Free Every Breath You Take by Bianca Sloane Page A

heady experience, particularly when he came to her underwear. He wept as his fingers swept across those fine threads, his face buried into the pile he’d lifted out with his hands, the shards of lace dripping from his fingers. It was the most delicious smell in the world to him. He waded into her closet, letting her clothes drape across him, luxuriating in the feel of the silks, cottons, and wools beneath his fingers, once again allowing his imagination to run away with him as he thought about the hem of a dress sliding down her breasts as it dropped from her head and down to her legs, of pants, jeans, and summertime shorts hugging her thighs and crotch.
    He continued his journey across her apartment, impressed with how neat she was: no teetering towers of magazines or stacks of mail ready to cascade from a counter or coffee table, no overflowing wastebaskets impatient to be relieved of their burden. Even the peeling linoleum countertops were free of crumbs and sticky juice rings. Her refrigerator was stocked with strawberry yogurt, bottled water, and enough Lean Cuisines to supply a supermarket.
    He let his eyes linger over the photographs in her living room, the framed, glossy squares brimming with the smiling faces of friends—no family, of course. He palmed the books on her bookshelves, featherweight tomes about succeeding in business and living your best life. She didn’t seem to read many, what his mama used to call, supermarket novels, bursting with heaving bosoms and glistening, muscular chests. All her fiction tended toward serious, highbrow works teeming with critical acclaim and shiny gold stamps denoting awards of some sort. She was always so serious. He’d have to help her with that.
    He used her toothbrush to brush the morning coffee from his breath, closing his eyes as the bristles tickled his gums and scraped against his tongue. He was delighted to find a silky pink bathrobe hanging on a hook on the back of the bathroom door. He stripped down until he was naked, already bulging and ready to pop. Once he slid between the cool, soft cotton of her bed, whatever tension or nerves strumming through him released the minute he felt those sheets swirl around him. He held her pillows to him, imagining it was her as he inhaled the scent of roses, winding her bathrobe around him as he relieved himself in a matter of moments, not needing much stimulation, as he was already skimming the clouds. He kept stroking and relieving himself, careful not to spill any on the sheets. He lost count after the fourth time, so dazed and drunk on the proximity to everything that was in proximity to her.
    Finally, as late afternoon began to cast shadows across those creaky wooden floors, he’d reluctantly torn himself from her bed and straightened up after himself before going home, so excited he could barely stand it.
    Over the next few months, he’d gone in a few more times, having to restrain himself from going in every day as he wanted. He didn’t want to tip her off. Then, out of the blue one day, she moved, cutting him off, leaving him to adjust to a whole new routine, leaving him without access. He used to wonder . . . did she know? Is that why she left? Running away yet again.
    It stung.
    He was back to wondering. Waiting. He sat down on the bench, still looking up at her building, thinking about what she was doing right now.

Chapter 15
SHE
    N atalie’s hands were sweaty as she gripped the now grubby paper handles of the shopping bag that had been burning a hole in her hand the entire walk from Water Tower to her apartment.
    Then again, what was inside the bag had been burning a hole in her mind for the better part of the last month.
    Jason. She would sometimes look at him a little nonplussed, a little afraid, expecting a calamity to intrude upon his latest romantic overture. True to his word, he was wooing her, lavishing her with attention and affection and himself. Since the chocolate-making class, he’d sent flowers to