Flesh & Blood Page 3

  Nor would he have been happy at the lacy purple bra made of silk and French lace, so flimsy the sheer half cups strained to contain the thrust of her full young breasts. Such items conveyed sensual femininity and youthful sexuality, but clothing discretely covered them and not even Gladwyck would have had the temerity to demand to examine the underthings of those ‘fortunate’ to be beneath his supervision.

  Leah always liked to dress well, and she always wore sensuous lingerie, even when in uniform. But today she felt much more conscious of it.

  She had not slept well at all, taking hours to fall asleep, her mind constantly replaying what had happened, her body reliving it through the helpless stroking of her fingers between her thighs. She had been incredibly horny, nothing like the intensity she felt in Morales’ house, but she was unable to keep her hands off her body, and was forced to masturbate three times in an effort to purge her body and mind of sexual hunger.

  She tossed and turned in her sleep to dreams of Morales taking her in every conceivable way, to dreams of her prostrating herself before him, worshipping him, adoring him, giving herself to him, submitting herself, body and mind and soul. She awoke again and again; her body inflamed, her sex wet, and masturbated to powerful climaxes. She’d never known a night like it. What was the matter with her?

  She turned into the briefing room and found a spot next to Sara Yi, nodding cordially as she slipped her Gucci bag onto the floor next to her chair, then sat down – gingerly. Her bottom still stung a little. She’d not thought he slapped her that hard, yet she had found a blotchy pink outline of a hand on her bottom when she examined herself in the mirror that morning.

  ‘Hey,’ Sara said, ‘what you think?’

  ‘What do I think of what?’

  ‘We got new captain of detectives. Black woman. Affirmative Action in action.’

  Leah nodded noncommittally. She was not about to express an opinion to a chatterbox like Sara Yi about anything controversial, let alone ‘Affirmative Action’, the Force’s attempt to ‘encourage’ higher levels of minority participation and promotions within its ranks. It had occurred to her on more than one occasion, however, that Affirmative Action was the only reason the flighty young Chinese girl had managed to avoid official sanction on numerous occasions, and even get herself promoted to the detective ranks.

  Not that she didn’t like Sara Yi. The girl was hard not to like, except for stuffed shirts like Gladwyck, but she acted far too much like an unreliable, fashion conscious, boy crazy teenager for Leah’s comfort. She leaned over to whisper, and noticed for the first time the graceful sweep of Sara’s throat, startled at how attractive she found it. ‘Uhm, you have blue in your hair,’ she murmured quietly.

  Sara blanched and reached up, her fingers pulling hastily at her hair. She scrambled in her purse and combed her hair rapidly, muttering in irritation in Mandarin. Or was it Cantonese? ‘Cheap hair extensions,’ she said apologetically.

  ‘Blue?’

  Sara beamed. ‘Look real cool. You should try it.’

  Leah shook her head.

  ‘I wear last night at rave.’

  ‘You were at a rave on a Monday night?’ She imagined the pretty Asian girl dancing and swaying provocatively to pounding music, dressed in something slinky and revealing, and felt a little thrum of heat between her legs that made her blink in astonishment.

  ‘Yeah, very loud, very wild. Didn’t get to sleep until four.’

  Leah nodded; still stunned to experience sexual interest in another female, let alone Sara. Sometimes she wondered if someone had altered the girl’s birth certificate and added three or four, or even five years. She was purported to be twenty-two, but sometimes acted more like seventeen. Not that she wasn’t bright and dedicated, but teenagers tended to grate on Leah’s need for dignity and circumspection. She might not be a stuffed shirt like Gladwyck, but she had quite high standards for behavior in public. So why on earth would she suddenly find Sara… desirable?

  ‘Nice scarf,’ Sara said brightly. ‘You buy at Wallmart?’

