The Wild Side

“Yes.” Riley met the man’s eyes impassively, surprised to see what looked like a trace of admiration and respect in the FBI regulation sneer. “What can I do for you?”

“We’d like to talk to you.” Ted Barker, FBI, put away his ID and gestured to the black Lincoln Towne Car across the street. “We think you can help us.”

“WOW.” MELISSA ROGERS widened her eyes and leaned forward on the living room sofa in her Cambridge apartment, over the bowl of popcorn clutched in her lap. “Oh, wow.”

On her television screen, halfway through the movie 9 1/2 Weeks, a blindfolded Kim Basinger lay on her back in an open white shirt and white bikini panties, cigarette smoke swirling behind her in the blue-white light of a desk lamp. Mickey Rourke, smirking in devilish black, fished an ice cube out of his drink and held it for a camera close-up. Cold wet drips fell into Kim’s mouth, trickled between her lips, down her breasts, hardened her nipples, rolled into her navel.

“Oh, oh, wow. Look at how he…oh, wow.”

Her friend Penny grabbed a handful of popcorn from her own bowl and turned to Melissa in irritation. “Will you stop with the ‘Oh wow’ and let me watch the movie? You’re ruining it.”

Melissa forced her mouth shut, except when it needed to admit another influx of popcorn. And except when Kim was sitting on the floor in Mickey’s kitchen, eyes closed while he fed her—strawberries, cherries, olives, champagne—then squirted honey on her outstretched tongue, and onto her chin, and knees, and legs; used his hands to spread the sticky golden fluid around her thighs, around and in, and up, and higher….

Melissa opened her mouth and formed the words silently. Oh, wow.

The movie spun on, ended; credits rolled up the screen. A strange, almost angry longing charged through Melissa’s body. She smacked her fist on her sensible dark beige, Scotchgarded couch. “Why can’t something like that happen to me?”

“What.” Penny screwed up her face incredulously. “You want to meet a controlling, sadistic psycho who almost ruins your life?”

“No, no, no.” Melissa pushed the popcorn off her lap and stretched her bare feet rigidly out in front of her, trying to calm the emotional need for physical action. “I mean I want that kind of excitement, that danger. I want to be swept away by passion, even if it’s not sensible. Maybe especially because it isn’t sensible.”

“You and the entire population since man walked upright. Get real, Melissa. It don’t happen. By the time you get to sex, you and Mr. Whoever know too much about each other. There’s always baggage, always a power play, or at the very least you start worrying that your thighs feel too squishy, your arm is in the way or you’re taking too long to come and he’ll get impatient.” She pushed her oblong wire rims higher up on her nose. “Swept away by passion is for the movies. Trust me.”

“What about sex with a guy you don’t know? Someone you don’t have baggage with yet?” Melissa blurted the words out, shocked she’d admit considering such a thing, even to her best friend. Some hungry demon had recently invaded her personality and begun gobbling up her common sense.

“Huh? You want to risk messing sheets with a guy who turns out to be Mr. Diseased Serial-Killer?”

“Okay, look. I want a deep, meaningful relationship as much as anyone else. I want to get married someday, and I know the kind of guy that can make me happy. But marriage is like life was for the five years I dated Bill. Comfortable intimacy, predictable dates, same old fights about the same old issues.” Melissa gestured in the air and let her hand flop disgustedly into her lap. “I understand that. I don’t expect it to be a rest-of-my-life thrill. But I’m not married now. I want something different, a totally shallow and exciting and fabulous adventure with someone I know is completely wrong for me.”

Penny snapped her wide-open mouth shut. “Since when have you been Ms. Hot-to-Trot?”

Melissa sat up and curled her legs under her. “I don’t know. I’m tired of being sensible and dependable and predictable. I want to try being someone else for a change.”

Penny rolled her eyes. “Who, Mata Hari?”

“Why not?” Melissa stretched her arms over her head and grinned. “After all those years with Bill, and then the months of misery after he dumped me, I feel alive. Like I’ve been asleep all my life and I’m just waking up.”

Penny peered over the tops of her glasses, brows raised. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life?”

Melissa grabbed a handful of popcorn and lobbed it at her friend. “Many thanks for taking my late-twenties crisis so seriously.”

“Aw, hon, you know I care. I just think sex is not any kind of a cure for what ails you.”

“Then what is?”

“Love.” Penny nodded emphatically. “You need to fall in love.”

“Oh, please. I was in love with Bill. Look where that got me.”

“Ha! Bill was a habit, not love. Give yourself some time. Look around. Ask your friends. Not me, though. If I knew an adorable, single, straight guy I wouldn’t let you near him.” Penny heaved her well-padded self up to her full five-foot-two-inch height, shook off the popcorn in a gentle rain onto Melissa’s hardwood floor and scooped it back into her empty bowl. “Me, I must go. I have to be at the museum shop early tomorrow. We’re expecting a huge shipment of mini Thinker statues for the Rodin exhibit.”

Melissa saw her friend to the door and waved goodbye, then lingered in the hallway, listening to the giggles and booming laughter coming from the apartment across the hall. Rose must have brought her date home tonight. The woman never stopped.

Again that strange, wild yearning slammed into Melissa. Sort of a combination of lust, fury and panic. Like she’d been trapped in a tiny elevator with John Cusack and didn’t know whether to jump him, force back the doors with Superwoman strength or freak from claustrophobia.

