by J. H. Croix
Her voice had a husky quality to it, only adding to the utter distraction she presented.
“I'll make arrangements for a tow truck for you. Do you need a ride somewhere?” I asked.
This was what I would ask anyone in this particular situation, yet it didn’t escape my attention that this would offer me some time alone with her.
Her gorgeous blue eyes widened. “You'll give me a ride?”
She seemed surprised by the simple suggestion.
“If you need one, yes. We're in the middle of heavy traffic,” I said, stating that rather obvious point.
Jana huffed and brushed a lock of purple hair behind her ear. “Well, of course. If you'll give me a ride, I'll take a ride. I was on my way to work, so I don't really have time to follow the tow truck.”
We happened to be on I-5 in Seattle, one of the busiest highways in the area. It was far too busy for a tire change on the side of the overpass, not to mention it appeared her tire rim had been dented in the fender bender.
She leaned her hips against her car and crossed her arms. I interpreted that as a sign she was willing to wait. I slipped out my cell phone and tapped dispatch.
“Hey Rosie,” I said as soon as her voice crackled in my radio. “Can you call a tow company for me?”
Rosie was all business and ever efficient. “Got it. Let me confirm your location.”
She quickly recited exactly where we were. “Correct,” I replied.
The radio went silent and then crackled again. “They said they’d be there in about 15 minutes.”
I looked back at Jana, thinking her name suited her quite perfectly. She still had her arms crossed, and she looked rather put out by the entire thing. I met her annoyed gaze, puzzled by the fact I enjoyed how riled up she was.
“Shall we wait in my car?” I offered.
Her eyes lit up. “Sure! I've never been in a cop car. Can I sit in the front?”
I bit back the urge to grin. “Of course.”
She pushed her hips off of her car, and I gestured for her to walk ahead of me. Mistake. I hadn't seen the sweet curve of her bottom from behind, and it only made my cock harder. I watched her hips swing as she walked ahead of me. She reached for the door handle only to sigh elaborately when it didn't open for her.
That time, I didn't bother not to chuckle. “You didn't think it would just open, did you? It automatically locks the second I'm more than a foot away,” I explained.
She rolled her eyes and waited while I tapped my key fob and unlocked it for her, opening the door to gesture her in. As her legs swung inside, I caught a glimpse of bright blue silk between her thighs. Fuck me.
I shut the door a little too quickly and walked around the back of the car, willing my mind not to think about her hot, little body. She was short and curvy. I didn't know what it was about this woman between her wild hair, her proper clothes, and her attitude, but she was like a straight shot of delectable. I wanted her. I couldn't help but think how hot she would look with that skirt up around her waist in the back of my car. In fact, I was thinking it would be ideal for her hands to be curled over the back of the seat while I fucked her from behind.
Just the other day, we had a workshop on ethics. I knew perfectly well I wasn't supposed to want to fuck a woman whose fender bender I’d responded to, yet my body didn't give a damn about ethics. I usually found our annual ethics workshops boring as hell. But then, I'd never, ever wanted to fuck anyone I crossed paths with in my official role as a police officer for the City of Seattle. I paused for a moment when I got to the back of my car. I needlessly glanced at my phone and checked my email. I couldn't stand back here forever though. I slipped my phone back into my shirt pocket and rounded the car, climbing into the driver’s seat.
Jana’s eyes were curious and soaking in everything. My police cruiser had a small computer tablet in between the seats and various gadgets on the dash. Her wide blue eyes landed on me.
“Wow. You have all kinds of stuff in here. This is awesome. Can you turn on your siren?” she asked.
I stared at her, willing my cock down. “Usually kids ask that,” I managed.
I gave into the urge to grin when she smiled. Her smile hit me right in my gut, and blood shot to my groin. Her mouth was wide and mobile, her lips plump. She had a refreshing quality of lightness and mischief to her. She was the first woman I'd met in years that elicited much of anything from me.
“What's a British guy doing here in Seattle as a cop?” she asked.