  Leah snorted. ‘No, it was a present from a friend. He picked it up in India.’ She subconsciously lifted her hand and brushed the soft brown hair back from the side of her face. She was lucky in her hair; it tended to style well and mind its manners. Today it seemed to fairly glow with brightness and life, despite her rough night. It was a deep, sensuous chestnut, a lustrous curtain of rich brown that framed her lovely face immaculately.

  Her cheekbones were high and aristocratic, her lips full and seductive, her white teeth giving evidence of a disciplined childhood with the best dentists. Her green eyes were slightly oval, indicating a trace of Mediterranean, or some whispered, Asian ancestry. She was beautiful by anyone’s judgment, having the beauty of the predatory cat, not the wispy model. Her eyes could pierce a man to his vitals and she could express more disapproval and contempt with an inclination of her chin than others could with a five-minute verbal diatribe.

  She was most certainly not a girl who would allow herself to be spanked. Yet her body seemed to recall each sharp impact of his hand across her raised buttocks, and her ears recalled the sound of flesh spanking flesh as his hand struck, and her mind remembered the sense of outraged excitement as he punished her.

  What was wrong with her? She was not a woman given to flights of fancy. Even as a young girl she had not been subject to the swooning romantics of other teenagers. She had always been strong willed, always been smoothly and proudly contained. Her parents had spoiled her with things, but for all intents and purposes she had been alone all her life. That required a certain measure of self-control, and she had come to rely on that self-control in dealings with the world around her, and especially with her cold, aloof parents.

  Her father was that dentist who cared for her teeth, an oral surgeon to be specific, while her mother practiced law in Atlanta. As an only (and she thought likely accidental) child, she benefited from her parents’ money as well as their desire to have someone else mind her upbringing. She attended boarding schools, and had only to ask for whatever hobby caught her fancy to be enrolled in the appropriate course of instruction.

  Thus she moved with the grace instilled by ballet, dance, fencing and martial arts lessons, had quite a talent for both piano and guitar, and was professionally trained in how to apply makeup and style her hair.

  Her familiarity with her parents, on the other hand, was somewhat loose. They had seldom played much of a role in her life aside from administering the proper moneys on request and chastising her occasional failures. They had not, needless to say, been pleased with her joining the police. But she had held firm.

  Lieutenant Colin Michaels came into the room and took his chair next to Lieutenant Malcolm Phillips.

  ‘I like to jump his bones,’ Sara whispered mischievously, her eyes on Michaels.

  Leah nodded wordlessly. That was certainly no surprise. Sara had ‘jumped the bones’ of half the eligible men in the district command. A first generation refugee from Hong Kong who came to the US at nine, she seemed determined to cast off every preconception about Asian women anyone had ever imagined, starting with those relating to how quiet, meek and chaste they were.

  Since she was really the only other young female detective in the district her actions did little to persuade the more hidebound males that they were to avoid viewing female police officers as sex objects. This infuriated many of the female officers, quite a few of whom wanted nothing to do with men in any case, and who were outraged at having a ‘Chinese boy toy’ in their midst.

  Leah understood their irritation, but didn’t share it. In what she admitted to be a sense of arrogance, she was an island unto herself. She did not believe the actions of a girl like Sara would reflect badly on her, for she was quite obviously a different breed than the giggling girl. But she felt less distant now, given what had happened the other d
ay, and even less given the images now rolling through her thoughts of Sara engaged in lewd carnal acts with Phillips and other men, and then, astonishingly, with her.

  ‘Hello sweets.’

  Leah turned, startled out of her shameful reverie, and nodded at Scott Brookline. He’d been her partner when she was promoted to detective a year and a half earlier. There had always been sexual tension between them, for it was quite obvious from the start that he viewed her as an eminently bedable female. Still, he had been professional enough not to try anything beyond a lot of verbal teasing. He was not unattractive, given their ten year age difference, with curly blond hair, a barrel chest and good humored features. But Leah had always been extremely protective of her reputation, and never so much as dated anyone in the police service.

