Echols, Jennifer by Going Too Far (v1.1) [rtf] Read Free Book Online Page B

Because at the bridge when he threatened me, I'd only noticed Officer After's dark uniform, white face, dark eyes. And his dimples. Now that he'd rescued me, so to speak, I noticed a lot more.
    I noticed how smooth his face was, except for a scruff of five o'clock shadow (in this case, a bit after 5 a.m.) and some worry lines between his eyebrows. I noticed how sensitive and soft his mouth looked as he bit his lip gently, considering a section of the form. I noticed how long his blond eyelashes were, fringing his dark eyes. His lashes were not stubbly. This certified he had cut the hair on his head so short on purpose. He was not growing it back after losing it all to chemotherapy.
    I’d never been attracted to older guys, my friends' fat dads. I had even wondered how their wives could stand to have sex with them. But with Officer After, it was strange. I could sort of see how it wouldn't feel like hell on earth to be his wife.
    He probably got her pregnant when they were both a little older than me. maybe nineteen like my parents had been. Now Officer After had four children (down from fourteen—he seemed more responsible than that) , with the oldest about to finish high school and get pregnant herself.
    They lived in a triple-wide trailer and were very happy. His wife stayed up some nights, listening to the police scanner just to feel close to him. There was a lot of warm fruit cobbler. She cooked with butter, and this was one of the things that made him horny for her after all these years.
    She went easy on the fruit cobbler herself so she could keep her girlish figure. She was one of the women around this town who looked like a hick but very, very pretty and carefully kept up if you could see past the big hair. Like Lois, twenty years ago. Oh, yeah, she turned Officer After on.
    Unlike me. I glanced down at my shirt. No cleavage tonight. Though I'd fantasized about it a little, in the end the whole seducing-a-married-man thing had made even me uncomfortable. Tonight I was wearing a crew-neck skull-and-crossbones T-shirt to get across how I felt about my punishment, in case this was not already clear.
    "I don't think you were worried about the danger to me," I said. "I think you wanted me to stay in the car because you were embarrassed to be seen with me in front of the suspects."
    He looked up from his forms at me. Then he peered through the metal grate at the suspects. Demetrius was still moaning. Zeke snarled, "What're you looking at?"
    "You have the right to remain silent," Officer After told Zeke. He looked at me. "I don't know what you mean. Why would I be embarrassed to be seen with you?"
    He asked so earnestly that I felt like I had to explain the obvious. "My hair, and the way I dress."
    "You dress like you're Japanese," he said.
    "The clueless Japanese who work at the car factory and wear those weird plastic sandals? Thanks."
    "No, the cute Japanese girls you see at the mall in Birmingham."
    He looked down at his forms, pen poised. But he didn't write anything. That blush crept up from his neck and across his cheeks. He had just realized he'd called me cute.
    "I mean, the Japanese girls," he said, still looking down. "You know how you dress. With your T-shirt and your jacket and your jeans and your shoes and your weird socks and your hairpins and your blue hair."
    He was digging himself a deeper hole. Now he had told me he'd noticed every detail of what I looked like. Maybe that was part of his police training, so he could provide an accurate description of me when I escaped. Although blue hair probably would be sufficient to get me picked up.
    Or maybe he was attracted to me.
    I watched as he drew an X on the form and brusquely flipped to another page. I honestly didn't know what to think anymore. Usually I was very good at reading people. T didn't get emotionally involved. When you were an outsider looking in, it was easy to see clearly. This guy I couldn't read.
    "You dress like a manga character," he