by Ann Jacobs
The smell of stale tobacco, unwashed bodies and cheap cologne lingered in chief of detectives Rocco Delgado’s nostrils long after he’d stepped inside Courtroom B and found a vacant section of a side wall to lean against.
The eyes of the women jurors seemed glued on the defense lawyer as he delivered his closing statement. Their tongues were practically hanging out their mouths, and Rocky even thought he saw one drooling. Disgusting, what a guy like Tony Landry could do with movie-star good looks and a deep, mesmerizing voice that Rocky bet could coax a nun right out of her panties.
Rocky stood there, half listening to Landry while he visually zoomed in on chief prosecutor Sandra Giancone. His tie suddenly felt too tight when he considered how some guys on his team had screwed up taking a key witness’s statement. They’d screwed her case in the process, but no one would guess it. It always amazed him how nothing seemed to blow Sandra’s cool.
Nothing, that is, except the idea of taking their friendship out of restaurants and movie theaters into her bed or his. He’d been about to give up on seducing her until that kiss last week when he’d discovered the flat acrylic retainer in her tongue.
Only a slight tremor in her voice when she stood and made her summation to the jury gave away the desperation she must have been feeling, facing the likelihood that another guilty man would walk.
She’d made a damn good argument. He’d buy it any day over Landry’s silky-smooth allegation that the State hadn’t proven its case and the jury must therefore set a big-time drug trafficker free. But then Rocky didn’t get a hard-on looking at a hunk in a tailor-made suit.
He imagined most of the women on the jury had soaked their underwear, imagining Landry crawling into their beds. And that they’d gotten the lawyer’s point when he emphasized that he’d neatly impeached a big chunk of the evidence Sandra had needed to prove the defendant’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
On the other hand, Sandra had a way of bringing his cock to instant attention. Rocky’s balls tightened when he thought about the lady replacing that retainer in her tongue with a vibrating barbell. The idea of her rubbing it sensuously over his naked body was a massive turn-on, and he damn well intended to make that happen soon.
His unflappable friend would need to let go some of her scary self-control when this case was over. She’d need to be mastered, and his cock was just the tool to do the job. Now if he could only convince her…
Fuck, he was dreaming. The lady might be keeping that tongue piercing as a souvenir of some long-ago fling. Nothing else about her gave the slightest hint that she might get into the BDSM scene he’d inhabited off and on for years. No, Rocky told his eager cock it wasn’t likely ever to feel the inside of Sandra’s cunt, let alone the delicious sensation of her pierced tongue sliding over it, wet and eager for a meal of his come.
He’d better cool it or he’d embarrass himself with a hard-on nobody in the courtroom would be able to ignore. Putting the lid onto his fantasies, Rocky forced himself to concentrate on what Sandra was saying.
By God, she might get lucky and pull this case out. Her argument sure as hell would have convinced Rocky that the creep on trial belonged behind bars for the rest of his natural life and then some, if he hadn’t already known that for a fact. But then Rocky knew his detective whose testimony Landry had just impeached, and he had confidence that the man would never perjure himself, even if his family situation suggested otherwise.
The jurors didn’t.
It was obvious from the tight set of her lips when she walked out of the courtroom that Sandra knew Landry had cemented doubt in those jurors’ minds. She hid it well, though. He doubted the reporters who were now ganging up on her outside the courtroom could tell.
“Do you think you’ve got a conviction?” one shouted at her from the back of the horde.
“Did Landry’s discrediting the detective hurt your case?” yelled an especially stupid young woman who shoved a microphone in Sandra’s face.
It was all Rocky could do to restrain himself from knocking aside everybody who stood in his path, plowing into the melee, and knocking the pesky reporters out of Sandra’s way. Damn, it was as if they wanted to make her break—wanted her to snap and say something that would spice up the evening news.
“No comment,” she snapped again and again, her smile tight-lipped as she and the rest of the prosecution team shoved their way through the crowd with the help of some uniforms.
