Women With Handcuffs Page 7

  I carefully told her that Rosa and I had been seeing each other.

  “Oh, Mom,” Ashley said. “I know that already. It’s obvious.”

  Rosa and I exchanged startled glances as I replayed the past year in my head, trying to figure out where we’d slipped.

  “It is?” I asked, befuddled. “How?”

  She rolled her eyes. “The very first time Rosa came over, you wore perfume. So, is Rosa going to move in? And does this mean we can have a dog?”

  Kids. They’ll keep you on your toes. I was going to be in so much trouble when Ashley hit her teens.

  Rosa’s hand crept into mine. The best part was, I wasn’t going to have to go it alone anymore.

  CHAPEL STREET BLUE

  R. V. Raiment

  With a long, drawn out “o-h-h” of weariness, Sally lies back in the bed. A familiar sound. A precious sound. I study her face and wait for her to talk.

  “‘You wouldn’t mind taking hold of my nightstick, now would you, Sal?’”

  She’s quoting one of Loomis’s jokes. He’s her partner. Six foot two of beefcake, a lantern-jawed cliché and a jock, who’ll tell you he went from tackling on the football field to tackling crime instead.

  She’s told me all about Todd Loomis, and often. Listening has become my role. Part of it, anyway.

  “He never was particularly good at it, you know?” I do know, and I know it’s football she’s referring to, but my expression’s noncommittal so she won’t feel guilty for telling me all over again. “Never was really interested in anything but cheerleaders and groupies. Always looking for something half-undressed to ‘twirl his baton.’”

  She doesn’t even react to his clumsy innuendoes anymore, she tells me. She just smiles that little smile which enables both of them to pretend that he’s only pretending, that he doesn’t really want to fuck her, that he doesn’t long for the day when the tenor of that small smile changes and gives him permission to jump her bones.

  That’s what he wants. That’s what they all want—all those not too old or addled, anyway. And why wouldn’t they? Even Sally understands that. One look in a mirror and she understands that.

  You can usually tell the gender of a cop at a glance. The blues, the holster on the utility belt, the leather jacket, they’re power dressing with a vengeance, but it’s actually very rare that you’ll confuse a male cop with a female.

  No one makes that mistake with Sally. No one could make that mistake with Sally. You see Sally in uniform on the street, and you look around for the HBO camera truck, the caterers and the focus pullers. Sally’s got the face of a movie star and the body to go with it: breasts that beg similes of ripe fruit; an ass no one could compare to anything but peaches; long, long legs, reaching up to a heaven that every guy on the force would die to get into.

  When she’s in uniform, guys whistle. They try to hide it, of course. They try to duck their heads so that she won’t know who it was who whistled, because while she’s a stunner, there’s something about Sally in uniform that’s quite scary for most men. There’s an indefinable power to her. One look and you know you’d never out-run her if she took exception and that it would take one helluva guy to overpower her. Like Todd, she’s an athlete. Unlike Todd, she hasn’t let recent years take the edge off her body.

  In civvies… Well, she tries not to let the guys see her in civvies. She likes to give the impression she lives in her uniform, neat and clean and sharp as it always is, and hardly anyone has ever seen her out of it. She sunbathes on the flat roof of the brownstone we live in, locking the access door behind us with a key she prised out of the janitor’s keeping. And when she does go out sans uniform, hardly anyone would be able to tell you it was her. She finds baggy tracksuits and dark lenses useful that way, though the tracksuit that can truly camouflage that ass is rare.

  Locking the roof access so she can sunbathe naked unobserved is, too, a kindness. Most of the men in our building are middle-aged and older. The sight of that body unadorned is, for most of them, potential heart-attack country.

  She knows it, and it’s part of what makes her different and makes her so very good at what she does.

