Suspect Passions

City Attorney Regan Desanto moved to town a year ago after her partner of twenty years dumped her for another woman. All she wants is to be near her ailing grandmother and to work ordinary, boring municipal cases until she can get her life back together. Beat officer Sydney Cabot is a chronic serial polyamorist who craves the adrenaline rush on and off the job. She has never wanted to be or tried to be faithful to one woman. When Syd is slapped with a wrongful death suit, Regan, the most uptight, controlling, and monogamous woman Syd has ever met, is assigned the case. Sydney doesn’t trust Regan, and the feeling is mutual, but they have to work together—and what’s even more of a challenge, they have to figure out how to defuse their growing attraction.

Suspect Passions

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Suspect Passions

© 2009 By VK Powell. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-340-2

This Electronic book is published by

Bold Strokes Books, Inc.,

New York, USA

First Edition: March 2009

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Credits

Editors: Jennifer Knight and Shelley Thrasher

Production Design: Stacia Seaman

Cover Design By Sheri([email protected])

To Protect and Serve

Suspect Passions

Fever

It would not be possible to do the work I love without the support and encouragement of amazing friends. Thank you for your understanding when I hide away for days to create a new character, write another chapter, or struggle with edits. Thank you for insisting that I come up for air occasionally so I can appreciate how wonderful you all are.

To Radclyffe and Bold Strokes Books, deep appreciation for allowing me to do what makes my heart sing. I thank Jennifer Knight for her wisdom, guidance, and humor and for helping me become a better writer with each project. My gratitude also goes to Shelley Thrasher and Stacia Seaman for their attention to detail when most of us are ready to move on to something new. And to Sheri, many thanks for bringing my words to life in graphic form. The cover is wonderful.

To all the readers who support and encourage my writing, thank you for buying my work, visiting my Web site (www.powellvk.com), sending e-mails, and showing up for signings. You make my “job” so much fun!

For Lyn, beloved friend near or far. AIRTIC

A beautiful mocha-skinned woman was standing against the back wall of the restroom when Sydney Cabot entered. She wore a red leather bodysuit unzipped past her navel, revealing full breasts and a tuft of dark hair between her legs. As Syd approached, the woman slid her hand inside the shiny material and stroked one breast in a circular motion. “Are you watching or participating tonight?”

“Do I know you?” Syd couldn’t believe the woman’s audacity.

“You certainly do, in the biblical sense, right here in this very place.” The woman’s smile was bold and suggestive of someone skilled in the art of conquest. “You refused to go home with me.”

The attractive African-American looked familiar but Syd couldn’t come up with a name. She should’ve been unforgettable—Amazon came to mind, large and muscular, but all woman. Her short hair clung to her head in light waves. Her eyes were almost catlike, their hue a brownish gold. “Ah, yes. You’re…”

“Lacy,” the woman supplied. “At least, that’s the name you seemed to prefer last time.”

“Sure, I remember,” Syd lied smoothly. A scramble of indistinct memories converged in the back of her mind. Her tactile senses said she’d touched that provocative body before, but she could not remember when or where. “Hey, good to see you again.”

Lacy passed on the opportunity for small talk. She held the last stall door open. “Well?”

Syd inhaled a blend of scents, disinfectant pine and various women’s perfumes, the lingering traces of patrons who’d passed through this room tonight. “Look, Lacy, I’m sorry but there’s been a big mistake. I have a girlfriend and—” Syd stopped, realizing that was no longer true.

“Yes, you told me all about your little vanilla lover.” Lacy pushed her jumpsuit to the floor and stepped out of it. “You’re nothing if not honest, darling. But I satisfy your
other
needs.”

She seductively stroked her breasts. Her body was a vision of perfectly toned muscles, which seemed to quiver with sexual energy.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Syd said. “What other needs?”

“The new tastes you’ve developed lately. Come here, lover, and I’ll show you.”

Lacy grabbed the front of Syd’s silk blouse, pulled their bodies together with surprising force, and covered her mouth with a searing kiss. With practiced precision she turned their joined bodies into the small booth and pinned Syd against the wall, leaving the door open.

Syd struggled, but her arms were trapped at her sides by the more powerful woman. Lacy’s firm body rubbed against hers with increasing intensity. Syd gazed into the single naked lightbulb that hung overhead, blinded to everything except its harsh glow and the severe ache building inside her. She clamped her legs together to block Lacy’s groping hands. But the more she resisted, the more excited she became. She wanted to be taken, and this woman knew it.

