Friends and Lovers (1)

“C’mon Stu…” she giggled as I struggled to get my front door key in the lock, left handed, my right arm was fully occupied, it was full of Jo Masters. We were not entirely sober. She had her arms around my waist, and she was nuzzling the side of my neck, and giggling a bit. I have to admit that she was propping me up just as much as I was holding her.

It was infectious that giggle. I honestly don’t know what we were finding so very funny, especially as it was taking me at least five minutes to unlock my own front door. Anyway, finally I managed it, and we virtually fell in through it.

We scrambled up the stairs to my living room, where Jo collapsed in a happy, slightly giggly heap on my sofa. We succeeded in making our case. We nailed the bastard, it had taken almost a fortnight of painstaking work. We’d dotted every i, crossed every t, submitted a mountain of paperwork to the CPS, exhausting hours of overtime, we’d pulled two all-nighters, and we had forty eight hours off to look forward to. So we were very drunk. I shifted towards the kitchen, and attempted to fiddle with my coffee maker. Coffee would be good. I heard the pad of feet behind me, an arm slipped around my waist, I was drunk, this is true, but I couldn’t control this funny little skip in my pulse when her arm went round me.

My first encounters with DC Joanne Masters were not at all promising. I really didn’t understand her. Then Cindy Statham was murdered, and I got a front row seat for just how great a cop Jo is. I was there for all of it. Jo’s persistance was incredible, her intuition wasn’t something that you learned, it was bred into her.

We clashed at first, then something changed. I don’t know what, I only know that the morning that Larry Franks was sent back to jail, and Jo didn’t turn up for work, I got a tiny little insight into what intuition really is. When eight o’clock came and Jo wasn’t sat across from me at her desk, coffee, a danish, her phone ringing constantly, I knew that something was wrong. When she hadn’t called or shown up by ten past, I was starting to feel a bit panicked. Which isn’t like me, I don’t panic.

By half past, I’d already found out that she wasn’t in court, and had left about eight messages on her landline and mobile. I remember that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I think I went a little crazy.

When the text message arrived, and she called me hun. She had never called me that before. On one level I knew that message was simply telling me that she was in trouble. Much later, when it was all over, that one little word would come back to haunt me, but I didn’t know that at the time. My pulse did a funny little skip then. I should have known, but hindsight is always perfect. We got her back in one piece. I wasn’t there. I was back at the station, co-ordinating, which given what I was told about her rescue in the days following, I was honestly relieved. It was bad enough imagining it.

When it was all over, I was on my way home. Jo pulled up in the station car park as I was walking out to my car. She stopped me, to thank me. In that moment, I didn’t know what to do. She said thank you, my confused brain was trying to process this information and my natural instinct for covering up feelings kicked in big time. Then she put her arms around my neck.

I can’t tell you what that was like. She put her arms round my neck and something just went twang inside. That was very nearly the closest I’ve ever come to complete collapse. She knew it, and she covered for it, helped me get myself under control again.

Over the weeks and months since, we’ve grown close, Jo and I. I trust her. I’ve been able to talk to her, I’ve told her things about me. We’ve sat in cars together for hours, we’ve been bored, and excited, and totally focussed and utterly laid back together. I know what she’s thinking, I’ve learned to trust her instincts. She’s saved my career, and there was a point at which she pretty much saved my life too. All through that, Jo’s been the most important person in my existence.

Anyway, she had an arm around my waist, and she was leaning into me, her head against my shoulder, her gorgeous chestnut hair was brushing my cheek, and my fingers had turned to thumbs as I tried to get the coffee machine going. “Wine!” she reached past me, tilted her face up and gave me that look, “come on, Stu, let’s live a little.” I gave up the struggle with the coffee maker, a struggle which made no sense as I worked it out a long time ago, and looked at the three bottles sitting in the rack.

“Okay….. what do you fancy?”

She leaned into me a little more, there was a really nice warm feeling spreading through my psyche, I didn’t stop to ponder what it was, I knew, and that was a place that I couldn’t go.

