Privacy Code (Shatterproof) (5 page)

Chapter
Nine –
Catherine

I was speechless as he left the room. I had pleaded with him, but stopped just short of begging. Or at least I thought I did. I probably came off as incredibly desperate
for sex, which I wasn’t.

To finally experience Watts, brief as it was,
surpassed all of my most vivid fantasies. It also brought to life my worst fear about meeting him.

The way he moved from the door to me, trapping me against the wall. There was an intensely sexual way even in his walk, the way he smoothly turned to face me, almost as if drawn to me by some magnetic force.

I’d never seen his eyes before this night. Only earlier in the lounge, and when I stole quick glances at him in the elevator and when he slid the keycard into the lock to open the hotel room door.

His facial expression then was much the same as when I saw him first in the lounge—serious, determined, in control.

But when he turned from the door to face me and made his way over to me against the wall, his eyes were as deep and rich as any I’d ever seen. His irises were brown and in the dim light, his pupils adjusted accordingly, getting larger, expanding that deep brown.

I remember thinking they looked like animal eyes. A strange thought to pop into my head,
maybe, but that’s what happened.

He was
raptly focused on me, and I could feel his eyes on me as much as I could see it.

The more he pressed his body against mine, the more I could feel the heat radiating from him, through his clothing.

He smelled of a musky aftershave, a scent I hadn’t experienced for far too long.

His overwhelming
intensity brought a whole new level to the feelings I had when I would read his explicit emails. This man ignited something inside of me that I previously had no idea existed.

My own animal instinct.
Rising from the deepest recesses of my inner core. Trapped there for my entire life. Dormant, waiting to be stirred, provoked, lured out of me.

It was as if Watts somehow knew I had it in me even before I did, and he was its only master, capable of turning that aspect of my being on and off at his will.

He’d done it so many times just with his words, and tonight he did it with something as simple as his pupils reflexively tuning to the darkness.

His words rang through my brain:
“Unzip me and take it out. I want you to feel it.”
That direct command. Meant for me to experience him. Not a cheap and selfish “Come on baby, jerk me off” which I’d been unlucky enough to hear during one of my short-lived physical flings with a person who it would be a complete lie to call a “man” now that I’d been alone in a room with Watts.

When my fingers closed around him, I
’d felt it pulse in response, acknowledging my presence, responding to me.

That’s when Watts told me to grip it harder and with both hands. I followed his direction, squeezing as I placed my other hand on it, end to end.

He was long but the thickness is what caught my attention as I’d tried to wrap my fingers around his girth. I’d ran my thumb across the head, feeling the bead of moisture that let me know he was primed and ready.

Watts knew just where to touch me, but more than that, he knew just the right way to touch and tease, then stop to change it up. Keeping me wondering, anticipating so that each new movement he made was unpredictable, a surprise sensation for the nerve endings he
’d decided to ignite.

All of that, just from a brief encounter.
What would it have been like if we’d completed it? I could only imagine.

It may seem irrational but the truth is that d
espite being turned on like never before, I didn’t care if we stopped. Yes, the foreplay was amazing and easily the hottest I’d ever experienced, but that was secondary to just having him there.

Despite seeming like a minor distinction, there’s a huge difference between having someone there and having them
not leave.
At least in my life, there is.

And here it was happening again. Of all the things that could have gone wrong that night, having him leave was the absolute worst.

Without even knowing it, I had spent months working myself up for this, and it only took a few seconds of ill-advised talking to chase him out the door. One minute he was here, like the man of my dreams, and the next he was gone like a fleck of dust caught in a hurricane.

I wanted to flop down on the bed a
nd curl up in a ball so tight I might have a hard time unraveling from it.

Rather than lie there wallowing in grief,
I got my clothes on straight as I tried to distract myself enough to calm down. In a few short moments, I would have to walk out of his hotel without appearing as though something awful had happened to me.

A walk of shame without the sex.

