The Original Sinners: The Red Years
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Good luck with the novel, my beautiful lady without mercy. Nora smiled.
“La belle dame avec merci,” she replied with a curtsy, touched by his kind words. Usually Kingsley had nothing but disgust for the other job that often kept her from her clients. “Merci, monsieur.”
He was still laughing when she left him.
* * *
Nora drove to Zach’s building, parked in the garage and tipped the attendant a hundred dollars to keep an eye on her car. Tipping generously came easily with the ten thousand dollars in cash Kingsley had just given her.
She tipped Zach’s doorman with equal generosity and claimed she had something to drop off at his apartment. Good thing Zach had a male doorman or sweet-talking her way inside might not have worked.
Nora found number 1312 and knocked lightly, praying Zach wasn’t working from home today. She waited and heard nothing. Opening her bag, she pulled out her small lock pick set.
The lock took less than a minute to jimmy open. With a deft hand she turned the tumblers and felt it give way. She slipped inside the apartment and looked around.
The impressive neatness didn’t surprise her. Zach was quite fastidious when he wanted to be. The apartment was austerely furnished, everything dark wood, dark leather and sparse. On the side table next to the black sofa she found a stack of manuscripts and on top of them sat Zach’s silver-rimmed glasses that he wore only when line editing. She’d seen them on him only a couple of times and it was good for both of them he didn’t wear them more often. He looked so intellectual in them that it was all she could do not to bite him. Only Zachary Easton could make proofreading that sexy.
She glanced at his one bookshelf and saw his private reading was of astonishingly high quality—Stanley Fish and Noam Chomsky. The man read literary theory for fun.
“What a nerd,” she said to herself, grinning.
Nora poked her head in the bathroom, inhaling with pleasure the warm scent of his soap and shaving cream. Men simply had no idea how profound an effect their masculine scent could have on a woman. She already felt her pulse beginning to surge with every invasion of his privacy.
Back in the living room Nora glanced at the stack of manuscripts again. Hers wasn’t among them. She picked up a small box lying next to his glasses on the stack of manuscripts. It still had some of the brown paper wrapping around it. It must be his latest gift from the office prankster who was anonymously torturing him for working with her. She opened the box and grinned—nipple clamps, she nodded her head appreciatively. She looked at them more closely and made a nervous discovery—they were handmade Eris brand, a kind not for sale anywhere. A local dungeon master gave them to his guests as party favors. They were two-ways—nipple clamps that doubled as clip-on earrings. She even had a pair somewhere. Whoever Zach’s office prankster was, he or she was an insider. Nora put the nipple clamps back in the box and set them on the top manuscript where she’d found them. Surely if the prankster knew she was on the underground payroll he would have already told Zach, she comforted herself.
A closed door beckoned and Nora passed from the living room into his bedroom.
There was nothing in his bedroom but the bed itself and a small table with his alarm clock. She appreciated his priorities—a bed was all they’d need. The bed was made, she noted. That wife of his had him so well-trained. She opened the closet and found a white shirt with French cuffs that Zach wore on occasion. She never told him how insanely attractive she found him when he wore it. Knowing him, he’d stop wearing it around her just out of spite.
Nora pulled it off the hanger and laid it on the bed. She tapped something with her foot, and bent and pulled the mysterious object from underneath Zach’s bed. It was a copy of her manuscript. Zach had apparently reserved her book for bedtime reading. She took that as a compliment.
Nora pulled off her boots and undressed quickly. It felt delicious standing naked and alone in Zach’s bedroom. She put the dress shirt on and buttoned only the two middle buttons. With a flourish she pulled the covers back from his bed and slid between the sheets. She reached for a pillow and placed it underneath her hips. As her legs fell open her mind found its way to Zach.
Zach…Zach knew her books and because of that she sometimes felt he might know her better than anyone. His body was long and lean and his lower back had the most exquisite arch and his fingers and hands were strong and it wouldn’t be long before they were on her and in her and he was inside her completely with nothing—not the book, not his wife, not his fears and his secrets—between them. What would it be like to look up into those ice-blue eyes and see them on fire?
Nora came hard on her hand and wiped her fingers on his pillowcase. She looked at the clock and saw it was still early. Zach wouldn’t be home for hours. She slipped her hands between her legs again. Time for at least one more.
Or maybe two.
* * *
Long after seven had passed, Zach trudged his way home, exhausted from a day at work. He’d felt miserable ever since Grace called. He’d snapped at Mary for no reason and hung up on J.P. in the middle of a call. He’d apologized to both of them and then wished he hadn’t. They were so damn sympathetic he felt he was wearing a scarlet D for dumped. As soon as he turned the key in his lock and opened his door, Zach perked up a bit. He inhaled Nora’s perfume, that unmistakable scent of hothouse flowers, and knew she’d been here.
“Nora?” he called out as he dropped his messenger bag by the door and shrugged off his coat. He saw nothing had been moved or altered. His books were all in place, his furniture, his glasses. Curious, Zach moved toward the bedroom and saw his normally closed door standing ajar. He peered around the door half expecting, half hoping to find Nora lying on his bed. But the room sat empty. Still it was clear she’d been in his bedroom. The bed was unmade, the covers pulled back and the imprint of her body still on the sheets. Zach started to inspect the bed, looking for any note she might have left. The moment his hands touched the sheets the phone rang. This time Zach knew it was Nora.