Bang (12 page)

“As it should be.” Neither of them say anything for a moment. Jack glances down at his beer, back up at her. “You ever think about more kids?” he asks.

That surprises her. It doesn't exactly feel like first-date conversation. “I don't know,” Mari says truthfully, tracing a fingertip around the rim of her pint glass. “I thought I was done, after Sone, but. With the right person, maybe, yeah.”

Jack nods and then she knows they're both thinking about it, the day at the motel right when he first got cleared for duty, the trip to CVS for the pills. You could be the right person, she wants to tell him. What happened that day doesn't mean you're not.

Before they can talk anymore about it, though—before Mari can picture it, his pale skin on a baby, his freckles and whether or not they might be hereditary—the bartender comes back with a second round of Harpoons. “We can't really get properly blasted here,” Mari observes, grateful for the distraction. “At least one of us has to drive.”

“True,” Jack says, looking at her speculatively. “What do you reckon we do about that?”

Mari hesitates. What she wants to do is take him back to her house, to stretch out in her bed and pull him down on top of her, but that's not exactly an option seeing as how she's thirty-three years old and lives on the other side of the wall from her mother. Three weeks she and Jack have been doing this, and already they've managed to fool around under the same roof as both of their parents. A little privacy wouldn't be out of line.

“My cuffs are in my purse right now,” Mari hears herself tell him. “I mean. Just putting that out there.”

Jackson's eyes just about fall out of his head. “Are you serious?” he asks quietly, and she can actually see his chest move as his breathing quickens. “I—”

Mari nods. She threw them in there at the last possible second instead of putting them on the shelf like she usually does. She has never, in all her years on the force, used them for anything not work-related. The way Jack's looking at her now makes her feel like the most powerful woman in the world.

“Uh-huh,” she murmurs, everything in her middle drawing up high and tight and ready. His eyes are impossibly fucking dark. “So. Probably you should finish your beer and invite me over.”

Both their pint glasses are full to the brim. Without taking his eyes off her, Jack picks his up and downs it in four easy gulps. Mari finds herself absolutely captivated by his Adam's apple. He has a long throat that should be too skinny but ends up being strangely elegant instead, smooth and streamlined and pale. Mari never used to go for white boys.

“Done,” Jack says. His voice is just the slightest bit hoarse. “Now you.”

Mari licks her lips and picks up her glass.

Mari wants to take separate cars so hers isn't parked outside a bar all night, which in Jackson's opinion is a lot of practicality coming from a woman who just proposed using state property for sex. He feels buoyant following her out the door and into the brisk afternoon, hands in his pockets to conceal a semi like some teenage kid. Mari's wearing some loose sweater thing that comes down over her ass but Jack can already tell these are the jeans he likes, the tight tight pair that leave angry red marks around her belly. All of her wiggles when he yanks them off.

“I'm gonna use the siren,” he says, grabbing her hips in the shadow of their two cars and grinding himself against her ass. “I swear to God.”

Mari laughs and rolls herself back against him, this really great full-body thing that makes Jackson feel like he's paying by the hour. “No,” she instructs calmly. “You aren't.”

Alone and buckled into the driver's seat, Jackson glances at his phone and finds three missed calls from Terry. He and Jackson have been avoiding each other since their dad's birthday dinner, but Jackson texted just before noon today to tell Terry about the manhunt.
We know who the shooter is now
, he said.
They're going to try for an arrest today
. He thumbs through his messages now as Mari flicks her lights, pulling out into the flow of traffic.

That's fucking—that's so great
, Ter wants him to know. He sounds about as delighted as Jack feels.
We should get drinks, man. Fuck. I'll buy you your own fucking keg.

Jackson laughs and makes a mental note to call back later tonight.

Probably much later.

Mari is already waiting outside his front stoop when he pulls up, looking mussed and glorious in the October wind. In the decade since they've known each other, Jack has been careful to never date anyone who looked even remotely like her. He only slipped up once: the week of her honeymoon, while she and Andre were off at a Niagara Falls bed-and-breakfast, he had a one-night stand with a paralegal from Chicago who happened to be Hispanic. To this day, Jackson tells himself it was her smile and not something else that made him offer to buy that beer.

