The Masseuse (4 page)

I turned to say good-bye, ready to cut ties, when Randall invaded my personal space and kissed me.

For one flash of a moment I wavered and considered taking him to bed. Randall would be a good lover, if maybe a little selfish. He had a nice body—one hardened by treadmills and free weights and personal trainers, no doubt. He’d keep me from thinking about my family and, best of all, he’d be easy to push out the door in the morning.

But I couldn’t shake the memory of another man’s body pressing mine up against a bookcase. I couldn’t get those piercing eyes or his voice out of my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about what he would feel like, driving into me as I scratched my nails down his back.

Randall seemed like a poor substitute, and it wasn’t fair to lead him on.

Too late to fully escape, I turned, and his lips found the corner of mine. They were waxy with Chapstick and stuck a little as I tried to pull away. His eyes were already closed, and my nose itched a little from the overpowering smell of his cologne.

The butterflies in my belly yawned. They made a big, dramatic show of it.

“I like a woman with curves,” he said, giving my hips a little squeeze. “More to hold on to.”

Translation: You’re not skinny, but you have nice boobs.

Carefully, I placed my hands on his chest and eased back. I may not have been a Calvin Klein model, but I’d be damned if I didn’t look good filling out a size eight.

“Why don’t you let me give you a ride home?” Randall wove his fingers together behind my lower back, latching me in place. “Better yet, why don’t you come over?”

I pulled away, placing a hand on his forearm. “I think it’s better I didn’t.”

The poor guy looked genuinely confused by this.

“Did I misinterpret what was happening here?”

“If you thought this would end in me spending the night, then yes,” I said.

“Oh, come on,” he said, reaching again to push the hair out of his eyes. I couldn’t believe Amy had agreed to give him that terrible haircut. “When you put on that outfit, you didn’t think you’d be spending the night too?”

My gaze narrowed. I had been thinking about spending the night with someone, just not him.

“Don’t make this ugly,” I said.

“What?” he asked, and then threw his shoulders back. “You know what, forget it. Have a great night. I should have offered a tip if I wanted a happy ending.”

“A tip?” I asked, hip cocked out. “You didn’t even buy me dinner.”

The light from the restaurant revealed the color rising in his cheeks.

“And spare me the masseuse jokes,” I added. “I’ve heard them all before.”

I left him standing in front of his white Lexus, nervously glancing around to make sure no one was within earshot.

Fueled by annoyance, I walked quickly, the heels of my boots clicking over the sidewalk. The occasional car passed, but there weren’t any cabs nearby. Pho wasn’t in the restaurant district—this area was mostly dedicated to business, so after work hours, it tended to empty out. I crossed the street, making my way toward the Taco Bus and the police station. There was always someone in need of a cab there.

I was glad I hadn’t succumbed to loneliness and brought Randall home. He was a pompous ass, only interested in himself—which is exactly why I’d liked him on the first date. I usually preferred guys who didn’t ask any questions. I didn’t want Randall digging around in my baggage, but at the same time it bothered me that he hadn’t really tried. It was a double standard I’d struggled with my whole life: I wanted someone to know me, but I wouldn’t let them get close enough to do it. It wasn’t worth it in the long run. You ended up alone, hurt, sitting on a grave by yourself drinking wine.

It was better this way. I’d been thrown off by all the stuff with my dad and the grief he lived with every day for his soul mate. The last thing I needed was Randall trying to fill the void.

Frowning, I passed the station and all the cop cars parked in the lot. Before he made detective, my dad used to take me to school in his cruiser. All the buttons and lights and sirens inside fascinated me, even when I was fifteen and having a cop in your family was the absolute worst. It always reminded me of the first night I’d ridden with him—I’d been eight years old, tired, scared, and starving, but hopeful too. Sometimes the first time you meet someone you know they’re going to change your life, and that’s the way I felt about Officer Rossi, the man who would later become my father.

As I came to the police station, I changed my mind about the cab. The night was cool, and it felt better to walk. With each step, my bad date and overthinking faded behind me, and once again I found my mind returning to Neighborhood Watch, and the incomprehensible, almost uncontrollable need I’d felt in his presence.