That was a bloody good question. I had a practiced answer. “I moved here during university, and I stayed.”
What I didn't offer was that in university, I’d fallen in love and gotten engaged. I’d stayed engaged for far too long and then three days before the wedding, my fiancée dumped me. Said fiancée was the reason I had stayed in Seattle after university. Kristen hadn't wanted to move away from Seattle, and I’d fancied myself in love with her. I'd ended up in law enforcement, although that hadn’t been the plan. Rather, I’d been a football star in university. Excuse me, soccer. I’d been on track to likely land a position as a professional player when I got badly injured in a car accident. I fully recovered from my injuries, but by then it was too late to get back into the game at the pro level. I turned to my second interest and became a police officer.
My answer to Jana was a quite truncated version of why I truly stayed in Seattle. I had a life here now and friends. My family was far away in London. My canceled wedding had been years ago, and I was staring down 32 now. I was rather cynical about the whole thing. I had thought I loved Kristen, and the way she’d broken up with me had stung. Even better, she shagged one of my former friends from university. I’d had little to no interest in dating since then and only sought out the most casual of encounters.
Jana cocked her head to the side. “Really? Is Seattle better than Britain?”
I stared at her for a moment, pondering her question. I liked Seattle, and I enjoyed living in the States. Yet, I kept meaning to move back to London. I hadn't gotten around to it, if only because life kept me busy. That was my only excuse.
To her I simply said, “Seattle’s a fair city. You know how it goes. You move somewhere and then you stay sometimes.”
I looked over at Jana who sat beside me—bright, funny, bold and brash—and wondered why she lit a spark inside of me. At my rather basic answer, she nodded.
“Ah, okay. Quite simple really.”
She shifted her legs, and my eyes automatically flicked down. I wanted another glimpse of that blue silk between her thighs, actually I wanted quite a bit more.
My eyes traveled up, willfully lingering on the shadowed valley between her breasts. Bloody hell. She was so fucking tempting. Thank fuck I was seated with the small monitor mounted between us. It shielded her view of my lap. Otherwise, it would be difficult to hide the fact that I was hard as a rock.
Jana’s eyes landed on the handcuffs hanging from a hook in between the seats.
“Do you ever have people in the front seat?” she asked.
She reached for the cuffs, lifting them up and circling them in her hands. The vision that flashed in my mind was absolutely not appropriate. It was her, cuffed on my bed with her hands over her head. Every inch of her that I'd never seen bare for me and that wild dark hair with purple streaks a splash of color against my cream colored sheets.
I swallowed, nudging the image out of my mind and forcing myself to respond to her question.
“Not usually. If someone needs to be cuffed, they’re in the back,” I explained, gesturing toward the steel screen behind us that separated the front from the back. I considered that I probably should've put her in the back. She was a handful. I held my hand out.
“What?” she asked with a sly smile.
“Hand over the cuffs.” I had to fight the urge to smile.
“I'm not gonna do anything with them. That shouldn't be a problem, right?”
I rolled my eyes, waving my fingers. “Hand
them over,” I repeated.
With an elaborate sigh, she did. I hooked them on my belt out of her reach.
Chapter 3
Jana
Oh. My. God. He was the hottest cop ever, and I didn't even know his name yet. I needed to know.
“What's your name?” I asked, getting right to the point.
He narrowed his deep blue eyes, his mouth hitching up at the corner. Wow. He was just delicious. I wanted to lick him all over. It was probably completely inappropriate for me to be lusting after a cop, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I wished there wasn’t all the stuff in between us because I wanted to climb right over the console and ride him. Preferably with his uniform on. He was so hot in his blue uniform with his wide shoulders and chest filling it out quite nicely. I’d gotten a good look at his tight ass when he walked to his car to write up the citation for the jerk who bumped into me.
When I handed the cuffs over, his fingers brushed against mine, and a hot jolt of electricity shot through me. I knew he felt it too because I saw his nostrils flare.
