Matt felt another surge of admiration for her, and for the obvious love she bore her son. He knew only too well what grief could do to a person, how it could rob them of the ability to still love the living. His mother had been a shining example, Matt being nothing but an obstacle to her drinking herself to a reunion with his father.
‘You’re a strong woman.’
‘I don’t always feel like it,’ she admitted.
They gazed at each other for a long moment before her gaze dropped again to his mouth. Matt felt that familiar heat curling in the pit of his belly and before he had known he was going to do it he was walking around the table towards her, holding his hand out to her. She stood up into his embrace, her head resting on his shoulder, the smell of perfume and an undertone of coconut – shampoo perhaps – assailing his senses. They stood like that, neither of them moving, until Lucy tipped her head back and looked up at him. Waiting.
Matt hesitated only a moment before brushing her lips with his own. He had the feeling that if he didn’t make a move now then the moment would be lost and they would be dancing around each other forever. Still, he didn’t want to push her.
Lucy surprised him with the urgency of her response, kissing him back fiercely, hands entwining around his neck and gripping at his hair. It ignited his own need and before he had time to think she was perched on the edge of the table, her legs hooked around the back of his and her body pressing into his. With a groan he slid his hands up her body, pulling her hips into him and feeling himself hard against her, sliding his hands up her ribcage to cup her breasts beneath the woollen fabric of her dress. Even through it, he felt her nipples harden at his touch. He forced himself to pull away, his breath ragged. Her face was flushed, her hair tumbling around her cheeks, her lips swollen from their kiss. She looked so temptingly fuckable it was all Matt could do to keep from taking her then and there, but he wouldn’t. Not the first time.
‘Lucy. His voice sounded hoarse even to his own ears. ‘Are you sure?’
She arched her back, pressing her body into his as if it was all the answer she needed.
‘Yes,’ she said, and kissed him again, rubbing her hand over the front of his jeans where his cock strained for her. It was enough to scatter all the rational reasons why this was not a good idea.
Matt picked her up, wrapping her legs around his waist, which made her both gasp and giggle at the same time. She wrapped her hands around his back, nipping at his neck as he carried her through into the hall, kicking open his bedroom door and banging his shin as he did so. He swore under his breath, making Lucy laugh. So much for being suave.
‘I’ve always wanted someone to do that,’ she said as he set her down, more carefully this time, onto her feet. He assumed she was referring to his carrying her rather than his slapstick clumsiness.
‘Whatever the lady likes,’ he murmured, running his hands down her body. In spite of her slenderness she curved deliciously, fitting into his hands. He splayed his palms over her hipbones, his thumbs moving in small circles in the indents there and she moaned softly, reaching for his shirt and pulling it up.
‘Take it off,’ she demanded, running her hands over his torso, scratching her nails lightly over his skin and looking up at him with a wicked expression. This was yet another new side to her; one he hadn’t expected. He kept thinking of her as somehow physically fragile, as if he must handle her like glass, but the woman now nibbling at his neck and reaching for his zipper was most certainly asking for handling that was anything but delicate. It took all his self-control not to just push her back on the bed.
Instead he dropped to his knees and began to push her dress slowly up over her thighs, kissing his way up her legs as he did so. She parted them slightly and coiled a hand in his hair, tugging gently as he made his slow ascent up to her groin. He stopped at her panties and kissed her mound gently through them, brushing his lips over her just enough to make her wriggle under him. He could feel the heat and dampness of her through the thin cotton of her underwear.
He paused there, breathing on her, then came up, slowly pulling her dress with him. As he lifted the material over her head and she lifted her arms and arched her back to wriggle out of it he had a sudden image of a snake shedding its skin.
Becoming something else, someone new.
It unnerved him, and he kissed her to stifle the feeling, not stopping her this time when she reached to undo his jeans. Any reservations were forgotten as he felt her tighten her hand around his shaft and squeeze, then reach inside his pants to cup and fondle his balls. He groaned into her mouth and now he did push her back onto the bed, straddling her and pinning her hands up over her head by her wrists. She smiled up at him and then closed her eyes in obvious pleasure as he pushed her bra up with his free hand, a scrap of cotton lace that barely covered her small breasts, and bent to take a nipple in his mouth, sucking on it until she whimpered.
As he rose above her and turned her onto her stomach before lying over her, poised to enter her, he allowed himself a surge of triumph. Whatever future their tangled interactions would allow, right here and now she was his.
Matt slid into her slowly, biting on the back of her neck, one hand fisting in her hair, the other gripping her ass, opening her to him, then when he was fully inside her he slid that hand underneath her to tease her intimately with his fingers. She was so wet, so warm and snug around him, he knew he wasn't going to last and so he held back, fucking her slowly.
Or at least he tried. Lucy arched up into him and pushed her hips further onto his hand, taking her pleasure with a hunger that both surprised and thrilled him. Her face was buried in the pillow but he could hear her stifled moans, her urging him to take her and so he upped his pace, reason forgotten as he gave himself over to the moment.
Lucy came in a warm rush of liquid that soaked his thighs and balls, her hands fisting in the pillow, her insides clenching around him. It was too much for him to hold back and Matt let go, almost bellowing into her neck as his climax racked his body, draining every last bit of energy and emotion he possessed.