  The world is full of beautiful women who are quite unsurprised at the scarcity of decent guys who want to be with them. Indecent or un-decent men who want to fuck them are a different matter. Such men are never, ever in short supply. But the lack of a White Knight is no surprise to your average Not-Quite-Sleeping Beauty, because even if she owned the magic mirror she would find a way to disbelieve its testimony. The Fairest of Them All rarely, if ever, knows she is so. She remains convinced that her ass or her breasts are too big or too small; that natural, charming asymmetries are uglinesses in need of chemical or surgical attention; and that the positive testimonies of others are only flattery, kindness or indulgence.

  Sally’s different. Sally knows that she looks ‘good enough.’ Good enough, that is, to make male attentions problematic from time to time, on a scale of ‘mildly irritating’ to ‘fucking annoying,’ and good enough to make use of her looks if and when she finds it politic. More importantly, Sally looks ‘good enough’ for herself. She doesn’t have any sense of needing anything more, is content with what she has.

  She has reason for that, too. Anyone should be content, no doubt, when they are truly blessed, but Sally’s contentment, she has explained, goes beyond that.

  “I love my body.” The observation would sound narcissistic from almost anybody else.

  “You should. You are so very beautiful.” Safe ground, for me.

  “Fuck that. The female body is beautiful. In the abstract, in the concrete, the female body is beautiful. Doesn’t much matter, to me, what the proportions of the body are. Curve after curve, fat or thin, and the miracle of the cunt—all are beautiful.

  “So many sensitivities, so many potential pleasures. ’Course, the fitter body gets the pleasure that comes from the chemistry of running or climbing, things like that, but look at the way women are made. How sensitive the skin is. How sensitive particular areas of skin are. The way the almost invisible hairs on our arms feel if we only brush them gently backward.

  “We get aroused and blood flushes our nipples, our lips, cuntlips and cheeks. Little things, pretty things, sweet things, all flushing and growing at once, whilst all a man has is his fucking cock, made ponderous and foolish.”

  “Not just ponderous and foolish.”

  “Don’t you defend them! You know that pisses me off.”

  “You’re angry today.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Work?”

  “Yeah.”

  She will have to tell it. She knows she will have to, but she is reluctant.

  “Chapel Street,” she says. “Fourth and Eldridge.”

  Working girls, then, almost certainly. I begin to stroke her flank, gently, glad of the heat that the rest of the world is cursing, because it means it is too hot for blankets and far too hot for sex under blankets, and I get to look at her endlessly naked.

  “I hate Chapel Street.” Her voice is sibilant with a darker passion than our own.

  “I know.”

  “Just routine stuff, of course. Caspar and Weiner were there from Homicide. Izzy Morgenstein and di Matteo called it in.”

  “And the vic?”

  “Some kid called Kassie. Short for Kassandra, spelled with a K.”

  “Black?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Kassie who?”

  “Whitney.”

  I try to remember, but the name means nothing to me.

  “Dead?” The question is stupid, but we both know it’s a prompt.

  “Couldn’t have been deader, poor kid.”

  “Got any idea who did it?”

  “Warm when they found her. Jism still leaking from her cooch. Caspar’s sure the DNA will be the killer’s.”

  “She fucked unprotected?”

  “Yeah. And her lipstick was kiss-smeared.”

  She is having a harder ti
me with this than usual. Dead hookers are commonplace, scarcely making the inside pages anymore.

  She rolls onto her back. Something that was smouldering low down inside me starts to sputter with flame. So confident, you see. Just lies there. Her arms are folded behind her head, her breasts spread that little extra by gravity, legs comfortably, revealingly parted. What is there is to die for.

  “Todd was an asshole today.”

  “He was?”

  “Yeah.”

  She’s quiet, thoughtful, just gazing at the ceiling. The fan up there rotates slowly, lazily. From low where I’m lying I can see the length of her curving lashes, the bright highlights from the window on the lenses of her eyes.

  “I suspect he’s not getting any.” Her lips are tight. Bitter.

  “He’s married, isn’t he?”

  “Sure. To his college sweetheart.”

  “The cheerleader. Of course.”

  “Yeah. His fuckbunny.” Her lip curls. I know all that shit makes her mad. “I wish he’d grow up. Over thirty fucking years old and his taste—really—is still for barely-post-pubescentlooking kids in rah-rah skirts and shiny panties.

