Flawless Desire

And maybe with this new Sterling Cross job, I can.

* * *

The walk-upI share with Kelsey is in a rundown area of Chinatown, on the fourth floor of an old walk-up above a dry cleaner’s. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to die from the fumes one day, but the rent is just about affordable, and there’s a great bodega on the corner. I haul myself upstairs, and find the door already open, with Kelsey pouring the finest cheap wine into glasses.

“Congratulations!” she cheers, shoving a glass into my hand. We’ve been friends for years, ever since we wound up sharing an apartment with a married couple who would have screaming fits at three a.m. We decided to move into a basement studio together to get away from them, and have been roomies ever since. It’s an unlikely pairing—she’s the blonde bombshell, I’m the one who remembers to pay the electricity bill—but she’s been a great friend to me.

We toast. “To new beginnings!”

I take a sip, then flop onto the couch and let out a relieved sigh. It’s been the longest day.

“So... tell me everything!” Kelsey demands. “Did you meet him? Was he hot? I heard he was scorching.”

I gulp my wine. Scorching just about summed it up.

“Come on, details?”

I look down at my shirt. His shirt. “He’s… Handsome. In a kind of unyielding marble statue way. Like a Greek god,” I decide.

Kelsey sighs happily.

“All the women at the salon do is talk about him. Not only is he blessed in the looks department... Supposedly, he’s blessed in bed.”

I flush. “They talk about that?”

“Girl, that’s the only thing they talk about.” She snorts with laughter. “Who he’s fucking, where, and how much. Supposedly, it’s a lot. Supposedly, he made a woman come so hard, she passed out.”

I snort on my wine. “That’s not possible!”

“I like to think it is.” Kelsey grins.

But what do I know?

I lean back. Maybe it is possible. Maybe there’s a whole lot more to sex than the grasping, sweating, and thrusting I seem to wind up with. Men whose idea of foreplay lasts all of five minutes—or, worse, are so determined to make you come to score points that they turn it into a dull Olympic event.

You can tell so much by the way someone kisses.

Going by that kiss, I have a feeling that I would be in serious trouble if I ever found myself in bed with Caleb Sterling.

A little shiver runs through me at the thought.

What it would be like to be pleasured by Caleb—to the point of sheer oblivion?

The doorbell buzzes, and Kelsey hops off the couch to answer.

“Uh . . . Juliet? Did you order something?”

My eyes fly open. “Of course not. You know my budget would be blown to smithereens if I so much as threw a new Great Lash Mascara in our grocery order.”

“Then what’s this?”

She hoists a giant white Bloomingdale’s box toward the sofa. It’s bigger than I am. How did it even fit through the door?

I jump up to help her. “It’s probably been delivered to the wrong address.”

“Then why does it have your name on it?”

I catch the yellow slip stapled to the front.