"I'm ready. Please, Marshall."
"Call me Detective, like you used to do. I've heard that snotty voice of yours in my dreams."
"Detective Scott," I said, with all the haughtiness I could muster while handcuffed to a bed.
"Yes, just like that," he said meanly, and gently pinched my nipple, which was undoubtedly tenting the soft white fabric of my T-shirt.
I felt him moving again and tried to lift my head. "Keep your head back and your eyes closed," he said. "This is better than a wet T-shirt contest."
I couldn't laugh; I wanted him too much.
He bent down and took one nipple in his mouth, sucking hard for several seconds, until it felt like a line of heat was running from my nipple to where I was wet and throbbing for him. "I've wanted you like this," he murmured, his breath blowing over the wet fabric and making my nipples even harder. "I've wanted you bound for me. I bet you knew that. I bet you know that I hate the thought that I care for you more than you do for me. It makes me feel weak."
"Is that why you didn't call me?" I challenged, lifting my head to glare at him. "You didn't think I'd care?" It felt good to fight, like we were both part of a furious, lusting tangle that would come undone in an explosion that would rock us both.
"Maybe I wanted to know if you cared. Were you worried about me?"
"No," I lied, and held my breath, head falling back again.
Suddenly his hands were at the neck of my T-shirt. It ripped with a shredding sound that masked my gasps of anticipation and fear. The halves of the shirt fell to my sides.
"Tell me you were worried," he ordered.
I whimpered in response and felt the sharp sting of teeth in the bend of my arm.
"Tell me," he said again, rubbing the swollen head of his penis against the knot at the top of my flesh.
"No," I argued, and lifted up abruptly, wrapping my legs around him and holding on fiercely. He reared back on his arms surprised, and I took advantage of his motion, lifting my hips up and onto him, forcing him inside me with the strength of my legs.
He speared me. Hot and hard, stretching me and making me shout out a triumphant, "Yes," and the painful tightness burst, releasing me in waves of shuddering pleasure.
He plunged inside me, helpless, drawn in by the rhythmic clamping of my muscles, his head falling between his arms as he shuddered and let himself go.
I lay there limply as he pulled himself out of me. I felt him reach for the keys to the cuffs, managing to rub his whole body against me in the process.
He kissed me and I smiled, content now. "Do you have to go back to work?" I asked, drawing a finger over his lips, trying to memorize the feel and shape of them.
"In a little while," he murmured into my neck. I breathed in the smell of his hair and held him against me.
"Again," I queried softly, and he nodded, rolling over so that I was straddling him.
"Only now it's your turn to do all the work," he ordered, petting my thighs.
I laughed and rose up to take his newly aroused body into mine. Work was, after all, one of my favorite things.
Chapter Eleven
He got a call that afternoon. Someone meeting the general description of the victim had been spotted at the fair. He wouldn't let me come, but he came over as soon as he got back, walking in the door and scowling before plopping down on my couch.
I let him relax before I started pestering him, snuggling against him on the couch while he watched cartoons. The man really was a lunatic.
"Was it him?" I asked, unsure why I was so interested. Maybe it was just because this case marked the turning point in my relationship with him.
"Nope. And no one admitted to recognizing the tattoo."
"Any of the carts look freshly painted?"
"Quite a few, actually," he said, glancing away from the Road Runner long enough to give me a pleased look. It was nice to be appreciated for my brain as well as my other talents.
"I don't suppose you'd like to go back tonight?"
"Why?" he wanted to know.
"Well, I have free tickets, and there's a chance, a small chance, that I might recognize the twin."
He made a noncommittal noise in his throat.
"We could go to dinner at the restaurant of the pretty Italian women beforehand. I'll let you ogle them and not say a word."
That got his attention. "Promise?"
"Uh-huh. But if their husbands beat you up, I'm not lifting a hand to help you."
"Okay. But you're not leaving my side at the fair, and if you do see someone, you tell me quietly, don't shout and point."