  “He started cracking wise this morning. Making jokes. And the thing is, there are jokes and jokes, you know?”

  “Yes.” It’s amazing what some cops will laugh at, but that’s because there are times when it’s only the ability to laugh at something that keeps them going, that enables them to cope. A lot of folks don’t understand that.

  It was as if she’d read my thoughts. “Just plain mean, his jokes were, this morning. Just plain mean. You should have seen Izzy’s face. He’s got kids, you know. Two girls, both about Kassie’s age.

  “Todd really wound him up. Wound me up, too, the bastard. If he goes on like this, I’m going to have to try to switch to another partner.”

  “It’s as bad as that?”

  “Yeah. It’s as bad as that. I’d say you should’ve heard him, but I’m really awfully glad you didn’t. Bastard. And it’s something I’ve noticed about him before. He hates hookers. With a passion.”

  “Probably his mother was one.”

  Sally laughs. It’s a nicer sound.

  “Fucking hypocrite.”

  “What?”

  “Todd. Puts the squeeze on working girls any time he can. He likes to say, of sex, that he never has to pay for it. Fact is, that’s only ’cuz he’s good at squeezing freebies out of frightened youngsters.”

  I can see the change in her expression. There are things going on in her head that she hasn’t given voice to. There’s a passion that doesn’t easily lend itself to words. Any moment and her eyes will moisten.

  I love that in her. She is so very, very strong, so very, very confident. So very powerful. She speaks and others obey, her orders short and sharp as a whiplash, and there’s scarcely a man in the precinct she couldn’t knock down with a single punch. Still, though, injustice can move her to tears. And maybe the best part of that is that it means I get to baby her, to be part of making her feel better.

  Her ankles move apart for me so that I can lie the length of her, my face level with her breasts. Her beautiful face above me.

  The response is swift. I feel her groin thrust once, impulsively, and writhe just a little, nestling. Her nipples are flooding warm and blushing, quickly eager. I only need to breathe upon one and she moans very softly, to touch the moistness of my tongue to it and feel her catch her breath.

  “Yes!”

  What is the function of that word, I wonder. How superfluous it is when the body says the same so eloquently. I fill my mouth with her, tease one perking tip with ripples of my tongue while the fingers of my free hand find and gently work its sweet companion.

  That upward pressure of her loins again, that subtle easing which, were she different, might bring other lips to her lips, a questing cock to her moistening cunt. Not this time though. Never, now, for her.

  “Kiss…”

  I am too eager to allow time for the full-formed phrase to escape her, bringing my mouth eagerly to hers, pressing the soft buttress of her lips with my own, finding her tongue with mine. A sweet confusion there, tongue on tongue. It is hard to know, at times, which tongue belongs to whom. And is hers really so long? It feels as if it could reach down into my belly.

  No shuttle ever docked more closely upon an airlock. No breath escapes. Hers is mine and mine is hers, until it seems our lips are bruising and the de-oxygenated breath we share begins to tip us toward unconsciousness.

  What a dizziness, what a fainting, this is…a gasping for air, because we cannot sustain the airlessness which is yet so delightful that we cannot easily part from it. A littler ‘little death’ than the one we hope will follow; still we cling to it.

  Her breasts press against my own, matching softness to softness, smoothness to smoothness, nipples jousting gently, playfully. Her belly, too. Matchless in perfection, immeasurable in sweet fluency, pressing so perfectly, the simple senses of skin on skin heart-achingly lovely.

  And I close my eyes to isolate that other sensation where mons rests on mons, both of us clean shaven, our two sacred mounds rubbing firmly on each other with every small yearning movement. I feel her hands pressing round the curves of my asscheeks, long slender fingers within teasing reach of that small, puckered ring, well-tended fingernails digging and sharp without, somehow, scratching.

  Not wanting to break apart, intoxicated with shared breath, both of us know what we both want. Slippery already, the heat of the day and the heat of our wanting become a sweat-glaze on our eager flesh. I begin to slide down her, my tongue already hungry, and yet she prevents me.