I couldn’t believe I didn’t know his real name, and I hadn’t given him my number, not that he would have called anyway. He probably had a hundred women waiting for the chance to jump into bed with him. Maybe I wasn’t looking for anything serious, but I also didn’t want to be a notch on someone’s belt. I got the feeling Neighborhood Watch was a serious playboy, and I could count the number of guys I’d slept with on two hands.

I kept to the well-lit streets, heading straight for the Channelside area. A Lightning hockey game was just letting out at the downtown arena, and as I approached the hordes of fans in blue emptying into the street, I felt a shiver work down my spine. I glanced behind me, but apart from a few homeless men, there was no movement.

Hugging my clutch to my chest, I hurried on, still glancing around. Someone was following me, I was sure of it. I removed the Mace from my wallet and held it in my fist, remembering all the self-defense classes my dad had made me take before I left for college.

Only, instead of feeling scared, I was flushed. My breasts were heavy and aching, and each step brought the slightest bit of friction to my oversensitive sex. It was like someone was watching me, checking me out,
wanting
me. I could feel the stranger’s eyes roaming over my exposed skin, and I fought the urge to slow down and reveal a little bit more, a crazy impulse that went against everything I’d ever learned.

When I crossed the intersection into the crowd, I stopped and turned in a full circle, but I couldn’t see anyone. It was probably just my overactive imagination.

Giving up on my search, I jogged to catch the red trolley at the corner and climbed aboard. The compartment was packed with men and women in oversize hockey jerseys celebrating the Lightning’s victory. Drunk as some of them were, I was safer here than I had been on the street. I probably should have taken a cab, but at least I wasn’t alone now.

The trolley dropped me off near my apartment in an old cigar factory converted into restaurants, studio flats, and condos. Before entering the building, I checked behind me one last time to make sure I wasn’t being followed. This part of the city was just beginning to come to life—music from the clubs down the street was already pounding, and a group of men across the street whistled at three cross-dressing strippers who blew them kisses. What a surprise the boys were in for when they realized what was hidden beneath those miniskirts. It was Ybor City at its best.

I climbed the steps to the second floor, hit hard by the strong aroma of Chinese food from the take-out restaurant below my studio apartment. The location—which always smelled of lo mein and sounded like a team of toddlers had broken out the pots and pans—was how I’d gotten the place so cheap.

The space was small, but it was mine, and for now I liked it. It was the sixth place I’d lived in within seven years and would do until the itch to move on struck me again. I liked to think of each new destination as a check mark on my explore-the-world bucket list.

I threw my purse on the flowery three-legged stool I’d picked up at a yard sale and locked the dead bolt behind me. One room may not have seemed very big, but it was enough for me. The tiny bathroom and closet were off to the left, while the ’70s-era pea-green kitchen sat opposite, taking the right corner of the room. The far window overlooked Seventh Avenue, with its pretty strings of twinkling lights draped between the old streetlamps. The bottom floor of the old immigrant hospital across the street had been converted to a steak house, but the second story was still empty, so I didn’t bother closing the curtains over the bay window as I took off my shirt and threw it on the bed. The black low-set frame from IKEA may have been cheap, but I’d sprung for the softest sheets I could find, and a plush purple comforter that made me feel like royalty.

Slipping off the skirt, I looked out the window, knowing those on the street couldn’t see me in my yellow lace strapless bra and matching boy short panties. I wanted someone to see me, though, and as my hands slid down my body of their own accord I thought of him. I imagined his strong arms around my waist, lifting me up, spreading me, his thick cock sliding deep inside while I screamed his name. I thought of my hands fisting his dark hair, and his mouth on my neck. I turned, and leaned back against the glass, feeling the way it would press against my skin as he fucked me.

My hand slid down the front of my panties, finding my slit sensitive and slippery, and when I came, it was with a whimper, not a scream.

I
t was a long, restless night. I barely slept, and when I did, my dreams were haunted by a man with wavy hair and wild blue eyes, pressing my knees apart and planting hot, wet kisses up my thighs. But every time he got close to my center, I woke up, aching and edgy and too hot, even after I’d shucked my nightie and thrown my comforter to the floor.

