Chapter Text
Tim’s not quite sure how he ended up here, with his hand inside Lucy Chen’s jeans, his fingers deftly shoving her underwear aside so he can sink a finger into her heat as she tips her head against the bathroom door, her breathy moans echoing off the tiled walls.
One minute he was shaking his head with a begrudging smile as he hung up the phone at the bar, impressed in spite of himself that Chen had managed to filch his money clip without him noticing. The next minute, the mastermind thief herself was texting him.
Boot Lucy Chen: Okay, but do you actually need your stuff back?
Boot Lucy Chen: I don’t want you to get in trouble for driving without a license or something
Tim had smirked and rolled his eyes.
Tim Bradford: Relax Boot. You’re ruining a perfectly good gotcha. I’ll be fine.
Boot Lucy Chen: Well if you change your mind I’m at Little Bar a block away having a drink
He had stared down at his phone, his thumbs hesitating over the keyboard as he reread Chen’s message. He knew what he should reply — that he was heading home and that he’d see her tomorrow. He should, under no circumstances, have been considering getting a drink with his Boot. His very pretty Boot, which is a thing he has most definitely not let himself think too hard about. The same way he did not find himself accidentally staring at her ass while serving that search warrant today.
But all the stuff with Hawke today had left Tim feeling on edge. Another unnerving reminder of how blurry the line between right and wrong could get when someone was desperate. It had been a weird day. Hell, it had been a weird year. And going home to his silent, empty house — a reminder of all he had lost and just how lonely he actually was — didn’t sound all that appealing.
Tim was perched on the edge of his seat, one foot resting on a rung of the barstool, the other foot on the floor as he considered his options, when another text from Chen came in.
Boot Lucy Chen: My drink is on you, obviously
He chuckled, draining the last of his beer as he stood up. One drink couldn’t hurt. And besides, he really should get his money clip back, right?
Right.
So that’s how he had ended up at a bar with Lucy Chen.
She had looked surprised to see him when he walked up to the bar and stood beside her. Surprised and a little nervous and maybe just the slightest bit excited.
“You came,” she said, cocking her head to the side as she took him in, her long, loose waves cascading over her shoulders. He was so used to seeing her with her hair pulled back in a bun, looking all buttoned up in her uniform. Tonight she was wearing a little white T-shirt and tight jeans that showed off much more than her starched uniform slacks ever could. There was a pink leather jacket hanging off the back of her stool that made Tim smirk. Of course Lucy Chen had a pink leather jacket.
“Luckily, they let me put my drinks on a tab instead of washing the dishes,” he groused, giving her a pointed look.
But she just grinned. “You deserved it. You didn’t see how disgusting that box of sex toys was.”
“Mmm hmm,” he muttered, sliding onto the barstool next to her.
Lucy lifted herself up onto her toes on the rung of her stool so she could lean across the bar to flag down the bartender, and for the second time today Tim found himself averting his eyes away from the curves of her ass.
“One shot of tequila and one shot of…” she turned to eye him curiously, thinking. “Whatever your best whiskey is,” she decided.
“I don’t do shots —” he started to protest, but Lucy cut him off.
“We’re off-duty and you’re not in charge,” she said firmly. The bartender slapped down the two shots, and Lucy quirked one eyebrow up as she looked at him, her eyes challenging. “What? I figure if I’m already in trouble I might as well push my luck. Sir.”
The way she emphasized the word sir, her voice low with a playful lilt, should have been Tim’s first sign that the night was headed somewhere…decidedly unprofessional. Coming here had been questionable. But taking this shot was a straight up bad idea. Being this close to Lucy Chen — with her gorgeous brown eyes, her perfect little pout, and her oh-so-tempting curves — without the structure of uniforms and training hierarchies, was a bad idea.
But then she had suddenly stretched her body across him, her T-shirt riding up to show off a sliver of the smooth skin of her back as she reached for something on the other end of the bar. Tim sucked in a sharp breath as Lucy sat back down, a salt shaker in her hand. Her tongue darted out to lick the skin on her wrist before she sprinkled some salt on it, and Tim felt the blood rush from his head down to his —
“So are we taking these or not?” Lucy said, interrupting his distinctly impure line of thought as she stared at him with a mischievous glint in her eyes, waiting. Tim’s mind was a whirr of mixed feelings, duty warring with the undeniable heat coursing through his veins.
