She felt the room close down to nothing, his hand under the hem of her burgundy dress, slow, steady slide up the inside of her thigh while her palms pressed into the bare concrete wall between grey metal fuse boxes. The one bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling was still swinging slightly from when Nason pulled the chain to turn it on. Her shadow was shuffling side to side on the floor beneath her. A pair of voices and...

Everybody said it was my mother threw acid on my face because I was born freak ugly from the start. But it was never her. It was one of her junkie boyfriends she had back then. The one called himself Uncle Danny. I was already six and not a baby anymore. And it wasn’t acid. It was cooking oil. The scars are from wet burns, not chemicals. Everybody just talks a lot of shit because everybody’s got nothing else to say. It’s...

Hunter sat on the sofa in the boxer briefs and T-shirt he’d thrown on after showering. He’d been at a crime scene all night with his partner, Duke. Now, he was counting on Lucy to erase it from his mind. She stood in front of him in a short, white robe, legs gleaming with a salon tan, arms crossed under her breasts. In the five months they’d been married, she’d been the perfect drug. If making a man forget his troubles we...

Applause swelled and died off when someone opened the conference hall door and let it swing shut, leaving the crowd inside. Pryce had done the same thing twenty minutes ago. He’d gone into the bar and gotten a glass of bourbon, then opted to sit at the far end of the lobby close to the bar. Now the sudden noise pulled his attention from the twin, revolving doors where snow had begun to fall faster and thicker out beyond t...

The suitcase handle pulls up halfway and jams. Father looks at it like he can see down into wherever it’s stuck and lurches into a moment of pointless jostling. Quinn and mother watch him hand-wrestle the object with a vacant frown until he stops abruptly and plants his fists on his hips. One hand darts up to push his glasses back to the top of his nose and then goes back to his side. Chase watches them all from the middl...

Everything is breaking down and she tells him no, that she will not do what he has asked her to do. Neon sign on the side of the building lights her body through the window. The bodega on the ground floor is doing its usual late-night condom and mouthwash trade. A bottle hits the pavement hard. Light dances down the bare lines of her body and he can see she’s breathing deep and worrying her fingers with her thumbs the way...

Elizabeth felt Sakura’s absence deeply as she watched the two college girls work the counter. It wasn’t that they reminded her of the young coed now living in her house, but because by all appearances they were nothing like her at all. They wore their sexuality like something extra, layered on top of their existence, something they could put on or take off at will. Sakura’s was hardwired into her blood. It was who she was...

She leaned against the sink, not looking at him. “So I was thinking…” The frosted plexiglass of the shower steamed up while the water running over his ears made everything sound like it was going under. Sometimes her voice made him think of liquid pouring into an empty cup. But she was searching. Her head went into that tilt it did when she was reaching for the end of a sentence she hadn’t thought all the way through. The...

If she were standing naked by the window Staring off at the light of concentration yards Across the river and the same light were dancing Like blue savages down the lines of her body Turning just so while tin music of a distant radio falls Like snow falling through the weary radiance of street lights – If I could walk down that dangerous alley between her arms Drawn to her mouth as if it were full of moonlight And touch h...

Rosalia found the dog right around mid-afternoon a couple miles past the iron scorpion. The studio was in the garage stall of an old service station. The doors were open and the space was full of scrap metal and half-finished sculptures. Everything smelled like burnt iron. It was a hundred and five but he was leaning over welding one chunk of scrap to another. She didn’t want to shout over the hiss of the torch so she wai...

“Tell me you wouldn’t love to fuck her,” she said. She was soaking wet in Dogface’s pool, holding onto Stone’s knees as he sat on the edge with his feet dangling in the water. A fit, pneumatically enhanced blonde in a black bikini and spike heels had just delivered them a pair of fruity cocktails. Nikki watched Stone glance at her ass as she walked away. Nikki grinned brightly. “You’re such a fuckin’ whore. Her, too. I me...

“So … I talked to my mother today.” Nikki was leaning in Stone’s bedroom doorway. She bit her lower lip and studied the top of the doorframe while he let her statement settle in his mind. But she didn’t make statements. She dropped soft grenades. He couldn’t say he was getting used to it, but he couldn’t say he disliked it, either. She was wearing a thin, white tank that didn’t reach the bottom of her ribs. It had spaghet...

Snow drove in on a hard slant across the windshield of Stone’s car, idling in the parking lot of the community center. The season was supposed to be safely past this, but it was coming down like it was personal. When he’d heard the first report, part of him hoped they’d cancel, but another part of him just needed to get away from the house. The wipers were on intermittent, heat cranked high with the fan on low. Stained ce...

They rode in silence back to the house. Stone was trying to wrap his brain around the last hour of his life while Nikki stared out the window with a vacant smirk. Her hand rested on her upper thigh, deceptively delicate fingers surreptitiously digging against the shape of her mound as it pushed against her jeans.He knew she felt him thinking about her. He could practically smell it rising off her skin. He kept searching f...

Luna squeezed his cock and sputtered half a giggle, the kind that almost sounds like a tiny cough. He was marble hard, standing thick and substantial. Her grip was iron tight, forcing a rush of blood into the tip that made his crown swell and flush an arrogant purple. The final seepage spilled off the ridge, down the exposed length of shaft and over her knuckles in a rolling fall of spunk, like hot wax dripping down a can...