start to hate the name you go by. He wondered what name he’d prefer being called when he turned thirteen.
“Did you need something?” Erin ignored her daughter in favor of her son. She smiled softly.
“Money,” Aiden smiled excitedly, “for ice cream. Please, Mommy, or we’ll miss the truck.”
“All right, go get what you need out of my purse,” Erin told him, “just be quiet while in the house, Jenny’s taking a nap.”
“Thank you, Mommy. You’re so pretty!” The boy’s genuine compliment was accompanied by a grin.
His sister groaned and rolled her eyes.
His mother laughed a touch. “Thank you, my sweet prince. Now hurry or you’ll miss the truck.”
~ 2008, Great Salt Lake, Utah ~
Everything was more beautiful when placed under the water. Angles rounded, lines softened, and forms grew hazy and dreamlike. Colors both brightened and dulled at once as she struggled just under the surface, eyes full of passion and mouth wide...waiting...wanting. Only when she settled, resigned, did Aiden relax his hold and let her come up for the air she no longer needed. He'd never imagined his girl could look so amazing - wet and ruby lipped with her sundress clinging clear to her to skin. He could almost want her again, one last time, but...
No. That was not appropriate.
He shook off the thought as he grabbed the barbell already tied to a length of rope from beside him in the boat.
Still he ought to kiss her goodbye, after all their time together. Aiden reached into water-logged hair and pulled her up by it.
She came to him like Venus out of the sea.
He closed her eyes first; she would've closed her eyes first. Her lips were cold, colder than he expected, but they were slick and tasted of salt. They made his chest rumble in a moan. Something in him itched strange and he released his love back into the water.
Slow.
Rope noosed around the neck and Aiden let her go. Watched her slip, sink, and fade into the depths. Everything was more beautiful when under water.
His phone kept him from following in after her. It rang and Aiden answered. "Hello?"
"That's all you have for a greeting?"
Aiden laughed. "Sorry, Mom, how's this..." he took a deep breath as he relaxed back in the boat. "Aiden Strauss. To whom am I speaking and how may I help you?"
~ 2011, Quantico, VA ~
A shockingly copper-redheaded girl with a bright smile appeared on the screen before the BAU. Her crime scene photos accompanied her, including her morgue shot. Pale, mottled, and wet. She looked a sad version of her live-self.
“Okay, so. Jessica Grant, 23, went missing three days ago and was found floating in the Potomac this morning by a construction crew working on the Georgetown Waterfront Park.” Garcia tried to keep her cheer despite the tale. She hated this new part of her job. “She’s the third young woman to be found in a body of water around the city and seems to be connected to the same killer. The other two…”
Two other smiling young women joined Jessica, as did their grim dead-selves.
“Megan Kellerman, 25, was found January 2009 in Kingman Lake after having gone missing a day or so. Then Alice Johnston, 22, was found in The Reflecting Pool after missing two days in October 2010.”
“He’s spending more and more time with them,” Morgan commented bleakly.
Garcia didn’t want to think about that, so she pressed on. “All three seemed to be drowned sometime in the middle of their disappearance and the time they were found, all were in similar clothing, and, for the ick trifecta, all three showed signs of being sexually assaulted both before and after their deaths.”
Seaver looked around the table. “So…a necrophiliac serial killer?”
“Or just a serial killer who happens to engage in necrophilia,” Reid counter-offered. “Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and a number of other serial killers engaged in sex with their victims after death but still wouldn’t really classify as a true necrophiliac.”
“What about the similar dress? Doesn’t that suggest some sort of…sexual ritual or something?”
Rossi gave Seaver an encouraging look. “It could. It could also be a coincidence, or it could be how the killer is choosing to let us know he committed these specific murders.”
Garcia shuddered. “Ick.”
Hotch glanced up. “Any similarities outside their ages and circumstances of their deaths that we’re aware of?”
Penelope shook her head. “Outside all being single, no. Megan was an intern for an Alabama senator from that state’s city of Huntsville, Alice a student at Georgetown from Augusta, Maine, and Jessica was from Spokane, Washington but worked at a bar, Calypso, in the city.”