He shook himself out of his thoughts. Jesus Christ, it was just one shot. The whole world wasn’t going to come crumbling down if he took one goddamn shot with his Boot. And so what if he was maybe, sort of, a little bit attracted to Chen? He wasn’t some horny teenager who couldn’t control himself around a pretty girl. For fuck’s sake, get it together, Bradford.
Tim reached for the shot of whiskey and lifted it toward Lucy. She grinned as she lifted her own shot glass. “To thinking like a criminal,” he said, his voice a little husky as he clinked his glass with hers.
Lucy giggled as she brought her wrist up to her lips and licked off the salt with a swipe of her pink tongue. When she tipped her head back and threw down the shot, Tim’s eyes zeroed in on the tattoo on the side of her neck, usually half-hidden from his view underneath the collar of her uniform shirt.
Get it together, Bradford, he repeated to himself again.
Then he closed his eyes and brought his own drink up to his lips, letting the harsh liquid slide down the back of his throat.
So yeah, that’s how he had ended up a little bit drunk at a bar with Lucy Chen.
Which had been fine — completely fine. At least for a while. One shot had turned into two, which had turned into three and another beer. It had felt good to just relax and shuffle off some of his usual hardass T.O. persona. Lucy seemed delighted to see this more casual side of him, her eyes lighting up every time she managed to pull a genuine laugh out of him with a teasing quip. Okay, so maybe their banter was just a little bit flirty. Maybe Tim had caught his eyes drifting down to stare at the writing on her T-shirt a handful of times. It wasn’t his fault that the lettering was stretched across the swells of her breasts and that he could just make out the shadow of a dark bra underneath the tight white cotton. Where the hell was he supposed to look if he wanted to know what the shirt said?
And Tim didn’t think he was alone in feeling a certain…pull between himself and his Boot. He may have had a few drinks, but he still had a cop’s keen eye for observation. He noticed the way Lucy leaned in closer to him when she told a story — the way she kept letting her eyes linger on him a few seconds longer than was entirely necessary. He noticed the way she watched his Adam’s apple bob when he took a long sip of his beer, and the way her cheeks flushed a little when he sometimes ran his thumb back and forth over the lip of the bottle.
Between the alcohol and the thinly-veiled flirting, Tim knew they were walking a fine line. A very fine line. But no actual lines had been crossed yet. Which was the thing that really mattered, Tim kept telling himself.
But then, as he was finishing his beer, Lucy’s thigh had rubbed up against his when she scooted closer to whisper a joke, and Tim had come thisclose to putting his hand on her knee, his fingers itching to slide inside the rip of her jeans and touch her smooth skin. He had stood up abruptly and excused himself to use the bathroom before he could do something stupid, and now he was standing at the sink, splashing cold water on his face in an effort to get his thrumming heartbeat back down to a reasonable rate.
This had been fun. Chen was fun. And gorgeous and hilarious and shockingly good at getting him to let down his guard, despite the fact that they had only known each other for a couple of months. But she was his Boot and he was her T.O., and any more fun tonight might mean big trouble. Which meant that it was time to call a Lyft and go home.
And that’s exactly what Tim had been about to do when he stepped out of the bathroom and ran smack dab into Lucy as she exited the single bathroom on the other side of the tiny hallway.
“Oh, I’m sorry —” she had stuttered, her hands coming up to his chest as one of his own hands landed on her hip to stop them both from falling. They stood like that for a moment, suspended in the dark back hallway of the bar, the air suddenly thick with an aching sort of tension as neither one of them made a move to pull away from each other.
“I — I still need to give this back to you,” Lucy finally said, her voice a breathy whisper as she reached into her back pocket to pull out his money clip. Tim expected her to just hand it to him, but instead she tilted her face up, her eyes locking with his as she stepped in closer and brought her body flush against his. She wrapped both her arms around him and he inhaled sharply as he felt one of her hands snaking underneath his shirt. Tim bit back a groan when her fingers brushed against the bare skin of his lower back while she tucked the money clip back behind his belt.
Their faces were mere inches apart as she continued to gaze up at him, her pupils blown wide and her eyes bright with undisguised need. Everything suddenly felt too hot in the cramped hallway. The smoldering desire that had been bubbling just under the surface since he got to the bar was now out in the open, impossible to ignore. Tim didn’t have nearly enough self-control to keep his eyes from drifting down to Lucy’s lips, so full and inviting he felt like he was going to go crazy if he didn’t taste them at least once.