She looked up at me. “Options?”

“Chianti, Riesling or……” I couldn’t remember what the third one was, so I picked up the bottle “Chianti….”

“Chianti it is then.”

I put the bottle down and turned to reach for the glasses, which meant we were facing each other. There was a look on her face that I’d never seen before. She put her hands around my neck, mine instinctively went to her waist, and we just stood there, and I acknowledged deep down inside what I had known and had been avoiding for months, I had a serious crush on Jo Masters.

Those big odd coloured eyes were looking into mine, and she had this really strange expression on her face, as though she wanted to ask me something, but was scared to. Which isn’t Jo at all. I could relate to that. There was something I was longing to ask Jo Masters, but I didn’t want to ruin the only real friendship I had.

I also knew that I was going to have to let go in a moment, before my body told Jo everything she needed to know about how I really felt about her. My brain was sending messages to my hands to let go, my hands wanted to slide further around her waist and pull her gorgeous, curvaceous, stacked, sexy body up against mine, and just let the rest of me do what came naturally. Jo is gay, she wouldn’t have appreciated the you Jane, me Tarzan routine.

So I’m standing there, I’m holding my best friend in my arms, and I want so very badly to go the rest of the way, but I know I can’t ruin our friendship. Finally, my hand pries itself away from her waist and I pick up the bottle. Her hands unwrap themselves from around my neck… which is crying out for them to stay…. and she turns and picks two large wine glasses out of the cupboard.

