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I go upstairs.
* * *
My apartment looks exactly the same. And I kind of hate it for that.
The throw blanket’s folded on the sofa. My shoes are lined up by the door. There’s peonies on the kitchen island that I bought myself on Sunday, and a picture of me and my parents on the bookshelf. It’s clean, quiet, a perfectly nice apartment that belongs to a perfectly sensible woman.
I don’t think she lives here anymore.
I kick off my heels and start stripping on my way to the bathroom. The cream silk blouse I steamed at five thirty this morning. The tailored charcoal pants, because nothing off the rack ever fits my waist and ass at the same time. The elegant gold hoops Mama gave me the day I passed the bar. My court armor. And it all smells like that place now. Bleach, stale air, and scared men.
I try a hot shower. Bad idea. I try a cold one. That’s worse.
Because I’m scrubbing the prison off me, and I don’t want all of it gone… I want him back. I close my eyes, looking for it. There wasn’t enough, nowhere near. But I remember. Woodsmoke. Rain. Warm skin, and something dark and wild under. I remember the second it hit me, my body going… oh. There you are.
I put my forehead against the tile.
“No,” I say in the silence. “We’re not doing this.”
My nipples pebble under the spray. My clit’s throbbing like a second heartbeat. I turn the water colder.
It doesn’t help. At all.
* * *
By eight o’clock, I’ve eaten half a piece of toast and walked about four miles around my living room.
My bag’s by the front door where I dropped it. His file’s in there. I put it in at six this morning, tabbed and color-coded, back when I was a professional.
I open it.
I don’t read the motions. I know the motions; I wrote two of them. I flip all the way to the back, to the photographs.
The first one’s his booking photo. It’s four years old. His hair’s shorter, and his beard’s trimmed down close. There’s a scar cutting through his left eyebrow, and another one that curves down from the corner of his mouth into his beard. His nose has been broken at least once. There’s a height chart behind him, and he’s taller than the chart.
I’ve seen a lot of mugshots. Guys are always either scared, or trying real hard to look like they’re not. He’s not doing either one. He’s just looking straight into the camera. Calm. Ice cold. Like he’s got all the time in the world, and he’s going to remember your face.
Good God.
I’ve looked at this picture before. I prepped this file two weeks ago. I looked right at this photo, and I thought, jury must have hated him, and turned the page.
I guess a photograph doesn’t have a scent, a presence, someone’s essence…
The second one’s from the newspaper. It’s him walking into his sentencing between two marshals. They’re not small guys. They look like kids next to him. He’s in a dark gray suit, no tie, white shirt open at the neck, and there’s a thick pale scar climbing up the side of his throat. His hands are cuffed in front of him. They’re huge and scarred.
The same hands that were reaching for me earlier.
I look at his face for a long, long time. Hard jaw. Tight mouth. The file says Eyes: BRN. The file’s wrong. They’re gray. Dark gray, like a storm coming, right until they went gold.
He’s forty-five. And he looks like a man who’s been in a fight every one of those days, and won.
He’s not handsome. That’s not the word. God, no. Handsome’s safe. He’s… I don’t even know. He’s the most male thing I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s rough, huge, terrifying, and I want to climb him like a goddamn tree. I want that beard between my thighs. I want those big, scarred hands all over me. I want to know what that mouth tastes like.
My hand’s in my robe.
I don’t remember putting it there. But it’s there, and my fingers are sliding through my folds, and oh my God, I’m so fucking wet. I’ve never been this wet in my life. I’m swollen, and slippery, and so sensitive that the first brush over my clit makes my hips jerk off the couch.
I’m a member of the state bar, and I’m sitting on my sofa fingering myself to a client’s sentencing photo…
