With well-composed fury she explained, “I realize that you are thirsty for blood given Alex’s dire situation, Detective… but I need to know what it is you are trying to accomplish by stretching Horton’s sentence so far into the future that it is ready to snap.”
“He tried to help the kidnappers by impeding my investigation.”
“Did you take his threat seriously for even a second?”
“No,” I lied.
“Even the 4 years we gave him is too much in my opinion, but I did not wish to risk insulting you, the victim, by being too lenient.”
“He deserves exactly what I offered.”
“All Cops Are Bastards, and that man in particular is garbage, no argument. But the deal you gave Horton has me fearing what you have planned for the actual kidnappers.” When after too many seconds I failed to tell her what I had planned for them, she said, “But as much as I fear it, I must know. When the time comes to arrest the rest of the ne’er-do-wells, what kinds of bargains will you try to extort from them?”
“None. I’ll force them to go to trial.”
“Why would you do that? A plea bargain is a safer bet; minimum sentences are already grotesquely disproportionate to the impact of their corresponding crimes. The system is designed to force the accused into accepting bargains as a rule.”
“The unfairness of the system is immaterial to my decision, the kidnappers deserve life.”
“Their lives seem like a lot to take from them if they have taken only a finite portion of one man’s life, don’t you think?”
“‘Finite portion’? We don’t even know whether Alex is still alive! As for your ‘one man’s life’, the bastards who took him have traumatized his loved ones, robbed his comrades of a powerful ally, deprived countless vulnerable people of a hero, and demoralized the communities and movements to whom he has given hope. Whoever took him hurt many people’s lives and deserves the worst punishment on the books.”
She sighed, shook her head, and exhaled a single, extended, disappointed stream of air. “Detective. The first step towards a favorable outcome for the prosecution is securing a bargain as soon as the defendant signals that they are amenable to negotiations. We are at our most powerful now, before we arrive at the preliminary hearing. The best possible outcome for the prosecution is the judge sealing the deal at pre-trial, negating the need for a trial altogether. Sending it to a jury, I should not need to tell you, takes time and resources and gives the evildoers an opportunity to get away scot-free.”
“The kidnappers won’t be getting away ‘scot-free’. Diane trusts you to do a good job in court, so I do, too.”
“Do you trust the judge? The jurors? Your witnesses?”
“The judge…” You can probably tell by now that I hadn’t thought that far ahead—Diane was right to tell me I wasn’t a good detective.
“You are no longer inspiring confidence within me, Detective.”
I winced. “We have a solid case for Horton, so even if the plea bargain falls through, we still have him dead to rights for accessory to kidnapping—will you at least admit that?”
She pondered the question for a disconcerting length of time before admitting, “Other than the fact we have neither Alex nor his corpse to testify for us at the moment—sure, for however long it takes for the wills of the jury to melt in a poorly air-conditioned courtroom in late July.”
“And… and wouldn’t you say that its solidity is the most important factor in predicting success?”
She shook-nodded dubiously. “If our judge is honest and fair and competent, and the jury isn’t biased or tampered with, and the witnesses are respectable and compliant, if his counsel doesn’t manage to get any of our evidence thrown out in pretrial for being warrantless… then the persuasiveness of the case is a modestly effective predictor of success.” I nodded, satisfied. “But if you have a judge with blue blood, Horton might not look so guilty; and as for the actual kidnappers: if one of our witnesses ‘disappears’, or is intimidated into silence, or turns out to have ‘bad character’—cough, cough, gets paid for sex—or if we have a single bad juror; or if any of your evidence was hearsay or acquired in violation of the Fourth… you can show the jury absolute proof, but in the end he will walk out of that courtroom unshackled.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. ‘Oh’ is right. But do not dwell on it. We were able to secure a bargain, and we may yet persuade the real kidnappers to sign their own, so you have not seriously screwed anything up. Yet.”
“Okay. For the rest of this case and every case that follows… I’ll let you make all the big decisions.”
“Assuming I accept any more cases for you.”
“If you do a good job, Diane will insist that you take it on.”
She sniffed through a smirk. “Then there is a perverse incentive for me to fail as miserably as I can.”
“Do you already hate working with me?”
She patted me on the shoulder. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“I’m assuming the answer is ‘yes’, so I’ll change my question to ‘How much do you hate me?’ I need to know if we’re actually capable of cooperation or if you were just going easy on me earlier.”