I follow her to my big comfortable sofa, my neck can feel the imprint of her fingers against it, the shadow of her soft rhythmic caress, my body ached for hers to press against me again, so I busied myself getting the bottle open.

~~~~

I awoke in my bed, and I didn’t remember getting into it, still less the reason why I could feel the warmth of a body curled into mine. I lay there, on my back, trying to work out why exactly I couldn’t remember how I got here, and what precisely I had done. I could see a mane of chestnut hair fanned out across the pillow next to me, and a soft cheek was resting against my bare shoulder. I moved slightly, and a feminine hand wrapped itself round my bicep, the fingers gently kneaded, and my body’s response was instant. I wanted Jo. As far as I could see, all Jo wanted was sleep. So I had a significant problem. I had to remove myself from the vicinity, and the ache would go away. A cold shower.

Very carefully, I eased away. I slunk out of my bedroom, best not use the ensuite, so I went down to the bathroom and turned the cold tap on in the shower. It was freezing. I stood under that freezing stream until I was shivering and my teeth were chattering, but it didn’t make the slightest shred of difference. I decided to make some sort of warm drink, in the vague hope that it would make me feel sufficiently sleepy to go back to bed and just do that.

Two bottles and the wine glasses were still on my coffee table. No doubt leaving rings. I scooped them up, and it was then I noticed the piece of paper. It was Jo’s hand writing, mostly, and we’d both signed it. I put the bottles and glasses down, and picked it up. Reading it made my head spin… and I had to sit down. I read it through three times before my addled brain could make sense of the words, and since I’d signed up to it… I didn’t know what to think. I abandoned the idea of a drink, and the glasses and bottles. My head in a whirl I headed back to bed. Trying to work out in my head exactly what I had or had not done.

I slipped quietly back into the bedroom, she hadn’t moved, she was curled into the space I had left. I watched her hand stray across the indentation where my body had been about ten minutes before. I was absolutely freezing and my teeth were chattering, but I watched that slim hand carress the sheets, and I wanted her like a physical pain, I dithered. I didn’t know what to do for the best.

I gave up the struggle. I was cold. So I lifted my corner of the duvet and slid back in. Trying very hard not to disturb her. I wasn’t wholly successful, as she curled into me, her hands wrapped round my bicep again and she snuggled up. “You’re freezing…” she muttered without opening her eyes, “where did you go?” She snuggled into me, and a hand rubbed itself across my chest. I turned onto my side, facing her, and she burrowed right up against me.

Well, the spirit was willing to try, but the flesh was having none of it. An ice cold shower, and resolve to behave myself like a perfect gentleman had absolutely no control over my body’s response to her presence. She burrowed closer. “Oh my!” she said, I had my eyes screwed tight shut, but there was an unmistakable smile in her voice. I could feel myself starting to blush. All over. If I was freezing before, that definitely warmed me up. Then the hand that had been tracing lazy patterns on my chest and around my left nipple, edged downwards.

“Oh…. my!!” my voice wobbled in a way it hadn’t done since puberty, and she edged downwards, her lips and tongue traced a little trail down my neck, across my throat, and continued south, with a little detour around my right nipple this time. When she took a careful, sucking nip, and the tip of her tongue flicked over it, I nearly passed out from sheer excitement.

I’m not completely clueless. I’ve had girlfriends, I’ve even managed to get one of those girlfriends pregnant. But I’ve never really done what Jo was doing to me. I decided to get in on the act.

“ah, ah, ah…” she said. Those incredible odd coloured eyes were looking at me, that impish smile was tugging my strings like an expert puppet master, and then I registered what she had in her hand. I swallowed. I’d never done that before…. She waggled the thing in her hand in front of me. I’d never done it…. but….. shit…. I swallowed. And nodded. If I had tried to say anything, my voice would have dumped me right back in the primary school playground again.
A minute later and I was starting to wonder just exactly what I had got myself into. Jo cuffed my wrists with my own handcuffs and leaned in to kiss me, pushing my hands above my head… I was so concentrated on kissing her back, I didn’t even notice when she tied the cuffs to the headboard of my bed.

She straddled me and leaned forward. Her beautiful, big, full breasts brushed my chest, I wanted to touch them, touch her, like she was touching me, but I was very securely attached to the headboard of my bed. She put her hands on my wrists, and slowly slid them down my arms, as she slid her body down mine. I wanted her in a big way. As she found out when she slid to a stop just above my not inconsiderable erection. She moved again, I tried to buck my hips a little, encouraging her closer, without a great deal of success, as she wafted out of reach. With a teasing smile on her lips, she bent a little closer, her tongue flicked delicately around my lower lip and I desperately tried to sit up and kiss her. The handcuffs brought me up short, and she grinned and pulled back out of reach again.

The next five minutes, or it might have been five hours, were unbelievable. She introduced her tongue, teeth and lips to every inch of my body, I was handcuffed to the bed, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it, and it was the most arousing thing I had ever experienced. I had the biggest hard on of my life, and the desperate desire to make mad, uninhibited and passionate love to the woman who was teasing my brains out.

“All things come to he who waits.” She whispered as her hips swayed and she once again moved just out of my reach. I muttered something under my breath, on the tail end of a gasp, as her nails flicked my sensitive nipples, “language…” she smiled.

