Misadventures in Blue Read online

  “Nice to meet you, Officer Sutton,” Kenneth says easily. It takes every ounce of self-control I have to shake his hand.

  “Likewise,” I lie.

  Cat stands up, smoothing down her skirt as she does. It’s another pencil skirt, dark gray this time, and I nearly need to excuse myself after thinking about how good it would look shoved up to her waist.

  She seems to have the same thought, because her hands shake as she smooths the fabric again and she can’t look me in the face.

  “Kenneth is the ADA who will handle most of the medium-level persons crimes moving forward, so he was just in to talk to Kim.”

  “Well, and to catch up with you, Cat,” Kenneth interjects.

  He calls her Cat. I don’t fucking like that. Not at all.

  And I like it even less when he catches her hand and gives it a quick squeeze. Jealousy flares through me so hot and fast that I think I might erupt, because how dare he touch her in front of me?

  Stop it, my conscience warns. She’s not yours.

  For her part, Cat seems as surprised by the hand squeeze as I’m not. Any idiot can tell that this Kenneth is interested in her, that he wants her. It’s all over his body language, in the gaze that can’t stop dropping to her tits and tracing the subtle curve her pussy makes against her tight skirt.

  He wants her, and worse—I think there’s some history here. When he lets go of her hand, it’s with the satisfaction of someone reclaiming lost territory.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I give you a call?” he asks, touching her elbow. I nearly deck him.

  Her eyes dart to me, her mouth pursed in a moue that I’m beginning to recognize as her thinking face. “I suppose that would be okay,” she says hesitantly, and something inside me dies a little.

  It’s impossible not to notice how good they look together. Not to notice he’s got the same elegant, well-bred features she does. The same expensive taste in clothes. They’re the same age and have the same precision of speech and bearing.

  Compared to him, I feel young and dumb. A blunt, inexperienced instrument. A big, strong body to ride and then forget about the next day.

  I take a step back as he gives her a winning smile and then turns that smile on me. I don’t think I’m imagining the glint of victory in his stare as he holds out a hand for me to shake again. Nor the trace of smugness in his voice when he says, “Officer Sutton.”

  I shake his hand, letting my nod be my only response.

  “I’ll talk to you later, Cat,” he says, the words laden with meaning, and then he leaves.

  And I’m not sure what I feel, except jealous and possessive and maybe the tiniest bit insecure. Especially looking at Cat, now leaning over her desk to get her portfolio, her pale-blond hair swinging in soft, coiffed waves, one delicate high heel kicked back for balance.

  She looks like perfection. Like the kind of woman who should be with a hotshot lawyer, pampered and taken to restaurants I’ve never even heard of—and wouldn’t be able to pronounce their names even if I had. Kenneth is the right kind of man for her. Not me.

  But I don’t think I care.

  I don’t care because I may not be rich, but I’ve known rich men and I know how they think. I know exactly how Kenneth sees Cat. She’s a shiny, beautiful thing to him, like a sleek sports car glinting in the lot, and once he acquires her, he’ll want her off the streets. He’ll want her sitting at home, safe and gathering dust, until he sees fit to take her out and show her off.

  I don’t care because even though I barely know her, I can see a life like that would make her miserable. She can’t be fettered down to play house, leaving only to be gala arm candy. She needs to be handled according to her strength—used and adored in equal measure—and she needs someone who doesn’t want to change a single fucking thing about her. Not her job or her drive or anything.

  And I don’t care because I felt her body against mine last night. I heard her fingernails against the wood and her soft, euphoric moans as she came over and over again. I saw her quiver as I spanked her and pulled her hair. I felt her get wetter and wetter as I kicked her legs apart and played with her asshole.

  There’s no way in hell Kenneth would be able to give her what she needs.

  And I can.

  Maybe it’s as simple as that.

  But as Cat straightens up, gives me one of those thoughtful half pouts, and says, “Okay, Sutton, what am I going to do with you?” I worry that it’s not going to be simple at all.

