Chapter 5: Butter Me Up

It was late October in the Sacramento Valley. That sweet spot of fall—days in the low seventies, nights crisp but not cold. Leaves turned reluctantly, clinging to their late-summer green until finally giving in, fading to gold and dry red. Halloween decorations were beginning to crop up around Morning Cove Way—tasteful ceramic pumpkins for the HOA rule-abiders, inflatable ghosts and solar-powered witches for the braver rebels. Samantha Belkin had already strung tiny orange lights across her eaves—subtle, elegant, and approved in the CC&Rs.

The weather, the decorations, even the air itself—it all gave off a mood of winding down. But for Samantha, the fire was still burning.

It had been a month since the first time Scott Dover fucked her in his bedroom. Since that first utterly depraved, entirely satisfying encounter—the one that left her walking home in a daze and stripping down in her laundry room like she was disposing of evidence. And she had not stopped thinking about him since.

They had gotten together five more times.

Each time, the same plan. Same careful choreography. The Cypress Avenue Starbucks—safe, far from prying HOA eyes. She’d pick up a drink she didn’t need, maybe a cruelty-free throw pillow she didn’t particularly like (but hey, it had a llama on it and she did love animals). Then she’d walk to Scott’s waiting truck.

She never sat upright once within a certain range of Morning Cove Way. The trick was to duck down while he waited for the light to change in the left turn lane from South Gardenville Parkway, the main artery through their part of town, to Grove Street, the main feeder road through their actual neighborhood. Head in his lap. Which ... now wasn’t as metaphorical as it had started.

It had been on the third trip from Cypress to Morning Grove when it first happened. When she first acted so wildly out of character, out of her comfort zone. Third trip to a hour or so of heaven (with a little erotic corner of hell thrown in). Same route. Same plan. Same rules.

Samantha ducked into Scott’s truck like she always did—smooth and practiced now—and lay herself across the bench seat with her cheek against the front of his jeans. She didn’t sit up, didn’t peek out the window. Not once they were off Cypress.

She pressed her face against him. Not at him. Just against. Still playing the role. Still “hiding.” But the heat of him bled through the denim, and it was making her pulse trip.

He was already hard.

Not all the way, maybe. Not yet. But getting there. Thicker than she remembered. Warmer. Her cheek was picking up the shape of him—long, curved, not some perfect porn-molded cylinder but a real cock. His cock. And it was driving her insane.

She hadn’t meant to rub her face against him. Not really. But she kind of did. Just a slow shift of her jaw, like adjusting for comfort. Her cheek slid up his length. Then back down. It was subtle. Barely there. But not accidental.

And oh god, it felt good.

The smell of him—not strong, not gross. Just... masculine. Like clean sweat and faded detergent and something uniquely Scott. She’d never known that could be a turn-on. But now her thighs were pressed tight together and her mouth was actually watering.

This was new territory.

She’d only ever sucked one cock in her entire sexual life.

Alan’s.

And even that had been rare. A handful of times. Always early on. Back when he was still opening car doors for her and pretending he liked musicals. He used to grip the back of her head—not lovingly, not teasingly, but like he thought he could force her to be better at it if he just shoved hard enough. She’d gagged more than once. He’d groaned like it was a compliment. And he had never come in her mouth. He’d asked her once or twice, but she denied him. “I’m not that kind of girl,” was her explanation. And he had accepted that. After all, the image she had captured him with was of the prim, proper, attractive, marriageable Samantha Adams. Not some slut who swallowed. Even the mere act of putting it in her mouth had been borderline scandalous to him.

She never liked putting her mouth on him. He was not fastidious about personal hygiene in that region of his body and he always smelled bad down there. She just ... avoided it. After they got married, she stopped doing it altogether. He never asked why. And she never volunteered.

But now here she was, cheek pressed against another man’s jeans, tongue lightly brushing the roof of her mouth like it was testing itself.

She had never tasted semen in her life. Not even a drop. Always thought the idea was a little gross—like swallowing mucus or licking battery acid. The porn stars made it look sexy, but she knew better. She’d read the articles. Salty. Bitter. Questionable texture.

But Scott’s cock ... she wanted to taste it. She didn’t know why. She couldn’t explain it.