You need to stop this. What is it with you and wanting to fuck men you're not supposed to want to fuck? For example, the cop who just responded to your fender bender.
I didn't know what it was with me. I had an inconvenient weakness for guys I wasn't supposed to want. It hadn’t been a problem for a while. Not since my last boss, who I got naughty with all over the office by the way. I loved office sex. The fun and games with my former boss came to a screeching halt when I learned he was married. There was naughty and then there was absolutely not okay. Screwing around with someone who was married fell in the absolutely not okay category. Not only had I been mortified and embarrassed, I was tarnished as the ‘other woman’ and felt awful, just awful, about it. I lost my job and my reputation all at once.
The whole mess had happened when my mom was dying from cancer. It was safe to say it was a fiasco. I thought it had permanently cured me of my inconvenient attraction to men I shouldn’t want. Definitely not.
With sexy cop sitting here across from me—oh my wow! I wanted him like I’d never wanted anybody. Just thinking about what we could do here in his car made me squirm in my seat. My panties were wet and had been ever since he climbed in the car beside me.
“Finn Connors,” he said, reminding me I’d actually asked him his name.
“Should I call you Officer Connors or Officer Finn?”
I couldn't help but grin because this was fun. His nostrils flared again, and I wished like hell that damn console thing and computer wasn't in between us. I wanted to know if he was hard because I was wet, so wet it was a problem.
“Technically, it would be Sergeant Finn, but you can just call me Finn,” he said in that hot British accent.
It sent my belly into a tailspin of flutters. My best friend Zoe was married to a British guy. Zoe was also technically my boss. She was one of only a few friends who reached out after my reputation went up in flames over the affair I hadn’t known was an affair. Ethan Walsh, Zoe’s husband, was a hot British soccer player from the Seattle Stars. He totally fell for her when she was his attorney. I’d thought all the British guys in Seattle were snapped up after that. Apparently not. I took it as a sign. I wanted to have Finn, and I would. I just didn't know how exactly I would go about getting him.
“Sergeant Finn. That’s better than just Finn.”
His grin widened, and he shook his head slowly.
“Just call me Finn,” he repeated.
I rolled my eyes. “Why not Sergeant Finn?”
He chuckled and looked away from me, giving me an excellent view of his profile. Dear God. The man should’ve been a model. He had that whole sculpted thing going on with his cheekbones and jaw.
“We might as well get to know each other. My name is Jana,” I said, if only because I wanted him to look at me again.
Finn turned back just as I held my hand out. He actually reached over and shook my hand. It was awesome. That little zing from when he took the handcuffs from me was nothing compared to this. His touch was a hot jolt straight to my core. His hand was warm and strong. I could feel the slightly calloused surface of his palm around mine, and I wanted to feel it all over my body.
I didn't want to let go. His name made it even worse. It was so sexy, and it suited him perfectly. As I sat there staring at him, thinking I didn't want to let go of his hand, lights flashed in his rear view mirror. The tow truck was here. With that half grin of his, I could hardly look away. He slowly released my hand and started to turn to open his door.
My words tumbled out. “Have dinner with me.”
He swung back quickly, his deep blue gaze sending a shiver down my spine.
“Pardon?”
His voice sent goose bumps prickling over my skin.
“Have dinner with me,” I repeated.
He stared at me and then shook his head slowly. “Ms. Sparks,” he began, just now becoming formal. “I'm a police officer. At the moment, I just responded to the scene of your accident. It wouldn't do for me to plan to go out to dinner with you.”
“Okay, maybe not now, but later.”
I was disappointed, quite disappointed actually. He grinned again and shook his head as he climbed out of the car, never replying to my last comment.