Rossi frowned a touch at the bar’s name, Hotch doubly so, but neither commented on it.
“Something tells me there are more than just these three. Killers don’t get this skilled after only two other kills, ” said Rossi, more to himself as they gathered their things and stood.
“Garcia, I’d like you to join Morgan in speaking with the local police. Reid and Seaver, go to the ME’s and see what they have to say. Rossi." Hotch turned toward Dave. "Care to join me to Ms Grant’s place of employment?”
“Of course."
***
David Rossi waited until it was just he and Aaron in the SUV as they headed to the bar. “So," he stayed conversational. "I take it you know who runs Calypso?”
“I think I know why Strauss required her personal time off.”
“So that’s a yes, " Rossi announced. “Is that why you brought me? You think I’ll know her or maybe I can play the ‘hey, I know your mom from back in the day so you should feel free to be honest and open and not call that fancy family lawyer you got’ card?”
Aaron’s lips curled up in a smile despite the business state he wanted to stay in. “Do you know her?”
David shook his head. “No, not really. The last time I saw Erin’s kids they were kids and it was a large holiday fundraiser. I couldn’t tell them from any of the others running around that day. If memory serves, though, Cynthia’s the eldest and knowing her mother won’t help much.”
The frown returned to Hotch’s face. “Then I guess we’ll just have to play it like we would any other case involving a political family.”
“Fighting all the way?” It was meant as a joke, but didn’t quite come out that way.
Hotch just nodded.
~ 2011, Calypso Bar, Washington DC ~
Cynthia looked at her staff as they gathered around the bar. It was lined with full shot glasses. “I want to thank you all for picking up the extra shifts and for being here now," she said. “It would mean a lot to Jesse to know she had so many who cared for her. It means a lot to her family and it means a lot to me.”
She was a decade too old for her tiger-streaked blond and brown hair and the tattoos both hidden and displayed across peached skin. Most people would consider her far too serious a person for both no matter her age. Her formality now turned solemn by loss and the stress of trying to balance the many aspects of her life that were all being agitated by this single event: Jesse’s murder. Her tiger-hair curtained her face as she looked down a moment. She thought of her punk employee with the bright red hair and cheerful smile that was brighter still.
Cynthia picked up the center shot glass on the inhale and lifted it up on the exhale. She raised it high. “To Jesse!”
Her staff followed. “To Jesse!”
The glass was tipped back with her head and Cynthia swallowed the shot of vodka in one go. Her staff followed.
After that it was down to business. Following the morning meeting, she went back to her office for business calls and one condolence call to Jesse’s family. Cynthia had to do this now, before the bar opened to the public, because she had to leave before then.
A knock sounded at her door as she got off the phone with Mr. Grant. “Come in.” Cynthia’s hand rubbed her sea glass pendant necklace as she looked over Jesse's file. What was she to do with it now? Throwing it away seemed…cruel, almost.
The door opened and Bernie, the bouncer, stepped in with a slight smile. “Got some guys out here wanna talk to ya. They say they’re Feds.”
Cynthia looked up, clasping the sea glass tight. “And you don’t believe them?”
“No, I do,” Bernie chuckled. “I just really like sticking it to the man when able.”
Cynthia smiled a touch as she let go of her necklace and stood up. “Show them in, Bern.”
A stern looking man with jet-black hair entered first, an older gentleman with an easier manner about him followed close after.
“Ms. Strauss?” the younger spoke first, showing he was the leader.
Cynthia’s urge to correct the man, to tell him to call her by her first name, was carried away in the formality of polite reaches to shake hands all around.
“My name is SSA Aaron Hotchner. This is SSA David Rossi. We’re from the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI.”
“My mother’s unit, correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m not actually my mother, Agent Hotchner.”
“I understand that, but -“
“And I’m pretty sure I’m younger than you.”
Rossi covered his snort of a laugh with a cough. Hotch cleared his throat.
“You may call me Cynthia," she said.