There wasn’t time for him to come in her mouth. It was only about two minutes from where she ducked her head to being safely inside his garage with the door closed. That was her safety factor. She was not ready for him to come in her mouth, but the need to see that cock, to feel it, to taste it was an impulse she could not control.

Her hand moved before she had fully decided to move it.

She undid the top button of his jeans with a flick of her thumb, then paused—half expecting him to say something. To stop her. To laugh.

He didn’t.

She eased the zipper down, slow and careful, like she was disarming a bomb instead of pulling out a cock. The denim parted. Boxers beneath—black, snug, already straining.

She hooked her fingers just inside the waistband and gave a little tug.

And there it was. Scott Dover’s cock.

Thick. Firm. Gorgeous. Not sculpted. Not pretty. Just real. Hard. Alive.

And hers.

She stared for a second, frozen with awe and anticipation and nerves all tangled together.

Then she heard him. A sound. Half a breath. Half a growl.

“What are you doing?” he asked, voice low and wrecked and already so turned on.

She looked up from his lap, just far enough to meet his eyes in the mirror.

“Distracting the driver a little,” she said sweetly. “So don’t crash.”

And then she lowered her head.

Her lips touched the tip. She kissed it, gentle, experimental, tasting him before she dared to take more. He was warm against her tongue, smooth and rigid and already leaking just the tiniest bead.

She licked it. God help her, she licked it.

Then she opened her mouth and took him in—slowly, carefully, breath catching in her throat as the weight of him filled her mouth.

Scott made another sound. Not a word. Not a moan. Just a grunt—deep and shocked and utterly male.

She started to suck. Not with skill. Not yet. She didn’t have technique. She had need. Instinct. Curiosity. Her head bobbed gently as the truck rolled down Grove Street, the shocks creaking, her jaw working. Every bounce in the road made it harder. Harder to stay steady. Harder to keep from gagging.

But she didn’t stop.

She held him with one hand, fingers tight at the base, her lips and tongue working the rest of him, soaking him in warm wetness. She wanted to do it. Wanted to taste him. Wanted to make him lose control.

He didn’t tell her to stop. Didn’t push. Didn’t thrust.

Just drove. One-handed. Quiet. Focused.

And fuck, she was wet. She could smell her own arousal. Knew she’d soak her panties. Didn’t care.

They made the final turn onto Morning Cove. Almost there. The garage remote clicked. The engine idled.

She sucked him right up to the edge of the driveway.

Only when the door closed behind them did he speak again.

“That’s enough,” he said roughly, putting the truck in park.

She sat up, lips flushed, breathing hard, face warm.

He didn’t wait.

He opened the door, got out, slammed it. Came around, yanked her door open like he was busting into a suspect’s house. She climbed out, legs unsteady.

Inside the house, he didn’t turn on the lights. He didn’t undress her gently. He didn’t kiss her.

He shoved her against the bed with one firm hand between her shoulder blades.

“Pants down,” he growled.

She didn’t argue. She reached back, unfastened her jeans, pulled them and her panties down together—just far enough to expose what mattered.

And then he was inside her. No warning. No buildup. He shoved into her from behind, grabbed her hips, slammed himself deep.

She gasped. Moaned.

He spanked her. Once. Twice. Harder the third time.

“You’re a bad girl,” he told her firmly, gripping her harder. “This is what happens to bad girls. They get their naughty little butts spanked.”

She came. Hard. Wet. Shaking. Still bent over, legs braced, arms clutching the blanket.

And it was ohhhh so sordid. So depraved. So fucking glorious.

Now it was part of the routine. She’d barely be out of the Starbucks lot and she’d already be tugging her blouse loose, biting her lip, flushed with anticipation. Sometimes she got all the way down before they even cleared the first intersection. Sometimes she teased him the whole drive, whispering filth without touching a thing.

And now here they were. Back in the garage, same entry. Same plan. Door closes. Scott’s member is in her mouth. No teasing today. She is extra-horny, extra needy, feeling adventurous. She is loving the texture of hard cock in her mouth. Is loving the groans and grunts as she caresses his flesh with her mouth, her tongue, her lips.

