The drive home seemed to take forever. I didn’t relax until I turned down my street and saw that Marshall’s truck was still in my driveway, though he had moved it in front of my garage door for some reason. I parked my car beside it and jumped out with only my purse and my camera bag. I figured I’d get him to move the car with all the camera equipment into the garage later.
It was about eight-thirty. Too late to go out on a weeknight, but I didn’t care. I wanted food and his body, and I didn’t particularly care what order I got them in. I thought he should’ve been able to look through everything by now, which meant that either he’d found something, or I was probably wrong about seeing the tattoo before. At any rate, he was all mine, and I was looking forward to enjoying him.
The first thing I noticed was the heavenly smells emanating from the back of the house. He was grilling. I could see him through the French doors that opened out onto my back porch. He was still barefoot and shirtless, wearing only the holey jeans he’d had on before.
He’d put on my Elvis’s greatest hits CD, and I could’ve sworn from the motion of his head that he was singing along to “All Shook Up.” I bit my lip to keep from laughing and walked quietly through the living room and the French door he’d left wide open.
I slid my arms around his back, and he stilled, craning his neck around to look back at me.
“Hello, gorgeous,” he said, twisting to drop a kiss on my lips. I kissed him back, gripping the belt loops on the back of his jeans.
We broke away and I smiled at him. “Hello, handsome. Don’t you know better than to let people sneak up on you?”
“You can sneak up on me anytime.”
“You heard my car, didn’t you?” I said suspiciously.
He grinned and turned back to the grill, humming again.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Well, I can’t be too annoyed with you. You might not feed me.”
“Are you hungry, then?”
“Starved.”
“Good, you can start the greens.”
“I have to cook?” I pouted, and he looked at me again.
“God, I love it when you do that,” he said, yanking me into him and nipping my lower lip. I squealed and tried to nip him in return.
“The greens, woman, or no meat for you,” he ordered, pushing me away, and went back to expertly flipping sauce-covered chicken pieces with a pair of tongs.
“Okay,” I said with a heavy sigh, “but can you move my car into the garage later? It’s got all my equipment inside it.”
“Sure,” he said. “How was the shoot?”
Was it me, or did he sound deliberately casual? “It was great,” I said, a little confused. “I’ll tell you about it while we eat.”
“Okay,” he replied with what I thought was a decided lack of enthusiasm.
I didn’t know what his problem was. I thought he would’ve loved to see those four naked women set against a panoramic backdrop of the ocean. I know they would’ve enjoyed his attention.
“How long till they’re ready?” I wanted to know.
“ ’Bout fifteen minutes, I think.”
“Cool,” I replied, and went back in the house.
I pulled a box of butter beans out of the freezer, hoping that was the kind of “greens” my Southern boy meant. I certainly didn’t have collard greens or okra handy; there just wasn’t much of a market for it in Southern California. What a shocker.
I thought corn bread would be good, too, so I got out the cast-iron pans my grandmother had given me and pulled out a box of instant corn bread mix.
I put on a white chef’s apron that my sister had painted a dragon on and given to me on my birthday last year. I didn’t take her choice of beasts as a comment on my character, but I probably should have.
It was as I was wrapping the ties around my middle that I remembered Marshall’s comment to me the other night. His fantasy was to come into the kitchen and find me wearing nothing but an apron. I thought about that for a second, flushing a little at the idea of it, and carefully turned off the stove.
I set the apron aside and quickly undressed, folding my clothes and setting them aside on a far counter. I put the apron back on, tying it around my waist. I could feel my cheeks heating. I felt exposed, vulnerable, almost silly, but I was wet, too, and my thighs trembled where I held them pressed together.
I took a couple deep breaths, wanting to appear nonchalant, and got the milk out so I could start mixing the corn bread batter. I was pouring the thick yellow liquid into the pan when I heard him closing the French doors.
I finished pouring, counting his footsteps as he walked through the living room. I set the bowl in the sink and turned on the water, taking a long time to do it, watching as the bowl slowly filled, knowing that he was going to come through the kitchen door any second and see the perky round cheeks of my ass. I hoped he didn’t drop the chickens.
He did, but they mostly stayed on the baking sheet that he’d used to carry them. I heard the clatter as the pan hit the floor, and I took a quick peek over my shoulder.
“Holy shit,” he said, and I turned back to the sink, biting my tongue.
There was a heavy silence, broken only by the sound of the running water and the remix of “A Little Less Conversation” playing in the living room. The next thing I knew, two hard, hot hands were on me, and I gripped the edge of the counter in anticipation.
