The Paris Secrets trilogy: includes: Window, Screen, and Skin (3 page)

He pointed to me, and gave me the thumbs up sign.  Stabbing his book with a finger, he then made the gesture of a gun shooting his brains out. 

"Romance always wins," I said to myself.  "But I'll take a sexy computer geek in his underwear any day."

Thankful he couldn't hear my lusty thoughts, I shrugged and performed the silly wave again.  Standing in my robe, communicating with the man across the street?  This was already more exciting than half the dates I'd been on lately.

He put his hands to his tilted head to indicate sleep, then made the thumbs up gesture.

"Have a good night," I deciphered.  I performed the same gesture.  "You too.  Good night."

I plopped onto the bed, stomach-first, and bent up my legs.  Elated and grinning like the cat that had eaten the canary, I searched for the last sentence I'd read.  I was aware that I'd left the sheers open, and from his perspective across the street, he could probably see my bare legs bent upward, my feet bobbling as I read.  I didn't move them out of view.

Hell, I wanted to dive off the bed, push my nose up against the window, and drink him in like a fizzy glass of champagne.  But I wasn’t so bold.  My fantasies could prove even more interesting.

I resumed reading.  And suddenly Blaise the gardener looked a lot like Mr. Sexy with the computer textbook.

***

Two nights later, I filled a glass of water from the kitchen tap and wandered back into the bedroom where the green LED from the clock lasered a blurry line across the wall beside the bed.  2:30 a.m.  A sigh was appropriate. 

I was having a bout of insomnia, thanks, I think, to my inability to let things go.  I'd just handed in some disturbing research to a thriller novelist.  He'd needed to know how to remove the skin from a human being, and then how to take out the bones while maintaining the integrity and form of the body.

I hadn't thought it possible, and I certainly hadn't thought that I would find the information anywhere online.  Turns out there was a booming industry for the bones taken from corpses to be resold for marrow transplants.  The thieves would remove the bones from the body and replace them with PVC pipes so the family wouldn’t be the wiser during an open-casket funeral.

I decided to refuse requests for such macabre research from now on.  I loved researching thrillers.  The weaponry, police procedure, and martial arts and fighting skills were interesting to me.  But serial killers?  I'd had enough.

Stubbing my toe on a hardcover, I clicked on the nightlight to make it easier to spot the killer tome.  A volume on Henri XIII.  I set it aside on the top of a stack, knowing I'd need to finish it soon and hand in my notes.

It was either bone removal keeping me awake, or the chemicals in the book glue at the library—where I had spent the afternoon pouring over plates from a pristine version of Diderot's Encyclopedia—were infesting my brain and slowly deteriorating it. 

I preferred the glue version.  Such a tragic way to die, and the tombstone could read: Glue sniffers unite!

Before clicking off the nightlight, I noticed the light from across the street.  Mr. Sexy was up too? 

I pulled aside the sheer and attempted to engage x-ray vision to see through his curtains.  The way the night muted the window I couldn't see well, though if the curtain were open his light would reveal the interior of his bedroom as if it were a diorama lit up at a museum.

When the curtains suddenly parted, I panicked and almost slammed the sheers shut, yet made the save by raising my glass in a silent toast. 

"Just your friendly peeping Jane," I muttered.  "Can't sleep?" I wondered.

The man held up a glass of milk and rubbed his eyes in the universal signal of sleeplessness.

I lifted my glass in another toast, and he matched it.  We drank our respective libations.  If a girl could get drunk off water, it was going to happen when the view was so tantalizing.

He leaned a shoulder against the window, brazenly unselfconscious of the fact that he stood in only his boxer briefs—that emphasized his package nicely.  Or maybe he was aware and wanted me to take a good long look.

I did.  And I wished it was my birthday.  Or Christmas.  This Catholic chick would even settle for Hanukah at this point.  Right now any reason to open a package was good by me.  As I assessed the abundant gift displayed behind glass and cotton, it hardened noticeably, forming a nice firm bulge that angled toward his hip.  It must serve a good handful for him. 

