Chapter 1: The Traffic Stop Temptation
The cruiser’s lights painted the falling snow in frantic pulses of red and blue. Inside her aging sedan, Anna watched the tall figure approach in the side mirror, a dark silhouette against the bleached-out winter landscape. The engine ticked as it cooled. She rolled down the window, a gust of biting air slicing into the stuffy heat.
“Afternoon, ma’am.” The policewoman’s voice was crisp, professional. She leaned down, her short, dark hair dusted with melting snowflakes. Her nameplate read Ada. “You were doing sixty-eight in a fifty-five.”
Anna offered a practiced, grandmotherly smile. “Was I, dear? This old car, the speedometer sticks something awful in the cold.” She let her hands, veined and spotted with age, tremble slightly on the wheel.
Ada wasn’t buying it. Her eyes, a cool, assessing grey, didn’t waver. “License and registration, please.”
Anna fumbled in her purse, taking her time. She watched Ada’s face. There was a tightness around her mouth, a rigidity in her posture that spoke of long shifts and little patience. This wasn’t going to work. The sweet old lady act was bouncing right off that Kevlar vest.
Ada took the documents and retreated to her cruiser. Anna watched her go, the tall, athletic frame moving with an efficient grace. The ticket was inevitable. A fine she couldn’t really afford, points on a license she couldn’t afford to lose. Fuck that.
When Ada returned, the tablet in her hand was a death sentence. “I’m citing you for speeding, ma’am. Sign here at the bottom.”
Anna didn’t take the stylus. She opened her door, the cold seizing her small frame. “Officer? Ada? Could you… come here for a moment? There’s something behind my tire I’m worried about.”
A flicker of impatience in those grey eyes. But duty prevailed. Ada walked around the back of Anna’s car, following her into the narrow space between the sedan and the cruiser’s grille, shielded from the road.
“What seems to be the problem?”
Anna didn’t look at the tire. She looked at Ada. The wind howled across the open fields, a lonely sound. The lights from the cruiser cast their hidden little stage in surreal, shifting colors.
“The problem,” Anna said, her voice dropping its frail tremor, “is that I really don’t want this ticket.”
Before Ada could react, Anna moved. She was seventy, and short, but she was fast. She grabbed the front of Ada’s vest, pulled herself up onto her toes, and crushed her mouth against the policewoman’s.
It was less a kiss and more an assault. A desperate, crazy gamble. Ada froze, her body a statue of shock. The tablet clattered to the icy slush at their feet. Anna expected to be shoved away, hard. Maybe tasered. This was a spectacularly bad idea.
But then, something shifted.
A tremor ran through Ada’s rigid frame. A stifled, choked sound escaped her throat. Her hands, which had been poised to push Anna away, instead gripped her arms, fingers digging into the thick fabric of her coat. Not pushing. Holding on.
Okay, Anna thought, her mind racing, a detached part of her analyzing the data. She’s kissing back. Now what? Where’s the crack? Everyone has one.
She deepened the kiss, her tongue finding entry, and Ada yielded with a gasp that was half protest, half surrender. The professional armor was gone, replaced by a raw, startling hunger. Anna’s hands slid from the vest to cup Ada’s face, her thumbs stroking the sharp line of her jaw. She could feel the frantic beat of the younger woman’s heart against her own chest.
That’s when she heard it. A faint, repetitive scuffing sound.
She broke the kiss for a breath, her forehead resting against Ada’s. Her eyes drifted down. Ada’s left foot, still encased in its polished black duty shoe and sock, was grinding against the frozen ground. The toe was twisting, rubbing, a frantic, unconscious motion.
Aha, Anna thought, a jolt of pure, electric triumph shooting through her. That’s it. That’s your weak spot.
She kissed her again, harder, more claiming this time. She slid one hand down from Ada’s face, over the strong column of her neck, across the stiff fabric of her uniform shirt, and down to her hip. With her other hand, she found one of Ada’s hands and guided it to her own thigh, pressing it there. Ada’s fingers clenched, gripping the coarse wool of Anna’s slacks.
The scuffing became more frantic. Anna watched, mesmerized. The shoe was now scraping against everything—the frozen dirt, the tire of her car, Ada’s own other foot. It was a desperate, blind dance of liberation. The laces were coming undone through sheer friction.
With a final, twisting grind against the cruiser’s bumper, the shoe came off. The sock, soaked with sweat from the intense, trapped motion, was peeled off in the same desperate movement. It landed in a damp heap next to its partner.
Ada’s bare foot was pale and elegant, the toes long and straight. They curled against the bitter cold of the packed snow, then flexed, seeking warmth, seeking contact.
Anna broke the kiss, her breath coming in ragged plumes in the air. She looked from Ada’s dazed, flushed face down to her bare foot, then back up. She gave a slow, wicked smile.
“There now,” Anna murmured, her voice husky. She leaned back against her car, pulling Ada with her by the hand still gripped on her thigh. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
Without looking away from Ada’s clouded eyes, Anna slowly knelt down. The frozen ground bit through her pants. She took Ada’s bare foot in her hands. It was ice-cold and trembling. She began to massage it, her thumbs working into the arch, her fingers kneading the tense muscles.
Ada let out a moan that was entirely unlike any sound a police officer should make. Her head fell back, her eyes squeezed shut. Her grip on Anna’s thigh tightened.
Anna kept working, her touch firm and knowing. She glanced over at the discarded shoe and the dark sock lying next to the police car’s massive tire, a tiny monument to a shattered professionalism. The cruiser’ lights continued to spin, painting the scene in endless, silent cycles of red and blue.