Cuffs Read online

  She managed to avoid coughing her stomach out as the drink settled, but the second and third shots had to be taken in almost equally quick succession, at least, according to Alan's pacing. The fact that he was a three hundred pound man and she barely 120 soaking wet did not come into play. Getting this scumbag's trust had not been easy. Keeping up with him was essential to keeping his respect.

  By the time Jerry had snarfed down all six shots, she was no longer quite in control of her facilities. They were still all there, they were just fuzzy.

  “I don't like this,” Alan said. “I was told there would be product. I need product. I lost a fuckload yesterday, you hear?”

  “I heard. There will be product. Better to wait than have it caught at the port by government. I bought a sample.”

  “Sample?” Alan's eyes lit up. “Show me sample.”

  Jerry fished in her pocket, then tossed a little white baggy across the table. “Lab grade. Wrap your air holes around that.”

  “Laboratory grade?” He pushed open the bag with thick fingers and gave the contents an experimental sniff.

  “From the finest Latvian plants.”

  “Latvia,” he laughed. “Good for fertilizer and prostitutes.”

  “And glass.”

  Alan took a deeper breath, huffing a decent amount of powder into his nasal passages. Almost immediately, a trickle of blood made its way out of the furry interior of his nose and trickled down over his lip.

  “Powerful!”

  “Yeah,” Jerry agreed, watching him snarf down a heavy dose off the tip of a switchblade. “Powerful.”

  There was a long moment before Alan could talk. His face had gone bright red and his eyes were gleaming with what could have been tears, but turned out to be an enthusiasm overload.

  “I need this stuff. More. I'm taking a fucktonne metric kilo. I want to blow my eyeballs out with it. This is some explosive shit, you hear me? This is a fucking tiger in a shark tank. This is World War Fucking Three!”

  He bounced in his seat like an oversized, bloated baby, then threw back his head, let out a wolf cry and stamped his feet fast and hard on the ground beneath him.

  “I'm gonna go make sure we can get this shit in for you,” Jerry said. “Hold tight, alright. We got some heat at the moment, once it cools down, I'll be in touch.”

  “Fuucckk yes!” Alan punched the air, then the table, then the bullet proof glass.

  Jerry left the place intact, which was an achievement. With all the rumors swirling about Alan's increasing paranoia and the disappearance of a couple of his closer henchmen, things were getting hairier by the day. Lara wasn't wrong when she said it was dangerous. She was just too cautious. Fortune favored the bold, in Jerry's experience.

  Walking was something of a difficult task, especially as she had to make it three blocks to the surveillance van parked on the side of the road opposite the donut shop. A tactical location it was not. Sure enough when she got into the back she found her comrades in arms resplendent in powdered sugar.

  “I rishk my life and you lot eat donutsh?”

  Several hands helped her into a stable seat. The world was rocking back and forth, gently swirling

  “You alright, Schwartz?”

  “Yeah.” Jerry pitched forward in the seat, pinching the bridge of her nose, as if that might help the swelling nausea. “Fucking guy drinksh like a whale.”

  The others laughed.

  “Sleep it off, Schwartz.”

  And that was how Jerry ended up spending most of her work day asleep in the van. It was close to three o'clock when she woke up, feeling pretty refreshed. Someone had left her a coffee and a chocolate creme donut. The coffee was cold, but the donut was still good. After hours of not eating, it was like ambrosia.

  She pushed open the door of the van and was almost immediately met by bad news, borne by Solomon.

  “Schwartz.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ashcroft wants to see you.”

  “Aw, fuck.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I don't know what you all did, but she's pissed. Got Tanner and Samson strung up by their balls.”

  “Nasty.”

  “Real nasty.”

  *****

  With her red hair half swept up and half down against the back of her neck, Lara didn't look nasty. She looked pretty. She also looked pissed. Jerry could tell because her lips were almost non-existent, tucked against her teeth with the force of her annoyance.

  “Where have you been all day?”

  “In the surveillance van.” It was a true and honest answer. You couldn't do much better than that.

  “Where were you performing surveillance?” Lara's keen gaze pierced Jerry in all her most mentally sensitive places.

  “Here and there.”

  “Don't lie to me, Jerry.”

  “Fine,” Jerry sighed. “I paid Hoffmeier a quick visit. Just to keep the wheels turning.”

  “You were told not to engage the target.”

  “He wanted some proof that the product was coming. I gave him some to keep him on the hook, what's the big deal?”

