Tasting Fear

by Shannon McKenna

  He waited. She could feel his insistence in the profound silence between them. He just sat there, motor idling, waiting.

  “It’s a long, complicated story,” she said warily.

  “We’re stuck in traffic,” he said. “Entertain me.”

  True enough. They were motionless in a gridlocked snarl.

  “It started a few weeks ago,” she began. “When my mother died.”

  He shot her a startled glance. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She acknowledged his words with a nod, and went on, simply and sequentially, with the whole crazy tale. The burglar, the necklaces, the mysterious letters. The clotheshorse, the murdered jeweller and his family, the attack in the stairwell, Nancy’s attempted abduction in Boston. The crazy, winding story got them all the way down to her apartment.

  He double-parked, listening with no visible reaction. The longer she talked, the more self-conscious she felt. He probably thought she was a paranoid nutcase. Or worse, an attention-mongering nutcase.

  “So, anyway. That’s why I’m scared,” she finally concluded. “All of us. Nervous, and scared, and confused. Do you want to fire me now?”

  He frowned. “Why the hell would I do that?”

  She shrugged, feeling silly, but before she was required to come up with a coherent reply, a guy opened the SUV in front of them, got in, and pulled away—leaving a perfect parking spot. Unheard of.

  Burke pulled into it. “I’d better walk you up to your door.”

  Oh boy. How very gallant of him. If only her heart would stop acting like it was trying to pound its way out of her chest. “Don’t worry about it,” she told him, with a breathless laugh. “It’s a fourth-floor walk-up.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I work out.”

  She glanced at his body, strangled another crack of laughter into a dry cough. She led him into her building.

  Up, up, up. The stairs never stopped. She stopped in front of her door, glad for an excuse to be that breathless and red. “I appreciate the ride and the company,” she said. He nodded, and kept standing there. Like a mountain, a monolith. “I’m not going to invite you in,” she blurted out. “Not for coffee, or for drinks, or…ah, anything.”

  “Of course,” he said. “You hardly know me.” But he did not leave.

  “So?” she prompted. “Why are you standing there? What do you want from me?”

  “Something I can’t have, I guess.” His voice was low. He reached out and touched the end of a dangling fuzzy ringlet that had escaped the bun. “I got the strangest sensation today. In the restaurant.”

  “Yes?” Her lips trembled. She pressed them together hard.

  “I got the feeling that you were trying to get my attention.”

  Duh, Einstein. “Well, I suppose I kind of was,” she fluttered.

  He tugged the curl, watched it rebound. “You’ve got my attention.”

  “Um”—she laughed, nervously—“now that I have it, I’m not sure what to do with it.”

  “There’s a lot you can do with it,” he said. “It’s multipurpose.”

  “Ah,” she whispered. “Um, really.”

  “Yeah, really. You’d be amazed.” He wound the curl around his finger. “Once you’ve got my attention, it’s hard to shake.”

  “I noticed that. The way you stared at that computer, a herd of elephants could have trooped by. But I’m not doing anything with your attention tonight. Thanks again, for the ride.” She hesitated. “Good night.”

  “Is your sister here?”

  She considered saying yes, just to defuse the tension, but she could not lie to those penetrating eyes. “She’s driving to Delaware,” she said. “She designs jewelry. She works the crafts fair circuit.”

  “You and your sisters have a lot of nerve, wandering around all alone when a stalker’s out there gunning for you.”

  She bristled. “We have no choice! We have to make a living!”

  “You have an alarm, at least?”

  “Yep. Top of the line,” she said promptly.

  He leaned against the wall. “A dog might be a good investment.”

  His position crowded her into the tiled corner. “Oh, please,” she said. “Not a chance. You have no idea how small my apartment is.”

  “No, I don’t,” he said. “And I guess I’m not going to.”

  “No,” she whispered, licking dry lips. “Not tonight.”

  The words slipped out, their obvious corollary being that he might well get lucky some other night. He smiled. The look in his eyes set off fireworks, in her mind, chest, thighs. Her face felt like it was on fire.

