in like she was starving. That knocked the lid off, and what he’d thought was just sexual hunger got swept away by something bigger and hotter, something that welled up from deep inside him like a fountain of molten lava.
The kiss went crazy. Her arms went up around his neck. He pushed her back against the car, nudging his thigh between hers as he plundered the tender secrets of her mouth. So sweet and moist and hot.
She pushed at his chest, murmuring soft protest. He finally registered it, and wrestled his trembling muscles back under control.
He stumbled away from her, panting. Didn’t even want to imagine the look that must be on his face.
Margot wiped her mouth, her eyes glowing, pupils dilated. Her lips were red, puffy and soft. “That’s all.” Her voice was wispy and quavering. “That’s it. No more. Please don’t torture me.”
“What do you mean, torture you? Can I call you?” he pleaded.
Her face tightened. She got into her car, started up the engine, and mopped her eyes with her sleeve before giving him a little wave and a tight, fake smile. She pulled away, her car belching black smoke.
He stared after her for several minutes, his brain wiped clean.
Then he walked around to her back porch. The overgrown bushes shielded him from the neighbors’ line of sight. His legs shook, his heart still raced. He had a pick gun in his tool stash in the truck, but the flimsy lock on the back door could be negotiated without it. He had to know more before he could help, he told himself as he eased the lock open with his bank card and let himself into the kitchen. He counted the money in her freezer stash, leafed through the envelopes on the counter. Utility bills, past due notices. None in her name, not that he knew her real name. The place must be a sublet.
He scanned every drawer, every scrap of paper, every scribbled grocery list. He sifted carefully through her trash. No clues.
It didn’t take long to go through the place. Margot evidently wasn’t the type who accumulated stuff. A roll of posters leaning against the wall proved to be Art Nouveau images and classic art photographs. A calendar of flower fairies hung in the hall, incongruously cheerful against the cracked, stained wall. This month was a rose fairy, with a flower petal skirt. Nothing was written on it, no appointments, no phone numbers. The books on the shelf were from the local library. Romance novels, popular bestsellers, inspirational essays, a manual on web site design, books on art history, one on photography. So she was into art.
He tried to justify the intensity of his interest as he sorted through the stuff on her desk, but after years of self-observation, he couldn’t fool himself. The first step towards self-control was self-knowledge. Well and good. But when it came to Margot, self-knowledge evaporated. As a consequence, self-control was likewise fucked. He was violating her privacy because he couldn’t help himself. A sobering realization. Didn’t make him stop, though. The joke was on him.
One sketchbook, with just a few pages used. Doodles, cartoons. Mikey sleeping. Mikey sprawled on his back. Quick, powerful pencil sketches of people. A guy catching a frisbee, a homeless man on a park bench. His eyes lingered over them, fascinated. She had a gift.
The basket on her dresser yielded one item of interest, a heavy gold pendant cast in the shape of a coiled snake. It looked old and valuable, but it was ugly as hell. He couldn’t imagine her wearing it, but he’d never claimed to understand women’s taste in jewelry.
He turned it over in his hand, wondering how it had escaped the burglary. Maybe she’d been wearing it that day.
Her closet and drawers were closer to empty than any woman’s that he’d ever met. A small, discreet vibrator was tucked under a stack of panties in her underwear drawer. He stared at it, his face going hot.
Oh, Christ, later for that. He was still half-hard from that crazy kiss. It would trash his focus completely to picture her using the thing.
He crouched down next to the pallet where she slept. A quilt folded over three times like a burrito, a sheet folded in half and tucked around it. She’d left it rumpled, the hollow of her head in the pillow.
Anger jarred him, at the thought of her lying on the floor, lonely and scared, while a sadistic stalker lurked outside. She should be in a steel-reinforced concrete fortress. Protected by barbed wire, broken glass, infrared motion detectors, submachine guns.
And himself.
Whoa. Concentrate. He pressed his hand against the pallet. He’d slept in harder places himself, but he’d gotten spoiled in the last few years. If he got lucky with her, he would stage their trysts at his place, in his big, comfortable king-sized bed. Not that it mattered for the sex. A bare floor was fine. Up against the wall, in the shower, in the tub.
Still, he liked the idea of watching her stretch and smile at him, rosy and tousled and relaxed in his bed before he mounted her, sliding his cock slowly into her hot, moist body while she clutched him.
He thought of her flushed cheeks, her fascinated eyes. She liked to be touched. Margot would be red-hot for a man she trusted.
His hyper-trained eye suddenly noticed the crack next to the baseboard. He hooked his fingernails under the floorboard and pried.
Sure enough, it came loose, revealing a shallow cavity. A small spiral notebook was nestled in the space, a felt-tip pen stuck between the pages. He pulled it out and flipped through it, too fast to read.
Her handwriting was small, but bold and graceful. Every instinct in him screamed to read the thing. It was the only source of information he’d found in the place. He wanted to so badly, his hand shook, but he just stared at the diary, paralyzed by a startling realization.
He wanted her to trust him.
He wanted to know all her secrets, but he wanted her trust even more. She was the type that would never forgive a guy for reading her diary behind her back. He tucked the journal back into the place where he’d found it and dropped the board carefully back into place.
He got up and backed away, feeling cornered and confused. As if he deserved her trust, after picking her lock and prowling through her house. Hypocritical, waffling idiot. He’d gone through her utility bills and rifled her underwear drawer, and he balked at her diary?
Nothing he did today made any sense.
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