Cuffed
Savannah Stephens Smith
I’m not a cop groupie.
So when a man wearing a dark uniform walked into the office at ten minutes after five, a man with more muscle than he needed, a gun, and a deadly serious expression, my initial reaction was nervous guilt.
Oh, no. What did I do?
Then I remembered that I hadn’t done anything, and I was annoyed with myself. And with him, since he’d provoked it. I kept typing—I wasn’t the receptionist, and besides, we were closed. It was quiet, almost everyone gone. I ignored him, far from the sort of reaction I could imagine my friend Marianne having in the same situation:
I’ve been a very bad girl, officer, and I should be taken
…
into your custody.
Sometimes we amuse ourselves with quiet comments as we work, however, I mostly keep my quips to myself. Business is business, after all, and I’m not the office comedienne. But it had been a long week, I was working late, and even an imagined witticism was enough to make me laugh. The audible snort that escaped wasn’t as contained and controlled as it should have been.
The good-looking man at the reception counter looked over at me, his face a disconcerting blank. And he had those cold eyes. Cold eyes—warm heart? Laughter turned into a sigh. Blame it on springtime. It was 5:15, I was still at work, and I was beginning to think that breaking up with my ex, Brian, hadn’t been such a good idea.
Oh, yes, it had. He hadn’t been good enough for me, and I knew it. I deserved better. The trouble is, being strong sometimes hurts almost as much as—
“Trouble, miss?”
The cop at the reception counter was looking at me. Where was our receptionist? Gone home, probably. Well, that wasn’t my fault. I was the department secretary in the rental part of the office.
“No, no trouble,” I said, my face hot. It was none of his business. I went back to what I’d been doing. Typing a tenancy agreement of all things—we were a low-tech office. The agreement had an annoying carbon copy for the tenant. The top page always looked fine (thank goodness for a correction ribbon on the IBM) but the underside was always a mess, with every typo showing through. I peeked discreetly at the cop, the sound of my typing loud in the post-workday quiet. Why didn’t he go away?
Very cute. Youngish, maybe thirty-five or so. Dark hair, neatly short. Clean shaven. I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were—and it didn’t matter, I reminded myself—but they were serious. And there was some serious muscle on him, too. His shoulders strained against the uniform, and he wore that gear they all come equipped with as easily as if it were made of plastic.
Clack, clickity, clack
went the keys of the typewriter.
Click, click,
to backspace and correct.
Clack-clack-clack. Clack.
I peeked again. He was looking at me. Then it hit me, and I felt sick.
My laugh. He thought I was snorting. At him. Snort. Pig.
Cop. Pig.
I spoke before I thought. His eyes were intense, and the office was so quiet. I hated my urgency to apologize, but did it anyway. “Sorry. I was just… It’s been a busy day. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Mean what?” Nice voice. Low and deep, warm as a furnace’s rumble on a December night.
Crap. “Never mind. I’m sorry. Has anyone helped you? I believe…,” I gestured to the counter, “they’re all gone for the day.”
And that’s how it started. He was there to pick up keys, so I abandoned the hateful typewriter and searched for them. Up close, he was even more intimidating. The way they wear that uniform sets them apart from the rest of us. As I searched, I explained about the laugh, how busy it had been lately, and that I was working late. “I think stress makes me silly,” I apologized.
“I can relate,” he said, and smiled. When he smiled, he wasn’t so scary. He had a nice smile.
I found the keys. They were propped up in a white envelope with
Congratulations, Eric!
written in a feminine hand. One of the realtors from the sales side. “My house,” he said. “Nothing big or fancy, but…” The pride on his face as he held the envelope, shaking it gently and making the keys inside slide back and forth, took away from the menace of his uniform.
“That’s great,” I said, and meant it.
It turned out that he was looking at me because he thought I was pretty, not because I’d made a pig snort sound. What do you know? But when he asked me out, I declined. I had work to do, and so I closed the door and locked it behind him—I noticed through the window that he waited until the deadbolt turned and clicked before he nodded and walked away with his keys. And his uniform. I went back to the typewriter. I sat down, put my hands on those keys, and noticed that everyone
else had long gone, and no one cared if I worked late. I said out loud: “Screw it. I’m going home.”