  The conversations that filled the room with a hushed babble ceased as a tall, athletic woman entered. It was the new captain, Leah knew at once. She was black, her hair cropped short, nearly to the skull. There was no hint of European or Arabic features in her strong, African face, and something strange deep inside Leah simmered in excitement at a brief thought of herself kneeling at the woman’s feet, before she banished it indignantly.

  ‘Good morning,’ the woman said, her accent bearing the surprising lilt of one of Britain’s fancier private schools. ‘I am Captain Taja Mbweni. Prior to assuming this position I was Lieutenant in charge of the robbery squad at Westgate. Prior to that I was a detective sergeant with burglary in Torrance. I have been a police officer for fourteen and a half years.’ She stepped around the podium and her eyes moved over the police officers in the room.

  She’s hot, Leah thought, growing aroused despite herself, inexplicably lurid images rolling through her head.

  ‘I do not expect unquestioned obedience,’ Mbweni said, her voice hardening. ‘But I expect absolute obedience. If you don’t think I am correct you are free to politely and respectfully state the reason for your disagreeing. But anyone caught disobeying my orders in the smallest degree will need to find somewhere else to work. I will not tolerate disobedience anymore than I will tolerate incompetence or laziness.’ Her eyes settled on Leah, and she seemed to frown. Then they tightened at the sight of Sara before continuing along their row.

  ‘I am not here to be your friend, your confessor, or your coach. I am here to supervise the detective squads of this district, and you are here to support whatever goals and practices I feel will best serve in policing and maintaining order. I have already met with the senior officers and expressed those policies and goals to them. They will in turn communicate those requirements to you.’

  ‘Jeez, what a bitch,’ Sara whispered.

  Definitely, Leah silently concurred, but what a hot one! For some bizarre reason she saw her in leather and high heels, glowering down at her from above, and jerked her eyes away, gazing nervously around in fear someone might sense her interest, and wondering where it came from.

  ‘I will meet with each of you privately for a few minutes, however, to help familiarize myself with your strengths and weaknesses. I will express my opinion regarding this to you, and you in turn will consider ways of improving any faults I find in your professional conduct.’

  Without a further word she strode straight down the aisle between the silent police officers and out of the door.

  ‘Well, she seems fun,’ Scott commented ruefully.

  ‘Too much compensation,’ Leah replied. Too many women she knew thought they had to be harder than the men in order to be obeyed and respected, and Mbweni was obviously of that school. But still, she was hot.

  Lieutenant Patterson silently tacked up a list of detectives’ names Captain Mbweni would see, and in what order. It was noted that the female detectives appeared first on the list.

  Leah was the fourth, just after Sara. She judged that Mbweni was going to be the punctual type, and arrived only a minute or so before her scheduled time. The door was closed, but she could hear the woman’s chilly voice coming from within.

  ‘I don’t care about quotas or statistics,’ she was saying. ‘Your presence is a distraction to the smooth operation of this district station, and the only reason I don’t immediately institute a complaint to Internal Affairs to have you fired is that the story would inevitably go public and would make for sensationalist press, which in turn would reflect badly on all of us here. But I will accept your request for transfer by the end of the day. Now get out.’

  Leah heard another voice start to speak but Mbweni immediately overrode it. ‘I said that will be all,’ she snapped, her icy voice rising. ‘I find your presence annoying. My advice for you is to resign before you are charged. You are an absolute disgrace to the police service.’

  Leah edged back as she sensed movement. The door was yanked open by a black hand and Sara stumbled out, her face ashen, and moved down the corridor in the opposite direction to where Leah stood. Mbweni turned cold eyes on her and jerked her head imperiously.

  Leah took a deep breath, then walked into the office and waited anxiously while Mbweni closed the door and went around her desk to sit. The austere woman placed a folder onto a pile of others on her desk, then took one from a second pile, opened and examined it. After a long minute she raised her eyes towards Leah.

  ‘Sit,’ she ordered.

