Devil In The Waters, Book 3, Chapter 2b (partial)

When the phone went back in her suit, Devlin was there, hands in his pockets, a summery lake breeze tossing his tie and ruffling his brushed back hair. He squinted into the sun saying to her, “Nice guy Josh checking up on his wife?”

“He wants to go out tonight.”

“Come on,” Devlin said, nodding his chin along the walkway where they’d headed before Josh called. The Mercedes was behind them, a small gleaming black slug aside the mass of the huge container ship. They strolled the concrete walk alongside the squared drop off into choppy Lake Ontario, the walkway separated by a massive chain strung on syncopated metal posts. The shun shone on them and the heat was nice on her cheeks.

Soon they’d left the bustle of moving equipment back by the Jourlet and the shipyard was quieter, not silent, but more peaceful. There was a patch of greenery ahead and she figured that was where Devlin would take her to talk, but now he veered inward, toward a low patch of grounded containers sitting around an abandoned forklift. She followed.

They got side by side again, and Devlin said, “You don’t have to apologize.”

“I didn’t—”

“I told you from the start the job was separate. I wouldn’t want it any other way. I mean, I was up front from the beginning.”

“You were . . .”

They paused at the forklift. Devlin leaned a shoulder on it and looked at her. She ran her hand on the sun-hot yellow metal.

When the moment was silent too long, she said, “It’s just . . .”

“Tell me,” he prompted when she paused.

She looked up, met his eyes. “Mel. Mel Wilson.”

Devlin raised his eyebrows. “What about him?”

“You let him go.”

“I did.”

“Before I got here.”

Devlin shrugged, frowned, watched her. Two cargo trucks lumbered their way, big smelly diesel motors churning and roaring. Both of them winced, and together saw the roiling dust storm in the trucks’ wake. Devlin led her to the nose of the forklift, took her hand and walked her into the cool dim space of an open cargo container a foot off the ground. He pulled her up and in as the trucks roared past.

The front quarter of the container had been emptied, or not yet loaded, the remaining space packed floor to ceiling with fifty-pound plastic bags stacked on pallets and wrapped in plastic. From the smell, they could be fertilizer.

Devlin, with his hands in his pants pockets again, turned saying, “Yeah. I fired Mel before you started.”

She stood in the line of light from the open cargo door. “You see what I’m thinking?”

“You’re not going to stop thinking of me in this way, are you?”

“What way’s that?”

“I needed you in bed so bad I just pushed out the closest dog to make room for you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You think I wanted you in here so I could fuck you. You think I got rid of someone so I could get you in my gunsights.”

“You need two lawyers or one?”

“In Toronto? One. You.”

“So . . .?”

“I need the right person. You’re the right person. When Mel was here, I hired you thinking I might need two lawyers. I only need one.”

“Double the workload for me.”

“You love it, I think. In high school, I knew Kimmy Chang always did her homework.”

“I always did my homework. So why is Mel gone?”

“Uh-oh,” Devlin said, flashing a mean smile.

“Uh-oh, what?”

“What’s that type of riddle the bad guy asks if you want to pass?”

“Pass? It’s a neck riddle if it’s to save your neck.”

“Perfect. I have a riddle.”

“To save my neck?”

“Mel lost his job because of it. It’s time sensitive. Are you up for the task?”

“What if I’m not?”

“You tell me.”

She scoffed. “What, you’re going to fire me like you fired Mel?”

“You going to cry on the way out too?”

“You wouldn’t fire me.”

“I hope I don’t have to decide.”

She studied him, showing him confidence while she scrutinized his intent. “So what’s the conundrum?”

“Border Services seized a load on us. Eighty containers. Mel Wilson fucked up his paperwork, now I’ve got a client with one-and-a-half million of perishables on a dry dock. Save my client’s money.”

“Where do I start?”

“Kimmy, Kimmy . . . you tell me. I already hired out of house, ABM in Toronto’s already working it. Hope you can beat them to the punch.”

She crossed her arms, smirking. “So if I fix it, I don’t have to have sex with you?”

“The job and its performance are always separate from sex. I told you that.”

“I was kidding, Devlin.”

Devlin adjusted his tie, working the knot looser saying, “The riddle’s a joke, Kimmy. I don’t need you to fix it. I told you ABM’s on it.”

“I can fix it,” she said standing up to him. He pulled his tie free and unbuttoned his shirt. “What are you doing?”

“Solving Kimmy’s riddle,” he said, coming closer.

***

With his tie removed, Devlin stood before her with the silk fabric wound over his two large hands. Her heart raced. He wound the tie tighter around his right fist, smirking now. “Turn around,” he said.

