Reckless (2 page)

At ten a.m. Kelly's office was packed with her reporting staff, John Marlboro, Liz Sanchez, David Chow and Tad Stone.

"Well, you missed meeting Tad yesterday," Kelly said, as a way of introducing the newest member of the team. "He'll be doing features and interviews. I understand he loves to link politics and crime." She actually looked like she admired him as she spoke. "I'm sure you'll all remember his infamous stories. You can take some time to get to know him, but right now we have a full schedule and we need to get cracking."

"Excuse me," Tad suddenly jumped in, interrupting her monologue.

Kelly reached for the typed papers in Tad's hand and perused the copy.

"What's this?"

"Thought that was spelled out pretty clearly," he said.

"You got an interview with Armand Perez?" She was astonished.

"Last night about four a.m.," Tad said with a smile.

"How'd you do that, we've been after him for weeks?"

"I told you, I just needed a few minutes with my informants. Led me right to him. He was a little hyped up on coke, but that only made the interview more interesting. Actually, you might have to edit it, being The Mirror is a family newspaper."

Kelly perused the full interview line by line, more amazed with every word she read.

"I think this will be fine, with a few choice metaphors deleted," she said. "I'm impressed."

"It's why I was hired, Ms. London," he said, letting his eyes get inside her as they stared at each other.

"Well, we can see why Tad Stone has joined our team. I'm sure we'll have more first class copy coming from him soon. And for today," she said, moving on, "John you need to stick with the rape story, see if there's anything else we can dig up, Liz and David, you're still looking into the trial. And David, see if you can get anything out of the Mayor's office. Tad and I will be doing some undercover work trying to tie the drug ring into the brothel and the topless nightclub."

"Sounds like you get all the fun," John commented with a grin.

"Yeah, if I sent you into that place you'd spend too much and waste too much time," she said, grinning back at the seasoned veteran who always looked as though he was waking up from a hangover. "So, let's make the headlines, people." She dismissed them. All but Tad, who lingered in her office.

"Undercover?" he asked.

"I know there's more to that bar. The girls are pretty mum."

"You thinking of turning pro for a story?" Tad said smiling.

"No, that's not what I had in mind. But I did think you and I should do a little sleuthing this afternoon. That's if you're not planning to spend the day in bed."

"It would only be with you, hon," he mocked her.

Three days pounding the pavement together, Tad and Kelly produced few results from the seedy Blue Lady nightclub and the rumored brothel, the suspected headquarters of the drug operation. In a bar across the street from the Blue Lady, the pair sat drinking beer.

"Damn, we're going no where fast," she said.

"Maybe," Tad said.

"What have you heard that I haven't?" she asked.

"Just the solution to the problem," he said.

"Oh?"

"We have to infiltrate the club. If you look at the sign outside the door, seems pretty straightforward to me. They're hiring cocktail waitresses."

"Topless?" she asked.

"I wouldn't think you'd have any problem with that," he remarked.

She took a drink of her beer, sat back and appraised him, and his suggestion. It wasn't that she hadn't already thought of it, even if the measure seemed a little extreme. She'd never gone that far just for a story. But she wasn't surprised that Tad had mentioned it. He'd taken similar lengths to get a story a few years ago, almost getting himself arrested in a drug bust when he moved inside a ring. It worked in his favor with the police that his story helped crack the case.

"I'll think about it," she said.

"If you're worried about fitting in, with your body you'll have no problem."

"Thanks."

"That was a compliment, Ms. London."

"Listen, you don't want me calling you Mr. Stone, you can cut the Ms. London crap."

"I thought it was kind of cute, since we're spending an awful lot of time trying to keep our hands off each other," Tad said.

"You think so?" she said.

"I know so," he said. "You're hot now. And the only reason you're not coming on to me, is because you don't really like me."

"I think that's a very good reason."

"Not if it's only sex."

"Sure," she scowled. "Just like a man to think that physical is all that matters."

"You're going to tell me, Ms. Bitch, that you haven't just fucked for pleasure and not given the guy a second thought the next day? You try to lay that line on me, and I'll know you're lying."

"If I did want something just sexual, why would I want it with you?" she asked.

"Chemistry," he replied. "Ours clicks. We both know that. Might even help that we don't really like each other."

