That Night at Roulette

As Sheriff, Rick Grimes didn’t often bother with writing tickets. When someone parked in the slot that was clearly reserved for the sheriff, however, it was a blatant lack of respect not only for him, but for the badge, and he wasn’t going to put up with it. Besides, hunting for a parking space wasn’t how he wanted to start a Friday morning. 

Aggravated, he dug through the glove compartment of his cruiser, looking for his book, when a sharp wrap on the passenger window startled him. His best friend, Shane Walsh, grinned in at him.

“Shane, you scared the shit outta me,” Rick complained. He’d missed breakfast, hadn’t had his coffee, and damn it all, it was Friday. It was supposed to be the best day of the week. He didn’t want to deal with this shit.

“This car is still here?” Shane said, nodding at the sleek silver Porsche parked in the sheriff’s slot.

“What do you mean?”

“It was here last night. I saw it as I was leaving work. Late, mind you,” Shane scowled, “because of paperwork after that fucking greaser Terry Hawkins took a swing at me.”

Rick shrugged. “He missed.”

“Still, he swung at me, the fuckin’ punk.”

“So this car has been in my space since yesterday?”

Shane was the one to shrug this time. “You were already gone. I figured they’d be gone by this morning so I left it alone.”

“All right. I’ll have it towed.”

Shane clapped him on the arm. “All right. Let's get inside and get some work done.”

Rick followed Shane inside where he poured a mug of coffee from the old Bunn coffee maker. The stuff that came out of it was thick as sludge and tasted like cow shit. 

“How can this coffee be this bad? It’s only nine in the morning for Christ’s sake.”

“Something wrong, Sheriff?” 

Diane Hayes. She worked the 6-2 shift in dispatch. She also harbored a crush on Shane. With her being forty-eight years old and twenty pounds overweight, Rick knew it would take an act of God for a man as shallow as Shane Walsh to look twice at Diane--at least without copious amounts of whiskey involved. She was a good woman, though, and Rick tried not to be short with her over the coffee.

“This coffee is sludge.”

“It’s been there all night. Go on in your office and I’ll -- hi, Shane.”

“Diane,” Shane said, as he breezed by without looking at her. 

Diane heaved a sigh and shook her head, her disappointment obvious. “Go on in your office, Sheriff, and I’ll make a fresh pot. It’ll be done before I go back on the phones. I’ll bring you a cup.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it. Hey, Leon, call Hughes and have him tow the Porsche that's parked in my slot.”

“Sure.”

“Now, Leon,” Rick insisted. 

Leon put his feet to the floor and the gun magazine he was wasting time on and did as ordered. Rick went in and shut the door to his office, glad to be alone. He wasn’t ten minutes alone before Shane came in.

“Wrecker’s gonna be here any minute.”

“Good.”

“Why don’t you join me and the boys down at Henry’s Bar for some drinks after work? Have a couple of beers, pat a couple of bottoms, nothin’ too heavy. Throw some darts.”

“Lori would kill me if she thought I was out patting bottoms.”

Or would she? Rick thought. It seemed she didn't much care what he did anymore. That saddened him.

Shane gave one of his trademark mischievous grins. “She’d kill me for telling you to do it. You need to unwind, Rick. You’ve been under a lot of stress lately at home. Come on out tonight. Have some fun. Lori can have one of those girls night in, or whatever the hell they call it, while you come out with me to Henry’s.”

It seemed like a reasonable request. And Henry’s was a nice, quiet bar, good for throwing darts and at least looking at a few bottoms after he got a couple of beers down.

“Yeah. I’ll let Lori know.”

Pleasantly surprised, Shane saluted and then shut the door on Rick’s office. 

The truth was he didn’t want to be in the office. He didn’t want to go home to another argument. He just wanted to go…anywhere else. He was restless. He was horny. God, how long had it been since he and Lori had sex? A month? A little more? He couldn’t even remember. Their last time together had been so dull, so perfunctory, it had left him hungry for something else. Something new.

You’re gonna get a buzz and cheat on your wife if you go out with Shane tonight, Rick thought. What did it say about the state of his marriage, the state of his mind, that the idea didn't bother him like it should?

He heard a racket in the parking lot. When he looked outside he saw Davey Hughes arguing with a dark skinned black woman. She wore an expensive power suit and carried a laptop case. Her hair hung in corded braids down to her shoulders and she looked, from where Rick was standing, fit enough to kick Davey’s ass in a fair fight.

