Читать книгу Out Of Control - Shannon McKenna - Страница 8

Marcus Worthington was in a killing mood.

Years of meticulous conditioning that Marcus had instilled into his younger brother, Faris, wiped away as if by a vicious computer virus.

All that Callahan bitch’s fault.

He would be glad when the woman was safely dead, though disappointment could drive Faris over the edge. Few people were aware of Faris’s unique abilities, and the tremendous risks involved. So far Marcus had always prevailed in a battle of wills. Still, it worried him.

The only thing that calmed Marcus when he was so agitated was puttering in his lab, playing with what Priscilla, his late father’s fourth and worst wife, was pleased to call his “toys.” She would learn soon how wrong she was about him. Just as his father had learned. The wife that had preceded Priscilla had learned as well. They all had, in the end.

But Priscilla would get a very special lesson.

Marcus teased the gelatinous mold of Dr. Driscoll’s hand out of the cast. His whimsical choice of livid, corpselike green coloring for the hand amused him, insofar as he could be amused in his current mental state. He adjusted the light to better admire the fingerprints. The loops, whorls and arches were so well reproduced, even the minute pattern of sweat glands on each ridge were duplicated.

Not perfectly, but well within the parameters of the sensor.

He pressed the hand against the Krell Systems Biolock Identipad Sensor. His own database was loaded with the same template as the Calix Research Laboratories, thanks to Caruso’s evil genius.

Negative. The machine beeped in protest. No match found.

It worked just as the Krell sales staff had promised that it would. Proof against fraud because of a complex, multi-system battery of “live and well” detection, a combination of ECG, pulse oximetry, temperature, electric resistance, and detection under the epidermis.

The Biolock Identipad wanted all five fingers, and moist, multilayered skin. It would settle for nothing else. Kudos to Krell. It was one of the most costly biometric systems on the market. Caruso himself had designed it. Marcus felt a twinge of regret that he’d been so quick to have the man killed. Craig had been useful. He’d been the one to recommend making a gummy hand with each mold, to test which image was the clearest. Marcus always followed his instructions to the letter.

But Craig had begun to play power games. Playing hide and seek with the mold of Priscilla’s hand. Talking about “full partnership.”

Marcus sprayed the inside of the negative mold with a light lubricant, and painted a thin coat of Caruso’s wizard’s brew of liquid gelatin inside it. He let it set, pressed his hand into the impression, let it bind, and slowly lifted it out. He repeated the process, taking exquisite care to match the print patterns, so as to fool the ultrasonic and electric field sensor features that tested for the print pattern in the underlying dermis. Fortunately, his and Driscoll’s hands were of similar size. The half-glove of gelatin was almost invisible.

He flexed his fingers, and pressed his hand to the Identipad.

Two seconds, and the monitor flashed. Match Found. Keith Driscoll, PhD, Laboratory Director, Calix Research Division. A photo of the chubby scientist appeared on the monitor screen, smiling broadly.

Marcus smiled back. Driscoll had the highest security clearance, surpassed only by Priscilla Worthington herself. This was well worth the trouble he’d gone to. He’d finally lured the older man up to his quarters, after months of flirting. Driscoll was a married father of three, but his preference for young men was well documented in certain circles. Marcus’s innate practicality forbade him from hiring someone else for the job. Why risk having some muscle-headed male prostitute botch this when he, Marcus, was sexually attractive enough to handle the job?

As it happened, he didn’t even have to go through with it. Not that it would have been a problem if he had. Driscoll’s middle-aged pudge did not repel him. Marcus’s sexuality was atypical. Power excited him. He was indifferent to the secondary details: youth, beauty, male, female.

Driscoll had drunk a martini spiked with Rophynol, and conveniently passed out. Marcus had taken multiple molds of the man’s hand at his leisure, bundled him into his car, and left him naked and senseless on his own front lawn.

Word was Driscoll’s wife had since taken the youngest two children back to Boston with her, and that the oldest one, studying at UCSF, would no longer speak to him. Driscoll had not looked Marcus in the eye since that night. He looked pale. Thinner. What had once been cheerful, rosy pudge was now sad, grayish sag.

Marcus studied Driscoll’s smiling face on the screen, enjoying the warm glow of pleasure that exercising power gave him.

A loud rap sounded upon the door. Marcus barely had time to toss the plastic cover over his project before the door burst open.

