Uncommon Romance (16 page)

“Sure. Come by when you’re done. Maybe we’ll still be there?” Reeva smiled like she was flirting with a boy, and Jude wondered if it was intentional.

“Maybe.” Jude slipped on her sunglasses and headed off in the other direction.

The office was easy to find, listed on the directory along with countless other Special Agent so-and-so instructors. Her entire name was printed on the nameplate next to the door.
Special Agent Beverly Hollis.
Jude smiled. Now she knew the instructor’s first name, a name she planned to be moaning later, whether under her own efforts or with help from the challenging Agent Hollis.

She knocked, but there was no answer. She tried the doorknob and the door opened easily. Hollis said she wanted Jude in her office, so Jude took the liberty of showing herself inside. The office was small by any account, but certainly larger than the space her desk took up in the bullpen of the homicide department. Still, she would use the size against Hollis if it promised to be fruitful. She didn’t have a good-enough read on her to know what her tastes were. She guessed, based on Hollis’s tone, her forward way of looking and touching without permission, that Hollis was a dominant. But she’d been wrong about that too many times in the past. She’d learned to be patient, to let a woman show her what she wanted.

She had a choice between a plush leather couch along one wall or a straight-backed wooden chair. It was simple, utilitarian, and placed Jude center stage when Hollis entered the room. There was no contest. Jude selected the chair.

She sat, back to the door, spine rigid, palms flat against her thighs. With her feet squarely on the floor and her body weight evenly distributed, it was easily one of the most comfortable positions Jude had been made to wait in. She relaxed into the posture and took a deep breath. She’d learned the easiest way to survive the boredom was to not allow it to set in. First she found a focal point—the nameplate on Hollis’s desk—and then focused on her breathing, on keeping it deep, even, and well regulated. She let her thoughts roam, but not her eyes. She kept her attention facing forward as she let her mind wander.

The small window behind Hollis’s desk had horizontal blinds that had been raised to the top, letting the afternoon sunshine and light the room. As the sun began to set, the light in the room dimmed. Jude hadn’t turned on the light when she entered. It was fully dark when she heard the door handle engage.

A soft snick and the room filled with light. Jude blinked for a moment to let her eyes adjust.

“You waited.” Hollis’s voice adopted a warm, honeyed sweetness.

“Of course.”

The door clicked shut behind her, and then Hollis entered Jude’s line of vision. She closed the blinds before turning to face Jude. “I’m pleased.”

She still wore the same FBI-issued slacks and shirt. She carried the jacket in her hand and slipped it over the back of her ergonomic office chair. It looked decidedly more comfortable than the one Jude was seated on.

“Do you know why I asked you to come here?” Hollis circled the desk and perched against the corner, her ankles crossed, hands resting on the edge of the desk. She tapped her index finger against the polished wood surface as she regarded Jude.

Jude nodded. She was absolutely certain why she’d been summoned and then left to wait. And the prospect of it made her light-headed and giddy. She loved this stage of a new encounter, one where boundaries were tested and established.

Hollis raised her eyebrow. “Well?”

“You wanted to see if I would come.” Jude chose her words carefully. She wanted to say everything, but not too much. Similar to Hollis.
I want you in my office.

Hollis nodded, the fingernail tap-tap-tapping. “Yes, I suppose I did.”

It was clear at this point that Hollis liked words. She wanted Jude responsive and vocal. She’d watch carefully to see when that leeway ended.

“And you left me here as a test, to see if I would wait.”

Hollis smirked then, her lips raised without fully committing. “And you did.”

“I did.” Jude relaxed into the chair, the first time in the hours she’d been there. Yes, she was pushing, but that was the fun of it. “I’m hoping it was worth it.”

Silence grew between them as Hollis stared at her without speaking, the smirk softening. Finally, she pulled away from her perch and circled back around. She took a seat, opened a file, and slipped on a pair of reading glasses. They made her look smart. And sexy.

“You’re forty-two?” She said it like a question even though she was no doubt looking at the answer on the piece of paper in front of her.