Shane was already on his way over to them to settle the matter, and Rick felt a surprise stirring in his nethers when the woman turned her back and revealed a very firm, round ass under that skirt. He looked away and sat down, disheartened that he was so horny just looking at a stranger’s ass was enough to almost get him hard. He was a grown man, after all, not some pimply fourteen year old boy.

He should have known that Henry’s wouldn’t be their destination. No, instead they ended up at a bar just outside the city called Roulette. It was big, it was crowded, and it was so fucking loud there was no way Rick could hope to hold any kind of conversation. 

Fine by him. He didn't feel much like talking.

Ironic, Rick thought, as he passed a silver Porsche in the lot that reminded him of the exotically beautiful woman he’d had towed for parking in his slot. 

Inside Roulette, the music was thumping hard. It wasn’t even the kind of music Rick liked, but he certainly liked the women who danced to it. Scantily clad young bodies swayed to the rhythm. He saw more skin in five seconds than he’d seen on his wife in a month. He followed Shane to a booth in a darkened corner while Shane went to the bar to order drinks. 

They were on their second round when Shane, as well as Darnell and Pete, got up and melted into the crowd of bodies pressed together on the dance floor. He stayed put and downed some of the beer in his mug. He was thinking about Lori, what was going wrong in their marriage, and if he even wanted to try to fix it, when two hands leaned on the table and he got a face full of cleavage. He looked up and into the face of the same woman he’d had towed that morning.

“You wouldn’t happen to be the sheriff of that podunk town that my car got towed in this morning, would you?” the woman said.

“I am. You are?”

She made herself at home by sliding into the booth beside him. She was nearly naked. A white, low-riding micro mini skirt barely covered a pair of white panties. A stingy strip of white material covered breasts that were unrestrained by a bra, with proud nipples poking out in a smart ass salute that drew his attention and wouldn’t let go. She was very fit, very curvy, and Rick was having a hard time concentrating on what she was saying.

“I’m sorry, what?” he asked, pretending to blame the thudding bass of some raunchy song that blasted from the speakers.

“I said, I was pissed off at first but then I realized, hey, I was in the wrong. I took your space. My bad,” she repeated.

“Oh,” he nodded. “Yeah, okay. That’s okay. It’s done with. Sorry I towed you.”

“I was so tired after court yesterday that I just went right to the motel and fell asleep,” she said.

“You’re a lawyer?” he shouted over the music, hoping she could hear him, when he could barely hear himself.

She only nodded and offered her hand, which he shook. It was oddly calloused, as though she did more than push papers for a living. He looked into her eyes. She’d had a couple to drink but she wasn’t drunk. She picked up his beer and helped herself to a deep pull.

“Wanna dance?” she asked, giving him his beer back.

“I’m not a good dancer. I don’t even listen to this music. I normally listen to country. The old stuff at that.”

She laughed and scooted out of the booth, flashing the backs of her strong thighs and that round ass that drove him crazy. She really was just a hair away from naked. God…

“Come on. I bet you’ll surprise yourself.”

Feeling brave, Rick worked his way out of the booth and took the hand she proffered. Soon they were both swallowed up into the writhing mass of bodies. It was hot in the midst of them. Rick soon understood why everyone on the dance floor was sweating. He felt self-conscious in his country-boy tee-shirt and ratty jeans. 

That was soon forgotten when his dance partner turned her back to him and placed his hands on her hips. She leaned back and managed to get her lips close to his ear to say, “Move with me. It’s just like sex. Move with me.”

Don’t get hard. Don’t get hard, he thought, in an effort to order his body to behave. The whisper of her voice, the feel of her lips against his earlobe, not to mention that tight ass of hers against him, all came together to make the blood start to drain out of Rick's head and pool southward. 

She was circling her hips, and soon, so was he. She reached behind her to loop her hands behind his head. He was beginning to enjoy the feel of running his hands over her body when the lazy beat suddenly changed, going from soft and slow to a driving hard thump that had her turn so she could grind her body against his. She placed his hands on her ass and Rick realized he couldn’t have moved them if he wanted to.

He caught sight of Shane in the crowd; a beautiful brunette clung to him like a wet tee-shirt. He doubted Shane would tell Lori about this dance, but he couldn’t speak for Darnell or Pete. Honestly, in that moment, he didn't care.

After two agonizing dances of body grinding the woman in his arms took his hands and led him to a dark hallway. She shoved open a door, revealing a room with a single empty chair. He knew exactly what that room was for. He knew it was the last place on earth he should be. 