"That's interesting logic," she replied. She'd had just enough liquor in her system not to lay on some silly moralistic judgment which she didn't believe. "So you think having sex will what?"

"Be a real kick," he answered lightly.

"And that's all?" she asked.

"What else do you want?"

"Is that a proposition?"

"Take it anyway you like." He snickered.

"And if I flat refused you?"

Tad smirked. "You won't refuse forever and you know it," he said.

"How in the hell did you get so damned arrogant?" she asked, honestly amazed by his audacity.

He shrugged. "Maybe it's faked, you ever thought about that?"

"Now wouldn't that be interesting. Tad Stone vulnerable. You say things like that, you'll lose your reputation."

"So, what do you think about topless bars, and an undercover operation?" he asked.

"You want me to take a job there because you think it'll be useful, or because you want to see my bared breasts?"

"Take your pick," he said. His eyes gleamed.

"I'll have to think about it," she answered.

For awhile neither of them said a word. The silence was peaceful.

"You okay to drive?" he finally asked, ready to leave her.

"You're worried?"

"I wouldn't want my partner doing something stupid," he said.

"I'm fine," she answered. "I have a way of waking up very sober, when I get in traffic. I have a strong survival instinct. But you'll have to drive me to my car. It's at The Mirror."

Ten minutes later Tad dropped her off at the parking garage.

"You're sure you're okay?"

"I'm sure. I'll see you in the morning, at nine," she said, "and remember, be on time, nine o'clock."

"Nine?" he scowled.

"Yeah, I changed the time, just to piss you off."

His scowl turned into a grin. "I'll be there sharp, boss," he replied with a little salute.

For a brief instant, she wished she was going home with him. It would be so nice to screw him and lie side by side until dawn, which wasn't very far away. But that would never happen, if she could help it. The world was full of sexy guys. There was no reason why she had to obsess on this one.

Gray was home in bed when Kelly arrived at the apartment. He was sleeping as peacefully as a babe until she woke him, playing with his prick. It swelled in her mouth before he was fully awake, and by the time he was conscious, she was on top of him, moving sensuously to a tune from the bar that was still playing through her head. In the darkness, it was Tad, not Gray she was screwing. Her mind had always been good at imagining other men in bed. She was kissing Tad's lips, sucking nastily on his shoulder, and riding on the very tiptop of his hard penis with her skillful cunt. Slowly, she let the sensations that began in the bar hours before begin to mount. When she exploded, there was a cry much louder than she should have ever made past midnight with the windows open to the sultry night.

She slept peacefully for five hours until the alarm went off. Jerked awake, when her eyes opened, she was reminded that she was sleeping next to Gray not Tad Stone.

***

The investigation into the drug ring was going no where. Kelly decided to back off of any personal contact with the street informants and basic riff raff around the club. She didn't want to destroy any chances she had to go undercover.

Tad had some pretty good sources, but the big story was just not materializing. While she waited for something hot to break, she edited Tad's notes, becoming more impressed than ever with his style. He was not half as rough as she thought he might be. She'd taken him for a decent fact finder, but not much of a journalist. On the contrary, he turned out to be a terrific writer, snappy with his prose and intelligent. She hadn't planned on admiring him any more than she already did. It made the pressure for sex that much more real.

Every day his innuendo and the banter continued, until she was afraid that the rest of the news staff would notice.

"You're really hot for him," Liz remarked after one morning meeting.

"Oh, give me a break" she moaned. "There's not one good reason why I should give him a second thought."

"I could give you a dozen," Liz contended. "Let's just say he's the sexiest man around here. He has those gorgeous brown eyes on you—or at least on your body parts—the better part of every morning meeting."

"And that's a reason to go to bed with him?"

"In Tad Stone's case, I think it's enough," Liz said. The newswoman was hot herself thinking of Tad. That was something to take note of. The diminutive Liz with the long brown hair and the generous curves was more the kind of woman that Kelly envisioned with Tad—like the Spanish senorita that he kept referring to.