“Jo, please…… please……” I was begging… I didn’t care…. at that stage I would have run naked through Canley Market if she’d asked me to. Her palms were on my chest, and she bent forward, those big beautiful breasts pressed against me as her hands slid up my chest, up over my shoulders and around my neck. “Patience…” she whispered against my lips…. “Patience….” It was the sexiest, most erotic thing I had ever done, as she slowly slid down and we came together. We made the maddest, most passionate and completely uninhibited love… We reached a climax so dizzying that I nearly passed out, I have a vague inkling that I might have screamed her name, and then we crashed over together.

I was warm and reasonably comfortable, and completely and utterly wiped out. I curled up against her and settled. I wasn’t moving anytime soon, even the handcuffs weren’t that much of a problem. In fact, if some one had shouted fire, I would just have rolled over and enjoyed the warmth.

I became vaguely conscious that something had changed, but opening my eyes to check exactly what had seemed like hard work. Eventually, I pried open an eyelid, and peered at the world. I was lying on my side, in my bed, the handcuffs had disappeared, and a pink silk scarf had replaced them. I gave a little experimental tug. I appeared to be attached to my headboard again. I heard footsteps, they seemed to be approaching. The door opened and closed, the duvet moved, the mattress dipped and a very nice thigh appeared right next to my nose, a hand gently nudged my shoulder. “Stuey…” a voice weedled. I opened my eyes and squinted up at her. “mmmmhmmmm” was about all I could manage. “Breakfast…”

I eased myself up a little, grudgingly, because I was warm and comfortable. I held out my bound hands. “okay.”

That light was in her eyes again, that twinkle, I didn’t have a clue what she had in mind, I was still rather tired, but she looked into my eyes with those big, sparkly blue and brown eyes and I fell. She had me. And she knew it. And I really didn’t care. I wanted to be had. I was enjoying being had. And what we were doing was about as far out of my normal life as could be. We burned convention down last night. We made love.

I looked in her face, and saw that she still wanted me. Any terms. Because I’ve never wanted anyone more in my life. She was smiling. I grinned back. It was probably a dirty grin. My mind was happily rolling in the gutter.

“Sit back against the headboard” she said.

I wriggled backwards a bit, my eyes holding hers. “Okay…. now what?”

“Put your hands up and drop them behind your head.”

I didn’t know what was coming, I wondered if I was severely depraved, because when she said that I wanted whatever it was with a passion. I complied. Conditioned response. She fastened my hands there with the trailing ends of the scarf and once again I was tied to the headboard.

Jo turned away for a moment and produced a bowl of fruit, she held out a strawberry to my lips, and I bit into it. As my teeth went through the soft succulent fruit I remembered the last time I’d been attached to something and food had been involved. We were trapped in a siege, handcuffed to radiator, and I nearly made love to her on the floor of a filing room, because I’d watched her suck chocolate pudding off her fingers, all because Stevie hadn’t included any spoons. As I went back for the second bite of the strawberry, I ran the tip of my tongue over her thumb. Her eyes bored into mine, and she held out another piece of fruit. I didn’t have a clue what it was, I used the fruit to draw her fingers in, and my tongue and lips to gently suck the juice from them, Jo was feeding me fruit, and I was the one tied to the headboard, but I was in control here, and I was loving every single moment of it.

I couldn’t identify a single fruit after that first strawberry and my exhaustion miraculously slipped away. I wanted her. I wanted her so badly I ached. And I knew she wanted me, I’d just done my level best to ensure that. But she had that teasing look in her eyes again, as well as arousal, and I knew that whatever was going to happen next, she would have total control over. I wasn’t going anywhere. My shoulders, elbows and wrists ached from being held in an unnatural position for so long, but perversely I didn’t want to ask for my freedom back.

Jo must have come to the end of the bowl of fruit, because she set it aside, and leaned in to kiss me. I relaxed into her kiss, losing myself in the woman of my dreams. My dreams had taken on an unusul reality and that was fine by me. On any terms.

The piece of paper we’d so drunkenly signed up to together, that popped into my mind, as I leaned into Jo’s kiss and gave my heart away. I had visions of impossible things, but what we were doing was technically not possible. Jo was gay, I was straight, okay straight might have been a slightly relative term given what we were doing; but I was one hundred percent female orientated. She was ten years older than me, and certainly nothing like what my over fertile imagination planned out for my future wife…

Wife?? Whoa…where was that coming from. I wasn’t ready for marriage, and picket fences and wisteria covered cottages in sleepy villages, with children and… Jo. Truth was… I was Jo’s, body and soul. If she wanted me. I hoped that she wanted me.

She wanted me. She straddled my thighs, and commenced teasing me with every inch of her body, she trailed kisses down the side of my neck, down my chest, paying particular attention to my nipples then on further down until her lips were poised millimetres above the biggest erection I’ve ever had in my life, and I was a writhing, sweating, incoherent mess begging her to put me out of my misery.

“All things come to he who waits…” she whispered, before delicately tracing the head of my penis with her tongue. I was pinned in place by a scarf that was binding my wrists together and firmly to the top of the slatted headboard of my bed. I wasn’t going anywhere, but every single inch of me almost hit the ceiling as she took my length into her mouth. I’m not entirely sure exactly what came next, but I’m fairly sure it was me.