Take Me Slow

by Shani Greene-Dowdell

  I lean forward and wrap my arms around her, then roll over landing on top of her. Her soft, pliable skin contours to my body as I lay on top of her. The way I’m about to make love to her is something that should be off limits with any woman I’m not seriously dating, much less someone I’m supposed to arrest, but I kiss her, sliding my tongue into her mouth as I ease back into her slick vagina. Laying directly on her, I kiss every spot I can reach while I take her deeply and slowly.

  Her moans never stop coming, and I feel as though I’m going to burst from the sound alone. Ari begins to meet my thrusts, and our bodies collide with passionate force, forcing our genitals to lock together tighter each time.

  Now, it’s me calling out her name, as she pulls my ass into her. I wrap my arms around her waist to pound into her deeper. A burning sensation builds in my chest, and a tingle builds in my balls, letting me know this is going to be the best one yet. This climax rages through me, ready to erupt.

  “You’re so hot,” I say as my hot seed fills the barrier between us. I mean it, too. She is heated inside and out.

  She screams in pleasure, her warm juices coating the latex. Considering how flush Ari’s brown cheeks get when she’s close to coming, how rich the sounds are, spilling from her lips, I don’t understand why the first man that saw her on the streets didn’t make an honest woman out of her already.

  “Do you want me to go?” she asks with uncertainty in her voice, as I’m still spinning from the power and beauty of making love to her.

  “No. Why would you think that?” I want Ari to never, ever, leave my apartment again. If only I could put her in cuffs for that, or even for other bed-related activities.

  “I just thought I’d ask because, I don’t know…” her voice trails off.

  “Baby, I want you to stay with me,” I admit. “Besides, you can’t leave because I owe you takeout. You should hang out with me tonight. Spend the night; it’s not like we have to be shy around each other anymore.”

  “Uh…,” Ari says, seeming to do some kind of mental calculation before she gives up entirely, shrugging. “Okay. That sounds good.”

  I get up and get my cell out of the living room, taking the time to stuff my badge under a pile of mail. When I come back into the bedroom, Ari is already sleeping. I take a moment to gaze upon her beauty. And man is she good-looking while lying in the center of my bed with my brown sheets wrapped around her body.

  I place the order for takeout, in case she wakes up hungry. Then, I climb in bed beside her and pull her to me. She fits so perfectly into my grooves that I don’t see why I can’t keep her forever.

  “I really should go,” she mumbles before dozing off again.

  “Sleep beautiful,” I whisper into her ear. I kiss her shoulder blades and hold her in my arms, cherishing whatever time I have left with her.

  ***

  An hour later, her eyes flutter open. “What time is it?”

  “After eleven. Do you have somewhere to go?” I ask her.

  “No, but I should go home.”

  “Just stay here, and I’ll get you home early in the morning.”

  “Well, I have a little work to do tonight. I really should go. I should already have been there by now,” she admits.

  That admission deflates my mood. Seeing her slide out of my bed and into her clothes does something to me, something it should not be doing.

  “Do you have to go? Can it wait until tomorrow?” I ask as she walks out of my room with me following behind her closely.

  “No, it’s something big I’m working on. I had planned not to work tonight, but I just remembered I have something I need to do,” she says, eyes averted from mine.

  “You’ve already worked on something big,” I tease. Though I’m not really in the joking mood, I want her to stay. I don’t want another man to touch what feels like in my heart should be all mine.

  “Funny, not funny, Blaze,” she says, poking my naked chest with her finger.

  “Keep poking the bear, and I’ll poke back,” I tease. I know for sure I’m a goner now. She’s bringing the silliness out of me.

  “I bet you will. That’s why I have to go now,” she says and giggles before her eyes land on the kitchen table. “Oh, you ordered the takeout?”

  “It came thirty minutes ago, but you were sleeping so good that I didn’t want to wake you up.”

  She walks over to the bag and inhales. “I’m hungry.”

  “We did work up an appetite, but I didn’t want to eat without you.”

