In Pursuit of Justice (15 page)

“Terrific. Would you like to go out or—”

“No,” Catherine said quickly, “let’s stay in. We can watch a movie. I can cook—”

“Don’t bother—I’ll take care of that,” Rebecca said swiftly, then broke into laughter. “Maybe if we stop interrupting each other, we’ll be able to figure out what we’re doing. Is thirty minutes all right?”

“Anytime,” Catherine said, her voice suddenly husky. God, she’d never thought she could miss someone so much after just a day apart.

“I’ll be right there,” Rebecca replied in a tone filled with promise.

In fact, by the time Catherine found a parking place and walked the half-block to her brownstone, Rebecca had arrived and was waiting on her front steps, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe, hands in her pockets, and eyes fixed on Catherine’s face. The sight of her, all long lines and lean strength, produced a storm of anticipation in Catherine’s stomach.

“Have you been waiting long?” Catherine asked as she hurried up the stairs, searching in her briefcase with one hand for her keys.

“Only a minute.”

The four marble stairs bracketed by wrought-iron railings that led to Catherine’s front door were not very wide, and as she reached past the taller woman to fit her key into the lock, their bodies brushed lightly together. Absurdly, her hands began to shake. It was moments like this that made her wonder how she had ever believed that she understood anything about life or human relationships. How could she, when she had never experienced anything like this before? Of course, there was no understanding it, as it made absolutely no sense that the mere presence of this woman could reduce her to nothing more than raw nerve endings and mindless desire.

“You’re trembling,” Rebecca murmured. “Are you all right?”

“No,” Catherine said as she pushed the door open and entered hurriedly.

Rebecca followed with a paper bag filled with groceries tucked under her right arm. She set it down on the telephone table just inside the door and stood still, regarding Catherine intently as she dropped her briefcase. “What’s wrong? Has something happened?”

“No. Everything is fine.” Hesitating, Catherine wondered how much to say and then, at a loss for logic, simply said, “It’s just that…these last few weeks, I was so used to coming home and you would be here. We’d have dinner; we’d talk; we’d sleep together. I miss you.”

For an instant, Rebecca was stunned. She still wasn’t used to the fact that Catherine, so accomplished and intelligent…and so damn wonderful, could even
want
to spend any time with her, let alone miss her when they were apart. It was fantastic and terrifying, and she expected at any moment for it all to disappear. But there Catherine stood, three feet away, looking at her with something close to sadness in her eyes, and the thought of Catherine hurting in any way tore through Rebecca more sharply than any bullet ever could.

Propelled by concern, she swiftly crossed the distance between them and pulled the other woman close, whispering fervently, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about last night. I wanted to be with you.”

Threading her arms around Rebecca’s neck, Catherine pressed tightly against her, content for the moment to forego words and simply feel. Besides, there were no words to describe the sensation of everything suddenly being made right by a simple embrace. She didn’t understand it, but the veracity of it was undeniable. Rebecca’s hands moving softly over her back felt more essential to her being than the air she was breathing. “I love you.”

Rebecca closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against the silky softness of Catherine’s hair. “I love you.”

“Is there food in that bag?” Catherine asked after her breathing had steadied, leaning back slightly in the circle of Rebecca’s arms and letting her eyes play over that strong face.

“There is,” Rebecca replied, but it wasn’t food that she hungered for. Deftly, she lifted the blouse from beneath the band of Catherine’s slacks and slid her hand onto the warm skin at the base of Catherine’s spine. Circling her fingers over the hollow just above her lover’s hips, she pressed her own hips forward, drawing a gasp from the woman in her arms. “But it will keep.”

Their lips met, and for a time they merely swayed together in the midst of the gathering darkness, hands claiming flesh and lips pledging promises with kisses that grew more abandoned with each passing second. Catherine finally pulled back when she thought she was in danger of falling, her legs shook so badly. Gasping, she asked, “Does this go away? This feeling of never being able to get close enough?”

“I don’t know,” Rebecca answered, desperate for air, her chest heaving. “I’ve never felt it before.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” Catherine murmured almost to herself as she worked the buttons free on Rebecca’s shirt, pulling it from the trousers as she did. She pushed the constraining fabric aside and slid her palms over firm muscles, capturing the soft swell of breasts in her palms. “It’s beyond my control.”

“Good…don’t stop then…” Rebecca groaned, her knees nearly buckling as pinpoints of pleasure streaked from beneath knowing fingers. She shrugged her shirt off onto the floor and pressed her pelvis hard into Catherine’s, needing more—more contact, more connection, more sweet torture. Arching her back, she closed her eyes and tried to steady herself with her hands on Catherine’s shoulders. When she felt Catherine’s teeth on her neck, she thought her head would explode. She’d never had a woman take her this way, and she’d never even known before how much she’d wanted it. But she did. More than wanted it—she craved it. The feeling of surrendering to Catherine’s passion was more freeing than anything she had ever experienced. “Just don’t stop…”

“Can’t,” Catherine moaned, her head throbbing and her vision nearly gone. Some small working part of her brain reminded her that they were standing in the middle of her living room, and she grasped Rebecca’s hand and pulled her urgently toward the sofa. “Sit down,” she commanded as she yanked down the zipper on Rebecca’s trousers.

The backs of Rebecca’s knees hit the edge of the sofa, and she had no choice but to comply, feeling the rest of her clothes stripped from her thighs as she went down. She found herself nearly naked, Catherine in her lap, their mouths dancing over one another’s skin again. When fingers slid between her thighs, finding her unerringly, all she could do was drop her head against the back of the couch and moan. It had been like this that first night, her need rising so fast she’d never had a chance to contain it, but this time she didn’t resist the aching surge of pleasure. She welcomed the fire that burned through her blood, purging the wounds far deeper than flesh.