“You said today that you have a tactic for every situation,” she murmured, her fingers brushing back and forth against the skin of his lower back. “So, what are you going to do now?”
Tim felt a jolt of electricity run through him as his cock immediately started to harden at her words. Lucy was pressed so tightly against him that he knew she could feel it too.
“I thought I wasn’t in charge tonight,” he managed to croak out, simultaneously hoping Lucy would be the one to pull them back from the precipice of whatever this was, and also dying for her to push them over the edge.
“But I love it when you’re in charge,” she pouted, her voice a throaty whisper. “Sir."
She dug her nails into his lower back and pulled him even closer so that his hard length was pressed against her hip, and the last remaining threads of Tim’s willpower snapped as he let out a low groan and crushed his mouth to hers. Lucy responded immediately, opening her lips so that their tongues could tangle together greedily.
Tim was so wrapped up in the taste of her — some kind of fruity lip gloss he had smelled before in the shop mixed with the tartness of the limes she’d been sucking on after her tequila shots — that he barely noticed Lucy guiding them both into the bathroom she had just exited. She briefly broke their kiss to turn around toward the door to lock it, and Tim was rewarded with an amazing view of the absolutely perfect backside he had been trying so hard not to gape at all day. He couldn’t stop himself from stepping in closer to cup it in both of his hands.
Lucy smirked as she leaned back into him, tipping her head back against his shoulder. “Were you checking out my ass today, Officer Bradford?”
“It’s a great ass,” he growled into her ear.
“I knew it,” she giggled. Then Tim squeezed both of her cheeks and brought his mouth down to her neck to suck on her tattoo, and her laugh turned into a moan. Lucy wiggled against him and reached a hand back to try and stroke his erection through his pants, but Tim had other plans. He wrapped his fingers firmly around her wrists and guided both of her hands up until they were pressed flat against the door. He didn’t know how much time they would have before someone came knocking, and he was dying to see if her pussy was just as hot as the rest of her.
“I’ll tell you when you can touch me, Boot,” he rumbled in her ear. Then he slid his hands slowly off her wrists and down her arms. The fingers of one hand deftly worked their way down to her pants to unbutton her jeans, while his other hand slipped under her shirt to cup one of her breasts.
“Ugh, you can be such an asshole,” Lucy whined. “Why is that so fucking hot —”
Her grumbling transformed into a strangled gasp as Tim got her jeans undone and slipped his hand inside her pantries to plunge a finger into her heat. She was already so wet that he slid in easily.
“What were you saying?” he teased, dipping his head down to suck on her neck tattoo again while he sunk another finger into her pussy and pressed the heel of his hand against her clit.
Lucy’s fingernails scraped against the door as she moaned, trying to grind herself down onto his hand. Meanwhile, Tim’s other hand had worked its way underneath her bra, and he was slowly rubbing one of his calloused thumbs back and forth over her nipple.
“You’ve been wanting this, haven’t you?” Tim slid his fingers out of her and focused his attention on her clit, picking up the pace of his stroking.
Lucy’s breaths were coming out in short, quick pants. “You’re one to talk,” she managed to grit out as his fingers continued to work her furiously, bringing her closer and closer to the edge. “I see the way you look at me.”
Tim nipped at her neck at the same time his thumb and forefinger pinched her nipple. God, the way this woman absolutely undid him, making him share and reveal and care and want things he never should have wanted.
“Yes, I’ve wanted this,” he growled, the alcohol loosening his lips and making him admit things out loud that he hadn’t even fully admitted to himself. Tim stopped moving his fingers suddenly and pulled his hands out of her pants. Lucy let out a desperate whine of protest, but then he was turning her around to face him. “And now I want to watch you come.”
He reached his hand back down into her jeans to pick up right where he had left off, his fingers still slick with her moisture. With his other hand he lifted her shirt up and pushed her bra aside to drop his head down and wrap his lips around her nipple.
“Fuck,” Lucy moaned, tipping her head back against the door. Her knees were becoming weak and Tim could tell she was close — so close. He lifted his head and reached his hand up to tug on her hair so that she was looking at him.
“Come for me,” he demanded in his sternest T.O. voice, his eyes locked with hers as his fingers pumped in and out of her pussy while his thumb made frantic circles on her clit.