  Lara sighed and pulled a piece of paper toward her. Jerry watched as Lara laid her signature across the lower part of the form.

  “I'm suspending you for three days,” she said, barely glancing up.

  “What? You can't do that.”

  “I can. Insubordination.” Those blue-green eyes flicked up and hit Jerry right in her non-existent balls. Lara was serious. She was genuinely going to push through a suspension.

  “Well try this for insubordination,” Jerry said as her temper flared. “Fuck you.”

  “Four days,” Lara said implacably.

  “Make it five. Then I can have a nine day weekend.” Jerry smirked. She was angry and frustrated, but determined not to show it. If Lara wanted to power trip, she could. Wasn't any skin off Jerry's nose. She knew damn well how essential she was to the department.

  “Five days it is.”

  “See you in a week.” Jerry turned on her heel and left Lara gently fuming in the office. Without anything like a sense of regret, she walked out of the station, got in her car and went home. She'd show Lara.

  *****

  Once home, Jerry tossed her uniform in the hamper, exchanged it for her usual home uniform of a vest and boxer shorts. Cracking a beer open, she settled down in front of the television. One pizza was ordered and all was well with the world.

  Fuck Lara. Seriously. The woman had no respect. That was her problem. Jerry swigged her beer aggressively whilst talking heads discussed the War on Easter.

  “What is the world coming to when a bunny is banned from public places?” A very pretty woman with hair defying the force of gravity posed the question. “What's next? Are they going to ban Christians altogether? Bring back the colusseums?

  Jerry nodded along, disagreeing with all of it. A knock at the door heralded the arrival of the pizza. She grabbed a twenty and scuffed her way over to the door.

  “Here,” she said, keeping her eyes on the television. “Keep the change.”

  “Jerry.”

  Jerry turned and saw not the pizza delivery guy, but Lara, now holding the twenty.

  Snatching it back, Jerry scowled at the woman. “What the fuck do you want?”

  Lara could have said something like 'to talk to you' or 'to apologize' or 'to see if you were alright after today'. She said none of those things. Instead she reached out with her well manicured thumb and forefinger, took Jerry by the earlobe and marched her back into the apartment.

  “Ow, Jesus, what the hell!” Jerry batted at Lara's hand. “Let me go, crazy lady!”

  Lara kept a firm hold, shutting the door of Jerry's apartment behind her. “I'll let you go when I'm finished speaking with you. The attitude you displayed today is not acceptable, Ms Schwartz. I won't have it in my department and I won't have it in my personal life.”

  “This is no way to conduct your personal life either,” Jerry said through g
ritted teeth. “Now let me go.”

  The pressure eased as Lara dropped her hand. Apparently she was finished speaking, and not a moment too soon for Jerry's lobe.

  Jerry rubbed her ear, scowling furiously at the woman. “That was stupid,” she said. “That's a really, really good way to get your ass kicked, you know that? You don't lay hands on people.”

  “I don't think you're going to kick my ass,” Lara said, the words sounding incongruous in her refined tones.

  “I'm not, but that doesn't give you license to manhandle me. Now what do you want, besides lecturing me?”

  Lara looked her dead in the eye. “I want to spank your cute little ass red, and then I want to fuck you until you cum screaming my name.”

  In spite of Jerry's anger, Lara's words made her pussy tingle. Dammit. It was as if Lara had some secret hacked pathway that bypassed all her common sense and irritation and went straight to the center of her brain.

  “So that was what, foreplay?” Jerry rubbed her ear, which was still aching, and not in a sexy way.

  “Of a kind.”

  “Come here then and let me return the favor.” Jerry waved a hand in Lara's direction. “Oh wait, I can't really, because I'd have to suspend you from work for a week first.”

  “That was your doing,” Lara said. “I warned you.”

  “Yeah, you did. And then I did my job anyway, because that's what I'm there to do.”

  “And my job was to suspend you.”

  “So we both did our jobs.”

  “Yes, we did.”

  They looked at one another, Jerry visibly fuming, Lara quite composed as usual.

  “You took my decision personally, didn't you?”

  “It was personal.”

  “No. It wasn't. The rest of your little team are also serving three day suspensions.”

  “Great,” Jerry deadpanned. “That's what you want, the most dedicated people sitting at home with their thumbs up their asses whilst criminals carry on as usual.”