As if I would. "Anything else?" I asked with only a touch of sarcasm.
"Yeah, make out with me in the Tunnel of Luv," he said, drawing out luv into a ridiculous exaggeration of a country hick's drawl.
I shouted with laughter, bashing him with a throw pillow, until he tossed me down and tickled me mercilessly. What did I do for fun before this crazy man?
STEVENS CALLED LATER that afternoon to say that the coroner had said that the mayor's daughter had apparently committed suicide, taking a large dose of sleeping pills and jumping off the pier. Marshall relaxed completely for the first time in days.
I put on my makeup, coming out of the bathroom twenty minutes later with pouty red lips the same color as one of the swirls in my dress, acres of dark brown tresses, and (thanks to mascara) eyes that would make a doe cry with envy.
"Damn," he breathed when he saw me, and I smiled. This was the reaction I'd been hoping for. "Are you sure you don't just want to stay here?" he asked hopefully.
"Yes, I'm sure," but I smiled at him and patted his shoulder as if he were a particularly good puppy dog. He had such nice shoulders, all strong and corded with those yummy muscles.
"We'd better head out then, the traffic probably sucks."
"So, who was the guy who drove you to the crime scene?" he asked after we'd gotten on the freeway. We were in his truck. The sun was still pretty high and the air smelled like the ocean and flowering plants. The windows were down, messing up my hair, but I liked the fresh air too much to complain.
I had to think. "Freckle Dick?" I asked, surprised.
"You actually call him Freckle Dick?" he wanted to know, sending me a doubtful look across the front seat.
"Not in public."
"Why?"
"Does it really matter?"
"No." Then, "Do you have one for me?"
"I haven't thought about it," I said honestly.
"Liar."
I laughed. "I'm not lying."
"Then you have to tell me what the deal is with all the men."
I fiddled with the strap on my purse. "Okay. I need to talk to you about it anyway."
"So...tell."
"Well, you know when you and Johnson ran into me?"
"Yes," he said shortly, and I knew he was still horrified by the thought that they almost killed me. I caught his quick glance at the scar that ran in a curved line from the top of my forehead to behind my left ear.
I sometimes wonder if I'd seen Marshall's face in the instant before the car struck me. I imagined I did. I wanted to believe that I had seen him at least once knowing that I would remember his face if I saw it again.
The funny thing was, if not for the accident, I don't think I ever would have met him, much less fallen in love with him.
I looked at his hands on the steering wheel, aware that he was waiting for me to elaborate. He still hadn't recognized his own hands in the photos I had taken. It was amazing to me, just as my little problem was amazing to everyone else.
"Well, you know some of what I went through to get better. You were there for a lot of it."
"Yes."
"You wanna know what I was doing right before Johnson hit me?"
"What?"
"Breaking up with my boyfriend."
He didn't say anything, so I just kept talking, thinking if I just got it all out in one go it wouldn't be so difficult. "I did that a lot. I wou
ld date a guy a couple times and somehow end up as his girlfriend without really thinking about it or intending to get in a relationship, and then after a few weeks or if they mentioned the word love, I would call it off."
He looked at me, probably thinking about his declaration in the closet and the fact that I still hadn't replied in kind.
"Anyway," I said, looking out the window, "when it became clear that I would never recognize anyone again, I got a little squirrely. There were lots of things going on in my mind. Things like, I can never go into a party again and see a familiar face. Watch my favorite actors and see a face I've watched a hundred times. If I have kids, I will never look into their faces and see myself or their father."
"You mean like, 'he has my nose' kind of thing."
"No, not exactly. That's what's weird. I can take a picture of myself and a picture of my father and see that we have the same nose. Sometimes, if I look for a specific feature on someone, I can always identify them by it."
"Like a birthmark?"
"Yes, the problem is that if someone has a similar-looking feature, I can't tell them apart. When my dad is around my uncle Ron, I am constantly confused. That's the best I can explain it really."