I don’t troll for tickets, turned on by a uniform, and I don’t hang out in cop bars. Frankly, I’ve only read about cop hangouts in novels. I’m like most people: when I see that light-bar-on-top silhouette in my rearview mirror, I get a pang in my gut and hit the brakes. Then I drive like a teenager with a brand-new learner’s permit and a mother in the backseat. I’m a good girl, and I stay out of trouble. And I’m no slut.
But sometimes things can change a little. The second time Eric asked me out, I said yes.
Eric soon learned I wasn’t a cop groupie. I didn’t want to hang around with the other wives and girlfriends of his fellow officers—frankly, none of those women were interesting enough for me to give up a good book or my own private time. I’d done my time trying to please a man, doing what I thought he’d want me to do. And be.
I was too old for that nonsense.
But the trouble with cops is that they make you feel guilty—even when you haven’t really done anything.
It was a summer afternoon. Eric had moved into his new house, a modest bungalow that needed a little fixing up. By July it was neat, newly painted, and pleasing. I was there, waiting for him to change. He had just come off shift. He had come into the bedroom, dumped most of the gear on the bed, and then gone off again to answer the phone. We were going to go to a barbecue at his sister’s place. I was going to meet his parents.
There it was on the bed. The belt, and all the accessories. I thought of that poem, the one about adoring a fascist. Then I decided that it was too nice a day to think about the implications of adoring a fascist, psychosexual complexities, or even modern poetry. Was it Plath? Maybe, Plath and her line about a
brute heart
.
Eric wasn’t like that, though—he was a teddy bear who only looked tough. Underneath the uniform was a guy even my mother would like. Despite his work, generally he was sunny and sweet. And underneath the uniform was a man I could, just maybe sometime, love. I waited for him, idly checking my hair.
I turned to leave the bedroom, but glanced back.
The pile of heavy, black…
stuff
laying there was irresistible. The belt was a thick, black snake resting on his bed. So I, with the soul of Eve, checked it out at last. I touched the things Eric used, the tools of his trade. They were things that intimidated, commanded, and subdued. They were cool to the touch and all black. These were things that he handled every day, but they were things that ordinary people—good girls and nice boys—wouldn’t know about. We stay out of trouble. Flashlight. A stick. A shiver danced up my arms and down again. Something in a canister. Mace? Pepper spray? We didn’t talk about his work much. A pouch with a snap on it. The gun, last, but I didn’t touch that. I
wouldn’t
touch that. I’m not stupid, and I knew it was loaded. So I went back to the pouch.
I’d opened it and taken out the weighty handcuffs, fascinated. “You want to play, Beth? You think those are toys?” His voice was deadly quiet, but I jumped anyway, like I’d swallowed electricity. I felt that sick clench in the gut, the hot shame of being caught. I was seven again, with cookie crumbs on my mouth and no ready excuses.
“No,” I said, jumping up quickly, putting some distance between me and the things I had been, well, playing with. I was surprised by his anger—I hadn’t seen him like this. He stepped closer to me, and I babbled further apology. Something else gathered between us, something dark and dangerous, eclipsing all that had ever gone before. Where was the nice guy, my new boyfriend, lover of puppies,
springtime, and his toddler nephews?
Gone. Just like the sun behind a cloud. Instead of smiling and forgiving me with a kiss, a kiss I’d been half-expecting, leaning forward with my mouth shaped to kiss back, he grabbed my arm. He spun me around. Suddenly, I was facing his bureau and my right arm was pinned up and behind me. It was held fast in such a way that I knew he could, just as easily as not, break it. I grabbed the dresser for balance. A lamp teetered, a quarter slid off a dime. “Hey!” I said.
That’s when he grabbed my other arm and cuffed me. The click of the metal sliding home was loud. The metal was cold and heavy. My mouth was dry. He’d never done anything like this before. Had I been wrong about him?
“This isn’t funny,” I said.
“And my cuffs aren’t toys,” he said.
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t want to apologize, but I thought it was the best thing to say.
“Sorry’s not enough. You play with the cuffs, what’s next, Beth? The gun?”
“Of course not.”
My hands were behind my back, and the cuffs were on me. They were unforgiving. I’d often wondered what it was like to wear them. Now I knew. And I didn’t like it.