She was wordless. Her brain gone cottony and disconnected. All snark removed, wit and cynicism stripped away. Devlin stood a head taller than her, the musky woodsy scent of him overpowering the chemical agriculture smell of the container. His shirt was open, and she could see the tanned skin of his chest and collar. Sunlight came in the open cargo door, painting one side of his face in bright pastel, the pale colors of floral bouquets drawing lines along the edge of his nose, the ridge of his cheekbone, his brow, the sharp angle of his strong jaw. And those hands, way the softness of the tie’s silk caressed their firm power . . . 

She turned around, dipping her chin, looking at the scratched and pitted metal floor, the angled edges of the container’s wall. When he said nothing, didn’t even touch her, she said, “What do you want me to do?”

“Put your hands behind you.”

There was a small clicking sound of protest in her throat, but she closed it off and put first her right hand behind her, then the left. Devlin maneuvered her wrists together, the left one over top of the right one, tugging higher the sleeves of her suit jacket and slipping the fabric of his tie around both wrists, tightening it, tying a knot, looping again and tucking the tie’s dangling ends through. Her arms were firmly affixed behind her back.

“Face me.”

When she came around now, that domineering expression had left his eyes, replaced with a certain pleasure. The dominance was still there, the base layer, but now it was like with her active compliance the next stage of his game would begin.

She whispered, “What are you going to do to me?”

It made him smile, and seeing the dimple form in his masculine cheek got her stomach fluttering. She sighed, leaned back until her shoulder blades touched the metal wall. He loomed closer.

“Well, Kimmy . . .” His hand came to her neck, his thumb tracing a line just under her chin, down her throat, then resting on her collarbone. “I’m going to give you what you want.”

Voice breathless, she said, “What’s that?”

He unbuttoned her shirt, not looking in her eyes anymore, but watching his own hand work. Button after button, tugging then her shirttails so they hung over her skirt. He warmed the flat of his hand on her naked tummy. Her thighs began quivering, and her breath came short and shaky. “What is it I want?” She didn’t even know.

His hand caressed her rib cage, slipped behind her, underneath her shirt, headed to undo her bra. She pinched his hand under her arm saying, “No, don’t.”

“This is what you want, Kimmy. You don’t want to give it to me . . . but you want me to take it.”

Her mouth opened to say No, but stayed silent and agape, no words uttered. All she could think was the embarrassment when he removed her bra and saw her naked chest.

But she didn’t stop him as his hand moved again, going to the center of her back, unfastening her bra with thumb and two fingers. She pinched her arms again, holding the bra in place.

Devlin took his time, drawing his hand out, running the first knuckle up her sternum, hooking his finger under the front of her bra then tugging it up and free. Her left breast was completely exposed to him, her nipple large, hard, and engorged, a bursting cherry pit on her A-cup. Devlin made a small hiss of appreciation. She closed her eyes, suffered under his gaze, thinking of all those pretty girls with their swaying breasts he’d been with. Hurting inside waiting to hear what he might say . . . 

“Everything about you is beautiful,” he said.

Her eyes fluttered open, peeled up to look at the shipping container’s ceiling. She said nothing, breathing in long strong gusts, feeling his hand cup her meager bosom, then the pad of his thumb working over top of her aching nipple. Her knees loosened and she dipped, tightening her back muscles so she wouldn’t slump to the floor.

Devlin’s hand left her breast. He stood. “Stand up straighter,” he said, and she dug her heels in the metal floor and pushed her back up the wall, hands tied behind her, breast exposed. From her navel down, she’d gone like warm Jell-O. Her ass muscles loose, uncomplicated. Glowing embers in her belly, damp heat at her core.

Devlin put a hand in the pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew a folded over sheaf of paper money. She chewed her lip, thinking he was going to peel off a few hundreds and offer money to fuck her. She formed complaint and anger but could say nothing.

But it wasn’t the paper he was interested in. He tugged the bills free from the gold money clip, put the bills back in his suit pocket.

Now he gripped her neck again, traced the pad of his thumb along the angle of her jaw, caressing the point of her chin, then pushing his thumb into her hung open mouth. She sucked it, closed her eyes. When he pulled it free, she watched then as he took the warm wetness from her mouth and thumb-smeared it into the pinch of the folded over metal money clip. His finger tucked into it, widening its mouth, and he placed it over the bud of her nipple.

“Oh no, no,” she moaned, shaking, chin tucked right down, eyes wide and watching, waiting . . . 

Devlin eased his finger out and let the natural tension of the clip bite its jaws down on her desperate throbbing nipple. She cried out, knees going watery again and slumping down the wall.

Devlin grabbed the waistband of her skirt, tugged her forward and helped her to stand. With fingers tented on her naked chest, he guided her backward to lean against the wall, every sensation in her body tuned into the wild radio waves emanating from the electric contact made with those metal jaws on that sensitive part of her. She could feel a growing heaviness between her legs. A wet hunger. Her knees shook.

With both hands on either side of her head, Devlin leaned very close and whispered in her ear now: “I want you on your knees.”