The List Read online

  Time seemed distorted, the leaves rustling in slow motion, twisting and dappling the sidewalk as they walked to the restaurant. He surfaced enough to order, but didn’t remember eating his food, too busy imagining what it would be like to get Tilda Davies in bed. He talked, but what he said, or what anyone else said, didn’t really register. He went back to work, made more phone calls, reviewed reports, got in a heated argument with his boss over a plea bargain for a repeat offender specializing in work-at-home scams. It wasn’t the high-profile financial services fraud he wanted to work, but he’d left the NYPD to come to the FBI prepared to do his time before moving up the food chain.

  The office emptied out as the light melted from day to the burnished gold of evening. Daniel looked up at the clock again to find that six o’clock had come and gone. He hadn’t felt this out of time and place since . . . ever. But, in his defense, he’d never met anyone like Tilda Davies before. In the privacy of his office, with his notebook before him and a pen in his hand, he noted the date, the time, the weather, and then started a list of pertinent details.

  Black hair, curly, exposed nape.

  Eyes that could only be described as gray, not blue, not green, certainly not anything in the range of brown. Thick black lashes.

  Pale skin. He knew it had seen sunshine, because a faint smattering of freckles dotted her nose and her cheeks, but she looked like a woman who disdained the sun.

  Thin, wide lips, the barest hint of color over the natural pale pink.

  A slim, angular body, bordering on bony.

  She’d come alive in the night, something he knew now that he’d seen her during the day. A nocturnal animal, he finally decided, out of step with the natural rhythm of day and night.

  He left the precinct just before seven, not enough time to head back to Brooklyn before knocking on Tilda’s door. Instead he walked over to the High Line and strolled the length of it, watching the shadows lengthen as the sun set over the Jersey shoreline. Sitting on one of the rolling benches, he wondered if Tilda liked this park, or if she liked green spaces at all. He wondered what he’d have to do to find out.

  He knew this feeling, knew it well, recognized it from sense memories burned into his nerves. The swoop and tumble of his gut the first time he arrested someone, the first time an arrest went bad, the first time he put handcuffs on a murderer. He liked puzzles. Solving them was better than trying to get promoted or get laid or get rich. Tilda Davies was pure risk, and he was an addict.

  Promptly at nine he rang the bell at Fifteen Perry Street. She appeared wavy and disjointed through the leaded glass windows until she opened one half of the double door, then leaned one shoulder against the opposite side and tilted her head. She was all angles and opposites, body moving one direction, head moving another, cheekbones and chin and collarbone visible in the dip of the same sheath dress she’d worn this morning.

  “Hi,” she said.

  He’d expected something profound, something astonishing, so the mundane greeting made him huff. “Hi,” he said.

  “Something tells me this isn’t your first time doing this.”

  “Showing up at a woman’s house for sex? No. Sorry. Were you hoping for a virgin?”

  “Quite the opposite,” she said, the same little smile on her face.

  He had a sudden urge to wipe it off her mouth with his. God, she was tough. “You going to let me in, or are we going to do this out here?”

  Another pause. “The slate will be quite hard on your tailbone and my knees,” she said, and stepped back to admit him.

  The double door was only the width of a typical front door, so he had to angle himself through, into the foyer. The walnut flooring gleamed in the low light, drawing the eye to the back of the town house. The stairs and handrail were made of the same polished material, but the risers and rails were painted white. Black-and-white prints framed in black mirrored the handrail’s progress to the second floor, but he couldn’t see the images, just the contrast.

  “Nice,” he said.

  “It’s my mother’s,” she replied, and stepped out of her heels.

  He bit back the automatic questions because she’d bent to pick up her heels and was climbing the stairs. He followed her, up to the second floor, around the bend, past two closed doors to another set of stairs. On the third floor, the doors were open. He saw a desk and a chaise through one door and a big bed through another. She walked into that room. He took five seconds to peer out of the floor-to-ceiling windows down at the tiny private garden below, added another quarter of a million to his estimate of the town house’s value, then followed her into the bedroom.

  “Does your mother live here, too?” he said to the empty room.

  She emerged from the closet, still in the dress but without the shoes. “She lives in London,” she replied, and walked around the bed to the nightstand. “Were you serious about the restraints?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d prefer not to use handcuffs. They’ll scratch the wood.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  He caught a quick glimpse of the drawer’s rather interesting contents before she withdrew two satin cords and tossed them on the mound of pillows at the top of the bed. She flung the white comforter to the foot of the bed, then reached behind her for the zipper.

  “Stop.”

  She stopped, her head tipped forward, as if bending her head made it easier to reach the tab, then looked at him. There was another second of odd alignment, where he realized his brain was automatically filling in the movement of hair, to hide, to tease, the obvious mark of femininity. But Tilda was all cheekbones and spiky eyelashes, shoulders and elbows, the collar of her dress gaping forward to reveal her collarbones.

  He walked around the foot of the bed. “Let me do that,” he said quietly.

  Her hands dropped to her sides. Permission granted. He pressed a thumb and index finger to the tab and drew the zipper down. The still air in the house seemed to absorb the noise. It was so silent here, Manhattan’s energy dampened, no radio or iPod, just the tap and swish of the leaves against the windows at the other end of the hall, and Tilda’s spine, revealed in the white light.