  Chapter Five

  Cat

  The sight of Jace standing in front of me stunned me so much that I don’t know how I fumbled my way through the rest of the conversation with Kenneth. There I was, praying Kenneth couldn’t tell how gingerly I was sitting on my office chair because I’d been reamed to heaven and back by a gorgeous man who’d been a baby while I was in high school, and then Jace just appeared, as if my tender cunt had summoned him into existence.

  The difference between Jace and Kenneth was beyond startling. Next to the raw, potent presence of Jace in uniform, Kenneth looked like a photocopy of a Brooks Brothers ad. Where Jace was hard and lean from PT in the desert, Kenneth had the sort of self-conscious physique that came from paying a trainer a lot of money. And where Jace’s almost-rugged features are pulled into a look of stern detachment, Kenneth was all genteel symmetry and practiced smiles.

  I’ve never felt that Kenneth was unattractive before now, but with Jace next to him…Jace might as well have been the only man on earth as far as my body was concerned. The sheer power radiating from his wide shoulders and crossed arms and wide, booted stance was enough to make me embarrassingly, shamefully wet. I stood up before I left a damp spot on my skirt.

  “Okay, Sutton, what am I going to do with you?” I glance down the bullpen, relieved to see that no one is watching the Ice Queen blush over a rookie, and then I glance toward the door as I think. I have a few follow-ups I need to do, and I could probably task some of those to Jace, but if I’m honest, I’m not ready for us to part ways just yet. It feels like some kind of bizarre gift from the universe that he’s here at all. One of those coincidences that I’m in danger of making too much of, when I should just be grateful for the extra help. Especially when that help is as capable and competent as Jace Sutton.

  The thought grounds me in the here and now. Back to reality and the case. With a deep breath, I turn to him and force myself to be nothing more than professional. At least in my words, if I can’t be in my thoughts.

  “I think it’s best if we go through the evidence together, make sure you know everything I do,” I say. “Kim’s given me the meeting room across the hall as a base camp, so let’s start there.”

  I gesture to the meeting room in question, but Jace doesn’t look where I indicate. Instead, he gives me a slow, heated once-over that makes my belly clench.

  “I’m happy to start wherever you are,” he says after a minute, with just the barest hint of an eyebrow raise to underscore that he’s not only talking about the case, and then he turns and walks to the meeting room with the confident stride of a man who’s been to war.

  It’s that presence that seals the deal, I decide as I follow him out of the little hallway made by my cubicle and the meeting room. With his kissable lips and long eyelashes, he could easily be too handsome to be powerful, but there’s something about those stormy gray eyes and the low voice and the authority he exudes simply by standing in place. It’s what makes him look like a cop and not like an actor who plays a cop on TV.

  He opens the door to the meeting room and flicks on the light, and I can’t help it. I really can’t. It’s these fucking uniform pants and how they display the molded, muscled curve of his ass.

  I look.

  I gawk. Like a schoolgirl after the cute boy, I gawk.

  And then I remember I’m thirteen years older than him and my gawking probably looks more like a leer.

  Stop it, Cat. This can’t happen.

  There’s a million reas
ons I can’t fuck Jace Sutton again. In our department, officers and detectives share the same rank, and fraternization is allowed within rank, but it’s still wildly unprofessional…even more so now that he’s been assigned to my case.

  And then there’s the age difference. A twenty-four-year-old cop with a giant cock and flat abs? I have no doubt there’s a bevy of badge bunnies with limber, nubile bodies waiting to crawl into his lap face first and that he probably went home so fast after fucking me because he had no desire to fuck me again. Why would he want to fuck an old lady when there’s probably an infinite supply of eager twenty-somethings waiting to fall into his bed?

  The thought is depressing.

  But I’m not in the habit of allowing myself self-pity and never have been, even after Frazer’s death. I enjoyed last night, and I refuse to regret it. Even if it’s time to get back to real life now.

  And I’m all ready for real life, for the contained control I normally enjoy, just as soon as I’m done looking at Sutton’s ass. Which I am. I definitely am done looking—okay, maybe just one more peek—

  Jace turns faster than I anticipate, and there can be no doubt he catches me looking. His usual brooding scowl gets scowlier.

