With Rebecca’s face came a deep searing regret as other sexual images came to mind, her auburn hair curling from the mist of a rainstorm, her perfect breasts and the curve of her spine, the little mole beneath one shoulder blade that he always kissed when he was making love to her and she was face down on a pillow, the way her lips parted when he touched the underside of her breast.

Rivers tore off the sunglasses. Dropped them onto the counter.

Felt like a voyeur.

Make that a thief and a voyeur.

And dirty—invading others’ most intimate of thoughts while his own pulse was racing.

“Careful, darling,” Astrid seemed to whisper in his ear. “You’re going to get caught and when you do—oh, my. The you-know-what is really going to hit the fan. Face it, Brett, you’re sick.” She laughed then, that trilling, nasty little Astrid laugh. “Do you get off on this? Does it feel good? As I said, ‘Sick, sick, sick!’”

“Go away,” he said aloud and realized he was sweating, his heart pounding. That happened sometimes.

He hadn’t been born with this gift—or, more accurately, this curse. He’d never had this kind of insight until late in high school after a bout with pneumonia and a fever that had spiked and fallen only to spike again. He’d spent nearly a week in the hospital, when the prospects for his recovery had been touch and go. He’d been in a semi-conscious state for seventy-two hours, and when he’d finally come to, he’d realized that he’d missed two important basketball games and that his girlfriend, Belinda Sommers, had started seeing Juan Martinez, the fastest tight end the Eagles football team had ever seen and one of Rivers’s best friends.

Belinda hadn’t mentioned that she’d started seeing Juan when she’d broken up with Brett once he was home. She’d thought she’d given him back a simple class ring that she’d kept on a chain around her neck. What neither of them had known at the time was that the ring had been so much more. When Rivers had returned it to his finger, he’d been stunned by images of Belinda making out with Martinez in the back seat of his classic Dodge Charger. Rivers had felt her passion, her fear of getting caught, her excitement at being with Martinez, but she’d never experienced one ounce of guilt about cheating on her hospitalized boyfriend.

Rivers had figured he was better off without her and had tossed the damned ring out of his bedroom window.

The class ring had been his entry into this new world. His first, but far from the last, and now Rivers couldn’t help but use whatever this insight was to his advantage.

Now he was a little calmer, the perspiration on his forehead receding.