“Take them off,” I said. How dare he abuse his position like this? I tried not to feel something else, something dry and crackling, as it crept up my back. My autonomy was gone, and that was a scary thing. We hadn’t been dating long, and maybe I’d made a very bad choice. This wasn’t the boyfriend I knew, the guy who I had caught crying at a sad movie we’d seen only two weeks ago.
“No.”
“Please.” I held my chin up, didn’t turn around, playing martyr. I was stubborn, even as I pleaded. I wouldn’t look at him. I wouldn’t back down, and it seemed neither would
he. Stupid fights start like this, over something small that becomes unforgivable.
When you’re a woman, and your hands are behind your back, that position does something. It arches your back slightly, pushes your shoulders up—and your breasts out. I was a little disconcerted to feel my nipples hardening, puckering against the cup of my bra. More than that—there was a familiar, warm itch between my legs. It grew hotter, like sun spilling over the horizon.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
Eric didn’t take the cuffs off. Instead, he tugged me, and I took a helpless step backward away from the bureau into the center of the room. I didn’t like this at all. He walked around and faced me, still in his uniform. I wouldn’t look at him. He was treating me like a child, not his girlfriend. I saw my face reflected in his badge. I looked strange, distorted in the metallic surface. I didn’t want to know what his face showed. Was it that scary blank expression?
He unbuttoned my blouse, and drew it down over my shoulders. I refused to speak, as if protesting would give him more leverage. He didn’t say a word about my nipples being hard. He couldn’t remove the blouse completely with me still cuffed, and it dangled off my arms. The light fabric hid them, but I knew they were still there. How could I not? I was only lucky they were not too tight. I wondered who the last person Eric had cuffed had been. What man—
Or
woman
—
It was July, but I shivered. What other women had felt his steel around their wrists? Eric didn’t talk. I didn’t know what he’d do next. It was the kind of fight when part of the dark appeal of conflict is provoking the other, goading him, pushing things. Stuff that you normally wouldn’t say or do rises up, gliding from the dark depths. He didn’t back off.
My bra came undone next, the same way. I should have
turned, squirmed to evade his fingers, but I didn’t. He pulled it up and lifted it over my head. The air caressed my bare skin. The straps he slid down my arms, chuckling as he stripped me. My breasts were bared and I was helpless.
And aroused.
There was a part of me, a deep and primal part, which bloomed as if it had waited all my life for this afternoon. A late flower, a twenty-seven-year blossom.
The skirt came off next. A simpler piece of clothing one couldn’t imagine: a narrow elastic waist and the smooth drop of fabric. It was a summer skirt that I wore a lot that year, slipping it on in the morning over bare legs freshly shaved. I liked the way the skirt swished against my skin, panty hose scorned for summer. I wore a plain black T-shirt with it most days, but that afternoon I’d picked a blouse. I’d never see the skirt hanging in my closet again without its pattern reminding me of this afternoon, reminding me of the way light slanted in at an angle through the closed blinds, the sounds of an ordinary summer afternoon going on outside, and how the handcuffs had become warm from my skin, but still heavy. Still present.
Eric told me to step out of it, and I did. I should have kicked him, but I’d swallowed a two-edged sword: fear and arousal. I didn’t know how it would sit in my belly. I still wore my shoes, frivolous summer sandals with a bit of a heel. But this wasn’t how I imagined the afternoon progressing when I’d dressed for a barbecue with his family.
I stood there, mulish and naked, dangling my clothes behind my back. I felt small and bad, a naughty child. I wanted to feel his hot tongue rasping over my nipples. I wanted him to stop this. He took my panties down next, slowly, and I didn’t feel childlike at all. Cotton slid down my thighs, and I seeped want.
Then I was naked and he was still in uniform, though he wasn’t wearing that belt. His uniform was blue, the color
of night sky at ten o’clock. Indigo, or something darker. He spoke softly, as softly as the skirt lay on the carpet. “Should I leave you like this, Beth, for the barbecue?” Oh, god. No. A quiver went through me, as I imagined Eric leading me down the steps from the side of the house into his backyard, guiding me as I walked, teetering slightly, without my arms free for balance. As I walked, still cuffed. Still in my sandals. Still naked. Like a prize. His friends, colleagues, men with the same hard faces, the same eyes that had seen so much, there. And now their eyes would rake my naked skin, from mouth to ankle. I trembled, imagining. That scenario was barbaric.