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thing. The two dark spots like eyes on either side of the shade seemed to watch her expectantly from across the room, asking her some question. She didn’t know what, but she imagined she wouldn’t like what it was.
    Thirsty, she went to the kitchen and switched on the dusty radio by the sink. It was tuned to the only AM station that came in fairly well here, one that played obnoxious oldies music that had been old even when she was a little girl: the Chi-Lites, the Four Freshmen, the Supremes, Chuck Berry. But it was company.
    With the Coasters cooing on about someone’s new love, she opened the cupboard to find a glass. As she reached inside, a cockroach flung itself onto the counter. When she opened her mouth and let out a shrill little shriek, the thing scuttled down the front of the cabinet and into an open drawer.
    “What’s all the noise about, Buttercup?” Paxton shut the door behind him and slid the chain onto its bar.
    Francie hurried out of the kitchen, her skin crawling with goose bumps. “You don’t even want to go in there,” she said. “This place gets nastier every time we come here.”
    “What? Our little love nest?” Paxton said, crossing the room, his arms open to her.
    “It’s nasty,” she said, turning her back on him. She hated that he made her feel petulant, hated asking him for things. Even so, there wasn’t really so much wrong with the place. Someone could spray for the bugs.
    As she knew he would, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against his chest. She relaxed against him. There was something about the bulk of his body—he’d played football at prep school and a couple years of intramural at college before he was thrown out—that made her feel wonderfully small and cared for.
    But she was sure that he didn’t care for her, not deeply anyway, despite his promises to the contrary. It was sex that he wanted from her, and, if she were honest with herself, it was what she wanted from him. Or maybe it was something more than that. At that moment, though, she didn’t really give a damn.
    Paxton began to gently massage her arms, her shoulders, letting his hands caress her upper back, rubbing circles with the pads of his thumbs on the back of her neck. The sounds of the traffic disappeared for her as he moved his hands down the front of her body, lingering on her breasts, feeling the shape of them with his fingertips and carefully sliding the buttons of her blouse out of their holes. As his fingers worked, he put his lips against her hair, the tips of her ears, and breathed softly on her.
    She began to help him with the buttons of the blouse, and the two of them together slid it off her body and it dropped to the floor.
    He turned her around to face him and lifted her off her feet so she could wrap her legs around him. She hung her head back and laughed as he carried her to the bedroom.
    “You were such an asshole at lunch today,” she said. “What was all the goddess bullshit?”
    “Was I?” he said, sounding just the slightest bit winded from carrying her. “Maybe I meant to be an asshole. We have to keep our secret, right?”
    When he dropped her on the bed, she scrambled to pull the spread over herself. The March afternoon was cool and damp, and there’d been no heat on in the apartment overnight. But he reached for her and pulled her back to him.
    “No, you don’t,” he said.
    “You are the meanest thing,” she said. “I’ll freeze to death.” And to prove her point, she pretended to shiver, chattering her teeth and giving her shoulders a shimmy.
    “You are so fucking sexy,” he said. “I want the rest of your clothes off.”
    “I thought I was a goddess,” she said. “Not your screw toy.”
    “Same difference,” he said, roughly unbuttoning her jeans.
     

     
    Everything about Francie made him feel like his prick was going to explode. At lunch he’d had to make an effort to keep from staring at her, from putting his hand right up inside that