Rocky stood and watched, hurting for her and for his detective who had inadvertently fucked up the case. Tonight he’d coax her once more to shed her cloak of determined self-control. If she’d let him, he’d be there for her and give her the love that had been growing inside him, love that was yelling to be revealed—and he’d provide however much or little sex as it took to shake that scary, brittle control of hers into oblivion.
Maybe he’d even hide the toys he kept below deck on the forty-foot motor cruiser he’d bought with his inheritance from Uncle Marco and treat Sandy to a relaxing cruise on the Gulf. He could always hope she wouldn’t notice Neptune’s Dungeon discreetly stenciled on the stern—or if she did, she wouldn’t catch the name’s significance.
* * * * *
“No comment.” Sandra could have saved valuable breath by tape recording those two terse words and playing them nonstop while she walked from the courthouse to the state attorney’s offices for the second time in two hours.
A cool breeze caught wisps of her simply styled pageboy and whipped the strands against her cheeks. Another annoyance, she thought, brushing back her hair as she tried to ignore the horde of TV commentators and photographers dogging her trail and spoiling this otherwise gorgeous February day.
Sandra hated reporters. Vultures. That was all they were. This time they hadn’t even waited for the jury to come in. She hadn’t needed to hear the verdict rendered moments earlier to know Landry had ripped her case to shreds.
This was one of those days when she wished she’d listened to Mama and forgotten about saving the world from bastards like the one who’d just gotten off scot-free. She should have settled down with a good old Italian-American paisano to raise her own brood of macho boys and sweet, subservient girls. At the very least she ought to have tossed away her ambitions and gone with her old Master when he’d moved his construction business to Arizona last year.
Maybe she should have taken Rocky up on one of his frequent hints that they nudge their long-time friendship into an affair. Too bad he seemed like such a nice guy. Too bad nice didn’t get her off.
Her second-guessing wasn’t happening because some hotshot defense lawyer five years her junior had just ripped apart her case. That humiliation was nothing compared with what she knew was coming from the state attorney, whose political ambitions went far beyond his present elective office. Sandra had no doubt he’d see her loss to the flamboyant attorney as a diminishing blow to his chances for moving up to Congress next year. She’d gotten a hint of just how angry her boss was when his secretary had buzzed her on her cell phone as soon as the trial was over and summoned her to an urgent meeting.
Sometimes Sandra wanted to strangle that pompous ass, but as always she vowed to keep a tight rein on her feelings. She wouldn’t let anybody get to her. Taking a deep breath once she got past the receptionist who she hoped would hold the reporters at bay, she opened the conference room door.
“Good. You’re finally here. We can get started.” The scowl on Harper Wells’ patrician-looking face gave Sandra another hint as to the level of verbal abuse she and the other members of the prosecution team should expect.
She schooled her features into what she hoped would be seen as a neutral expression. No way would she ever give Wells or anybody else the satisfaction of getting past her defenses. “Fire away,” she said as she took a seat at the conference table between Andi Young, her second chair, and Kristine Granger, the law clerk who’d assisted with preparations for the trial.
A quick check of the other faces around t
he table confirmed that everyone who’d been even peripherally involved with preparing the case had received their boss’s summons. Even the detectives who’d screwed up collecting evidence—and Rocky, their boss, who wore an ominous scowl.
Damn! This was apparently going to be even worse than Sandra had imagined.
It was. She clenched her fists under the table to keep from using them on Wells when he threatened her with firing or demotion for having let Landry get the best of her. She gathered from his comments that he’d run up against a brick wall with the flamboyant defense attorney before, and this loss added insult to the earlier injury.
Then Wells turned on the police investigative team, his mouth curled in a mask of disgust. “I’m filing a complaint with the Tampa Police Department, Delgado. I’ll have all your heads on pikes before I’m through with you,” he concluded following a lengthy and loud recitation of every real and imagined error that might have contributed to the not-guilty verdict.