Jude decided to play along. “I am. How old are you?”

Hollis glanced at her while still studying the file. It was an impressive trick. “Forty-six.”

She was in damn good shape. Jude approved of her workout routine, whatever it was.

Hollis continued. “You do not report to me. Outside of this training session, I have no influence over your future or your career. Do you agree?”

“Sure.” Jude sat up and leaned closer to Hollis. Things were getting interesting.

“I want to be very clear about that before we go any further. Please say it.” Hollis engaged her “I’m in charge” voice and Jude snapped perfectly upright. No more relaxing back or pushing forward. It was a matter of reflex, and until she was told otherwise, she had no choice but to follow her training. At this point it was engrained in her at a cellular level.

“You do not have the power to ruin my career.” Her sodden underwear and her sanity in that moment? Absolutely. Her future as a detective with the Portland Police Department? Not in danger at all. Jude didn’t point out that Hollis was the only one at risk in this scenario.

Hollis nodded and closed the file. She removed her glasses but didn’t return them to her desk. She held them in her hand like an accessory, using them to gesture when appropriate, occasionally chewing on the stem that made her teeth flash white in a way that drew Jude even tighter in her seat. At forty-two fucking years old, Jude Lassiter was officially hot for the teacher. God.

“Tell me, Jude. Why do you think I asked you to my office?” Hollis chose her words too carefully and Jude smiled in spite of herself. She’d already given this woman too many little acts of disobedience to use against her. She didn’t need to add fuel to the fire.

“You didn’t ask.” Despite her self-preservation instinct, Jude poked at Hollis once again.

“No, I didn’t.”

“You said
I want you in my office
. I took the order at face value. You want me. In your office.” She left a long, pregnant pause between the first and second half of that sentence. “And I very much like the idea. So here I am.”

“And here you are.” Hollis echoed Jude, her eyes growing darker with every passing moment. Still she didn’t move. Jude had made it very clear that she understood. And that she was willing. She would continue to wait until Hollis was ready for the next move.

Finally, after staring at Jude with those dark, probing eyes for so long Jude was certain she’d leave a wet spot on the chair when she stood, Hollis spoke again. “Do you have a safe word?”

“Of course.” Jude was a little insulted. Even experimenting college students had a safe word. And she’d made it pretty damn clear that she was well beyond amateur status. She might have let her irritation show in her tone of voice.

Hollis raised an eyebrow, perfectly manicured and arched without interrupting the flow of her face. Her skin was flawless and beautiful, and her eyes flashed hot and cruel. A lesser person would have squirmed in her seat, but Jude sat fast.

“Would you care to share it with me?”

Oh, yes, she very much would. “Strawberry jam.”

Hollis folded her glasses and returned them to the case in her desk drawer. She moved with controlled precision, every gesture economized and flowing into the desk, like office tai chi.

“Strawberry jam?” Hollis nodded as she said the word, her face tilted, contemplating the worthiness of a word chosen so long ago that Jude rarely thought of the circumstances anymore. It’d seemed poetic and ironic at the time. Now it just seemed functional. Like every other part of her training, it was ingrained. She would not forget, no matter how much Hollis might try to break her.

Hollis moved to Jude’s side and leaned over her, her stature comforting and intimidating and commanding. Jude’s breath hitched when she felt Hollis’s fingers caress the length of her cheek, then dip inside her collar to graze the smooth skin of her upper chest. She spoke directly into Jude’s ear, her voice low and dangerous. “Good. I’m going to make sure you need it.”

Jude slept for shit. It was a strange bed, in a tiny, strange room with a roommate she didn’t know. Reeva, for all her awkward charm and beauty, had a respiratory problem that made her lungs work fine most of the time, but then they’d stop at random intervals while she slept. As a result, she had a machine to make sure she stayed alive through the night, and it made her sound like Darth Vader.

