Chapter One

 

"You... kill me," Danny said.

Jamie turned to look behind her. "Well, I could, I suppose. But you probably wouldn't be good for much afterward."

She turned back to sorting through the not very tidy contents of the lower drawer of the dresser.

Since she was naked, Danny continued to watch. He was sitting up in bed, propped against the faux leather headboard, his hands behind his neck. He watched as she straightened and stepped into a black thong.

"Don't you have somewhere you need to be?" she asked, pointedly.

He shook his head. "Not till noon."

"You're why everyone hates feds; lazy bastard." she said, pulling the thong up and then wrapping the matching bra around herself.

"Everyone doesn't hate us," he said with a smile.

She snorted as she fastened the clips, then slid the bra around and pulled it up under her breasts, another operation he watched closely.

"The lefties hate you because you're all gestapo scum and violators of the civil rights of innocent people," she said, slipping the straps over her shoulders, and adjusting her breasts in the cups.

"Need any help with those?" he asked.

"Thanks, I think I can manage."

She turned to check herself in the mirror, and then, satisfied, went to the closet.

"The righties all hate you because you want to steal their guns and you're always persecuting that poor Donald Trump guy."

"That's the intelligence agencies," he said.

"I don't think they really make a distinction."

She pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants and he sighed and swung his legs out of bed.

"What am I supposed to do all morning when you're leaving so early?"

"Masturbate?"

"I think I've forgotten how. Maybe you could show me?"

"It's like riding a bicycle. You never forget. Or so I hear."

He snorted. "Are you seriously going to do this?"

"Why not? Seems easy enough."

"But bicycling to work? Isn't that... a bit below your... standards?"

"My standards?" she asked, pulling on a tank top.

"Your princessly standards."

She gave him a hard look as he stood up and came over to her.

"Are you calling me a princess?"

"You won't go near Wal-Mart. You buy top of the line everything. You have... high standards."

"They can't be that high or I'd have a better boyfriend," she said.

He put his arm around her, and his big hand slid up to cup her breast.

"Jesus, don't you ever get enough?" she asked. "You're supposed to be an old man."

"Old man? Want me to show you what an old man can do?"

She pushed him back. "You already did that. That's why I'm late."

"Have a shower, put on something nice, and I'll drive you in."

"I need exercise."

"You don't get exercise with me?" he asked with a grin.

"I would except for your habit of tying me up all the time," she said. "It's hard to get exercise when you can't move."

"You can move," he said, letting his hand caress her buttocks through the thin cotton sweatpants. "You wriggle very nicely."

"Yeah, well, out of breath does not equal exercise. And I'm finding I have less time for actual exercise lately - for some reason. You want me to get fat?"

"Perish the thought. Have your boss put you on foot patrol more."

She snorted. "Mueller is back. He doesn't like to walk far."

He smiled slightly. "Get him on a bicycle."

"Yeah, that ain't happening."

She shoved her feet into a pair of tennis shoes then picked up a hip pack and belted it on. She had her gun, badge, cell phone, and a few other things inside it.

"That what you're gonna wear on patrol today?" he asked with a grin.

"You don't think I look cute?" she asked, turning to pull her hair behind her into a pony tail.

"You look cute, adorable, and hot and sexy. I don't think the bare midriff will go over well with Mueller or your lieutenant, though."

She turned and headed for the door and he slapped her butt sharply.

"Hey," she yelped, rubbing herself and scowling as she continued.

"Not to mention those pants are kind of tight," he said, slipping on a pair of shorts before following.

"And low on your hips," he said as he followed her up the hall and into the kitchen.

"They're not low on my hips. I just... have longish legs."

She checked the coffee machine. She'd set the timer on it last night, so the coffee was hot and ready.

"Anyway, I have spare outfits at work. I'll wear one of those."

"Gonna take a shower at work?"

She nodded as she poured the coffee into a steel bottle."

"That'll please your girlfriends," he said.

"You and your lesbian fantasies," she said. "I would have thought you'd have gotten enough of seeing the real thing by now."

"Never. How can two hot, sexy, naked girls not be better than one? Especially when one of them is you?"

She snorted and poured in coffee and milk, then stirred.

"They could be busy with each other and ignoring you."

"That's all right. I'm patient. I can wait. I know they'll soon be eager for my body."

"Because what lesbians all really want is a man?"

"Exactly."

He saw her to the door, where they kissed for a long minute, then she pulled her bike out the door and he closed it behind her as she carted it upstairs to the street.

