“You were in uniform this morning. You could have waltzed in here.”
“Ah, not quite,” she says. “Technically, it’s easy to duplicate swipe cards and decrypt pass codes, but without knowing any of the officers personally, I’d be exposed and caught quite quickly. This is a much better solution.”
“Better?” I ask, holding my handcuffed hands up before her. “You think being locked in a cell with these on is better?”
“Yes,” she says, pulling her hands apart. A steel link drops to the concrete floor as the chain on her handcuffs breaks.
“How did you…?” I ask, changing tack mid-sentence. “Do you have like superhuman strength or something?”
“No, silly,” Sharon replies. “The NYPD spares no expense in purchasing only the highest quality handcuffs, and the higher the quality, the easier they are to break. Cuffs like these are actually quite brittle. Apply alternating torque and you’ll snap one of the links, or the base plate, within about sixty seconds.”
“Are you for real?” I ask, copying her motion and grinding the links together time and again as my wrists swing back and forth.
“Oh, yes. Only the very best handcuffs break this easily. And the NYPD settles for nothing but the best.”
There’s a sincerity in her words that tells me she’s genuinely impressed by the NYPD’s attempt at procuring quality law enforcement merchandise, regardless of how ineffective it may be.
The junkie sits watching us. He isn’t in restraints, but then again, he didn’t assault a police officer.
“Quick,” she says, standing up. “They’ll be back soon.”
I’m so intent on breaking my cuffs I don’t notice Sharon getting undressed. She lays her coat on the bench seat beside me, but it’s warm in here, so that doesn’t register as anything out of the ordinary. It’s not until she’s got the buttons on her blouse undone and is taking off her shirt that my handcuffs break and I look up at her full figure in a stunning lace bra.
The junkie laughs. He’s probably not sure if he’s hallucinating.
“Ah,” I say, trying to keep my eyes from popping out of my head. “Is this part of the plan too?”
“We’re going to need some lube,” she says, taking off her shoes and pulling off her jeans.
“You heard the gal,” the junkie cries, exasperated with how slowly I’m reacting. “Get the woman some lubricant!”
“Shut up,” I say, turning and pointing at him. “Just. Stay out of this.”
He laughs again, gawking at Sharon with wide eyes.
I turn back to her and she’s naked. She tosses her bra and panties on the bench beside me, saying, “Without lubricant, this is going to be tight.”
“Come on! You’re gonna need some lube, man,” the junkie says, gesturing with his hands toward her.
“You’re not helping,” I say sternly to him.
“We don’t have long,” voluptuous, naked, stunning Sharon says, bouncing slightly as she moves.
“Lube. Lube. Lube,” I say, desperately trying to take her request seriously. I scramble to think of possibilities, but honestly, there are other things on my mind. I close my eyes. It’s the only way I can think straight, even then, knowing she’s standing just inches away from me in her birthday suit has my heart racing.
“Water,” I say. “Will soap and water do?”
“Yes, yes.”
I turn on the tap in the tiny basin beside the toilet and start lathering my hands with soap and warm water.
“Ah,” I say, hesitating as I turn toward her, unsure exactly what I should be doing. I hold up my dripping hands, marveling at the insanity of the moment. Insanity, that’s how I’ll get out of this. I’ll plead insanity. Surely, the police must be videoing what goes on in these holding cells. They’ll see this. They’ll see Sharon stripping down. They’ll see me lathering her with soap. No jury is going to convict. After seeing this, they’ll have to acquit. Hopefully, I’ll get community service, or perhaps court-appointed psychiatric monitoring as an outpatient for six months.
“What are you waiting for?” she asks, beckoning me to run my soaking wet hands over her body.
The junkie’s laughing his ass off. I’m laughing. Even Sharon’s laughing. Although I’m not sure she’s laughing for the same reason we are.
“Yeah, baby,” the junkie cries as Sharon turns around, holding her arms above her head and pirouetting.
The junkie yells, “Move those hips, gal.”
“I did ballet. Can you tell?” Sharon asks as she turns, breaking into different poses as I splash her naked body with soapy water. I nod, grinning like an idiot. Yep, I can tell. Ballet. That’s just what I was thinking of. Nothing else. Honest.
Sharon has the body of a goddess.
I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Like the junkie, I’m caught up in the moment and drunk on the sexual energy implicit in touching a sensuous, gorgeous, naked woman. I know it’s a cliche, but if this is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
I keep returning my hands to the tap, lathering more soap and splashing warm suds on her body, running my fingers over her silky smooth stomach, hips and thighs.
“Don’t forget my breasts,” Sharon says.
Forget them? I was trying to maintain some sense of dignity, but, okay. Go with the flow, Joe. To hell with being in a police cell, this is the greatest moment of my life! Well, slight exaggeration. Nope. No exaggeration at all. This incredibly beautiful, stunning woman has taken her clothes of in front of me—inexplicably. And all I had to do was body check a cop. Hell, if she’d told me her plan, I would have hit him with a baseball bat. This is my wildest high school pubescent dream come true.
Sharon twirls, raising her arms above her head and jiggling her body. Water splashes everywhere, but whatever. My hands glide over her smooth, soft skin, feeling the texture of her sensuous body sliding beneath my fingertips.
“Okay,” she says, coming to a halt. “I think we’re good.”
I hear those words, but my hands keep moving. I cup more water and splash it on her, rubbing my fingers over her breasts again for good measure. I must look like a clown.
Sharon raises her eyebrows.
“Oh, right,” I say, remembering there’s a reason she’s stripped down, and that reason wasn’t to fulfill my teenage fantasies. My hands are reluctant, but I pull them away. “Right. Serious alien stuff now, huh?”
“Something like that,” she says.
At a guess, she’s going to do a cool alien thing, like walk through the bars Terminator 2 style. Although she doesn’t look very alien. More playboy bunny minus the leotard. At least, she’s not like any alien I’ve ever seen in the movies.
Sharon walks up to the bars of the cell and bends over, squeezing her arms and head through the horizontal opening used for passing food trays and paperwork to prisoners.
“Damn,” is all I can say, watching as she wriggles and shimmies her upper torso through the bars. Roughly halfway, she gets stuck. She can’t get her hips through the narrow opening, and I watch in a trance as she leans forward, grabbing at the bars below her, wrestling to get through the opening.
“It’s so hard,” she says.
“Yes, it is,” the junkie cries, and I swat him on the shoulder, signaling for him to be quiet.
“Give me a push,” Sharon says.
“What?” I say, looking at the most perfect butt I’ve ever seen in my life. There’s not a single blemish on her peachy white skin.
“Quick,” Sharon says, looking at me upside down from between her legs.
I’m about to faint. My blood pressure is up, but there’s not much blood pumping to my head.
I position my hands on either side of her ass, feeling as though I’m about to explode. My fingers touch lightly against her buttocks and I push as though I’m committing a cardinal sin.