Priscilla marched in. She was thicker about the waist and ankles than she’d been ten years ago when she’d met Marcus’s father, Titus Worthington, owner and CEO of Calix Pharmaceuticals. Priscilla had been a researcher in one of Calix’s experimental labs. She’d dazzled the old man with her beauty, brains and forceful personality, but her face had hardened over the years. With her dark hair dragged into a bun and her white lab coat, she looked like a Gestapo prison warden.

She was shadowed by her hulking bodyguard, Maurice. She’d hired Maurice shortly after Titus’s death, and moved into her own residence as well. Priscilla was nobody’s fool.

Her eyes brushed over his various projects with unconcealed scorn. “Playing in the sandbox, are we, Marcus?”

Marcus’s hands clenched into fists, his nails digging into the delicate Driscoll glove. “Just fiddling with some new designs.”

She sniffed. “You’ve fiddled for years. You’re relatively intelligent, after all. With three PhD’s, don’t you think it’s time to stop fiddling and do something useful?”

Like plan your disgrace and ruin, perhaps? “I’m working on patenting some of them,” he said vaguely. Let her think he was a vacuous idiot. He no longer cared. Her days were numbered anyway.

“Where on earth is the domestic staff, Marcus?” she demanded. “This place is becoming a sty. The terms of Titus’s will gave you and Faris the right to reside at Worthington House for life, but remember that the place does not actually belong to you. And it never will.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Marcus said. He had, in fact, dismissed the staff months ago in preparation for the Blessed Event, which required utter privacy, to say nothing of the obtrusive presence of several armed professionals. He’d never dreamed it would drag out so long. He was tired of the dust and cobwebs himself. Another inconvenience to lay at Margaret Callahan’s door. Bitch.

“If the place falls to ruin, I will take legal action. And now, if you can drag your attention away from your toys, I have a real job for you.”

Marcus’s stomach tightened, but his smile simply widened. He’d always been good at masks. “Of course.”

“Dr. Driscoll will be leaving his post as lab director. He’s going back to Boston, for health reasons. His place will be taken by Dr. Seymour Haight, who is flying in from Baltimore tomorrow. His plane stops in Seattle for one night. The next day he’ll fly to San Francisco.”

Marcus nodded. Priscilla enjoyed humiliating him by giving him assignments more suited for a low-ranking social secretary. It was all she thought he was fit for. That, and holding Faris’s leash, of course.

“I want you to organize his welcome,” Priscilla went on. “Arrange for lab security to have his enrollment data entered into the system. Highest security clearance. And have Driscoll’s deleted immediately.”

“Of course.” He was glad he had avoided having sex with Driscoll after all. The event would have lost all its power, all its meaning.

“Arrange for housing, and a limo to pick him up at the airport.”

“I’ll need his flight info and contact numbers,” Marcus said.

Priscilla waved her hand vaguely. “Ask my staff. Melissa or Frederico should have the contact data. Tell them to arrange a dinner date for him with me that evening, too. The rooftop restaurant at the Halsey Crowne, that should be nice. Oh, yes, another thing. Where on earth is Faris? I haven’t seen him lurking about in weeks.”

“He’s mountain climbing in the north Cascades,” he said. “He loves climbing. It’s good for him. Keeps him emotionally balanced.”

“Climbing? Unsupervised?” Priscilla’s brows snapped together. “Titus and I only permitted Faris’s release from Creighton Hills on the strict condition that you would monitor him constantly!”

“Faris is under control,” Marcus soothed. “He’s taking his meds regularly. I talk to him several times a day on my cell phone.”

“I don’t care! Get him back here immediately! I cannot risk any embarrassing incidents, particularly not after Driscoll’s little scandal! The one useful function that you serve around here is to keep an eye on Faris. If you can’t even handle that much responsibility—”

“I’ll have him come home immediately,” Marcus assured her.

“Do that,” she said crisply. “I am leaving myself this week to spend a month in our lab in Frankfurt. I won’t have time to orient Dr. Haight myself, beyond our dinner date. Please do what you can.”

Such as that is, being the all-too-clear subtext.

“Of course,” Marcus murmured.

She swept out the door. Maurice’s hulking form shadowed her.

