She tightened the bend until her hair brushed her feet and looked around her bare calf at him. “What kind of pie?” Straightening, she stepped out of the boots and murmured, “Cherry?”
“No.” He croaked it. “Apple.” Frank swallowed. “I love apple pie.” For once during a sexual encounter, he hadn’t calculated his words for maximum seductive effect. There was no Dom artistry to them. Nothing but raw male need.
She bent and ran her lovely hands up the backs of her thighs to her ass, where those pretty fingers edged under the red lace. Just brushing the bright copper tuft covering her pussy. Once. Twice.
Straightening to her full height, she caught the waistband of her panties, and pulled them down those legs. Slowly. So slowly, lace whispering over smooth skin. Until she was bent double again.
His hands were sweating. He started to dry them off on his pant legs, only to hear the clink of the handcuff chain, the tight rake of the bracelets around his wrists. She had him fucking helpless . . .
God, her ass. The full, round curves of it. The bulge of her pussy lips between her thighs. Those legs, long and curving with feminine muscle. She could probably run him into the ground with those legs.
Pulling upright again, Alex turned to face him, settling her duty belt over her lush hips. Leather creaked and the baton rang against the ring that held it.
He swallowed. “Why did you keep the belt?”
“This?” She ran her right hand over her Taser, the pepper spray canister, the collapsible baton. Cupping the grip of the pistol protruding above its leather holster even as the tapering fingertips of her left hand traced the extra magazines for the weapon. “It has something I need.” She unsnapped one of the smell leather pouches and pulled out a familiar square of plastic packaging.
“You keep condoms in your duty belt?” he managed, his voice a little choked.
“Not always,” she informed him. “Just since I met you.” She tucked the condom between the belt and her bare belly.
“Jesus God, what you do to me.” It was all he could do to talk, staring at the contrast between her pale skin and the black leather of the belt.
“It’s so fucking male, isn’t it?” Alex asked softly, both hands weighing the belt. “It’s designed to be worn by men, with their narrow hips and broad shoulders. Makes women just look chunky.”
“You don’t look chunky.” His voice rasped.
“Thank you.” Her soft lips curved. Any lipstick she’d put on at the start of the day was long gone, leaving her mouth lusciously bare and softly pink. Only a shade lighter than the nipples that rode so proudly on those full, pretty breasts. Hard nipples, jutting as if eager for his mouth.
She walked toward him, the swing of her naked hips emphasized by her duty belt. The delta of her neatly trimmed pubic hair gleamed like threads of copper in the soft light. He stared at the swaying triangle, entranced. She stopped right at the barrier of his knees. He spread his thighs, and she stepped between them. Leaned in.
It was a delicious promise of a kiss, all tease and warmth, her pointed tongue sliding between his lips, tracing the edge of his teeth as his own tongue chased hers. Sliding together in a sinuous erotic dance, wet flesh brushing wet flesh, caressing and stroking.
Until she drew back a fraction so she could look into his eyes as she sat down astride his lap and began to unbutton his shirt.
He panted with need. And didn’t care what power he was surrendering to his sub. Didn’t give a shit about their respective roles. About anything other than the hunger to touch those perfect breasts, tight nipples, creamy skin. “Uncuff me.”
She bit her lip, a gentle press of teeth on flesh as she considered. Then, deciding, “No.”
“I want to touch you.”
“I don’t care.” Her clever fingers made short work of his buttons. Flick, flick, flick. One after another, sliding free of their buttonholes. “I haven’t made my point.”
“Oh, believe me . . .” He rolled his hips against her weight and suppressed the need to groan. “You’ve made your point so well my balls have turned blue.”
“Blue balls? Really? Are you a sophisticated Dom or a sixteen-year-old boy?”
“You seem to have convinced my dick I’m a sixteen-year-old boy.” He contemplated the eager intensity of his lust. “Maybe thirteen.”
She pulled his shirt out of his belt, moving, it seemed to him, with all the speed of honey in January. How the hell was he supposed to survive the removal of his vest, tee, and pants without embarrassing the hell out of himself like some overeager teen at the prom?