And really, she could have slept through all of that if Hollis hadn’t been such a fucking tease and left her with the biggest case of blue balls ever. Hollis had promised to push Jude to breaking, and then she’d left. That was it. Jude was flooded with arousal, her panties embarrassingly wet, and Hollis had simply walked away with a command that Jude wasn’t allowed to take the edge off herself.

It was a test. And Jude hated tests, especially this one. No matter what she did, Hollis won and Jude lost. Except she didn’t. If Jude jerked off, Hollis would know. Of that, Jude was absolutely certain. She probably had some heightened sense of smell and could detect self-induced come on a woman’s fingers. And she would definitely punish Jude for disobeying.

If Jude waited—which was what she chose to do—she got to sport an over-sensitized clit with no idea when Hollis would take mercy and bring her off. Either way, Hollis got off on the control and Jude’s discomfort. Fucking manipulative Dom.

She’d squirmed in bed, rubbing her thighs together miserably and cursing Hollis. Not that she could have done anything about it anyway, with Reeva and her mechanical lung four feet away, but being told she couldn’t made her want it that much more.

After a quick shower, she and Reeva made their way to the cafeteria together. Jude was barely awake and stumbling, and Reeva was far too awake and chipper. If the girl asked her one more question before she found the coffee machine, Jude would honest to God choke her to death with the plastic tubing that led from her breathing machine to the mask she wore on her face as she slept at night.

“What’s it like to be a detective?” Reeva asked with bright-eyed curiosity. “Have you ever shot anyone?”

Jude squeezed the bridge of her nose tight between her fingers. God help her.

“How is it possible that you actually work for the FBI?” How this absurdly naive girl from fucking Topeka managed to land a career with the FBI was a mystery to Jude.

“Oh.” Reeva paused for a moment. “They recruited me.”

“Of course they did.” She didn’t even want to know why.

They arrived at the dining hall and Jude could smell coffee, but she couldn’t actually
see
it. Except, of course, in the hands of other people. It seemed everyone but her had a paper cup filled to the brim with glorious black coffee. And Reeva chose that moment, the one time Jude needed her all morning, to disappear. Fuck. She was on her own to find the coffee.

Reeva returned before Jude could truly orient herself and pressed a cup into Jude’s hands. “You look like you need this.”

“Oh my God, I love you.”

Jude took her coffee hot and black. Beyond that, she didn’t care about the particulars, and the cup Reeva brought her was perfect.

Reeva smiled at Jude, all open and confident like Jude had no choice but to like her. As she gulped black coffee, Jude could almost agree.

“Want me to show you around?”

Jude nodded. She needed more than coffee to fill her stomach and help her make it through to lunch.

“Good morning.” Hollis’s smooth voice registered at a visceral level long before Jude realized that the woman walking past with a filled tray was their instructor. Her spine straightened reflexively. She was too tired, too unprepared to stop the reaction before it happened.

Reeva didn’t notice, but Hollis did. She smirked at Jude and continued to a table filled with other instructors. She sat too close to a cute blonde, who was almost as bubbly as Reeva, and Jude choked down the rising bile in her stomach. Hollis winked wickedly and took a loud, crunching bite of an apple, then casually draped her arm over the back of the other woman’s chair, brushing her shoulders with her fingers as she did. The woman smiled at Hollis, then went back to her bowl of oatmeal and her conversation.

Reeva grabbed Jude’s arm, and coffee sloshed over the rim and burned her skin.

“Come on, it’s this way.”

Jude shook the coffee from her fingers and dutifully followed Reeva with only a mumbled “Shit!” as admonishment. She glanced over her shoulder at Hollis one last time to discover that Hollis was no longer paying her any attention. She was fully engaged in the conversation at her table, leaning forward and speaking with great passion.

Reeva led Jude through the options with too much ease for a person who’d only arrived the day before. Jude selected a simple protein smoothie. It was easy to consume and even easier to digest. The less she had to think right now, the better.

They joined a group of their classmates at a table on the other side of the dining room, too far away for Jude to truly see Hollis, but close enough to track her outline. She felt like a stalker.