“Spread your legs.”
I whimpered and did as he asked, widening my stance. He gripped my hips and tilted me toward him.
“Witch,” he said gruffly, and I pressed backward, into the hard hot strength of him.
I heard the sound of a zipper and then a shuffle as the heavy denim of his jeans fell to the floor. I felt him moving behind me, the heat of his body replacing the coolness of the air against my feverish flesh.
There was a gentle rubbing and then the hard pressure of him against the entrance to my body. He rubbed himself against the wet slickness, making me gasp with pleasure, then he pushed inside, spreading me, filling me as I clenched around him. I whimpered, and he pressed deeper, gripping my left hip while his right hand slid around to my front to touch me there. His chest heaved like a bellows and the motion moved him gently inside me.
“You okay, baby, can you take me harder?” he asked, rubbing circles on my clit with a callused fingertip to convince me.
“Yes,” I gasped, and he slid out, then in again, harder, working me with his fingers from the front.
He hunched over me, letting go of my hip and bracing himself with a hand on the counter next to mine, and I knew he was about to fuck me in earnest. I could feel his legs shaking behind me and guessed he was on the edge of his control.
He thrust faster, pounding inside me and making me gasp and bend my elbows forward till I was almost kissing the countertop. He did it again. And again. Ramming his hard flesh into me with merciless intensity, the hand between my legs rubbing faster and faster.
“I can’t last much longer, Deborah, take it,” he growled in my ear.
He didn’t have to. I thrust my hips back against him and came so hard that I was afraid the clamp of my muscles had bruised him.
He groaned and jerked against me, and I felt the individual pulses of his climax as he came inside me.
We were both sweaty and breathing heavily, his body still braced over mine. I felt as if I’d just run a marathon; my knees were shaking and I felt light-headed. He pulled out of me gently, and I gasped as the feeling made my body clench in pleasure again.
He noticed, hugging me from behind, one hard arm curving just over my collarbone. I laid a kiss on the hairy, muscled expanse, feeling safe and protected, though I’m sure we looked ridiculous, him with his pants around his ankles and me in nothing but an apron.
He let me go, running his hands over me like he couldn’t get used to the feel of me. I looked over my shoulder at him, wanting to smile, but feeling strangely unsettled. I told him I wanted to change and escaped into my room to change into one of my yoga outfits, hemp pants and a cotton tank.
He was stirring the butter beans on the stove when I came in. He’d put his jeans back on and rescued the tray with the chickens.
“I was going to bring it to you in bed,” he said, and kissed me when I tilted my face up to him.
“That’s okay, I wanted to talk to you.”
“You can make the iced tea.”
“Okay,” I said, and opened the drawer with my collection of tea. I had a lot of herbal, green, and European teas, but I kept a stash of good old Lipton handy for barbeques.
I took out the basket on my Mr. Coffee and began washing it while he watched me curiously. Once it was clean, I put the tea bags in and put it back in the machine.
“What in Sam Hill are you doing?”
I blinked at him, then laughed, forgetting that not everyone used their coffee machine to make tea. “My mom always made it this way. She said it tastes better.”
“Doesn’t it taste like coffee?”
“Not that I’ve ever noticed.”
“I’m not gonna hold my breath.”
“You’ll like it,” I promised, pouring in a carafe of cool water and listening to the hiss and spit as it brewed. “So, did you find anything?”
“Nope. And Stevens turned up zilch on the tattoo parlors he called and visited, but he pretty much stayed in the North County and that tattoo could have been done in Hong Kong for all we know.”
Since my best friend had gotten a tattoo of a giant bullfrog on her ass while visiting Hong Kong, I could pretty much attest to the truth of that statement.
“So I guess it’s pretty much on hold until I remember why it’s familiar or something else turns up.”
“Yep. Nobody’s gonna get in a dither over a John Doe unless someone claims him, or other bodies with the same MO start showing up.”
“Do you think that’s likely?” I asked, interested in learning the way he thought. All the other cops respected him; some of them looked at him with something akin to awe.
“No, something about it felt personal, you know, and sloppy. Like a fight that got out of hand.”
“Why strip him naked, then?”
“I considered that. Blood gets everywhere. It could be the killer was just trying to clean up the mess, but honestly, I think he was naked when he got shot.”
“But there would have been blood all over him,” I argued.
“Not if the killer washed it off. Did you smell the body when you were taking pictures?”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “Gross, we’re going to eat soon, you know.”