"Okay, so you had all this stuff going on in your head, and your solution was to sleep with as many men as you could?"
I frowned at him. "I was, am, pretty messed up. I can't even look in the mirror and see myself, the girl I feel like I am inside. It's like I woke up from that coma and she was gone. I was missing somehow, and I tried to get her back by grabbing and holding to whatever I could. I exercised like a maniac, so that I could have a perfect body. That, at least, I could recognize and call my own."
"And you took photographs of bodies..."
"Because that's what I'd felt like I'd become, a body without a soul...or a heart. I just took pictures of dicks because at least that was one way of telling you all apart, but I became fascinated by the process of it. The search for meaning in the physical. Eventually, in my later work, the stuff you saw in the museum, it became my way of looking for the soul in the body."
"You've managed it."
"Thanks," I said, and felt my eyes sting, and then I told him something that I'd never told anyone else, not even my therapist. "I thought that this was a punishment. The way I am now."
He sent me a surprised glance, but was too much of a cop to glance away from the road. I was glad we had done this in the car. I wasn't sure I would've been able to get it out while he looked at me. "For what?" he asked, sounding faintly outraged, as if I could never do anything to deserve such a horrible fate.
"For never loving any of those men, for never wanting their mind or their heart."
"Honey, if that was a crime worthy of divine punishment, don't you think half the people in the world would be struck with it, too?"
"At least the male half."
He gave me an impatient smile and took my hand. "You have a soul and a heart; you just got lost for a while."
I lifted his hand and kissed it, wanting to tell him about my conversation with Sara, wanting to ask if he really thought this was going to work. I still wasn't sure what other ways we could find of loving each other, but to keep him, I was willing to try, and keep trying.
I would tell him later. If I started crying now, I'd mess up my eye makeup. I couldn't bring a picture of my face to mind, but I was certain that I didn't want to have raccoon eyes the first time I ever told a man I loved him.
ROSA GREETED US at the door, her gnarled fingers taking mine as I bent down to kiss her cheek.
"Welcome, cara. You look lovely."
"So do you, ma'am."
"Call me Nonna," she said imperiously, and winked at me. "Is this your man?" she asked with a great deal of appreciation.
"Yes," I said, turning so that I could eye him as well, and I could've sworn that a blush tinged his cheeks.
She laughed and ordered him to bend down so that she could kiss his cheeks, first one and then the other, and I found myself pulling out my camera and taking a shot before I'd completely realized what I was doing.
Marshall looked up at me, and I thought that if I had seen a total stranger look at a woman that way, I would've said that he loved her like a crazy man. I stared back at him, wondering if he saw the same thing in my eyes.
Nonna led us to our table, and all the women crowded around us, giggling and asking when the photos would be ready.
"Soon," I told them, and nodded at Marshall. "I've been a little distracted," which sent them into gales of laughter again. Isabel's husband, a strapping older man with a barrel chest and a twinkle in his eye, winked at me from the kitchen door.
They opened a bottle of the house red for us and left us to ourselves in our dark little corner of the restaurant.
"How did you find this place?" he asked around a mouthful of garlic bread.
"I thought you wanted to make out with me later," I said, staring pointedly as he pulled off another piece.
"So you eat some, too, and you won't know the difference," he said, feeding me.
I chewed, looking around at the other diners. "I was just wandering around mostly. I had an idea for taking some photos using the old lighthouse as backdrop, so I came by one evening and found this place."
"And the rest is history."
"It will be. I did a couple prints. They're amazing. And there are some even better ones if the contact sheets are anything to go by."
"That's the one with all the negatives printed on it."
"What a man."
"I can't wait to see the ones from last night. As long as I'm the only one seeing them."
"What, you're not willing to give it up for posterity?"
"Not on your life. Those are going in my private collection."