Hotch found aspects of the calculating politician scrawled all over Cynthia; she held a formality in speech despite the informality of work venue and an air of the diplomatic despite her artist’s appearance. The straw coloring in bits of her hair matched Erin Strauss, as did the steely posture and lips that never quite smiled even if amusement was heard in the voice. All of it worked to remind Aaron Hotchner of his superior and bring out his most refined nature.
It was Cynthia’s eyes that caught Rossi’s attention. They were nothing like her mother’s. They were a rich, thick, brown…like the banks of a muddy river. Erin’s had always been oceanic, blue or gray, a stormy mix. Erin’s gaze was always either aggressively keen or untouchably far off, forever at the ready to shift. Cynthia’s moved slow, steady, and often seemed stuck to whatever was her focus. At the moment that was him. Rossi.
“So how may I help you, agents?”
~ 2011, Watergate Hotel, Washington DC ~
Aiden sat on the plush leather as he remembered Jesse. Not Jessica; she’d insisted she preferred to be called Jesse and he obliged, of course. Jesse with hair like a freshly minted penny and the tattoos of roses, complete with thorny stems traveling down the sides of her body. One rose to a side. She wasn’t like the others.
Jesse was wild.
She was beautiful.
He swore he could love Jesse.
She was even more beautiful under the water, most at peace floating on top of it.
Aiden sat on the plush leather and fingered the pendant. He hadn’t planned on taking it, he knew he shouldn’t of, but he had to.
Now if he could only figure out why. Why had this blood-red sea glass on a bit of leather been an undeniable pull for him?
He sighed, stood as he stuffed the pendant into his pocket, and began to prepare for the night’s dinner plans. He played with it, fondled it once more before he set it in the hotel suite’s safe. He took some money, his Rolex, and cufflinks in exchange. It was then that he got the idea - he pulled the stuffing from the cufflinks’ box and slipped the pendant underneath before setting it back together and closing the box.
It felt safe there.
More his.
Aiden relocked the safe and began to strip off his Polo and khakis to change. As he did, Jesse filled his mind.
He remembered how her hair tangled and pulled in his hands when dry and the smoothness it held once wet and combed properly. Aiden thought of hunter green eyes that glistened and the creamy skin that stayed wet and slick longer than he thought possible. He thought of lips, lips gone violet until he fixed up her make-up once again. Lips full of splendorous desire that always opened for him.
Aiden thought of all the details that made Jesse beautiful and felt his heart start to pound hard and fast into his ribcage. So hard and fast it kept him from getting a full a breath.
He had to sit to remove his tanned pants. Had to hunch forward and take the time to inhale and exhale. He set a hand to his forehead in effort to help keep the feelings from overwhelming.
It didn’t.
He was half-hard and getting more so by the moment.
All these years, all these women, and Aiden still didn’t know why. Why Jesse had been beautiful in life, but more so in death, just like the others?
The phone rang from his pants. He sighed. He’d been waiting for her call, he just preferred not answering her in such a state. It felt dirty.
Still he made the effort to reach out and grab the cell from the pocket. He double-checked the screen before answering with a smile.
“Aiden Strauss. To whom am I speaking and how may I help you…Mother?”
Aiden listened to her soft laugh and felt at sudden ease.
“Hello, my sweet prince,” she said.
His mother’s laugh always put him at ease, just like his childhood nickname slipping sweetly from her lips.
"The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out." ~ Annie Dillard
Chapter 2
Author: Tooks
Pairing: Team, Strauss, OCs (Strauss' family)
Rating: FRM
Summary: A case with ritualistic killings leads the BAU straight into Erin Strauss' personal life and past.
Notes: Spoilers all the way up to the end of Season 6!! The UNSUB's a necrophiliac so, while not graphic, consider yourself warned...also he has not so wholesome thoughts about his mother. There's also cursing and some violent imagery and discussion. Nothing past FRM...not yet at least, haha! This is a first/test chapter in a new case-fic I'm working on. Thanks pink_siamese for the beta, you rock!! So...lemme know what ya'll think! :D
Aiden watched his mother from the balcony as she floated light and free on her back in the center of the pool. He leaned over the porch barrier to get a better look: back straight, arms out, each peak and valley of her body encased in black spandex, standing out against the ripples of sun-glazed water. Her hair looked like a halo. The boy was entranced.
