by Kline, Sandy
I’ll decide what to do later. In the meantime I think I’ll go to Starbucks and sit and drink coffee and read my emails. I’m surprised I don’t have a hangover after all I drank last night. I have a mild headache and that’s about it. It’s a good thing too because tonight I have a date with Sergeant Marc Moran, a deputy with the Solano County Sheriff’s Department. Our first date was pretty spectacular as far as first dates with me tend to go. I would never have consented to date a person in law enforcement, but Molly has known him for several years and set me up on a blind date with him. It wasn’t until an hour into the date that we got to the usual, what do you do for a living stuff and he came out and said he was a sheriff. By then I was already pretty attracted to him and I was willing to let it slide. There is something to be said for a man in uniform; whether it’s the military, police, or my personal favorite, a fireman. Marc is not super tall. He’s about five ten and well-built but not bulging. He holds a black belt in some form of Jujitsu I believe and has had many occasions to use what he has learned. He’s super clean cut with very short black hair and a clean shaven face. His mother was from Mexico and his father is your typical educated Caucasian male born and raised in Arizona amongst a very large Hispanic population.
Dating Marc totally caught me off guard. He doesn’t walk around like he’s god or something and he doesn’t go around exercising his authority or is on any type of power trip like a lot of cops. Makes me wonder how a nice guy like him actually got to become a Sheriff’s Deputy.
Six months later and we’re a couple. We didn’t become exclusive until we had dated for maybe three months, then it just seemed like the most natural thing in the world to commit to each other. Being a cop’s girlfriend has been nice. All the guys at the station seem to be really good guys and we all get along. Before I met Marc though, I had issues with cops in general and it went like this.
My father did eight years on a minor charge that got turned into serious time for resisting arrest and battery. My father is not an aggressive person, but when the arresting officer took offense to a remark made by my father and went ballistic; my dad just reacted in self-defense and put the guy to the ground. About the time the cop went down, back up had arrived and Tasered my father several times then arrested him. The DA tried to get him for attempted murder despite the fact that when the cop went down my dad backed off, but that didn’t matter to the cops. My parents stayed together for the first three years he was in lock up but it got to be too much for my mom and when a stable man asked her out she said yes. One year later they got married and now I have a step dad who is a jailer at Clark County Jails; not the same place my father did time but it was a huge slap in the face for dad. Here he was unjustly imprisoned, and then his wife goes and dumps him for a cop. It goes without saying that I haven’t spoken to my mom in something like 10 years and my dad died six years ago of a heart attack. My little brother sided with my mom and me with my dad so that pretty much wrecked our relationship.
For a while I thought Caleb would follow in his step dad’s footsteps and become a cop but he got interested in computers and video games and that was the end of his law enforcement aspirations. I went to school to get a fire science degree with the hopes of becoming a firefighter and it worked. I was halfway into my degree with I got hired on with WFD (Watsonville Fire Department) and eventually became certified. I spent three glorious years as one of the only two female firefighters in the department before I was injured in a warehouse fire and broke my back in two places. It was a long slow painful recovery but I was never able to get reinstated as a firefighter. Since then I have been working part time as a 911 dispatch operator. I like it, but at times it’s hard when I dispatch my old unit to a fire and I can’t come along. Oh well…I knew the risks when I was hired and I really don’t regret it. I had some wonderful experiences as a firefighter that I wouldn’t trade for the world.
As I’m sitting at Starbucks sipping hot coffee I can’t help but wonder what my brother would think if he found out that I am dating a cop. It’s not my fault that he has chosen to ally himself with the wrong side of the law. It pisses me off. Before my dad was thrown in jail, Caleb and I were close. I basically have lost my entire family. I’m just about ready to get up and leave when Marc actually walks in. He’s in full uniform and is obviously on duty. He doesn’t see me right away and goes up to the counter to order coffee. He can’t miss me going out so I am going to have to talk to him. Not that it’s such a bad thing…but I don’t have makeup on and am wearing a well-worn pair of sweats.
I pretend not to notice him when he approaches with coffee in hand. When he finally addresses me I make a big show of being totally surprised.
“Oh my god Marc, I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I don’t often come here. It’s not my area but I had to meet up with another officer and go over a call we both responded to. So what are you up to this morning?” He asks.
“Nothing much.” I reply. “I just got up and decided I was too lazy to go to Safeway to get beans to roast at home so I came here instead. I don’t go here much either. You can sit down if you like.”
Marc hovering over me like this makes me even more nervous.
“Thanks. I can’t stay long but I can chat for a minute. We still on for tonight at 7:45?”
“That’s right.”
“Great. I was beginning to second guess myself. Hey… you ever go to that new bar on Ocean Street?”
He can’t bring himself to say the name. Especially since the sign has a pig riding Harley on it and the pig is dressed up in a cop uniform.
“Yeah I go there…Molly likes it.”
“You know anything about the incident where those two bikers attacked and tried to kill a patron for no reason?”