“Beat me, huh?” he asks now, reaching out for Mari's hands and pulling her up to her feet to stand flush against him. Her palms are dry and improbably soft.

“I sped,” Mari tells him, grinning, tipping her face up for a kiss. Jack reaches down and around, squeezing her generous ass right there in the open. Mari laughs against his mouth. “Fresh,” she chides him, turning and climbing the short concrete staircase. Jack slides his hand right between her legs in response, and this time she gasps. “Open the door,” she murmurs, crowding him on the top step. “Jesus, Jack.”

“Uh-huh,” he says, fumbling with the keys a bit and then again at the door to his unit, Mari nipping at the back of his neck.

“I like this shirt,” she tells him distractedly, fisting her hands in the waffle fabric at his sides, rubbing her fingertips up and down the muscles in his back. Jack feels like his whole fucking brain is on fire. He feels invincible, someone who could reach out and snatch bullets right out of the air, someone with a life that's his for the taking. Someone who got shot three times and didn't die.

After an eternity the knob finally turns and they stumble into his apartment like a couple of drunk idiots. He kisses her for a long time up against the island in his kitchen, licking his way into her wet, willing mouth and knocking her knees wide apart with one of his. He keeps himself there once he's done it, the heat from between her legs bleeding right through two layers of denim, her hips working hard against the muscle in his thigh.

“That's it.” Jack squeezes her rib cage and rubs his palms up her body, cupping her breasts through the soft weave of the sweater. His thumbs find her nipples and she gasps. He's rough with her, pinching through the fabric until she arches; Mari sinks her teeth into his neck. “Shit.”

“Mm-hmm. Keep touching me,” Mari mutters. She's sucking to leave a mark now, he can tell she is, the pull of her mouth at the soft, thin skin of his throat. Jack's more than happy to oblige. He works his hands up underneath her sweater, popping the hook on her bra with two quick fingers.

“Turn around,” he hears himself say.

Mari hisses and obeys, shoving at his thigh until he backs off far enough for her to maneuver. Jack doesn't give her much space, grinding his hips against her ass, trapping her between the island and his body, his palms flat against the countertop. He feels horny and shameless, doing shit that would embarrass him normally, jackhammering his dick against the soft curve of her body, letting out an audible groan. He's got both hands back up inside her sweater, pulling at her nipples with basically zero finesse at all.

“Bend over,” he tells her roughly, clumsy fingers at the button on her blue jeans as she helps, yanking them and her black cotton panties halfway down her thighs. That's not going to do it, though—there's no way he can have her how he wants her with her legs hobbled—so he follows the denim down her body, tugging, almost losing his balance with the force of the motion.

“Okay,” Mari says, huffing a desperate-sounding laugh. “Okay, just let me—” She turns and curls her strong fingers around his shoulder to keep her balance, each of her leather boots hitting the hardwood in turn. Her fingernails leave pale half-moons in his skin. “There,” she says breathlessly when she's barefoot, standing upright and letting him pull everything down the rest of the way. “That good?”

“Mm. Bend,” Jack says again, and this time Mari does it, dropping down on her forearms against the laminate and God, fuck, shit, Jack has such a huge, terminal thing for her ass. He grabs it now and squeezes, hard.

Mari keens, pushing herself back at him until he does it again. He wants to leave bruises, wants to look at her in the morning and be able to tell he was here. “We need a condom,” she reminds him, low and urgent. “Jack, remember we—”

“No we don't,” Jack interrupts her, dropping down onto his haunches behind her, running his palms up and down her thighs. “Not yet.” He bites at the curve of her ass a bit, just teasing, then slides two fingers right up inside her from behind. Mari gasps.

“That feel good?” he asks quietly, pulling at her knee until she gets the message and widens her stance for him. She smells salty and sharp and good. “Hm?”

“Yeah.” Her voice sounds muffled. When he glances up she's gone and dropped herself down flat against the island, head pillowed on one arm and hand clutching all that dark dark hair. Jack bites once more, harder this time. She's soaking wet, slick all between her legs with it. He tugs her feet apart even farther, bends his head to lick at the inside of her thigh. “Is good.”

“How good, huh?” Jack does it again, a little dizzy with her, sliding his hands to her hipbones and pulling. He wants to fill her up and cover her, wants it so bad it scares him. He gets his hands on her ass again, spreads her and licks.