They lay together, a damp tangle of limbs, until he got his breath back and rolled off her, then pulled her into his arms. She kept her head in the pillow and he wondered what she was thinking, hoping the regrets weren’t setting in already.
‘Lucy?’ he whispered, moving the hair off her face and kissing the side of her cheek. He felt uncharacteristically shy and in need of reassurance; something he hadn’t felt since he had been a child.
Lucy blinked and then smiled at him, kissing him back warmly. She sat up and stretched, her movements languorous, all the earlier tension gone.
‘That was amazing.’ She looked back over her shoulder at him. Matt grinned.
‘You sound surprised.’
‘It’s been a while. That release was...needed.’
Matt reached up and stroked her back, loving the way she leaned into his touch, accepting it, enjoying it.
Then she got off the bed and reached for her clothes.
‘You’re going?’
‘I want to get back before Ricky does. His curfew is half ten. Sorry, I don't mean to rush off, but I didn’t expect,’ she smiled down at him, ‘this to happen.’
Matt got up himself and pulled his clothes on, feeling self-conscious. He wasn't used to having a woman rush off on him – hell, it was usually the other way around – and he didn’t like the feeling. He realised he wanted her to stay, which was unusual for him.
‘Perhaps next time –’ he hoped there was going to be a next time ‘– you could stay the night? If you can arrange it.’
Lucy hesitated.
‘Maybe. The thing is, I told Ricky I was out with Susan. Well, I left a note.’
‘I understand.’
He did, of course. It was too much, too soon, to expect her to mention this – whatever this was – to her son yet. Especially after what she had told him. Matt liked the kid, felt almost as protective of him as he did his mother, and
certainly didn’t want to be a catalyst for upsetting the boy, who was clearly more fragile than he had realised on meeting him.
But he couldn’t help feeling disappointed when Lucy even refused coffee and left him at the doorstep with a chaste kiss on the cheek, leaving him staring after her as she got into her cab.
‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ she whispered. He nodded and watched her walk down the steps, then on impulse called her back. She turned expectantly, her blue eyes huge in the light from the street lamps. Matt smiled.
‘Tonight was great. You were great.’
‘So were you.’ She gave him an impish wink, and was gone. He watched her cab until it disappeared round the corner, then went in and shut the door behind him. The house felt empty, and he was restless, noticing his aloneness at a time when he was usually happy with his own company.
Tonight had been a beginning, had set something in motion; that much he was sure of.
He just wished he knew exactly what.
Lucy reached home feeling lighter than she had in weeks. All the tension that had been building in her had broken in the midst of that shuddering release in Matt’s arms. Collapsing into the pillow afterwards she had been expecting to weep from the sheer intensity of it.
Instead, a calm had settled over her. Almost glad that she had to leave early, she wanted nothing more than to lie in her own bed alone, wrapping her new-found peace around her like a blanket. To savour it while she could.
Because in her experience the old saying was true: any calm invariably foretold a storm.
Chapter Seven
Monday
The next morning however saw Lucy still feeling an almost eerie peace, punctuated with a quiet rush of joy whenever she thought about Matt and recalled their urgent, frenzied love-making.
Bustling around getting ready for work she hid her smile from Ricky when he first came slouching down the stairs with school uniform and hair crumpled, then saw he looked reasonably cheerful himself, considering his typical morning demeanour.
‘Do you want me to make you breakfast?’
‘Nah. I’ll get something at the canteen.’
Lucy reached to straighten his tie and he darted away, but without his usual scowl.
‘I met a girl.’
Lucy’s mouth made a small ‘oh’ of surprise before stretching into a smile.
‘At school?’
‘Yeah.’
That was clearly as much as he was prepared to share and she held back from questioning him further. Watching him go she noticed how he seemed to have grown even taller over the past few weeks. He would be as tall as Matt soon.
The thought of Matt made her smile again and his image was still in her mind when the day’s paper dropped onto her mat. So much so that when his face stared out at her, grainy and pixellated, she blinked to clear her vision.
His face remained, along with a headline that froze her smile and left her grimacing in shock.
The calm was fast disappearing, and the storm clouds gathering a great deal sooner than she could have anticipated.
Once again Matt walked into the station to eyes that didn’t quite meet his. What the hell has happened now? His first thought was that it would be Prince, or something to do with him, but when the desk sergeant smirked and turned away from Matt rather than ducking her eyes in the embarrassed sympathy he had seen on the day of Prince’s release, he knew that this particular drama was going to be about something very different.
When he saw the morning’s Telegraph sitting next to his coffee, with no sign of Marla, his stomach sank with foreboding, guessing what it was going to say before he picked it up to see his own face staring back at him, along with a fetching picture of Lucy getting into a cab, her dress hiked up to show a glimpse of a toned and slim thigh.
Shit. The headline was more reminiscent of a tabloid than a local paper – and no doubt they would jump on the story next – and his first reaction was to check the byline and breathe a sigh of relief that it wasn’t Carla’s name printed there. A relief swiftly replaced by anger as the words sank in.