  Which is fair. There’s no doubt it’s improper to be caught ogling your young coworker’s ass, even if you did fuck him the night before. But I can’t pretend shame. I can’t pretend there isn’t a tiny part of me that feels entitled to look.

  I tilt my head and allow him a little smile. You caught me.

  He kicks the door shut, and in a heartbeat I’m pushed against the wall and trapped between his hands planted on either side of my head as my phone and portfolio tumble to the floor.

  I’m caged in by two hundred pounds of angry male muscle, but I haven’t been afraid of big, grumpy cops since I started academy—and anyway, my body associates all this intensity and closeness from Jace with something close to danger but much, much more fun.

  “You’re looking at me like you want to be bent over a table again,” he says in a silky voice.

  “Maybe.”

  He glances down at my nipples, erect and making themselves known against the thin fabric of my blouse.

  “Is that for me?”

  “Who else would it be for?”

  “Kenneth.”

  I make a dismissive noise, and my cop narrows his eyes.

  “He wants to fuck you,” he growls. “I don’t like it.”

  I lift an eyebrow. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

  More scowling. “Still. He’s an asshole.”

  It’s so churlish, so very male, that I have to laugh a little, and his gaze snags on my smiling mouth and goes from angry to something different. Something greedy.

  “He’s not an asshole,” I say. “He’s very nice. Even if he were an asshole, however, it still wouldn’t be any of your business.”

  “You’ve fucked him,” the sulky rookie says. “Haven’t you?”

  There’s no point in lying, not when Jace and I are as little to each other as Kenneth and I are. Or at least as little as Jace and I should be to each other. “Three years ago. One date. He ended up moving right after to be closer to his kids, and that was the end of it.”

  “Except he’s back now,” Jace points out. “And he wants to pick up where you left off.”

  “I’m reiterating again that this is none of your business.”

  Not that Jace is wrong. I think Kenneth would very much like to pick up where we left off. Have more china doll sex. And in the three years since he left, I’ve thought about it. Thought about how long the nights are getting, how my house seems to feel emptier and emptier and emptier. I never cared too much about becoming a spinster—I’ve even railed against the label as patriarchal bullshit—but though I don’t feel desperate to marry or start a family, I do feel…lonely.

  And wouldn’t Kenneth be an easy solution? He already has two lovely daughters, so if we had children, it would be because we wanted them, not because we felt middle age bearing down on us. And we run in the same circles, share many of the same friends. It makes sense.

  In contrast, Jace makes no sense. He’s the opposite of the pro-Kenneth list. Too young to settle down, and I bet too wild too. Just like Frazer at that age, working hard, playing hard—drinks and girls and danger. There’s no easy security in Jace, no clear path to a future.

  So why am I uninterested in Kenneth?

  And why am I so inexorably drawn to this young cop instead?

  I look up into Jace’s stern face. “Why do you care?”

  It’s the wrong thing to say. It betrays too much of my own conflicted desires, and Jace, like any good predator, smells my weakness.

  “Do you want me to care?” he asks, his voice turning low and rough.

  He’s visibly shaking with restraint now, his hands balled into fists on either side of me, his pulse thrumming fast in his neck. Every long, diamond-cut inch of his body is desperate to press against mine; I don’t have to look down to know he’s hard. His jaw is tense, rigid, a small muscle jumping along it. He looks like he wants to fuck me right through the wall.

  God, this is sexy. It’s all so fucking sexy…

  My composure is gone. My control is shot. There’s only him, smelling like leather and the barest hint of tea tree oil. Rugged and clean. I lean forward and run my nose along the edge of his jaw to smell it better.

  He freezes.

  His jaw is clean-shaven, but that five o’clock shadow is beginning to make itself known—just a hint of raspiness over his warm, sculpted jaw. It tickles against my nose, and his scent is even stronger like this. If the Yankee Candle store sold a candle that smelled like Jace, women would stop going on dates altogether.