She leaned against the paper towel dispenser. With her biggest smile, she reminded me with measured deliberation and forceful enunciation, “Detective Bachman: you… are a cop.” Every nuance—bold or fine—in every thought of hers—conscious or subliminal—concerning police officers was made flawlessly clear in her enunciation of the word ‘cop’. “I am an attorney who specializes in civil rights violations, by cops… like you.”
“Or like Diane,” I riposted.
“Diane has deliberately decided to put as few people in jail as she can get away with and allow the few she is forced to catch to go free without punishment at her earliest opportunity; she has secured not even a single conviction, neither by her own hands nor by any of her subordinates… in her entire career. You went in person to the judge to get your warrant, having spent your day off investigating instead of recuperating; you arrested Horton yourself; and you wanted me to put him behind bars for an excessive length of time. Your aims diverge from hers.”
“But she supports my decisions.”
“Which—” She allowed a little frustration to dribble out. “—boggles my mind. I have been transplanted—without anesthetic or antiseptic or antirejection medication—into the DA’s office and given a badge without any training, like Dorothy being given silver shoes without a good witch to guide her through this depraved permutation of Oz. This was the punishment inflicted upon me by Diane.”
“Punishment for what?”
“Things I will not explain to you because it is our business, not yours.”
“Whatever. I don’t know how to feel about being on my girlfriend’s other submissive’s shit list. I wish she hadn’t told you anything about me.”
“I am her lawyer. I have a need to know about her indiscretions. She could be fined for quid pro quo and be liable for a God-awful sum in damages if any of you decide to exercise your legal and human rights—enough to have a significant impact on her finances. Not to mention—it is simply unethical, and unbecoming of someone who believes in the inviolable right to control one’s own body to engage in these exchanges of power and liberty. I’ve told her she’s a fool and a hypocrite, but she insists on playing the sexual harassment lottery. Nobody tells Moneta, Teacher of a Hundred Naughty Subs, what she can and cannot do.”
After an awkward moment, I admitted, “I hadn’t considered her net worth until you brought up damages. How much does she make?”
“Attorney-client privilege.”
“Aww. Guess I’ll have to ask her myself. You sure you don’t feel like dishing on how you pissed her off?”
She smirked. “Why? Are you in need of inspiration?”
“Sure. What if I share my own naughtiness? We could trade stories.”
She shook her head and zipped her lips.
“I’ll tell you anyway, because you might find it amusing and thus like me more than the big steaming dog shit you stepped in right before meeting me.”
“I won’t stop you from trying to endear yourself to someone whose mind has been permanently concluded since she first heard about Diane’s new pet who wanted to be a cop and really wants to fight crime.”
“I bit her on the neck.”
She was caught off guard; unable to hold back the laugh forcing its way out of her throat, she resorted to covering her mouth to suppress it. “(Hmh!) Oh my God.”
“To mark her as mine.”
She cackled. “You are insane!”
“She took away my ears and tail. Absolutely devastated me, and she warned me of some additional, vague punishment to come at an undefined date.”
“I’ll be damned… I’ll be damned. What could she have in mind for you? Something horrible, no doubt, if you displayed such insubordination.” She sighed. “Something that will be difficult to one-up.” She removed a card from her jacket and offered it. “Until I hatch a plan to piss her off, I have work to do.” I accepted the business card, which simply listed her name and number. “I will be off.”
“Nice chatting with you, Eileen.”
She waved as she left.
“Tough crowd,” observed a voice once Eileen was gone.
“Huh?” I looked around for the source of the utterance.
“She’s got a point though.”
“Where…?”
“The kind of consequences you want… you really think they’re fair?”
“Christ, I’m hallucinating. Fuck.”
“You don’t recognize your old Ma’s voice?”
The reminder that she was always there for me shot from my heart up into my brain, and her sudden appearance startled me. “Ah!”
“What’s up with the spooking, did ya forget I exist or something?”
“Um. I don’t… know, I just… haven’t seen or heard from you in a while.”
“It’s getting harder to get through to you nowadays.”
“Why’s that?”
“The same reason any parent loses touch with their adult child. You don’t need me anymore—most of the time.”
“I’ll always need you.”
She shook her head. “You don’t. It’s a fact of life, it’s a part of growing up and becoming an adult. You spend so much time with your parents as a kid that whenever you get an opportunity to be away from them, you make the best of it—and when those opportunities eventually grow so close together that they become one, long, uninterrupted opportunity extending to the grave… you never see them again.”
“Don’t say that. I want to see you every day.”
“When? You spend every waking moment with your girlfriends.”
