Heat by Francine Pascal Page A

bits of information fit together as Mary thought, it made for
interesting results.
Gaia Moore's father was somewhere in New York.
    That was information Mary thought Gaia might find very interesting.
    SAM
    It's supposed to be a dream. In fact, it's supposed to be the classic dream, something every male in America fantasizes about
.
    You're sitting alone when this beautiful woman walks up and sits down beside you. You might be drunk enough to think any woman looks good, but you're not drunk enough that you don't recognize gorgeous when you see it. True, this woman might be a little older than you, and she might be a little more slutty than your usual taste, but isn't that part of the way the dream works? This is a woman with a lot of experience when it comes to sex
.
    This beautiful woman--beautiful, sexy woman--starts to talk to you. She tells you you're cute. She says she likes you. She tells you she's all alone. She puts her hand on your leg. She brings her face so close, you can smell the flavor of her lipstick. And eventually she asks you if you want to go home with her
.
    What are you going to say?
    So, the two of you end up in a hotel room, and the dress comes off, and she's just as sexy as you thought she would be. Her body is incredible
.
    She's as experienced as you thought she was. She knows exactly what do with her hands. And her mouth. And her body. Even if you're half drunk--even if you're ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent drunk--you're not falling asleep on this performance. She moves like no one you've ever met. She bends in places you didn't even know human beings had joints. She keeps you going not just once or twice but until exhaustion catches up with drunk and the room spins. When you fall asleep, she's still pressed against you. Warm, and soft, and sexy
.
    When you wake up, the woman is gone. There's no note. The hotel room is taken care of. There are no obligations or commitments. You get one night of fantastic sex with one unbelievable woman and the price tag is zero. That's the dream, right? The all-American male sex fantasy
.
    So why does it feel so much like a nightmare?

The fear of dying
    Mary had absolutely no doubt that someone had come to kill her.
    IT WAS AFTER NOON BEFORE SAM
made it back to his dorm room. As soon as he was inside, he stumbled across the room and collapsed on his bed.
    The Real Dream
    Either the bartender was wrong or Sam didn't have the typical reaction to vodka.
If there were hangovers worse than the one he was feeling, Sam didn't want to know about it.
Already he felt like someone had lifted the top of his skull, poured in a box of thumbtacks, and put the lid back on. Add in the family of gerbils that had taken up residence in his stomach, and Sam was ready to call the Mafia and see if he could hire a killer to come and shoot him.
    Sam crawled up the bed until his face was smashed against the pillow and tried to keep his head from exploding. The drums down the hall were silent this time, but they weren't needed. Sam's heart was beating all on its own. On some scale, he knew that the hangover was getting better. The idea that he might actually live through it now seemed like a possibility--not that death wasn't still an attractive option.
    The bone-crushing hangover might not have felt quite so bad if Sam hadn't also felt so guilty.
    Heather cheated first.
    That was true. In fact, once one partner had
    cheated, could you even call what the other did cheating at all? Shouldn't it be like getting a free hit?
    Of course, Sam had kissed Gaia when he was still supposed to be with Heather.
And there was the little detail of his constant Gaia obsession.
    Sam worked at trying to get the right feeling of justification, but he couldn't manage to find it. Even memories of the great sex he had experienced the night before didn't help. Sam couldn't get past the idea that the sex was wrong. Great, but wrong.
    It didn't matter that Heather had cheated. Heather didn't know that Sam knew