The Firm Hand of the Law Read online

  She decided to do something about it. The car was below her apartment more or less, which gave Lily an idea. She went to the junk drawer, which housed items dating back more than twenty years. Bottle caps, rubber bands… and water balloons. She filled them in the kitchen sink, adding a little something from the junk drawer to the mix.

  Taking the filled balloons out to the fire escape, she tossed two in quick succession. They flew straight down as if made of lead, not water, and burst in great wet crowns, soaking the car in not just water, but a burst of glue and glitter, which would royally mess with the finish on the car. It looked clean, or rather it had done before Lily unleashed her ire upon it.

  “Hey! Cut it out!”

  A deep voice evinced immediate frustration. Someone had been caught in the splash, judging by the way his shoulders glittered in the limited light reflected from the street lamp outside the alley.

  “Get out of here!” Lily shouted down. She couldn’t make out who it was, but she didn’t care. Whoever it was needed to go away. “Next time, it won’t be water!”

  A dark chuckle floated up the iron girders. “Little lady, you think you can chase me away with a few water balloons?”

  “The water’s just a warning!”

  There was a squeaking sound as the man pulled down the ladder leading to the fire escape. Panicking, Lily hurled down the remaining three water balloons, catching him in a cascade of fabulous pink and gold glitter. Then she slammed the door shut, bolted it, and closed and pulled the shade so he couldn’t see in. Having run out of courage for the evening, she hid behind the couch, phone in hand in case things got any worse.

  A solid knock at the door jangled her nerves. “Come on,” that deep voice rumbled. “If you’re bold enough to do the crime, be bold enough to own up to it and face the consequences.”

  “Water balloons aren’t a crime,” she shouted. “I’m about to make a call that’s going to mess your night up if you don’t get out of here.”

  “Oh yeah? Who are you planning on calling?”

  She was trying to intimidate a door. She got the impression that trying to intimidate the man himself wouldn’t be any easier.

  “What do you want?”

  “Right now? I want to smack your little ass until you learn picking fights with strangers is a bad idea.”

  Now she was being threatened by the door, though as threats went, it wasn’t a particularly fearsome one. It was almost flirtatious really. Obviously he had some sense of humor. A lot of men Lily knew would have flown into a cursing rage at being caught by water balloons in the middle of the night while wearing what looked like a fairly expensive leather jacket.

  “This isn’t that sort of place,” she shouted. “Try Girls Girls Girls, down the street street street.”

  “I’ve found the girl I need to deal with,” the man behind the door said. “And now she’s hiding because she knows she’s in trouble.”

  How in hell was he making her feel naughty? She was squirming behind the couch, hiding like the girl he accused her of being.

  “Who is it? Who are you?” He had piqued her curiosity enough to make her take her fingers off her phone. She had been on the verge of calling for back up, but now her instinct was telling her that the man on the fire escape was no threat, even if he was looming wetly in the dead of night.

  “Someone who isn’t going to converse through the door. Either open up and face the consequences or our conversation is over.”

  Lily smirked. “Go away,” she shouted, “and take your sparkle wagon with you.”

  There was a moment’s silence, then she heard footsteps moving away. Whoever he was, he was a man of his word. A minute or two later, the car’s engine purred into life. She was alone.

  There was a little spring of triumph in her step as she made her way to bed. Car gone. Job done.

  * * *

  Lily’s week didn’t give her a lot of time to think about what had happened that night with the man and the car. There were other men with other cars, trucks, and packages, all passing through the bar at various hours of the day and night, sometimes stashing goods in the cellar, sometimes cutting deals in the bar itself, sometimes panicking and getting into fist fights. There was no shortage of excitement about The Fox and Stoat for sure. Lily presided over it all, staying out of the deals themselves, but making sure that things ran smoothly.

  The last deal was done, the bar was cleaned, the staff had gone for the evening, and she was taking the trash out when a little flutter of glitter heralded the return of the mysterious stranger. No sooner had she put the lid on the trash can than he was there, tall and dangerous, still sparkling in a few places.

  This time she recognized him as the same man who had given her cause for concern when ordering beer. His glinting eyes caught her in their gaze and pinned her to the alley floor.

  She was not dressed for conflict. A light tunic top and skin tight leggings were comfortable to work in, but they provided no protection from tall, dark, and dangerous men with scintillating gazes which shot through her and seemed to read every thought she had.

  “You!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the man drawled. “Me. I think we ought to go upstairs, quickly, before any of your associates happen to see what’s going on.”

  “I think you ought to get in your sparkly car and leave.”

  “Not happening,” he said, taking her by the upper arm. “Move.”

  There was no way in hell Lily was going to allow him into her home. She did not have much at her disposal in the way of self-defense, but she knew how to execute a flawless shot to the groin. Her knee was in motion the moment he touched her, flying with precision towards the most sensitive and prized part of his anatomy.

  If she had performed the action against any other man, it would have worked flawlessly, but this one moved quick as a snake, blocking her knee and twisting her around so that she was facing away from his body.