“No reason? Your kid-” I stop myself. I just gave away that I may have been there or know something about it. Maybe he didn’t notice.
“You were there with Molly weren’t you?” He asks, keeping his tone friendly.
“Uh yeah, for a minute, why?”
“Evidently someone caught the whole thing on camera, but they won’t come forward. At least that’s the word on the street. You see anyone with their camera out taking pictures or recording anything?”
I hate lying, but I’m not ready to turn myself in either. Trouble is, the longer I wait, the guiltier I seem. If I turn it in now I may get in trouble for hindering their investigation. I wonder if I can go to an internet café and upload the video there and then send an anonymous email with the video attached.
“I was there, yeah but it was pretty quiet for a Saturday night, especially after the fights. I heard it got pretty heated up after we left. What happened?”
“The fights?”
“The MMA cage fights at Arco Arena.”
“Of course, I heard about them. The last fight got cancelled because some guy got beat to death I think.”
“That’s right.”
“So after the fight was stopped you went to the bar on Ocean to relax and unwind a little?”
“Molly and I actually.”
Just then my phone rings and without thinking I fish it out of my purse and look to see who’s calling - it’s Molly. I decide to ignore it. I’m about to put it back in my purse when Marc asks to see it.
“Nice phone. Is that the new HTC from AT&T?”
“Yup.”
I stow it back in my purse.
“You know I’ve got this same phone I’ve been using since I don’t know, a couple years ago and I dropped it last week and cracked the screen. I heard the HTC is pretty cool, mind if I check yours out?”
Fuck! How can I refuse without seeming impolite or even worse, like I’m trying to hide something? He knows I was in there last night because I’m sure he ran my car through the police database. I’m also pretty sure he thinks I was the one who shot the video. Why else the sudden interest in my phone? I’m pretty sure he uses a department issued phone. My heart is pounding in my chest and I have
to fight to keep a smile on my face. He has to know something is wrong. He’s a cop. He has to be good at reading people.
I set my phone on the table and slide it across to him. If I’d have tried to hand it across the table to him I surely would have dropped it from my shaking hands. He picks it up and pretends to admire the aesthetics of it but I can tell he’s really not interested in how it looks. He turns it on and makes several comments about the screen resolution, size, and processing speed.
“This is amazing!” He says.
Then we get to the meat of the matter.
“This thing have a forward and rear facing camera?” He asks.
I nod, not daring myself to speak. I’m sure my voice will shake as badly as my innards right now.
“Smile.” He says and captures my most awkward smile ever. “Beautiful resolution. I bet you lose a lot when you’re videoing, am I right?”
I somehow both shake my head and nod.
“Oh there’s the video camera right there. Looks like you take a lot of videos don’t you.”
I nod.
“Hey this looks like-” He stops as his radio crackles to life.
“3502 please respond to 3435 Acacia Drive for possible 5150. Female caller states that her ex-husband…”
And the rest of it just goes in one ear and out the other. All I can think is that I just narrowly escaped being caught red-handed. I seriously have to do something about that video.
“I am so sorry.” Marc apologizes as he gets up from the table. 7:45 tonight?” He asks.
I nod again as he smiles and hurries out. I can’t believe how close I just came to getting caught. I have to figure out how to connect this to my computer and download the video to it. I tried to email the video but the file was so big it refused to mail it. I’m sure my brother would have learned how but I can’t just up and call him. Besides, I’m sure he’d delete it to protect his new brothers.
If there’s one thing I don’t like about Marc it’s that he’s a cop. Trouble is that is also why I respect him so damn much. I think if he wasn’t a cop the attraction just wouldn’t be there so strong. It’s not that I worry that he’ll get shot or something. It’s that I hate when he acts like a cop with me. Like during coffee when he treats me like a suspect at the station where he wants a piece of information but instead of just outright asking me if I was there during the incident at the bar and did I take the video. Oh no, he has to circle around the subject collecting information and waiting to see if you’re going to implicate yourself or not. He did this one time when he thought I was lying when I said I didn’t feel well and cancelled on a date. He had actually stopped by my apartment to bring me some hot soup and when I didn’t answer the door he thought I was out with friends or something. Instead of just coming out and asking why I didn’t answer my door he goes on this investigation that takes a half hour before he finally lets me know what the hell he is trying to ask me. We had been going out steadily for maybe two months at the time and I just about put an end to our budding relationship. But I let it slide because he has to think that way for his job and thinking like a cop is what keeps him alive; plus he wants to be a detective one day so he’s always going to have this mind set. After that he hasn’t done it again except for a little today and he’d better not bring it up tonight or he’s going to get an ear full.