“Please,” she begged.

Catherine slipped to her knees between Rebecca’s legs and then leaned forward to take her with tender hands and demanding lips. No thought, no insecurity now. This—this splendor, this wonder, this indescribable beauty—this was hers for the taking, and take her she did. With certainty of touch and surety of heart, she lifted her lover on the wings of her own breathless desire to a place far beyond words.

*

Watching moonlight flicker on the ceiling, Rebecca sifted strands of thick auburn hair through her nearly lifeless fingers, unable to muster enough strength to lift her head from the cushions of the couch. Her thighs still trembled, and her stomach rippled with aftershocks. “Catherine?” she murmured hoarsely.

“Mm…”

“I’m wasted.”

“Me, too.”

“If you help me up, we can probably make it into the bedroom. You must be uncomfortable.” With effort, she slipped her palm beneath Catherine’s chin, raising her lover’s head from where it rested against her own inner thigh, and managed to focus on the deep green eyes. “If you give me a few minutes, I might be able to reciprocate, too.”

“I’m fine.” Catherine smiled. “Something else about being with you that surprises me—making love to you seems to set me off.”

“You amaze me, too.” She was tired, and her chest ached, and the lassitude that lingered after her climax had nearly lulled her into sleep, but she needed Catherine to know how much she wanted her. She needed to show her. “Still, I have plans for you.”

“Hold that thought,” Catherine said warmly as she pushed herself upright and extended one hand to Rebecca. “Let’s have dinner first. We both need to eat.”

“All right. Food first, but don’t think I’m forgetting.”

“Oh, believe me, I won’t let you forget.”

As it turned out, time slipped away. It was close to midnight by the time Rebecca stir-fried the vegetables and noodles she’d picked up earlier in the evening, and even later by the time they finished eating and piled the dishes into the dishwasher.

“Come on,” Catherine announced, grasping Rebecca’s still-untucked shirttail and tugging her away from the sink. “Bed. I’m fading and—”

“I need to go out, and it’s already later than I thought.”

Catherine stopped moving abruptly, letting the material fall from her fingers. “What?”

Exhaling softly, Rebecca turned and rested her hips against the counter. She didn’t want to see what was in Catherine’s eyes—she was afraid it would be that combination of hurt and resentment that had so often been in Jill’s—but she forced herself to meet the other woman’s gaze. There were questions in the depths of those green eyes, and confusion, but they hadn’t grown cold. Not yet. Drawing a deep breath, she steeled herself for the pain that was sure to come when Catherine turned from her in anger, and pushed herself to answer.

“I’ve been away from the job a long time. I want to get a leg up on this new case, and there are some people I need to see.”

Catherine stared at her, struggling to absorb the words and place them into some context she could deal with. There wasn’t any. “Tonight? In the middle of the night—alone?”

It was Rebecca’s turn to be confused. “Catherine, I’m a cop.”

“Of course, I
know
that, Rebecca,” Catherine snapped, rubbing the bridge of her nose and pacing the length of the kitchen. “I thought this first assignment was desk duty for you. A paper chase.”

“It is—well, it is and it isn’t. It’s a real investigation, and a lot of it will be done through computer searches and whatever the hell else it is that those eggheads are going to do, but there’s real police work to be done, too. Someone out there knows
something
about this racket, and I need to find out what.”

“What about Watts?” Catherine heard the edge in her own voice, realized that she was still pacing, and forced herself to slow down. Screaming would not help, and the very fact that she
wanted
to scream was upsetting enough. She’d been involved with other women before—nice, interesting, attractive women. None of them had ever turned her upside down this way. “I thought
he
was going to do the street work?”

“He is,” Rebecca affirmed. She took a chance and walked the few feet to her lover, tentatively taking her hand. The slight contact eased some of the tension in her stomach, although Catherine’s response was guarded. “But he can’t talk to my contacts. It took me years to cultivate them, and they don’t talk to just anyone. I’ll just be talking. I swear.”

Catherine took a step away, but she kept her hand in the detective’s. She couldn’t think clearly when they were so close. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? When you got here…or on the phone when I called you from the car?”

The cop was silent.

“Rebecca?”

“I was…” She ran a hand through her hair, shrugged her tight shoulders. “I thought you’d be angry. I thought you wouldn’t want to see me.”

“Angry,” Catherine said softly, incredulously. The desire to scream had returned. So had the desire to hold her, because the detective’s uncertainty, her expectation of loss, was so plain in her voice. “Did you not think that I might be worried? That I might be concerned that you’ve barely been out of bed a week and you’re already working fifteen-hour days? God, Rebecca…”

Dropping Rebecca’s hand, Catherine walked over and sat wearily at the small kitchen table, motioning to the adjoining chair with one hand. “Sit down. You look tired.”

Rebecca sat. “I meant to tell you, but when we got here—”

“I didn’t give you much opportunity to talk then, did I?” Catherine finished, a faint smile relaxing her troubled expression. “I barely gave you a chance to say hello.”

“I wanted you, too. All day. Badly.” Rebecca took her hand again, and this time Catherine’s fingers laced comfortingly between hers. “When you touch me, everything just…falls into place. Everything makes sense.”

“I know.” She brushed her fingers over the detective’s cheek. “For me, too. Our nonverbal skills are just fine—outstanding, as a matter of fact. But we need to do a little better on the verbal parts.”