Suspect Passions Read online

  Synopsis

  City Attorney Regan Desanto moved to town a year ago after her partner of twenty years dumped her for another woman. All she wants is to be near her ailing grandmother and to work ordinary, boring municipal cases until she can get her life back together. Beat officer Sydney Cabot is a chronic serial polyamorist who craves the adrenaline rush on and off the job. She has never wanted to be or tried to be faithful to one woman. When Syd is slapped with a wrongful death suit, Regan, the most uptight, controlling, and monogamous woman Syd has ever met, is assigned the case. Sydney doesn’t trust Regan, and the feeling is mutual, but they have to work together—and what’s even more of a challenge, they have to figure out how to defuse their growing attraction.

  Suspect Passions

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  Suspect Passions

  © 2009 By VK Powell. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-340-2

  This Electronic book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.,

  New York, USA

  First Edition: March 2009

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editors: Jennifer Knight and Shelley Thrasher

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design By Sheri([email protected])

  By the Author

  To Protect and Serve

  Suspect Passions

  Fever

  Acknowledgments

  It would not be possible to do the work I love without the support and encouragement of amazing friends. Thank you for your understanding when I hide away for days to create a new character, write another chapter, or struggle with edits. Thank you for insisting that I come up for air occasionally so I can appreciate how wonderful you all are.

  To Radclyffe and Bold Strokes Books, deep appreciation for allowing me to do what makes my heart sing. I thank Jennifer Knight for her wisdom, guidance, and humor and for helping me become a better writer with each project. My gratitude also goes to Shelley Thrasher and Stacia Seaman for their attention to detail when most of us are ready to move on to something new. And to Sheri, many thanks for bringing my words to life in graphic form. The cover is wonderful.

  To all the readers who support and encourage my writing, thank you for buying my work, visiting my Web site (www.powellvk.com), sending e-mails, and showing up for signings. You make my “job” so much fun!

  Dedication

  For Lyn, beloved friend near or far. AIRTIC

  Chapter One

  A beautiful mocha-skinned woman was standing against the back wall of the restroom when Sydney Cabot entered. She wore a red leather bodysuit unzipped past her navel, revealing full breasts and a tuft of dark hair between her legs. As Syd approached, the woman slid her hand inside the shiny material and stroked one breast in a circular motion. “Are you watching or participating tonight?”

  “Do I know you?” Syd couldn’t believe the woman’s audacity.

  “You certainly do, in the biblical sense, right here in this very place.” The woman’s smile was bold and suggestive of someone skilled in the art of conquest. “You refused to go home with me.”

  The attractive African-American looked familiar but Syd couldn’t come up with a name. She should’ve been unforgettable—Amazon came to mind, large and muscular, but all woman. Her short hair clung to her head in light waves. Her eyes were almost catlike, their hue a brownish gold. “Ah, yes. You’re…”

  “Lacy,” the woman supplied. “At least, that’s the name you seemed to prefer last time.”

  “Sure, I remember,” Syd lied smoothly. A scramble of indistinct memories converged in the back of her mind. Her tactile senses said she’d touched that provocative body before, but she could not remember when or where. “Hey, good to see you again.”

  Lacy passed on the opportunity for small talk. She held the last stall door open. “Well?”

  Syd inhaled a blend of scents, disinfectant pine and various women’s perfumes, the lingering traces of patrons who’d passed through this room tonight. “Look, Lacy, I’m sorry but there’s been a big mistake. I have a girlfriend and—” Syd stopped, realizing that was no longer true.

  “Yes, you told me all about your little vanilla lover.” Lacy pushed her jumpsuit to the floor and stepped out of it. “You’re nothing if not honest, darling. But I satisfy your other needs.”

  She seductively stroked her breasts. Her body was a vision of perfectly toned muscles, which seemed to quiver with sexual energy.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Syd said. “What other needs?”

  “The new tastes you’ve developed lately. Come here, lover, and I’ll show you.”

  Lacy grabbed the front of Syd’s silk blouse, pulled their bodies together with surprising force, and covered her mouth with a searing kiss. With practiced precision she turned their joined bodies into the small booth and pinned Syd against the wall, leaving the door open.

  Syd struggled, but her arms were trapped at her sides by the more powerful woman. Lacy’s firm body rubbed against hers with increasing intensity. Syd gazed into the single naked lightbulb that hung overhead, blinded to everything except its harsh glow and the severe ache building inside her. She clamped her legs together to block Lacy’s groping hands. But the more she resisted, the more excited she became. She wanted to be taken, and this woman knew it.

  “That’s right, baby, fight me. It makes you feel alive, doesn’t it?” Lacy chuckled, opened the zipper of Syd’s trousers, pushed them to the floor, and off. She smiled at the absence of panties and raised Syd’s left leg onto the toilet seat. Lacy kissed Syd again, then replaced her tongue with her index finger. Sliding her wet finger down Syd’s chest and abdomen, she dipped into the silky moisture between her legs.