Regardless of what Kelly might have desired, however, there was little time for sex with Tad out on the street most of the day. She hardly saw him past noon. After the suggestion that she get hired by the topless club, she tabled any idea that they work together on the drug story. If he was so good, he'd get the whole story himself without her. And for several days, he seemed to be doing just that. However, when he skipped two morning meetings in a row, no one had any idea where he was. Trying to raise him on his phone at home, Kelly didn't have any luck. Hopefully that meant he was working, not out screwing some chick. But the thought occurred to her that he was in some kind of trouble. For professional and personal reasons that worried her.

It had been a quiet day for news and the newsroom had cleared out early. By ten, it was just Kelly working late in her office, combing through a number of stories she wanted to feature the next day. She'd just been to the water cooler, and had sat back down at her desk thinking that her eyes might be good for another hour, when she heard a shuffle outside her door and looked up.

"You're burning the midnight oil," Tad remarked.

"Where the hell have you been?" she blurted out seeing him leaning against the doorpost.

"You're gonna have to go undercover, Kel," he said, ignoring her remark.

"That doesn't answer my question," she replied.

"You want a story or not?" he snapped.

"The least you could have done was call and let me know where you've been," she said. "And you don't need to snap at me."

"You know, sometimes you have a rod up your ass," he said.

"You're being paid to produce, and you haven't been anywhere around for three days."

"Listen, I do my work, you'll get your copy. But if you really want something juicy on this story, you'll take off your top and get in cozy with the girls at the club."

"Is that so?" she said.

"Yeah."

"The kind of risk you'd take?" I'd suppose.

"Sure I take risks, I just spent the last hour at gunpoint if you really want to know."

"You what!"

"I'm not even sure it was loaded," he said immediately trying to soothe her concern. "Guy was a punk without much guts."

"At gunpoint!"

"Some dude thought I was getting too close."

The thought was sobering, but it almost reminded her of how he'd started this conversation.

"And now you want me to expose my breasts in a nightclub, because you're getting nowhere?" Her eyes flashed, though it was more than annoyance she communicated. Being so close to Tad was getting to her again. After a few days not seeing him, she discovered that absence had only made her longing more obvious to both of them.

"I didn't say that," he snapped at her, matching the look of scorn she was sending his way.

"But that's what you're implying. The Pulitzer author a little short on magic tricks this time?"

"You know, you're one hell of a dame. You gave me the assignment, called us partners, but when the job calls for getting a little nude, you back out like you're some kind of priss. Fact is, I can't get everything we need because I don't have a cunt. You do. I suppose the partners crap was just you shittin' me."

"Listen, Stone, I have a whole staff I'm responsible for," Kelly reminded him. "I have to look at the whole picture, and I can't see myself taking off a week to get the story you should be getting yourself."

"Well, that tells me what I need to know," he answered sarcastically.

"And what's that?" she asked.

"You've lost your nerve, babe. Leave it to the guys to get the real stuff, you're just like all the other chicks I've been around."

"I have not lost my nerve," she snapped at him.

"Couldn't tell by me," he snapped back. "You've lost your nerve about lots of things. Time was, I'd see your byline all over The Mirror. Now you're content to remain on the editor's page. Nice and safe."

"You have no business talking this way," Kelly said.

"Bothers you because it's true, just like the fact that you want to fuck me right now."

Tad moved from the center of her office, to the side of her desk, and pulled her to her feet.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Just testing the waters," he said, taking her into his arms, and kissing her mouth.

Just like she imagined it, she kissed him back; but remembering that they were at war, she pushed him off.

"Don't tell me you don't want it," Tad mocked her as he rocked back on his heel.

"That doesn't mean you have license to fuck me," she answered breathing hard.

"Of course it doesn't, but why not?" He was challenging her and the fire between them was turning into a first class blaze.

"Because I'd never want anything from you but what's physical."

"Of course. That's all you'd get. I'm not much of a boyfriend. So let's just do the physical part. Get it over with. You know it's going to come down to that."

She thought about it, as Tad slowly bridged the space she'd put between them. Right in her face, so close she could almost hear his heart beating, and could surely smell a hint of coffee on his breath. Her resistance was breaking down.

"It's just physical," she reminded him, once she realized that she wouldn't stop. "Nothing more."

"No other way," he agreed, as he took her back into his arms, and began running his hands over her breasts.