  Nervous, but doing her best not to show it, Leah sat, her back stiff and her heart pounding a little.

  ‘You have good reviews,’ Mbweni said. ‘Various reports reflect on your empathy and how this gives you a knack for knowing when people are lying, for knowing what their motivations are. But you have less experience on the street than you should have for a detective, no doubt because you were promoted rapidly, in part due to being female.’

  Leah frowned without thinking.

  ‘You think it doesn’t play a part?’ Mbweni said caustically. ‘Don’t be naïve. I wouldn’t have reached this level this soon had I not been a black lesbian. I am extremely competent but there are many extremely competent white heterosexual males out there who have as much if not more experience than I.’ She sat back a little in her chair, her eyes raking Leah.

  ‘You are indeed a fashionable girl,’ she said. ‘There is nothing in your attire which goes against the letter of the dress code; but you dress too well and too fashionably. You are not here to look attractive, MacInnes. You are not here to impress people with your looks and color-coordinated wardrobe. Tone down your dress. Buy dull grays and blues and blacks, which are looser. A police detective is in plainclothes so as not to be noticed, not to indulge ones taste for stylish fabrics and colours.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Leah said, a little chastened and red-faced.

  ‘You heard what I said to Yi?’

  Leah hesitated. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘A friend of yours?’

  ‘I like her,’ Leah said uncertainly.

  ‘She’s a common slut.’

  ‘She does her job well, so far as I’ve seen,’ Leah said loyally.

  ‘Perhaps by the letter of the requirements, but there are unwritten rules at play, MacInnes. A police detective is expected to maintain a professional relationship with his or her colleagues and to be above reproach, even in their private life. Someone who is known to boast about the variety of public places in which she has had sexual intercourse and the wide variety of individuals she has had them with is a fool in too many ways for me to list. Not to mention lacking the dignity needed to uphold the reputation of the service. She has only gotten away with it because she is a visible minority member, and that irritates me immensely, both as a visible minority member and as a female.’

  She leaned forward, eyes hard. ‘Do you know that I wanted to strike her? I was so utterly outraged with her behavior I wanted to physically thrash her. Given the nature of this service, the old boy network, and the feeling among so many that females can’t cut it, I find it ap
palling to have a female like that in my section. She ought to take up prostitution and put her undoubted talents to work at something she clearly feels a calling for.’

  Leah held her breath, feeling again that intense and inexplicable desire to prostrate herself at the woman’s feet, a buzzing excitement in the pit of her stomach, and yet at the same time a rising indignation. What a bitch, she thought. ‘I… I think you’re being a bit harsh, ma’am,’ she ventured.

  ‘No doubt the many men here who have sampled her dubious pleasures will agree,’ the superior snorted, ‘and I expect a lot of protests when the news of her resignation gets out. But it will be interesting to see just who those are who do protest.’

  ‘Why?’ Leah asked, frowning. Mbweni’s eyes narrowed, but Leah continued. ‘It certainly won’t be an indication of who has and hasn’t slept with her. The cowards won’t say boo to you no matter how many times they might have had sex with her. The only ones who will express any reservations are those with, excuse me, the balls to support someone they have some affection for.’

  Mbweni smiled coldly. ‘Did you use that expression deliberately? Can you imagine how a proud lesbian would view that expression, one which presumes that the bigger one’s testicles the braver one is?’

  ‘It’s a common expression,’ Leah said, ‘used metaphorically.’ Again she felt that sense of erotic tension, a longing to see Mbweni naked, an almost physical heat at the thought of their bodies pressed together. Yet running counter to it was a rising sense of actual dislike for the woman.

  ‘Yes, used by common people.’

  Leah felt her face flushing, and glared across the desk. ‘I’ve never claimed to be up on a pedestal beyond the popular culture of the little people,’ she said. ‘It has been my experience that placing oneself above others merely sets one up for a very hard and painful fall.’