  No, it doesn’t make me feel alive, Syd thought, I want to get away from you! But even as she looked toward the door, her body betrayed her and she was gripped by a wave of raging desire. She buried her face in the voluptuous breasts pressed against her and breathed in the aphrodisiac of sweat and sex. Simultaneously she closed her fingers in the tight curls at the base of Lacy’s stomach and tugged.

  “Oh yeah, baby, do it. Pull it. Bite my tits,” Lacy begged, in labored breaths. She placed her fingers against the bony mound between Syd’s legs, entered her roughly one at a time, and then plunged deep inside.

  “Fuck me harder!” Syd urged. “Make me feel it!” It was as though someone else was in her body, willing this woman to take her, to make her feel something—anything. Even pain was better than the numbness she wore like a cloak since the shooting.

  “You don’t do things the easy way, do you, lover?” Lacy purred.

  Syd felt like her insides were being ripped out as Lacy’s sudden withdrawal created a vacuum where Syd wanted fast, hot pain. “Just fuck me, now,” she begged.

  Intense pressure replaced the void as Lacy forced her fingers back inside all at once and closed them into a ball. She hammered her clenched fist deeper into Syd time after time, using her free hand to pinch and twist her exposed clit. Syd felt as if she was splitting open from the girth and force of the thrusts, but the pain only heightened her excitement.
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br />   Her mouth covered Lacy’s nipple and she sucked harder, in time with the pumping inside her. There was no tenderness, only the need to be completely possessed, totally fucked by a stranger who asked nothing more than that and to whom she owed no explanation.

  Syd’s body shuddered with tremors as she felt herself tighten around the hand that occupied her centermost cavity. She opened her eyes and waited as lust shrouded her vision. Her back arched and a rasping scream rose in her parched throat. Wave after wave of hot juices drained from her. She clutched Lacy to her and convulsed as whimpering cries of pleasure and agony forced their way up her throat and out into the heavy air. The climax ripped through her with an energy she didn’t recognize, dissolving all thought and providing the physical release she craved. Then, afterward, there was only an emptiness of unfathomable depths.

  Lacy pulled Syd’s right leg between her own and rubbed herself along the length of the shapely thigh, her fist still buried inside Syd’s convulsing body. After a few long, unhurried strokes, Lacy collapsed against her. “My God, woman, you just keep getting better,” she breathed onto Syd’s neck.

  Syd pushed back and looked at the clinging woman, unable to believe what she’d just done. Lacy’s body shimmered with perspiration and the flush of satisfaction. Their bodies were still joined and their panting breaths filled the room with heat and a strange echo.

  Just over Lacy’s shoulder Syd caught a flash of something. She blinked to focus. A woman, still as death, was staring into their stall. A bright red flush roared up from the woman’s shirt collar, over her face, and sparked fire in her cobalt blue eyes. Her intense gaze lingered on their bodies as if committing the image to memory. The tight press of her lips told Syd all she needed to know—prude. The woman smoothed her closely cropped honey blond hair in a fidgety gesture of embarrassment, then spun on her heel and walked quickly toward the door, mumbling something about consideration for others.

  Her mood destroyed, Syd disentangled herself from Lacy, gathered her clothing, and dressed again.

  “What are you doing?” Lacy asked.

  “Thanking you for a great time and leaving.” With a perfunctory wave, Syd exited the restroom and the club. She stepped out into the crisp April air just as a gray Acura, driven by the disapproving blonde, spun out of the parking lot.

  Syd wasn’t sure why she’d bothered to rush out here. Granted, the blonde was attractive and tall, with a firm body, great ass, and a swagger that would make any woman swoon, but she was a puritan nonetheless. Her condemnation was broadcast in that critical icy glare; you’d think she’d never seen two women having sex.

  She probably never got any, Syd concluded, but why did some women find it necessary to judge each other’s lives? Didn’t we get enough of that shit from everybody else? The entire lesbian nation should celebrate with cheers and catcalls every time another sister had an orgasm.

  *

  Regan Desanto ramped down on the accelerator and spun her vehicle out of the Cop Out parking lot. The muscles in her legs ached from the restraint she’d imposed by strolling away from that restroom when she’d really wanted to run. But one thing life had taught her was control. No one would ever see her lose it again. So, anyone watching her walk to the Acura would have seen a woman unaffected by the increased pounding of her heart and the heat surging beneath her skin.

  She wondered why she’d gone to Cop Out in the first place. She never found anything she wanted in bars or brothels, and she’d tried several times. But after only a year in High Point, North Carolina, her adjustment was proving more difficult than she imagined. Her intuition had begun to atrophy and her emotions to transform into lumps of home décor in this furniture capital of the world. She knew it really wasn’t the place as much as the disassembly of her life and her relocation hundreds of miles away from everything familiar.