So much for Driscoll. Marcus peeled the glove off his hand and tossed the ragged, transparent scrap into the waste bin. He took the corpselike rubbery hand, grabbed a pair of scissors, and began cutting it into pieces, imagining that the hand was Priscilla’s. Heard shrieks in his mind with each snip of the blades. Chunk after chunk after chunk.

He was back almost to zero. Access to the holy of holies required the tandem cooperation of Priscilla Worthington and the lab director. Priscilla’s mold was still lost, and Seymour Haight was an unknown.

But Faris was in Seattle. Something had to be improvised, and quickly. There was no time left for the careful planning he’d done to obtain Driscoll’s mold. And Priscilla was leaving. It was now or never.

The obvious solution was to obtain a new mold, but seducing Priscilla was not an option. She loathed him, for one thing, and for another, even Marcus’s own practical attitude towards sexuality had its limits. Priscilla’s rabid security staff would not let poor Faris anywhere near her. And though she did indulge occasionally, Priscilla was far too intelligent and self-protective to be taken in by a hired gigolo.

Craig Caruso had managed it, though how he’d found the courage to have sex with that cast iron bitch, Marcus would never know. Perhaps the ten million dollars Marcus had promised had kept his dick hard enough to perform the task. Marcus shuddered at the thought.

His buyer had lost patience, after eight long months of waiting. The plan was falling apart before his eyes. Years of his life, millions of his own private money, invested in this perfect mating of profit and revenge. All blocked, because of Margaret Callahan.

He had to light a fire under Faris. He wanted this to end.

Sean’s truck was parked right in the middle of the driveway, leaving no room for Davy’s own vehicle. It wasn’t the first time. His youngest brother was careless and distracted. He also liked to make his presence felt. Usually Davy just blew it off with a philosophical sigh.

Tonight, his nerves on edge, it bugged the living shit out of him.

He parked up the street from his house and sat there for a while, staring through the trees at the lights from Mercer Island, rippling on the dark waters of Lake Washington. Struggling to pull himself together. It had been way too long since he’d gotten laid.

Humiliating, to reduce it to that, but he was a grim realist about the effects of protracted celibacy. Six months, not that he was counting, since Beth laid down the law. He’d liked Beth a lot, and appreciated the hell out of her fine qualities, but he hadn’t been up to buying her a ring.

He’d tried to make that point clear from the outset, but Beth hadn’t gotten it. Women never did. They insisted on taking it personally and getting their feelings hurt, every fucking time. He wished he could put the whole sex melodrama aside and focus on other things, but his body had other ideas. He hadn’t been able to strike a truce with it yet.

Then again, this wasn’t the prodding of generalized horniness. Steffi, the previous aerobics instructor at Women’s Wellness had been a honey-blonde with a body worthy of a centerfold spread, but she’d never inspired him to babble or grope. He’d casually considered having sex with Steffi—it had been clear that she was more than willing—but she was so damned bouncy. And her nasal voice had grated his nerves.

Steffi had left a while back to do a season of dinner theater on the coast. It had been weeks before he’d noticed she was gone.

But he’d noticed Margot, her replacement, instantly. Margot’s voice did not grate. It was low, rich and smoky, like fine Scotch. Margot glided, swayed, sauntered like a female panther. No bouncing.

He slammed out of his truck and stalked into the house. The open door swung in the breeze. Every light in Sean’s path towards the fridge had been flipped on and left burning. A murmur of voices from the back porch indicated that Miles, their protégé, student and future employee, was out there too, helping suck down Davy’s beer.

He slapped the porch door open. “The next time you pull a shit parking job like that in my driveway, I’m slashing all your tires.”

Sean froze in the act of lifting the bottle to his lips. “Shoot, Davy, that would be really counterproductive of you, being as how it would take that much longer for me to move my truck and park it according to your rigid specifications.”

“The delay would be worth it if I actually managed to make an impression in your thick skull, smart-ass.”

Miles put his beer down and got awkwardly to his feet. “Uh…should I, like, go? I’ll go take the bus, if this is a bad time—”

“Sit down, Miles,” Sean said. “This is business as usual.”

Miles dropped back into his chair and hunched down into his habitual vulture shape of which they were both trying to break him.

Sean studied his brother, a frown between his eyes. “You’ve got that puckered-butt, hollow-eyed look of a guy who hasn’t gotten laid in months. For God’s sake, grab a beer, and chill. We brought Chinese.”