She does not stop now that they’re in the closed garage. Scott does not try to force his way out of the cab of the truck. She keeps sucking. She wants to keep sucking. She wants to keep this up until the end. And so does Scott.

“Use your hand,” he whispers to her, breathless. “And go faster.”

She does both of these things and she can feel his control—that iron wall of constant self-control in any situation that is Scott Dover—slipping. He is beginning to make the motions she has learned means he’s going to come soon.

It’s time to stop this game or play it to win.

She plays it to win, increasing her pace. Soon, she feels his body tense up. A long, drawn out groan emits from his lips. His hand drops to her blonde hair, hair that is down and spread out across his exposed groin, and grips her almost roughly. She doesn’t mind a bit. She likes the feeling that she is doing this to him, that she is making him lose control.

He erupts into her mouth, a huge amount. She does not hesitate. She swallows it greedily. It is salty, with a consistency like raw eggs, and it his hot, hotter than his body temperature it seemed. And she doesn’t care that the taste is not “his sweet offering” as the stories she sometimes reads on her phone describe it. It was far from sweet, far from appetizing. But it’s a taste and a smell that she will forever associate with this moment, this man, and it floods her panties with moisture.

I’m a cocksucker, she thinks to herself in wonder. The worst insult imaginable for one girl to say to another back in the hoity-toity high school she went to. She embraces that designation now.

They went inside without a word.

Samantha didn’t even glance around this time. No nervous glances at the hallway. No flinching when the door closed behind them. No whispered “is Maggie home?” like she used to ask.

She already knew.

Maggie was in the laundry room, folding what looked like tactical cargo pants and muttering to herself about fucking dryer sheets. She looked up just in time to see them pass. Samantha. Hair a mess. Lipstick smeared. Jeans clinging damply to her thighs. Face flushed with satisfaction and anticipation all at once. Scott, his pants held closed only by the snap, the zipper still down, an embarrassed smile on his face.

Maggie raised an eyebrow. Said nothing. She simply shook her head a little.

Samantha met her gaze for the briefest second. And kept walking. She didn’t care anymore because obviously Maggie didn’t care.

Scott’s door shut behind them. The lock clicked.

“Well,” he said, “I need a little bit of recovery time. Just a little. Whatever could I do to pass the time until that happens?”

It was rhetorical question, she found out.

He stripped her slowly, reverently. As if what she had done in the truck deserved ceremony. Worship. Reward.

She lay back. He went down. And he stayed down, using his lips, tongue, and fingers with skill. She came once, twice, three times, screaming aloud on the third, one hand over her mouth, the other fisted in the sheets, legs shaking like she’d been tased. She forgot the quiet game. Forgot Maggie. Forgot her name for a second.

Scott climbed up and made her lick her own juices from his face and lips, made her suck it off his tongue.

Then he fucked her. Two more orgasms. Both loud. Both soaked.

By the end, her voice was hoarse and her hips were sore and she could barely remember what day it was.

They lay there afterward, side by side, breath heaving in tandem. The ceiling fan spun lazily above them, wobbling just a little like it might come down someday but not today. The room smelled like sweat and sex and something rawer—need, maybe. Or just release.

Samantha let herself melt into him.

She curled up against his side, skin damp and slick, cheek on his chest. Her fingers traced lazy little shapes along the lines of his stomach, feeling the way his body still twitched with leftover tension. His arm was around her, loosely. Not holding. Not caressing.

Just ... there.

She would only get a few minutes of this. Two or three, max. This was Scott’s limit for post-fuck closeness. After that, he’d be back to business—stoic, self-contained, shirtless cop mode.

But she didn’t mind. This was all she wanted from him. She didn’t love him. Not even close.

She liked her life. Her house with the walk-in pantry. Her car with the leather seats. Her closet full of Lululemon. Her dogs, her kids, her curated little world. She even liked her husband sometimes—his ambition, his predictable routines, the way he always made sure the bills were paid without ever asking what she spent at Anthropologie. He was a bore. A shitty lover. A man who thought foreplay meant brushing his teeth. A man who had once called her pussy ‘that dirty hole’. But he provided.

And Samantha liked what she had. She didn’t want to blow it all up.

