“After barely seeing you all week? Yeah, fucking you is all I can think about. When I stop thinking about fucking you, start worrying.”
She knew that Josh didn’t think it was ladylike for a woman to say “fuck.” It was one of those things he’d learned to get used to. Sarah even suspected that it secretly turned him on. She was so different than his friends’ wives. She was more like the wives in Penthouse Forum.
Sarah shoveled the eggs into her mouth along with the rest of the bacon and then stood up, still chewing. She walked over to the garbage can and scraped the pancakes off the plate into the trash.
“Hey!”
“I love you, honey. But there’s no way I’m eatin’ that shit. I do appreciate it though. You’re sweet for trying.”
“Thanks. Sweet is exactly what I was going for.”
He looked truly hurt. He looked down at his own plate full of burned pancakes, then walked over to the garbage and tossed his uneaten breakfast in as well.
“Oh, well. I tried.”
“And I love you for it.”
Sarah stood up on her tiptoes and kissed Josh on the cheek. Josh was not a small man. He was six foot four and over 250 pounds. He’d played hockey in college and had once had aspirations of making an NHL team. That was until he’d lost his athletic scholarship and had to admit that he didn’t have a hockey player’s killer instinct. He still played hockey on the weekends whenever he didn’t have to work or when Sarah didn’t nag him into staying home with her, which she did often. After he’d worked all week, if he finally got a weekend off, she didn’t want him spending it chasing a bunch of men up and down the ice with a stick. She wanted him all to herself. She knew it was selfish and she ought to have felt guilty about it but she didn’t. Sometimes she tried to be supportive and went to watch him play. The hotel he worked at sponsored their league and they played against other hotels, bars, and strip clubs that all had their own teams. Sarah knew that it made Josh feel great to compete in those games. It was the closest to the NHL he’d ever get. And it was a good excuse for him to stay in shape. His size and muscles made Sarah feel safe and when he hugged her she felt like a child again, without a care in the world.
“Okay, I’ll go put some clothes on and we’ll go say hi to another neighbor that we’ll probably never speak to again as long as we live here. But when we come back in I’m going to fuck you like I paid for you.” She smiled mischievously, then skipped up the stairs.
Upstairs in the bedroom, Sarah began to sweat. Her hands shook as she reached for the T-shirt. She was shrugging into a pair of jeans and almost fell over. Her legs were trembling.
What the hell is wrong with me?
She began to hyperventilate. The room tilted and whirled like a carnival ride.
I think I’m having an anxiety attack. Either that or a stroke.
She held on to the closet shelves and took deep breaths, waiting for the moment to pass. She thought about calling Josh but her pride prevented her. Sarah didn’t want her husband to think she was weak. She had always been afraid to show weakness around him or any man. She considered herself the rock of the relationship. She was the strong, steady one, the one who never worried, never panicked, never flipped out no matter how difficult things got. Josh was the one who panicked whenever they were late paying a phone bill and rushed to the doctors whenever he had a cough or a stomachache. Sarah always kidded her husband about being a hypochondriac. The last thing she wanted was for him to see her freaking out.
“Sarah? Sarah, you coming?”
After a few more breaths the trembling in her body stopped and her breathing settled back into a normal rhythm. She finished pulling on her jeans and slipped on a pair of flip-flops.
“Sarah!”
“I’m coming right now!”
Sarah trotted down the steps and met her husband at the front door.
“What took you so long? Why are you all sweaty?”
“Well, you wouldn’t fuck me so I had to do it myself. You wouldn’t want me meeting the neighbor when I was all horny, would you?”
Josh’s eyes widened.
“You didn’t.”
“A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
Sarah walked out the front door, leaving Josh standing there with his mouth hanging open.
The moving truck was almost empty when Sarah crossed the street to greet the neighbor. Josh jogged across the street to catch up with her. The movers all stared at her like they hadn’t see a woman in years. Josh draped an arm around her protectively, claiming his territory.
“You’re jealous. That’s sweet.”
“Okay, let’s just meet the guy and go home.”
“He’s the guy standing in the garage.”
Sarah and Josh walked toward the garage where a skinny guy in a white polo shirt stood, holding a blender and looking around as if searching for an escape route.
“Hi! We’re your new neighbors. I’m Sarah and this is my husband, Josh.”
Sarah held out her hand and the man looked at it for a second as if he were afraid it was going to grow teeth and bite him. Sarah looked back at her husband, then back at the man and smiled. The skinny man reached out tentatively and gripped Sarah’s hand.
“I-I’m Dale. D-Dale McCarthy.”
Josh stepped up and stuck out his hand. The skinny man winced as if he thought Josh was about to strike him.
“Nice to meet you, Dale. This is a great house you’ve got here. We knew the previous owners. Nice old couple. They took great care of the place.”
The skinny man shook Josh’s hand and smiled nervously.
“Nice to meet you both. You live across the street?”
He looked at Sarah when he asked, then looked away, dropping his gaze toward the ground and grinning. Sarah once again felt a shiver race up her spine.