“I’ve had plenty of moments here and there for you to visit.”
“You’ve been so invested in your girlfriends and sleepovers and kidnapping that you never think about me, never call out to me anymore.”
“I’ve called out before and you didn’t show up.”
“Maybe because I wasn’t the person you actually needed. You call out for me sometimes, but the loved ones you really need are your girlfriends. So I can’t show my face.”
“How do I get you to visit?”
“Maybe… do things that remind you of me. Things we did together.”
“I’ll watch more mystery movies—without my girlfriends, so there’s room for you on the couch.”
“That… might work.”
“So… Why did you come to me now?”
“To help.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bloodthirsty.”
“What the hell makes you think I’m ‘bloodthirsty’?”
“You want to destroy the culprits’ lives, not serve justice.”
“Of course I want justice! Justice is all I want!”
“Alright. Tell me: what is justice?”
“Justice is people getting what they deserve. Good people getting good things, bad people getting bad things.”
The voice sighed. “I can’t believe I’m doing this, but you’re not gonna see clearly until I blow your mind with wisdom. There’s a saying I want you to know: ‘Tzedek, tzedek tirduf.’”
“This… is a surprise. You never talk to me about Yiddish. Every time I ask about it you act like I’ve just spit in your face. Except for this Monday night, but then you were kind of a bitch about it.”
“Right. I was. I’m sorry, and I wanna make things right between us and do better from now on by teaching you all about this stuff. Anyways, it isn’t Yiddish, it’s Hebrew. It’s usually translated as Justice, justice you shall pursue.”
“Is it a common phrase?”
“It’s from Parshe Shoftim of Devarim—for gentiles that would be the reading portion of Judges in Deuteronomy—chapter 16, verse 20. These 3 words are thousands of years old, and are part of the foundation of one of the world’s oldest and most-debated systems of ethics and justice.”
“Why are you suddenly okay with talking about this? You never talk about the Old Testament with me, it’s even more taboo than Yiddish.”
“It’s called the Torah, emphasis on the second syllable—only Christians call it the Old Testament. I’m teaching you now because that lawyer’s words made you doubt yourself, caused you to realize that you’re lost, and I owe it to you to help you find your way. Because I never showed you the way. But now I share these ancient words with you, words that have chased me no matter how far I run from the faith of our mothers: Justice, justice you shall pursue. In your crusade for Brookvale, have you done anything that you believed was not in line with your understanding of justice?”
“Well… I tried to avoid becoming a cop, but that didn’t last very long.”
“And what about the plea deal?”
“I think Horton deserves worse. He tried to get in the way of my attempt to rescue Alex. He was in league with the kidnappers.”
“Okay. Let’s stick a pin in that and address the cop thing first. Here’s my understanding of your thought process: becoming a cop was the lesser of two evils in a matter of life and death—you could either become a cop and save a man’s life, or let the cops bury the case and let him die. At least in the first course of action the victim stands a chance. Is that an accurate summary?”
“That was my reasoning to a T.”
“So would you say that becoming a cop was the just course of action, even if it wasn’t ideal?”
“Hmm. I… guess. Yes.”
“And has your goal always been to achieve a just outcome, no less?”
“Justice has always been my goal.”
“And did you try to show fairness to this Horton guy, or were you cruel?”
“I think I was fair, but I, um… was… a little harsh, according to Eileen.”
“Somebody took a man away from his loved ones and away from the people who look to him for the right path in life—and for all we know, they took not just his body, but his life. And Horton tried to help them.”
“Yeah. Exactly. He was an accessory.”
“But he doesn’t know where Brookvale is.”
“That doesn’t matter. He tried to help the kidnappers get away with their crime.”
“Did he succeed?”
“No.”
“Then what harm has he caused?”
I shrugged. “He scared me and he killed a bird.”
“Do those sins warrant taking him away from his loved ones for the rest of his life?”
“Well…”
“If the bird thing had been a practical joke, would you have bothered arresting him?”
“I, uh… probably would have told him to grow up.”
“And then let him go.”
“Um. Yeah.”
“Putting him in jail won’t make Alex magically reappear, it just takes Horton away from his family, depriving them of a husband and a father and a breadwinner—a triple hardship. Is that fair to his loved ones?”
“Oh. No. It isn’t.”
“It’s one thing to save a man from a kidnapping. But is putting a man in prison truly an act of justice?”
“Well… I can’t say ‘yes’ following that logic. Locking someone up doesn’t really accomplish anything positive.”
“Does prison change people? At all?”