Sandra glanced across the table, noted the hard set of Rocky’s square jaw and the white-knuckled fists he didn’t bother hiding from plain view. From the fierce expression in his deep-brown eyes, she imagined he was one step away from exploding. And she didn’t blame him. Wells was out of line, blaming Rocky because Landry had dug up the detective’s family problems to impeach his testimony. If anybody was to blame for that, she was.
“I should have thought to ask Detective Sergeant Kelly if anything in his private life might be subject to scrutiny. I didn’t. If you need to blame someone, blame me,” she said when Wells paused in his loud diatribe. Not that she imagined the big, rough-edged chief of detectives needed defending. She’d put her money on Rocky over Wells any day—at least in a back-alley brawl. No, she spoke up to keep from witnessing an explosion of testosterone that could easily have resulted in bloodshed.
As the state attorney turned back to Sandra, he slammed a fist onto the table, sending reverberations through her fingers, up her arm and into her throbbing head. “Yes, you should have. Why in hell can’t I get attorneys as good as Landry?”
Because you’re a self-serving bastard, maybe?
Careful to keep her expression neutral, Sandra looked Wells in the eye. “I doubt the state attorney’s office pays nearly as much as Landry makes in private practice.”
“That may be. Still… Don’t let this happen again or you’re out, Giancone. I don’t need lawyers who can’t get convictions. All of you get the hell out of here now.”
“Wells was in fine fighting form today,” Rocky observed a few minutes later when he and Sandra waited in the hallway for the balky elevator. “It’s past quitting time. How about we head over to Bennie’s Place and commiserate over a drink or two?”
“All right.” Sandra had no desire to rehash the trial or its replay, but she could seriously use a drink—and a few hours with the big chief of detectives who was the closest thing she had to a best friend. Truth be told, she could use a man…the right sort of man. Maybe tonight if Rocky suggested again that they share a friendly fuck, she’d say yes.
Maybe she’d even enjoy it.
* * * * *
Bennie’s. For over ten years now she’d been stopping in for a bread bowl of Selena’s famous stew at lunchtime, drinks after long days in court. Located across from the courthouse in downtown Tampa, the pub attracted a horde of lawyers and judges and the occasional detective or cop. A cool blast of air greeted Sandra as she and Rocky stepped through faux-western swinging doors into a bar paneled with dark wood. Candles flickered at the centers of the round tables in the center of the room.
“Over there.” Rocky led the way around the tables and through the maze of mostly empty barrel chairs to the dimly lit corner booth he always chose when it wasn’t already occupied. “Need the peace and quiet after the day from hell we went through from Wells, right?” he asked after Sandra had slid around to the back of the horseshoe-shaped red leather seat close enough to him that she could smell the woodsy scent of his aftershave.
“Yes. Right.” The crackling silver light from a sphere on a neon beer ad behind him bounced off his gleaming scalp. Suddenly she wondered…
Except for the coat and tie that looked as though it didn’t really belong over his massive shoulders or surrounding his thick, tanned neck, Rocky might have been a dockworker…a pro wrestler…anything but the highly respected cop he was. In some ways he reminded Sandra of her old Master. Of the hot, committed relationship she’d ended a year ago after refusing to quit her job and follow Him to his new home in Arizona.
She recalled the orgasms she hadn’t had with her last lover, a local corporate attorney. Ice maiden. That was what he’d called her. Little had he known how hard she’d tried to find release when they fucked in the plain-vanilla way that left her cold—or how frustrated her failure to come had made her.
The jerk never would have believed her if she’d told him how she’d gone wild with men who’d hardly been fit consorts for the respectable, unflappable Sandra Giancone. Hard, macho types she’d never dare show up with at bar association parties or Harper Wells’ mandatory social-business gatherings. Men who took control of her body the way she’d never let them intrude on her professional life—until Master had come along.
Men with dark, dangerous edges honed to razor-sharpness in Tampa’s underground community. Could Rocky be…?
For the next half-hour Sandra and Rocky rehashed the case while she polished off two syrupy strawberry daiquiris.
