Justice Served (20 page)

Sloan shook her head.

“Progress, then?”

“Some.” Sloan stiffened as she thought about what she had learned. “I know who hurt you. At least who set it up.”

Michael gasped. “How?”

“I tracked him through the computer system at Police Plaza.”

“You know his name?”

“Yes.”

“A police officer?”

“An ADA. He’s probably Mob connected—I don’t know how just yet.”

“Has he been arrested?”

“No.” The bitterness in Sloan’s voice lay heavy in the air.

Michael cupped her fingers along the sharp angle of Sloan’s jaw, sensitive to the tight muscles quivering beneath the smooth, pale skin. Now she understood why Sloan had come home in the middle of the day, in the middle of a big case. Something she would ordinarily never do. She was in pain. “You know what I’d like?”

“What?” Sloan’s voice was husky, her hands terribly gentle as they rested in the soft curve above Michael’s hips.

“I’d like to go to a movie, and then out somewhere for dinner, and then come home and spend the rest of the night in your arms.” Her fingers trembled faintly as she traced their tips over Sloan’s mouth. “Can we do that?”

Sloan buried her hands in Michael’s soft golden hair before lowering her mouth to Michael’s. After she’d filled her mind with the touch and taste of her lover, she whispered, “Yes. Always for you, yes.”

*

Catherine stepped from her car and turned at the sound of her name. Smiling, she leaned a hip against the fender and watched Rebecca coming toward her, a pizza box balanced in one hand. Under the streetlights, Rebecca’s blond hair glinted. Her blazer swung open, revealing the long line of her chest and hips. Catherine’s heart skipped a beat, and she felt the familiar tingling that always accompanied the first sight of her lover.

“How did you know I’d be home now?” Catherine asked as Rebecca drew near.

“I’m a detective.” At the sight of Catherine’s raised brow, Rebecca grinned. “I called Joyce, and she told me when you’d be finished.”

“Mmm. Good thinking.” Catherine wrapped her arm around Rebecca’s waist as they strolled down the sidewalk side by side. “You need to start wearing an overcoat, darling.”

Rebecca kissed Catherine’s cheek. “Why? Is it going to snow?”

“It feels cold enough to.”

“I’m fine.”

“Is there some rule about police officers not wearing coats?”

“I don’t like them. Too confining.”

You think it will get in the way of you reaching your gun, don’t you?
Catherine had noticed that whenever they walked together, Rebecca took the street side, as if shielding her. She was also very aware that no matter where they were, Rebecca constantly scanned the surroundings, looking for something or someone out of place. It wasn’t a question of Rebecca always working, it was simply that Rebecca was always a cop. And in that regard, there was no middle ground. “If you won’t wear an overcoat, then you need to switch to wool blazers. The silk is not heavy enough for this time of year.”

Rebecca laughed. “If that will make you happy, I will. Except they’re still in storage from last winter. It might be a week or so before I have time to retrieve them.”

“Give me the tickets, and I’ll pick them up for you.”

“You don’t have to,” Rebecca said as they climbed the stairs to Catherine’s brownstone.

“I want to. That’s all a part of our being together.”

Inside, Catherine shed her coat and briefcase as Rebecca took the pizza into the kitchen. A moment later, Catherine joined her. She made an appreciative sound as Rebecca opened a bottle of cabernet and filled a glass for her.

“This is wonderful,” Catherine sighed after her first sip of the dark wine.

With a contented groan, Rebecca leaned her hips against the counter, arms outstretched on either side, her fingers curled around the edge, enjoying Catherine’s pleasure. “Better than wonderful.”

Appreciating the way the fine, pale linen stretched across Rebecca’s chest, Catherine nodded. “It’s the first night you’ve been home for dinner all week. We should celebrate.”

Rebecca patted the pizza box. “That’s what I thought too.”

Catherine took another swallow of wine and set the glass on the small butcher block next to the stove. Then she stepped up to Rebecca and placed her hands on the counter inside of Rebecca’s, trapping her lover between her arms. “I wasn’t thinking about food.”

