But by the happiest coincidence, this precise situation seemed to bring out two of Richard Storm’s most appealing character traits. For one thing, he was capable of displaying almost boundless patience and good nature with people he truly liked, women especially. He’d been born like that probably, but formative years of dealing with a fractious, theatrical and yet adorable mother had honed this feature of his personality to a skill. Of course, even for him, patience wasn’t particularly easy just then. Sophia was even better looking with her clothes off. Lying on her bed on her back, with her breasts spilling wide. Her face turned up to him, her eyes panicky and entreating. Her skin may have felt frosty to her, but it was burning under his hand, burning. And she had one white knee bent, parting her legs to him, a sight that made him so hard he was afraid he might go off like a rocket and end up three blocks away. He had been dreaming of taking her—against a wall, on the floor, over a chair—a little knockout passion, a little ripping of clothes, a little Brando action from Last Tango in Paris. He wanted to send her richocheting off the stars like a pinball. It’s never been like that for me before, Richard! He’d had the whole thing pretty well worked out in his mind.

But that was the other thing about him: his nature, his business, a not altogether inattentive eye on the world, had combined long ago to convince him of the important fact that things almost never shake out the way they do in the movies. He scoped the real lie of the land pretty quickly. He held her, stroked her, kissed her. He cooed to her long after the inner powers were shrieking for him to morph into a human jackhammer. And in the end, with jazzman fingers and a serpent’s tongue—and with a little bit of the gunk from a diaphragm that looked like it hadn’t been used since 1947—he was delighted just to slip inside her with a semblance of sweetness and ease. Which is where he wanted to be when he told her he loved her. Which he did, kissing her panicky eyes till they softened, letting great handfuls of that raven black hair cascade from his grip onto her valentine cheeks. Drawing from her, finally, some small signs, at least, of spontaneous pleasure. Which would serve for now. Which was enough.

Spent, of course, he was almost instantly appalled. He was still in her, still on her. She was clinging to him. He was caressing her face. There was light in her brown eyes and she was smiling as if she thought she had done something exceptionally clever. She was even glancing coyly at him. Mata Hari suddenly. Marilyn Monroe. The femme fatale of the universe. He adored her.