Dirty Lies

THINGS HEAT UP

We'd been kissing for hours.

It had started when Skylar arrived. I gave her a long, lazy kiss, pressing her into the door as I locked it. We smooched throughout dinner, in between bites of the pizza, then I led her upstairs to the TV room attached to my big bedroom, and we made out on the sofa for a long time, pausing to talk and laugh as our bodies molded together.

I hadn't spent so much time kissing without having sex since I was a teenager.

Skylar's lips, now practically bruised from my nips and nibbles and bites, made me feel young again. Innocent. I'd promised sex wasn't an option until she gave the go-ahead, and found myself unbearably excited by the teasing, wanting, aching feeling inside me. Neither of us had mentioned the previous night's hot talk on the phone, but that, coupled with her in-person shyness, drove me wild.

"Are we really going to watch a movie?" She tickled my side. "Or are you going to kiss me all night?"

"I'm going to kiss you while we're watching a movie. It's really old, from the seventies. In English, it's called The Passenger, but in Italian, it's Professione: Reporter. It's about a reporter who takes on a different identity and then falls in love with a woman and they run from criminals. There's subtitles."

Skylar grinned. "Sounds good to me."

I chuckled softly as we reclined on a wide, tufted, brown leather sofa. She snuggled her back to my chest as I pressed play on one remote and turned down the lights with the tap of another. I put my arm around her, wishing she wore a shirt and not a dress so I could easily access the skin of her stomach.

The movie started. As I stroked the curve of her hip and pressed my lips to her shoulder, I was slammed with an overwhelming, unusual feeling.

Normalcy.

I'd never really been intimate with a woman like this. High school, college, post-college—all were spent on quick hookups. I hadn't ever taken a relationship slow because I had never really attempted to have one.

I'd bounced from boarding school to university to internship to my first newspaper. In my early twenties, my career had come first. But here on Palmira, when I was supposed to be writing a second book, I was spooning a sweet woman and watching a movie.

Acting like a man whose parents hadn't been killed as retribution for an expose. Pretending I hadn't spent a year on the run. Appearing as though I wasn't waiting with dread for a mafia boss to go on trial.

To an outsider, it would look like I cared about the girl in my arms. And I was starting to care about her. But why her? Why Skylar and not any of the dozen or so other beautiful women I'd hooked up with over the years?

It was more than the physical attraction, obviously. Was it because she made me laugh, or was it her quick mind and how she read voraciously? Her favorite book as a child was Harriet the Spy, and now she read true crime. None of the women I'd screwed in recent years read much, and if they had, I hadn't spent enough time with them to find out their preferences.

I swept Skylar's hair away from her neck, and she pressed her body closer. The coral hue of her little dress made her skin look more velvety and pale, and I longed to lick her from head to toe. We lay tight together, watching the slow movie. I became absorbed in the plot.

After an hour or so, she rolled over and pressed her nose into my chest, puffing out an adorable little snort. I almost laughed aloud at the thought of putting a woman to sleep before sex, but I didn't want to wake her, so I hugged her close, ignoring my erection. Every so often, I'd gaze down at her face and brush my thumb over her cheek.

She looked young, yet regal. Her mouth turned up at the corners, and her dark eyelashes grazed the tops of her cheekbones. So damn gorgeous.

When the movie was almost over, thunder rumbled in the distance. Skylar nuzzled deeper into my arms and sighed.

"I should go," she whispered. Her eyes opened, revealing a hazy blue color, then fluttered closed again.

Poor thing. She was exhausted. She'd talked about working overtime on a reporting project and I wondered if she was pushing herself too hard.

"Sorry for falling asleep," she murmured.

"Why don't you stay? You had a lot of wine and you're sleepy. And it sounds like it's about to rain. You shouldn't drive."

"Mmmm." She kissed my neck.

"You can sleep in my bed and I'll take the guest room. Or the sofa."

She let out a cute growl of dissatisfaction and pressed her forehead into my chest.

"Or we can sleep in the same bed. I promise I won't try anything."

She opened her eyes slowly and looked at me. "Okay."

I climbed over her body and pulled her to standing. She followed me through a door and into my bedroom, which was decorated in the home's formal, tropical-colonial furniture.

I was ambivalent about my uncle's home and its luxuries. After backpacking and staying in grungy hostels in third-world countries, the Palmira house and its formal decor seemed cold, like living in a showroom. The four-poster bed with a canopy top in my room was probably the most ostentatious piece, but it would be rude to ask my uncle to redecorate. At some point, I wanted to remove the gauzy, faux malaria curtains tied to the canopy rails that made me roll my eyes whenever I looked at them.

"Ohhh, pretty," Skylar said dreamily as she touched the curtains hanging around the bed. "Romantic."

Okay, maybe they weren't so bad.

I led her to the master bathroom and found a towel.

"Toothpaste?" she asked drowsily, and I set a tube on the wide counter. She shut the door softly after I left.

Like I did every night, I locked the door leading to the hallway and made sure my gun was in the nightstand drawer.

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