  He slid his palms over her shoulder blades and eased the fabric forward, watching the bumps and fibers catch the light before dropping down her arms to the floor. She wore sheer white underwear but of a surprisingly modest cut, the cleft between her buttocks a shadowy secret, a hint of lace at her hipbones and between her breasts as he bent forward and set his mouth to her nape.

  “I’ve wanted to do this since the moment I saw you.”

  Goose bumps shivered under his lips, down her arms, pebbling her nipples in the sheer white fabric. “Kiss my neck?”

  “Yes,” he murmured into her nape, then licked each bump on his way down to between her shoulder blades. She arched and flexed like a cat.

  “Ticklish?”

  “Sensitive.”

  “Good.” He unfastened her bra and let it drop onto the dress. He set his fingertips on her hipbones, then drew them up her ribs, along the swell of her small breasts, then curving around over her shoulder blades to press both thumbs on either side of her spine. At the pressure her head tipped forward. He slid one hand around to lay his index finger and thumb on either side of her jaw and wrapped his other arm around her waist to hold her exactly where he wanted her. Her hands gripped his forearms as he explored the sensitive, vulnerable skin. This didn’t work for everyone, but for some people the nape was wired directly to the sex drive in the brain. They got off on the submissiveness of this, a primitive response left over from the animals humans had once been, where baring the nape meant surrender, where biting it, as he just bit Tilda’s, meant ownership.

  All her angles melted into sinuous lines, and she undulated in his grip, seeking contact where she didn’t have it. Her nipples were swollen, but he ignored them, instead slid
ing his hand under the elastic stretched across her abdomen and stroking the outer lips of her pussy. The curls there were damp enough to make him moan.

  “Is this now, or from earlier?” he growled.

  “Yes,” she said, and spread her thighs.

  He shook his head in disbelief, but didn’t oblige her. Instead he cupped her breasts and squeezed, avoiding the nipples, which tightened at the touch, before letting go and stepping back.

  “Lie down,” he said.

  She turned to face him, eased her bottom back on the bed, then swung her legs up. There was a natural grace to the way she moved, a completely unselfconscious way of getting from point A to point B. He toed out of his shoes, shucked his jacket, and rolled his sleeves to his elbows, then caught her smiling at him.

  “What?”

  “You look like a man getting down to work.”

  He knelt on the bed beside her and picked up the silk cords. “You’re sure you’re okay with this?”

  In response she lay back and stretched her arms to the headboard. The movement was part surrender, part challenge, all paradox, and somehow entirely Tilda. He was thoroughly experienced, but he’d never seen anything like her before. Untouchable, and yet utterly available to him.

  He looped the silk around her wrists and tied the cords in loose bows, then tapped the end against her palms. She watched him, eyes wide open, content in the silence. “One tug and you’re loose,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said seriously.

  “Anything I can’t do?”

  “You mean, do I have an odd quirk, like you can tie me to the bed and go down on me until I scream but you can’t kiss me? I won’t know until you do it,” she said.

  The calm response surprised him until he remembered the way she swung her legs in the air twenty-two stories over the street. “You’ll let me know if I need to stop.”

  “That wasn’t a question,” she said, amused.

  “No, it wasn’t,” he said, and straddled her hips.

  The amusement disappeared. For a long moment he studied her, the slender length of her arms hollowing to the curve of her underarm, then swelling again at her breasts. Her nipples were small, pale pink, and distended, and her skin was pale cream but for a bit of color in her cheeks and her mouth. He palmed his jaw and rubbed, hearing a day’s worth of growth scrape against his skin. The sound rasped into the room, and her mouth opened slightly.

  He bent down, braced his forearms on either side of her head, and gently nuzzled her cheek, drawing rough skin down to her jaw, then turning his face to hers, chin to chin. Her lips parted in anticipation but he didn’t close the gap, just drew his lips above hers in a parody of a kiss before stroking opposite cheek to opposite cheek. A short puff of air aimed at her earlobe earned him an answering exhale that drifted over the juncture of his neck and collarbone. He retraced his steps, this time using his parted lips on her chin, a dry, open kiss of sorts.

  “You have very pale skin,” he murmured into her ear. “I’m going to mark it.”

  “Yes, please,” she whispered in return.

  He chuckled, then pressed kisses into her eyelids, feeling her lashes snag in his five o’clock shadow as her lids fluttered. He continued down her cheek, over her jaw, to the pale skin of her neck. A very faint perfume tempted him to linger there before he slid one hand under her head and tightened his grip in her hair. One tug arched her neck. He set his lips to her pulse point just under her jaw, then moved back up over her chin to her mouth.

  This time he let his lips graze hers, again and again, slowly deepening the pressure but without using tongue, detouring to her ear or the hinge of her jaw or her cheek, until her mouth was wide open. She shifted restlessly under him, her thighs pressing against his knees, her hips lifting into his, softening, opening, flooding with desire.