  “Awe, well, get some plates and let’s eat.”

  “I think they put some in here,” I say, opening the bag. “Yeah, everything we need is in here, so allow me to serve you Miss Ari…what’s your last name?”

  “Martin.”

  “Well, allow me to serve you, Miss Ari Martin.”

  I’m glad she has at least agreed to stay and have dinner with me. It’s a midnight dinner, but dinner nonetheless.

  “You’re such the gentleman, Blaze.” She giggles and sits down at the table. “Now, hurry up, I’m starving. The least you can do is feed a girl.”

  “You’re right; it’s the least I can do. But it’s not all I want to do.”

  “What do you want to do?” she asks curiously.

  “I want to give you everything I have to give.”

  “Oh, wow! That’s a lot to give some prostitute that you’ve only known a short time. What’s it been a little over a week, maybe two weeks?”

  “You’re not just some prostitute, Ari. You’re a woman with a good sense of humor, you’re kind with the right amount of sass, and you’re passionate. I haven’t spent a lot of time around you, but in the time we have spent together you have shown me the wonderful parts of you that I don’t want to let go. I also can look into your eyes and know all of these things are true about you, and I want more of it.”

  “Why are you saying all of this to me? I’ve never had anyone talk to me the way you do, Blaze. But let’s be real, it hasn’t been that long ago since you were out surfing for random women to take home.”

  Dang. How do I come back from that?

  I could tell her the truth and let the pieces fall where they may. But, that would be reckless and could end with her storming out and never coming back.

  “I was lonely,” I admit, which is the truth. I didn’t have anyone to call my own. Before I went out on this assignment and met her, the only thing I had to keep me company was my work and calls home to Mom. “Seeking out women for hire isn’t something I normally do or agree with. I just found myself out there that night searching for something. Then I saw you, and I was drawn to you,” I say truthfully. Everything I’m saying is one hundred percent truth with a few omissions.

  “I’m curious. Since you don’t normally find women this way or agree with it, what are your thoughts on me being out there?” she asks.

  “I want you to quit,” I say without hesitation. “I want you here with me. I can show you much better things in life if you let me.”

  She pushes her half-eaten plate away from her. “I have to go.”

  “We were having such a good conversation. Why leave now?”

  “We can get together again tomorrow,” she says, avoiding my question as she stands to her feet.

  “I hate that you’re leaving, but I would be happy to see you again tomorrow, Ari. Do you want me to come to pick you up?” I ask, trying very hard not to think about where Ari has to run off to. Every conclusion leaves me upset that another man might touch her tonight. But if it’s one thing I’m confident about, it’s knowing he won’t be able to touch her as deeply as I have already.

  “No, I’ll come to you around ten,” she promises.

  I kiss her for a long time at the door, making sure to slip the takeout receipt—with my number carefully written out on the back—into her back pocket. I want her to be able to reach me at all times. I walk her to her car and come back to my apartment and plop down on the sofa.

  I slowl
y feel myself opening up the vaults of things that should be locked away from a woman like Ari—a nightwalker that dwells in places of criminality and dishonesty. None of how I feel about her makes sense, but I can’t stop this feeling, not even if I want to.

  ***

  It keeps happening, over and over again. I’ll send her a text around ten or eleven at night, trying to work around her schedule, and she keeps coming over, somehow always miraculously in between clients. Sometimes, I can’t find it in myself to sleep with her due to the jealousy that sparks in my mind just at the thought of other men touching her.

  I like Ari. She’s hilarious, smart as hell, good in bed, and ridiculously hot, whether she’s dressed regally or wearing a ‘come fuck me dress’ designed to make married men spend all their money on sex.

  I can’t bring myself to ruin Ari’s life by arresting her. I’ve written it off at work, passing the assignment off to someone else, and hoping they go in another direction, to any other hooker in the entire city besides Ari. I have reserved myself to the fact that I’m going to continue ‘paying’ Ari for sex with meals and spending time with her. I hope to fucking hell that no one in the department ever finds out about us. That will be the end of my career as a police officer, and as of right now at thirty-six years old I have thirty years left before retirement. I laugh at that thought.

