Anticipation. JENNIFER LABRECQUE
was way off her meter.
She rifled through the folders in his briefcase, taking care to leave everything the way she’d found it. Nothing definitive there, except the name Nick O’Malley, plus a phone number and address. They knew Slick Nick used a number of aliases. O’Malley was close enough to Malone to make sense as an alias. People tended to pick names similar to their own. But the address…She grinned. Sweet.
She stepped back and turned around, bumping the chair behind her. The doll started to fall and Serena grabbed it to keep it from tumbling to the floor.
“Oh, Nicky, would you like me to talk dirty to you?” a canned woman’s voice asked, startling Serena. Serena realized it was the doll. This guy was a bonafide freak. Serena righted the doll, feeling slightly intimidated in the face of what were extremely large breasts. Apparently Slick Nick did not find more than a mouthful a waste. Those monsters would require a quarterback to make a two-handed pass. Wait till the boys in the station heard about this.
And then because she figured Nick hadn’t even finished his burger yet and it was sort of akin to watching a train wreck or Jerry Springer when you were late-night channel surfing, she squeezed the doll again.
“Oh, Nicky, you’re so big.”
Oh brother. This guy was pa-thet-ic. And then, because she wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t come in handy one day and because she was simply curious, she listened to the rest of the doll’s messages. Sheesh. Love slave. Mama. Threesome. Spanking. Well, Slick Nick certainly had some hot buttons.
She did a quick recon of the drawers. Not much there except for the usual socks, underwear—kind of boring tighty whities, not exactly what she’d figured for a kinky kind of guy—and a pair of cotton drawstring pants all jumbled together. Nick might be a nice dresser but he wasn’t exactly tidy or organized.
She only had one more place to check. Maybe he had something in the closet, something in his suitcase. She slid open the mirrored closet door and checked the pants pockets. Nada. The door lock clicked. She froze for a second, then she ducked into the closet, sliding the closet door behind her just as the room door swung open. Her heart pounded. Two seconds later and she’d have been an unwilling doorstop.
The deadbolt clicked into place, a sure sign that whoever had come in—she assumed Nick—didn’t plan on going back out any time soon. She was amazed she could hear anything over the deafening pounding of her heart. That had been a close call. Nick walked past the closet and Serena held her breath, careful to remain still and not bump the hangers at shoulder level. Thank goodness he’d left half the closet empty. She inched the closet door open, just a hair, so that she could survey the room.
Slick Nick sat at the table next to the blow-up doll and did something on the computer. “Ah, sweet Sheila, you’re still here.” Double ick. His plastic fantasy had a name. And where the heck else did he expect her to be? Sheila wasn’t going far on rubber legs. “I should’ve ordered in and eaten with you, my sweet.”
It was one of those universal injustices that such a weirdo had such a sexy voice, a warm, slightly husky baritone that slid over you, through you.
“There was a woman in the bar…my God, those legs. I was seriously tempted.”
He was talking about her. She wasn’t sure whether she was flattered or grossed out. Well, that wasn’t true. Maybe all his perversion was rubbing off, because, dammit, she was flattered that he was out there sighing over her legs and confessing to the plastic Sheila.
“They were get-your-dick-hard legs. Oh, honey. And those eyes and that cute nose. Sheila, she was a turn-on and I was close to caving, but I stayed the course, even if it meant leaving half my dinner. I didn’t give in to temptation. I was true to you, my love.” He closed his eyes and ran a hand over his head. “I swear I can even smell her perfume in here. She seriously flipped my switch.” He opened his eyes and shook his head, as if to clear it.
Serena couldn’t believe that it turned her on to hear Mr. Perve talk about getting a woody looking at her legs, especially since he was describing her to his blow-up doll girlfriend. She didn’t want to feel the moisture gather between her thighs, didn’t want to feel that flutter low in her belly. It was even worse when she considered that his “giving in to temptation” meant betraying an inanimate object with a permanently gaping mouth.
Oh no. No flaming way. Not going to do it. No way she was going to sit in this closet and watch him “enjoy” Sheila. But hey, Sheila was there, available, permanently willing and he was turned on. Of course that was what was going to happen.
Cripes, a guy with a little willie going at it with a blow-up doll. Well, it wouldn’t be any better if it was a guy with a big willie.
The upside, however, to witnessing that freak show in action would be she’d see his bare butt and have a positive ID. Sometimes her job sucked. Increasingly, she felt permanently slimed by the bad guys.
“Okay, little Sheila, I think it’s time you went in the closet.”
What?
Nick picked up the doll and carried her under one arm across the room.
No. No. No. A blow-up doll was about to totally blow her cover. She inched back but couldn’t go too far because his suitcase was on the foldout stand and his clothes were hanging. If she was really lucky, he’d only open the door far enough to shove the doll in. But she wasn’t feeling lucky about right now.
Nick reached for the closet slide and must’ve hit Sheila’s hand. “Oh, Nicky, would you like me to talk dirty to you?”
“Thanks for the offer, Sheila, but I don’t think so.” He laughed but turned back toward the bed, away from the closet. “But I guess you can just stay in the chair. You’re really too nice a girl to be stuck in the closet.”
Reprieved! Blood rushed to Serena’s head.
“Enjoy your chair while I shower.” He placed the doll in the chair and crossed to the dresser where he pulled out the cotton drawstring pants.
Shower meant naked. Bare tush. All she needed was one good look, just a glimpse of that tattoo. No. She was not looking forward to checking out his bod. She was just doing her job—even if that meant watching a buff, good-looking perve strip naked.
Serena wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold this position, scrunched over. Nick went into the bathroom. Don’t close the door. He pushed it behind him, but it only closed about a quarter of the way, leaving her with a line of sight and the reflection from the bathroom mirror.
He tossed the cotton pants onto the counter next to the sink and reached into the shower, turning on the water. Serena took advantage of the moment to kneel on the closet floor, closer to the crack, giving her a better view without her eye being level with his in the mirror. She didn’t need him to see her watching him from the closet. That could be a bad scene. But from what she knew of this guy, he’d probably get off on it.
Nick tugged his shirt over his head and tossed it onto the floor, taking her right back to that life-not-fair deal. He had a gorgeous chest, broad with a smattering of hair that was masculine without looking like a hairy beast. And the mirror reflected his back—no hair, thank you, but plenty of sculpted muscle. And arms—cut, defined. He was buff without being Cro-Magnon.
He stepped out of a pair of loafers and unzipped his pants, sliding them down well-muscled legs. Now who was the freaking pervert? She was crouched in a closet watching a man undress. She felt as if she should close her eyes or look away, but that would defeat the purpose of getting a look at his butt and that was, after all, why she was here. She kept her eyes trained on the nearly naked, very fine male specimen before her.
Nick hooked his thumbs in his underwear and pulled them off, stepping back slightly, so that his butt was just behind the door. Serena gaped. Sweet mother of…oh my. He had a magic wand waving that looked pretty big from where she crouched. He pivoted on his right foot and turned toward the door, giving her a bird’s eye, full-frontal nudity view. She bit back the sound that almost escaped her. Case in point,