Chapter 8: The Bar and the Trap
The whiskey in Rondha’s glass had gone warm and flat. She hadn’t taken a sip in ten minutes, just stared at the amber liquid, seeing not her reflection in the bar’s grimy mirror but Amanda’s face—flushed, tear-streaked, vulnerable—floating in the memory of Cinnamon’s dim hallway. The kid had looked shattered. Reborn. Something. A feeling Rondha couldn’t name curdled in her gut, equal parts protectiveness and a sharp, unwelcome heat.
The cop bar, ‘The Last Call,’ was a dive in the honest sense. Neon tubing buzzed and flickered, casting a sickly blue glow over the off-duty uniforms hunched over pitchers. The air was a permanent fog of fryer grease, stale hops, and the underlying note of despair that clung to places where people drank to forget their shifts. Rondha preferred it. The noise was a blanket. Here, she was just Levine, a veteran with a decent arrest record, not a woman whose thoughts kept circling back to the sweat-slicked curve of her rookie partner’s spine, the helpless twitch of her bound wrists.
The door swung open with a groan of tired hinges, cutting through the hum of talk. A draft of cooler, diesel-scented night air washed in, followed by a woman.
Rondha noticed her immediately, the way a cop notices anything that doesn’t belong. It wasn’t the smart heels clicking on the worn linoleum, or the fitted dress that cost more than Rondha’s monthly take-home. It was the carriage. The woman moved with an unhurried certainty that sliced through the room’s collective slump. Ash-blonde hair, sleek and sharp at the jawline. Eyes that scanned the crowd and landed, unerringly, on Rondha in her shadowed corner.
Lydia Cross.
Recognition was a cold jolt. The woman from the dungeon. The one chained and gagged, yet whose eyes had held not fear, but a serene, unnerving awareness. She looked different now. In control. In charge.
Lydia didn’t pause at the bar. She didn’t look at anyone else. Her path was direct, a straight line to Rondha’s table. She pulled out the chair opposite and sat without asking, folding her hands on the sticky surface as if she’d just settled into a boardroom.
“Officer Levine.” Her voice was lower than Rondha remembered, smooth as the whiskey she wasn’t drinking.
“You’re out of your territory,” Rondha said, her tone flat. Cop voice. A wall.
“Am I?” Lydia’s smile was a knife-cut. “You’ve been thinking about it, haven’t you? All evening. Since you left her there.”
Rondha’s fingers tightened around the glass. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The little redhead. Amanda.” Lydia leaned forward slightly. The sweet, vanilla-cinnamon scent Rondha had caught whiffs of earlier now had a source. It was cloying, intimate. “You saw her. Really saw her. Not as your eager-beaver partner. But as something else. Something… open. And it pissed you off. It scared you. It turned you on.”
A flush, hot and unwelcome, crawled up Rondha’s neck. “You need to leave.”
Lydia laughed, a soft, percussive sound. “Look at your hand. You’re white-knuckling that glass. You want to pin her down, don’t you? To feel all that pretty resistance melt away. To watch those big blue eyes go blank with something other than fear. To make her fucking whimper.” She paused, letting the words hang in the beer-stained air. “But you can’t. Because that would mean admitting you look at her and don’t see a sister officer. You see a wet, willing cunt. And that, Officer Straight-Shooter, would make you a dyke.”
The word, crude and deliberate, landed like a slap. Rondha’s chair screeched against the floor as she shoved back, standing up too fast. “Get the fuck away from me.”
But her voice cracked on the last word. It betrayed her. The wall had a fissure.
Lydia just leaned back, utterly unimpressed. She traced the rim of Rondha’s abandoned glass with a manicured fingertip. “All that repressed need. It’s fucking pathetic. You’d rather blow your own brains out than admit you want to blow hers out through her ears with a good, hard fuck.”
Something snapped. Rondha didn’t trust herself to speak, to move, to do anything but stand there vibrating with a rage that had no clean target. She turned on her heel and stalked towards the back hallway, towards the restrooms, needing space, needing cold water, needing to not be in that woman’s sightline.
The women’s room was a single stall, a sink, a grimy mirror. It smelled of cheap soap and mildew. Rondha braced her palms on the porcelain sink, head hanging, and sucked in a breath that hitched in her chest. Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs. Lydia’s words echoed, amplified by the tiny, tiled room. A wet, willing cunt. A dyke.
She splashed water on her face, the shock of it barely registering. The door creaked open behind her. In the mirror’s reflection, she saw Lydia step inside, her movements silent and sure. The lock clicked shut with a final, heavy thud.
Before Rondha could turn, could shout, could do anything, Lydia was on her.
A strong arm snaked around Rondha’s waist, yanking her back against a body that was surprisingly solid. A hand—not soft, but capable—clamped over Rondha’s mouth, stifling her gasp. The scent of vanilla and cinnamon enveloped her, overwhelming the mildew.