  “Cat,” he rumbles in warning.

  This growling version of Jace is going to be the death of my panties. I rub my chest against his hard, body-armored one and smile into his neck.

  He lets out a long breath. A “now I see” breath.

  “Do you like me being jealous of him?” His hand drops from beside my head and slowly, deliberately palms my cunt through my skirt. “Do you like it when I’m possessive?”

  My head drops back against the wall as my hips push against his touch. Pleasure curls, dark and smoky, through my belly and chest, and I know the answer before I admit it aloud. “Yes.”

  “I know you do.” He says it matter-of-factly, in this almost-arrogant way that leaves no room for doubt.

  I do like it. He did know.

  It’s that straightforward.

  He reaches over with his free hand and locks the meeting room door, and for the first time, I appreciate how isolated it is. Near nothing else except my cubicle, with no internal windows or shared doors. And when Jace flicks off the light, leaving only the afternoon sunlight straining against the metal blinds of the exterior windows, I know we’re essentially hidden here. As long as we stay silent, no one will know.

  Ohhhh, this is such a bad idea. But it doesn’t stop me from rocking my cunt against Jace’s peremptory touch.

  “Tell me,” he says, leaning close and ghosting his mouth over my jaw. “Did he fuck you right? Did he make that little pussy of yours happy?”

  My eyelids flutter at his dirty words, even as the sensible part of my mind rears up to scream it’s none of your business! I shouldn’t betray poor Kenneth’s ego this way. I shouldn’t. But then Jace presses hard enough to make me moan, and I think maybe I don’t care and that I’ll tell him anything to keep this jealous, ravenous side of him around.

  “Did he?” he demands again, impatient with my silence, curling his fingers to catch my clit with more pressure.

  “No,” I relent in a whimper. “No, he didn’t.”

  Jace nods to himself, as if confirming knowledge he already had. “He was too gentle, wasn’t he? Tried to fuck you easy and sweet?”

  His fingers are now at the hem of my skirt, dragging it up to my waist. I’m squirming to get his touch back where I
need it, back where I’m wet and aching, back where only he can soothe me.

  “Too bad he didn’t know there isn’t anything easy about you,” Jace says, one hand pushing my panties aside and the other hand fisting in my hair. He makes me watch as he pushes his fingers inside me and fucks me with them. “Too bad he didn’t know you’re the furthest thing from sweet.”

  “Then what am I?” I dare him, as if any dare has teeth when you’re fucking yourself on someone’s hand.

  But Jace responds immediately, his nostrils flaring and his eyes blazing bright. “You’re mine,” he seethes and yanks me in for a brutal kiss.

  Our lips meet, hot and urgent, and then his tongue seeks out the seam of my mouth, demanding entry, demanding succor. I let him in. I let him taste my mouth for the first time as he finger-fucks me against the wall and fists my hair. He sweeps through my mouth the way he does everything—quietly, intensely, and with raw, male power. But I manage to break his silence and elicit a long groan from him when I kiss him back, when I stroke my tongue along his the way I would his cock, with flickers and swirls and promise.

  I shouldn’t do this. Fraternization is fine, but sex on duty definitely isn’t—and we’re not only on duty but also on police department property. In the same building as twenty other cops. I should push Jace away, straighten up my skirt, and act like Catherine Day again.

  I’m tired of acting like Catherine Day. The thought adds to the restless itch that’s been crawling through my blood since I saw Jace standing firm and sure next to my cubicle. I’m tired of being lonely, of being the best, of being the sort of woman that would fit a man like Kenneth.

  And as foolish as it is, something about Jace drives back this lonely ache and makes me feel alive again—and I can’t surrender that to the faceless pestle of propriety and professionalism. Not yet, anyway.

  I reach up and grab his collar. “I want to get fucked again,” I say against his mouth.

  He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t hesitate.

  “Here?” he asks.

  “Here.”

  His mouth comes back over mine, hard, as he adds another finger inside me. “I don’t have a condom, Cat.”