I didn’t understand why a thing like his name still had to remain such a secret. He knew my real first name, after all. That’s all I was asking for.

Fortunately, I stopped just short of asking him what hi
s sales job was all about. And damn, to think I almost blurted out that I worked for the FBI, just to give him a piece of me, my life, hoping he would break down and give me something, anything.

What if I had? And what if his secret lifestyle—his “privacy code”—was the result of him working with the FBI, too, only on a much higher level.
Or the CIA? Maybe the “sales job” he told me about was a complete lie. Could that be why he had to be so discreet in everything he does?

It wouldn’t have been so strange in this part of the country, where everyone seems to have some kind of connection to the government.

I know the timing was terrible and that I caused it all by asking things I shouldn’t have, but I wouldn’t waiver in defending my reasons for wanting to be sure of what I was doing and who I was doing it with.

Watts was the first real human connection I’d had in
…well, literally forever. While he didn’t know the details of my identity or the story of my childhood, he knew a lot about me, knew the Catherine of today, not the Catherine of years past.

Maybe he too had a past that he was hiding. But he had no idea that I had no intention of prying that out of him, anymore than I had any intention of sharing mine.

I had opened up to him, if only slightly, and he had done the same to me. All I wanted—all I
needed
—was the assurance that all of this was real. And the one way that made sense to me was to know if his first name was Watts and if not, what his first name really was.

He didn’t even give me the chance to explain. Something
more had spooked him.

. . . . .

As I drove home, my thoughts shifted to preparing myself to deal with the fact that I was unlikely to ever see him again or even hear from him.

“
You’re better off staying away from me. This shouldn’t have happened.”

Those
cold, rough words were as final as any words could be. Everything I knew about his dealings with women led me to believe that he kept his word when he said he never saw the same woman twice.

And now I was just another one of them.

I pulled up to my apartment to find that someone had parked in my reserved spot. Saturday night. Not surprising, though it pissed me off. Does anyone respect boundaries anymore or is everyone just out for their own immediate convenience?

I circled the block, finding a few open spaces that were marked reserved, but unlike that asshole who took mine, I wasn’t going
to do the same.

I finally found a spot farther away than I’d have liked, but maybe a walk would do me some good. Burn off the frustrated energy built up from being so turned on and left sad and kneeling on the bed as I watched Watts slip out of the room—out of my life
.

Walking up the five steps to my front porch, I
first noticed the red splash of color against the backdrop of the black door. The red was a single rose. It was in a tall, narrow glass vase. Someone had placed it right in front of my door.

I bent down to pick it up. No note. Curious.

Watts? Could he have left it here for me as some kind of apology? That would have been an odd way to do it, and plus, he had no idea where I lived. Or at least, I didn’t think he did. Could he?

Confusion swirled in my mind and soon the insecure young girl in me settled on the very real possibility that someone had left it in front of my door by pure accident. It was possible.
More than possible, actually. It was likely.

There was no one in my life
who would leave a rose outside my door, yet there were dozens and dozens of doors within sight of mine. And our addresses aren’t posted very clearly—they’re arranged in foursomes, every four doors down. Why, I have no idea, but they are. When you explain it to someone, it’s clear, but even the FedEx and UPS delivery people leave things at the wrong door all the time.

So I decided it was an accident. But with no card attached, I had no way of knowing
who it was really meant for so I took it inside with me.

The rose was still a tight bud, yet to bloom, but was a richly dark red that promised to be beautiful. At least I would be able to enjoy it.
A minor sweet ending to a very bitter night.

Chapter
Ten –
Watts

I hated leaving her. Hated seeing that look on her face.
Hated hearing the words she spoke and the tone of her voice.

I’m not prone to guilt trips. I
n fact I have little patience for such things. But I felt guilty precisely because she
wasn’t
trying to guilt trip me.