“Shh,” Lydia breathed into her ear, her voice a low, vicious purr. Her other hand slid down the front of Rondha’s uniform pants, cupping her through the polyester blend. “Just feel.”
Rondha jerked, a strangled sound caught behind Lydia’s palm. Her own reaction horrified her. The protest died in her throat, replaced by a flood of sensation so intense it short-circuited thought. Lydia’s fingers found the seam of her trousers, the zipper. They dipped inside, past the waistband of her standard-issue cotton panties.
Lydia’s fingertips were cool. They brushed through coarse curls and found wet, hot flesh. Rondha moaned, the sound muffled and desperate. Her hips bucked forward once, involuntarily, seeking more pressure.
“That’s it,” Lydia murmured, her lips against Rondha’s ear. Her fingers didn’t tease. They pushed. Two of them, plunging into Rondha’s cunt in one hard, deep thrust.
Rondha’s knees gave way. Only Lydia’s arm around her middle held her up. Her back arched, her head falling back against Lydia’s shoulder. The invasion was brutal, shocking, absolute. It wasn’t tender. It wasn’t loving. It was a claim. Her cunt clenched violently around the intrusion, a spasm of pure, animal response.
Lydia fucked her with her fingers. It was a relentless, piston-like motion, curling them on each inward stroke, scraping against a spot deep inside that made Rondha’s vision blur. Her thumb found Rondha’s clit, a rough, circling pressure that was too much and not enough.
“Let go, you stubborn bitch,” Lydia hissed, her breath hot. “You’ve been wanting this. Needing it. Needing to be taken. To not be in fucking control for once in your miserable, tight-ass life.”
Tears, hot and shaming, welled in Rondha’s eyes. She tried to fight it, to clamp her thighs together, to twist away, but her body was a traitor. It sang a different tune. Each thrust of Lydia’s fingers sent a jagged bolt of pleasure-pain up her spine. The rough pad of Lydia’s thumb on her clit was a live wire. The heat coiled in her belly, tight and urgent, a storm she’d been denying for years.
“Come for me,” Lydia commanded, her voice dropping to a guttural rasp. She sped up, her fingers fucking into Rondha with a wet, obscene sound, her thumb a furious, focused counterpoint. “I want to feel that neat little pussy of yours milk my fingers. Do it. Now.”
The command broke her.
Rondha’s orgasm ripped through her with no grace, no crescendo. It was a detonation. A raw, guttural cry tore from her throat, muffled and swallowed by Lydia’s palm. Her body convulsed, her cunt clamping down in rhythmic, seizing pulses around Lydia’s buried fingers. Wave after wave of pure, mindless sensation shattered through her, draining every ounce of resistance, every thought, every pretense. She slumped forward, her weight fully supported by Lydia’s arm, her own arms limp at her sides.
For a long moment, the only sounds were Rondha’s ragged, sobbing breaths and the drip of the leaky faucet. Lydia kept her fingers inside, gently now, feeling the last fluttering clenches. Then, slowly, she withdrew.
Rondha heard the wet sound of Lydia bringing her fingers to her mouth. In the mirror’s smudged reflection, she watched, dazed, as Lydia sucked her own fingers clean, her eyes locked on Rondha’s broken form in the glass.
“Now you know,” Lydia whispered, her voice soft again, almost conversational. She released Rondha, who stumbled, catching herself on the sink. Lydia used a paper towel to wipe her hand calmly, then adjusted her dress. “You know what you are. What you want.”
Rondha couldn’t speak. She stared at her own reflection—pale, tear-streaked, uniform disheveled. A stranger.
Lydia unlocked the door. She paused, looking back over her shoulder. “Cinnamon was right. You’re both perfect. Amanda needed to surrender. You…” She gave a slow, knowing smile. “You needed to be conquered. To have all that precious control stripped away. She’ll be expecting you. When you’re ready to stop lying.”
She slipped out, the door swinging shut silently behind her.
Rondha stood there for a long time, listening to the thump of music through the wall. The ache between her legs was a vivid, throbbing reality. The taste of her own shame was metallic on her tongue. Lydia’s words echoed. Now you know.
She splashed more water on her face, wiped roughly at her eyes. She tucked her shirt back in, zipped her pants, ran a hand through her short, sweat-damp hair. The face in the mirror hardened by degrees, the cop mask sliding back into place. But it was a cracked mask. She saw the fissures now.
She left the restroom, walked back through the bar, head down. She didn’t look at anyone. She threw a twenty on her table, covering the untouched whiskey, and pushed out into the night.
The cool air hit her like a slap. She leaned against the brick wall of the bar, taking deep, shuddering breaths. Her body still hummed, a live wire of spent sensation and horrifying awakening.