Lucy’s mouth dropped open in a wide ‘O’ and her eyes, still boring into his, got glassy as his order finally pushed her over the edge. She let out a string of expletives so loud that Tim had to take his hand out of her hair and press it against her mouth as she came, her whole body shaking with the force of her orgasm. It was the sexiest thing Tim had ever seen, and he drank it in, trying to memorize the perfect, mind-blowing hotness of Lucy Chen in the throes of ecstasy. If this never happened again (and god, it shouldn’t, no matter how badly he wanted it to), at least he would have this memory.
Lucy was slowly coming down from her high, her body still shuddering intermittently underneath him as she struggled to catch her breath. She looked thoroughly ravaged, her shirt and bra rucked up on one side and her cheeks flushed pink and gleaming with perspiration. Tim slowly pulled his hand out of her pants.
“Why aren’t you that good at taking orders in my shop?” he teased, giving her a sly, shit-eating grin. But something about the mention of the shop started to pierce his hazy bubble of lust.
Lucy just rolled her eyes and smacked him lightly on the chest. “Like I said before… such an asshole,” she murmured with exaggerated exasperation. But she was already reaching out to unbuckle his belt.
He definitely wanted this. God, he wanted it so badly. But some small part of Tim’s brain — the part that was slowly sobering up and starting to maybekindasorta freak out about what the fuck he had just done to his Boot — was at war with the rest of his body. He reached out to stop her, holding her wrist. “We’ve, ah, we’ve been in here a while.”
Now it was Lucy’s turn to give him a smug smile. “Don’t worry, I’m very, very good at this.”
Tim suppressed a moan. He was still painfully hard inside of his pants. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to —” he stammered, his temporarily regained self-control slipping with every passing second.
Lucy’s eyes softened with understanding. “I don’t feel like I have to. I feel like I want to,” she insisted, slipping her hands out of his grasp and returning to the job of unbuckling his belt, making quick work of it and then unbuttoning his jeans before Tim could offer up another half-hearted protest. “I want to so badly. Please let me show you how badly.”
She dropped slowly to her knees, sliding his jeans and boxers down as she dropped to the floor. Tim’s cock jutted out, even with Lucy’s face as she hungrily took in the sight of him.
“How was I supposed to ride with you every day and not want to do this?” Her eyelashes were fanned out against her cheeks as she looked downwards. Then she slowly lifted her eyes up to meet his gaze and whispered. “May I please have permission to touch you, Sir? ”
Tim sucked in a jagged breath, certain that that dirty little mouth of hers was going to be the death of him. Lucy darted out her tongue to lick her lips, and Tim knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was a goner — that he’d been a goner the second he stepped into this goddamn bar and slid into the seat next to her. There was absolutely no way he could say no to this. So let out a grunt and gave her a slight nod, his jaw clenched. And then that same dirty little mouth of hers was wrapping itself around his cock, her tongue swirling over the tip as her hand wrapped around his base, and yeah, he was going to fucking die. Lucy Chen was on her knees sucking his cock in a bar bathroom, and Tim was suddenly glad he hadn’t ever let himself imagine this moment, because no fantasy could do the reality of it justice.
Lucy was right — she was very, very good at this. She seemed to approach the task of getting him off with the same eager, relentless desire to please that he’d come to know from their time on the streets together. Only this time there was no rookie hesitation in her. She knew exactly what she was doing as she took him deep into her throat, using one hand to work in tandem with her mouth while her other hand gently cupped his balls.
Tim’s eyes rolled back with pleasure — between her hands and her mouth and the way his brain couldn’t stop imagining what his cock would feel like buried deep inside a different part of her, he wasn’t going to last very long. His hands searched for something to hold onto, and he landed one on the edge of the sink counter as he threaded the other through her hair. Lucy moaned a little when he pulled her hair slightly, and the vibrations sent another jolt of pleasure through him.
He shifted his gaze down to watch her work, and the sight of her — full lips hungrily sliding up and down his length with increasing speed, hair wild and jeans still undone from their earlier activities — brought Tim to the very edge of his orgasm.
“Fuck, Chen — I’m going to —”
Lucy nodded but kept her mouth on him, making it clear where she wanted him to come. She took him deep into her throat one last time as she held his eyes with an intense gaze, and that was it. Tim twisted his fingers in her hair and pulled as he came hard with a strangled grunt, his eyes never leaving hers. She kept her lips wrapped firmly around him as she took in his release, letting the aftershocks of his peak slowly subside before pulling away and sitting back on her heels.