Her pleading was honest, from somewhere deep within. That much I could tell. I just didn’t know what the root of it was.
Something awful, for sure. Several possibilities ran through my mind: bad previous marriage, abusive ex-boyfriend, molested at a young age, a childhood full of neglect, or maybe it was just in her nature to be mistrustful.

Whatever the case, a
ll it did was confirm my decision to leave. If something awful had happened in her life, there was no way she needed to be anywhere near me. The ramifications of being close to me could be bad enough to make whatever happened to her pale in comparison.

The guilt stemmed from the indisputable fact that I had cro
ssed a line I knew I shouldn’t.

Over the six or so months that we had gotten to know each other,
such as it was, the truth was I had started to care about her. Not even knowing her last name. Not even knowing for a while if Catherine was her real name. Not knowing what she looked like, sounded like, laughed like, cried like.

Sight unseen, I cared about her
well-being.

And now I had placed her in danger.
Two kinds, actually.

One, the danger I knew existed if she happened to be connected to me and what would h
appen if someone got hold of Catherine and used her to get to me.

Two, the danger of doing damage to her emotions, which I hadn’t considered because I didn’t know about the pain her life until I saw it on her face as I left the hotel room.

Fuck.

In ten years, I hadn’t made a stupid move. I’d
been careful not to put others in danger, even when they meant very little to me outside the realm of bringing me physical pleasure.

In ten years of doing what I do, I had never once even considered doing something like that, much less
to someone I had developed some level of feelings for.

Even if I hadn’t left the room under those circumstances, I would have never seen her again. So I was bound to hurt her at least in
one way, and potentially the other. Or both. All because I let my sexual desires overrule my logic.

But hell, what
man couldn’t make that claim at least once in his life?

The difference with me, though, was that the consequences were far more severe than facing divorce, losing a job, or anything else like that.

. .
. . .

My place was in the Charles Village neighborhood of Baltimore, a nice neighborhood with lots of restaurants and shops within walking distance. It’s a two-story townhouse with on-street parking, a small and fenced-in front lawn, and a front porch that spans the entire width of the unit.

It was just after 9 p.m. by the time I got
home. I was frustrated with how the night had gone, so I was glad to see no one had parked in my spot.

I was also glad Mrs. Woodal
l wasn’t out on her front porch. She lived in the townhouse adjacent to mine. She and her husband had introduced themselves to me the first day I moved in here almost ten years ago, letting me know that they were there if I needed anything. Considering the fact that I needed ultimate privacy, the last thing I needed was nosy neighbors, which is why they had known me as “Andrew Murphy,” my alias. Mr. Woodall had died four years after I moved in and Mrs. Woodall had kept up their tradition of spending every spring and summer night on the front porch, watching the world go by.

Walking into my house, I suddenly felt hungry.
I hadn’t eaten dinner. I also had built up quite a bit of energy that needed to be spent. Enough energy that I probably could have punched through a brick wall.

If only Catherine
hadn’t asked that one damn question….

I considered going for a run, but ruled that out. When I run, I think, and the last thing I wanted to do at that moment was think too much.

Basketball was my preferred method of keeping in shape. There were courts nearby, and I sometimes went down there and played alone, working up a good sweat and exhausting myself at the end of a day.

Other times I’d play in a pick-up game. There was a group of guys in their late te
ens and early twenties who were down at the courts quite a bit.

While I was almost ten years older than most of them, I more than kept up with the speed of their game. Not that being almost thirty was old, but I did get some satisfaction in knowing I hadn’t lost the physical edge I’d had a decade ago.

Some evenings were spent at one of the local taverns playing pool. It was a game I wasn’t particularly good at, but I enjoyed it and found myself picking up pointers by watching some of the people who play for money.

I ruled o
ut basketball that night, along with the other forms of relaxation, opting instead for the release I really needed.