“Maybe some people, but… a lot of people, it does nothing. Reconviction rates in the state have gone down in recent years, but as of 2020 they were still at 39 percent. And… even the people who learn their lessons… their lives and their families’ lives are destroyed.”
“Do you really want to destroy that man’s life?”
I sighed and shook my head. “No… Not anymore. But, if not jail, what punishment does he deserve?”
“Maybe justice isn’t about punishment.”
“Okay. If not punishment, what is justice about?”
“I feel like I fell short, back when you first started getting into police stuff, by not teaching you about this… and many other things. Righteousness, to be clear, is a better translation than ‘justice’. ‘Tzedek, tzedek’—Righteousness, righteousness, spoken twice to emphasize how critical it is, but also to emphasize that there are two aspects to its pursuit. You must take to heart the fact that tzedek is more than merely enforcing rules and punishing rule-breakers—in fact, punishment and retribution are only small slices of the pie. Beyond correcting and punishing antisocial behavior, tzedek is vastly more concerned with acts of compassion—giving money to those in need, protecting vulnerable people like orphans and widows and migrants, clothing the naked, feeding the penniless, assisting the abused, sheltering the homeless, paying fair wages, that kinda stuff. Mending wounds, if you will. Tzedek is the righting of wrongs in all senses.”
“Okay. So… how do we right our wrongs for all the people we’ve sent to prison?”
“T’shuvah. In English we say ‘repentance’, but the word literally translates to ‘return’, as in ‘return to the righteous path’. Realize what you have done wrong, regret what you have done wrong, confess what you have done wrong, resolve never to do it again, mend the wound as best you can, and ask for forgiveness.”
“So… society needs to figure out that the justice system is hurting people needlessly, and then… make it up to them.”
“In summary.”
“That’s just apologizing.”
“You can apologize without understanding what you did wrong, and without making amends. You can even apologize without confessing your wrongdoing, if you word it carefully—or carelessly. Most importantly, an apology isn’t a guarantee that you’ll never do it again. You need to own your mistakes in all respects.”
“I do that all the time.”
“How often, after you apologize for a mistake, do you make the same mistake the next day?”
“I don’t…”
“Be honest.”
I sighed. “I’ve… apologized a lot at work for not doing a good job, and then… I continue not doing a good job.”
“Unions organize those kinds of ‘mistakes’ all the time. It’s protest. That’s good work.”
“Oh. Well. Okay. Then I’m okay.”
“How about alcohol?”
“I’m sober again. I’ve confessed that I need to avoid it, and I’ve decided to never drink again.”
“Except, can you say that you’ve truly repented if you haven’t had the opportunity to turn it down since your confession?”
“There was alcohol at the orgy, and I didn’t touch it.”
“…‘Orgy’?”
“Yes, me and my 5 girlfriends.”
“Alright. Okay. My baby is going to orgies.”
“Hosting them.”
She nodded, and after a few seconds of silence, continued, “Anyway… you’ve done t’shuvah, Esti. You are a ba’alat t’shuvah, a master of return, when it comes to alcohol. As for being a cop, I don’t think you were a bad cop. If anything, you were a good cop. Never arrested anyone you didn’t believe was guilty—which was nobody—you never ratted anyone out, you filled the expired meters instead of writing parking tickets. But now you’re taking being a good cop to the next level. You’re showing people that you aren’t gonna abuse your police powers. You’re actively helping people instead of passively avoiding hurting them. You’re helping the people that cops usually hurt, and you’re helping them even though it’s gonna make your fellow cops mad. That’s returning to the righteous path.” She wrapped her arms around me. “You’re on the path, Esti. Try your hardest not to stray, but if you do, know that it’s never too late to return again. The gates of repentance are always open, even to your dying breath.”
“Thank you.” I squeezed thin air.
I sat on the toilet and mulled over her words. Once I had recovered from the unexpected but welcome Hebrew lesson, I called Diane and told her, “I have Horton.”
“Good.” Then gently she commanded, “Go home, Sweetie. You will need the rest for the coming days.”
So I did; but before I unlocked my door, I knocked on Judy’s, and she answered with a hug, a smile, and a brief kiss. We sat on my couch and I caught her up on my hunt for Horton.
“You had a helluva day,” she observed.
“Yes. I’m kinda bushed.”
“You could lie down while I fuck your pussy.”
“That would be nice, but… I’m kind of sexed out. Hmm. We were supposed to buy you a collar yesterday. Wanna go do that?”
