“Have you ever been with a reader, Nick?”
“Cooper,” he said. “I’ve known lots of readers.” He stood and walked to the window. Her apartment was on the thirty-second floor, and the view was a partner to the one he’d had at the Continental Hotel, only hers faced east. He could just make out the tracings of waves on the lake, gray on midnight blue. Layered atop it, the ghostly reflection of the room.
“I didn’t say known.” In the glass, she rose, smoothing her skirt as she walked over. “I said been with.”
Cooper didn’t respond. She moved in behind him, small enough that his bulk blocked her reflection. But he could smell her and sense her. “Listen.” He turned. “I appreciate what you’re doing for us. But drop the sex-goddess act.”
“It’s not an act. You want the real me?” She traced the outline of her body with her hands, not quite touching. “This is it. I’m the fantasy. What do you want, Cooper? Whatever it is, I’ll be it. Hard or soft, helpless or jaded, ashamed or wanton or anything in between. I can be the pliable young innocent or the Amazon only you can conquer.” She stepped closer. “You don’t even have to tell me, to ruin the fantasy by saying it out loud. Just let me see you.”
“You’re serious. You want to go off to the bedroom right now?”
“Shannon won’t mind. She and I have fooled around before.”
That image was almost enough to make his control slip. He took a deep breath, pushed aside the hastily assembled fantasy. “See, I think this is just a game to you. You want to win.”
“No games. I want to know you.” She put a hand against his chest. “You turn me on. It’s your strength. You’re so contained. Show me who you are. No one needs to know. I can be your second-grade teacher, or your daughter’s girlfriend, the one you won’t even admit to yourself that you want.”
“My daughter,” Cooper said, “is four.”
“Just open up to me. I’ll sense what your body needs. I know it before you do. I know it even when you don’t. What’s reality compared to that?”
He looked down at her, at her deep brown eyes and soft skin, at the swell of her breasts and the way the skirt caught at the line of her thigh, at her tumble of golden hair and her pedicured feet. She was stunning, the distilled image of desire, Aphrodite writ in miniature with the corner of her lip caught between bright teeth.
But beneath it all, he could see the need curling inside her, slippery and fanged as an eel.
“Thanks,” he said, “but I’ll pass.”
She had been stretching up, offering pouting lips, and for a moment didn’t process his words. When they hit it was like electric current, her face clenching and eyes sparking. “What?” When he didn’t respond, she said it again, angrier this time. “What?”
He saw it coming, but he let her have the slap, her hand whistling through the air to smack his cheek.
“No one says no. Who do you think you are? Do you know how many men would kill for the chance to be with me?” She planted hands against his chest and shoved ineffectually. “You don’t say no. Not to me.”
She wound up again, and this time he caught it. In the process, he noticed Shannon, somehow standing in the center of the room he’d been sure was empty.
He dropped Samantha’s arm. “I’m sorry,” Cooper said. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
Her beautiful face had turned red with fury. “Get out. Both of you.”
They did. As the door closed, he took a last glance over his shoulder. Samantha had the pill bottle open and was shaking tablets into one perfect palm.