It was an obsession. A crazy fantasy that would never come true. I didn’t know why Mr. Stein’s security guard had had such an effect on me, but it was unhealthy. I couldn’t even concentrate long enough to make coffee, and it was an automatic coffeemaker.

I settled for pushing the love seat in the center of my apartment aside, turning my iPod to classic Aerosmith, and powering through an hour of yoga. It was worth it: After five sun salutations and a cold shower, I’d burned up most of my angst and was feeling considerably more in control.

A little mascara, eyeliner, and my new cosmetic fave—a dark red lipstick called Siren—and I was out the door. I didn’t bother doing my hair; one of the perks of working at a salon was there were plenty of people there to do it for you, so I left it down to dry in the Tampa heat.

I stopped at Javaz, a coffee shop around the corner from my apartment and five blocks from the salon, Rave, and stepped through the wall of air-conditioning to treat myself to twenty-four ounces of caffeinated heaven.

Bob Dylan was playing from the speakers as I got into line, and the aroma of roasting beans immediately perked me up. I checked my cell—four texts from Amy, ending with
WTF ARE YOU DEAD?
—and a list of my booked appointment times from the receptionist at the salon. I sent a quick text back to Amy that I’d see her in a few with a peace offering of her favorite iced green tea, and stepped to the front of the line, where a barista, in his thirties with a stocking cap and a braided goatee, took my order.

“Good morning, my love.”

“Hey, Kevin,” I said, smirking at his customary declaration. “The usual, plus an iced green tea for Amy.”

“Got it.” He wrote my drinks on the large white paper cups in a green marker.

“No charge,” he told me as I reached for my wallet.

I lifted my eyes. “Huh?”

“That guy over there took care of it when you came in.” He pointed to the seats in the back corner, but a woman in a sage maxidress was blocking my view.

“You have a secret admirer.” He looked a little annoyed.

“Well, awesome, I guess.” I shoved a five in the tip jar and made my way to the back to thank my mysterious do-gooder, but the woman in the dress was clearly trying to make conversation with him. I wondered how many drinks he’d bought people this morning.

“So if you’re not doing anything for dinner . . .” she was saying.

“Excuse me,” he interrupted. His voice curled around me like warm velvet. Neighborhood Watch.

The woman, a perky brunette with a jangly necklace, stepped aside. When our eyes met, her cheeks grew rosy.

“Lucky you,” she said, taking a sip from her drink before heading for the door.

He rose from the soft chair like some sort of Greek god, dark hair curling at the tips, gaze more penetrating than it had been even in my dreams. He wore a black suit that had been tailored to fit his broad shoulders and lean waist to perfection, with a white dress shirt left unbuttoned at the collar. When he stood, his slacks moved in such a way that offered only a hint of the long muscles beneath and made me curious as to just how well-endowed he actually was.

“Anna.”

The word from his mouth made my breath hitch; his voice was mesmerizing. It conjured images of him hovering over me, growling my name against my neck.

The space between us crackled with electricity; I felt it humming in my blood, making my body sensitive and damp. Fearful I would drop the two drinks I was holding, I set them down on the table beside me and tried to pull myself together.

“If it isn’t the neighborhood watch,” I said, scarcely more than a whisper.

His lips quirked, and I wanted to lick them. The butterflies in my belly were going haywire.

“What do you mean?”

I blinked, trying to break the spell. “I don’t know your name.”

“Alec Flynn.” He moved closer, and his hand rose to my long, wet hair, twisting the ends around his fingers.

“Did you just get out of the shower?”

I nodded, unable to move.

His eyes darkened, like storm clouds over the ocean. I could feel my temperature rising and the tension building inside me, the muscles I’d just stretched out growing taut again.

“It’s bad enough you’re wearing those pants,” he said, referring to the black tights I’d tucked inside my knee-high boots. “Now I’m thinking of you naked
and
wet.”

“Is that a problem?” Seeing the desire in his face made me bold.

“Depends on how long you’re going to make me wait to see you that way.”