“I already ate.”

“Where?” Sean demanded. “You haven’t gone out in ages.”

Davy let the screen door slam loudly as he grabbed a beer out of the fridge. As a rule, he didn’t rely on chemicals to change his state of consciousness. Fuck it. He put the beer back, grabbed a glass, and pulled out his emergency bottle of single malt.

Sean was still waiting for an answer to his question when Davy stretched out in one of his deck chairs. His eyebrows quirked when he saw the whiskey in Davy’s hand. “Mr. Pure, imbibing strong spirits? How depraved. So? Where did you eat? With who? Let’s have it.”

He inhaled, and braced himself. “Margot Vetter.”

Sean’s dimples came and went as he struggled not to grin. “Oh! Awesome. Guess we’re going to have to start calling before we drop by. It’s about time, man. I was starting to worry about—”

“Why didn’t you tell me about the stalker?”

Sean blinked. “From the tone of your voice, I take it you haven’t gotten lucky yet. Guess we can’t all be as slick as I am at seduction.”

“Focus,” Davy snarled. “Just answer the goddamn question.”

“I didn’t want to give you a chance to think it to death,” Sean said bluntly. “And I thought it would be a hell of a lot more effective if she asked you in person. Dewy eyes, long lashes going blinkety-blink? Full, trembling lips? Heaving bosom? And it was, wasn’t it?” He studied his brother, and repeated in a sharper tone. “Wasn’t it?”

Davy studied his brother over the rim of his glass. “Just how well do you know her, anyway?”

Sean’s tilted green eyes were unusually cool. He waited a very long time to reply. “You mean, have I put the moves on her?”

Davy waited to inhale. Seconds ticked by. Miles looked worried.

Sean stretched out his long legs and propped his boots up on the porch railing. “I tried, sure. Any straight guy with a pulse would try. Except for you, of course, but we all know that you’re, ah, special. She just wasn’t into me. It’s like when I got that crush on my high school French teacher. She just sort of pats me on the head while I pant and drool.” His shrug was elaborately casual. “I think it’s you she likes.”

Davy’s chest jerked in a convulsion that vaguely resembled laughter. “Hah. Not.”

“Really. I’ve seen her scoping you. God knows why a woman would prefer your charms to mine, but babes are unfathomable.”

“Stop busting my balls,” Davy growled. “What did she tell you?”

Sean heaved the heavy sigh he always affected when Davy refused to play along with his bullshit. “I ran into her in the parking lot the other day. She’d locked her keys into her car. She was crying.”

Davy was taken aback at the thought of Margot crying. “Her? Over car keys?”

“I thought it was weird, too. She looks like the type that would kick the tires and yell at the car. Anyhow, I galloped to the rescue with my Slim Jim, but when I got the car open, she just gave me this blank look, not responding to my devastating charm. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, ‘Oh, nothing,’ you know the way women do when they’re about to go sit in the dark and eat a half gallon of ice cream?”

“Actually, Sean, I’ve don’t know that I’ve ever inspired a woman to eat a half-gallon of ice cream,” Davy said, with rigid patience.

Sean rolled his eyes. “Little do you know. You just don’t pay attention. Anyhow, I coaxed it out of her. The burglary, the dead dog, yuck. It sounded creepy, so I told her to talk to you. I know you’re phasing out the P.I. stuff, but she’s scared. Broke, too, but you’re not hurting for money, and it’ll keep you from getting bored and stealing hubcaps on the street until we get our business launched. You could hold off on billing her. Or better yet, do it pro bono. That would be righteous and studly of you. Women dig that.”

Davy regarded his brother with slitted eyes. “Are you trying to fix me up? Don’t.”

Sean looked disgusted. “Self-absorbed prick. You think this is all about you. I was just trying to make Margot stop crying. She’s afraid this sick fuck is going to hurt her little dog.”

“Great,” Davy said sourly. “Heart-wrenching.”

“Yeah, actually. It is.” Sean scowled at him as he took another swig of beer. “And what if I was trying to fix you up? What’s the crime? You’re not making discernible progress on your own. You haven’t shown signs of life since the Ice Princess gave you the boot. The chick with the blonde bun who never let her hair down, what was her name?”

Davy winced. “Beth. She wanted a ring.”