  Martha, her fifteen-year partner, had been the essence of her life since they were in college. But last year Regan had been exiled from their relationship like a pile of putrid garbage. Now she was in a strange place with no real friends, an aging grandmother, and no life beyond work. The club had sounded like a good idea earlier, an attempt to begin a social life and maybe even make a few friends. But she didn’t need or want friends who thought sex in a public restroom was fun or acceptable. Regan shivered at the recurring vision and concentrated on where she was going, which seemed to be her grandmother’s assisted-living facility. She parked carelessly outside the building. Her legs shook slightly as she got out of the car.

  She took a deep breath to calm the uncustomary pounding of her heart before she tapped lightly at Isadora Pearce’s room. Her grandmother could always tell when she was upset or worried and she didn’t want to alarm her, especially when she wasn’t sure herself why she was so out of sorts.

  Her grandmother’s soft voice invited her into the small room that had taken the place of her three-thousand-square-foot home. Inside, the space had been converted into a memory bank filled with anything that evoked a happy story or recollection. She noticed with a pang of guilt that her grandmother was already in bed.

  “Hi, Gram. How’re you feeling?” Regan kissed her on the head and slumped into the cushioned rocker beside her.

  Izzy Pearce looked surprisingly good for a woman who’d had three heart surgeries in the past five years. Her fiery red hair had been invaded by silver and the result was striking. At seventy-five, her once-flawless facial features had headed south and filled with wrinkles, but her sparkling blue eyes hinted at her astute mind and clever wit.

  “Hi, honey. I’m doing great.” Izzy glanced at the large wall clock. “I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”

  “I’m sorry it’s so late. I was out riding around. Guess I lost track of time.”

  Regan loved Izzy and hated lying to her. She’d been the only person in Regan’s family who helped her in any way, taking her in after high school and helping her get a scholarship to attend Xavier University to study law. Izzy treated her like she mattered. That’s why she’d moved to this small town next to nowhere in the first place; not because Izzy needed her but because Regan needed to be close to the one person who thought she was special.

  “Don’t ever apologize for coming to visit. But it is Friday night. I hoped you were on a date with some hot woman.” Izzy studied her. “You look a little flushed. Maybe you already had the date?”

  Regan knew Izzy meant well, but the questions about her personal life always caused a pinch of embarrassment and too much pain. “No, Gram, no date.”

  “Then why is your color so high? And you have those little crinkle lines around your eyes that usually mean you’re thinking about something.”

  Izzy knew her entirely too well, and her capacity for listening was like being surrounded by a warm blanket. Regan had never been able to resist her invitations to confide, subtle or otherwise. “Okay, I went to a club tonight but it turned out to be a bad idea.” The couple in the ladies’ room flashed through her mind again.

  At first, she couldn’t believe anyone would be having sex in such an impersonal, public area. But the moans reverberating off the walls of the cramped space were distinctively sexual, and she was drawn involuntarily toward them. A stall door was open and the scene inside paralyzed her. With her muscles locked, she’d been torn between an urge to run, a compulsion to launch into a legal sermon, and a voyeuristic yearning to watch.

  The two women were entwined like braided coils of rope, strong and tight. The contrasts of their bodies, black and white, large and small, dominant and submissive, conjured up unfamiliar desires in Regan that twisted her insides with longing and clouded her mind. Muscles rippled in the stronger woman’s naked back, buttocks, and legs as she manipulated the smaller woman against the stall and rubbed their pelvises together. Throaty pleas from the brunette belied her feeble attempts at physical resistance. Her moans bounced off the tiled walls and plucked at a frayed nerve threatening to unravel inside Regan.

  The distinctive sm
ell of arousal mingled with moist air in the confined space and settled over Regan like a second skin. She tried to look away from the intimate exchange but felt as if she’d become an unwilling participant, ensnared in the sights, sounds, and scents of their spiraling sexual serenade.

  The dominant woman raised the brunette’s left leg onto the toilet seat, opening and exposing her, stroking and licking her, while she begged for more. Then she entered the smaller woman and plunged her fist deep inside. The power with which she claimed her surprised Regan and forced a gasp from her aching chest. But the brunette’s response was anything but pained.

  Her shapely body stiffened. The bronze color of her tanned skin deepened. Preorgasmic tremors twitched and rippled the surface of her skin. Low, husky moans magnified into sharp, needy pants. Then she opened her eyes and looked directly at Regan as the tall woman pistoned her fist in and out of her convulsing frame. Regan shivered. She wasn’t sure if it was from her own arousal or the unseeing emerald green eyes that looked through her.

  The brunette’s entire body humped, thrashed as she rode her lover through wave after wave of orgasm. Regan had never seen a woman so fully engaged in sex that she was oblivious to her surroundings. This woman appeared to not only love sex but to crave it for some reason beyond physical pleasure. As her body reveled in the sensations, she stared, unseeing. Regan detected a void in the lust-clouded depths of the woman’s eyes, the absence of something vital. She wondered what could sever the connection between the physical and the emotional in a woman so beautiful and vibrant.