didnât have to bend.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, and I could feel him through the layers of cloth that separated us. My body pulsed with the contact, and I broke from the kiss, not to breathe but to cry out.
He pressed me to the tabletop, his groin grinding into me. Lying on the table he was too tall to maintain the kiss and keep our lower bodies pressed together, so he raised himself up on his arms like a push-up, keeping his body pressed into mine.
I stared up the length of his body and finally met his eyes. They held the darkness that usually doesnât come to a manâs eyes until later when the clothes are gone and thereâs no turning back. I grabbed two handfuls of his shirt and pulled them, sending his buttons flying, baring his chest and stomach. I raised up, doing a sort of sit-up so I could lick down his chest, run my hands across the flatness of his stomach. I tried to put my hand down his pants, but his belt defeated me.
Suddenly, the room was full of uniforms and plainclothes detectives. They pulled Alvera off me, and he fought them. They had to pile on top of him, ride him to the floor in a mountain of uniforms. He was screaming, wordlessly.
I lay on the table, the skirt hiked to my waist, my body so full of blood and need that I couldnât move. I was angry, angry that theyâd stopped us. I knew that was stupid. I knew I didnât want to have sex in an interrogation room in front of an entire precinct, and yet . . . I was still angry, still wanting.
A young uniformed cop was standing beside the table. He was trying not to stare and failing. It was easy to grab his hand, to press the Tears over the pulse point in his wrist. His blood beat against my hand, and he bent over me, kissed me before anyone noticed what was happening.
Someone said, âJesus, Riley, donât touch her!â
Hands grabbed Riley, tore him from my lips, my hands. I reached for him, sitting up, screaming, âNo!â I started off the table to go to one of them, when another detective grabbed my arms, held me sitting on the tableâs edge. He stared down at his hands as if heâd burned them against my bare arms. He said, softly, âOh, my God.â
Just before he bent and kissed me, he yelled, âGet some women officers in here.â I learned later that this medium-build, slightly balding man with the strong hands and the muscled body was Lieutenant Peterson. They had to handcuff him before they could carry him out of the room.
I was buried under a mound of female officers until I couldnât move. A couple of the female officers had the same trouble that the men had, just as at least one of the men had had no problem not manhandling me. Nothing like being outed at work!
They got Jeremy back in to redo the warding. I calmed, eventually, but I was in no shape to talk to anyone. Jeremy assured me that heâd talk to narcotics for me, though he was pretty sure that the officers who had been in the room with me would be persuasive on the dangers of Branwynâs Tears.
Roane was waiting for me, a pair of surgical gloves on his hands so he could touch me, a jacket to throw over my head to keep people from recognizing me. The police took us out the back way. So far the media didnât seem to know that Iâd finally surfaced and under what circumstances. But someone at the police station or on the ambulance would talk. They might do it for money, they might do it by accident, but the media would find out. It was only a matter of time. A race to see which hounds would find me first: the tabloids or the Queenâs Guard. If Iâd been well, Iâd have gotten in my car and driven out of state that night or caught the first plane to anywhere. But Roane took me to his apartment because it was closer than mine. I didnât care where we went as long as there was a shower. If I didnât get my body free of the Tears or have sex soon, I was going to lose my mind.
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