  “No you don’t,” he murmured in her ear. “Just do as you’re told and nobody gets hurt.” He emphasized his point by slapping her bottom—hard. The slap sounded like a gunshot in the alley and was followed by an involuntary cry of complaint which she knew nobody was going to investigate.

  The promise that nobody would be hurt had already been broken as far as she was concerned. If this was to be the end of things, she would not go quietly into the night, or into her apartment as the case might be. She lifted her foot and kicked him in the shin. “Get the hell off me!”

  “Settle down,” he growled. “I’m a police officer.”

  “And I’m a fucking nun,” she swore, now quite terrified.

  “If I was going to hurt you, I would have done it by now. Stop making this dangerous for the both of us and get your butt upstairs.”

  There was authority in his tone which made her feel he was probably telling the truth. Only a police officer would be arrogant enough to order someone around the way he was doing. A criminal would have been either more aggressive or much nicer about the whole thing.

  “Go.” His palm landed hard across her bottom cheeks again.

  Lily made her way reluctantly back into the bar and up the stairs to her apartment with the officer at her heels. This was bad. This was very, very bad. Her bottom was tingling, along with her sense of danger. Trouble was in the air, thick as smoke and twice as bitter.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said, sitting her down in the armchair Gammy had once loved. “I’m a detective.” He showed his badge, confirming his identity. “And you’re part of a criminal organization. I think we can help each other out, though.”

  Lily sat back in the chair, giving him the same look Gammy would have, a steely blue gaze which once unnerved an infamous gangster. “Do you have any proof of that? Do you have a warrant to be in my house? Or do you think you can scare me by breaking into my home and intimidating me?”

  “If you want me to get a warrant, we can do things that way. Bring you in on formal charges, make it known to your as
sociates that you just became a weak link in their chain. What happens to weak links, Lily?”

  Biting her lip, Lily felt her heart begin to beat faster. The detective had a point. If anybody found out that the police were onto activities at The Fox and Stoat, things would get very nasty very fast. She wasn’t going to let him know he’d rattled her though. She had to stay strong. Men like him sensed weakness and exploited it. She’d seen it happen a hundred times before and she was not going to let it happen to her.

  “I’ve been arrested plenty of times,” she shrugged. “It’s never been a problem for me.”

  “Tough girl, huh?” He stood in front of her, powerful legs spread shoulder width apart in a stance that was undeniably dominating. His presence was large in the small apartment, threatening, but not in the way Lily was used to being threatened. “Let’s see how tough you are after a night in the cells.”

  “What are you arresting me for?”

  The officer smirked at her, his lips quirking in a way that made the planes of his cheeks become unyieldingly hard. “My brief was to keep an eye on you until I had enough evidence to press charges. It didn’t take very long.”

  “Oh, the two minutes you spent in the bar was long enough, was it?”

  “The ten minutes I watched a known smuggler bring a package containing a tracker into the bar was.” He gave her that hard, dark look, tinged with triumph. “Rex is one of ours. So I suggest you consider having a nice, friendly chat with me on the topic of what we can do for one another.”

  Fuck. Lily let that and a whole string of curse words flow through her mind. Outwardly, she was more composed. “Rex is a scumbag, and so are you. Get out of my house. Now.”

  “If that’s how you want to play this,” he shrugged, removing handcuffs from his belt. “Stand up please, Miss Brannigan. You are under arrest.”

  “For what?”

  “Interfering with an investigation.” He beckoned her out of the chair. “If I have to drag you out of here, I will.”

  There was no sense resisting arrest, but Lily made sure her demeanor conveyed nothing but contempt for the man as she stood and allowed him to handcuff her. His hands were ridiculously large, dwarfing hers as he snapped the cuffs around her wrists and tightened them to a point just short of discomfort.

  Her heart was pounding and her stomach was churning, but she tried to convince herself not to be worried. Even if he had sprung her with a snitch, there was nothing else on site. He didn’t seem to know about any of the real deals that had happened in the past week, which meant it would be a tenuous case at best, and Lily’s lawyer wasn’t in the habit of fumbling the ball. The officer on the other end of the cuffs was just trying to bully her into submission, and that wasn’t going to work.

  It wasn’t Lily’s first brush with the law. She didn’t recall her first brush with the law—that had taken place long before she could talk or walk. Police uniforms had punctuated her formative years. For a long time she thought they were family friends. They came over more often than some aunts and uncles did, that was certain. Then, as she got older, she realized that the police presence was not exactly welcome, no matter how big the smile Gammy plastered on her face whenever they came by.

  Her own first personal experience with police was as a student in an apartment with several other students, one of whom had taken an interest in psychedelic horticulture. A party had turned into a brawl, had turned into a visit from the local PD, who were kind enough to turn a blind eye to the many pipes and pieces of wire gauze and the general funk of smoke and hand rolled cigarettes. She didn’t think they’d have been so lucky if this officer had been on the scene that evening. He was a hard ass, a “my way or the highway” sort of guy. Unfortunately for him, Lily was a highway sort of woman.

  “Off to the cells with you, my girl,” he said, giving her a little nudge forward.

  “Good,” she replied. “I needed a break from this place anyway.”

