The Number

He nodded now. "Yeah. Whatever. Look, Jaeckel's going to want to see you in the morning about a ticket you gave out today. The driver has called like five times."

"And he can call five more," I snapped. Goddamn Red SUV. I was aware, in that sinking way you get when you know you're about to get fucked in the ass, that my ticket on Shore Road was probably not going to hold up, and that Jaeckel was probably going to be angry about that, and that I was on thin ice already. "What else?"

He shrugged and yawned. "Your partner's still working," he shrugged. "That case the two of you caught last month. The drugs, on that boat?"

"Oh. Yeah. Shit." My last bust as a detective in good standing, just before Tony had skipped out of town.

"And then Sergeant Murcia is finishing up his radio inventory. Other than that, the station's empty." We both glanced at the duty chart, showing the four cars of the night shift and their sectors. My heart sank.

"Burke is supervising." I glanced over at him as I brought it up; he'd gotten Burke pregnant years ago, I knew, and they loathed each other. She was a useless bag of shit, counting the days until her pension vested fully. "So I'd imagine aggressive policing is not really on the menu tonight."

He stretched in a blatant show of indifference. "Not my problem, Lindberg. It's yours." He reached between his thighs and jacked himself crudely. "You sure you don't want a piece before I leave?"

I smiled, one of those smiles I'd used often when I was working Vice. "Know what? Maybe. Stand up, Mike," I purred quietly, giving the door a theatrical glance. "If you show me what you've got, I might think about it..."

His eyebrow rose mistrustfully, but he was only a man: he rose to his feet, way up above me, his beady little eyes trying to pry into my shirt. "Show you what I've got?" he rasped.

"Go on." I put on that husky voice guys loved. "Take your dick out. I want to see what all the fuss is about."

"Show me your tits first," he breathed.

"Nuh-uh," I whispered, "it doesn't work that way. You want it? Prove it." I stepped closer to him, so he could smell my shampoo. "Roberta Burke told me once you had the biggest cock she ever had," I lied. "She said you loved showing off. Well?"

He was already scanning around the foyer, making sure we were out of the cameras' range, as he moved his hand to his fly. "For real?"

"Totally," I smirked. I lowered my head so that I could look up at him through my lashes, Vice-style, and debated whether I'd have to escalate to gnawing on my lower lip. "Time's wasting, Sergeant LaFratta. Let me see what I've been hearing about."

A cunning grin spread over his stupid face as he lowered his zipper, licking his lips as he fished around inside his underwear. "Goddamn, Lindberg. I guess it's true, what I've heard about you," he whispered, throat already thick with lust.

"That's right, baby," I cooed, "I'm the station whore." I stuck my hand out under his fly, expectant, so that he could haul his meat out and sling it right into my palm. "There he is," I murmured, looking down between us. He arched his back slightly, settling his warm dick across my hand. It lay there, stubby and brutish and fatter than I'd expected, and I was struck by how much it resembled the ridged, wrinkly look in the photos of those little microbes? In the drops of water?

Ah yes. A tardigrade.

He preened for me. "What do you think?" It was getting harder already, and I could feel it. It gave me a brief but unwelcome thrill, a reminder that he and I were the same, in some ways: no matter how much sex you got, a new partner was always exciting.

I took a deep breath and held his eyes on mine as I closed my hand around his shaft and began to squeeze. He didn't worry until I didn't stop squeezing, and around the time I started to see doubt cloud his eyes, I leaned in and hissed in his ear. "Let's make one thing clear, LaFratta. I could sling my pussy all over this town. I could spread for every shithead in that drunk tank. I could let every cock in this station jam me. And with all that?" I smiled, my fingers tightening. "I'd still never let you do me."

"Fuck you," he snarled, batting my hand aside as I laughed my way into the comfy chair behind the desk. "You're a goddamn bitch."

"Have a pleasant night, Mike!" I called gaily while he zipped up and grabbed his stuff. He didn't look back at me as he stomped off, the back of his neck bright red, leaving me cackling in his wake as I threw my feet up onto the desk.

So. DiMaggio was still working. Good.

* * *

I barely waited until Murcia went home before I forwarded the desk phone, locked the station door, and stole upstairs to Detective Division. I still had my desk up there, but it wasn't like I really had time to do much at it. Nowadays, it had mostly become my partner's spot to store excess shit. He sat there now, flipping through some paperwork, bent over some reports in the halo of his desk lamp. He looked up when he heard my boots on the top step.