Unfastening the plastic buckle of his duty belt, Alex dropped the whole thing on the floor with a ringing thump. She went after his pants belt next, unbuckling it, letting it hang with a jangle. Slim hands unfastened his pants and unzipped him.
Dragging his aching, desperate erection free, she hooked his boxers under his balls. She reached into her belt, pulled out the condom, tore the package open with her teeth. Slid it down over his throbbing length, making him gasp at the wicked promise of the friction. “Oh, Jesus, hurry up,” he managed between set teeth.
“Well, if you insist.” Alex grinned wickedly. Before he could even draw a deep breath, she’d impaled herself on his rubber-sheathed cock, her pussy tight and just slick enough.
“Oh, Christ!” he groaned, throwing his head back at the blaze of sensation burning its way up his spine.
* * *
Alex inhaled sharply, loving the feel of Frank’s thick cock filling her so completely. Somewhat to her surprise, teasing him had aroused her every bit as much as it had him. Now each slow stroke teased her sex with delicious friction that drove her to grind down even harder, stimulating her clit as he rolled up to meet her. She watched as he threw his head back, panting in delight, the cords of his strong throat rigid with the effort of controlling his pleasure. “God,” he gritted. “What you do to me! You feel so fucking good, so tight, so . . .”
Incredible.
He filled her as if God had designed his dick for the job—its meaty length spearing to her slick, tight depths, its thickness pressing deeper and deeper as she slid down over him until her ass met his hips. She paused, loving the pure intensity of the moment, the silken sensation of being linked to him. Then he lifted his head and met her eyes, and the psychic snap of that instant rocked her. She’d never connected so perfectly with a man in her life.
Alex rose upward, and still he stared into her, making her feel like a Caribbean tidal pool, clear all the way to the bottom, every thought swimming through her brain visible. Staring into those gray eyes, she watched them darken as his pupils expanded, to the near-black of hurricane clouds. Hungry eyes, desperate not just for sex—that was easy enough—but for something more. Something she couldn’t quite see, could only sense in his shadowed depths. Something that swam through his darkness like sea monsters in the Mariana Trench.
Hungry, lonely monsters.
She sank again, chasing the liquid silver burn of her orgasm. His cock reached deep, and her pubic bone ground on his pelvis with a delicious buzz of pleasure. Circling her hips, Alex moaned as the delight intensified into a hot electric spark. Frank made a needy sound, hunching up at her, each thrust burning her senses like an arc welder’s flame, until . . .
The bright detonation ripped a scream from her mouth that became a drawn-out yowl as she paused, her thighs shaking as she held herself in place, and he lunged up and pulled out and . . .
Roared, a deep male cry of climax as he bucked, Alex riding his heaving thrusts, her orgasm intensifying with the savagery of his.
Until he finally collapsed under her, panting, as she let herself fall against his chest. One side of his open shirt was caught beneath her body, and his badge scraped her cheek as he recovered his breath. She curled her arms around him, listening to his heart thumping hard.
God, she loved this moment of sated connection. Loved it so much she was tempted to keep her mouth shut just to preserve it. Unfortunately s
he had to say what had to be said, or her stubborn Dom would keep making the same mistake. Until it got him killed.
And that was an unacceptable outcome no matter how much she wanted to preserve the moment.
“I trust,” she said when she was capable of speaking a sentence without panting it, “I’ve made my point.”
“Any number of them,” he agreed. His breathing, she was gratified to notice, was no steadier than hers. “But I gather you mean one in particular.”
She drew back and straightened to meet his gaze with as much cool confidence as she could muster wearing only a duty belt. “I just kicked your ass.”
At that his head rocked back, and he frowned slightly, as if a little jolted from the delicious aftermath. “What?”
“You heard me.” She gave him a deliberately taunting smile. “You might be able to bench-press my body weight, but I still won.”
“Won what?”