He’d been sent by Big Sis to ask for money. But now, now that he was there, he didn’t want to disturb his mother. She looked too perfect, drifting as lazily as the cotton-candy clouds overhead.
“Aide, what’s taking so long?”
His mother slipped under the water in a swift movement that startled before she reemerged, standing up out of the water. He frowned some.
Erin walked towards the edge of the pool, wiping the water from her eyes and nose as she did. “Aiden, Cindy. Did you need something?”
“Cyn, Mom." Polite, formal, but stern; it was a firmness that could only come from a Strauss female. "Or Cynthia, I guess."
Aiden didn’t understand why Cynthia insisted on being called something else now. She never used to mind being called Cindy. Maybe, he thought, once you hit your teens you start to hate the name you go by. He wondered what name he’d prefer being called when he turned thirteen.
“Did you need something?” Erin ignored her daughter in favor of her son. She smiled softly.
“Money,” Aiden smiled excitedly, “for ice cream. Please, Mommy, or we’ll miss the truck.”
“All right, go get what you need out of my purse,” Erin told him, “just be quiet while in the house, Jenny’s taking a nap.”
“Thank you, Mommy. You’re so pretty!” The boy’s genuine compliment was accompanied by a grin.
His sister groaned and rolled her eyes.
His mother laughed a touch. “Thank you, my sweet prince. Now hurry or you’ll miss the truck.”
~ 2008, Great Salt Lake, Utah ~
Everything was more beautiful when placed under the water. Angles rounded, lines softened, and forms grew hazy and dreamlike. Colors both brightened and dulled at once as she struggled just under the surface, eyes full of passion and mouth wide...waiting...wanting. Only when she settled, resigned, did Aiden relax his hold and let her come up for the air she no longer needed. He'd never imagined his girl could look so amazing - wet and ruby lipped with her sundress clinging clear to her to skin. He could almost want her again, one last time, but...
No. That was not appropriate.
He shook off the thought as he grabbed the barbell already tied to a length of rope from beside him in the boat.
Still he ought to kiss her goodbye, after all their time together. Aiden reached into water-logged hair and pulled her up by it.
She came to him like Venus out of the sea.
He closed her eyes first; she would've closed her eyes first. Her lips were cold, colder than he expected, but they were slick and tasted of salt. They made his chest rumble in a moan. Something in him itched strange and he released his love back into the water.
Slow.
Rope noosed around the neck and Aiden let her go. Watched her slip, sink, and fade into the depths. Everything was more beautiful when under water.
His phone kept him from following in after her. It rang and Aiden answered. "Hello?"
"That's all you have for a greeting?"
Aiden laughed. "Sorry, Mom, how's this..." he took a deep breath as he relaxed back in the boat. "Aiden Strauss. To whom am I speaking and how may I help you?"
~ 2011, Quantico, VA ~
A shockingly copper-redheaded girl with a bright smile appeared on the screen before the BAU. Her crime scene photos accompanied her, including her morgue shot. Pale, mottled, and wet. She looked a sad version of her live-self.
“Okay, so. Jessica Grant, 23, went missing three days ago and was found floating in the Potomac this morning by a construction crew working on the Georgetown Waterfront Park.” Garcia tried to keep her cheer despite the tale. She hated this new part of her job. “She’s the third young woman to be found in a body of water around the city and seems to be connected to the same killer. The other two…”
Two other smiling young women joined Jessica, as did their grim dead-selves.
“Megan Kellerman, 25, was found January 2009 in Kingman Lake after having gone missing a day or so. Then Alice Johnston, 22, was found in The Reflecting Pool after missing two days in October 2010.”
“He’s spending more and more time with them,” Morgan commented bleakly.
Garcia didn’t want to think about that, so she pressed on. “All three seemed to be drowned sometime in the middle of their disappearance and the time they were found, all were in similar clothing, and, for the ick trifecta, all three showed signs of being sexually assaulted both before and after their deaths.”
Seaver looked around the table. “So…a necrophiliac serial killer?”