  “What I want is for people to follow procedure and protocol. Discipline means consequences.”

  A tap at the door heralded pizza. Again.

  “My consequences just got here,” Jerry said. “Excuse me.”

  Lara waited whilst Jerry retrieved her pizza. The prospect of food lightened Jerry's mood almost immediately, the rich scent of tomato sauce and melting cheese promising a palateful of pleasure.

  “I have my consequences with pepperoni and extra cheese,” Jerry said, pushing the pie onto the table. “You want to share some of my consequences?”

  Lara quirked a smile and took a seat at the table. “You're going to be flippant about this, aren't you?”

  “What am I supposed to do? Cry and beg you to come back to work? Promise to be a good girl from now on?” Jerry smirked and grabbed a slice. “Not really my style, Lara.”

  “You don't use knives and forks for this?” Lara looked at the pizza as though it were some kind of foreign object.

  “Naw,” Jerry said, “you just pick it up and fold it like this,” she showed Lara the technique with her slice. “And then you eat it pointy end first. Surprised they didn't teach you that out East.”

  Lara looked doubtful, but she tried the method and found that it worked.

  “There you go.” Jerry dumped herself down on the couch and finished her slice. “So is this what you usually do? Suspend people then go around to their houses and tell them how awful they are all over again?”

  “I'm not here to tell you you're awful,” Lara said. “I thought we agreed we wouldn't let work get in the way of our relationship.”

  Jerry snorted, amazed at Lara's nerve. Sure they'd had the discussion about not being affected by work, but that was before the suspension.

  “Are you going to sulk all night?”

  Jerry snorted again, this time more loudly. “Sulking isn't what I call it when my girlfriend suspends me from work.”

  “Sulking is what I call it when my girlfriend is insubordinate and is punished for it and then takes her work woes home with her.”

  “It's the only place I'm allowed to take them now, thanks to you.”

  “So you are going to sulk.” Lara started in on a second slice and helped herself to a beer.

  Jerry watched as one of the most beautiful women she'd ever seen sat at her table, ate her pizza, drank her beer and kicked her out of her job without so much as an apology.

  “You've got some nerve, you know that?” Jerry tried to sound mad, but she couldn't pull it off. Lara just winked and went right on eating her slice.

  It was impossible to be angry with the woman. Physically impossible. As angry as Lara's decision had made her, as antagonistic as she felt, Jerry couldn't muster the necessary brain chemicals to have any sort of a sustained irritation. Instead, she found herself remembering what Lara had said when she first came in. The stuff about the sex and the...

  “Take your shorts off.”

  “What?”

  Lara washed her hands under the sink tap and repeated the order, just in case Jerry hadn't heard her right. But Jerry had heard her right, she just didn't want to obey the order. Well, she did, actually. She wanted to take her shorts off and her top off and that suit Lara was wearing and she wanted to fuck Lara until they both collapsed from exhaustion. But she didn't want to give in that easy. Lara needed to suffer a little, dammit.

  The order wasn't given a third time. Lara came and sat down on the couch next to Jerry and began tugging her boxers down without another word. The elastic wasn't exactly tight, so they slid down over one cheek, then the other, exposing Jerry's rounded rump and dark fur clad mound without undue delay.

  “You can keep them around your knees,” Lara said, wrapping an arm around Jerry's waist.

  It was the way Lara did things that made Jerry sort of freeze. Like the way a mouse might freeze before a cat. Not fear, just a complete stoppage of thought and surrender to the moment. Jerry felt herself tip and gently fall over Lara's thighs and then her hips pressed against the toned ridge of Lara's leg and Lara's hand smoothed over the bare surface of her cheek. She landed a light slap which did nothing more than make Jerry's bottom tingle.

  “You're such a naughty girl,” Lara purred, repeating the treatment again and again, each time with a little more intensity.

  There was nothing punitive about the way Lara's palm stung Jerry's bottom. It was foreplay of the pleasure pain kind, the sort of foreplay that made Jerry wetter than your average monsoon. Before long she was parting her thighs and dipping her hips in time with the slaps, rubbing her clit against Lara's thigh.

  And then the slaps changed, they grew a little harder, a little hotter. Jerry cried out on the precipice of pain, but her cry was cut short by a moan as Lara slid two fingers deep inside her pussy. In. Deep. Fuck. Jerry panted, grasping at the couch cushions as her lover's fingers began a quick pistoning that left her squealing into the stuffing.