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He raised his head. Then he stood, jerked the cord on my blinds so they shut over the window, and turned on the lamp next to my sofa. He came toward me, his face illuminated in the soft light, his features hard, his green eyes on me. I stood frozen in place as he came close and, to my surprise, cupped my jaw gently in his hands. “Listen,” he said, tilting my head back and looking into my eyes. “I didn’t hurt anyone. Do you understand?”
It was so unexpected that I couldn’t move for a moment. I felt like my spine was melting like wax. His fingers were lightly callused on the soft skin of my neck, his hands warm as the chill from outside wore off. “Yes,” I managed.
He looked at me for a long moment, but he did not let me go. “I’m a thief,” he said, and then he dropped his hands.
“What did you steal?” I asked as he turned away.
“TV’s,” he said, sitting on the arm of my sofa again. He rubbed a hand tiredly over his jaw, the sound rasping in the quiet. “Except the TV’s were hollow and packed full of OxyContin. That part was a surprise. That’s why the cops are crawling the place.”
I put my beer bottle down, unable to think of anything to say.
“I was the driver,” he went on. I drive, he’d told me in the car that night. “We dumped the Oxy, so it’s possible we’ll only be nailed for the TV’s. Unless someone talks. I walked here from the dump site. It took me nearly two hours.”
He was wearing jeans, work boots, a black windbreaker jacket that he hadn’t unzipped. He’d walked for hours, alone in the cold and damp. “What are you going to do?” I asked him.
He looked at me. “That’s up to you,” he said.
I knew what he was saying. I could turn him in. All I had to do was open my front door and shout, and it would be over in seconds. He wouldn’t stop me if I did that. He was saying that, too.
But he didn’t want me to.
I licked my bottom lip, thinking, watching him. He could be dangerous. He could be lying. He could hurt me. But he could have hurt me when I let him in the window to my kitchen, or when he had his hands on my neck. He could have hurt me when I got into his car—a stranger’s car—two nights ago. He could have hurt me in the corridor, in the parking lot. Anytime at all.
He watched me back, unmoving, waiting for me to decide.
“You can stay until they leave,” I said at last.
He didn’t move, just watched me, but something I couldn’t read crossed his gorgeous green eyes.
As soon as I said it, the air felt heavy. I was suddenly aware of his hands, braced against his thighs. The line of his back beneath the jacket. His mouth contrasted with the rough stubble on his cheeks and jaw. The rise and fall of his breathing.
“All right,” he said softly, still not moving. “What do you want in return?”
The question hung there. What did I want? So many things. I couldn’t even name half of them, not with him sitting there, his presence making my apartment—my life—look small. I licked my lip again. “What’s your last name?” I asked.
He blinked. “Wilder,” he replied. “What’s yours?”
“Maplethorpe,” I said, thinking Devon Wilder, Devon Wilder.
I waited for him to have a reaction to my name—most people did—but there wasn’t even a flicker of recognition. Not a big TV watcher, Devon Wilder, then. I asked my next question. “Why did the cop ask me about the Pure Gold strip club?”
Devon frowned for a minute, and then he seemed amused. “Did he ask if you work there?”
“Yes, he did.”
His green gaze moved down, over me, as if he could see through my clothes. “Fuck, what a stupid question,” he said softly.
My blood thrummed in my veins. It was a compliment—he was saying that I was sexier than any stripper. Somehow I always knew what the words between his words meant, as if I could read a secret code. “Why did he ask me about it?” I repeated. “Do you work there?” Do you have a girlfriend there?
“The man who hired me for this job spends a lot of time at Pure Gold,” Devon said. “You could say he uses it a little like an office. If you worked there, you’d probably be acquainted with him.”
“He uses a strip club as an office?”
He shrugged. “I don’t associate with very good people. I think you already figured that far.”
I made myself picture it. Devon at a strip club. Devon driving a getaway car with drug-filled TV’s in it. Dumping the load and walking back here in the damp, trying to stay one step ahead of the cops. This was him—this was what he was. And yet, he had given me honesty in reply to my questions. He didn’t lie or try to justify himself. He’d given me information that I could use against him with the police if I wanted to. If I wasn’t worth trusting.
And suddenly I realized something: this man—who he was, what he did, how he lived life—excited me. I had been a law-abiding citizen all my life, but now I felt a deep thrum inside me, a vibration that made my blood pound. I looked at Devon Wilder and I wanted everything from him. I wanted his secrets, his vitality, his complete lack of fear. I wanted to consume every inch of him with a fierceness that shook me.