“Yeah, we live in the big two-story. So where ya from, Dale? What brings you to Vegas?”
“I’m from Mesquite originally but I just moved here from Henderson. I do Web design.”
“I’m a blackjack dealer over at the Hollywood Galaxy Casino. The wife here just finished grad school and she’s still working on her dissertation. It’s a study of the sociological effects of pornography on society’s collective unconscious or something like that. She’s going for a doctorate in social science.”
“Wow. Congratulations. You must be really proud.” He was staring at her breasts when he spoke. His odd little grin was widening. He was almost drooling.
“Thanks.” Sarah folded her arms across her chest and crossed her legs, visibly uncomfortable. She looked at Josh and then back at the house and then back at the skinny little man in the white polo shirt.
“She’s the brains of the operation. I’m hoping that soon she’ll be the one taking care of me. They’ve already offered her a position at UNLV.”
“Excuse me? Where do you want your TV?”
A large black man in gray overalls with LOW-COST MOVERS silk-screened across the chest stood holding a plasma screen in his enormous hands.
“Jesus! Be careful with that. Put it in the master bedroom.”
“Well, Dale, I’ll let you get back to moving. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too.”
Once again Dale looked at Sarah when he spoke, then down at her breasts, then grinned awkwardly and looked away. Sarah turned and walked back across the street, anxious to get out of the man’s sight. Something about the way the neighbor looked at her made her feel violated. She felt like she needed to take a shower. Josh had to almost run to catch up to her. He caught up with her just as she opened the front door and stepped inside. She shut the door behind him and locked it.
“What was that all about?”
Sarah closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, trying to slow her racing heartbeat.
“That fucking guy is weird. He creeps me the fuck out. He’s got to be some kind of pervert or something. Why did you have to tell him I was home alone all day?”<
br />
“I didn’t say that!”
“You told him that I was home working on my dissertation while you’re at work. I don’t want that weirdo knowing that I’m here by myself when you’re at work.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was a big deal. I was just making small talk.”
“It’s okay. I’m probably just overreacting.”
Josh smiled and gathered her into his arms.
“I’ve never seen you this agitated before. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m okay. It’s just the way that pervert was looking at me. He kept sneaking peeks at my breasts. Did you see that? And he could barely make eye contact with me.”
“The guy just looked like he was terrified. A lot of guys are just nervous around beautiful women. A computer geek like that has probably never been with a woman as beautiful as you without paying for her.”
“Oh, thanks. That makes me feel better.”
Josh brushed the hair from her face and kissed her on the lips. It was a long, deep kiss, sucking her tongue into his mouth, nibbling and sucking her bottom lip. Sarah had always loved the way he kissed her. Even after ten years of marriage it still made her knees weak.
“You want to go upstairs?” Sarah asked breathlessly.
“No. I want to fuck you right here on the floor.”
Now it was Sarah’s turn to blush.
CHAPTER SIX
Dale watched the couple walk back across the street. His eyes crept down to the woman’s ass as if they had a will of their own. It was small but round and tight. She was beautiful. He had seen her standing in the window earlier. He couldn’t really make out her features but he knew someone was there and now he knew that it had been her. She hadn’t been wearing a bra when she met him. He could see her nipples poking through the fabric of her shirt. She had a lovely face too. Big doelike eyes, slightly slanted as if she had some Asian blood in her somewhere. She had high cheekbones and full lips. Her hair was shoulder length, a deep, lush black, with wild loose curls. Dale thought she looked more like a movie star than a doctor of sociology or social science or whatever it was she was studying. She looked a lot like his mother.
Her husband had said that she didn’t work, but that he did. That would leave Dale and his new neighbor plenty of time to get acquainted. But Dale wasn’t sure he could wait for the guy to go to work on Monday. Luckily he didn’t have to. It didn’t matter how big the guy was if he didn’t know it was coming. And Dale was going to make sure that neither of them knew what hit them. An erection was already tenting the front of his jeans.
Dale spent the rest of the day organizing his things in his new home. The movers had all gone and boxes sat upon boxes in every room of the house. The house was small, only 1,300 square feet. But it was perfect for him. It had two bedrooms, two baths, and a den with a window that looked out onto the street. His neighbor had been right. The old couple who had owned the house previously had taken great care of the place. For such a small place they had packed it with expensive upgrades. They must have spent almost as much upgrading the place as they had on the house itself. They must have thought this would be their last house, the house they would die in. Then they had lost most of their retirement in the stock market and their interest-only loan had adjusted and they’d been forced into foreclosure. Dale had picked up the house for half of what it had been worth a year ago.
The appliances in the kitchen were stainless steel, the cabinets were cherry wood with brushed nickel handles and glass fronts. Dale thought he would have to get better dinnerware. His dishes were mismatched and half of them were stained or chipped. Not that he ever entertained but he still liked his place to look good just in case, and seeing his old cheap dinner plates through the glass cabinet doors made the house look cheaper. It made it look like he didn’t really belong in such a nice place.
