Misadventures in Blue

by Sierra Simone

  You’re a detective, Cat. You know how to read evidence.

  Being irritated at Kenneth’s touch combined with how miserable I felt today turning down Jace’s invitation seems to point toward a very obvious conclusion. One I don’t want to think about because what it means is too maudlin. Too destabilizing.

  Far too real.

  “I’m so glad you could meet me,” Kenneth says as he pours me a glass of sauvignon blanc.

  I take it gratefully, determined to fortify myself before the hard conversation starts. “Thank you for being patient while we were making plans. This case has been eating up lots of my evenings.” Well, the case and sex marathons with a man almost half your age.

  Kenneth waves the hand holding his own wineglass, in a don’t even worry about it, I totally understand gesture, and I can’t help but fixate on that hand. On the difference between his manicured fingers under the pale wine and how Jace’s fingers looked wrapped around a beer bottle at that bar a few weeks ago. How casually masculine Jace was. How unselfconscious.

  Kenneth pretends to be casual too, with his air of careless sophistication, but his mannerisms are too studied for that. The wine label faced outward so the rest of the diners can see that he spent eighty dollars on a single bottle. The angle of his shoulders so that his thin sweater over his button-down will pull just the right way over his arms and back to display his physique.

  I think of that date three years ago and the terrible sex that followed—the kind of sex you’d expect from someone who focuses more on style than substance.

  This is the person I thought made the most sense for me?

  We make small talk for a while, mostly about work and his daughters, and then we hem and haw over whether we want to order the rabbit or the octopus, because that’s the kind of restaurant this is. I wait until after we eat and after Kenneth has his third glass of wine to turn the conversation to our non-future.

  “Kenneth,” I start, searching for tact. “You’re a good friend, and—”

  “Oh, Cat,” he says and reaches for my hand across the table. “I thought you’d never broach the subject. I don’t want to dance around this because I think we are both too old and too tired for that, don’t you?”

  I hate the way my hand feels in his. How funny that Jace can bend me over a table and plug my ass with his thumb while I babble incoherent, orgasmic thank yous…and yet the peremptory way Kenneth takes my hand in a public building raises my hackles.

  I gently remove it, giving him a small smile. “I agree.”

  “I like you,” he continues, although he stares at his own hand with a furrowed brow, as if confused about what just happened. “I know our last foray into romance was interrupted by my move to St. Louis, but I’m here to stay now, Cat. And I want to make a new life here. Find a partner to share that with. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I do understand. He’s thinking exactly what I’ve thought before: the two of us make sense on paper. We’re the logical and inevitable pairing of upbringing and profession. Two rich kids who caught a case of conscience and went into the field of justice instead of finance or medicine or literally anything else more lucrative? That’s us. We’d be able to kvetch about judges and defense attorneys while we shopped for antiques and took winery tours.

  But in the last few weeks, I’ve discovered I don’t want that…if I ever did.

  “I understand, Kenneth, and three years ago I might have wanted to be that partner,” I say. “But that’s not why I came here tonight.”

  A hard anger passes over his features so quickly that someone less perceptive might have missed it. But I catch it.

  I catch it, and I’m suddenly beyond grateful that I’m not going to entwine my life with his. Not when his first response to rejection is anger. Not when all my cop senses are currently on high alert at the prospect of a man so much larger than me suffering from the side effects of a fragile ego.

  Fortunately, that ego appears to value public perception over personal slights, because he doesn’t seem inclined to make a scene. Instead, he takes a deep pull from his wineglass and leans back in his seat. “Is there someone else?”

  “There is.”

  He looks off into the middle distance and then looks back to me after a long, pensive moment. “Why did you come to dinner tonight, Cat?”

  “I came because I respect you and I thought this conversation deserved care and attention.”

  He sighs, rubbing his forehead, and then gives me a rueful kind of smile. “That’s how you know we’re old, by the way. Seven years younger and you would’ve just DMed me on Twitter. Seven years younger than that, and it would’ve been a passive-aggressive Snapchat story.”

  I laugh a little and so does he, and my tension slowly ratchets down.

  He’s taking it okay. It’s going to be okay.

  “I am sorry,” I say. “I truly enjoyed the time we spent together before you moved. But then I met”—I stumble, almost saying Jace’s name and only barely catching myself in time—“someone, and I’d like to see where things go.”

  Kenneth shakes his head, seeming sad. “I should’ve reached out earlier. It’s my loss, Cat. I hope he makes you happy.”

  I don’t miss the bitter edge in his tone, and my cop senses prickle again. Outwardly, he seems like he’s adjusting well, but there’s something emanating from him that makes me uneasy. I never ignore these instincts, and I feel abruptly grateful that I drove here on my own and don’t have to rely on him for a ride home.

  “Thank you,” I say. “He does make me happy.”

  There must have been too much truth in my tone, because there’s more irritation in Kenneth’s expression now. Luckily the waiter comes by with the check. Kenneth and I politely argue about who will take the bill—a pointless argument because the money isn’t significant to either of us. We agree to split it, and then we pay and make to leave.

  Kenneth catches my hand a last time after we stand up, and he kisses the back of it. “I hope we stay friends.”

