“Yeah, goodnight, boss.”
She shut the door and turned away. But she had only walked two or three steps when she heard the whirr of a car window opening and Cooper’s voice call out.
“Boss.”
Expectant in spite of herself, a kind of hope burgeoning up in her regardless of her fine intentions, she turned round smiling.
“I’ll understand if you report me, boss, I really will.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Phil...” she began.
Then suddenly it was all too much for her.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she repeated. But this time she was talking to herself.
She strode back to the car, flung open the passenger door, and reinstated herself next to a bewildered-looking Cooper.
“If you must know, I’ve wanted you to do that ever since we had that Indian meal the day we arrested Marshall,” she blurted out.
“Have you, boss?” Cooper was sitting very still, as if afraid to move.
“Yes, I fucking well have. But I don’t think I can continue to have this conversation with you if you insist on calling me boss.”
Cooper grinned. He really did look like a little boy. He leaned towards her again, reached out to put his arms around her.
“No,” she said.
This time, although looking a little bewildered, he pulled away at once.
“No,” she repeated. “Not here. I’m too old for necking in a car park. Let’s go inside, shall we?”
She had always considered Cooper’s wide grin to be one of his most attractive features. As she spoke it cracked his face wide open. She felt herself melt. She knew she was entering highly dangerous territory. She could not stop herself. And neither, it seemed, could Phil Cooper.
“Whatever you say, boss — I mean, Karen,” he replied.
He jumped on her as soon as she closed her front door behind them.
He caught hold of her by the shoulders, spun her round and pressed her against the wall, pushing himself into her. She could feel his hardness against her. Then he pulled away, sank down on to his knees and began scrabbling at the zip fastening of her trousers.
“Fuck, I want you,” he breathed, as he buried his head in her.
She let out a small cry, part pleasure, part surprise. This was not what she had expected at all. Cooper was mild-mannered and funny, a gentle family man — although she tried not to think about that. This was not how she had thought he would be.
He had come at her like an animal. And she found that she rather liked it. She was immensely excited by him. His hands were tight around her bum, his fingers digging into her. As he used his tongue on her he made small grunting noses. He was eager. The word that came to mind was rather an old-fashioned one. He was rampant.
She started to move with him. She was a woman who liked the niceties of lovemaking, she did not fantasies about sex in dark alleyways or forbidden places where lovers might be discovered in embarrassingly compromising situations. That was not Karen’s way at all. She liked warm comfortable beds and, to be honest, warm comfortable men. Her liaison with Cooper seemed to be turning out to involve neither.
He was handling her quite roughly. Something inside was beginning to turn over. Then he bit her. Not hard, but enough to drive her wild. She started to scream then. She couldn’t believe it, but she was screaming. She could feel the climax building up inside her.
He pulled away from her again then, quite abruptly. She groaned in disbelief, slumped against the door. Then he reached up, caught hold of her hands and pulled her to the floor beside him. She half-fell down there, her legs hobbled by the mess of her trousers and knickers which were now wrapped around her ankles. There was a ripping sound as he tore them off her with one hand, then with the other he pushed her legs open. Somehow or other he had already managed to remove the clothing from the lower part of his body. With a low animal moan he threw himself forward onto her and entered her straight away.
The sensation was extraordinary from the start. Every nerve end felt raw. He clamped his mouth on hers as he began to move in her. She could smell and taste her own juices spread all over his face. She found it unbelievably sexy. He was an aggressive eager lover. She was aroused to the point of bursting. The climax when it came was more than great pleasure, it was an overwhelming relief. She knew she was screaming again as she moved beneath him, her legs wrapped around his neck. She couldn’t help it. And she couldn’t stop. Not for anything. If the chief constable had walked in, she wouldn’t have been able to stop. If a fire had broken out, escape would have had to be delayed until she had finished. It had been a long time. Such a long time. Her body was crying out for release.
Great waves of pleasure swept over her, died away, then returned. It was the ultimate orgasm. She couldn’t remember experiencing one like it.
Then just as her waves finally started to fade away to nothing she felt it begin to happen for him, too. His movements became more and more urgent. She was totally aware of his body exploding inside her.
Afterwards, they lay in a sweat-drenched heap, their clothes and limbs in a tangle, their breath coming in short sharp gasps for several minutes before either of them spoke.
It was Cooper who uttered the first memorable words.
“I’m really sorry, boss,” he said.
Karen burst out laughing. Straight away and without preamble, much the same way as the sex had been between them, really.
“Phil, I just do not believe you,” she spluttered. “You’ve just fucked me rigid, gone at me like some wild animal, and at the end of it you’ve said sorry and called me boss.”
He started to laugh, too. Then he touched her face lightly with one hand.
“Do you have a bed here?” he asked, his voice still light with the laughter.
“Oh, yes,” she replied.
“And do you think you might like to take me to it?”
“Yes, I rather think I would.”
“Good.” He kissed her very gently on the lips and drew away at once.
“I want to hold you close to me, Karen,” he said, and there was an urgency about him just as great as the sexual urgency had been earlier, but of a very different sort.
“I want to hold you so much.”
Before they could climb into bed they had to turf off a disgruntled Sophie who was already lying spreadeagled on top of the duvet, waiting patiently for her mistress to finish whatever it was she had been doing in the hall.
“Love me, love my cat,” muttered Karen.
“My pleasure,” Cooper responded. He stayed until almost three in the morning. And as she watched him prepare to leave, a great sadness overwhelmed her. She was suddenly starkly aware that she was embarking on the age-old routine again. An affair with a married man who sneaked away from wife and work to be with her, and then in the early hours sneaked away from her, dressing in the dark, averting his eyes, trying to avoid the reality of his behaviour.
They had made love once more, and that time it had been exactly that, real lovemaking, slow, gentle and intense, quite unlike that first desperate animal fuck. But mostly he had held her, very close and very gently, just as he had said he wanted to. And she had held him back. She had clung to him.
She tried not to show what she was thinking as she watched him tuck his shirt into his trousers, fasten his tie and pull on his jacket, but she knew that she was afraid. She was somehow quite sure that this would not turn out to be a one-off fuck, another one-night stand. It had been too special. For her, anyway. She studied him as carefully as she could in the dimly illuminated room, which was lit only by the moon shining in through the windows. She couldn’t see his face properly. Maybe for him it was just a bit on the side, a bit of fun. How could she tell? She knew him as a copper, as a workmate, as a drinking companion. She didn’t know him in this way at all, not as a lover, as a man who could be a bull one minute and the gentlest, most cuddly of creatures the next.