I sit for a few more minutes at Starbucks before getting a refill and heading back home. I have to bang out my story and turn in the first draft to the ‘In The Cage’ editors tonight before I go on my date. Thanks to my brother’s handiwork my little second page story on the website is going to make headlines at the sites print edition. The magazine has about 100,000 in readership so even though it’s not big, for a lowly website writer like me this is huge. Plus I get paid a hell of a lot more. I get paid .05 cent a word for everything I write for Inthecage.com, but for their print magazine I get thirty-five cents a word. For the story on the Crusher’s death they’re paying me to write 1,500 words. There are actually two stories here. The first about the Crusher’s death and the second would be about the Soul Eaters and their practice of awarding full membership only to those who kill for the club as my brother apparently did. I’m just not sure I want to open that can of worms for a few hundred dollars. I could probably get several stories out of this if I was willing to contact my brother and get the inside scoop about life in an outlaw motorcycle club. I know the website and the magazine are all about martial arts and cage fighting, but many of our readers are motorcycle enthusiasts, and some are probably in various clubs and gangs. I’m not sure I want my name being known by outlaw biker clubs, even if they do like my writing.
I’m not a real fast writer so it takes me forever to get my story finished and sent off to the editors. Then I have to hurry extra fast to get ready for my date. Marc will be there at…well he’s supposed to pick me up at 7:45, but being that he’s a cop he’s uber punctual so he’ll probably be knocking on my door by 7:20. That gives me less than an hour to get ready.
I charge into the bathroom, turn on the shower and start stripping off my clothes. On the bed is my outfit. Tonight I’m keeping it simple; black skinny jeans that ride low on the hips, and a crop top to show that I actually do have abs. The neck scoops low enough to show that I do have more than mosquito bumps in the all-important chest department. I decided to go with a ‘damn you look good’ outfit rather than one of my ‘I may look easy but I’m not’ get ups. Marc is an attentive lover and is blessed with a more than average tool and staying power to match so I’m pretty happy with our intimate life but I’m just not in the mood tonight. There’s just too much crap going on between my ears lately to make me want to have anything going on between my legs.
The second I see steam developing in the bathroom I charge into the steam of hot water. I have to at least get out of the shower before he gets here or I may end up having a lot going on between my legs after all. Soon as I’m done with my business I get out and do a minimal amount of drying before I slip on my bathrobe. At least I’ll have this much on when Marc shows up. I sit on the bed beside my underthings when abruptly the doorbell rings. I look at my watch; it’s 7:15. That’s a new record for early when it comes to Marc. I skip my bra and panties and go to the front door. Like I was taught long ago I look out the peephole to make sure it really is my date; it is.
He gives me a peck on the cheek and flowers as I let him in. Right away I know this is not going to be your typical date. Marc’s eyes have yet to reach my face. I look down and discover why; hello nip slip. One of my little brownies is poking out at him and he can’t seem to take his eyes off.
He is handsome tonight! I mean, he always looks good and he cleans up amazing! He’s chosen a tight fitting black turtleneck, a black belt, and a black pair of some type of designer jeans pressed and so sharp looking. He has on a pair of black tactical boots to finish off his super cool badass look. Here’s a man who’s ready to fight and he looks like he can totally kick ass and he does from time to time. It doesn’t happen a lot, but when a suspect takes Marc on they’re always surprised at how quick and strong he is. He’s not a huge guy, but I’ve seen him take down guys five inches taller and fifty pounds heavier when I did some ride-a-longs before we started dating. I was duly impressed!
“Any chance you’re not real hungry?” Marc asks as he shuts the door behind him.
“I’ve been on a three day cleanse so I haven’t eaten solid food for 72 hours so yeah, I’m starved!”
I watch as his face literally falls, before he catches himself and puts on a different expression. I give him a stern look for a second before breaking out in laughter.
“Kidding!”
He takes a deep breath and sighs in relief.
“What makes you think we’d be doing anything but going to the restaurant tonight?”
“Well you did answer the door like…like that.” He says pointing to my breasts that I still haven’t covered up.
“I see, so you thought
that was an invitation for something else then?”
“Well it kinda looks that way.” He replies.
“What’s this look like then?” I ask as I loosen the only thing keeping my robe together.
My belt falls to the floor and my robe parts the rest of the way.
“May I see your nightstick Officer Long?” I ask in my most seductive voice.
“You’d better behave yourself young lady or I may have to beat you with it.”
I watch as Marc expertly kicks off his shoes, unbuttons his pants and slips them down over his hips. I watch mesmerized as a large white bulge appears in front of me. I reach out to touch but he catches my hands and stops me. Then he let’s go and slides my robe off my shoulders and lets it drop around my ankles. I love the feeling of the power I have over Marc, or any man when all I have to do is get even semi naked and they’re good to go in seconds.
I drop to my knees in front of his package, lean forward and just breathe over his growing bulge. It’s true what they say about men and a stiff breeze, except this one doesn’t even need the breeze to be stiff, just warm and out of my mouth. Marc thrusts his hips forward hoping for contact but I move my head back out of range. I put the palm of my right hand on his flat stomach and push gently. I’m taking my time with this. A soft moan escapes his lips. I lean in again and breathe the breath of life on his swollen member and his package twitches in response.