Sean pantomimed wiping sweat from his brow. “Thank God you bailed. I always felt like I had my foot shoved into my mouth when that woman was around. Oh, and speaking of girlfriends, I talked to Connor. He said it’s in your best interests to bring a date to the wedding, because Erin’s got a flock of man-eating bridesmaids, and Erin’s mama likes to matchmake. If you go alone they’ll be unleashed upon you. A tornado of jewel-toned taffeta. Watch out. They see you in a tux, man? You’re dead meat.”

Davy hissed in dismay. He’d deliberately avoided thinking about his brother Connor’s impending wedding, but it was bearing down on him now like a runaway train. “Fuck me. You bringing someone?”

Sean’s grin was gleeful and wicked. “Hell, no. Bring ’em on, six, eight, ten at a time. My idea of paradise. Marooned on the lost planet of horny bridesmaids. Yum.”

“Cindy’s gonna be a bridesmaid, too,” Miles volunteered. “She’s wearing red. She’s awesome in red. That’s why I’m crashing at Sean’s condo tonight, because Cindy has an appointment with the dressmaker for a final fitting tomorrow at eight in the morning. And I’m driving her.”

Davy and Sean exchanged pained glances. Miles’s hopeless devotion to their future sister-in-law’s younger sister Cindy made them both nervous, but all they could do was to build up the kid’s muscles, reflexes and self-esteem, and hope to God that his brain would eventually trail along behind.

Davy sipped his whiskey and let it burn down his throat. “Bridesmaids are bad news,” he reflected. “Beth was a bridesmaid at her cousin’s wedding. It was right after that she got all intense about commitment. Women start tossing back the champagne and thinking about the big M, and whammo, you’re in a world of hurt.”

“You should think about the big M yourself,” Sean said. “You have to do your duty by the family DNA. You’re not getting any younger.”

Davy closed his eyes. “Connor’s got it covered. They’re probably procreating already, the way those two go at it.”

The silence that followed suggested that Sean had the same quiet ambivalence about their brother’s wedding that he had. Not that they weren’t happy for Connor. He was so far gone in love with his bride-to-be, he was practically incapable of coherent speech.

Which was fine. Great. Extreme, out of control happiness was exactly what they wanted for their brother. But the thought of the wedding left him with a dull pang of loss. Connor was moving into a new phase of life. Leaving his brothers behind. It made him feel vaguely restless and empty, when he thought about it, so he tried hard not to.

Stupid, yes, and selfish. They loved Erin. She was perfect for Connor. Smart, brave, pretty, sweet. She’d shown her quality in that crazy thing that went down with Novak a few months ago. She’d earned her membership to the McCloud clan a thousand times over.

No, Erin wasn’t the problem. It was just going to be…different.

Sean blew out a sharp sigh, like he was shoving away unwelcome feelings, too. “I just had a brilliant idea. Bring Margot. She’ll create a force field to protect you. And she’ll add to the scenery, big-time.”

“Forget it,” he growled. “Not happening. Lost cause.”

“How come?” Sean demanded.

Davy gritted his teeth. “Drop it, OK?”

Sean’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, Christ. Don’t tell me, let me guess. You flubbed it, didn’t you? I dropped a golden opportunity in your lap, and you blew it. You chump. No wonder you never get laid.”

Davy stared at the lights that gleamed on the dark, rippling surface of the lake, declining to rise to the bait. He had nothing to say for himself. He hadn’t shared the results of Margot’s background check with his brother. Her mysterious secrets were none of Sean’s business.

Of course, by that token, they were none of Davy’s business, either. He brushed that unhelpful thought aside. “Don’t you have someplace to go tonight?” he asked. “Some girl or other?”

“Miles and I might grab an action flick at the viddy store,” Sean said. “I’m experiencing a brief, restful lull from my usual erotic activities. Keeping myself pure until the wedding.”

“It’s only two more days,” was Davy’s dour observation.

“A fucking eternity,” Sean said. “I want to be charged up for the bridesmaids. Mow me down, ladies. Use me up. Wring me dry.”

“I don’t know about the viddy,” Miles said doubtfully. “I’ve got to get up really early. I have to—”

“Be Cindy Riggs’s personal slave, gofer, tutor, chauffeur, yeah. We know,” Davy cut in.