  Except, the thing is, I’m not sure I’ve actually paid Ari for sex; not in a way that counts. We’ve fallen into this weird bartering pattern, just shy of illegal. I’ve made passionate love to her in every way imaginable—oral sex, sex in the car, sex in public, sex hard and fast, sex slow and sensually. But the barter is always, “Order some Thai,” or “…grab me a bottle of wine before I get there.”

  The first time Ari slept over the entire night, accidentally falling asleep after I pounded her until tears were leaking out of the corners of her eyes. I had been nervous that was going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back—that for some reason Ari was going to turn around and demand compensation for all the other meetings she’d missed that night. Instead, she only smiled at me across the pillows, half of her face illuminated by a beam of sun coming in through a window.

  “Do you have pancake mix?” she’d asked me the next morning and even helped me flip them.

  It’s risky and unexplainable what Ari and I share. Something in my gut tells me she’s not who I think she is. She’s too good to be out in the streets working. But, she continues to slip away from me whenever I’m sleeping. I wake up to an empty bed, ready to chase after her…to pursue the next feeling of passion we will undoubtedly share. Whatever this is between us, I don’t want it to end.

  Chapter Eight

  Ari

  “Are you okay, Ari? You haven’t been working all week. Our arrests have gone down the tank. We’ve only arrested ten men this month, and we only have a few days left. That’s a long way from the thirty-six men we took down last month. We were averaging at least one perp a day then. How are we going to explain this slump to our boss? It’s not like the men aren’t out here picking up women,” my partner, Sloane, stands in front of me at the park trying to figure out where my head is.

  “I know, it’s just been a slow month for me,” I say dismissively.

  I haven’t had the desire to pretend to want to take men home since I met Blaze. Doing that means I have to transfer sexual energy to them, allow them to talk to me any kind of way, allow them to touch me, and I don’t want that anymore.

  “Slow month, eh?”

  “That’s what I said. Slow, Sloane. Now, get off my back!” Sloane is the type of person I have to ward off before he gets started. If I don’t get sassy with him at the start of our conversation, I’ll be listening to him talk smack for hours.

  “Well, it’s going to be slow if we’re not working, and by we, I mean you because I can’t go in the room with these men.”

  “Well, technically, you could,” I remind him. “Some of them are looking for that kind of action.”

  “You’re getting off the point, Yan. There’s no way you’re going to convince me that no one’s tricking just because it’s December. I see transactions that appear to be happening with the other girls out here, but I have no insight on what’s going on because my partner is out of commission,” he argues.

  Sloane knows as well as I do these men will come out here and trick if it’s the last thing they do. Even if there is a fifty-fifty chance the gates of hell will open up and suck them in on the spot, they’ll take that chance. Hell, some of them might even think it’s kinky.

  “I’m here now, okay,” I say, not caring enough to offer an excuse for not working. My time with Blaze is off limits for this discussion.

  “Well, I went by your house, and you weren’t there. You weren’t at any of your usual spots. What’s going on with you lately? You’ve never slacked on the job, so it has to be something.”

  “Stop being so pushy and nosey, Sloane. I just needed some time for myself. Am I allowed that?” I ask.

  One of the guys I suspect of beating up a prostitute last week walks in front of us. He’s headed over to where there is a group of girls, so I think quick.

  “Go on about your business if you don’t want to pay the forty dollars!” I yell at Sloane, giving him the nod, so he’ll know I’m going back undercover. “I’m not fucking with you for free!” I tell Sloane.

  “That’s right. You heard the lady,” the man turns on his heels to say. He’s a big, husky man, and his skin is blistering red from the cold air. He should be at home somewhere trying to stay warm, but he’s always out here soliciting women so he can brutalize them in a nearby motel.