“Tell me why they recruited you?” Jude asked after she’d finished her first cup of coffee and started on her second. She felt a little more human after her initial intake of caffeine and therefore more willing to try at playing nice.

“Because I remember things.” Reeva added jam to her toast from a small square packet, the kind that was always too much for one piece, but never enough for two. “Well, everything, really. I remember everything.” She said it with the same uncertain cadence that she’d used for every communication so far, and Jude found it both endearing and annoying.

“Don’t be late for class.” Once again Hollis snuck into their conversation before Jude realized she was coming. She smiled directly at Jude with too many teeth and
I dare you
in her eyes. It was terrifying and yet Jude was irresistibly tempted. She definitely would dare.

“What happened to you yesterday?” A man whose name Jude couldn’t remember asked the question.

Jude watched Hollis walk away until she rounded a corner and dropped out of sight. Then she turned to the group and shrugged. “I had a few things to take care of.” She wasn’t about to tell them what she’d really been up to.

“I was worried. Special Agent Hollis looked like she was ready to kill you when you argued with her.” Same guy again. He regarded her like he knew something she didn’t. Too bad he wasn’t interesting enough for her to care.

“I didn’t notice.” Jude sipped her coffee.

“Seriously?” Reeva gaped at her. “She was livid. And when she walked over to you during the movie, I about shit. I’m glad I’m not you.”

Jude snorted. “What do you think she’s going to do?” Jude was certain that with all of Reeva’s goofy, Bambi-like sweetness, the worst she could think of wouldn’t even come close to the truth.

“I don’t know. Fail you?”

Jude switched to her smoothie. She had too much caffeine in her stomach without a buffer, and she’d pay for it if she didn’t change that soon. “This isn’t high school, Reeva. I’m not being graded.”

Everyone stopped eating and stared at her.

“You’re not?”

“You are?” Jude looked closely at her classmates. They all wore identical FBI-issue T-shirts with the agency emblem on the front right. “Oh, shit. You are? Am I the only person here who doesn’t work for the FBI?”

“At this table, yes. In the class, no,” Reeva said.

“You’d know that if you’d arrived the first day with the rest of us.” Suddenly, Jude was very interested in knowing this man’s name.

“I’m sorry, who are you?”

“Tim.” He stuck out his hand gamely.

Jude shook it because that’s what cops did all day long, shake hands with people they’d rather not touch. She’d learned long ago to use the experience to help her read other people.

“Okay, Tim, you’re right. I would know if I’d been here. But I figured that learning your name and vocation on day one wasn’t quite as important as scooping up a sick fucker who likes to kill women and then fuck their skulls.” Jude took a long drink of her smoothie.

Tim turned a satisfying shade of green. So did Reeva.

“If you’ll excuse me.” Jude pushed away from the table and stood. Dramatic exits aside, she really didn’t want to be late. It was too early in the day to provoke Hollis. “I’m going to head to class.”

Reeva chased after her. “Is that true?”

“What?”

“That part about…skulls.”

“Yeah.” Jude tossed her trash into the bin with too much force. It didn’t budge and that made her feel foolish. Her outburst had no place here. She scrubbed her hands over her eyes. “Sorry. It’s been a rough week.”

Reeva squeezed her shoulder. “I can’t imagine.” Maybe Reeva would be okay after all.

“You shouldn’t have to.”

They walked out of the building and were halfway across the compound before Reeva spoke again.

“So what’s the deal with you and Special Agent Hollis? For real?”

Jude smiled. “Nothing.”

“That was convincing.”

Slumber-party confession wasn’t Jude’s style. She knew better than to share anything tangible. Especially with a person who “remembers everything.”

“What do you think’s going to happen? I’m here for three weeks to
learn.
Then I go back to Oregon.”

“But she’s hot, right? You noticed that?”

“She’s definitely hot.”

“I knew it!” Reeva did a ridiculous little hop clap that made Jude mildly nauseous.

“Jesus, calm down.”

“I can’t. You have a crush!”

Jude stopped walking and stared at Reeva. “What are you? Like twelve?”

