“Okay,” she said. “And you really can call me Nell.”
Bruce grinned. “You’ll do.” He got up, came around the table, and sat down next to her. “So, here’s where I think we should start.”
A half hour of intense concentration ensued, in which the two of them worked out a prioritized schedule of the texts she needed to churn out first. It looked like fun. She was actually getting excited about it, even if she was probably going to have to skip pesky little details like, say, sleep, in order to keep up with Bruce’s schedule. He needed twelve hours’ worth of work done by tomorrow evening, with a long waitressing shift cutting right into the middle of it. But hey. What else was new.
Just one thing still perplexed her. “But what about your brother?” she asked, hesitantly. “If he hates my ideas—”
“Ignore him,” Bruce advised. “Really. Suit yourself. But work fast, whatever you do, because I’ve got programmers and graphic artists working on the sixth level, and we need to catch up with the texts.” He looked over his shoulder with exaggerated caution, and dropped a gallant kiss on her hand. “Our unprofessional secret,” he whispered.
Nell was laughing at him when the door opened.
Duncan stood there, scowling. “What the hell is going on?”
Bruce looked guilty. “Uh, nothing.” He glanced from Nell to Duncan and back again. His face took on a thoughtful, calculating look. “Maybe you have the wrong idea,” he said. “I’m not…say, Duncan, did I tell you about the new girl I’m seeing?”
“No,” Duncan said icily. “Nor is it in any way relevant.”
“Her name’s Melissa,” Bruce went on, undaunted. “She’s a knockout. I’m totally in love. I’ve got to introduce you. She’s a poetry fan. The ultraromantic type. Speaking of which, I need some personal poetry advice.” Bruce slanted a sly smile toward his brother and winked at Nell.
Nell was bewildered. “You need what?”
“Melissa loves poetry, and I want to impress her. What would be a good poem for me to memorize? To, ah, you know, melt her?”
“That depends on her tastes. Before I recommend anything, though, there’s one thing I want to know. What’s your purpose?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Bruce said, with a roguish wink.
Nell frowned. “Not necessarily. If you mean to genuinely court this woman, then I caution you against presenting yourself as other than who you really are. She’ll just be disappointed when she realizes the truth. Which she will. Don’t fool yourself.”
“I’m not a total Neanderthal,” Bruce said indignantly.
“But if, on the other hand, you’re not serious, and mean to simply use this woman to, uh…”
“Slake his lust?” Duncan offered helpfully.
“To slake your lust, leaving her crushed and embittered, then you’re a dirty dog, and don’t deserve my help. Either way, I don’t want to participate. So forget it. Go read some poetry for real. Expand your horizons. Take a night class. Go to the public library. Good luck.”
She crossed her legs and looked at him sternly over the lenses of her glasses. Bruce stared down at her for a moment, bemused, and started to laugh. “You’ll do,” he said. “You’re perfect.”
“Thank you for sharing your opinion, Bruce,” Duncan said. “That’ll be all.”
Duncan’s voice cut through the laughter.
Bruce choked off his chuckling and nodded hastily. “Uh, yeah. I’m gone. I’ll let you guys, uh, work your stuff out, then. Bye.”
He left the room, still snorting with muffled laughter. The door clicked shut. The room was profoundly silent. Nell stared out at the cityscape without seeing it, tongue-tied and intensely nervous. Bruce was pleasant, and his enthusiasm heartening, but Duncan was a problem. She didn’t have the kind of brazen self-confidence necessary to simply ignore his disapproval. That took brash nerve, and she was coming up short on that commodity, with the Fiend at large. She needed all her brash nerve just to walk out her apartment door every morning. She didn’t have any left to spare for wrangling sexy, difficult men. For God’s sake. She didn’t even have the courage to talk to the guy.
Well, whatever. She sighed. If it didn’t work out, she would be no worse off than before. Time to go home, eat a TV dinner, and get to work writing epic poetry about goblins and demons and holy quests. God knows there were worse night jobs. At least it wasn’t telemarketing.
She got up, cleared her throat. “Well, I’ll just, um, be on my—”
“No. Don’t go yet. We need to talk.”
Nell’s heart thumped. “Okay,” she managed. “We do?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry I was rude. My brother was bugging me.”
“I could see that,” she offered tentatively.
“I shouldn’t have taken it out on you,” he added.
“No, that’s true. You shouldn’t have,” Nell agreed.
