by Alicia Scott
She yanked off her pants hastily, impatiently kicking them aside. He stripped off his own, as well, standing before her in nothing but a lopsided grin and a pair of cotton boxers decorated with Winnie-the-Pooh. The sight made her giggle. Then it made her want him more.
“I like your underwear better,” he said.
“Okay. Take it off.”
He took his sweet time, his hands devilishly slow and controlled as they danced across her shoulders. How could she have forgotten the delicate whisper of his fingertips against her skin? The rasping feel of strong fingers sliding down her neck, hovering just above the swell of her breasts. And then his lips, kissing her teasingly, coaxing her head up, her body into his, while his fingers still lingered, brushing her skin but not moving one inch lower when she desperately wanted them to.
Then, just when she thought she might scream from frustration, his fingers flickered over her silk-covered breasts. His thumbs massaged her nipples. His palms cupped her breasts. Her own hands finally slipped the thin straps of the teddy off her shoulders. The top fell down, exposing herself completely to his hands.
He ducked his head and took one nub into his mouth.
She whimpered. She buried her hands in his dark, thick hair. She held his head against her and thought if he ended it now she’d die. No, she would kill him first. Then she’d die.
“Please,” she murmured. “Please.”
He moved to her other breast, laving it with equal care. Then he drew the nub between his lips and suckled hard. She released her pent-up breath as nearly a scream and found the waistband of his boxers. She jerked them down savagely. She pressed herself against his hard length, rubbing her silk-clad belly against him.
He responded by tossing her over the back of the sofa and following her down into the pillows. Now they had her teddy off. Now they were naked body pressed to naked body, sweat-slick skin against sweat-slick skin.
His hands seemed to be all over her. Then they found her hot, wet folds, slipping into her body, moving with exquisite care. She grabbed his arms so tightly her fingers welted his skin. It had been too long for her. She could feel the pressure building up to unbelievable levels and she thought when the climax finally came, it would tear her apart. She didn’t want to be shattered alone.
“Now,” she murmured. “Now!”
He settled between her legs. She had one last glimpse of his face. His eyes were so dark they were bottomless. Sweat beaded his brow. Tension set his jaw. He looked handsome and a heartbeat later, as he plunged into her body, she thought he looked sad, torn in two.
He ducked his head against her shoulder. He whispered her name in a tone of guttural need. And suddenly she was rocking him against her at the same time he was moving inside her. She offered him comfort while he took their bodies up, up, up. She held him tight while the tension built then burst, and then she was murmuring his name over and over while he exploded inside her and their bodies writhed together on the sofa.
In the aftermath, he fell against her heavily. She stroked his back and wondered how he could make her body feel so good while holding so many secrets in his eyes.
A short time later, he rose and wordlessly led her to the bedroom. He spooned her against him and seemed content to stroke her hair. But those touches soon led to his hands on her arms again, then her breasts. Then he was kissing her feverishly. Once again they made love with an urgency she didn’t understand.
And Sandra discovered that in spite of her best intentions, she could not bring herself to ask Mike what was really going on. She was too afraid he’d say, “Nothing.” She was too afraid he’d say, “I’m fine, ma chère, fine.”
So she curled up against him silently in the dark. And she was not surprised to wake up hours later and find her ex-husband gone from her bed.
The clock read 2:04 a.m. Sandra got up and retrieved her silk robe, pausing for a moment to listen. There were no sounds coming from the rest of the house. Most likely, that meant Mike was in the living room. Six months after they were married, Sandra would find him sitting there a lot in the middle of the night. Always alone in the dark. Never giving up his thoughts.
I thought we were going to talk this time, Mike. I thought we were going to work on being more than lovers. That we were going to be friends.
Sandra took a deep breath, told herself this was the mature thing to do and walked out into the hall.
She did find him in the living room. He was sitting on her pale sofa, nursing a glass of something and studying an icy sliver of moonbeam as it slid across the floor.
“Hey,” she said at last.
“Hey.”
“Couldn’t sleep?” She took a hesitant step into the room.
“Just restless. Didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“You didn’t disturb me.” She walked a few steps closer. He’d pulled on his boxers but nothing else, and moonlight rippled across his bare chest. Sandra decided to take a seat on the small chair across from him. Distance seemed safer.
“You should get some sleep, ma chère,” he said after a moment. “Until we catch Vee, it’s gonna be a rough week.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Don’t you have a press conference tomorrow? That community policing stuff? Don’t want shadows showing up under your eyes.”
“I’ll wear more makeup.”
He looked away, then took another sip of his drink.
“Whiskey?” she guessed after a moment.
“Yep.”
“You don’t generally drink much.”
“Just in the mood, I guess.”
“Mike, what’s going on?”
“I’m fi—”
“Don’t say it, Mike. Please, just don’t say that.”
He ducked his head. She could see his frustration, illuminated by the moon and set harshly on the planes of his face. Something was definitely bothering him, and once more, he seemed intent on keeping it to himself. And it hurt her deeply.
“It would be better,” he said hoarsely, “if you’d go back to bed.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why, Sandra? Can’t I have moods, too? Can’t I be the tense one sometimes, the angry SOB? You could be the one who lets it all slide and trusts me to be fine by morning.”