“No, but I saw you watching her yesterday. And she is hot. And now we’re bonding because you talked to me about it.” Reeva clapped again.

“Are you kidding me?” Jude shook her head and started walking again. Reeva laughed and skipped to keep up.

“Yay!”

“Stop it. You’re a federal agent. Have some decorum.”

“They didn’t hire me for my decorum.”

“Right. I forgot. You remember things.”

“That’s right. Like yesterday you wore workout clothes for classroom time, which means you didn’t check the itinerary beforehand. Obviously you were a little tied up with the whole apprehending-a-psychopath thing. And you were cold, with goose bumps and everything, but you wouldn’t take my jacket. You were watching Special Agent Hollis and obviously didn’t want her to know you were cold. And, just so you know, she was watching you just as closely.”

“And?”

“And since the sun was bright enough the blinds didn’t block it out, the light switch, which should have been on the opening side of the exterior door, was actually located in the middle of the back wall. And Hollis tapped her fingers against the wall heating unit sixty-seven times after you joined the class, but didn’t do it once before. And you smelled like bus even though you obviously took time to change. Your shoelaces were tied perfectly in the middle, but your hair was coming undone. And the video showed two people on the screen, but there were at least six in the room, based on the shadows and background noises—”

“Enough. What do I have to do to get you to promise to never, ever do that again?”

“Admit she’s hot.”

“She’s hot.”

*

“What were you talking to Reeva about?” Hollis scraped the sharp edge of her nail along Jude’s spine.

“When?” Jude stood naked and blindfolded in Hollis’s office. The combination was so disorienting she wasn’t able to track Hollis’s subject change.

“A few days ago when you were leaving the cafeteria.”

Hollis’s voice floated into her, disembodied and soothing. It wove Hollis into Jude’s subconscious, fixing her in place with sense memory of pleasure and pain. Memory recall of any event that took place prior to Hollis securing the scarf over her eyes and saying “Trust me” was a complete loss.

A sharp, stinging blow landed across her backside, in that crease too low to be ass and too high to be thigh. The cutting line caught her off guard. Hollis’s gentle touches had lulled her into relaxing. She sucked a breath through her teeth and straightened instantly. She’d been sloppy, and Hollis had called her on it.

“I don’t remember.”

“Let me help.” Hollis traced her fingers over the fire-hot line where she’d just struck her. Jude wondered what she’d used. The ruler from her desk? It definitely wasn’t her palm. Her touch was cool and comforting, taking the heated bite from Hollis’s skin. “Reeva said ‘she’s totally hot,’ and you agreed. Now do you remember?” Hollis held her mouth close to Jude’s ear as she spoke, and the word “hot” shivered down her spine and further fanned the flame building inside her.

Jude vaguely remembered the conversation. It’d been Jude’s first trip to the cafeteria and they’d just finished eating.

“I remember. She was talking about you. She thinks I have a crush on you.”

Hollis laughed, a weird mix between surprise, amusement, and cruelty. “How cute.”

“She’s young.” Jude couldn’t remember a time when she’d been so staggeringly naive, but she imagined she must have been at some point. Maybe when she was twelve.

“Yes, she is, but is she right?” Hollis resumed her slow tactile exploration of Jude’s body.

“About what?”

“Do you have a crush? Should I get you a collar and make it all official?”

Jude couldn’t stop the snort that escaped at Hollis’s question. It was just too absurd for her to do anything else. “That won’t be necessary.”

“No?” Hollis circled her neck with her hands where a collar would go. She pressed in tight to close the circle. It was snug, but not suffocating. Jude focused on her breathing and waited. “You wouldn’t like that? A snug band of leather around your throat to remind you who owns you?”

Hollis squeezed hard enough to cut off airflow, and Jude’s head swam. It didn’t matter that she had plenty of oxygen in her lungs; the action both excited and frightened her. Something to explore later, perhaps.

She shook her head no, and Hollis loosened her grip but kept her hands in place.

“Have you ever worn a collar?”