Vin shifted off his chair and knelt between her legs, spreading them wider. She was ready for him, and he took her right on the carpet next to his desk. The sex was fast and hard, but she was crazy into it and that turned him on.

As he orgasmed into her, she said his name as if he had given her exactly what she after.

Dropping his head to the fine silk carpet, he breathed hard and didn’t like the way he felt. With the passion gone, he was more than spent; he was barren.

Sometimes it was as if the more he filled her, the emptier he got.

“I want more, Vin,” she said in a deep, guttural voice.

In the locker room shower at the Iron Mask, Marie-Terese stepped under the hot spray and opened her mouth, letting the water wash into her as well as over her. On a stainless-steel dish, there was a golden bar of soap, and she reached for it without having to look over. The Dial imprint was nearly washed smooth, which meant the thing was going to last only another two or three nights.

As she washed every inch of her body, her tears joined the sudsy water, following its path into the drain at her feet. In some ways, this was the hardest part of the night, this time alone with the warm steam and the rotgut soap—worse even than the post-confession blues.

God, it was getting so that even the smell of Dial was enough to make her eyes water, proof positive Pavlov didn’t just know about dogs.

When she was done, she stepped out and grabbed a rough white towel. Her skin tightened up in the cold, shrinking, becoming like armor, and her will to keep going performed a similar retraction, pulling in her emotions and holding them secure once more.

In the cubicle outside, she changed back into her jeans and her turtleneck and her fleece, stuffing her work clothes into the duffel. Her hair took about ten minutes of blow-drying before she was ready to go out into the chilly night with it, and the extra time at the club made her pray for summer.

“You almost ready to go?”

Trez’s voice came through the locker room’s closed door and she had to smile. Same words every night, and always at the very moment she put the hair dryer down.

“Two minutes,” she called out.

“No worries.” Trez meant that, too. He always made a point to escort her to her car, no matter how long it took her to get ready to leave.

Marie-Terese put the dryer down, drew her hair back, and wrapped a scrunchie around the thick waves—

She leaned in closer to the mirror. Sometime during the shift, she’d lost an earring and God only knew where the thing was. “Damn it.”