Hannah Bronto - Lovers in paradise

"Oh, yes, sir. I'm quite familiar with the famous Malachi Browne." She flashed a dazzling, if not sardonic smile at me. "I'm looking forward to working with him. His reputation is almost legend."

"That's it!" I said, slapping my palm against Commissioner Moran's desk. "It's just not going to work. I can't work with her."

Her ice-blue eyes froze up, and her smile melted away. "If you object to me, sir, because I'm a woman, let me just say…"

"No, no, no! It's not that." I waved away her objection with a disgusted flap of my hand. "I wouldn't care if you were a kangaroo, I still wouldn't want you for my partner. I don't want anyone for a partner. I'm a loner, sister. I work by myself."

"I am not your sister," she said in carefully controlled anger. "My name is Jocelyn Wolfe. You may call me Jocelyn, or you may call me Miss Wolfe, but I will not stand for you calling me…"

"Oh, God," I moaned sarcastically. "One of those!"

"Listen, buster…"

"Stop it. The both of you." Commissioner Moran gave us both withering looks. "You're acting like children instead of the professional policemen that you, both are. You are going to be partners, whether you like it or not; is that understood?"

"But Spencer, for Christ's sake," I tried once more, "listen to reason. I'm a loner – you know that. A partner, any partner, will only get in my way. It will slow me down. It will prevent me from doing my job effectively. A partner will…"

"A partner will help you," Commissioner Moran finished for me. There was a rigid tone of finality in his voice. "Besides, look at this from a purely professional point of view. The crimes you'll be investigating involve rape and women. Wouldn't it make sense to you, therefore, to have a woman's perspective in on the case? She'll see things that you might not even be aware of simply because you are not a woman. But Jocelyn is, and on top of that, she's a damn fine policewoman."

Jocelyn's voice was subdued. "Thank you, sir."

I heaved a mighty sigh. "Yes… yes," I grudgingly admitted. The idea was sound. "That does make sense… I guess. All right. I'll work with a partner. That is if she has no objections."

"I have none," Jocelyn said.

Commissioner Moran smiled a tight uneasy smile of relief. "Thank goodness that's settled. If you both don't mind my saying this, you acted more like children than professionals. In many ways you're both very much alike – independent and headstrong and resentful of being told what to do; but, in the same breath, you're both damn fine cops. If you learn to work together I'm confident that between you you'll have this matter settled in no time at all."

Jocelyn and I mumbled something quietly appropriate.

"All right," Commissioner Moran said. "Get out of here, the both of you. I want you to keep me posted on every move you make. I want full summaries, daily. Now go to work and solve this damn case."

I looked at Jocelyn, and she looked back at me. Something like a smile passed between us. I don't think she was any more ecstatic about the circumstances than I was, but what the hell. We had no choice. Together we got up and began to walk toward the door.

"Oh, yes!" Commissioner Moran called. "I just remembered something. Mal, I'd like to speak to you for a few seconds more. You know where Detective Browne's office is, don't you, Jocelyn?"

"Yes."

"Why don't you wait there for Mal. I'll only keep him a moment."

When she was gone, Commissioner Moran called me over to his desk.

"What is it, Spens?" I asked.

"I didn't want to say this in front of her, Mal," he began, looking concerned, "but we – the department are worried about Jocelyn. As little as two months ago she was considered by everyone a cracker-jack policewoman. She had all the potential in the world of developing into something really special. She had all the tools: a fine mind, sensitivity, keen perceptions… everything."

"And then?"

Commissioner Moran sighed, "It's tragic. Her husband left her. They were married for less than two months, and Jocelyn was mad about him. She literally worshiped the ground he walked on. But he left her for another woman. She took it very poorly. The psychiatrist's report says that her father did the same thing to her mother when Jocelyn was only a little girl: he left them for another woman. Apparently, in Jocelyn's mind, she convinced herself that she was responsible for both incidents. With that kind of a load to carry around, she cracked. She had a nervous breakdown."

"I wish I'd have known," I said, feeling sorry for her. "I wouldn't have made such a fuss before."

"For a long time she was very bad: depression, even suicidal; there was a real possibility that she wasn't going to pull through. She did, thank God, but the trauma changed her. It shook her confidence in people and in herself. She's still floundering, looking for something to grab onto. Her psychiatrist suggested that work would be the best possible kind of therapy for her now. So we put her on this case with you."

"I see."

"There is a possibility that getting back to work, being in on an important case, with the possibility of solving it, may restore her to what she used to be before. She had a fine mind, Mal, and would have been a first-rate police officer one day. She still may, if we can pull her through this. If not, I'm afraid she's out. This just may be Jocelyn Wolfe's last assignment, so, please… don't be too hard on her."

Jocelyn was sitting at my desk, studying the files, when I returned to my office. I smiled at her without pitying her, and I said: "Would you like to go to dinner? We can discuss the case together."

"I've already eaten, thank you." She smiled. "But I'll let you buy me a beer."

"A beer?"

"Sure. I simply love beer!"

Somehow Jocelyn and I wound up in bed. Actually, it wasn't an accident; I'd planned it this way. Of course I was sympathetic toward her and what had happened to her, but I decided that sympathy wasn't the best way to begin a professional relationship. The case we were on was a serious case, and I wasn't about to carry her no matter what was in her past. The quality and tenor of our partnership had to be established right from the beginning. She had to know that I was in charge, and that she was my assistant. So, in a tradition that men had used from time immemorial, I decided to use sex as a way of gaining the upper hand. I seduced Jocelyn Wolfe.

Actually, it wasn't all that difficult to do: she seemed fairly willing. It was very late when I'd gotten her to her apartment, and the lobby was empty. We'd had a nice long talk – about the case, about Jocelyn, about me – and we'd consumed an incredible amount of beer. To say that we were both more than slightly drunk would have been an understatement. We were smashed.

"Oh, I don't think I could take the antigrav shaft," she said, shaking her head. "My stomach doesn't feel all that great now, and I'm certain that floating up fifty or sixty floors won't help it either. If you don't mind, lets take the elevator."

The elevators were in the rear of the lobby, and they were completely deserted. Hardly anyone used them any more. We stepped into the brightly-lit car, and the doors closed. By the time we were half-way up to her apartment, I had two fingers in Jocelyn's juicing cunt. I twirled the fingers around, and jabbed them in and out until my fist and fingers were all sticky with her leaking excitement. She pulled my cock out, and she began to stroke it with her curled fingers, squeezing hard into the shaft until I felt my balls tense with pleasure.

With my cock still jutting nakedly from the open zipper, we hurried to the door of her apartment. Jocelyn called out her name, and the, voice-print mechanism verified her identity. The door slid open.