But she also wanted this, tucked into the corner of her week like a secret indulgence. A hot, muscled, foul-mouthed indulgence who could make her scream into the sheets and then vanish back into his house like nothing happened.

Twice a week, maybe. More if she could manage it.

She knew it was dangerous. She knew the odds. That someone would talk. That Judith was probably already sniffing the wind.

But she didn’t care.

A whole new world had cracked open. And now she understood why people got obsessed with sex. Why it ruined marriages. Started wars. Drove men insane and women wilder.

She had never felt like this before. Not once. Not ever. And now that she’d had it? Now that she had tasted of the forbidden fruit? She had no intention of giving it up.

Eventually, Scott moved. Just a slight shift. That was the signal.

Time to go.

She rolled off him and sat up, legs still shaky, muscles tender. Her panties were inside out on the floor. Her bra was hanging off the nightstand like a warning flag. She collected her clothes in silence while Scott pulled on his jeans and smoothed his shirt.

They made some small talk. No promises. Just the ritual. They dressed like they’d done it a hundred times. Like it didn’t matter. Like they weren’t both still buzzing from it.

Then they headed for the garage, the same way they always did.

Time to get her back to her car. Back to her real life. Back to normal.

Whatever that meant now.

Judith Linden had never considered herself the suspicious type.

No, no—she was simply observant. Attentive. Engaged in the community. A pillar of Morning Cove Way. It was her duty to pay attention. To remain alert to anything... untoward in the neighborhood. And if the other women didn’t always understand the value of such vigilance—well, that was their choice. It wasn’t as if everyone had the time or mental acuity to track the subtle signs of decline. But she did.

And something was most certainly going on with Samantha Belkin and that so-called cop across the street.

The thought rankled her as she sipped her second cup of Darjeeling from her HOA-logoed ceramic mug. The mug had been a gift—Judith had ordered a dozen during her third term as president—and it still looked as pristine as the day it arrived. Dishwasher-safe, thank you very much. Unlike the marriages on this street, it hadn’t cracked under heat or pressure.

She set the mug down with a deliberate click.

The suspicion had begun—properly, anyway—about three weeks ago, when Samantha had changed clothes again between morning drop-off and afternoon pickup. Not once, but twice in the same week. And both times, when asked about the new outfit, she had given the same excuse:

Salsa.

Salsa, indeed.

Yes, they were classy women. Stylish. Fashion-conscious. Upper-middle-class wives with an eye for presentation. Judith changed twice a day herself, depending on her errands. But she did not spill food on herself like a toddler with a juice box. And certainly not twice in a single week. With the same food.

That was not fashion. That was cover.

Judith had kept her mouth shut—outwardly. Inwardly, her radar had gone to full alert. And when her radar activated, so did her process.

She began to watch. Even more so than she normally did.

From her perch at the front window (partially obscured, of course, by the brocade drapes and the antique fern stand), she began logging arrival and departure times. Nothing intrusive. Just observations. Timed entries. Patterns.

Four times now—four!—that so-called cop had arrived home five to ten minutes later than his usual post-drop-off ETA. And on each of those mornings, Samantha had not returned home from the pickup line at all.

Not even once.

Coincidence? Unlikely.

And then—this—on those very days, the cop had left again roughly an hour or two later. Just stepped out, got in his big, dented truck, and vanished for fifteen minutes. Never longer. Then right back into the driveway like he’d forgotten his wallet. Or his morals.

And—surprise!—Samantha would return home within fifteen minutes of that.

Every single time.

It was a pattern. A clear one. And Judith knew patterns. Her second husband had taught statistics at the community college before he ran off with that dental hygienist from Sacramento. Judith had sat through three years of math-based dinner conversations and had learned one thing: when data points cluster, it’s not an accident.

She now had four clusters. She had records. She had logs.

What she did not yet have was a story she could tell without implicating herself. That was the problem. That was always the problem with true information—it often came from places people weren’t supposed to be looking. If she told them she had gathered the information by painstakingly staking out Samantha and the cop’s house, they might think she was some kind of common gossip or something.