He squeaked back in his chair. "Yeah," he nodded, lip curling, "as soon as I saw your name on the shift sheet, I figured you'd be up here." Bastard. We'd only been fucking for a couple weeks, and already he was starting to take me for granted. The night I'd first let him have me, he'd spent hours licking me out. He'd stopped doing that now, the balance shifting quickly.

I didn't like that change. At some level, obscurely, I was starting to worry about it. But there was another level, that night, where I wanted dick, and he had one, and that was as simple as I'd need it to get. It had been building all day: the faculty advisor's veiled glances, at my detail. Red SUV and his supercilious attitude. Alex Krasnov, and the memory of what he could do to me. The fat microbe-dick of Mike LaFratta, its smell still on my hand.

All of it yelled at my pussy, waking it up, prodding it all day. Reminding me it was there whenever I was trying to think about anything else. Refusing to settle for my fingers in the station bathroom, at least not once I knew DiMaggio was still working. I stared at him now. "Hi, Aaron," I rasped, cursing the husk in my throat. "Wanna bang?"

His eyes narrowed as he glanced up at the clock. "I'm expecting a call in like five minutes, Jules."

I laughed and sauntered across the echoing floor, swaying around the other detectives' desks, feeling my pulse start to race. "You don't usually last much longer than that, kid," I murmured, my fingers working at my buttons already. Usually I wore a sports bra to work, but there's not much for a desk sergeant to do; DiMaggio's eyes rose when he saw lace and satin under there, and holy shit! Is there anything better than when a man wants to fuck you?

He was nodding already, taking off his watch. "Fucking slut," he rasped. I shivered, and it bothered me that I knew he saw it. He'd taken to denigrating me with just a little too much pleasure, and once again I started to get a little worried about who was using whom, here. He rose, tugging his tie loose and then throwing his gun on the desk so it wouldn't drag his pants down when he undid the belt. "I'm going to destroy that conceited pussy of yours."

"Promises, promises," I sneered, my own overloaded gunbelt hitting the floor with a small crash. I'd taken off everything but the gun, one mag, and my cuffs, and still the motherfucker seemed to weigh like twenty pounds. "I'm never really sure you're man enough to handle me."

"See, you always say shit like that," he snickered, working at his zipper, "and each time I leave you wrecked." He pushed his pants down to his knees and undid his buttons, taunting me with the dick that poked half-hard out the front of his boxers. I grinned. I like older guys as a rule, but young guys like Aaron could get so stiff, so fast. It was just what the doctor ordered tonight. "Bare? Or rubber?"

"What the fuck do you think?" I snarled. It wouldn't be the first time I'd bent over a desk in Division, and I was sure it wouldn't be the last. "When have I ever let you fuck me raw?"

"One of these days, Julie," he rasped, shrugging his shirt off, the desk lamp reflecting off his tight undershirt, "I'm going to just rip that thing off and show you what it's like when a real stud shoots in you." His hand was in his boxers, jerking himself all the way hard, eyes glittering as he watched me strip off my uniform shirt. "Nice bra."

"Thank you." I winked at him, hands at my zipper. "Think the panties match, DiMaggio?" I toyed with my waistband, easing my fingers around as he let his boxers fall. I giggled. "Jesus. It didn't take you long tonight."

"I told you." He stretched toward me, long and thick, balls swinging low. "I'm on the clock. So bend your ass over, or get the fuck out."

I flared, my eyes wide. "I'm not sure I like your tone, Detective DiMaggio," I warned, stopping just a few inches beyond his reach. I stood there in my bra, pants unzipped but held together by my trembling hands. "Don't forget who writes your evaluations."

He arched an eyebrow, hand clasped around his straining dick, and then without warning he lunged at me, his hand a vise around my upper arm as he threw me across my own desk and then leaned a steel forearm across my upper back. "I said," he hissed, "bend your ass over, or get the fuck out." I felt his other hand clawing at my waistband, dragging the thick pants down over my hips, past my butt, until suddenly he stopped pulling and flipped his hand around, cupping hard at my pussy. I groaned despite myself, the desktop chilly on my tits. "Wet little slut."

"Get the fuck off me," I snarled back at him, but it wasn't like I was struggling. Especially when his finger steered smoothly past the edge of my panties and wormed its way into a slit gone soupy with lust. "Ohhh, fuck," I gasped.

"Sure you want me to glove up?" He eased up with his forearm, but kept his hand there, splayed over my spine. Reminding me of his power. I hated that I loved that. "You sure you don't want to take me the way I know you really want?"