“I want you to be fine by morning, Mike. But I also want to know what’s going on inside your head. Why is it so hard to tell me what you’re feeling?”
Her voice had risen. She hadn’t wanted that. Now he slammed his highball down on the glass coffee table with more force than necessary. She hadn’t wanted that, either.
“I feel a need to be alone. That’s all I’m asking, Sandy. All right?”
“No, it’s not all right. It’s our old pattern. Unbelievable intimacy inside the bedroom, total withdrawal outside of it. Dammit, I care about you, Mike. I want to know all of you. The good and the bad, the fun and the fierce, the happy and the moody and everything in between—”
“And I can’t give you that right now. I just…ah, damn!” He swiped his hand through his hair, rose jerkily off the sofa and paced a few steps. “Sandy, I’m a guy. Sometimes guys need to be left alone. It’s nothing personal.”
“But it feels personal.”
“But it’s not! I just can’t talk to you about everything. Sometimes…I gotta work it out for myself first.”
“How? By coming over and seducing me? By stripping off my clothes and jumping into bed with me just so you can leave me six hours later?”
“One thing has nothing to do with the other.”
“Like hell it doesn’t! We hadn’t been together for four years. Four years! And then there was this afternoon, and then you arrive tonight, and all I can think is how good it feels. I missed you. I’ve been lonely. I’ve been thinking about our marriage and why we couldn’t make it work. I wanted to make it work.” Her voice broke; her eyes were tearing up. She brushed back the moisture impatiently. “So here you are, Mike. And into bed we go. And not six hours later, her
e we are again. You shutting me out, and me feeling lonely. Damn you for that. I thought we were going to be better this time. I thought we were going to try harder. Damn you!”
“Hey, I’m not doing anything I didn’t learn from you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She’d risen as well. Now he turned and met her gaze squarely from across the room.
“Come on, Sandy. You’re standing here lecturing me about sharing. That’s a laugh. Which one of us prides herself more on independence anyway? Sure, you’ll tell me about your day. You’ll come home and rant and rave about the politics of your daddy’s company or the co-worker who messed up your project. But what about when you have a real problem, Sandy? What about when someone writes Bitch on a nameplate outside your new office? That’s for you to handle, right? What about when you’re scared of attending a cop shooting? Another problem just for you. Fear is your burden. Proving yourself is your burden. Facing down all the big bad chauvinist pigs in the world is also your problem. ’Cause heaven forbid anyone ever help Sandra Aikens. Not even her husband is allowed to do that.”
“I…I try to include you….”
“You rejected my name, my family and my house. How the hell were you including me?”
“I don’t know! I’m the only Aikens left. It seemed a shame to lose the name completely. I thought you under stood that. Our children still would’ve been Rawlinses. I promised you that.”
“Maybe. It’s harder to believe that though, when I put it together with everything else. You got married, and what really changed for you, Sandy? You have the same name, you live in the same house, you insist on Saturday cocktails with your parents. I get married, I gotta move into some art deco monstrosity, toss out all my furniture—”
“Hey, duct tape wrapped around a foam cushion doesn’t count as furniture!”
“But it was mine! And then there was nothing of mine left. You rejected invitations to my family’s house, you didn’t fit in with my friends, and you had me living in some house where I was terrified to walk through the door most nights in case I tracked working-class dirt on the marble tiles. But you know what hurts most of all, Sandy? The fact that you still insist I did nothing to save our marriage. My God, I rearranged my whole life for our marriage. It just wasn’t good enough for you.”
For once, Sandra was stunned into silence. She had never thought of things that way, never tried to look at their new life from Mike’s perspective. Funny, at the time she had honestly not possessed any ill intent toward her new husband, and yet she had done plenty of damage anyway.
“I…I guess I wasn’t thinking,” she said at last. “My house was larger than yours, so I thought it made sense to keep it. My furniture was nicer. My neighborhood has better schools. I don’t know. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
Mike kept staring at her. She finally bowed her head.
“I do value my independence,” she admitted. “I liked keeping my stuff and my world. That way I didn’t have to throw myself at your mercy, or suddenly feel dependent upon you. I guess…I just didn’t want to be one of those women whose lives revolved completely around their husbands. I wanted to still feel like myself, capable of taking care of myself and solving my own problems.”
“Well, there you go, Sandy. You want your independence and I want mine. So hell, maybe the bedroom is the only place we can meet in the middle. The rest would involve too much compromise.”
He took off for the bedroom. She followed him belatedly, feeling even more confused than before. “Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“Mike?”
“I want to be alone. How many times do I have to say it? Dammit, don’t look at me like that. I just need space!”
“Don’t leave like this. We have to be able to work this out.”
He threw on his shirt and pants. “There’s nothing to work out.”
“Mike!”
“Sandy!” He had his shoes on now, his jacket under his arm. He stopped in the foyer just long enough to meet her eye and she was taken aback by the depth of anger in his face. “You told me you would trust me, Sandy. You told me you would understand when I didn’t want to talk. Well, I don’t want to talk. When I’m ready, I will. But I won’t be bullied into it beforehand just to meet your needs. I’ve got needs, too, you know. How about thinking of those for a change? How about thinking of something other than yourself?”