I sucked in my lower lip.

Call it lack of sleep.  Call it needing to get laid more often than the once every month or so rotation I'd been on lately.  Call it…fascinated by his soft, sexy smile that twinkled in his eyes, and that extremely enticing, hard, huge package.

He winked at me.

My heartbeats stopped for a full ten seconds.  Count out ten seconds.  That is one hell of a long time.  His sexy wink stole away my breath and threatened to keep it from me.  His regard glided over my heart, stunning it still with a powerful beguilement spell.

Smirking, I resumed breathing.  Arousal tended to make me breathe faster.  My heartbeats kicked back into gear, though a little faster and lighter now, like butterflies beating the airstream that encircled the universe.

Touching the empty water glass to my lips, I dipped a lash flutter at him.  I wasn't an expert in flirtation, but I'd read books, and had actually researched different forms of kissing for a romance novelist.  I pointed at him, and gave him the thumbs up sign.

He lowered his head in an embarrassed shrug.  A few dark curls spilled over his ear, and he brushed them back.  Could the man be any cuter?

Setting his glass of milk on a marble-topped dresser across from the end of his bed, he then put his forearm to the window and propped his palm against a temple.  His gaze sought mine and I let him have the connection.  Or was it my soul he'd connected to?  Could souls flutter?

No, wait.  I was getting ahead of myself.  It was just a look shared between two people who stood, scantily clad, in their respective windows.  No soul mating going on here, folks.  Move along.  No pictures allowed behind this line.

What he did next was to be my undoing.  I just wouldn't know it for months to come.  He pointed to me, holding the gesture for a few seconds…then, he made a motion of slipping the robe from my shoulder.

Eyebrow lifting, I defied him with a tilt of my head.  My slightly-longer-than-shoulder-length hair spilled off one shoulder.  Cheeky of him.  Very forward.  I wasn't that kind of girl.

But right now I needed to be that kind of girl more than I needed to breathe.

He shrugged and splayed his palms in a 'what can I say?' gesture. 

And for some reason, maybe lack of sleep, or glue-induced insanity, I tapped into the vixen I knew existed somewhere inside me.  That part of me who pranced before the mirror on tiptoes when I tried on a new dress or a sexy pair of panties.  The seductress who pursed her lips at the reflection in the mirror, yet who shuddered at the idea of actually doing such a thing before a real, live, breathing male. 

Oh, tiny vixen.  It's your time to shine.  Or at least turn up the dimmer switch to the next level of brightness.

I slipped the yellow silk robe from my shoulder.  Taking particular notice of the slide of fabric over my skin, I focused on that instead of the man watching me.  Swift, light, as if a brush of a lover's hand, it sent a shiver down my arm and perked the hairs over goose flesh.  The silk draped above my breast, the little embroidered bee crushed within the folds. 

As I shifted my shoulders back, allowing the other sleeve to drop down, the robe spilled even further, both sleeves landing at the crooks of my elbows.  My nipples tightened, much less from the fabric, and more from anticipation.  Or was it fear?  The tremble in my chest gave me away.  But I was determined, so I continued. 

I didn't feel compelled to cup my hands before my breasts, so the lightweight fabric splayed open, shifting across my skin in delicious tingles, and inspiring a heavy inhale of courage on my part.

The man's smile deepened, and he nodded at the sight of my exposed breasts.  His thumbs up sign didn't seem lecherous so much as a quiet thank you.  Because there I stood, in the middle of the night, exposing myself to a complete stranger who I hardly knew.  Hell, I didn't know him at all. 

Wait.  The other night's window wave and book sharing counted as a first meeting, right?  Sure, we were old friends. 

Struggling with the weirdness of my newly-emerged exhibitionism and the need to wrap the silk back across my breasts and flee for safety under the comforter, I exhaled slowly and breathed in through my nose.  Aware that the action lifted my breasts, I noticed that he was even more acutely tuned in.

Too much.  Too fast.  What the hell are you doing?