He made a line of kisses down her neck, tiny, purposeful ones. When he reached the crook of her shoulder, his one hand was under her dress reaching for her panties. His hands toyed with the soft wet skin, his fingers finding their way deep to her hole. The body heat swam over her like a wild wind. Once he found her vagina, and prodded it with a few thrusting pokes, he pulled his hand out and squeezed her entire pubic mound in his firm grasp. Then returning to his exploration, he invaded her between her legs again with his hand, forcing them wide apart. Moving lower still, he moved beyond her vagina to her back door.

"No, not there," she whispered, expecting him to stop. But he wasn't dissuaded at all. Taking juice from her pussy, he lubricated her anus and began to push through the tight barrier.

"God no, I can't," she murmured again.

"Oh, yes you can. You wouldn't be happy any other way," he assured her. He had no plans of listening to her protest.

"But I've never . . . . "

"You will tonight."

He was leading, she was following, the most submissive she ever remembered being.

Tad stopped for a moment and pulled her dress up over her head.

"Don't you think we should find someplace a little more private?" she asked, as she looked at the windows of her office.

"No," he replied as his T-shirt went over his head and he tossed it to the floor along side her dress. Unzipping his pants, he was more naked than she was in a minute's time. She was still in bra and panties. One glance at his glorious body, and Kelly was not disappointed. The chest was as muscular, the loins as inviting, and his cock as large as her imagination had created them.

"You're not really gonna put it in my ass, are you?" she questioned him before he could assault her again.

"After I've fucked your cunt," he answered her.

He had her legs parted, his dick between them, and though she'd laid back on her desk across the messy papers, he pulled her up to him so their chests rubbed, and he could fondle her breasts. The instantaneous clash of heat, the energy, the pulsing groins, slapping together like locomotives colliding, produced an orgasm in Kelly almost instantly. She bucked against him seeking another, the trip switch in her wound so tight it might take half a dozen to ease the pain of withholding from Tad Stone all these weeks.

As the spasms from her second orgasm died away, he pulled out, set her feet on the ground and turned her over the desk. One hand slapped her thighs and ass, the other prodded at her anus. She had one instinct to run away, the other to accept his plain faced assault for what it was. Never having been entered from behind, she thought she'd scream. But Tad, far more artful then she ever expected him to be, had her ready for the startling breach. With a multicolored fiasco of images shooting through her mind, the sensations fired through her body and she latched on to her own orgasmic wave. A different kind of orgasm, the feelings had a different source. This baser brand of copulation had its own rewards for the way it touched the darkness in her, the way she was forced to open and let go.

No, it wasn't a pretty sight. What a simple masturbation weeks before didn't accomplish, one hot ass fuck did. What was suppressed and angry and frustrated in her, vanished. And both limp after Tad exploded in her ass, neither one could argue with the results.

"You got a cigarette?" Tad asked, when he finally pulled away from her.

"You smoke?" she asked surprised.

"God you're dense," he laughed. "It's just a joke."

She got it then, but didn't smile. "Maybe it won't be so hard to work together after this," she acknowledged.

"Maybe," he answered, remaining purposefully guarded, like he had a whole lot more to add, but wouldn't.

He was picking up his clothes, putting on the jeans while Kelly's blue dress fell down over her flushed body. She might have been good for another round, but she'd never say so. Her ass hurt, and now felt empty. She liked the way it has been filled, liked being taken and subdued, but that was also something she'd never admit.

"What I didn't tell you, Kel," Tad said, as he pulled his T-shirt over his head—he was back to business, "there's something really fishy going on at that nightclub. There are rumors all over the place implicating the mayor's office. I don't know exactly where it's coming from, but I have a feeling that there are a few politicians right around the corner just waiting to be featured in our next story."

Kelly sat down, listening to his speculation, forgetting her body. Her mind was suddenly racing fast.

"You've got some proof?" she asked.

"Some, but I need more," he said.

"And you need me," she stated, as though she finally under-stood.

"It's all up to you," he replied, and he walked out the door.

She couldn't think of work, or the topless bar, or baring her breasts, or anything else mundane or otherwise. Her mind was on Tad Stone and the fuck of her life just minutes before. Her body and soul were more at peace than they'd been in a long time. Any decisions about the future and Tad's story would have to wait until she'd had a long night's sleep.