Watch me, Jack. Watch me fuck my sweet pussy for you. Watch me.
She felt Jack’s eyes, permeating her, consuming her, and that’s all it took—a hot, blissful orgasm rushed over her like a tidal wave, the consuming pulsations echoing through her body and swallowing her in mindless pleasure, until finally the tide inside her calmed…and left her sad and heartbroken once more.
* * * * *
Jack’s life felt like a fucking disaster. A week ago, he’d been in heaven—in love with a beautiful, sensual woman who fulfilled his every sexual fantasy like a dream come true. At the same time, work had been good, steady and manageable, fulfilling without being overwhelming.
Now he felt like a man trapped in a snow globe—like someone had picked up his fragile little world and given it a hard shake, and he was still waiting for the dust to settle.
His days now, without Liz, felt like one devastation after another. He kept forgetting—waking up in the morning expecting to find her there, or having her absence in his life strike him like a blow with a baseball bat at moments when he least expected it: turning his key in the lock to go home at night, ordering take out for one, finding—and then subsequently tearing up—the computer-generated bill for her case.
It was Friday night—he didn’t bother turning to check the clock, but he knew it was late. The last hours had been a blur and as he sat in his office, fast-forwarding through surveillance tapes looking for the relevant stuff, he thought back over the long evening.
Earlier, when a glimpse of the time revealed it was after nine, he’d decided to take a break and walk around the corner to Pat O’s for a helping of jambalaya and a side of catfish strips to go.
His cell phone had trilled nearly as soon as he’d walked out the door; he’d reached in his pocket and flipped it open. “Jack Wade.”
“Dude, where are you?” It was Ty.
“On my way to Pat O’s.”
“Cool—I’ll meet you there. We can grab some drinks, then maybe hit some clubs.”
“No, ami, I’m workin’. Just takin’ a break to get somethin’ to eat.”
“It’s Friday night, buddy.”
“And I’m busy,” he’d replied shortly. He didn’t mean to be gruff with Ty, but he was in no mood for partying.
He’d listened as Ty released a huge sigh. “Have you called her yet?”
Ty, of course, knew exactly why he was in such a pissy mood, and had been giving him unwanted counseling on it for days. He rolled his eyes as he kept moving, dodging a pair of ready-looking women who were giving him the eye on the sidewalk. “The truth is, I’ve considered callin’ her probably a hundred times since that day I practically hung up on her…but no, I still haven’t.”
“Why not?”
Ty knew why not, yet he’d made Jack say it again. “Because she taught me a valuable lesson, which I’m not gonna forget this time. And the lesson is that my old man was right—fallin’ for somebody only gets you kicked in the teeth in the end.”
He still didn’t know what had prompted her to change her mind about moving in with him, but he could only conclude the same thing over and over—that she didn’t want to let the relationship go that far, get that serious or committed. As for her phone call, well, he supposed she missed the sex, but he’d learned the hard way from her that he was more than just a sex toy—he had feelings, and she’d fucking trampled them. A lonely sounding phone call didn’t change that. There were a thousand guys in this city she could fuck, and quite a few girls, too, if she wanted—he wasn’t playing stud to her anymore. He missed sex with her so much he sometimes felt like he couldn’t breathe, but he couldn’t fuck her and not love her, and not having her love him back hurt too damn bad to even contemplate.
Ty had sounded put out with him. “If you ask me, you’re screwing up big time.”
“And for the twentieth time, I didn’t ask you.”
“Okay, okay.” Finally, his friend changed the subject. “So why the hell are you working this late on a Friday night?”
“It’s like I told you a couple days ago—the job’s suddenly runnin’ me ragged.” Lately, it seemed that if he wasn’t chasing down leads on a missing person’s case the police had given up on, he was trying to track down a bundle of laundered money or looking for a jewelry thief who’d managed to heist an expensive diamond necklace from a private collection. Of course, it got like this sometimes—cases got stacked up, one upon another, for no particular reason. But now, added to all that, was the task of trying to keep tabs on Todd.
“Still spyin’ on the nutjob?” Ty had asked, seeming to read Jack’s mind.
“Yep,” he answered shortly.
Despite how much Liz had hurt him, he still intended to keep her out of danger, at least to the degree he could control the situation—something she’d made a lot harder by deciding to stay put next door to her psycho ex. That decision still boggled his mind, and he knew from his caller I.D. system that she was still at Lynda’s, or at least she had been when she’d called him.
In fact, that was what really had him stuck in the office long after dark on a Friday night. He was off the clock, no longer billing anyone for his hours, but he had a shitload of surveillance tapes to catch up on—surveillance on Todd.
The very day after he’d had to escort the little bastard out Lynda’s front door, he’d let himself inside Todd’s back door with the help of a simple credit card, and he’d placed a few tiny cameras and mikes throughout the house—one in the kitchen, one in the living room, one in the master bedroom. He’d also placed one
