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Neighborhood Watch, and the incomprehensible, almost uncontrollable need I’d felt in his presence.
    I couldn’t believe I didn’t know his real name, and I hadn’t given him my number, not that he would have called anyway. He probably had a hundred women waiting for the chance to jump into bed with him. Maybe I wasn’t looking for anything serious, but I also didn’t want to be a notch on someone’s belt. I got the feeling Neighborhood Watch was a serious playboy, and I could count the number of guys I’d slept with on two hands.
    I kept to the well-lit streets, heading straight for the Channelside area. A Lightning hockey game was just letting out at the downtown arena, and as I approached the hordes of fans in blue emptying into the street, I felt a shiver work down my spine. I glanced behind me, but apart from a few homeless men, there was no movement.
    Hugging my clutch to my chest, I hurried on, still glancing around. Someone was following me, I was sure of it. I removed the Mace from my wallet and held it in my fist, remembering all the self-defense classes my dad had made me take before I left for college.
    Only, instead of feeling scared, I was flushed. My breasts were heavy and aching, and each step brought the slightest bit of friction to my oversensitive sex. It was like someone was watching me, checking me out,
wanting
me. I could feel the stranger’s eyes roaming over my exposed skin, and I fought the urge to slow down and reveal a little bit more, a crazy impulse that went against everything I’d ever learned.
    When I crossed the intersection into the crowd, I stopped and turned in a full circle, but I couldn’t see anyone. It was probably just my overactive imagination.
    Giving up on my search, I jogged to catch the red trolley at the corner and climbed aboard. The compartment was packed with men and women in oversize hockey jerseys celebrating the Lightning’s victory. Drunk as some of them were, I was safer here than I had been on the street. I probably should have taken a cab, but at least I wasn’t alone now.
    The trolley dropped me off near my apartment in an old cigar factory converted into restaurants, studio flats, and condos. Before entering the building, I checked behind me one last time to make sure I wasn’t being followed. This part of the city was just beginning to come to life—music from the clubs down the street was already pounding, and a group of men across the street whistled at three cross-dressing strippers who blew them kisses. What a surprise the boys were in for when they realized what was hidden beneath those miniskirts. It was Ybor City at its best.
    I climbed the steps to the second floor, hit hard by the strong aroma of Chinese food from the take-out restaurant below my studio apartment. The location—which always smelled of lo mein and sounded like a team of toddlers had broken out the pots and pans—was how I’d gotten the place so cheap.
    The space was small, but it was mine, and for now I liked it. It was the sixth place I’d lived in within seven years and would do until the itch to move on struck me again. I liked to think of each new destination as a check mark on my explore-the-world bucket list.
    I threw my purse on the flowery three-legged stool I’d picked up at a yard sale and locked the dead bolt behind me. One room may not have seemed very big, but it was enough for me. The tiny bathroom and closet were off to the left, while the ’70s-era pea-green kitchen sat opposite, taking the right corner of the room. The far window overlooked Seventh Avenue, with its pretty strings of twinkling lights draped between the old streetlamps. The bottom floor of the old immigrant hospital across the street had been converted to a steak house, but the second story was still empty, so I didn’t bother closing the curtains over the bay window as I took off my shirt and threw it on the bed. The black low-set frame from IKEA may have been cheap, but I’d sprung for