With Catherine pressed along her length, Rebecca remained motionless, content for Catherine to lead. “Not hungry?”

“Well,” Catherine murmured as she slid her hands over Rebecca’s back, “I am, but I was thinking of pizza for the
second
course.”

“I like cold pizza.” Rebecca tilted her head back, offering her throat. She growled softly as Catherine’s teeth caught at her skin. When she raised her hands from the counter to embrace her lover, Catherine grasped her wrists.

“No. Keep them right where they were.” Firmly, Catherine guided Rebecca’s hands back to the curved edge of the counter. Then, as she kept Rebecca pinned with the force of her pelvis between Rebecca’s thighs, she kissed her. Slowly at first, the tip of her tongue tracing the juncture of lips and moist inner recesses. Then a little harder, a little deeper, until their tongues danced in teasing counterpoint. While she savored Rebecca’s mouth, she slipped her hand between them and unbuttoned Rebecca’s shirt.

“Catherine,” Rebecca whispered at the first touch of fingertips against her breast. With her hands clenched around the edge of the counter, she braced her arms for support. The muscles in her legs trembled as Catherine kissed her, one warm palm kneading her breast, a thumb flicking at her nipple.

“Mmm,” Catherine moaned as she broke the kiss and dragged her fingernails down the center of Rebecca’s abdomen to her belt. As she deftly slid the leather free of the clasp, she whispered, “So much better than pizza.”

“You make me feel so good,” Rebecca gasped. “You make me forget…everything, except us.” Her head swam as Catherine’s fingers dipped inside her trousers and found her ready. “When you touch me…” The exquisite pressure left her breathless.

“What?” Catherine’s voice was deep, husky with desire as she kissed the corner of Rebecca’s mouth, her jaw, her neck—one hand inside Rebecca’s shirt, caressing her breasts, the other stroking rhythmically between her legs. “What happens, darling? What?”

Rebecca’s vision wavered as her stomach tightened, her thighs turning to jelly. Her breath came in short pants, and a sound somewhere between a plea and a prayer tore from her throat. “You make me whole.”

“We make…
oh God
…” Caught unawares by a sudden surge of heat that raced along the inside of her legs and up her spine, Catherine shuddered. Eyes nearly closed, she rested her forehead against Rebecca’s and slipped inside her, never breaking the rhythm of her strokes, only moving deeper, taking more of her. Taking all of her. As she felt Rebecca spasm around her fingers, she whispered, “We make each other whole.”

Long moments later, when Rebecca could speak, she whispered, “I love when you do that to me.”

Sated by her lover’s pleasure, Catherine nestled her head on Rebecca’s shoulder, arms loosely clasping her waist. Eyes closed, she drifted without thought, only knowing that she was happy. “Mmm. Do what?”

“Just take me, like I’m yours.”

Catherine raised her head, her eyes still hazy with arousal. “You
are
mine.”

Rebecca grinned weakly, finding it difficult to control her body, which still felt boneless. “Yeah. I know. But when you have your way with me, I
really
know.”

“Stick around, detective,” Catherine murmured, nipping at Rebecca’s chin. “It gets better.”

“I don’t see how it could,” Rebecca replied, suddenly serious. She filled her hands with Catherine’s hair, holding her head as she took her mouth with fierce intensity. She kissed her, suddenly desperate for the taste of her. When she felt Catherine tremble against her body, she moved her mouth to Catherine’s ear. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Catherine wanted to ask for her promise, but instead, she found Rebecca’s hand and guided her lover’s sensitive fingers underneath the edge of her skirt, along the path her pleasure had streamed earlier, and to the center of her desire. Pressing Rebecca’s fingers through the slick heat, into the waiting heart of her, she had no need for words.

Sandy stood by the bedside, watching Mitchell sleep. An open book lay on her chest, the edges of the pages crumpled against her bare breast. Lamplight shone in her face, and she didn’t budge even when Sandy leaned down and kissed her lightly. Moving carefully, Sandy stripped and lifted the sheet to slide in next to the slumbering woman. As she reached to turn off the light, Mitchell stirred.