***
Sergeant Finn—I just had to call him that in my mind—dropped me off at the office. I was disappointed at how short our drive was. By the time the tow truck driver dealt with my car and we had seen him off with a plan for me to go pick it up at the end of the day, Finn drove me to the office in minutes. He’d been busy responding to a call on the radio, so I hadn't even had a chance to flirt with him on the way there. Instead, I had texted Zoe to explain why I was late. I pushed through the door into the office, glancing around, relieved to find no one waiting in the reception area. I was a paralegal and receptionist for Zoe Walsh. She was a hotshot criminal defense attorney. We’d started law school together. I'd dropped out when my mom got breast cancer. I’d managed to scrabble together the funds to finish up my paralegal requirements, but I’d never been able to finish law school. Money and life got in the way.
While I was busy taking care of my mother, I landed a job as a paralegal at a high-end law firm. It had been a great job for my resume. I should've had enough sense not to get tangled up with my boss, but I had and, well, you already know that story. Needless to say, I lost my job. It was a large, well known law firm, and my reputation had taken a hit. Not too long after that, my mother passed away, which had been incredibly hard for me. We’d been close, and I still missed her.
Zoe, good friend that she was, reached out to me when she started her practice and offered me a position as a paralegal for her. She was still encouraging me to return to law school and finish up my classes, so I could actually get my law degree. I kept telling myself I would, but it hadn’t happened yet. Working with Zoe was a pleasure. She couldn't afford to pay me as well as my old job had, but even before everything had blown up there, it hadn’t been the most pleasant place to work. Being nice didn’t fit in well with the cutthroat competitiveness fostered there.
Here it was just Zoe and me. I loved working with her and had enormous respect for her. She also let me do my job as I saw fit. Her office door was closed when I arrived. I knew she had a meeting, so I swung behind the desk of my little kingdom as I called it. I handled all the reception and paralegal duties, so I was the face everybody saw when they first came in the door. I had a small office behind the reception desk, but I rarely went there unless I needed to speak privately with someone.
With nothing other than Finn on my mind—his hard, hot body, his gorgeous eyes, and his mouth made for sin—I sat down at my desk and got to work. I caught up on voice messages, got through my email and then began working on a few draft legal filings for Zoe to review later. Around lunchtime, the client she’d been meeting with exited the office. Zoe came out front, leaning her hips against my desk.
Zoe was gor
geous with beautiful auburn hair, bright hazel eyes and fair skin. She was also willowy and somehow managed to have curves at the same time. When I first met her in college, I'd been struck by how oblivious she seemed to how beautiful she was. After I got to know her, I learned she’d been rather awkward looking all through high school, towering over most of the guys. She still towered over some of them now, but she’d definitely grown into her beauty. She’d gotten married only a year or so ago to Ethan Walsh, soccer star for the Seattle Stars. Ethan was eye candy for most women, so we still laughed about the whole thing.
I was more than happy for Zoe because Ethan adored her. I knew by most standards, she wasn't a typical woman. She was brilliant, dedicated to her career and not one be wowed easily. Ethan had fallen for her, hook, line and sinker. He was currently trying to persuade her it was time for them to start planning a family, while Zoe was undecided if she was ready for that yet. She crossed her arms once the door clicked shut behind her client.
“God, I hate it when I end up agreeing to take a case for an idiot,” she said with a sigh.
“Oh? So Carl Chambers isn't a great client?” I asked with a sly grin.
Zoe rolled her eyes. Hooking her foot on a chair across from my desk, she pulled it closer before sitting down.
“No. I keep trying to tell him that insider trading is a problem, and that they have a good case against him. If he had half a brain, he would settle. He's not seeing the light yet. I always tell people an attorney is only as good as the truth they tell their clients. I keep trying to tell him the truth, and he doesn't want to hear it.”
“I warned you about him, but you love a challenge.”
Zoe sighed again, picking up a pen on my desk and idly flipping it back-and-forth between her fingers. “You did, and I do like a challenge. But there's a challenge and then there's an annoying, stubborn client. Carl Chambers is that client.”
“I warned you,” I repeated. Because I had. I’d crossed paths with Carl at my last job. He burned through attorneys fast because of his stubbornness.