The door to Rose’s apartment opened. Melissa stepped back and guiltily gave in to her voyeuristic mood by closing her door most of the way and gluing her eye to the crack.

A dark-skinned, tuxedoed man, probably once gorgeous, now handsome in a balding, middle-aged kind of way, emerged, pulling a laughing young woman behind him. Melissa’s eyes stretched wide. Rose looked like something out of a 1940s movie tonight. Her hair, undoubtedly a wig, fell carefully around her face in dark waves. She wore an unusually modest, rose-colored gown that showed off her fair skin, nipped in her already tiny waist and flowed down to a stunning floor-length skirt. Tonight, instead of the sultry pout she’d had on for her last date she glowed with girlish enthusiasm.

Every time a different man. Every time a new look.

Melissa’s body contracted with fierce longing. She wanted that. That ability to try out a new personality, to let loose, experiment, play. Just for a month or two. More than that and she’d get sick of it, for sure. But two months of wild, nonstop partying and blow-me-away passion would be fine.

The man swept Rose into an embrace and pushed her back against the wall, kissed her mouth, face and hands, and then ruined the entire mood by making a doggy growling noise deep in his throat. Melissa made a gagging face and closed the door noiselessly on Rose’s pretend-outrage squeal of “Oh, Your Majesty.”

Ix-nay on the oggies-day. Melissa didn’t need a “Your Majesty,” either. She wasn’t that picky, by any means. Just a nice parade of your garden-variety perfect studs who could go all night.

She slumped back onto her couch. Who was she kidding? A different man every night? Ick. But one would be great. One no-strings man who set her clock ticking, with whom she could explore things Bill had never shown her. One man who would do a damn sight more than climb on top of her, produce a lot of noise and sweat, then roll off, mumble an endearment or two and start snoring. Maybe someone tremendously talented with ice cubes and honey.

She looked down at her bare feet, ratty shorts and Toy Story T-shirt and pushed back her straight, bobbed hair self-consciously. Yeah, right. She was sex goddess material for sure. Men would throng to her door the minute she announced herself available. An entire squadron of supergeeks, fresh from their Star Trek convention. A brood of wholesome innocents brought up lusting after Mary Ann on Gilligan’s Island instead of Ginger.

Hardly the beefcake she had in mind. But the really amazing guys never gave her a second glance. She was always the cute little sister they never had. Aw…

Melissa sneered and threw a newly recovered brown couch pillow across the room. Fine. She’d been toying with the idea of a makeover for years, but Bill always insisted she’d look fake.

Well, tough. Bill was history. The time was right. If Rose could reinvent herself, so could Melissa. Not for nothing was she assistant director of marketing at the Museum of Fine Arts. Her job was to make things sexy that people might not think were sexy otherwise. If she could make ‘em line up around the block for a glimpse of shards from an ancient Egyptian cooking pot, she could make herself over into the kind of woman someone other than Elmer Fudd would find attractive. Right?

Right.

She grabbed the July issue of Cosmo off her coffee table and leafed through, noting the styles and attitudes of the models. Where to begin? If she was going to go on a rampage, even if she ended up doing so only mentally—an attitude change if not a real sexual odyssey—then she’d have to make sure she got a style she could live with. She stopped and stabbed her finger on the picture of a sleek pouty model with a cap of dark hair. Her all-black, figure-hugging outfit made her look casual, elegant, sexy and innocent all at once, exactly what Melissa wanted.

She shut the magazine and hugged it to her chest. The works. The whole shebang. The New Her. To celebrate her final thrilling freedom from loving Bill. To celebrate the need to explore that strange dark desire that had been thrashing around inside her for the past few weeks. To celebrate the birth of her female power and the chance to bring it to its fullest, most independent potential.

Now just one problem. Where was she going to find the man? The one who’d do all this investigating with her? Help explore the depth of her femininity? Help her overcome any and all inhibitions and take her places she’d never— “Oh, yes, Your Majesty!” Rose’s voice carried clearly from the corridor right into Melissa’s fantasy.

Melissa smiled. Right on cue, not that she would have taken long to think of Rose. What more could she ask for? The new Melissa was a done deal. She had the desire, the means—and the perfect mentor right across the hall.

2

MICHAEL SLATER TOOK a deep breath of the sea breeze wafting through the screened-in porch of his parents’ summer house in Howarth, Maine. Below him, sparkling through the evergreen branches and birch trunks, spread Fischer Bay, dotted with islands glowing green in the early sun. The still-chilly morning air, spiced with the scent of pine and the sea, flowed over him with a cleansing freshness that went a long way toward instilling peace in his always-restless soul. The place definitely got under your skin, into your blood.

He took a few steps toward the south edge of the porch, running his hand along the screen, wet from last night’s rain, causing a shower of drops to fall on his bare forearm. During the year he’d spent nursing his mother, he’d begun to appreciate solitude, something he’d never thought would happen after thirty-three years jammed with people.

But not this much solitude.

He clenched his fist; muscles contracted in his forearm, rolling away the drops of water collected from the screen. Since his energies had stopped being focused on keeping his mother alive, keeping her comfortable, he’d started wanting someone around. Maybe Riley would want to visit. He missed Riley. Maybe a woman. He damn well missed women. He could see a woman here, in this idyllic place, moving around the house, reading on the porch or sitting on the rocky shore watching the water.

He laughed; the sound startled a hummingbird hovering at a nearby tree. Maybe he should pack up and go back to Boston, back to telephones and electricity and cynical city dwellers before he turned into a total sap.