She won’t come in for me, but apparently she will for coffee. Fine. “Can I take your coat?”
She shrugs out of it. Like an old habit, I check her outfit, trying to find a piece of the puzzle I’m creating in my mind. A picture of who she really is. Her top is white but the material is thick enough to hide her bra. With her hair down, her tattoo is hidden. She’s wearing black pants and those leather boots again that come up to her knees.
“I told a friend, a man, I’d be here.”
I blink from her legs to her face. I’m not sure how to feel about the fact that she needed to tell someone where she is. And to let me know about it. “Do I scare you?”
“No,” she says quickly. “This just isn’t something I’d normally do. Go to a stranger’s apartment by myself.”
I turn and lead her into the living room. “What do you think I’m going to do to you?”
She hesitates so long that I glance back at her. “Any number of things,” she says softly.
I’ve seen through her eyes. Maybe if I hadn’t peeked inside her mind, I might not understand. I do, though. She lives in vivid fantasies of love, sex, pain, need. Of course, a stranger would slip right into any role she wants—a hero to save her, a villain to be terrorized by. They both make for good fiction. “Don’t worry. You’re safe with me.”
She looks at the only things in the room—the big screen TV, a neutral-colored couch and love seat, an antique wooden coffee table. Books stacked on the window ledge above a vintage record player. My sneakers by the kitchen doorframe. My camera bag on the coffee table. That’s all of it.
She touches her neck. It’s possible I’ve made it too warm in here. “How long have you lived here?” she asks.
“Why not your boyfriend?”
She whips her gaze back to me. “What?”
“You said you told a male friend you were here. Why not your boyfriend?”
She swallows. I’d like to feel her skin on mine, the delicate ripple of her throat against my palm. She crosses her arms lightly, as if she needs something to do with her hands.
She looks so uncomfortable, I let her off the hook. “I’ll get the coffee,” I say, going into the kitchen. “I moved in last November.”
“You don’t have much furniture.”
I pour coffee from the pot into a mug, comforted by the black hole it creates. “I’m in the process of replacing it.”
“Bed bugs?”
“What?”
“Is that why you had to get rid of your furniture?”
“Oh.” Gross, but I’m not sure if the truth is worse. When I’d rented this apartment, I’d already begun moving things in from our house in Connecticut when Kendra found out about the affair. She’d made me move it all back. Not that I’d been upset to say goodbye to the butt-ugly, green-velvet couch she’d bought without my input, or the kittens-with-babies photographs she’d insisted on hanging in my mature daughter’s room.
I guess I should be grateful I got to pick out my own shit for once, but I’ve never had an eye for interior decorating. I only buy what I need.
I can’t begin to think of how to explain all that to Halston without freaking her out. “Sure . . .” I say. “Bed bugs.”
I return to the living room with two steaming mugs. She takes one before I even offer it, lifting it to her lips.
“It’s hot,” I say. “You’ll burn—”
She sips and winces, but hums with appreciation. Her eyes are closed, yet I can’t take mine off her. I watch her like she’s the goddamn Mona Lisa come to life. I want her to hum into my mouth, to melt like that with my tongue between her legs. The way she writes, the way she moves—she’s got to be sensuality personified in bed.
My craving for her makes it hard to talk, and even more difficult to control myself. “You shouldn’t do that, by the way.”
She opens her eyes. “Do what?”
“Go to a stranger’s place alone. Drink from a cup without knowing what’s in it.”
Her lips part for an audible breath. “But you said—”