"Goddamn you," I wailed, arching back, trying to impale myself on his fingers. He had me where he wanted me. I was honest enough to admit to myself that if he stuck it in right now, no condom, I wouldn't stop him. I needed him in there, his fingers a churning reminder of what he could do to me. "Fuck me!"

"Stupid bitch, letting Massacoli get away," he jeered, "but it's got you working nights at least, whoring yourself for my dick." I was almost weeping, needy and frustrated, my hips driving me randomly back; with an effort, I made myself realize that the hand on my back had now been joined my his other hand on my hip, meaning the thing in my pussy... He thrust forward, his cock driving balls-deep just once as I heard him chuckle up above me. I felt myself parting, spreading, stretching as he pushed. "Bet you did it on purpose, letting him go. I know you were fucking him." He drove back into me after a breathless, empty moment, his thighs crashing into mine. "Not like you fuck me, though, huh?"

It was true, so true, painfully true: Tony had been my bitch. Aaron, it was increasingly clear, was not interested in that role. "Fuck you," I spat, head twisted painfully around as he seized my bra strap, hauling on it.

Another reminder.

"No," he laughed, "fuck you." He drove into me once more, a really hard jam, bruising my thighs against the desk before, with another gurgled chuckle, he withdrew and slunk over to his desk to pull out a condom. "Just stay put," he called to me.

And I did. With my cunt creaming into my stretched panties and my workpants halfway down my thighs, I stayed put. With my chest heaving, bra letting both tits burst out in disarray, skin scarlet from chin to nipples, I stayed put. Goddamn me. I faced away from him, savoring the soreness in my breached pussy, anticipating more thrusts with a bizarrely perverse sense of eagerness as I heard the snap of latex behind me.

And then he was in me again, more slowly this time. More perversely. I could tell he was savoring it, the endless taboo: sex with the boss. I bowed my head, my forehead resting on a pile of blank DG-344 reports as I groaned low, cranking my legs as far apart as my pants would allow. "No," he grated at once, "keep them together. I want you tight." His smack on the meat of my ass was a stinger, loud, delivered with real feeling, and I was on the verge of twisting around to tell him to cut that shit out when he did it again.

And bottomed out at the same time.

"Ohhh," I moaned again, filled with that hot-lava feeling of being used. I was going to cum all around his plunging dick, and it was going to be a big one.

"That's it." His voice was a cruel, mocking incantation. "Take that cock, you stupid whore." He swiveled his hips quickly back, then jammed me again, the desk beneath me squeaking on the linoleum as he shoved it forward with me sandwiched helplessly in between. He spanked me once more. "You know everyone in Division thinks you're a brainless little bitch, don't you?" Another ringing smack. "We spend all day up here laughing at you when you're on your details. We talk about your tits. We wonder how it'd feel to do you up the ass."

"Fuck you," I managed, my boneless body on fire, held up by nothing but the shoddy desk and his sturdy dick. His reply was more mocking laughter and another stinging smack, this time across the other cheek, followed by a confident thumb pressing on my asshole.

What the fuck was I doing? I asked myself, vaguely, but just then I heard the birr of a ringing phone from over on DiMaggio's desk. He stopped for a moment, both of us looking over. "My call." He sounded like he was barely breathing hard. "Pick it up, Detective Sergeant Lindberg," he chuckled. "It's one of our CIs."

"No shit?" I watched my drool land on the stack of DG-344s. "Which one?"

"Keyes? Dickwad Keyes?" He eased back into me, and I could hear the gloat in his voice as he watched my pussy grip him. "From the Birdie Robbins case."

"Fuck." I leaned sideways, gasping when that made his dick touch a new part of my pussy, and fumbled his phone to my ear. "Detective Lindberg," I snapped into the phone. "What the fuck do you want?"

"Yeah," came Dickwad's smarmy voice, "is DiMaggio there?"

"Sort of." He snickered behind me as he eased out slowly, so slowly, then drilled me again, hard, the desk squeaking once more. "He's nearby," I managed. I closed my eyes as Aaron reared back once more.

"Look. Let me talk to him!" Dickwad bellowed into my ear, or something like that, but at that point Detective DiMaggio was quite unable to come to the phone: he was bouncing his balls off my clit far, far too vigorously to care about a phone call.