But before I took care of that,
I got a fresh piece of salmon from the refrigerator, heated up a pan, and cooked it with dry white wine and diced onion. I usually don’t eat standing, but I did tonight, leaning on the counter, holding the plate, occasionally sipping an Italian imported wine that I’d picked up on sale for $125.

I like good food and wine. It’s my guilty pleasure, especially when I’m trying to get my mind off of stress.
And tonight certainly qualified.

With my guilt over how the evening ended subsiding, my thoughts turned to the
other tragedy that had occurred: getting worked up without coming.

Logic had made a comeback
in that hotel room and had won out over my cock. And what a battle it was, considering how exquisitely gorgeous Catherine was.

Golden
blonde hair past her shoulders. Crystal green eyes, a short nose, and full lips that I could have had fun with in a number of ways. Perfectly sized breasts, too, with the nipples slightly perked upwards. She was not thin and not overweight, definitely a body built for sex.

She had once referred to herself in an email as “average.” I wondered why, and figured it was one of those cases wherein someone sees
themselves entirely different than the world sees them.

My cock hardened as I stood there in the kitchen finishing off the glass of wine, thinking of what could have been with Catherine earlier.

Goddamn. Maybe I should have stayed.

No. No.

I was getting sloppy because of sex. Couldn’t let it happen. Wouldn’t let it happen.

I had to prev
ent myself from falling into the dick-over-mind trap, and there was only one way to achieve that. At least in the short term.

Once the water in the shower was warm enough, I stepped in w
ith a bottle of KY Ultraglide. Standing under the hot water, I opened the little bottle and got just enough to make my hand slick. I wouldn’t need much, not as worked up as I had gotten myself. Or rather, as worked up as Catherine had gotten me.

I
was finished and out of the shower in less than five minutes.

I looked at myself in the mirror as I toweled myself dry. Who had I become?
What
had I become? Not just tonight, but over all these years.

I was approaching the age of thirty and living what some might call the life of a playboy. And not even a glamorous one, at that. It was more the life of an opportunistic rogue, snatching up the chance to be with a woman whenever the occasion presented itself.

The only thing I didn’t feel badly about that night was the fact that Catherine knew all of this going in. I had made her well aware of the circumstances. She’d known them for months, actually, so it’s not as though she had been duped at all. Hell, I had done everything to warn her, short of having her sign a contract.

As I brushed my teeth,
staring at my eyes in the mirror and wondering all of these things, I thought maybe the contract wasn’t such a bad idea.

That thought lasted all of five seconds. Of course a contract was a bad idea. It was a terrible notion when it came to some kind of fuck-buddy arrangement, just as it was a terrible idea in terms of getting married.

You’re either with someone or you’re not, contracts be damned. It’s my belief that those who stick around
without
a contractual agreement tethering them to another person have the real bond, anyway.

. . . . .

Before getting into bed, I checked my email. I hoped there was nothing from Catherine, and sure enough, there wasn’t. I briefly considered typing a quick apology to her, but reasoned that it was probably best to leave things as they were. Why prolong the pain for either of us?

Maybe I
should even add her email address to my SPAM list, so nothing she sent would get through.

Fuck. The idea of doing that was crushing.

And yet, maybe the best idea I’d had in a while. No, I decided, I’d rely on self-control and only read her email if I felt like it.

. . . . .

I don’t watch much television, except when I’m winding down for the night. After getting into bed, I grabbed the remote and turned it to a local news channel that was just starting its 10 p.m. report.

The broadcast opened wi
th a video of a house on fire. I doubted it still smelled like lamb and cabbage.

T
he anchor narrated: “Authorities are investigating what started out as a house fire just after seven tonight, but is now believed to be the scene of a triple homicide, in Laurel, Maryland, halfway between Baltimore and D.C. Our crime reporter Kelly Sutton is live on the scene in the neighborhood where residents are expressing shock over the incident that occurred on their normally quiet street. Kelly?”

I pointed the remote at the television, turned it off, and went to sleep.