  He pulled his cell out. “Let’s exchange mobile numbers,” he said. “If you have a problem, call. Whenever. Any time of day or night.”

  “Thank you. That’s very kind,” she whispered. She groped in her bag for a pen and her little notebook.

  He frowned. “Just program it in,” he suggested. “You’re not going to want to dig in your handbag for a number in an emergency.”

  “I don’t have a mobile phone,” she admitted.

  He stared at her, as blank as if she’d announced that she was a space alien. “You what? You’re insane!”

  Nell’s chin went up. “Thank you for sharing your opinion.”

  “Here!” He held out the phone he’d pulled from his pocket. “Take mine, for Christ’s sake! I have four more!”

  “No, thank you,” she said, in her snippiest tone.

  He slid the phone into his pocket and studied her face with hypnotizing intensity. “There’s just one thing I need to know before I go,” he said. “Or I won’t sleep tonight.”

  She tilted up her chin, trying to breathe. “Know what?”

  He sank down onto one knee. “Don’t panic,” he soothed, as shocking erotic possibilities flashed through her mind. She shrank back, shocked, as he grasped her skirt—and lifted. Just a couple of inches. She quivered, trapped. She couldn’t retreat, with her back flat to the wall. “What are you doing?” she squeaked. “Let go of my skirt!”

  He looked up with a triumphant grin. “Dimples.”

  She wanted to sink into the ground. Oh, for willowy slender legs, like Nancy and Vivi. Having her chubby knees remarked upon by this guy, of all guys, was just too much to bear. “Oh, God. Get out of here.”

  “No, no! They’re great. Really. I was hoping they’d have dimples.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t handle this. Good night. Get lost.” She put all the commanding punch she could behind the word.

  He rose slowly to his feet. Up, up, and still up. God, the guy was tall. And broad. And he smelled so seductively good, it was filling her senses. Scrambling her brain.

  “You’re, ah—not moving,” she pointed out to him.

  “No,” he agreed.

  She tried to look stern. A tall order with that tremor in her mouth. “Why not?” she demanded.

  He shrugged. “Because you don’t really want me to.”

  The guy’s nerve was staggering. “Oh?” she snapped. “You read minds, do you?”

  He shook his head, impassive. “No. I read faces, and bodies.”

  She struggled for a moment with that. She was blushing hotly, which did not help her dignity one bit. “That’s very impressive,” she said primly. “But my face and body do not make the executive decisions around here.”

  He leaned closer. “Of course they don’t.” His voice was a velvety, rumbling caress. “They have better things to do.”

  She was still groping for a comeback when his lips touched hers.

  She gasped at the sparkling rush of energy. The startled heat, unfurling through her body. Spreading out, like a rippling current of water. Too delicious to resist.

  She rose up on tiptoe, and it all spun out of control. Before she knew it, she was pinned to the wall, kissing him madly. Forgetting everything except for how sweet, how good it felt. How much more she wanted, how bad she wanted it. He hooked her knee with his hand and pulled it up to cla
sp his muscular thighs, leaning against her so that the hot bulge at his groin pressed against her tender intimate places, in a slow, deliberate pulse that made her ache and squirm and moan.

  His tongue slid inside her mouth, commanding and directing the kiss with implacable skill. His hand cupped her bottom, stroking.

  She started to shake, terrified and disoriented. Something was spinning out of control. The heat, the light, the ache began to coalesce, sharpening, swelling into something huge and wild—

  It burst, and her startled shriek was smothered against his hungry mouth. He held her tightly in his arms, while shudders of unbelievable, shocking pleasure wrenched through her entire body.

  Her eyes fluttered open. His gaze burned her face. Her eyes were wet, her mouth couldn’t stop shaking. She couldn’t believe herself. A stranger? In her own stairwell? Her eyes shut against the pressure. So. That was what a screaming orgasm felt like. She’d always wondered.

  He stroked her cheek gently, waiting. “Any new executive decisions coming down the pipeline?” he prompted softly.