  “Oh really?” His reply was as calm and falsely cheerful as her statement. “Well, we have a range of fine penal institutions spread across the country. I can arrange a stay for you in any one of them.”

  “Penal institutions are probably the closest you get to anything penile,” Lily muttered under her breath.

  “I heard that,” he said, sounding almost amused. “That sort of talk will get your butt tanned before we get to the station.”

  “Because putting innocent people in cuffs isn’t enough humiliation for you,” she argued over her shoulder.

  “You’re not innocent,” he reminded her, giving her a swat. “Get moving.”

  The sting in her butt sparked her temper and made her do the worst thing anyone in handcuffs can ever do—she kicked the officer holding her. Immediately braced for retaliation, Lily waited for the beating to start. It didn’t. Instead she was swept off her feet entirely and only came down once the cop sat down on her sofa and put her over his thigh. Without any further discussion, he started spanking her bottom hard and fast. It sounded like a thunderstorm in her apartment, slaps falling like torrential rain. The cuffs kept her from protecting her bottom, so she was completely helpless as his palm punished her.

  “You’ve been getting away with being on the wrong side of the law for a long time, but that run is over, young lady,” he lectured. “I’m taking you in, and no tantrum is going to stop me.”

  Lily’s reply was caustic and filled with curse words which didn’t rise to the level of sense. She was outraged in the extreme. How dare he! “You’re not allowed to hit people!” She screeched the objection at the top of her lungs. “You’re breaking the law too!”

  “There’s no law against giving a girl a spanking when she needs one.”

  “Yes, there fucking is!”

  “Not in my book,” he replied, whacking her bottom with resounding slaps. “And that’s the only one that matters right now, wouldn’t you say?”

  He was right. There wasn’t anything she could do in her position, cuffed and caught over hard thighs. The sting had turned to a flame searing her cheeks, each new swat stoking the fire. She was left to kick her legs and squeal like a piglet, or so it sounded to her ears. Her face flushed with the shame of it all, hating how vulnerable she was. Being arrested was one thing. There was due process in an arrest. You got your stuff taken, you got your fingerprints recorded, and you got your picture taken, but you didn’t get your ass spanked.

  “You ready to go to jail now?”

  “Yes! Fuck you, yes!”

  “Now that’s what I like to hear,” he said, resting his hand on her bottom and moving it back and forward slightly. Was that a rub? Was he rubbing her ass? She couldn’t believe it, but she wasn’t going to complain either. The small movement relieved some of the discomfort which had consumed her hide. “Unless, of course, you’re ready to talk sense with me.”

  His hand squeezed her bottom and the tips of his fingers grazed between her cheeks. They slid lower until he was touching her pussy through her leggings. Her gasp was not of complaint. He had thick, long fingers and the lower they strayed, the more of their length was pressed against her slit. She was not wearing panties under the leggings in an effort to avoid visible panty line, so there was very little protecting her from his touch.

  It was madness, but she spread her thighs just a little and was rewarded when the pad of his index finger settled over her clit and started circling. Her sigh was soft as she clenched her stomach, bearing down against his hand. The pressure grew a little as he went once, twice, thrice around her clit, then rubbed his fingers along her slit all the way up to the moistening aperture.

  Lily lifted her hips. His fingers pressed down, her leggings delving between her lips as he massaged gently. Part of her mind was screaming to stop, but that part grew smaller and smaller with every movement of his fingers.

  It had been a long time since anyone had touched her like that, with a masterful desire that gave as much pleasure as it took. The leggings were a frustrating barri
er, but one that was quickly becoming soaked with her juices. The tingling in her bottom, first whipped by his palm, now artfully stroked by his dominating digits, had spread deep into her pussy.

  Silently hoping that he would pull down her leggings, Lily tried to keep her moans quiet. It was bad enough to be spanked by someone she was fast coming to hate. It was even worse being pleasured by the same man. He had her quite literally in the palm of his hand, working her pussy with increasing intensity.

  A ripping sound made her freeze. It was the unmistakable sound of the seams of her leggings giving way. A cool breeze hit her bottom and pussy lips, quickly followed by the heat of his fingers on her bare cunt. Two pushed right between her lips, penetrating her while his thumb pressed against the button of her clit. If she’d had any objections, they evaporated with the plunging motions which left her gasping for more.

  He growled above her, his cock pressing against her hip. He was just as turned on as she was, just as caught up in the lust that was consuming them both.

  “Time to get you in the cells,” he said, stilling his hand. His fingers were still deep inside her hot pussy, but his words indicated an imminent cessation of pleasure. That she could not allow.

  “I’m not going to the fucking cells!” She bit his leg through his thick pants. He spanked her ass. Hard. She fought as hard as she could and managed to slide off his lap. But it didn’t do her a bit of good because he just scooped her off the floor and tossed her face down on the couch, her hips high over the arm. The spanking continued, his palm lashing her bottom with hard, fast slaps that made her screech into the upholstery.

  Her tights were stretched and torn, wet where he’d teased her. The frustration of that burning need made her act out all the more, wriggling and squirming until he was forced to pin her down. His big strong hand pressed down on her lower back, cutting off all other movement.