  The rhythmic lifting movements stopped when he touched his tongue to hers. He gave her one slow lick and withdrew, and watched as she bit her lip, licked the spot, then whimpered. He bit the same spot, kissed his way down the tendon in her throat to the hollow between her collarbones, and worked his way back up again. He licked his way into her mouth, granted access to his, and felt her breasts lift as she inhaled deep need.

  His hand left her hair, and he smoothed his palm along her jaw, fanned his fingers over her now-swollen lips, then flexed it against her throat. She arched into the touch, lifting her breasts toward his hand. He smiled, even though she couldn’t see it, and trailed just the tips of his fingers over one mound, avoiding the nipple. She purred at the back of her throat, but the sound held an edge, not of desperation but of demand.

  “Did you think I’d come over and service you?”

  “The possibility—” She paused as he took her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and lightly pinched. “Occurred to me,” she finished when he released the pressure.

  “Disappointed?”

  Her eyes opened slightly. “Do you always ask questions to which you know the answers?”

  He bent down and flicked lightly at the other nipple with his tongue. “Not always,” he said. “But I am now, because I want to hear you say it.”

  She undulated under him, her legs closing, her hips writhing. “I’m not at all disappointed.”

  “Good,” he said, and sat back, then shuffled down the bed, using his knees to spread her wide. Once he was sitting on his heels between her legs, he unbuttoned his shirt and tugged it off. She watched him, her pupils blown wide, her body moving unconsciously, hips lifting in demand, back arching in search of pressure on her nipples and breasts.

  He gave her none of that, instead shifting down to scrape his face over her hipbones and belly and mound. The bristly hairs rasped against the sheer fabric of her panties. Here, the scent of her arousal was so strong, making his mouth water. He traced the elastic edge of her panties with his tongue, and watched her arch, then pressed his open mouth to the curve of her mound and exhaled. He left her panties on and lapped at her, pausing to lick the elastic at her inner thigh. He pushed his tongue against the soaked panel of her panties, and heard her moan.

  “Take them off,” she commanded.

  “No,” he said, and worked his arms under her hips. For a few more minutes he traced his fingers from hipbone to hipbone, absorbing the dip of flesh, the way the skin quivered under his fingertips. He hooked his index finger in the elastic and tugged it down, let it spring back while he worked his tongue against her clit, hidden in her folds. Her gasps went higher in pitch as he did, eased back into deep, slow exhales when he backed off to trace the leg edges with fingers and tongue.

  “Daniel. Now.”

  He laughed, extracted himself from between her legs, and leaned up to kiss her. She moaned when he left, a sound he cut off with his mouth. This time he kissed her thoroughly, a physical promise of what lay ahead.

  “You’re demanding,” he said.

  “And you’re a tease,” she replied, chasing his mouth with her own.

  He checked her over quickly, running his palms along her triceps, sliding a finger under the silk cord to make sure the restraints weren’t too tight. She’d released the dangling ends, refusing to set herself free and renegotiate the terms of this encounter.

  “You think so?”

  “I do.”

  “You want to argue with me? I don’t multitask well. I can think about it,” he said, then circled her nipple with his tongue. He rested his chin on the upper swell of her breast and looked up at her. “Or I can do that. Totally up to you.”

  “You’re a right bastard,” she moaned. “Get to it.”

  “Bossy,” he said. “Now I have to work my way down there again.”

  She was hot to the touch now, the scent of her skin, the taste, the sight of red washes of color at her breasts and thighs creating a sensory overload. A primitive urge swamped him to pull off her panties, rele
ase his cock, bury himself so deep inside her she would feel it for days. He stopped, breathed through it, and gave himself the treat of hooking his fingers in her panties and working them down her thighs.

  She planted both feet on the bed and lifted her hips. He resettled himself between her thighs and resumed teasing her, a progression of touches from gentle grazes of fingernails to inner thighs, then flat strokes with his fingers over her trimmed curls, kisses along her outer folds, before he put his open mouth to the top of her slit and darted his tongue out. The folds parted easily and he circled her clit once. Her hips bucked, catching him off guard, so he flattened his hands on her hipbones and held her down.

  A few moments of exploration taught him what he needed to know. Then he backed off and settled into slow circles just outside the most sensitive tissue, closing in for a few moments, building the pleasure, then letting it ebb again, using the tension in her thighs, the quivering muscles under his fingers, the tenor of her moans as his guide. When they took on a helpless, pleading quality, he relented and gave her what she needed.

  When she came, she went utterly silent, her body jerking in his arms.

  She’d be sensitive, so he pulled back and rested his head on her thigh, stroking her belly with one hand and her inner thigh with the other. “Can you do that again?”

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed.

  He chuckled. The scent of her, clean and tangy and primitive, clung to his lips and jaw, drifted from his nostrils straight to his back brain. When she’d shimmied on the bed, he traced the swollen folds with his index finger, then gently pushed inside. Her inner walls tightened around his finger, so he waited until she relaxed, then worked a second finger inside, doing nothing more than feeling the silky heat and strength.

  When he added a third, she groaned. When he twisted his wrist up and curled his fingers gently, spreading them to stroke across the top wall of her sex, she let out a sobbing little laugh.