The knobs and hinges on all the doors in the house were also brushed nickel, like the handles on the cabinets. There were faux wood blinds, which matched the cabinets, on all the windows. The floors in the kitchen, living room, hallway, and both bathrooms were covered in twenty-by-twenty-inch travertine, white with orange, black, and brown veins running through it. The wood floor in the den was the same cherry color as the cabinets and shutters. The only things Dale didn’t like were the white walls. With all the other upgrades you would have thought they would have painted the walls a different color, maybe an accent wall or two or a faux finish. He would have to take care of that later.
Dale walked into the den and began unpacking his computer. He moved his desk over by the window so he could look out at the house across the street while he was working. He began unpacking his printer, his scanner. He plugged in his digital webcam and the speaker on his computer and then began unpacking all of his books.
It took him almost two hours but Dale managed to unpack, organize, and decorate his den. His bookcases were filled with books on Web design, true crime, and detective thrillers, along with crime-scene investigation and police procedure and old erotic novels from Anais Nin, Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch, Henry Miller, and de Sade. In several boxes that remained unopened were black-market DVDs and old VHS tapes of vintage pornography, including S-and-M movies from the eighties and nineties and some more modern torture films.
His computer was up and working. A picture of his mom and dad hung on the wall opposite the window. He had even hung up a couple of movie posters from two of his favorite movies, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. Dale loved Quentin Tarantino movies. Tarantino was his favorite director.
Dale had posters of several Russ Meyers films still rolled up that he was planning to hang in his bedroom. That would be his next project. The movers hadn’t even put his bed together and his mattress and box spring were leaning against the door to the master bathroom. At this rate, he wouldn’t be done until well after dark. That would just barely leave him time for dinner and a brief nap before it was time to visit the new neighbors.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sarah watched Josh rinse the dishes and stack them in the dishwasher while she curled up on the couch waiting for Real Time with Bill Maher to start. Josh had made dinner tonight and she had to admit that it wasn’t half bad. He’d found a recipe for enchiladas in one of those little recipe books you picked up at the supermarket and had baked her some, using tortillas, Monterey Jack cheese, fire-roasted red chilies, cream-of-mushroom soup, and Old El Paso green enchilada sauce. It was actually pretty good and Sarah had eaten half the pan. She’d have to do a long run tomorrow or else she’d be packing on the pounds. She knew Josh would love her even if she got fat.
“Would you still love me if I gained a bunch of weight?” It didn’t hurt to ask.
“When you marry a woman, you always have to assume that she’s gonna gain at least thirty or forty pounds. You’ve still got like twenty pounds to go.”
“What? I’m still the same size I was when you met me.”
“I don’t know about that. You’ve been eating a lot of ice cream lately.”
“You’re a pig. You know that don’t you? A male-chauvinist pig.”
“That’s just how you like me.”
“Now you’ve got me thinking about ice cream. Why don’t you run to the store and get us some?”
“Why don’t you? I cooked dinner. Remember?”
Sarah hugged the afghan wrapped around her.
“But I’m so comfy.”
“You’re the one who wants ice cream. I’m just the guy who deserves it.”
“You’re such a jerk. I can’t believe you’re trying to make me feel guilty.”
“Guilty for what? For not getting ice cream for your poor tired hubby after he’s worked hard all week and then slaved over a hot stove all day to make you a nice meal? I did cook you breakfast and dinner.”
“Well, I made lunch and you burned the pancakes this morning, so we’re even. But the enchiladas were pretty good. I guess that’s worth a trip to the grocery store.”
“Wa
it until I finish with the dishes. I’ll go with you.”
“That’s a good hubby.”
“Don’t push it, woman.”
Josh and Sarah were arm in arm, looking like new love as they walked out of the house and climbed into their SUV. When they drove off, they glanced only casually at the house across the street. There was a light on in the den and Sarah thought she could make out the silhouette of the neighbor’s head through the closed blinds.
An hour later they were curled up in bed with a couple pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, watching Dexter on Showtime. Sarah was asleep before the credits rolled.
Josh must have gotten up and turned off the television after she’d fallen asleep because the room was completely black when Sarah awoke suddenly to the sound of her husband choking. She reached out for him and her hand came back wet. Josh was bleeding. His throat had been cut. He was choking on his own blood. When Sarah’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw the new neighbor standing above her husband, stabbing him in his chest again and again.
“Oh my God! What are you doing? Josh! Oh my God! Josh! Get the fuck away from my husband! You’re killing him! Heeelllp!”
Sarah grabbed hold of her husband and began scrambling off the bed, trying to drag him with her, away from the crazed man with the knife.
The neighbor put the knife, dripping with her husband’s blood, against Sarah’s throat and raised a finger to his lips.
“Shhhhhhh. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. I don’t want to kill you but I will and I’ll enjoy it.” Dale smiled to emphasize the point. “I’m going to fuck you anyway. Dead or alive.”
“Y-you-you killed Josh. Oh my God. You killed him!”
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