‘Fallen Hero? ‘Hero’ cop seduces mother of murdered Jack Randall.’
Great; they were painting him now as some opportunistic player, taking advantage of Lucy. An accusation that hit all the harder because he had worried about that himself. Although he had been the one left feeling vulnerable the night before. To the general public however the headline, coupled with the picture of her leaving his house dressed to the nines, looked damning. And they had to resurrect that damned ‘hero’ tag as well. Dailey was going to go ape-shit.
His first port of call was not his no-doubt seething superior but Lucy herself. God only knew how this would affect her and Ricky, who she had been so anxious to protect. Matt cursed as he repeatedly tried to ring both her mobile and her house phone only to find one turned off and the latter engaged. She was probably fending off reporters already.
‘Detective Inspector?’ Matt jumped as Marla came up behind him, her lined mouth puckered, ‘Chief Dailey would like to see you. In his office. Right away, he said.’
‘Thank you, Marla. I suppose he’s seen this?’ He gestured towards the newspaper. Marla raised an over-plucked eyebrow at him. Her disapproval was almost tangible.
‘I think everyone has seen it,’ she said in clipped tones, walking off without another word. Matt held his breath for a moment before going to Dailey’s office. He was angry; more, he was fuming. At the paper, certainly, but mostly at himself for not being more careful. Resentful, also, that he couldn’t be left alone to date who he damn well pleased.
‘Sir,’ he said a few minutes later to Dailey, who indeed looked thunderous, invoking in Matt a sense of rebelliousness. It was like standing in front of the headmaster.
A copy of the Telegraph sat accusingly on his desk, and Dailey jabbed at it with a fat finger. His voice was ominously quiet.
‘Is this what it looks like, Winston?’ He only used surnames when he was royally pissed off. Matt sighed, and gritted his teeth. He liked and respected Dailey, but he wasn’t going to be reprimanded like a naughty puppy for something that, as far as he was concerned, had nothing to do with his superior.
‘Myself and Ms Wyatt are friends, yes sir. But with respect, I don’t think this has anything to do with anyone else, or my ability to do my job. Ms Wyatt isn’t involved in a current case; her son’s murder was eight years ago.’
‘I’m well aware of when it was, Winston; thank you. I’m also aware, as is every other person in this god-damned city, that you were the arresting officer on the case. Yet you see no conflict of interest here?’
‘If it wasn’t for the fact that Prince has just been released, no one would even be interested sir.’
‘But he has, hasn’t he? And in light of the media interest surrounding his release, I would have expected one of my most well thought of officers to have a little more sense – or failing that, discretion.’
Matt swallowed down his anger.
‘I didn’t expect reporters to be skulking around the bushes, sir. It’s hardly something either myself or Lucy – Ms Wyatt – were anticipating.’
Dailey sat back in his chair, surveying Matt with a bland expression that Matt knew of old was a foil.
‘I’ve never questioned your commitment to your role, have I, inspector? And yet your choice of personal relationships might give reason to wonder about your loyalties. First a journalist – who I was under the impression you were still involved with – and now the mother of an old victim.’
‘I don’t see the connection,’ Matt said stiffly. For Christ’s sake, when he had first got with Carla she had been working on the fashion pages of the local university magazine. Hardly any ‘conflict of interest’ there.
‘Perhaps not, but when the story hits the bigger news outlets – as it will, given the furore over Prince – your personal life will no doubt get poked around in. There isn’t anything else is there that’s likely to come to light? No other
“seductions?”’
‘Clean as a whistle, sir. I don’t make a habit of “seducing” women I meet on the job.’ Matt’s voice dripped with sarcasm but the retort he expected from Dailey didn’t come. Instead the older man waved at the seat opposite him and his voice, when he spoke, was warmer.
‘Sit down, Matt. I want to talk to you.’
Matt did, wondering where Dailey was going with this. He was very much not the sort of guy who went in for heart to hearts and yet this was the second time in a week the Chief had invited his confidence.
‘Do you know I worked a similar case to little Jack Randall’s? Over in Ashbourne. Almost twenty years ago now.’
‘No, sir.’ Matt’s throat felt tight. Dailey nodded, his eyes looking now not at Matt but through him.
‘Six-year-old girl it was, found bludgeoned to death. By her older cousin who was supposed to be looking after her, as it turned out. Lad of nineteen, special needs, though no prior indication of violence. Of course, life meant life then.’
‘Okay.’ Matt didn’t add the words on his lips, but Dailey answered them anyway.
‘You’re wondering what my point is? Well, that case got to me for a long time, Matt; I was still wet behind the ears, still believed victims could be saved and the bad guys locked away for ever. Then a few years later, I bumped into the girl’s father. At the market, of all places. He had a new wife.’
Matt thought of Ethan Randall and wondered if it was a common male reaction. He nodded at Dailey, interested now but still puzzled.
‘Go on.’
‘I wanted to go over and say something, befriend the guy almost. As if there was a link between us; I found his daughter’s body, saw the guy break down when he was told. But he looked right through me. Didn’t even recognise me; or didn’t want to.’
When I Wasn't Watching Page 9