Right.  Enough with playing the wanton for the night.  I pulled up the robe, kissed the palm of my hand and blew him a kiss.  Then I shuffled into bed and switched off the lamp.

Snuggling into the sheets, my head crushing into the pillow, I closed my eyes.  A smile curled my mouth.  I'd never done anything so brazen before.  Ever.  It was completely out of character. 

My introvert's crown had just tilted.  And the vixen within giggled.

I wondered if he was still standing there, waiting for my return?  Dare I look?

I pulled up the comforter to my nose.

"Tomorrow night," I whispered.  "It’ll be his turn to reveal something to me."

Chapter Three

I fantasize about shoes, a lot.  Or are such dreams simply a natural trait indicative of the female species?

After working at the map shop, I beelined toward the shoe store in the sixth arrondissement that had been calling my name for weeks. 

Christian Louboutin called every woman’s name.  It was an elite little shop that boasted a doorman who only let in so many shoppers at a time.  On any given day it was normal to see a line outside the storefront windows, and in that line, women pushing and cursing one another for better positioning closer to the door.  Seriously.

Ever since those black, ribbon-tied, fuck-me pumps had made their appearance in the front window, I had not been able to stop thinking about them.  I wanted to slide my feet into those pretties, and wearing nothing more than those and a smile, prance before a sexy stranger and watch his eyes follow my every move. 

Did I have a sexy stranger in mind?  After last night I did.  I’d done it.  I’d actually flashed a stranger my naked breasts.  And I’d stood there some time, allowing him a good long look.  How crazy was that?

Every time I thought about the flashing incident I stood taller.  Oh yeah, I was no wallflower.  I could seduce a man
like that
.

Maybe in an alternate universe.

Ah hell.  Baby steps, right? 

Back to the mission.

Something about the perfect shoe worked magic to a woman's heart—to her very soul.  High-heels, stilettos, and precarious skyscraper-stripper-heeled shoes made us stand taller, jutted our breasts, and emphasized our asses by the tilt of our hips. 

But we didn't need to walk in them (and who could endure that torture for long?).  Just slipping on a gorgeous pump, lying across the bed, our arms stretched out above our heads as we gazed upon the pretty shoes capping our feet, changed our religion.

Shoes were sexual toys.  And we women did not need a man to help us operate those devices.

The narrow sidewalk before the shop was clear of women jostling for line position, so I pressed a palm to the window, eyeing my prey.  Smooth black leather, wrapped about the heel with black velvet ribbons that crossed over the top of the foot, around the back of the ankle, and then tied into a pretty bow that said 'tug me, if you dare'.  

It wasn't my birthday (much as I had wished for just that the other night).  I hadn't even achieved a great accomplishment at work or otherwise.  I was simply answering an age-old call to nourish my soul.

It occurred to me that the male sales clerk on the other side of the glass was watching me.  I sucked in the corner of my lower lip.  Dressed in a black suit, his hair shaved to a shadow on his scalp, he personified smug.  Dare I flash him some nipple as I had my handsome neighbor last night? Ha!

He smiled at me, dashing away the smug with a hint of warm welcome, and gestured I come inside. 

I stood there for a few seconds, ruminating over our silent exchange.  There's something oddly intimate about communicating through glass and at a short distance.  The only thing between the two of you was a thin sheet of ultra-heated limestone and sand.  Clear enough to reveal everything we wanted to present on our complicated surfaces.  And yet, what lay hidden within could never be seen through that glass.  Maybe?

Rolling my eyes at my sudden plunge into window philosophy, I opened the door and strolled in, knowing my credit card was going to scream bloody murder and not giving a care. 

Thanks to research, I knew how to hide a body.

***

I made it home as the setting sun blazed orange across the Seine.  The river was always alive with lights from the boats and the reflections from the grand buildings and landmarks edging its shores.  The occasional bonfire down by the waters tended to hook my wondering brain.  Had they been started by the homeless, or by a bunch of ruffians?  Perhaps one had been set ablaze for a glamorous evening roasting marshmallows down by the smelly old river?