“That’s right, baby, fight me. It makes you feel alive, doesn’t it?” Lacy chuckled, opened the zipper of Syd’s trousers, pushed them to the floor, and off. She smiled at the absence of panties and raised Syd’s left leg onto the toilet seat. Lacy kissed Syd again, then replaced her tongue with her index finger. Sliding her wet finger down Syd’s chest and abdomen, she dipped into the silky moisture between her legs.

No, it doesn’t make me feel alive,
Syd thought,
I want to get away from you!
But even as she looked toward the door, her body betrayed her and she was gripped by a wave of raging desire. She buried her face in the voluptuous breasts pressed against her and breathed in the aphrodisiac of sweat and sex. Simultaneously she closed her fingers in the tight curls at the base of Lacy’s stomach and tugged.

“Oh yeah, baby, do it. Pull it. Bite my tits,” Lacy begged, in labored breaths. She placed her fingers against the bony mound between Syd’s legs, entered her roughly one at a time, and then plunged deep inside.

“Fuck me harder!” Syd urged. “Make me feel it!” It was as though someone else was in her body, willing this woman to take her, to make her feel something—anything. Even pain was better than the numbness she wore like a cloak since the shooting.

“You don’t do things the easy way, do you, lover?” Lacy purred.

Syd felt like her insides were being ripped out as Lacy’s sudden withdrawal created a vacuum where Syd wanted fast, hot pain. “Just fuck me, now,” she begged.

Intense pressure replaced the void as Lacy forced her fingers back inside all at once and closed them into a ball. She hammered her clenched fist deeper into Syd time after time, using her free hand to pinch and twist her exposed clit. Syd felt as if she was splitting open from the girth and force of the thrusts, but the pain only heightened her excitement.

Her mouth covered Lacy’s nipple and she sucked harder, in time with the pumping inside her. There was no tenderness, only the need to be completely possessed, totally fucked by a stranger who asked nothing more than that and to whom she owed no explanation.

Syd’s body shuddered with tremors as she felt herself tighten around the hand that occupied her centermost cavity. She opened her eyes and waited as lust shrouded her vision. Her back arched and a rasping scream rose in her parched throat. Wave after wave of hot juices drained from her. She clutched Lacy to her and convulsed as whimpering cries of pleasure and agony forced their way up her throat and out into the heavy air. The climax ripped through her with an energy she didn’t recognize, dissolving all thought and providing the physical release she craved. Then, afterward, there was only an emptiness of unfathomable depths.

Lacy pulled Syd’s right leg between her own and rubbed herself along the length of the shapely thigh, her fist still buried inside Syd’s convulsing body. After a few long, unhurried strokes, Lacy collapsed against her. “My God, woman, you just keep getting better,” she breathed onto Syd’s neck.

Syd pushed back and looked at the clinging woman, unable to believe what she’d just done. Lacy’s body shimmered with perspiration and the flush of satisfaction. Their bodies were still joined and their panting breaths filled the room with heat and a strange echo.

Just over Lacy’s shoulder Syd caught a flash of something. She blinked to focus. A woman, still as death, was staring into their stall. A bright red flush roared up from the woman’s shirt collar, over her face, and sparked fire in her cobalt blue eyes. Her intense gaze lingered on their bodies as if committing the image to memory. The tight press of her lips told Syd all she needed to know—prude. The woman smoothed her closely cropped honey blond hair in a fidgety gesture of embarrassment, then spun on her heel and walked quickly toward the door, mumbling something about consideration for others.

Her mood destroyed, Syd disentangled herself from Lacy, gathered her clothing, and dressed again.

“What are you doing?” Lacy asked.

“Thanking you for a great time and leaving.” With a perfunctory wave, Syd exited the restroom and the club. She stepped out into the crisp April air just as a gray Acura, driven by the disapproving blonde, spun out of the parking lot.

Syd wasn’t sure why she’d bothered to rush out here. Granted, the blonde was attractive and tall, with a firm body, great ass, and a swagger that would make any woman swoon, but she was a puritan nonetheless. Her condemnation was broadcast in that critical icy glare; you’d think she’d never seen two women having sex.