  All she wanted was to yank him inside. If this is what he could do to her fully clothed, in the stairwell—ah, God. It was too much.

  Way, way too much. She shook her head. No. She mouthed the word. Had no breath to actually say it.

  He stepped back, let go. “Sorry if I went too far,” he said. He turned, and headed slowly down the stairs. “Good night.”

  She stayed there, immobile, until she heard the front door click far below. Then she fumbled with the keys, her hands trembling so hard she could barely hold them.

  Once inside her apartment and the alarm armed, she sank down onto the ground as though her legs had no bones, and rocked, hands over her mouth. The keening sounds coming out of her made her throat ache and burn, as if a tuning peg were turning, ratcheting up the tension relentlessly, tighter, higher.

  Furious with herself for being such a goddamn coward.

  Duncan stared at the screen of the online version of The Golden Thread Poetry Journal and sent the pages to print. He reread the series of short lyric poems by Antonella D’Onofrio on the screen while the pages churned out of the machine. It was the tenth time he had read them.

  He was baffled by them. Or rather, he was baffled by his reaction to them. It was complete gibberish, of course. He couldn’t figure out what the fuck she was getting at, for the life of him. But he liked the way the sequence of words made him feel. He kept rereading them, over and over. Grasping for that elusive feeling. Weird.

  And the way it made his dick feel was a damn inconvenience. He stared down at his stubborn boner. He’d already tried to deal with the problem in the shower. Wild, hot water fantasies. Nell, naked and soaked and soapy, pinned to the shower wall, her legs draped over his arms. Whimpering with each deep, slick thrust. He’d come so hard, he practically knocked himself out, so why he should still have a tent pole in his sweats was beyond him. Had to be the poetry, he guessed.

  He’d been at the computer since he’d gotten home. He was too wound up and turned on to sleep, so he’d used the time to research everything he could glean about the D’Onofrio saga that could be found on the Internet. He was champing at the bit to call his NYPD source and get some inside details on the case, but it was too early.

  So he’d ranged further to pass the time. Reading articles she’d published in various literary journals, about Sara Teasdale, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sappho. A paper for her graduate seminar. Then there was poetry she’d written and published herself. Guest blog entries on websites that catered to poets, scholars. Online poetry workshops that she critiqued. Outlandish stuff. And they said computer nerds were arcane and weird? Computer nerds had nothing on poets and scholars. This crap was from fucking outer space.

  He glanced at his watch. Almost five a.m. Good enough. His friend and ex–comrade in arms was now a detective in the NYPD. Gant owed Duncan his life, from a number of bloody adventures they’d had back in Afghanistan. If he wasn’t awake by now, it meant he was getting soft.

  He dialed the number. It rang twelve times before the guy picked up. “Who the fuck is this?” said Gant sleepily.

  “I need some info,” he said.

  “Oh, Christ. You. Couldn’t it wait till daylight?”

  “It’s dawn,” Duncan said, staring out his picture window at the spectacular New York City skyline, silhouetted against the faint glow of breaking day. “I need the details of an ongoing police investigation, in Hempton. It involves an elderly woman named Lucia D’Onofrio. She died during a burglary in her house, of a heart attack. A few weeks ago.”

  “Yeah? Why do you want to know?”

  He leaned his hot forehead against the cool window glass, and hesitated. “Because I’m interested,” he hedged.

  “Interested? You wake me up at this un-fucking-godly hour just because you’re interested?” Gant paused for a moment. “This is about a woman, right?”

  “None of your goddamn business,” Duncan muttered.

  “I knew this would happen,” Gant bitched. “You freak. Acting like a fucking monk, for years at a time. It was just a matter of time till you snapped. So it’s happened, huh? You’re obsessed? You’re awake at this hour because you spent the night Googling her life? Poor girl. She has no idea what she’s in for. So what does this chick have to do with the old broad who had the heart attack?”

  “She’s the old broad’s daughter. Stop busting my balls and just get me the info,” Duncan growled.

  “You’ll have to wait. I won’t call those guys until it’s a decent hour. That’s called common courtesy. Ever heard of it? Go to bed, Dunc. Or better yet, go jack off, and then go to bed. Later.”