“Want some dinner?” Rocky asked when it seemed they’d said all that could be said about their shared business dealings.
The last thing Sandra wanted was food. Her stomach already was queasy from having drunk those daiquiris on her empty stomach. “No. But I could use some…” She dared not tell him what she needed right now. “Coffee.”
“I think you need more than that. You need to loosen up. Relax.” Rocky’s voice compelled, commanded, despite its deep, melodic tone.
What I need is for him to clamp his cuffs on me, force me to let go.
Sandra’s nipples tightened and her pussy got wet when she imagined him taking control, taking her the way she hadn’t been taken for far too long. Because he’d hinted more than once that he wanted to fuck her, she imagined he’d pick up on even the subtlest of invitations. “Relax how?” she asked, her tone deliberately challenging.
“In bed.” His declaration, as bald as his cleanly shaven head, came out as a low rumble, and he drew her hand to his lap and settled it over the bulge of his rigid throbbing cock.
When he shot her a predatory grin, his straight teeth flashed a brilliant white against swarthy skin dotted along his square jaw line with a heavy five o’clock shadow. And his dark eyes glittered, promising…
Danger?
More like mastery. Oh! How Sandra needed to be mastered. In bed, not in court the way Landry the wonder lawyer had bested her this afternoon.
Testosterone practically oozed from the big detective whose conventionally cut dark brown sports jacket did little to disguise his hulking shoulders and massive chest. The winking silver stud in his left earlobe did nothing to offset his blatant maleness. She imagined Rocky without his clothes, certain now he had everything it took to turn her into a mass of quivering jelly. Not just the cuffs she imagined he carried in his pants pocket and the big, hard tool now pulsating beneath her palm.
He’d have the confidence to know what she wanted, the balls to take her and make her like it. If she was really lucky, he might even be a true dominant male—a Master.
Sandra’s pussy wept more, drenching her pantyhose. She barely managed to resist the impulse to squirm against the leather-covered booth when she imagined Rocky restraining her with his iron-muscled arms, dragging her head down to his crotch and making her swallow his hot male flesh.
His cock would be long and thick and maybe uncut as so many Latino men were. Her mouth went dry at the thought, and her whole body began to tingle with greedy anticipation. His thick, slick
cream would slide down her throat, trickle down her chin.
After she sucked him off, he’d pin her to the mattress and fuck her long and hard. He’d make her come the way no gentle lover had ever managed.
Yeah. The big dangerous-looking cop could make her come. No doubt about it. Problem was, he’d likely strip away the control she’d worked so hard to come by. And conquer not just her body but her mind.
Her nipples beaded up, their sensitive tips pressing against the lace of her push-up bra.
The hell with the aura of control she’d managed with such determined effort to create around herself. She could get it back tomorrow. Maybe. “Why don’t you take me home?” she asked, giving his cock a playful squeeze.
Maybe if she held on to her control. Maybe if she let it down only enough to gain momentary release…
Chapter Two
Having put the same proposition to Sandra numerous times before and gotten coolly rejected, Rocky had trouble believing she’d given in so easily tonight. But he hadn’t questioned his luck when she’d tweaked his cock at Bennie’s. He wasn’t about to hesitate now that she’d handed him the key to her apartment and invited him inside.
Shit, but her place left him cold. He looked around a living room that reminded him of the kind of hotel suite salesmen rented to hawk their wares.
Everything was beige, except for a few startling black accents. A few wood-framed black-and-white photos marched neatly along the foyer wall. A geometric pattern stood out startlingly against stacks of big pillows massed on either side of the fireplace.
He’d be afraid of sitting down for fear of knocking one of the loose pillows out of place on the backs of a sofa and two love seats that sat at precise ninety-degree angles to each other and the fireplace. Or of even suggesting that they light a fire in the pristine, beige marble grate and sprawl out together on the utilitarian woven carpet that looked anything but cozy for a fuckfest.
The place was brittle. Cool, calm and collected. Like Sandra.
