Sacred Sins

take things slow.
    His mouth was close to hers. His hand was still on her hair. “You like butter on your popcorn?”
    Tess didn't know whether to laugh or curse. Deciding to do neither, she told herself she was relaxed. “Tons of it.”
    “Good. Then I don't have to spring for two boxes. It's cold outside,” he added, leaning away from her. “You'll need gloves.”

    He drew out his own scarred black leather ones before he opened the door.

    “I' D forgotten just how frightening those movies were.”
    It was dark when Tess settled back in his car, sated with pizza and cheap red wine. The air was biting, stinging her cheeks with the first brush of winter before she slid into Ben's car. Neither the cold nor the media was keeping Washington indoors. The Saturday-night stream of traffic rolled by, on its way to clubs, supper, and parties.
    “I've always appreciated the way the cop gets the girl in the House of Wax .”
    “All Vincent needed was a good analyst,” she said mildly as Ben adjusted the radio.
    “Sure, and he'd have dumped you in the vat, coated you with wax, and turned you into…” He turned his head for a narrowed-eyed study. “Helen of Troy, I think.”
    “Not bad.” She pursed her lips. “Of course, some psychiatrists might say you chose that, subconsciously linking yourself with Paris.”
    “As a cop, I wouldn't romanticize kidnapping.”
    “Pity.” She let her eyes half close, not even aware of how easy it was for her to relax with him. The heater hummed in accompaniment to the moody music from the car radio. She remembered the lyrics and sang them in her head.
    “Tired?”
    “No, comfortable.” As soon as the words were out, she straightened. “I'll probably have a few nightmares. Horror movies are a wonderful escape valve for real tensions. I guarantee no one in that theater was thinking about their next insurance payment or acid rain.”

    He let out a breezy chuckle as he drove out of the parking lot. “You know, Doc, some people might look at it as simple entertainment. It didn't seem like you were thinking escape valve when you dug holes in my arm when our heroine was running through the fog.”
    “It must have been the woman on the other side of you.”
    “I was sitting on the aisle.”
    “She had a long reach. You missed the turn to my apartment.”
    “I didn't miss it. I didn't take it. You said you weren't tired.”
    “I'm not.” She wasn't sure she'd ever felt more awake, more alive. The song seemed to be playing just under her skin, promising romance and exquisite heartache. She'd always thought the first was somehow imcomplete without the second. “Are we going somewhere?”
    “A little place I know where the music's good and they don't water down the liquor.”
    She ran her tongue over her teeth. “I'd like that.” She was in the mood for music, something bluesy maybe, with the ache of a tenor sax. “I suppose in a professional capacity you're well acquainted with the local bars.”
    “I've got a working knowledge.” He punched in his car lighter. “You're not the bar type.”
    Interested, she faced him. His profile was in shadows, struck intermittently by streetlights. It was funny how sometimes he looked safe, solid, the kind of man a woman might run to if it were dark. Then the light struck his face another way, and the planes and angles were highlighted. A woman might run from him. She shook off the thought. She'd made a policy not to analyze men she dated. Too often you learned more than you wanted to know.
    “Is there a type?”
    “Yeah.” And he knew them all. “You're not it. Hotel lounge. Champagne cocktails at the Mayflower or the Hotel Washington.”

    “Now who's doing psychological profiles, Detective?”
    “You've got to be able to type people in my business, Doc.” He pulled up and maneuvered into a space between a Honda three-wheeler and a Chevette hatchback. Before he turned off the key, he wondered if he was making a mistake.
    “What's this?”
    “This.” He pulled out the keys but left them jingling in his hand. “Is where I live.”
    She looked out the window at a four-story apartment building with faded red brick and green awnings. “Oh.”
    “I don't have any champagne.”
    Her decision. She understood him well enough to understand that. But she understood little else about him. The car was warm and quiet. Safe. Inside, she didn't know what to expect. She knew herself well enough to understand how seldom she took