Brooklyn, northern Brooklyn anyway, was Danny's new home. That was a relief from trying to find her way home or to work from the Bronx. Since he'd moved here she'd been staying over more often, and now had her own drawer in his dresser. Which was progress of a sort, but she was hesitant about looking for more.

At twenty-two she was way too young to be settling down with someone and moving in, she thought. That was a bit of an issue, though so far only a bit. Because Danny was thirty, and that was the sort of age where people did feel it was about time to settle down.

But Danny had weird hours, and she liked living with her family, liked having them around the house, even if they were annoying at times. If she moved in here she'd be alone much of the time given the late night hours Danny often worked.

She ought to be working shift work herself, mainly the overnights. She'd only been a cop less than a year, after all. She felt a bit guilty about that, and about taking advantage of her family connections. Then again, she hadn't asked to be moved to Midtown North or put on the Anti-crime squad. And she hadn't asked for the day shift either. Her grandfather had simply arranged it on his own.

As one of the department's senior and most powerful Deputy Commissioners, her grandfather pulled a lot of weight, and things like that, getting plumb assignments for relatives, had been going on in the NYPD since forever. Everyone did it.

Fortunately he'd waited until she'd gotten some great publicity after someone with a camera had uploaded a video of her kicking in a window and saving some teenagers from a fire to the internet. Because of that, few really questioned why she was on Anti-crime with so little experience.

Of course, Anti-crime was mostly made up of younger cops, identified as having above average abilities for one reason or another. But she was technically still a rookie with less than a year on the job, and that was rare for Anti-crime.

They weren't detectives. The job wasn't a promotion and did not pay better. They were ordinary patrol officers who worked in plainclothes. They were inserted into the precinct's higher crime areas to conduct patrols either in cars or on foot without it being obvious they were cops. The city especially liked that in tourist areas, where lots of cops might make the tourists uneasy.

Sometimes they conducted surveillance on the precinct's known troublemakers. Occasionally they were loaned to the detective squad as extra bodies for surveillance or backup. But they didn't answer the normal calls assigned to the blue and white patrol cars, didn't direct traffic, and rarely wrote traffic tickets.

They also weren't confined to a particular patrol district within the precinct but moved around as needed. That allowed for a wide variety of possible experiences, which was why Jamie loved it.

Unlike detectives, though, they didn't wear business outfits, just ordinary street wear, or whatever would blend in with whatever area they were monitoring.

That didn't usually include sweatpants and tank tops, though it had in the past for Jamie. She wouldn't mind if it did again. They were, after all, quite comfortable, and she looked hot in them. That used to bother her, but not anymore. Now, Danny had taught her to feel almost vain about her looks and shape, and the way men - and some women - looked at her.

As she pedaled along she considered that bicycling had a number of advantages over jogging. She got more fresh air in her face, which was nice on a warm day - though this wasn't particularly. She moved a hell of a lot faster. And she could carry stuff like a coffee.

Compared to driving a car - which she didn't normally do since she didn't have one, it actually moved faster in rush hour traffic, especially in dedicated bike lanes and paths. The only time she really had to stop was for red lights - unlike the slowly moving, start and stop traffic next to her.

And if there were no lanes, well, she could just drive past the stopped cars and continue on.

She reached the Ed Koch bridge, which nobody called anything but the Queensboro bridge, and pedaled up and across on the separate bike path. Here she slowed down a bit, because the bike traffic was heavy. She got off and turned onto 2^nd Avenue, surprised and pleased at how quickly and easily she moved through stalled traffic.

She was stopped at a light on 56^th, and, as she had a number of times, reached down to the bottle strapped to the bike, lifted it up and took a few sips of coffee. A van pulled up alongside her, the kind of nondescript old workhorse used by ten thousand companies in New York. There was a guy with greasy hair half hanging out of the passenger side staring at her.

He leered and looked her up and down with patently rude appreciation, nodding his head, then waggling his tongue at her.

That sort of thing had once infuriated her, back in the day, when she was so determined to be taken seriously and treated with respect. Now, it wasn't that she didn't demand respect, but that people noting she had a nice body, however obviously, just didn't bug her anymore.

"Hey, baby. Nice tits," he said with a broad grin.

"Hey, get your hair washed," she replied.

He glared at her. "Bitch, I'll wash your hair in my come!"

She snorted in amusement. "Hey, I'm like, a Nine, and you're, at best, a Two, and that's only if you have a bath," she replied, putting the coffee bottle back.

"Fuck you, bitch!"

"Someone will tonight, but you ain't gonna be him!" she called back, pushing away from the curb.