Miles rocked back in his chair, his eyes wide and startled behind his round glasses. “No way! We’re just good friends. She didn’t have a ride to her fitting, so I told her—”

“I’ve seen how good a friend she is.” Davy mimicked Cindy’s light, breathy voice. “‘Miles, do you like my new push-up bra? Miles, would you help me with my zipper? Miles, would you do my calculus homework? Miles, who should I go out with, Rob, Rick or Randy?’ ”

Miles’s mouth set into a hard, angry line. “It’s not like that.”

Sean cleared his throat in the silence that followed. “Uh…maybe Miles and I should hit the road. You sound like you need a serious time out. We’ll take the Chinese with us, if you don’t want it.”

“Yeah.” Miles sprang to his feet. “Let’s go. Like, right now.”

Davy lifted his glass in silent apology as Sean and Miles left. Waves lapped rhythmically at the pebble beach below the porch in the silence they left in their wake. Usually it was a restful, meditative sound. Tonight, it struck him as soggy, depressing. Repetitive.

He was ashamed of himself. He had no right to criticize poor feckless Miles. He’d done stupider things himself for a woman. Would’ve done them again tonight, in fact. All night long, if Margot had let him.

The evening ticked by, impossibly slow. He wandered from room to room, discarding books and magazines. He surfed the net, the tube, but nothing was remotely interesting. It all seemed empty. The silence was so thick, it clogged his brain, but any music he put on irked him.

Evening stretched into an endless night. He finally wandered into the bedroom and dragged his jeans off to give his relentless boner some air. He sprawled out on the bed, but instead of sleep, he slid right into a series of erotic waking dreams about Margot. Kinky stuff, charged with anger and power games. Struggling against ropes, staring up into her bright eyes as she taunted him, showed him how helpless he was.

Very weird. He wondered what the hell that was about. Bondage games had never remotely entered his mind in terms of bed play. That was for bored people who needed to shock dulled senses to life. And God knows he went to great lengths in his life to avoid feeling helpless.

There was nothing dull about his senses. The dream memory of writhing beneath her beautiful body was vivid to the point of pain. He covered his face with one hand and gripped his stone-hard cock with a growl of frustration. There was no reasoning with his hard-on tonight, with the memory of her slim, strong shoulders beneath his hands so fresh in his mind. The fine texture of the skin on her neck. The look on her face, when she was thinking about letting him take her to bed.

His heart had beat so hard it almost exploded out of his chest.

If she’d kissed him, he would have gone for it and fucked her anyway, in spite of all the question marks. Everything about her turned him on, even her clumsy lies. They didn’t come to her easily. It was almost endearing. The woman couldn’t tell a decent lie to save her life.

The way his mind had couched that passing thought sent an uneasy chill down his back. He shrugged it aside.

Years of interviewing witnesses had made him expert in the study of body language. Margot was prickly and defensive because she was afraid, not guilty. She was no scam artist. She would crash and burn if she ever tried that line of work, the way her feelings were plastered on her face. She was proud, tough, principled. Impulsive. Scared to death, but more scared of the cops than she was of her bloodthirsty stalker.

Something even bigger and nastier lurked in her past. It would be a challenge to get past her wall of thorns. Challenge stimulated him, though after the Fleur debacle, he made a big effort to avoid challenges in his love life. He tried to keep things simple. Uncomplicated.

“Tried” being the operative word, women being what they were.

Curiosity burned him like acid. It wasn’t his problem or his responsibility, but he wanted to nab this asshole who was terrorizing her. The more he thought about it, the more it pissed him off. He wanted to pin the sadistic fuckhead’s balls to the wall.

He rolled up off the bed, restless and jittery, and wandered into the bathroom. He set the shower running, and stared at himself through the mirror fog. He wasn’t vain about his body. It never occurred to him to be. It was a tool, a resource to be maintained. It was useful to have strong muscles and quick reflexes. Women tended to say yes when he made advances, and that was convenient, too. Up to a point.

He stared at himself, trying to see what Margot saw in him. Wanting her to want him. His pulse spiked, and his dick stood higher.

He stroked himself experimentally. He didn’t much go for the shallow relief of jerking off. It was wasted energy, and he disliked the flat, let-down feeling it gave him after. But six months, for fuck’s sake?

No one was perfect. No one was watching.

