Page 52 of Misadventures in Blue
Minute by minute, my resolve lessens and my famous ice thaws. I can smell that masculine scent of clean leather and tea tree oil. I can see his clenched thigh next to my own and those huge hands white-knuckled where they rest in his lap.
I’m weak, I’m so weak, because I want to beg his forgiveness and beg him to make me atone with my body, but I can’t. I can’t.
Dammit, Cat, you can’t.
“…and that’s why we’re proud to present Officer Jace Sutton and Detective Catherine Day with these commendations. Let’s give them a round of applause, shall we?”
We stand up, and then there’s handshakes and pictures with the chief formally presenting us our commendation, and then finally, thankfully, it’s over.
I bolt out of the reception room as fast as I can because I don’t trust myself around Jace a moment longer. If I so much as look at him, speak to him, I’m going to crumble. I’m going to beg him to make me crumble, and if I’m going to survive losing him, I have to hold on to my pride somehow.
So I leave while he’s talking to his family and take a shortcut through the employee-only hallway back to the parking lot, breathing a sigh of relief when the door closes behind me. This is the hallway where most of the civilian employees and administrative personnel work, and since it’s evening, they’ve all left and I’m alone.
I need to get home. I need to get home where I’m safe from my own weaknesses, where I can burn off this need for Jace Sutton with a long run and a good toy and not by finding him and fucking myself on his angry erection until we’re both too exhausted to move.
A door creaks; I stop and turn.
Jace is framed in the doorway like a wrathful god, striding toward me with a look on his face that would signal to any other woman to take cover.
It only makes me ready for him, so ready that I ache. I’d do anything right now to ease that ache, any undignified thing, oh God oh God—
“We’re going to talk now,” Jace says, reaching me and yanking me into him with his good arm. Every curve of mine presses against his hard body, and the unmistakable proof of his wanting to “talk” digs into my belly. “We’re going to talk until I fucking understand why you said the things you said that night.”
I close my eyes in regret, in uncertainty. If I tell him I hated the things I said, that they were lies I chose for the plain fact that I needed to hurt him, then everything else will tumble out after it. How much I love him, how much I want him and want him to be mine.
And if he knew that? If he knew he had permission to claim me forever?
Then all of this would have been for nothing, and I wouldn’t have saved him or myself from all the pain waiting for us in the future.
It’s remembering the awaiting pain—inevitable, unavoidable—that gives me strength. I open my eyes and gaze up at his face.
“I said them because I had to,” I say, which is not a lie.
Jace’s eyes narrow. “You said them to hurt me. Every day, I thought you’d call to explain more, to tell me you were lying. To tell me I wasn’t just…”
“Just what?” I whisper.
He exhales forcefully. “Just a young, dumb fuck. Just a good body for you to ride until you got bored.”
I want to close my eyes again. I hate myself for giving him this doubt, this wound, but what else could I have done?
His face changes when I don’t deny it right away, his defensive expression pulling into a dark scowl. “If that’s all you want,” he says roughly, “I can give it to you. You want me to fuck you like I did that first night, hmm? Bend you over the table and take what I need? Or what about the night I found you with Kenneth? What about the night I tore up your pretty silk blouse and tied you up with it so I could fuck your virgin ass?”
Despite all my regret and torment, his words stir up my already primed body, and I can’t help the little moan that leaves my lips. His eyes flare, and suddenly I’m spun around, my hands pinned to the wall and my ass yanked back to his lap.
“I knew it,” he breathes in my ear as his hand works at the belt to my dress pants. “Knew you wanted me.”
I recognize distantly that I need to stop this, that I need to tell him my decision still stands no matter what, but dammit, I don’t want my decision to stand! And how can I deny my neglected body what it’s been keening for since I left him in that hospital room?
Instead, I grind back against his cock and whimper the moment his hand slides into my panties, his middle finger finding my clit with unerring accuracy and rubbing me so perfectly that I feel the climax already pulling tight in my belly.
“Yeah,” he grunts behind me, rocking his clothed erection against me as he fingers me with that blunt male prerogative that gets me so hot. “That’s it. Remind me how wet and tight that pussy gets for me. Remind me how hard I make it come.”
I’ve been too long denied, too desperate, and his words eradicate any barrier between me and what he demands of my body. In a sharp, vicious instant, I come so hard my knees buckle and it’s his hand on my cunt keeping me upright.
“Need to fuck you,” he mumbles into my hair. “Need it.”
“Yes,” I breathe, still riding it out on his hand. “Yes, please, yes.”