I’m a married man. I can’t do this. I’m a married man. I really can’t do this.

Rick began to wonder at the lack of a response from the woman he’d allowed to lead him around like a puppy on a leash and then he realized: he hadn’t protested aloud. He could have said something. He should have said something when she pushed him into the chair, straddled his lap, and deep tongue kissed him without any kind of slow build to it at all.

Then he realized something else: a slow build was the last thing he needed. He needed decisive action. He needed a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to go for it. He needed to enjoy this. 

Rick ran his hands up the soft, brown skinned thighs of the woman that straddled him. She smothered him in kisses until he could barely catch his breath. She pulled back, stood up, and left him cold and disoriented.

“What--where--”

“Gotta get something,” she said, and ran over to a shadowy corner of the room. She came back with a condom. 

Holy fuck, he’d completely forgotten a condom. He hadn’t needed one in years. He anxiously reached for his fly, he was committed to this now, but she stopped him.

“Wait,” she said, with a mischievous grin.

Wait he did, but not in silence. “I want to see you. All of you.”

She obliged by pulling that flimsy excuse for a top off and dropping it to the floor. She kept her eyes on Rick’s as he watched her let firs the skirt fall, then the panties. The crotch was soaking wet and seeing the moisture made Rick gulp. His eyes traveled the length of her body with such longing he moaned as though he was already inside her.

“Been awhile?” she asked.

“You have no idea.”

Her eyes danced off the wedding ring on his left hand. She said nothing about it when she worked to free his burgeoning erection from the confines of his jeans. She slipped the condom on, straddled his lap, but refused to slide down onto him. Instead she was intent on teasing and torturing him. He hoped this wasn't payback for the tow. If it was, it would go down in the history as the greatest act of revenge ever.

“I don’t have much time left,” he said, after a long, slow kiss. "Please..."

Without word she flexed those powerful thighs, positioned him at her entrance, and then slid down onto him. 

“Oh, God,” he whimpered. He could almost cry it was so good. She was almost virginally tight, but she also had the wettest pussy he’d had in years, if ever. She moaned as she lifted up and then came back down again. 

Soon the easy rhythm she’d established quickened as the first little ripple of pleasure coursed through her. She picked up the pace, rode him hard, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t pound it hard enough to suit her. Rick slid to the floor, careful not to allow himself to slip free of her, and then gave in to the moment. He fucked the stranger beneath him with thrusts so hard her cries turned into near screams. Her release came on a high wave of mind numbing pleasure that left her drained and sated beneath his final, clumsy thrusts.

Rick had assumed, years later when she’d appeared at the gate, she remembered him. He sure as hell remembered her, even though she’d never given him her name. He'd never forget the shock he'd felt in his gut when he'd looked into her eyes. He had thought that it couldn't have been her, the beautiful, smiling woman from Roulette, but seconds later he'd known. Yes, it was indeed the same woman. 

When she didn’t mention it, when she never brought up even a hint of that night in Roulette, Rick assumed she’d forgotten it. After all, she was not the carefree lawyer he’d met that night when she showed up at the prison with a wounded leg and basket of baby formula. 

“I never thanked you.”

“For what?” Rick asked, his mind half focused on the impending battle against the Governor and the people of Woodbury.

“For getting me out there that day. Taking me in.”

He nodded, feeling stupidly awkward around a woman he’d already been as intimate with as a man could be, at least physically. “Well, if you didn’t have that baby formula I wouldn’t have.”

She looked at him with dry humor. “You could have just taken the formula.”

He could still easily see her as she was that night at Roulette, dressed in that skimpy white outfit, then, later, naked as she rode him to climax. “Well, it must have been something else, then.”

He looked down, remembering her perky breasts and those tight nipples, and how he’d neglected the chance to suckle them. Hopefully, someday soon, he could right that wrong. 

“You know, it was Carl who made the call. He said you belonged here. You’re one of us.”

She gave him a look, then. It was a deep look. It was a knowing look that was loaded with memory. It was, for just the briefest moment, an acknowledgement of that night years ago, in that sweaty club, and then in that room, where two strangers had come together to satisfy lust. She’d left him there, in the room, zipping up his pants and he’d thought he’d never see her again. She’d disappeared from the club, and reappeared in the time and place he’d least expected her to return. 

Michonne looked at him, and he’d looked at her, and he knew they both remembered that night. As she walked away, the beautiful warrior with the heart of a lioness, he knew, in his heart, they’d find their way back to that room where clothes came off, breath came quick, and lust made you forget the troubles of your life.