“Or just a serial killer who happens to engage in necrophilia,” Reid counter-offered. “Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and a number of other serial killers engaged in sex with their victims after death but still wouldn’t really classify as a true necrophiliac.”
“What about the similar dress? Doesn’t that suggest some sort of…sexual ritual or something?”
Rossi gave Seaver an encouraging look. “It could. It could also be a coincidence, or it could be how the killer is choosing to let us know he committed these specific murders.”
Garcia shuddered. “Ick.”
Hotch glanced up. “Any similarities outside their ages and circumstances of their deaths that we’re aware of?”
Penelope shook her head. “Outside all being single, no. Megan was an intern for an Alabama senator from that state’s city of Huntsville, Alice a student at Georgetown from Augusta, Maine, and Jessica was from Spokane, Washington but worked at a bar, Calypso, in the city.”
Rossi frowned a touch at the bar’s name, Hotch doubly so, but neither commented on it.
“Something tells me there are more than just these three. Killers don’t get this skilled after only two other kills, ” said Rossi, more to himself as they gathered their things and stood.
“Garcia, I’d like you to join Morgan in speaking with the local police. Reid and Seaver, go to the ME’s and see what they have to say. Rossi." Hotch turned toward Dave. "Care to join me to Ms Grant’s place of employment?”
“Of course."
***
David Rossi waited until it was just he and Aaron in the SUV as they headed to the bar. “So," he stayed conversational. "I take it you know who runs Calypso?”
“I think I know why Strauss required her personal time off.”
“So that’s a yes, " Rossi announced. “Is that why you brought me? You think I’ll know her or maybe I can play the ‘hey, I know your mom from back in the day so you should feel free to be honest and open and not call that fancy family lawyer you got’ card?”
Aaron’s lips curled up in a smile despite the business state he wanted to stay in. “Do you know her?”
David shook his head. “No, not really. The last time I saw Erin’s kids they were kids and it was a large holiday fundraiser. I couldn’t tell them from any of the others running around that day. If memory serves, though, Cynthia’s the eldest and knowing her mother won’t help much.”
The frown returned to Hotch’s face. “Then I guess we’ll just have to play it like we would any other case involving a political family.”
“Fighting all the way?” It was meant as a joke, but didn’t quite come out that way.
Hotch just nodded.
~ 2011, Calypso Bar, Washington DC ~
Cynthia looked at her staff as they gathered around the bar. It was lined with full shot glasses. “I want to thank you all for picking up the extra shifts and for being here now," she said. “It would mean a lot to Jesse to know she had so many who cared for her. It means a lot to her family and it means a lot to me.”
She was a decade too old for her tiger-streaked blond and brown hair and the tattoos both hidden and displayed across peached skin. Most people would consider her far too serious a person for both no matter her age. Her formality now turned solemn by loss and the stress of trying to balance the many aspects of her life that were all being agitated by this single event: Jesse’s murder. Her tiger-hair curtained her face as she looked down a moment. She thought of her punk employee with the bright red hair and cheerful smile that was brighter still.
Cynthia picked up the center shot glass on the inhale and lifted it up on the exhale. She raised it high. “To Jesse!”
Her staff followed. “To Jesse!”
The glass was tipped back with her head and Cynthia swallowed the shot of vodka in one go. Her staff followed.
After that it was down to business. Following the morning meeting, she went back to her office for business calls and one condolence call to Jesse’s family. Cynthia had to do this now, before the bar opened to the public, because she had to leave before then.
A knock sounded at her door as she got off the phone with Mr. Grant. “Come in.” Cynthia’s hand rubbed her sea glass pendant necklace as she looked over Jesse's file. What was she to do with it now? Throwing it away seemed…cruel, almost.
The door opened and Bernie, the bouncer, stepped in with a slight smile. “Got some guys out here wanna talk to ya. They say they’re Feds.”
Cynthia looked up, clasping the sea glass tight. “And you don’t believe them?”
“No, I do,” Bernie chuckled. “I just really like sticking it to the man when able.”
Cynthia smiled a touch as she let go of her necklace and stood up. “Show them in, Bern.”