A smile came and went on his face, so quickly, she wondered if she’d imagined it.
He smiled, briefly. “The situation makes me crazy.”
Nell cleared her throat delicately. “What situation?”
He shrugged. “This project. I design specialized data sorting and analysis programs. I’m good at that. I understand what they’re good for, whom to market them to, what they’re willing to pay. Then Bruce waltzes along, with his game idea. I couldn’t talk him out of it, and God knows where he would have gone for the money if I’d refused, so now—”
He stopped suddenly, and turned, looking out the window.
She gazed at the sharp line of his silhouette. The shadows in the dim room accentuated the harsh planes of his face.
“And now?” Nell prompted gently.
“I don’t know about games. Anything about them. I don’t like it.” His voice was clipped. “I like to have all my facts in a row. No surprises.”
“Like the strip steak,” Nell said daringly.
He considered that, turned and looked at her. “Yeah, I guess.”
Nell perched on the table, clasping her hands. “Well, the soup changes every day, and you’ve bravely tried a new one every time.”
“They’re all pretty good.” He took a step closer. “I didn’t come to the Sunset Grill for lunch today.”
“We missed you,” Nell said. Her voice felt breathless, wispy. “There was a very nice lentil stew you could’ve tried.”
One step closer hid his face in shadow, silhouetting him against the illuminated buildings outside.
“I don’t hate your ideas,” he said. “I just automatically contradict everything my brother says. It’s a reflex.”
“He shouldn’t tease you,” Nell said. “Any man who runs his own business knows about taking risks. What’s Bruce risking? He’s launching his project using your business as a springboard. What has he got to lose? You’re financing it. You’re the one who’s put everything on the line!” She was startled at her own vehemence.
She couldn’t see his face, but she got the feeling he was smiling. “Thank you for saying that,” he said. “I appreciate your understanding.”
The hairs rose on her arms as he took another step closer. She could smell the fresh, crisp scent of his shirt. “You’re welcome,” she whispered, gazing at his inscrutable silhouette.
“I spoke to Detective Lanaghan today,” he said abruptly.
Denise Lanaghan was the investigating officer for Lucia’s case. Hearing her name spoken here, in this context, was disorienting. “You did what? Why on earth?”
“I wanted to see what progress they were making on the case.”
Shock was quickly replaced by anger. “Oh. I understand. You wanted to see if my story was just so much paranoid bullshit, right?”
He hesitated. “Ah, no, actually. Not at all. A few minutes with a good search engine was enough to establish that.”
She was further outraged. “Oh! So it’s true, then? You checked up on me? You cyber-spied on me?”
“I would hardly call it spying,” he said. “I didn’t hack into anything private. I just looked at what was lying around in plain sight.”
“But why?” she demanded. “Why nose into my life?”
He shrugged, unrepentant. “I was interested.”
“Well, this level of interest is making me nervous! And I do not need anything else to make me nervous! Understand?”
He nodded, but did not apologize.
“It’s all or nothing with you,” she said tartly. “Either you ignore my very existence, or you pin me under a microscope. So, whatever. What did Lanaghan say?”
“Pretty much what you told me last night,” he said. “They haven’t made much progress.”
“No,” she said. “The guy’s good. He left no trace. No prints, no DNA, nothing. Even the SUV in Boston turned out to be stolen, hours before.” The thought chilled her. She shied away from it, groping for something else to think about. “So what else did you find on me out there in cyberspace?” she prodded him. “I suppose you read last term’s graduate seminar paper on Christina Rossetti? Or did you dig into the archived transcripts from the message boards at the online poetry forum?”
“Yeah, both,” he said. “But my favorites were those five short poems you published in
The Golden Thread Poetry Journal
last January.”
That floored her. Her mouth opened and closed. “Ah…actually, I was, um, just kidding. About you reading…any of that stuff.”
“I wasn’t,” he replied.
The silence stretched out, heavy between them, and he made a sharp gesture with his hand. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “It’s not like I can discuss them intelligently. I can’t. To be honest, I don’t have a flipping clue what you were talking about. In any of those poems.”
She was puzzled. “So how did you know you liked them?”
She sensed his discomfort as he fidgeted and looked out the window. “I don’t know. I just did. I liked the way they made me feel.”
She was startled and moved by the awkward confession. “That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said about my work. Thank you.”
He drifted like a shadow until he stood right in front of her. So close, his aura was interfering with her brain waves.