“Hey, honey,” Mitchell murmured, turning on her side, knocking the book to the floor in the process.

“Hi, baby.” Sandy snuggled close, edging her thigh between Mitchell’s. “Go back to sleep.”

“Mmm, in a minute.” With a contented sigh, Mitchell nuzzled Sandy’s neck, inhaling her scent. “Missed you.”

“You and Jason were so into your spy stuff when I left, I wasn’t even sure you heard me say goodbye.”

Mitchell chuckled and wrapped an arm around Sandy’s waist. “I heard you.” She kissed the tender spot below Sandy’s ear. “Everything okay?”

Sandy rubbed her palm back and forth across Mitchell’s chest, finally trailing her fingers over the inner curve of one small, firm breast. “Yeah.”

“You’re home earlier than usual. S’good.”

“Uh-huh.” Sandy debated sharing the news that she’d run into a girl at the Blue Diamond who’d seen Trudy in the club the night before, asking some of her old friends for a place to crash. After a few more stops in a few more strip joints, Sandy had finally scored a phone number to get a message to Trudy. It wasn’t
Trudy’s
telephone number, of course. It was a link in a phone-message tree that the street girls often used to thwart their pimps when they were planning to cut out on them or if they just wanted privacy. Rather than risk having their cell phones confiscated and their messages intercepted, they passed messages from one to the other through a convoluted set of phone relays. Eventually a message would reach its intended recipient, and a callback number or time for a meeting would wend its way back up the tree to whoever had initiated the contact.

Sandy
had
gotten a return message—with the time and place for a meeting with Trudy the following night. She wasn’t certain their getting together would come to anything, because she didn’t know if the girl had any more information about the video porn ring than she’d already revealed. Still, it was a place to start, and Sandy could at least try to talk Trudy into contacting her if she learned anything new or if she had another offer to do a porn shoot. No way was one police raid going to shut down that kind of business for good. Anything selling sex was impossible to kill.

In the end, she decided that only Frye should know, because that was what the detective was paying her for. She didn’t like keeping anything from Dell, but she didn’t want to get her into trouble, either. And, she admitted to herself, the less Dell knew about these activities, the better. She’d only worry. Or get protective. And even though Sandy liked the way it felt to have Dell care about her that way, the downside was having Dell get all bent out of shape about it. So she kept silent about the details.

“You okay about tomorrow?” Sandy asked instead, stroking the back of Mitchell’s neck.

“About the promotion ceremony?” Mitchell nuzzled Sandy’s nipple until it hardened, then flicked at it with her tongue. “Yeah. You’re comin’, right?”

Sandy directed Mitchell’s mouth back to her breast. “Uh-huh.”

“Good,” Mitchell mumbled before devoting herself to sucking Sandy’s nipple to rigid attention.

“Mmm, that’s nice,” Sandy sighed, closing her eyes and savoring the heat that washed through her as Mitchell teased. “Did you hear from your sister today?”

Mitchell stiffened, but kept her mouth to Sandy’s breast. “No.”

“Does she know about tomorrow?”

“Don’t see how.” Mitchell rolled over onto her back.

In the silence that followed, Sandy leaned up on an elbow and settled her palm on Mitchell’s abdomen. The muscles beneath her fingers felt like wood. “What did she do to you?”

“Nothing. She was only here an hour or so yesterday.”

“I don’t mean
yesterday
, Dell,” Sandy said impatiently. “I mean before. Whenever.”

“Look, Sandy, honey—”

“It’s like a splinter, Dell. You gotta pull it out, no matter how much it hurts.”

Mitchell laughed—a short, hard sound. “Jesus. First in therapy, now in bed. I can’t get away from old history.”

“You did, though, right?” Sandy smoothed her hand in slow circles, not the way she did when she wanted to get Dell hot, but the way she gentled her after she’d already made her come. Coaxing the clenched muscles to relax, Sandy continued softly, “Get away from it, I mean. All this time that you haven’t seen her—you’ve been keeping all of this stuff deep down inside somewhere.”