She looked like she was going to panic, then calmed down and smiled. “Yeah, sure. We need to make sure it’s real leather. I won’t settle for any plastic or plant-based crap.”
We went to BEaST FuRIENDS Pet Shop and immediately found what she wanted, metal spikes on black leather, sized for a large dog. “Andy,” she said, putting it on and admiring it through her compact mirror, “Andy… this is making me…” She whispered into my ear, “Super fucking horny.”
I snickered (once I had recovered from the ear blast). “We are both as bad about any given kink as the other. You were right to call us soulmates. Okay, take it off so we can buy it.” She pouted. “Oh my God, you’re giving me puppy dog eyes. Yes, Blondie, it breaks my heart to ask you to do this, but please take it off so I can pay for it.” She removed the collar—very reluctantly—and relinquished it. I paid with cash, and as soon as we were past the checkout she asked, “Can you put it back on me now?”
I laughed. “Of course.” I bought a dog tag from the engraver machine with the name ‘Blondie’ in a curly-girly font. “Without the dog tag people probably wouldn’t care, but with it… maybe you shouldn’t be wearing it in public.”
She whispered, “I wish I’d tried this sooner, because I’m having a blast. Please don’t take it off of me.” I could hear pain in her voice, and in her eyes was the fear of having something precious taken away.
“I’m not sure I could do something so cruel to you,” I confessed. “Even if it needed to be done, I don’t think I could. It would break my heart. I won’t. I will have to euthanize you before I take that thing off your neck.”
Her worry went away. “Thank you, my Lady.” As she said ‘my Lady’, as she hugged me in gratitude and ground her pelvis against mine, as her cocoa-honey-mallow musk migrated from her chest into my nose, I suddenly became very ready for coitus.
“How about we go home and take care of the effects of that collar, Blondie?”
“Hell yes.”
The drive took too damn long; we were both horny as hell, and our car talk devolved into dirty talk, which only made our anticipation more intense. We held hands as we ascended the stairs and as I unlocked my door; I tugged her to the bed and told her to get undressed while I did the same. As soon as she was down to nothing, I pushed her onto her back, grabbed her cock, wrapped my lips around the head, and got to sucking.
“Andy…”
I took my mouth off her penis. “What did you call me?”
“Oh. Uh—I meant to say ‘my Lady’.”
“I’m busy, Blondie, what do you have to say? Out with it!” Her cock bounced eagerly in my hand.
“I was hoping you might… stick it in… your… pussy.”
“No.” I resumed sucking; she groaned, perhaps a little disappointed that she wasn’t inside me, but that would only be the case for a few seconds more because I was coming closer and closer to losing the fight against my instinct to mount her.
“Okay—Could you—(mgh)—maybe slow—down? I don’t want—(ah)—to cum right away.”
I took my mouth off her cock and snapped, “I might have granted your request had you asked with manners!” Then I doubled down on my sucking.
“Oh—I’m—(hah)—sorry—my Lady! Please, would—you slow—(mh)—down so that I—(ah!)—don’t cum?”
I pulled my head off her cock. “Much better.” I got up and rifled around in my purse, pulled out the box of Teddy Grahams and tossed one at her—it landed on her stomach.
“Is this a… a Teddy Graham?”
“Yes. It’s a treat, a reward for addressing your mistake.” I returned to bed.
“A… treat.”
“Well?” She ate it, and I petted her hair. “Good girl.” I grabbed her cock, startling her, and gave it a squeeze to check that she was still firm, and, satisfied that it was still rock-hard, climbed aboard her and slowly slid her inside myself.
“(Ohhhhh… fuck.)” She had a stupid smile on her face.
I began riding her. “What do we say, Blondie?”
“(Ahh…) Thank you, my Lady, for… (mh…) gracing my cock with your… (mh…) beautiful, tight… (hah…) pussy.” She moaned quietly, placidly, and placed her hands on my hips. I bent forward, our tits touched, and I kissed her Eve’s apple. Her hands moved from my hips to my back, where her fingers slowly curled and the pressure of their tips increased with each thrust. Her moans turned into groans, and her nails dug into my flesh, carving welts into my skin, and I sighed in pleasure at the pain and doubled my efforts to make her flood my pussy. Her phone rang, but we ignored it. Her hips moved with mine as I rode her and squeezed her and did my best to make her cum as there came a knock on the door, and I could feel her cock getting ready to explode when we were interrupted by a series of forceful raps, insistent enough to break through the overpowering haze of our libidos and touch our brains’ fight-or-flight organs.