“You’re welcome,” he said, his voice low and velvety. “This is the first time in my life I ever got something like that right. And damn if it wasn’t by accident. Pure, dumb-ass luck.”
“Don’t put it in those terms,” she scolded, breathlessly. “It’s not something you get wrong or right. It’s just a matter of paying attention and telling the truth.”
He touched one of her ringlets, pulling it out long, letting it spring back, bouncing. “I’ve got no problems with attention. Or truth,” he said.
“Um, n-no, you sure don’t,” she stammered.
He curled another lock of hair around his finger, stroking the texture. “So, what’s my prize for getting this right, Nell?” The deep vibration of his voice made her skin tingle. His breath was so warm. It smelled of coffee, of mint. “Did I earn some points?”
“There you go again,” she protested, in a whisper. “It’s not about points. Or prizes.”
His lips grazed her temple. “It’s not?” Then her cheekbone. His voice was a delicate brush of darkest sable over her nerves. “Then what is it about, Nell? Teach me. Enlighten me. I await your wisdom.”
Her head dropped back. His hand was ready to support it, warm and strong. Cradling her. “Do not make fun of me,” she whispered.
“Oh, God, no,” he muttered, and kissed her.
It was like light flashing through her, delicious heat flushing every corner of her body. Like some sinuous, muscular animal thing inside her woke up, a thing that was not afraid of him at all, oh no, not one little bit. That sleek animal part knew exactly what she wanted from him. Knew that he had it to give. Lots of it. Loads of it.
She wound her arms around his neck and demanded it. He made a surprised, satisfied sound deep in his throat and positioned himself between her legs where she perched on the table. Cupping her head with one hand and her bottom with the other.
She’d kissed men before, and been kissed, and had sex, too. Some, not a lot. She’d even enjoyed it, sort of. But never like this. Always before, part of her had stood apart, critiquing, judging. She’d tried to let herself go, experience the magic, the ecstatic passion that poets wrote about, but she’d always stayed so flat, so cool.
With Duncan, there was no problem with letting herself go. Oh, no. The problem was in holding herself back. She wanted to eat him up, strip him bare, ride him hard. He tasted so good. He coaxed her mouth open, and she wound her fingers into his thick, straight hair and moved against him, helpless to stop. He bent her back on the table until she let go of his arms to prop herself up on her elbows. He grabbed her ankles, folded her legs up high, until her skirt rode up and her gartered stockings showed. The ones she’d put on this morning, back when she was still trying to fool herself into thinking she wasn’t going to wrestle this guy to the ground and have her wild and wanton way with him. Like, please. Who had she been trying to kid? He was gorgeous. A smorgasbord of sexual delights. So big, so hot. She gasped and pressed back at each grinding shove of his erection against her. He circled against that crazy, hot, delicious, writhing sweet spot, and oh…
God.
Bursts of pleasure rocked her, jolting her mind out of whack.
When she opened her eyes, she found his hand clamped over her mouth. He was grinning. Delighted with himself.
“Wow,” he whispered, slowly lifting his hand.
“Oh, God,” she croaked, mortified. “Did I…make a noise?”
“Oh, yeah. Big-time. Hold on a sec.” He pulled away, wrenched the door open. Nell’s legs snapped together as a blade of cold light sliced into the room and assaulted her eyes. Duncan poked his head out the door, peered around, and closed it, plunging them into darkness again. “They’re gone,” he said, and she heard the click of the door lock engaging. “Not a sound. But just in case. Since you’re a screamer.”
A thread of cold unfurled in her belly. She slid off the table. tugged her skirt over her legs, and found him in front of her. “Oh, no. Don’t panic on me now.” There was an edge of pleading in his voice.
“I just…the locked door, it, ah…”
“I’ll unlock it, if you want. I just don’t want surprise visitors.” His hands slid under her skirt and gripped the tops of her thighs, slid slowly up to her groin. “Making you come is not a spectator sport.”
“Uh, no, of course not. But I—”
“Shhh,” he shushed her, and he seized her again, and they were off, kissing wildly. She gripped his arms and drank him in. Their mouths melded with the sensual sureness of well-matched dancing partners. It was as if they’d known how to kiss each other senseless since time began, with all the excitement of novelty, all the grace and ease of familiarity. She wanted to claw his shirt off, to discover every detail of that big, solid torso, to smell his sweat, to feel the texture of his chest hair, the shape of his nipples, the contours of his muscles.