"Along with your Playboys from 1978 to 1986 and your signed photo of Alyssa Milano?"
"How'd you know about the Playboys?"
"Stevens."
"Is nothing sacred?"
"He's probably told the whole station about us by now," I said, and waited uneasily for his reaction.
"He didn't have to. Everyone was sitting around innocently when I got in yesterday. Never mind that the mayor's daughter had turned up dead, the package on my desk still looked as rumpled as my date the morning after prom."
"They saw the photo," I guessed, already picturing the scene.
"'What's the photo for, Scott?' " he mimicked, wiggling his eyebrows. " 'I never got a photo, Scott,' " he said, doing Barnes's high-pitched Boston accent so perfectly that I snorted with laughter. "And then they began a rousing rendition of 'Scott and Debbie sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.'"
"Cops are so juvenile."
"That's why they like you so much."
"Ha ha. Did you always want to be one?"
"A cop?"
"No, a juvenile. Yes, a cop."
He looked down at his plate, then back up at me. There was something in his eyes that made me think of a five-year-old who just shoved his sister's Barbie down the toilet. "Actually, you wanna know a secret?"
"Oh, yeah," I crooned, leaning over my half-eaten salad. Unfortunately, one of the many DeTavola men showed up bearing a heavy tray with steaming plates of pasta and vegetables.
I smiled at him, he was gorgeous after all, but I really just wanted to hear Marshall's secret. I had a feeling he didn't make that offer lightly.
Our plates were set in front of us. Chicken cacciatore for me, mussels in clam sauce over a bed of linguini for him. It looked delicious, but I had another kind of sustenance in mind.
"So, don't leave me hanging here. What?"
He wasn't paying me any attention. He'd just wrapped his fork in his pasta and taken a bite. Even I couldn't mistake the look of divine bliss that passed over his face. DeTavola's restaurant had that effect on everyone.
I smiled and shook my head at him.
"This is...this is..."
"I know," I said, taking pity on him.
We ate
in silence for a while--Marshall letting out an occasional moan of pleasure while I laughed at him.
When we were finished, a different handsome Italian boy came over and took our dishes. Isabel followed shortly after him, smiling at our empty plates as they passed her in the strong arms of her grandson.
"Nonna said you were to have tiramisu and coffee. Is that all right with you?"
"We'd love it," I said immediately. I'd had their tiramisu before.
The gorgeous, multilayered dessert was brought out to us on china plates while the coffee was poured from a silver urn. I wouldn't let Marshall touch it until he'd told me his secret.
"No, don't take a bite until you tell me."
"Can I sip my coffee at least?"
"Fine, but I have to warn you, it doesn't taste like the coffee down at the station."
"You mean it doesn't taste like it was run through someone's dirty socks? What a disappointment."
"So--the secret. I'm dying here."
"Well," he began, sipping his coffee, "my first look at the inside of a police station actually happened the first time I was arrested."
I'm sure my jaw dropped. I couldn't have been more shocked if he'd smacked me one. He snickered at the look on my face.
"I was a bad, bad kid. Stole, did drugs, ran wild. My mom and I lived in a trailer just outside a small Georgia town. We were dirt poor and I had no idea who my father was. I got teased by all the other kids. My mom did the best she could for me, but I was always bored in school. Thought I knew everything. When I was about thirteen, I got hauled into the local station by a big, burly cop named Ted Fields. He called my mom to pick me up, and when she came tearing into the station, it was love at first sight. My little sister was born eight months and one wedding later."
I smiled, hearing the affection in his voice.
"She was beautiful. A little moppet with big green eyes and a silly smile. It took us a while to figure out that she was deaf."
I nodded, remembering what I'd learned at the crime scene that day. "That's why you know sign language."
"Yeah, the sergeant and I learned together, and I figured out that I wanted to be like him more than I wanted to be a badass."
"So you became a cop," I said quietly.
Big Guns Out of Uniform Page 25