  “Of course,” I say, but I doubt it.

  In fact, I’ll probably make sure to put some distance between us…at least until his bitterness fades and I sense he’s safe again.

  I get in my car and text Jace.

  I really need you tonight.

  And I mean sex—always that—but I think I might also mean more. I need his chest to bury my face in and his hands petting my hair. I need to tell him everything about Kenneth and apologize for not telling him sooner.

  I need him to know that I only want him.

  And I think I need to know that he only wants me. I think I need to be spanked, mounted, and fucked. I think I need all Jace’s intensity centered on marking my body as his. I think I need my choices anchored in this raw connection Jace and I can’t seem to shake.

  I’m pondering all this as I drive home, chewing over the dinner and my uncomfortably big feelings for Jace, and I’m so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I don’t notice anything different when I park my car in the garage and walk inside my kitchen.

  “Have a good time?” says a low voice from behind me.

  Chapter Ten

  Jace

  I almost didn’t believe it when I saw them through the window. The restaurant they were at is in this fancy mixed-use development thing—the same complex that houses the bakery that made my niece’s cake. I volunteered to pick up her cake so my sister could focus on getting everything else ready, and then I saw Cat’s car—with the license plate number I couldn’t help but memorize the first time I saw it.

  I thought I’d pop in and say hi because that’s where I’m at right now. I’m at the point where two hours away from her is bone-cutting agony, and I needed a fix. I’d just pop in, fake a smile to whatever martini-drinking girlfriend she was with, and then lean in to kiss her cheek. I’d smell her hair and her skin as I whispered what I was going to do to her later tonight. Where I was going to fuck her. How hard she would come.

  But there
was no martini-swilling girlfriend.

  Instead, she sat across the table from Kenneth—fucking Kenneth—who looked handsome as always in his “only the best from JoS. A. Bank” way. And they were talking. And smiling. And drinking wine.

  And the rightness of them in there tore through me like a shotgun blast. Because of course Cat looked like a movie star with her expensive clothes and soft blond hair and those high heels that give her feet that glamorous, Barbie-style arch. And of course she looked like she belonged there with a man who knew what kind of wine to order, what kinds of arts events and charities to make small talk about.

  Fuck.

  And she lied to me about it.

  Double fuck.

  I should have left immediately. I should have stepped away and shelved this for a later discussion, but I didn’t. I stayed and watched for another ten minutes, jealousy and hurt pounding through my veins. I stayed until my sister called and asked me what was taking so long with the cake.

  It wasn’t a surprise that I wasn’t much in the mood for a party after that. I went, gave little Abigail her cake and her present and a big hug, and then decided to go home.

  Which was when I got her text.

  I really need you tonight.

  I leaned my head back against the driver’s seat and tried to talk myself out of it. I could cancel. I could tell her I wasn’t feeling well, or that my sister needed help with the babies, or even that I saw her out with another man and didn’t feel much like fucking tonight.

  Which would be a lie. I want to fuck her now more than ever.

  I want to feel her body pressed against mine. Feel her mouth moving over my own. I need to reassure myself with thrusts and moans and searching fingers that I’m not imagining what’s between us. That she is still mine.

  No. No fucking. Not until you’ve figured this out.

  So I’m at her house because she asked and because it needs to be figured out. Even though the thought of figuring it out sends fear bolting through me like jagged sparks of lightning.

  What if we figure it out and that is the end of us?

  I pace through her sleekly renovated bungalow until I can make sense of my feelings. Until I can admit to myself that falling in love somehow turned into being in love without me realizing it, and now I have to deal with it. I have to admit to myself that us ending would destroy me.

  She has to know.

  But I won’t be a dick. I’m here because she asked me to be. I’ll tell her I know about Kenneth, and then I’ll tell her how I feel. The choice is hers. I’ve been here before, after all, with Brittany and her reverse harem of jackasses who worked in cell phone stores or did car detailing or whatever it was that kept them here and available and not off fighting a war. I survived that with a woman I thought I might marry. I could definitely survive this.

  Even if it doesn’t feel like it.

  Even if it feels like I already love Cat an infinite amount more than I ever loved Brittany.

  Face it. You’re in way deep. Deeper than you’ve ever been.

  When Cat walks through the door, I don’t mean to scare her, but that’s what happens. I speak, and she spins in a sharp turn, her hand dropping to her hip as if she’s reaching for her duty weapon.

  Shit. I’m a dirtbag. I take a step back, my hands in the air like a suspect.

  “Christ, Jace,” she says, her hand falling away from her hip and her posture going from alert to its usual straight-backed poise. “You frightened me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. “I didn’t mean to…loom.”

  She sets her purse down on the counter and presses her fingertips against her forehead for a minute. “No, I—I should have remembered you might get here before me. I was just distracted.”

  By Kenneth? I want to ask, but I’m not going to. If I’m brutally honest with myself, we’ve never talked about being exclusive. We’ve never set any parameters around our relationship. Yes, fine, I’m still jealous as fuck, but I know I don’t really have the right to be.