Once I had come to my senses I growled, “Oh, for fuck’s sake…”
“Just ignore it.”
“Are you commanding me, Blondie?”
“(I’m sorry, my Lady,)” she mumbled.
“Just for that, I’m cutting this short and answering the door.”
She groaned. I gave her a poison glance as I (more reluctantly than I wanted to let on) got off of her. The visitor knocked again; I forgot to cover up, Judy hid under the covers, and I answered.
It was Diane. “Mistress! Uh, would you like to come in?”
She sized up my naked body, but chose not to comment. “I am looking for Judith, she is not answering her phone or her door.”
“She’s… here. We’re in the middle of fucking.”
“You are? She and I have a date very soon.”
“At 6, right?”
“Yes.”
“Um… what time is it?”
“5:35.”
“That’s… early.”
“It takes 20 minutes to get to the restaurant.”
“Oh—then I guess she needs to get ready immediately. Please… come in, Mistress.” She followed me. “Judy, your date is here.”
“She is?” She peeked out from under the covers. “What’s the time?”
“5:35,” I repeated.
“Leigh, you’re early. Which is good, but I was expecting you at 6 because I made the reservation for 6:30.”
“Oh? Then there was a misunderstanding. My apologies for interrupting. Were you nearly finished?”
“I was close,” I said. “But… I can finish myself off if you need to take her away.”
“No, we have time. Go ahead.”
“Thank you, Mistress!” I launched myself at Judy, yanked off the sheets, mounted her, vigorously rode her, and within half a minute I was sighing my satisfaction. As I recovered from my orgasm I observed that she was still rock-hard. “Did you cum?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, no.”
I kept going. Diane surprised me by joining us and kissing Judy. After a few minutes, Judy grunted. I fed my pet a treat and patted her on the head. “Good girl.”
“I am happy to see that you are remembering to reward her, Prax.” She stole a Teddy Graham and fed me.
“Thank you, Mistress. Judy, you should have time to take a shower.”
“I… like,” confessed Diane, “when my partners have sexual fluids on their bodies, when they go out in public. It feels exhibitionistic.”
“Really? Maybe I should have Judy give me a pearl necklace next time we go to Asmodeus.”
“That would be lovely. Up, Jude. Get dressed.”
“Yes, Mist—” She cut herself off. “I mean—of course, Leigh.” Diane laughed.
“We can share her,” I told Diane. “What’s mine is yours, after all…”
“Well? What do you say?” she asked Judy.
“Um… Having two owners sounds a little confusing… but, okay.”
“Splendid. What is your name, pet?”
“Blondie.”
“Cute. Get dressed, Blondie.” Judy chuckled and obeyed without hesitation.
“Did you find my command humorous?” Diane hid her smile behind an artfully-chiseled façade of stony disciplinarianism.
“Oh, uh… No, Mistress.”
“Good.” She smiled and winked at me, then returned her eyes to Judy. “Blondie… how big is the table you reserved?”
“I figured you’d prefer to limit your public association with a merchant of regulated substances, so I reserved a private table, which seats up to 6.”
“Prax, you shall be joining us.”
“Thank you, Mistress!” I ran to the bathroom and put on makeup, then put on my black dress, and we left for Lorenzo’s.
The restaurant’s reputation as swanky was well-deserved, with fine China, crystal drinkware, and flatware that had a hint of real silver patina. We chatted and bonded and ordered nice food. Judy was Diane’s primary focus, but she was careful to give me enough attention that I didn’t feel left out. We ate, talked into the night, and, satisfied we’d gotten our money’s worth, Diane insisted on paying because she was ‘responsible’ for us; as her pets, we knew better than to object.
We went back to my apartment and shagged a couple of times, until Diane reminded me, “You have kidnappers to find, who no doubt took greater care to cover their tracks than the idiot you have already caught. You need a good night’s sleep if you are going to cope effectively with that frustration.” She gave each of us a gentle kiss. “You are so close, Drea. I will see you tomorrow. Good night, and much devotion to both of my pets.” She left.
“She’s a helluva woman,” opined Judy.
“She sure is. Want to sleep over? I sleep better with you next to me.”
“You decide, remember?”
I laughed. “With Diane, I feel good following her commands without pause, but you… I like to let you have your free will from time-to-time.”
“Of course, my Lady. I enjoy sleeping next to you.”
“‘Andy’. Get your jammies, Judy.”
She changed into her pajamas and joined me in bed. Sleep came easy and went easy.