The air pulsed like it had a heartbeat as I pushed the shimmery material over my hips, letting my gown fall to my feet.

Chink.

He didn’t look away from my face, though the urge was there. Shifting like a breeze heading in the wrong direction.

I stood inches in front of him, in a red bra and panties, with an entire party and my husband just beyond a set of double doors.

His response was simple and exactly what I’d expected from the strait-laced fed, yet it still found the heat to brush my back as I made my way to the pool.

“No.”

I looked over my shoulder. “Then how do you ever feel alive?”

A smile touched my lips as I dove into the water. Because his gaze had slid down the curves of my body, and it was the furthest thing from cold I’d ever felt.

September 2015

TAP,

tap,

tap.

Sasha Taylor, Ph.D. watched the motion of my finger on the armrest. Eyes narrowed, lips slightly pursed, it was the expression she wore when deep in thought.

Tap . . . tap . . . tap.

Her gaze met mine, and, as a slow smile tugged on my lips, she swallowed and glanced at the file in her lap to find some resolve. “Tell me about your home life,” she finally said, looking up. “Iowa.”

I chuckled. “Ah, Sasha, we both know that’s not what you want to talk about.”

She pulled the charm on her necklace, back and forth, and raised a brow.

“Ask,” I said impatiently.

Determination flared in her eyes, and she dropped the necklace. “Fine. Let’s talk about your relationship with the number three.”

“And here I didn’t take you as one to engage in breakroom gossip.”

“I don’t engage, I merely observe. All means of information are valuable to a case.”

“All right.” I sat back, rested an elbow on the armrest, and ran a thumb across my bottom lip. “You tell me what you think this relationship is, and I’ll tell you true or false.”

Hesitation flickered across her expression, but she inhaled a breath and dove right the fuck in. “You only sleep with the same woman three times.”

“True.”

“Why?”

A whole list of reasons, but there was only one that motivated me to do anything.

“It feels right.”

Four times suggested the relationship could go somewhere. Four felt like a sloppy affair, with feelings and questions thrown into the mix. Four annoyed me.

She accepted my answer and continued with her probing. “Some motions, not detrimental to your overall schedule, such as adjusting your clothes, maybe combing your hair, or laps at the gym, you do in some figure of three.”

“To an extent.”

“What happens when you stop at two?”

I held her gaze.

Tap . . . tap.

She waited on bated breath for the next tap that would never come. “Are you obsessing over the third now?”

“No.”

Yes.

“Do you consider yourself OCD?”

“Mildly, self-diagnosed,” I answered, looking at the clock. My phone vibrated in my pocket, and impatience burrowed beneath my skin. I had shit to do this evening. I was on suspension at the Bureau, but I’d taken on more work by outside sources, as much as was possible, because if I didn’t stay busy I was afraid I’d burn under the heat of my own fucking anger.

I’d climbed my way out of hell, had seen it, tasted it, felt it, and the only thing that got me through had been dreaming about revenge and everything I would have on the other side. I’d planned my future out, from the kind of woman I’d marry to the type of hardwood in my apartment. Nowhere in those dreams had I ever planned for a Gianna Marino.

I should feel reprieved she was married and out of my reach again, but, fuck . . . it sometimes felt like an impossible feat to forget her.

“What about contamination symptoms?” she added, averting her gaze like there was something important in my file she’d just now noticed.

“More gossip, Sasha?”

Not surprising. When someone met me, they didn’t forget me. Except for one woman, anyway. My face had been a curse when I was a kid, but now, I took advantage of it. To intimidate, to manipulate, to get whatever I wanted. Power. Information. Women. Ironic, that the one thing I now wanted, I couldn’t fucking have.

She looked up, flustered with herself. “You don’t kiss on the mouth.”

“True.”

“Why not?”

“It’s messy and unnecessary.”

Her eyes flickered with confliction. She’d already dug deeper into my psyche than this evaluation should have. Her interest was plain curiosity, the reason anyone decided they wanted to become a psychologist—to crack open a human’s mind like an egg, to see what made us tick. What she didn’t know was that I didn’t tick. I’d made the fucking clock.

“You don’t seem to have the same opinion regarding . . . other parts of a woman’s anatomy.”

I laughed.

I wouldn’t have a problem with any part of a certain woman’s anatomy. Truthfully, I’d let her spit in my goddamn mouth.

“So, if you’re willing to . . .”

“Eat pussy?”

She flushed. “This has gone beyond what it should have,” she muttered, fumbling with her pen.

“Are you getting all this down, Sasha?” I adjusted my cuff.

“Why no kissing?” Her uneasy movements had paused, her curiosity unwilling to let it go.

She thought she’d found something, a piece of the puzzle that made me. In truth, she was probably close. If she pulled at this thread hard enough, she might free another.

“Lipstick,” I said. “I hate it.”

Specifically, red.

A heart-shaped stain on my cheek. The red imprint left on the edge of a dirty glass or a lit cigarette lying on cracked pavement. The twisting of a little black container. I fucking hated all of it.

“So, the reason isn’t related to thoughts of contamination?” she pushed.

“No.”

It was mostly true. When I was agitated or stressed, my issue with cleanliness magnified, but otherwise, I just liked to be clean. I liked a clean space, clean clothes, and not to put dirty shit, like a used communal pen, in my mouth. Not to wake up with bugs crawling on me. Not to have to wash the dirt off my body in a drinking fountain.

“We’re at the end of our meeting, but I have one more question. What is your earliest memory of the number three?”

Knock, knock, knock.

The knocking reverberated in my mind, three heavy thumps I’d still have been able to hear even if I placed my hands over my ears.

“They always knocked three times,” I said.

“Who?”

“The men who made me.”

23 years old

July 2014

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”

The shout of a hundred different voices hit me as I pushed open the club door. Confetti fell, sparkling beneath dim lighting and tickling my bare skin as it brushed my shoulders. Balloons floated to the ceiling, distorting the view of a photo of me blowing a kiss to the camera that took up the entire far wall. Birthday by The Beatles flooded the room.