A stern looking man with jet-black hair entered first, an older gentleman with an easier manner about him followed close after.
“Ms. Strauss?” the younger spoke first, showing he was the leader.
Cynthia’s urge to correct the man, to tell him to call her by her first name, was carried away in the formality of polite reaches to shake hands all around.
“My name is SSA Aaron Hotchner. This is SSA David Rossi. We’re from the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI.”
“My mother’s unit, correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m not actually my mother, Agent Hotchner.”
“I understand that, but -“
“And I’m pretty sure I’m younger than you.”
Rossi covered his snort of a laugh with a cough. Hotch cleared his throat.
“You may call me Cynthia," she said.
Hotch found aspects of the calculating politician scrawled all over Cynthia; she held a formality in speech despite the informality of work venue and an air of the diplomatic despite her artist’s appearance. The straw coloring in bits of her hair matched Erin Strauss, as did the steely posture and lips that never quite smiled even if amusement was heard in the voice. All of it worked to remind Aaron Hotchner of his superior and bring out his most refined nature.
It was Cynthia’s eyes that caught Rossi’s attention. They were nothing like her mother’s. They were a rich, thick, brown…like the banks of a muddy river. Erin’s had always been oceanic, blue or gray, a stormy mix. Erin’s gaze was always either aggressively keen or untouchably far off, forever at the ready to shift. Cynthia’s moved slow, steady, and often seemed stuck to whatever was her focus. At the moment that was him. Rossi.
“So how may I help you, agents?”
~ 2011, Watergate Hotel, Washington DC ~
Aiden sat on the plush leather as he remembered Jesse. Not Jessica; she’d insisted she preferred to be called Jesse and he obliged, of course. Jesse with hair like a freshly minted penny and the tattoos of roses, complete with thorny stems traveling down the sides of her body. One rose to a side. She wasn’t like the others.
Jesse was wild.
She was beautiful.
He swore he could love Jesse.
She was even more beautiful under the water, most at peace floating on top of it.
Aiden sat on the plush leather and fingered the pendant. He hadn’t planned on taking it, he knew he shouldn’t of, but he had to.
Now if he could only figure out why. Why had this blood-red sea glass on a bit of leather been an undeniable pull for him?
He sighed, stood as he stuffed the pendant into his pocket, and began to prepare for the night’s dinner plans. He played with it, fondled it once more before he set it in the hotel suite’s safe. He took some money, his Rolex, and cufflinks in exchange. It was then that he got the idea - he pulled the stuffing from the cufflinks’ box and slipped the pendant underneath before setting it back together and closing the box.
It felt safe there.
More his.
Aiden relocked the safe and began to strip off his Polo and khakis to change. As he did, Jesse filled his mind.
He remembered how her hair tangled and pulled in his hands when dry and the smoothness it held once wet and combed properly. Aiden thought of hunter green eyes that glistened and the creamy skin that stayed wet and slick longer than he thought possible. He thought of lips, lips gone violet until he fixed up her make-up once again. Lips full of splendorous desire that always opened for him.
Aiden thought of all the details that made Jesse beautiful and felt his heart start to pound hard and fast into his ribcage. So hard and fast it kept him from getting a full a breath.
He had to sit to remove his tanned pants. Had to hunch forward and take the time to inhale and exhale. He set a hand to his forehead in effort to help keep the feelings from overwhelming.
It didn’t.
He was half-hard and getting more so by the moment.
All these years, all these women, and Aiden still didn’t know why. Why Jesse had been beautiful in life, but more so in death, just like the others?
The phone rang from his pants. He sighed. He’d been waiting for her call, he just preferred not answering her in such a state. It felt dirty.
Still he made the effort to reach out and grab the cell from the pocket. He double-checked the screen before answering with a smile.
“Aiden Strauss. To whom am I speaking and how may I help you…Mother?”
Aiden listened to her soft laugh and felt at sudden ease.
“Hello, my sweet prince,” she said.
His mother’s laugh always put him at ease, just like his childhood nickname slipping sweetly from her lips.
"The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out." ~ Annie Dillard
Chapter 2