No Strings

Chapter 8

Over the next few days I barely had time to feed myself and sleep. Our team was seriously short of manpower. Bloody Greg had chosen a really bad time to have a baby and Janet had swanned off on some Caribbean vacation she'd been saving up for for what felt like years. Mo and I were left to deal with not just the mystery of the dead old bloke but we were still tying up the ends of our previous case, a sad loser who'd got stuck in the middle of some drug feud between baby wannabe gangsters.

My unexpected Friday night/Saturday morning sex fest suddenly seemed a very long time ago, but I have to admit that memories of it kept me entertained during long hours in the car having to listen to Mo's chewing. Or when hunched over a computer screen filling in mindless paperwork. Every ten minutes or so my mind would wander and remember how it had felt to grip her hips and pull her further onto my cock, how deep I'd gone, the sound of her desperate moans. Then I would have to pull myself back to the present to concentrate on the damned screen before my hard-on got me in trouble.

She'd asked me what I did for a living. What did that mean? Why did a little thrill of smug satisfaction make my lips curl upwards remembering that? Had I finally cracked her cool demeanor? And why did I want to crack it? It was me who didn't do relationships. It was me who nearly ten years ago had had any motivation to deeply love someone blown away, annihilated in a split second. Yes, that was what I needed to remember. Getting close to anyone was a very bad idea.

I forced my attention back to the report I was writing. Shit, it was hard to concentrate. Now my mind wasn't full of Sarah's naked body, it was full of smokey darkness and blood and twisted metal. 

Maybe fresh air would help, a change of perspective. So I took myself outside to pace around the carpark for a while. This was why some people smoked, so they would have an excuse to have time out, I realised. But all I could do was wander around the parked cars, taking slow deep breaths,  hands in pockets, staring at my shoes, like someone who might be going a little crazy. Or someone who was doing his level best not to go crazy, to hang on to the here and now.

"Palmer, you nutter!" Mo's dulcet tones jerked me out of my thoughts. "Get in the motor. It's kicking off down the Avenue!"

That's all I needed, the baby wannabe gangsters no doubt. We hadn't been able to bring them in yet due to lack of evidence. We'd been biding our time but maybe this was finally our moment.

---

The kid must have been all of fifteen but he had a fucking hard punch. One minute he'd been slumped on the sofa, the next he was screaming blue murder and swinging his fists around. I saw a flash of a face full of insane hatred, then his fist connected with my face, right on the cheekbone, missing my eye by an inch. I didn't fall, just wobbled a bit and then launched myself at him, pinning him to the ground while Mo fumbled with handcuffs and screamed into his radio.

I gripped him tight and growled through gritted teeth, "Just fucking try it mate. Just fucking try it," and then the bastard spat at me. 

And to top off a perfectly wonderful day, who should turn up as the duty solicitor when we finally dragged the little shit back to the cells? Claudia. 

She strutted in in her tight little black suit and high heels, blonde hair swishing, just as I was surreptitiously trying to inspect my swollen cheekbone in the reflective surface of the cop shop door.

"Hello," I heard Mo say smoothly and turned to see him staring at her arse as she passed him.

She just ignored him, like a great white shark she was heading straight for me.

"My God Jake?" she purred with concern. "Are you OK? What happened?"

Her hand was reaching up to my face and I deftly stepped away before she made contact. Not only Mo, but the fucking desk clerk were both sniggering behind her. 

"Some kid thumped him," Mo said and the desk clerk giggled like a girl.

It hurt like buggery but I wasn't going to tell her that, not with those liquid blue eyes gazing up at me. Jesus, her concern made me feel sick. It made me feel like punching someone. So I just stepped around her and left, slamming the door behind me and sat in the car gripping the steering wheel and trying to get my head into some kind of order. The fucking adrenaline was still coursing through my system and I had to find some way of calming it down. I knew from experience that if I didn't there'd be trouble.

---

"Are you still interested in meeting Ollie?" Nina bellowed down the phone and I was tempted to hold it away from my ear. She seemed to be in the middle of a wind tunnel from the background noise.

"Where the fuck are you?" I asked.

"A train's just gone past," she said at a more normal level. "Are you still interested in meeting Ollie?"

"Yes," I replied with hopefully convincing surety. "I told you. I want a relationship." For some reason, my voice had stuck in my throat over the word.

The wind tunnel noise had started up again. "But what about the Sex God?" Nina shouted.

"What about him?"

"You're still fucking him," she yelled and then as clear as a bell said, "Whoops. I think the whole platform might have heard that."

I couldn't help laughing. "Sex God sorted me out on Saturday morning, I can't deny it," and I was quiet for a moment just to give Jake the respect he deserved, "But nothing has changed. It's just sex. Maybe this Ollie can offer me more than that."

"Like the occasional conversation?"

"Exactly."

"A cuddle when you're feeling low?"

"You heard me, sister."

"Ordinary, run of the mill sex?"

"Go get your train Nina," I said and rang off. 

I sighed. Maybe ordinary run of the mill sex might not be so bad, not if it came with a conversation and a cuddle. And I knew exactly when I was getting it and it came with a guarantee. That might be a good thing. It might stop me from sitting all alone on this sofa thinking maudlin thoughts like I was doing right now.

I glanced at the phone. Eight o'clock. I was twenty seven years old and I was thinking of going to bed at eight o'clock. The situation was dire.

I glanced at the door. Maybe Jake was home. And just as that thought popped into my head the doorbell rang and I jumped. It couldn't be could it?

And when I opened the door it was. He was leaning with one hand braced on the doorframe and he looked exhausted. That was the first thing I noticed, the dark shadows under his eyes, then the twitching of his eye lid and then the angry purplish red swelling on his left cheek.

"God J..." I gasped but his hand shot out and covered my mouth and he shook his head. Then he took my hand and kicking the door shut behind him led me across the living room and into my bedroom where he let go and started shrugging out of his clothes. First the leather jacket, then his T shirt then he started on the buttons of his fly. I just stood watching him, while he glanced at me, his eyes dark and stormy, full of restless energy that had my skin crackling with excitement. God, his body was really something and it was mine for another hour or so. One more precious hour in which I would get to touch that taught skin and watch those muscles contract. 

He was down to his underpants and he slid them off until there it was, his big hard cock, erect as always, making my mouth water and my pussy clench. Stepping towards me, he silently helped me pull off my clothes and then gently pressed me down onto the bed, eased my legs apart and pressed his face against my mound, his tongue snaking out and licking my folds, immediately finding my clitoris and making me jerk under him. He gripped my knees tighter and licked harder and faster until I was squirming in his firm grip and moaning, and hoping to God that he would start using his fingers too. And of course he did. Jake always knew how to send me over the edge. He thrust two fingers inside me and looked up as my moans turned to cries and I came around him, as his blue eyes stared up at me, hot and intense, the angry bruise adding an air of danger to the rugged beauty of his face.