I swallowed, and reminded myself I knew nothing about him.

“You seem awfully sure of where this is going,” I told him.

“And you’re not?” His hand left my hair, trailing down my side before coming to rest on my hip. Heat streaked through the thin fabric of my flowing black peasant top, making me shudder. He must have felt my reaction because he moved close enough for his lips to skim my ear.

“You kept me up last night, Anna. I know you thought of me, too.”

I froze, memories flashing bright in my mind of the glass window against my back and my fingers sliding over places I wanted him to touch. He couldn’t have seen me; no one from the street could see up to the second floor. I’d checked it several times. It was nothing more than a cocky assumption, but I couldn’t help but feel transparent.

Suddenly I became aware of our surroundings—the coffee shop, the people watching us, the barista with the goatee glaring from his position at the cash register. I took a step back, pulling my hair over one shoulder.

“Do you live nearby?” I asked. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

He breathed in deeply, pushing his hands into his pockets. He didn’t have a drink; maybe he’d already finished it.

“Just here for business.”

“A little of this and a little of that,” I said, remembering what he’d told me the previous day in the study.

“Right.”

“It’s too bad,” I said. “I was going to say we should have coffee sometime. Now I’ve got to go to work.”

“At Rave?”

I felt my brows pull together. “How did you . . . ?”

“I asked around,” he said with a devious glint in his eyes. Then conceded. “Ms. Rowe.”

So he had been thinking about me. I felt the power shift back to my corner.

“Well,” I said, fighting the urge to grab him by the lapels and drag him back to my apartment. “I guess if you know where I work, you can make that appointment we discussed.”

He tilted his head. “I will. You owe me, remember?”

I bit my lip; yesterday’s run-in with Maxim Stein and his redheaded mistress seemed more like a dream than reality.

“I do.” I picked up my drinks. “Thanks for the coffee.”

I could feel his gaze on my back until I was out the door and across the street. Maybe I let my hips sway a little more than normal, but I didn’t giggle until I was sure Javaz was out of sight.

*

Rave was sandwiched between an Irish pub and a tattoo parlor, neither of which were that busy at ten o’clock in the morning. Still strutting, I breezed through the glass doors, passing the salon’s manager, Derrick, at the front desk with a little wave, and making my way past the decadently framed mirrors and hair-washing stations to the styling chairs. There were only a couple of people in this morning—Rave did most of its business in the early afternoon and evening hours.

A rail-thin girl in a black velvet tuxedo jacket, shorts, and torn fishnets replaced a broom against the wall and stalked toward me. With white-blonde hair, cut asymmetrically, and purple eye shadow, Amy was the definition of edgy. Here at Rave, she fit right in.

“You . . .” she snarled as I plopped myself into her chair. I held the tea out before me like a shield to avoid the full extent of her wrath.

She growled like a puppy and lifted the cup to her mouth. “You got laid. Good, it’s about time.”

“What?” I hid my smile in my vanilla latte, taking a long, scalding sip. I didn’t mind the hot coffee in hot weather. The hotter, the better.

“Oh, don’t even pretend you didn’t. I can see it all over your face, you smug little floozy.”

“I didn’t.” I laughed.

She rolled her eyes, set down her tea on the tray with her blow-dryer and other tools, and spun me around to face the mirror. Without discussion, she began piecing my hair, clipping it up, and making her mental preparations of just how she would dress up her favorite doll today.

“It was the doctor, wasn’t it?” Her mouth fell open. “Dr. Randall!”

“Dr. Boy Band? Yeah,
no
.” I made a face. “And honestly, what were you thinking giving him that haircut?”

She stifled a laugh. “He asked for it.”

“He asked to look like the only thirty-year-old cast member of the Mickey Mouse Club? Please.”

“He brought in a picture.”

I closed my eyes. Amy hated it when people brought in pictures of the hairstyles they wanted. According to her, they never were a good fit for the person’s face or personality.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “You liked him after the first date.”

When I was reasonably buzzed, and the bar where we’d met was too loud to hear him talk about himself.