  No more than a pressure of fingertips, and ever so gentle at that, but still I know.

  I lift myself lightly as she slides a little lower, and I reverse my position to kneel there, above her, and ease myself down. Her lovely thighs are parted above the naked pink vee of her, the sweet junction exposed as uncompromisingly as my own, which tingles to her gaze and the hope of her touch.

  “Goddamn, you are beautiful.”

  In fact we say little. Those words are hers but could as easily have been mine. What I see is exquisite, and I know that what she looks upon is no less exquisite to her.

  Within inches of her, I inhale her sweet perfume.

  Oh, jeezus. So lovely. My chest aches with yearning. I moan, tears forming in my eyes, because I know she loves me so much. Her mouth warm, moist, closing around me… I close mine around her before I become too distracted.

  We play mirrors. Each reflects back upon the other the sensations they feel. When her tongue describes a moist figure eight around my inflated outer lips, my tongue skates a parallel path round hers. Round and round, swirling, the both of us, and she who is ‘mistress,’ if only in persona, dips her tongue deep inside me and I follow her guide.

  Not for the first time I wonder if I taste the same to her. I hope I do. She tastes like elixir. The magic juices emanating here are surely capable of miracles, the stuff of life.

  Sweet smoothness slides upon my tongue inside her. Her tongue matches the motion and, again, the synchrony of movement and response is such that the sensation in my cunt could be the product of my own tongue. That is, perhaps, the joy of this, the miracle of fucking or being fucked by one of your own, so that you know what they are feeling.

  My tongue presses deeper, as does her own, and my lips press firmly about that sacred site as if I would devour her. Between my thighs I feel what that is like, as if the hunger is hers, too. Only now the pressure’s gone, nothing but a tongue tip left, flicking deftly at my clit. Oh, god, I may not believe in your existence, but there is no other name that springs so easily to my lips at such a time.

  My hands press around her buttocks just as hers are pressing on mine, only cheekily, now, as I tease her own sweet nub, I let my index finger slide. Lubricious with sweat it slips within the ring, and I feel her start at the surprise of it. The quid pro quo is different though. No finger
slides inside my ass, but her mouth closes small and tight around my clitoris, sucks rapidly and firmly till I would scream, if my mouth were not full.

  I press my finger deeper, knowing that she likes it, and she acknowledges her gratitude, pushing and pressing her chin against my pubis as she begins to massage my cunt with long, hard tongue-licks. The flame within my belly surges as I know one must within her own. The chin upon my pubis, my own, now, upon hers, apes the movement and pressure of the pubic bone, driving us onward.

  Sweat trickles across my breasts. Gentle rivulets flow down the valley of my ass. My chin begins to ache, and hers must as well. The fire in me roils and twists, a serpentine liquid madness of want and need and joy and glorious, nameless sensation.

  A sudden surge and we are sliding sweat-soaked and laughing from the gorgeous peak, my lovely law-woman and I.

  Afterward, an hour or two later, I watch her dress. Black shoes, blue pants, blouse and black-leather tunic, that absurdly—or is it wonderfully—masculine tie, the leather belt and deadly gun, the distinctive flat cap. I love to see her like that, not least because it reminds me every time of our first meeting.

  I haven’t quite succeeded in distracting her from what I wish she could forget.

  “The first report I got was just of the death of a hooker,” she says quietly, and I nod. Our understanding is unspoken.

  “Be careful out there,” I tell her. “Make sure you come home in one piece.”

  “You be careful, too. Very careful. You hear me?”

  I nod again as she turns to go. I will, of course, be careful. I have a client arriving in twenty minutes or so, but I know him as I know all my customers, and I have little to fear. I have come a very long way from Chapel Street.

  COP AT MY DOOR

  R. G. Emanuelle

  Bing-bong.

  “Well, here we go,” I said, getting up from the couch.

  Lisa got off the recliner and grinned.

  “What are you smiling about? I don’t enjoy opening up my door to find cops standing there. Nothing good ever comes from cops on doorsteps.”