He stormed out the door. Sandra remained standing in the darkened foyer.
“I’m…I’m sorry, Mike,” she whispered. But by the time she got the words out, his car had already backed out of her driveway and there was no one around to hear.
Another reconciliation, another fight. Funny, how the arguments were never what she wanted and, yet, all she seemed to have in the end. Apparently they weren’t older and wiser after all. Apparently they were still oil and water, forever unable to mix.
After a moment, she closed her front door and locked the dead bolt. Sandra returned to her living room and curled up on the sofa where only hours before they had made love. She didn’t cry. Instead she closed her eyes and long before the sun lightened the sky, she did her best to inhale the lingering traces of Mike’s scent. She held the pillows close, since she was now more certain than ever that she would never have him.
At eight o’clock, Sandra’s phone rang. From the kitchen table, she eyed the plastic hand piece warily. It was late; she should be at work. Instead she was lingering over her cup of coffee, still in her silk bathrobe. She just couldn’t get herself moving this morning. She didn’t like to think about having to face Mike at work.
On the third ring, she reluctantly picked up the phone. It was good old Lieutenant Hopkins.
“You planning on coming to work today?” he asked immediately.
“I’m on my way,” she lied coolly.
“Good, ’cause the Citizen’s Post ran that drawing of Vee this morning, and we got a problem.”
“Someone identified him?”
“More like nine hundred people have identified him. The switchboard is jammed, the call officers are booked, and the leads are still streaming in. Congratulations, Chief. You’ve officially crashed the Alexandria police department. Now what do you plan on doing about that?”
Sandra jumped into the shower, threw on a suit and headed for work.
By ten, Sandra had assembled Mike, Koontz and Lieutenant Hopkins in her office for a situation update. She’d already spent thirty minutes on the phone with the mayor. She’d spent another fifteen minutes talking to the Citizen’s Post. Her press conference, officially to talk about community policing, had been moved up to one o’clock. She would now be talking about the Vee “crisis” as well. If the mayor had his way, she’d be announcing that Vee was safely in custody. That, of course, remained to be seen.
For now, she adopted her most somber expression and eyed the three men across from her. All three of them had shunned the offered chairs. Koontz was leaning against the left wall, wearing a double-breasted gray suit and looking as if he’d rather be any other place on earth. Lieutenant Hopkins stood in the middle, still smirking slightly at the mess Sandra had made. Mike was all the way in the back, closest to the door. His face was carefully shuttered, his dark eyes remote. She thought he looked tired, but wasn’t sure if that was wishful thinking on her part.
She didn’t look at him long anyway. She was too afraid her eyes would give her emotions away.
“All right,” she said briskly, “I’ve spoken to the mayor and we’ve outlined a plan of attack.”
“Better late than never,” Koontz muttered.
Sandra ignored him. “Given the high volume of calls we are currently experiencing, the mayor has authorized the establishment of a temporary command center. We will form an official “Vee” task force, overseen by Lieutenant Hopkins here. Mike, Rusty, you will remain the lead agents on the case, but the mayor has also approved an additional manpower request, so you’ll now be assisted
by the Gang and Vice detectives as well. Basically, I’ve appointed eight troopers in charge of the phone lines. They’ll take all calls and fill out a log sheet with the information. It’s up to you to evaluate the leads and assign detectives to follow up on the ones you think are most important.”
This was standard protocol for a large-scale manhunt. That a thirteen-year-old could qualify for so much procedure still staggered Sandra, but she had not expected many comments on the organization itself. Of course she was wrong. Koontz promptly pushed away from the wall and stalked toward her.
“Come on, when are you going to get serious?”
“Excuse me?”
“Haven’t you been listenin’ to Lieutenant Hopkins here? These calls are a waste of time. Every shop owner who’s ever been robbed and every citizen who’s ever been mugged is now tying up our phone lines. Let’s face it, politically correct platitudes aside, to most white folks, all black kids do look alike. So we’re not gonna get anywhere there.
“Worse, now we also got gangs taking credit for Vee like he’s some kind of hero. That damn picture has given him substance. Now it’s ‘our homey, Vee’ this, ‘our brother, Vee’ that. You know it’s only a matter of time before either the kid blows up from the pressure, or someone else does it for him. We’re talking copycat shootings, organized attacks on cops, maybe some good old-fashioned looting and vandalism.”
“I’m aware of those dangers, Koontz. Patrols are under orders to travel only in pairs, and everyone is suited up in vests. We’re doing everything we can to protect ourselves, but you know as well as I do that we can’t retreat.”
“No kidding. But as long as the patrol officers are risking their butts out there, let’s take the offensive! We bring the composite drawing to the junior high. The principal and teachers can probably pinpoint two dozen kids who roughly match the sketch. Perfect. Now we got a list of names. Furthermore, we know this kid is packing. He had a gun when he encountered you two, right? Most likely, he’s armed twenty-four seven. So let’s have the principal open up the lockers—”