“He was an ass,” I raised my voice to talk over the dryer as Amy began to straighten my hair. “He ate dinner before I even showed up, and then, when I told him I wasn’t going home with him, he made a pathetic masseuse joke.”

“I make masseuse jokes,” Amy said. “Dr. Randall was supposed to be a fling.”

“Speaking of masseuse jokes . . .” Derrick strode up from the front desk, tablet in hand. With dark, flawless skin and a body perfected by hours at the gym, Derrick was two parts business, one part glam. Today he was showcasing the new smoky eyeliner we’d gotten in last week. If I was being honest, it looked a lot better on him than it had on me.

I raised my cup. “Here we go . . .”

“Mr. Herman is your eleven o’clock.”

I groaned and slumped in the chair. Melvin Herman was a lonely accountant who scheduled a little too regularly and had to be reminded more than once about the sexual-harassment policy. He was harmless, but exhausting.

Amy began to chuckle.

“Hasn’t he been banned yet?” she asked.

“He signed a client-conduct form,” said Derrick with a grimace. “He agreed to stop asking you out on dates and knows that he can only see you for scheduled appointments during regular business hours. You’ll tell me if he gets sassy?”

I could hardly imagine Melvin “getting sassy.” The guy was forty-five, six feet tall, and a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet. I doubted he even really knew what I looked like—every time he got a massage, he took off his telescope-lens glasses.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Good.” Derrick flashed a smile of perfect teeth as he made his way back to the front of the shop.

“Since all seems hopeless with the good doctor, I suppose you could always take Melvin out for a spin,” Amy grinned.

“What is your obsession with my sex life?”

“Just lookin’ out,” she said.

Amy was always “just lookin’ out.” We’d gone to high school together in Cincinnati. At fourteen, she’d been wild and untamable, angry over her dad leaving her mom, and her brother getting killed overseas. And I’d been a loner, too wary to trust anyone. Somewhere between a sampling of boys and booze, we evened each other out. She was the first real friend I’d ever had. The only one, really.

After senior year, we’d gone our separate ways: me on my quest to see the world, her to Florida with the twenty-one-year-old guitar player who was just trying to “find himself” in her pants. We’d kept in touch, and when things had gone stale in Baltimore, I’d come down to Tampa to nurse her through a divorce from the lying, cheating husband who’d left her with nothing but a beautiful little girl.

Amy was the one who’d gotten me the job and my apartment.

“Maybe,” she said, trading the blow-dryer for a flatiron, “I just want you to stick around for longer than two months.” Her gaze didn’t stray from my hair.

“Baltimore was eight.” It was a weak argument. Her wanting me close felt good, but it also made me sad. Part of me wanted to put down roots somewhere, anywhere, but it seemed like the ground beneath was always too hard.

“And Atlanta was six. And Austin was two.”

“
Three
. You know, I had to sign a conduct form of my own last night,” I said, changing the subject.

“At the big shot’s house? Do tell.”

I launched into a full description of what had happened at Maxim Stein’s, beginning with my first run-in with Alec. When I got to the part where I walked in on Maxim and his mistress, the flatiron Amy had been using fell to the floor.

“You’re full of shit,” she said.

I hushed her. “I swear.”

“They didn’t see you?”

I told her how I hid in a room until I’d been rescued by Alec, and then proceeded with the appointment as if nothing had happened.

Amy shook her head, nose scrunched up like it always did when she was worried about something.

“And”
—I held up my coffee—“he showed up out of the blue at Javaz this morning and bought us drinks.”

“Out of the blue,” she said. “Yeah, right. He showed up because he wanted to see you.”

The thought of his fingers teasing my hair and his warm hand on my waist made my skin feel sensitive. I had wondered if he’d arranged to run into me, but it seemed too good to be true.

“You’re really into him,” Amy noticed.

“It’s probably nothing,” I said, trying not to get my hopes up.

“Are you kidding?” She finished pulling the top strands of hair back in a silver clip. “He’d be crazy not to like you. I just worry about those house calls. I seriously could have kicked your ass for not texting me back last night.”

“I’m sorry.” I meant it. She was a good friend—the best.