  But I’ve underestimated Cat and her powers of observation. She gives me a once-over with those sea-blue eyes, with one delicate eyebrow arched and her lips pursed, and then she says, “You know I was with Kenneth.”

  God help any suspect who tries to lie to her.

  “Yes,” I say. “I know.”

  She looks at me almost like…like I don’t know. Like she’s disappointed. But disappointed in what? That I know? That I admitted it? Am I not being as calm as I think I am?

  I take another step back, trying to reassure her that I’m not going to give her a hard time. That I’m not going to try to use my body to intimidate her. Her gorgeous, pressed-together lips grow more disapproving.

  Does she want me to talk more? I don’t trust myself to talk more. I don’t trust myself not to blurt out you’re mine, you’re fucking mine, drop to my knees, shove up her skirt, and prove it with my mouth. Prove that her body already knows who it needs, and it’s not Mr. Men’s Wearhouse. It’s me.

  “I thought you’d be jealous,” she murmurs, still studying me.

  “I am fucking jealous,” I say tightly and then snap my mouth closed so fast my teeth click. Don’t be a dick, don’t be a dick, don’t be a dick.

  She takes a step forward. Another and then another while I stay completely still, unsure of what she’s thinking.

  “Prove it,” she says, folding her arms across her chest.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Prove you’re jealous.”

  It’s like I’m in some alternate dimension—one where my primal, Freudian id makes all the rules. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

  She sighs, suddenly looking very much like an impatient schoolteacher, which is not helping the angry lust roiling in my belly in the least. “What do you want to do to me right now, Jace?”

  “I don’t—”

  Another step forward. “You want to screw me in the heels I wore to dinner with him? You want to handcuff me to the bed so I can’t leave until you say I can?” She presses a hand against my chest. “You want to see your come on my stomach? Or my tits?” Her hand drops down to my belt, and I catch her wrist before it can go somewhere farther down.

  I can’t tell if she’s in earnest or she’s goading me. “Stop it.”

  “Why are you asking me to stop?” she asks. “Is it because you actually don’t want this? Or is it because you doubt I’m really asking you for it?”

  “Of course I doubt it,” I say through clenched teeth. “What I really want would terrify you.”

  She gives a beautiful, rich-girl scoff. “Try me.”

  I lift a hand and slide it though her silky hair, fisting it at the base of her neck and holding her head back just enough that she won’t be able to move without disrupting her balance. And then I lean in so my lips brush the shell of her ear as I speak. “I do want to fuck you in these heels. And in handcuffs. I want to fuck your mouth, and then I want to bend you over my knee and redden your ass until you think of me every time you sit down. I want you to take me everywhere in your body—and I mean everywhere, Cat—until you feel as owned by me as I’m owned by you.”

  Confident my little speech has frightened some sense into her, I let go of her hair and pull back. But instead of seeing her face tight with fear, I meet eyes with pupils blown wide with lust and blushing cheeks and her tongue working at her lower lip in a kind of fervent anticipation.

  “You feel like I own you?” she whispers, searching my face.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I ask.

  She just keeps blinking up at me, like she can’t believe it. Like she can’t believe I feel it, and I trace that doubtful mouth with my fingertip as I speak.

  “And I may be young, but I know what I want, Cat. I want you. I want to make you mine.”

  Her hand goes back to my belt, toying with it, but her eyes stay glued to mine. “Then make me yours, Jace. Right now. I won’t break, I’m not”—a small smile here, as if at some priv
ate joke—“I’m not a china doll.”

  I consider her, reading her body’s signs. Her nipples poking through her blouse trying to get my attention. Her pulse thrumming at the base of her neck. The blush below her collarbone that disappears down into that sexy silk shirt. She likes it when I’m possessive. Jealous, even. I remember that from the first time we had sex at the station.

  But this is something different. “You’re asking me to claim you,” I say, making sure we’re on the same page. “While I’m angry and hurt and jealous. While I want to be rough.”

  “Yes,” she moans, pressing her breasts against my chest as her hand wraps around my denim-clad erection.

  And that’s all I can take. All the permission I need. I scoop her up and sling her over my shoulder, just like the Viking I wanted to be a few weeks ago, and smack her ass hard as I walk toward her bedroom. I feel her stomach hitching where it presses against my shoulder, and for a moment I wonder if she’s crying or trying to speak, but then I hear—

  She’s laughing.

  She’s happy.

  It’s a roller-coaster laugh, the kind of laugh that’s pulled out of you by adrenaline and joy and terror all mixed together, and I take it as extra confirmation that she’s on board. I still say over my shoulder, “Say stop when you need to stop, baby.”

  Her voice is full of smug cop pride when she answers, “Fine. But I won’t need to.”

  I don’t think she will either. She’s tough, tougher than anyone gives her credit for, and I think under all that good breeding and money is a woman who wants to test her limits. Who wants the edgy, filthy, primitive challenges no one else has known to give her.

  But I know. I know what she needs.

  I drop her onto her bed without warning, without delicacy, without even flicking on a light, and then I fall on her like a predator in the dark. I nip at her jaw and throat until she whimpers, and then I eat her mouth with stark, brutal kisses until both of us are breathing hard and my dick is leaking all over the inside of my jeans.