Now You See Her Read online

  “This is decadent,” she pronounced.

  A large warm hand moved over the bare curves of her bottom. “Glad you like it.”

  She didn’t just like it; she loved it. The colors were wonderful. A dull brown would have been awful, but this brown was so deep and rich she felt as if she could sink into it. The gold of the faucets seemed to pick up gold flecks in the vanity top, making it glow.

  She opened the shower door and peered in. “Wow.” The shower stall was at least eight by five feet, fashioned in marble streaked with brown and rose. There was a showerhead at each end of the enclosure, positioned so one would be rinsed front and back simultaneously.

  The hand on her bottom became more insistent, urging her into the shower. She turned, and faced a very naked man. Her breath caught. She had already seen him mostly naked and had imagined him completely so, but the reality was so much better than her imagination. He was in marvelous shape, but it was more than that; he looked exactly the way a man should look, in her opinion, mature and muscular and interested. Impulsively she reached out and closed her hand around his stiffened penis, only half-hearing his involuntary hum of pleasure, and concentrating instead on how the thick shaft jumped in her hand.

  He said, “If you aren’t careful, you won’t get that shower just yet.”

  “Is that important?” she murmured.

  “I’m trying to be considerate and romantic.”

  She tilted her head back, lifting her brows in interest. “Romantic?”

  “I’ve been thinking about this for a solid week, planning what I would do.”

  One hand remained at his crotch. The other stroked over his hairy chest. Her breath panted softly between her parted lips. “What romantic plans have you made?”

  “Well, there’s really only one.”

  “One? What is it?”

  “Fucking your brains out,” he said matter-of-factly, and when she fell back shrieking with laughter, he prudently removed her hand from his sex. While she was helpless, he herded her completely into the shower and turned on the water.

  He had showered with a woman before, she realized; he adjusted the showerheads so the streams of water hit close to her waist, leaving her hair mostly dry. A few minutes later, with his soap-slick hands roaming all over her body, she conceded that he also knew a good bit about bathing a woman. A few minutes after that, condom in place, he demonstrated what he knew about having sex in the shower. It was fast and hard and carnal, with her pinned against the marble wall while he hammered into her. She came fast, writhing and bucking in his arms. Afterward she could barely stand, and he supported her as he dried both of them. He was still hard, not having climaxed, and the realization dawned on her that he would be much, much slower to climax the second time, and that she could look forward to a long session of lovemaking. She didn’t know whether to rejoice or plead for mercy.

  Then he carried her to the bed, and all thoughts of pleading for mercy went right out of her head. He spent a long time kissing her, from head to foot. He sucked her nipples until she was almost sobbing with pleasure and frustration; his finger probed and stroked between her legs, and then he replaced his fingers with his tongue and she climaxed again, screaming from the intensity of the sensations. He let her rest for a little while, then rolled her over on her stomach and took her from behind. She was so swollen that he felt impossibly huge, barely able to fit inside her; she was acutely aware of every inch of him, probing deep into her. His slow thrusts rubbed her body against the sheets, and against the hand he had tucked under her so that every movement moved her on his wickedly knowledgeable fingers.

  The fourth time she climaxed, he was with her, and afterward they lay close together, her head cradled on his shoulder and his hands leisurely stroking her buttocks, her breasts, her hips and belly and thighs, as if he couldn’t get enough of the feel of her. Closing her eyes, she listened to his heartbeat, and her own, as they gradually slowed and adjusted until they were beating in time, two hearts, one rhythm.

  “Tell me if you need to sleep,” he murmured after a while, rolling on top of her.

  She felt him probing, but not yet entering, and knew he wouldn’t if she told him she was tired. “No,” she whispered, clutching his back and tilting her hips so that he slipped inside her a tantalizing couple of inches. “Don’t let me sleep tonight.” She had had enough of murders and paintings and feeling as if her life was subject to the whim of an unseen, unknown power. She wanted to drown her senses with Richard, lose herself in the purely physical.

  He did just as she asked. A couple of times she thought she dozed, but perhaps not, perhaps she was in a daze of completion. He made love to her endlessly, and even when they rested, he was inside her. When she became too dry to take him, he used lubricant to ease his way into her. He pushed her hard, and a couple of times she cried because she didn’t think she could take any more, but she always found that she could, and for that night he kept the cold away.

  They were lying quietly together when the sky began to lighten. He stroked her hair back from her face, his touch infinitely tender. “Tell me about the painting.”

  She tensed, momentarily resisting the ugly intrusion into the happiness of the moment. Then she sighed, accepting the return of reality. “I finished her face.” She found she had to swallow. “When I woke up and saw it, I tried to call the gallery, but there wasn’t any answer. I didn’t have her number, so I called you and—and I found out I was too late.”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” he said fiercely, cupping her chin in his hand and turning her face up to his. “The detectives think she was killed around midnight. By the time you finished her face, it was already too late.”

  “I—” Her throat closed. She knew he was right. Given the time she had gone to bed and the length of time it would have taken her to finish the face, Candra had already been dead. The artist in her knew that. The woman, the human being, felt as if there should have been something, anything, that she could have done.

  She could feel the tension in him, thrumming through his muscles and communicating itself to her through his hands. “God, I was so worried about you,” he said in a tone of stifled violence, crushing her against him.

  “I’m okay.” She kissed his collarbone and thought how wonderful it was to be safe and warm, and so thoroughly satisfied. Love for him filled her, making her heart swell. She wrenched her thoughts back to the subject. “I won’t lie to you; it was pretty rough, but I managed. You don’t have to worry; this proves I can handle it on my own.”

  His dark eyes glittered. “You shouldn’t have to do it on your own. I should have been there.”

  “You couldn’t. You had to—You had to take care of Candra.” Her throat tightened again. “She was your wife for ten years. I know you must be upset—”

  He made a harsh sound in his throat and released her, rolling over onto his back. He stared up at the ceiling. “I don’t mourn her, if that’s what you’re asking. I can’t be a hypocrite and fake grief. Maybe people think I should, but I’m not going to put on a show for them.”

  Sweeney felt the power and frustrated rage in him and gave him the same comfort he had given her, putting her arms around him and gently stroking his face, his chest. “Of course not. It wouldn’t be honest.”

  He glanced down at her. “You didn’t do any work on the man’s face?”

  She shook her head. She tried to be nonchalant, but her eyes filled with dread for what was coming, and he knew that yesterday morning’s episode had been the roughest yet.

  It was his turn to stroke. “I wanted to call you,” he whispered. “I spent all day with the police.”

  “I know. I knew you had to make arrangements—”

  “Not to mention being the prime suspect.”

  Her pupils flared. “What?” She would have bolted up in bed, but he controlled the surge of her body, keeping her clamped to him.

  “I was the most logical person. When a woman is murdered, it’s usually th