He laughed. “Not that smell. It was faint, but the man had been washed with perfumed soap, like that purple stuff you have in your tub. The guys will never let me live it down if I go in there tomorrow reeking of flowers.”
“So go home and shower first,” I said, not at all surprised to learn that he intended to spend the night with me.
“So…” I extemporized, hopping up on the counter and picking up a drumstick from the tray next to me, “he and someone else, probably a woman, got into an argument, and that person shot him in fury. He or she panicked, washed off all the blood, and carted the body off to the lagoon to dump it.”
“Something like that. The simplest explanation is usually the right one. The only problem is, that guy was pretty tall, and dead weight is the heaviest kind. Most women wouldn’t be able to haul him anywhere.”
“So, it was probably either a man, or a woman who had some help,” I guessed. “That’s creepy.”
“What is?”
“The idea that there might be people willing to help someone haul off a dead body. And why dump it there? That’s a pretty public place. Those weird guys are always fishing off the highway.”
“I don’t have any idea why they chose that spot, but any number of people will help a murderer cover up a crime, mostly family, friends, or lovers. Some do it out of loyalty, others perversion, but I think most people usually help because they think in some weird way that if they get rid of the evidence, then the crime never happened.”
“I can understand that,” I said, thinking of some of the rape victims I’d seen down at the station.
“Fortunately for us, those same people usually crack under the strain and tell everything they know.”
I toasted him with my half-eaten drumstick. “Here’s to mental breakdowns and the secrets they reveal.”
He grunted and opened the oven to check on the corn bread. A hot rush of sweet corn-scented air hit me and I breathed in deep.
“It’s done. Where are your pot holders?”
“In the drawer next to the stove.”
He pulled out the heavy pan and cut the corn bread into even, pie-shaped slices. I watched him over his shoulder until he told me to sit down before I drove him batshit.
I did, and presently he laid a plate in front of me with a full chicken breast, a slice of corn bread, and a small mountain of beans. It was nothing compared to his plate.
“Are you going to eat all that?” I asked incredulously.
“I had a lot of exercise today,” he said, and I rolled my eyes at him.
We munched companionably in silence, my smooth legs entwined with his hard hairy ones under the table.
“So, who was the guy you took pictures of today?” he asked between bites.
“It wasn’t a guy. It was four women.”
“Is that right,” he said with what sounded like surprised relief.
“That’s right,” I said, suddenly understanding that he’d thought I was shooting a male model, and he hadn’t been happy with the idea.
I set my fork down on my beans, not terribly hungry anymore. “Is my work going to be a problem?” I asked carefully.
He tilted up my chin to meet my eyes and I blinked; I’d been watching his hands.
“Not the photography part of it, but the dick-collecting, that bothers me some, yes.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s just a game I played. I wouldn’t sleep with anyone else, not if we’re together.”
“I guess that’s what I want clear, then. Do you want to be with me and will you stay faithful?”
“Will you?” I countered.
“Yes,” he said steadily, not looking away. “You’re the sexiest, funniest, most interesting person I’ve ever known, but I’m not like those guys in Penthouse letters; I won’t share you with anyone.”
I wanted to shout that of course I’d be faithful, but something stopped me. I wasn’t sure he really understood what it meant that I couldn’t recognize him. Would he get tired of having to identify himself in a crowd? Would he get annoyed if I got confused and put my arms around some strange guy? He’d never said he loved me, just that he wanted to be with me. Did that mean marriage? Kids? My God, kids. I’d never be able to pick mine up from school without making them wear some stupid hat or something.
I could feel myself kind of panicking. This was all way too fast for me. I mean, I hadn’t known him that long. Well, I’d known him, but I hadn’t known him. And just because he was funny and smart and sexy didn’t mean that I should promise him everything I had. What if I couldn’t deliver? What if I wasn’t capable of loving him or anyone else?
He put his hand over mine, and I must have looked a little wild-eyed because he used his most soothing voice to calm me down.
“Debbie, honey, I’m just telling you what I want. You think about it. But be sure, because once I have you I’m not letting you go, understand?”
I nodded, wanting to ask if he loved me, but a little afraid of the answer. I thought he might. I was almost sure of it, and my heart felt tight in my chest.
He took both our plates then, and started doing the dishes. I sat there and watched him, aware that he wasn’t completely happy with me and wanting to cry because if I fucked this up, where else would I find a guy who would do the dishes without being asked?