“How did I do?” She asked innocently, echoing the usual way she asked him for feedback on her performance at work. But there was a naughty, self-satisfied gleam in her eyes.
Tim rolled his eyes, still struggling to catch his breath. He wanted to say something snarky, but his brain was still hazy with pleasure, so instead he said the first thing that actually came to his mind. “That was fucking incredible.”
“I love a good performance review,” Lucy deadpanned. Then she laughed loud and bright, looking so utterly pleased with herself that Tim couldn’t help but smirk too.
She stood up and set to work pulling herself together, turning to look in the mirror. Tim’s eyes drifted automatically back to her ass before he shook himself out of his stupor and bent down to pull his own pants back up. He watched her reflection as she tried to fix her mussed up hair and dab some cold water on her cheeks, but she still looked thoroughly ravaged in the most delectable way. Tim’s mind flashed to a vision of how she would look in his bed… rumpled sheets tangled around her sweaty curves, utterly satiated after he had fucked her senseless —
“This — this shouldn’t have happened,” he said abruptly, reality suddenly hitting him like a freight train. “This never happened,” he said more firmly, trying to infuse his voice with more assertive authority than he was currently feeling.
Lucy eyed him in the mirror. “Okay,” she said simply. But something in her tone was too casual.
“Chen…”
“I get it,” she said, turning around to face him. She leaned back against the sink and gave him a look that made Tim feel like she could see right through him. “This never happened, it wasn’t insanely hot, and I’m not going to have fantasies about wanting to do it again.”
“I’m serious —”
“Relax, Tim,” she cut him off, all the teasing gone from her tone. “We’re both professionals. This was just…something we needed to get out of our systems. It won’t interfere with training on my end.”
“It won’t interfere with training on my end either,” Tim said quickly.
“I know that,” Lucy said more softly, taking a step toward him. She reached out and placed a hand on his chest, and Tim wondered if she could feel how fast his heart was beating. “With all the shit you put me through, I don’t know why I trust you. But I do.”
She grabbed a fistful of his T-shirt and lifted up on her toes to press a kiss to his lips. Where their first kiss in the hallway had been frenzied and full of desperate lust, this one was slower and more sensuous. Tim felt a fresh rush of heat start to pool in his belly almost immediately, and he deepened the kiss, wrapping one arm around her waist and lifting his other hand to thread it through her hair. Lucy snaked her other arm around him to dig her fingers into his lower back and moaned softly into his mouth. The sound went straight to Tim’s cock, which was inexplicably starting to stir again —
Shit. They were never going to leave this damn bathroom if they kept this up. And hadn’t they just been talking about never doing this again? Fuuuuuck.
Tim tore his mouth away from hers. “You should get going, Boot.” His jaw was tense and his voice strained as he fought against the buzz of desire coursing through him.
Lucy pulled her bottom lip in between her teeth, looking for a moment like she wanted to argue with him. But reason seemed to win out. “Have a good rest of your evening, Officer Bradford,” she finally said, letting go of his shirt and stepping back. She slipped both her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and gave him a coy little smile. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”
With that, she turned around, unlocked the door, and walked away. Tim stood in the middle of the now-empty bathroom and let out a long exhale that was equal parts relieved and disappointed. What the fuck had they just done? And why couldn’t he stop thinking about doing it again?
Tim shook himself out of his thoughts. He needed to get the hell out of this bathroom. He needed to go home, sober up, and get some sleep. He needed to somehow bleach everything that had just happened from his brain, because no good could come of holding onto this memory — with all its forbidden heat and mind-bending pleasure. He needed to get back into the confines of the shop, where the rules were black and white, Lucy was his Boot, and he was her training officer. Nothing more.
Tim swung open the door of the bathroom and was making a beeline for the exit when the bartender called out to him.
“Hey! The woman you were with wanted me to give this to you before you left.”
He furrowed his brow as he stepped closer to the bar, and was surprised to see what the bartender was holding in her hand.
His goddamn money clip.
Lucy must have picked it off of him again at some point during their bathroom escapades. Which was… funny and ballsy and so goddamn her that Tim couldn’t help but shake his head with a dazed laugh as he took the clip from the bartender’s hands. What had he said to her on the phone earlier tonight? That she was in so much trouble?
Tim was starting to realize that he was the one who was actually in trouble.