No one would take kindly to the phrase “I’ve been watching them closely.” Not even in her position. It sounded ... off. It sounded like obsession. Which it most certainly was not.

This was concern. This was community defense.

But still—she couldn’t go around spreading accusations based purely on timestamps and driveways. The standards were too high. The information was too volatile.

No. This needed finesse. A buffer. A proxy.

Judith Linden would have to find a way to confirm what she already knew. But first, she would need something solid. Something indisputable. Something visible.

And that—Judith thought, folding her hands neatly over her tasteful cardigan—would come in time.

She watched. It took two hours and five minutes this time but the cop’s garage door slid open and his truck—imagine driving a truck everywhere—backed out. She zoomed in on the vehicle but all she saw was the cop from the shoulders up. There was no one in the passenger seat. She was quite sure of that. Sammie was not short for a woman (her pale legs were just soooo ridiculously long) and, unless she was actually kneeling down in the seats of the truck, there is no way she was in there.

The cop returned fifteen minutes later. Ten minutes after that, Samatha returned.

“Uh huh,” Judith said knowingly.

She updated her log.

That night, while Judith was entering her observations of the neighborhood into a spreadsheet she maintained, Maggie Winslow was tucked behind an abandoned church off Brighton and Layton, her patrol Tahoe idling quietly in the dark. It was 4:13 AM. The lights were off—all of them. No headlights. No taillights. No parking lights. Civilian Tahoes could not turn off all the exterior lights. Police Tahoes could, however. It was just a matter of flipping a single switch on the control panel beneath the lights and siren controls.

The engine thrummed softly under her boots.

She was half-dozing in the driver’s seat, body curled slightly to one side, head tilted back against the headrest. Not asleep. Never asleep. Just hovering in that edge-space between awareness and rest.

She’d had six calls tonight. The big one had been a perimeter search for a carjacker who’d ditched a stolen Lexus at the Northwood light rail station and vanished into the maze of infrastructure. They never found him. Probably slipped out the east side before the last two units even got staged. The perimeter was a joke. But they ran it anyway. They always tried. Two hours, two canine calls, one minor ankle sprain from one of the rookies who tripped over a drainage pipe.

Now the clock was sliding toward end-of-watch, or EOW, and everyone on Adam-Watch knew the unspoken rule.

No proactive policework after 0400. You didn’t stop cars. You didn’t hassle drunks. You didn’t go check on that guy pushing the shopping cart down Brookfield unless he was actively stabbing someone or carting around a couple pounds of enriched uranium.

You found a hidey hole. You parked. You shut down everything that could flash, beep, or give away your position. You leaned back. And you let the silence hold you until end-of-watch. Or until dispatch sent you a call.

Maggie had found this spot a year ago. Good lines of sight. No through traffic. No loiterers. Anyone approaching would have to come up on foot, and she’d hear them crunching gravel before they got within ten yards. And it was dark. There were no parking lot lights, no lights from the building. There was not even moonlight on this particular night.

She liked it here.

Her uniform jacket was on the passenger seat. She’d had to wear it out on the perimeter but she was warm enough now. The night air was late October crisp, but her long-sleeved uniform shirt kept her cozy enough for now. Her radio was clipped high on her left shoulder, volume down to a whisper. Her body was relaxed, but her brain was still cycling—calls, reports, carjacker, dispatch codes, breakfast options, gym or no gym, sleep or no sleep.

Her eyes were closed. But she’d be up in a flash if that radio so much as cleared its throat. This was what 0400 looked like when you worked nights. It wasn’t glamorous. But it was peace. Of a sort.

Her MDT beeped—sharp and urgent, not a status ping but a real call.

Maggie’s eyes snapped open instantly. She reached forward, tapped the touchscreen, and read the alert. The text was already populating in the center pane.

1901 B Street, Arcade Creek. Explosion reported. Unknown cause. Unknown if structure occupied. Multiple 9-1-1 calls.

Beneath it: 16-A-1 assigned as lead. 14-A-1 secondary. Multi-agency response. District 1 units respond priority-one. Fire and EMS en route.

A half-second later, the dispatcher’s voice crackled across the radio, calm but clipped.