“You’re in that chair, despite the fact that you didn’t want to be there.”
Frank grinned toothily. “Well, it was a damned good floor show.”
“Yep. But you’re still right where I want you.” She ground her hips a little, and he sucked in a breath, despite his softening cock.
He swallowed at the tight, slick friction. Hard. “Okay.”
“Even though in any direct hand-to-hand contest, you’d kick my ass.”
“Honey, kicking your ass is the last thing I want to do to it.”
“Exactly. I know your weaknesses and I exploited them. I goaded you into reaching for me, giving me the opening I needed to put you in a pain-compliance hold, exploiting another weakness. I handcuffed you, used more pain compliance to put you in that chair, and seduced you into staying there.”
“And made me come so hard I saw stars. I consider that a win.”
She reached down and pulled the tube of pepper spray off her belt, and raised it right in front of his eyes.
Patrol cops had to submit to being shot with pepper spray in order to carry it, so he knew exactly how unpleasant it would be to get a direct blast in the eyes from two inches away. He reared back instinctively. “Alex!”
“SSSSSSSSSssssss,” she hissed, pretending to fire. “And you have a face full of pepper spray, just as you could have had a face full of bullet earlier tonight. And in both cases, it would have been because you underestimated a woman who used your weaknesses to kick your ass.”
Angry heat replaced his lazy pleasure. “I knew what I was doing. I had it under control.”
Alex lifted a red brow. “Like you have me under control?” She slid the slender spray can back into its holster on her belt.
His voice lowered to that deep Dom thrum that made her pussy heat, even after everything they’d just done. “I’ll show you control.”
“And I’ll probably enjoy every minute of it,” she said, ignoring the blend of arousal and delicious anxiety that rolled through her. “But having your gun holstered while you tried to talk Charlotte down was stupid.”
“Yeah, if she’d wanted to shoot me. But she didn’t want to shoot me. She wanted me to shoot her. And if I’d had my weapon out and cocked, it would have been too easy to do just that, even if only by accident.”
“She’s mentally ill, Frank! Which means, by definition, that her actions are not rational. Anything you said could have triggered her into shooting you, me, and that poor bitch Betty, who was armed only with a cell phone. Video from which, by the way, is probably already on the Internet.”
“I was watching her eyes, Alex. I’d have known if she was about to fire.”
“It’s not the eyes you have to worry about. It’s the damned gun!”
“Look, if she hadn’t been crazy, you can bet your ass I’d have had my weapon drawn. Hell, if she’d just been a run-of-the-mill robber, I’d probably have already shot her. But I know crazy.” He paused, swallowing. “My mother is bipolar.”
Alex stared at him in dismay. Bipolar disorder was a major mental illness in which victims alternated between periods of frenzied, manic joy and depressions that could drive the victim to suicide. Victims were also prone toward delusions when their brain chemistry got particularly bad. “Oh. Oh, shit, Frank, I’m . . . I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, it didn’t make for the most stable childhood. When she was manic, Mom would stay up for days at a time, drawing all over the walls, talking a mile a minute, so damned happy she’d break into dancing in the middle of the mall. When she was in a depressive phase, I had to practically drag her out of bed to get her to go to work. When she was healthy—and most of the time, she was— she was a good mother. When she was bad . . . sometimes she’d go psychotic.”
“Violent?”
“And delusional.” He nodded grimly. “I learned how to predict when she was about to explode. Good thing, too. When I was sixteen, she had a really bad episode. She cut my throat.” He turned his head and gestured at a short scar on his neck not far from his left ear. It was only a couple of inches long, but it was thick with knotted scar tissue. It must have been a hell of a wound.
Alex gaped at him. “Your mother did that?”
“Yeah. I always hid the knives when she got bad, but somehow she’d gotten her hands on a half-rusted box cutter. I got into the bathroom and locked the door. Luckily she’d left her cell in there and I was able to call 911. Damn near bled to death before the cops arrived. They saved my ass.” He smiled faintly. “That’s why I became a cop after I got out of the Navy. Wanted to pay it forward.”