  Sloane slinks away. “My bad, big guy. You can take this one because I’m just not paying that much. It’s out of my price range,” he says before disappearing.

  “So, what are you looking for tonight, big money?” I ask the man.

  He coughs, and it sounds horrible. “A good time is what I want,” he begins. “Can you give it to me without any attitude? These other girls don’t know how to treat a man, but they want to take a man’s money,” he says, his voice coming out raspy and weak sounding.

  I itch to reach inside my bag and pull out my gun. Any wrong move and I’m shooting him where he stands.

  “No attitude here. Just all performance. I can do whatever you want,” I say to the man who’s about to hack up a lung. My stomach cringes at the thought of going anywhere alone with him.

  “That’s what I like to hear. See, you sound professional. What are you asking for?”

  “Forty for blow jobs and a hundred for everything, head, and penetration,” I say, my stomach curling more.

  “Shit, as fine as you are baby, I want everything. How much for me to get in that pretty, round ass of yours? Ooouu, I bet it’s tight too.” His fat tongue slides out of his mouth, and he licks his lips.

  My stomach lurches. I don’t like this guy.

  “To have anal with everything else, it’ll be one fifty.”

  “Oh girl, I can’t wait to get you back to my room. Come on; we can get in my car back here. I’ll drive us to the motel; it’s the one right around the corner.” He coughs that horrid cough again and hocks a big wad of spit onto the pavement. Then, he walks off with more pep in his step than he had before.

  I start to walk behind him while reaching inside my purse. This is a signal to Sloane that I’m ready to arrest the guy. I follow the man to where his car is parked as I watch Sloane move in close to us. Just as the man reaches for the door of his vehicle to let me in, I produce my gun with the safety released.

  “It’s always something with you women. What are you doing, lady?” he asks, his voice going high as a soprano note.

  “You are under arrest for soliciting a prostitute. Anything you say or do can, and will, be used against you in a court of law. You have a right to speak to an attorney, and to have one represent—”

  “I’m not going to jail. Who’s going to make me, you?” he asks
then lunges toward me.

  “Put your hands up!” I yell, bringing my gun into full view. “Or, your brain matter will be an official part of the pavement. Give me one reason and the people of New York City will trample over your remains like you’ve been trampling over these women out here.”

  “I can’t stand you damn whores! Always think you’re better than us men, just because we’re paying. Anyone I trampled deserved it.”

  “Just like you deserve this trip to the jail,” Sloane says. He has sneaked the man and placed him in his grip from behind. “Now, you do what Agent Martin instructed you to do the easy way, or we can do this the hard way, which as you can see has already begun.”

  The man starts coughing as Sloane holds his hands behind his back. He immediately stops resisting and agrees to be cuffed. But, just when he’s lowering his hands, he reaches behind his back into his waistband.

  Sloane is screaming orders at him, and I have a split second to react. I shoot him in the kneecap, bringing him down to the ground. Sloane quickly cuffs him, and we get medics on the way. Later, he is turned in to the proper authorities in NYC.

  I may have been off work for a while, but my return tonight has gotten at least one bad guy put behind bars. Now, on to the next one…

  Chapter Nine

  Blaze

  Everything comes to a head on an unusually cold day in December. I have a hellish day at work. I lose two straight cases when they go to court, meaning all my work to prepare for them was for nothing. Then, I get absolutely reamed out by the Captain, for a whole variety of things, including both the court losses and giving up on the prostitution ring. My favorite lunch place gets my order wrong, and then when I go to leave for the day, my tire is flat. By the time I finally get home, feeling exhausted and fighting a burgeoning headache, all I want is Ari. It's not even that I want to have sex, either. I want to see Ari's smile up close, chocolate dimples sinking, beautiful, thick lips spreading into a glorious sight. I want to lay with my head in Ari's lap and listen to her tell me that tomorrow will be a better day. I want all of her. I take a single second to marvel at how well and truly fucked I am. Then, I pick up the phone, find her name, and hit dial. Ari answers after only a single ring.