“Dispatching 16-Adam and 14-Adam. All available District-1 units respond as well. Structure explosion reported, 1901 B Street, Arcade Creek. Multiple callers. Fire, EMS responding. Scene not secure. Unknown cause.”

Maggie was already dropping her Tahoe into drive, flipping the lights on but holding the siren. No need to wake the whole goddamn county just yet. Not until she hit a main road.

Her fingers flicked the lapel mic.

“14-Adam responding. Rolling from Layton and Brighton.”

She felt her pulse jump. Not panic—never panic. Just the baseline spike of every cop who’s been sitting still too long and suddenly has to move. That full-body click-in.

Arcade Creek.

Of course.

District 1 continued west from the edge of Northwood all the way out to the Sacramento River—a twelve-mile stretch of mostly farmland. Tomato fields. Rice paddies. The occasional irrigation canal or stolen truck dumped in a ditch. Long stretches of nothing but crops and power poles. Quiet as hell.

And then, halfway between the city edge and the river, was the small town of Arcade Creek. That little redneck pocket of the county everyone pretended didn’t exist.

Every major city had a town like this on its periphery—tucked just outside the metro, just rural enough to avoid oversight, just populated enough to cause problems. A no-stoplight town with a bunch of liquor stores, more honky-tonk bars than churches, a tow yard, a couple of double-wides selling fireworks out of season, and a population where incest jokes were considered to be in good taste.

Someone was always talking about the sheep being nervous. Someone else was always playing the banjo. And everyone laughed at the same old jokes:

“What’s an Arcade Creek girl say during sex?”

“Stop it, Daddy, you’re crushing my smokes.”

Maggie didn’t laugh anymore. Not since her third honey lab explosion out there.

Something blowing up in Arcade Creek? That was no fucking gas leak.

That was someone trying to make something they shouldn’t.

Honey labs were all the rage these days. No one cooked meth in the United States anymore. It was too hard to get hold of the main ingredient of pseudoephedrine. Now, meth was mostly cooked in Mexico where pseudoephedrine was unregulated and available for the equivalent of about twenty dollars a gram. And you didn’t even have to break open all the little capsules first. After being cooked in warehouses that looked like legit chemical manufacturing facilities and kept safe by the corrupt police, the end product was smuggled across the US border by a variety of means but most commonly muled in by cars returning from trips to Mexico.

Honey lab explosions were the new meth lab explosions in the second quarter of the twenty-first century. Honey oil was a concentrated form of THC extracted from the leaves of cannabis plants—a byproduct of smokable weed production. You could separate what little THC there was in leaves by hitting it with butane gas to break the carbon bonds that held the active ingredient to the inert plant material. Easy peasy. People with room temperature IQs were doing it all the time and making a hefty little profit. But sometimes they were really dumb about it. They worked in unventilated spaces with a highly flammable fuel/air mixture. Sometimes they lit a smoke while they were working. Sometimes the water heater kicked on. Either way, the result was the same. A big, rapid release of energy as C₄H₁₀ and O₂ were converted to CO₂ and H₂O.

There had been six such explosions in HCSD’s jurisdiction this year so far. This was likely number seven.

Maggie caught sight of Boulder’s Tahoe up ahead as she blasted west on Knox Lane, the taillights flickering red in the dark. No lights visible on the houses anymore. They were at the edge now. The last blink of suburbia before the black.

Up ahead, the canal loomed, black and glistening beneath the bridge.

They crossed it at seventy-three. On the other side, the world changed.

Knox Lane became Sankey Road—narrower, darker, rougher. The streetlights ended abruptly, as if the county had given up trying to light anything west of where the porch couches lived. The road dropped to two lanes, patched and pitted, the kind of surface that turned speed into gamble.

They pushed anyway. Eighty. Eighty-five. Ninety. Ninety-five.

Not quite triple digits—but close. Maggie had been over a hundred out here before. Not recommended. Not with the potholes. Not with the frost heaves and the ditches that yawned like open mouths on either side.

“Update on Arcade Creek response,” the dispatcher broke in. “Fire and EMS on scene. One mobile structure fully destroyed. No active flames. One confirmed 11-44. Second victim on scene, severe burns, uncooperative. Incident Command requesting law enforcement expedite.”