“Oh my God,” Mari says, this sound like a sob muffled into the crook of her elbow. “Oh my God, oh—” She's still wearing the sweater, bra loose and unhooked underneath. He does it again, the taste of her there new and unfamiliar. There's literally nothing about her Jackson doesn't want to know.

“Where are the cuffs?” he asks her, heart thudding, teeth scraping at the plush bottom curve of her ass. “Mari. Tell me now, where are the—”

“In my purse,” Mari says, her whole body vibrating. “On the floor in my purse, please, I need—”

“Yeah.” Jack swallows and licks her one more time before he lets go, pressing his tongue up inside the ring of muscle. Mari's whole body jumps like she's been shocked. He taps her thigh once and reaches across the living room floor to grab her bag, rooting underneath her wallet and her car keys. Finally his fingertips close around the cool, smooth metal, and his heart somersaults inside his chest.

He turns back around to find Mari finally pulling her shirt off. Her hair's one big static flyaway, breasts lying heavy and lush against her ribcage. Jack feels his dick jump inside his jeans. “Come here,” he mutters, grabbing her by the wrist and sucking one nipple into his mouth, then the other. He likes the look of them like that, spit-shiny and drawn up tight. He reaches out and flicks one, and Mari whines.

“Please.”

“On the couch,” Jackson says breathlessly, nodding toward he brown leather three-seater. Mari slides her palm down over his cock.

“You gonna take those off first?” she asks, slipping two fingers into his waistband and yanking. She plucks the cuffs out of his grip with her other hand. “Or am I gonna be the only one naked again?” Then—and Jesus Christ in heaven, it's the hottest thing he's ever seen in his fucking life—she snaps them nice and tight onto her smooth brown wrists.

There's a roar in Jackson's head like a river. “Off,” he says, popping the button of his jeans and pulling at his thermal. He hesitates briefly at his T-shirt but then that comes off too, the cotton warm as he yanks it over his head.

“Shit, you're pretty,” Mari says. When he looks up she's sitting on the couch, cuffed hands resting on the couch arm and her legs spread far enough that he sees pink. “You're the prettiest guy I ever did this with, swear to God.”

Jack huffs, shucking his boxers. He picked up a brand-new four-pack of underwear last weekend, neutrals colors, good cotton. It feels girly as fuck, wanting to look good for her. “Is that what I am?”

“Yep.” Mari lifts the cuffs up and folds her arms behind her head, threading both hands through her hair. “That's what you are.”

Jackson laughs. She looks like a woman expecting a show so he reaches down and pumps his dick a few times, feeling like he's in a locker-room pissing contest and a porno in equal amounts. The combination of touch and her watching make him shudder.

Mari hums appreciatively. “I'd clap if I had the space,” she says. “Get over here.”

Jackson does. He sucks hard at her neck, then her breasts, then her stomach. She's smooth and round and ripe, all taught plush skin and hanging curves. But Mari pushes him away when he licks there, giggling like he's playing a joke. “Not my belly, come on,” she whines. “Don't look.”

Jackson doesn't know how to tell her he finds it sexy, that the wiggle on her when they really start going is what makes him blow his load half the time, so he manhandles her into a different position instead, up on her knees with her front draped over the back of the couch. She lets him, body gone soft and rag-doll pliant. When he's finished positioning, she lifts her elbows just a fraction, letting the cuffs dangle down behind her neck like an invitation. She isn't looking at him, but Jack can see the tips of her ears go pink.

“Shit.” He hooks one finger around the chain and pulls lightly. “Yeah. Like that.” But then she looks so hot he can't resist biting down her spine, slipping off the couch for a second to kneel on the carpet and pay homage to that ass again.

Mari's legs are shaking with the effort to spread herself, cuffed hands opening and closing in her dark, glossy hair. Jack spreads her ass open with one hand and works two fingers from the other back inside, finger-fucking her nice and sloppy while he licks. When he starts twisting his wrist in tandem with his tongue, he feels her start to clench. “Gonna,” she tells him, pushing that fantastic ass back in Jack's direction. She's so wet that he can hear it, has her all down the bottom half of his face. “Oh Jesus Christ, Jack, please don't stop.”