“If she was that bad, why were you with her at all?” Alex demanded, outrage stirring behind her astonishment. He’d spent years at the mercy of a woman slowly losing herself to mental illness. “Why didn’t DSS take you?”
“Because I went to considerable lengths to make sure they didn’t.” Rolling those delicious shoulders, he added, “Could you take off the cuffs? My arms are beginning to cramp.”
“Oh. Yeah, sure.” Mechanically, she rose from his lap, taking the key off her belt and unlocking the cuffs, then pulling them off his powerful wrists and stashing them in the cuff-shaped pouch on her belt. “You wanted to stay with her?”
“She was my mother,” Frank said, as if that went without saying. “I took care of her, just like she’d taken care of me when I was small.” He stood, rubbing his reddened wrists. “You know, as bondage gear goes, handcuffs kinda suck.”
“Sorry.” Alex shook her head. More for something to do with her hands, she took off her duty belt, then looked around and started collecting her uniform from the floor. “I just don’t understand how you managed to stay with her, unless a whole lot of people really dropped the ball. Didn’t you go to school?”
“Of course. She wanted me to go to school. Hell, she wanted me to go to college. She wasn’t always sick, Alex. Mom had a lot of good days.” He shrugged his broad shoulders as he zipped his fly and buckled his belt.
“But what about your grandfather? The one who left you the money. Why didn’t he do something?”
“He didn’t know. She didn’t get sick until I was ten or so. After she tried to kill me, I realized she needed serious help. I got Granddad on the phone and told him if he didn’t start taking care of my mother, I was going to the media. I’d tell everybody all about how he’d abandoned his grandson to the psychotic mercies of his mentally ill daughter.”
“And it worked.”
“It worked. He finally stepped up to the plate, and Mom got the care she needed to recover. Since I was only sixteen, I had to move in with him. That was no party—Granddad really was a prick. When I finally decided I couldn’t take it any longer, I enlisted in the Navy. After I warned him that if Mom didn’t keep getting the care she needed, I’d make him pay.”
“Ballsy. Not that I’m surprised.” She studied him. “When you said you knew what you were doing with Charlotte, you meant it.”
“Yeah. There’s this look they get. At first there’s all the usual pain and fear as they fight whatever the disease is tr
ying to make them do. And then . . . their eyes just go flat. Dead. They give up. That’s what I learned to look for, dealing with Mom.”
“That’s what you were watching for with Charlotte,” Alex said softly.
“Right. That’s why I holstered my gun. I was trying to show her that I hadn’t given up on her, so she shouldn’t give up on herself. She still had a chance.”
“And then I forced your hand because you knew I was about to shoot her.”
“Right.” He shrugged. “But you never had to develop your instincts the way I have.”
“You obviously have good instincts—otherwise the sniper would have gotten us both yesterday.” She searched his eyes. “But, Frank, what if you trust them, and they’re wrong?”
He just shrugged. “Then I guess I’m fucked.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There weren’t nearly as many cars in the Myers-Rhodin Funeral Home as there should have been. Normally the visitation for a cop—particularly one who’d died in the line of duty—would draw every officer in the department, plus representatives from departments all over the state. Alex knew that, because she’d attended a visitation for a cop in Greenville, fifty miles away.
“Where the fuck is everybody?” Frank growled as he parked the patrol car.
“At home,” Alex said, getting out. They’d ridden in together; Frank had insisted, knowing how torn up she’d be. She’d decided not to fight him on it, suspecting she’d need the energy to get through the event, never mind the shift to follow. “They saw the fucking video.”
“Speaking of video . . .” He glowered at the street, where two news trucks from rival stations were parked. Four or five people with iPads and television cameras loitered on the sidewalk, watching for anybody moving slowly enough to accost. “The vultures are here.”
“Walk fast.” They headed across the parking lot toward the funeral home’s columned entry. It was a long, one-story redbrick building that looked like a cross between a church and an old Southern plantation house.
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