He stepped under the pounding water, soaped up his hand and gripped himself. His mind hit the reverse button and ran him right back to that moment where Margot’s slender, cool hand was pressed against the center of his bare chest, her multicolored eyes wide and fascinated. Midnight blue fading to bright aqua, and a ring of golden brown around the pupil, like whoever put her together couldn’t make up his mind and just kept on tinkering. That red, sulky-sweet mouth slightly open, cheeks flushed. Taut nipples poking the thin fabric of her worn T-shirt.

If things had gone how he wanted, her mouth would have curved into a sultry smile, and she would have pulled the T-shirt off and displayed herself to him. Eyes bright with that what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it look that drove him right out of his head.

No hesitation there. A sweep of his arm to clear the dinner stuff out of his way, and he set her on the table, shoved her onto her back so he could pull her sweatpants off, hands lingering on every warm detail of her lush hips and ass. She unbuckled his belt with frantic urgency.

Her words echoed. “…don’t have the time and energy for a boyfriend…can’t handle no strings sex…where does that leave us?”

Good question. A dangerous idea took form in his mind, parallel and independent to the sexual fantasy that churned on unimpeded.

Maybe they could work out the perfect deal.

He didn’t want a girlfriend any more than she wanted a boyfriend. He was tired of the frustration on the woman’s part, the guilty discomfort on his. He hated one night stands, too. Often squalid and empty, always a health hazard, and he disliked waking up with someone with whom he had nothing in common but sex. Sneaking off before the woman woke up was bad, as if he’d stolen something, but the coffee, the groping conversation, her hopeful eyes—that was worse.

He didn’t want no strings sex. He wanted carefully chosen, clearly agreed upon, precisely negotiated strings. A civilized, sensible arrangement between consenting adults. They were both single. She was attracted to him. She needed help, and protection. He was in a good position to offer it. She had her secrets to guard, he had his space to maintain. He would be very clear with her. Honest and respectful.

The idea excited him more deeply than the fuck fantasy had. The water had run cold, so he switched it off, rubbing water out of his eyes, and heard his cell phone ringing. He almost broke the sliding glass door in his haste as he bolted for the bedroom, dove for the phone. “Yes?”

Silence. The hollow kind that indicated that the line was open.

“Hello?” he said, more urgently. “Who is this?”

Click. Whoever it was hung up.

Her phone number had stuck in his mind even after he’d decided that he’d never have reason to use it. He punched it in. It rang, once, twice. The line clicked open. “Margot? You OK?”

Another brief silence. “No,” she whispered.

A queasy, crawling feeling squirmed in his belly. “What’s wrong?”

“Sorry I hung up on you.” Her voice was dull, none of its usual sass. “I lost my nerve.”

“Never mind that. What happened?” He waited a few agonizing seconds, and prompted her. “Did Snakey send you another present?”

“I think so. I’m scared to go out and look more closely.”

“Shit.” He was off the bed like he was on springs, fishing his jeans off the floor. He jerked them over his wet ass, not bothering with underwear. “What did he leave you this time?”

“I…I shouldn’t have bothered you. I don’t know why I…I guess I just panicked.”

She was chickening out. His instincts screamed to jump on her, pin her down, quick and fast. “I’ll be right there.” He shoved wet feet into his boots, struggled with laces. “Fifteen minutes, max.”

He hung up, the better to forestall further argument, and dragged on his shirt. His mind flicked across the Glock 9mm in the gun safe.

He decided against it. Bare hands were his preference, with the knife in his boot sheath for backup. He charged out the door and over the dew-soaked lawn. He gripped the wheel to keep his hands steady.

He was an idiot, running into God knew what kind of mess, but he would bet body parts that whatever secrets Margot was hiding were not her fault. And that changed everything.

He knew the difference between reality and fantasy. He’d choked down enough reality when he was ten years old to know exactly how it tasted, but just look at him now. All that meditation and detachment were for shit when that hot button was pushed. Pow, he jumped three feet into the air and charged off, cape fluttering, to save the fair maiden from the gigantic squid. Forever trying to rewrite the sad story’s ending.

Not that he was any goddamn superhero. In fact, he was a calculating bastard. Blatantly working the situation to his advantage.

But then again, she was free to tell him to fuck off if she pleased. So Margot Vetter needed help with her mysterious problems? Fine.

Then maybe she could be persuaded to help him with his.