Come to think of it, those bounces probably had something to do with my own lack of interest in the call, too, along with the exciting discomfort of his thumb, burying itself thoughtfully up my butt. "Look," I managed between thrusts, my teeth gritted, "fuck off. Call back in about... oh, five minutes?" DiMaggio's pace told me he was about to cum hard, so I hastily added, "less, maybe," before thumbing his phone off and flinging it across the room. In the very next moment I was wailing out my orgasm, almost sobbing on my desk as it washed over me, cutting through my malaise and driving my brain crazy with blanked-out desire. "Fuck!" I screamed.

"Yeah," he chanted, low and eager, "here it comes," and with that, I felt that emptiness one more time as he whipped his big dick out of my twitchy, nerve-frazzled pussy and slipped the rubber off. I watched it sail past my head and knew what was coming: him, all over me. He loved to paint me. "Get on your knees," he gritted tightly, desperately, and with my legs protesting I whirled around and sank heavily to the floor just in time to see the big, glistening head of his wide cock, his hand and balls a blur as he jerked himself at my face, and I was still wondering dully whether he'd deliberately put it in my eye again when, with a strangled cry and a hand gripping the back of my head, he launched all over me.

And yes. Of course he got my eye first, the bastard.

* * *

My thumbnail was scraping at an errant cumstain on my left eyebrow when my phone warbled. I'd done my best in the Detective Division bathroom, but you always miss a spot or two. I put away my little mirror and peered over at my phone.

Shit.

I don't know why I'd never added The Number as a contact. Superstition? Like I'd be tempting fate if I honored That Number with a label, that I'd give it legitimacy? Not that it mattered much, because The Number itself had been showing up on my phone lately. Twice in the last week, both times text messages. Then that call this afternoon on my way to the diner, after the detail.

And now, apparently, another text.

I frowned, hesitating before I grabbed the phone, thinking that looking at the text would make it real, make it an actual thing I'd have to deal with. Thinking I should ignore the phone completely, maybe even block the number. But on the other hand, it was fucking two in the morning and I was bored. So I seized my phone in one convulsive grasp and thumbed it awake, staring at the little screen.

The smilie-face emoji did not make the message any easier to digest. Tony sez he misses u, but Im taking good care of him. And the photo that came along with it?

I gaped at the phone. Because there he fucking was. Tony Massacoli, my shithead of a snitch who'd left me twisting in the breeze with that little bitch Traci Golden. His eyes stared at me in the pic, but the lower half of his face was obscured by the top of a well-trimmed bush, with smooth young skin curving down toward his nose and a pair of thighs framing his face: he was eating her out as she took the pic.

Or i guess i should say hes taking good care of me! the next text gloated, complete with some other emoji, and I threw the phone down fuming. Another incoming text cajoled me into picking the phone back up, and after a couple of frowning seconds I let myself do just that. He sez i taste better than u. I glared down at my cursor, mocking me as it blinked, daring me to reply. Cya! Enjoy desk duty!

I had to make a fist to keep my thumb from racing for the little digital keyboard. "Enjoy desk duty." Little bitch. She was ruining my life, and all for some mediocre cunnilingus and... what? She'd stolen ten thousand dollars from her boss and then skipped town with that boss. I knew firsthand that he wasn't that great a lay, and I'd seen Traci Golden: the chick was on fire. She could snag any dick she wanted. Why had she saddled herself with him?

I was still pondering that as another message shook the phone in my hand. Oh. Great. An audio. I brushed the PLAY icon without even thinking, only to be greeted by the breathy theatrics of a woman selling an orgasm to her man. "Oh, fuck! Yeah! Eat that wet cunt, Tony, you motherfucker! Get your tongue in there! Ohhh... yeah..." She yipped off into a series of wheezy moans as I sat there rolling my eyes.

And then it occurred to me that the chat app would show her I'd listened to the audio.

"God fucking dammit!" I grunted, pissed at myself. I'd intended to let her think all the messages were going unread, unheard. Unseen. But that was fucked now, so I gritted my teeth and let my thumbs unleash themselves. Enjoy that dickhead's mouth while you can, whore, because when I put you in jail, the only lips down there are going to belong to... I blinked down at my phone, having completely run out of things to type.

But, fuck, she'd see that I was replying. I'd need to send her something.

I ran my hands through my hair, perturbed when I found yet more of DiMaggio's crusty remnants, and backspaced that whole thing. Instead, I opted for something slightly more professional. Because these texts, incredibly, would probably show up in court one day. I took a deep breath, my mind racing to come up with something. Anything. Thank you. I'll look forward to seeing you soon! I eventually typed, aware that it was pretty lame, but not really caring by that time.