  His friend hung up, and Duncan let the phone drop and spun the chair back around to read those poems again.

  He was unaccountably fascinated. As if some window were opening in his mind, with a view he’d never seen before. He couldn’t understand what the fuck she was talking about, but so what? Who cared? He liked the way the words resonated inside him, like a big, deep bell. He’d never felt like that before. Everything buzzing, humming.

  It felt strangely, dangerously good.

  Chapter

  4

  “Stop here,” Nell directed the driver of the car.

  The guy screeched to a halt and took the money with a deadpan face. She was spending a fortune on car services, but there was no help for it. At least there were enough people on the streets that she felt safe walking the rest of the way to the Sunset Grill.

  She stared at the hair salon as the car accelerated away. She’d been circling this issue all morning, since she’d wound her hair into the usual thick, fuzzy braid and twisted it into a heavy knot. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window, slid her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose, and took another good, long look.

  She was hiding behind the glasses, the baggy dresses, the dowdy, frizzy hair. She’d hidden behind the cowardly assertion that looking good was all vanity and nonsense. That she was a lofty scholar who was too intellectual and above it all to care.

  What total bullshit. After less than ten lust-charged minutes with Duncan Burke in the stairwell, she cared passionately. She needed every weapon at her disposal to deal with him.

  The stray thought made her wince. There it was, beauty as a weapon. The association was programmed into her. She’d chosen plainness because she’d wanted to stay off the battlefield.

  But the battle had come to her. There was nothing to do but fight.

  She marched into the salon, sniffing nervously at shampoo, perfume, and chemicals. A slight, bald Hispanic man with a pearl-drop earring gave her a toothy smile. “What can I do for you?” he inquired.

  Nell stared helplessly. “Do you take walk-ins?”

  “When I feel like it. What do you have in mind?”

  “I, um, don’t know yet,” Nell confessed.

  The man rubbed his hands together. “Hmm. You’re in luck. I just had a canc
ellation. I’m Riccardo, by the way. Let’s take a look.”

  Nell soon found herself in a chair, her body swathed in a plastic cape. Riccardo’s expert fingers pulled the pins from her hair, unraveling it and fluffing it up. He made cooing noises of approval. “May I?” he asked, removing Nell’s glasses. The salon became a glittery blur. “Good material here. You really ought to try contacts,” he counseled.

  Nell harrumphed. “Can you do something that’s easy to style?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m just going to shape this a bit, and thin out all this weight, and layer this…and lighten it, make it more fluffy. See?”

  Of course, Nell didn’t, without her glasses, but this was the beauty salon of destiny, so she nodded and consigned herself to Fate.

  Some time later, she retrieved her glasses and gasped at the result. Riccardo had layered and shaped her formless, kinky waist-length mop into a shiny halo of black curls that framed and flattered her face and still hung halfway down her back. Nell kept putting an unbelieving hand up, feeling the soft, springy texture of her ringlets, the way it fluffed up on top, perfumed with various salves and waxes and goops massaged into it. The price was staggering, but she passed over her credit card without protest. The only problem was the glasses. With her new do, they looked even more ridiculous than before.

  One step at a time, she told herself.

  Her hair caused a sensation when she walked into the restaurant. Monica wolf whistled. Norma spun Nell around, looking at her from every angle. “Oh, honey! You look as gorgeous as I knew you would!” she exclaimed. “I just wish your mama could see how pretty you look!”

  Nell’s eyes dampened, and she hugged the other woman tightly.

  “Enough of the sentimental stuff,” Monica said briskly. “C’mere, Nell. I wanna put some makeup on you.”

  “Aren’t we supposed to be prepping for lunch?” Nell asked plaintively, as Monica dragged her to a chair.

  “That’s all right, hon. We can open five minutes late,” Norma said indulgently. “How did that job interview go?”

  “Oh. The job interview,” Nell hedged, as Monica tilted her face up and outlined her eyes with black pencil. “It was extremely interesting.”