The Sex Files

“You still here, Oliver?” Before he could respond, Anna added, “You know that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, right?”

“Good thing my name’s not Jack.”

She nodded at a blond man in an expensive suit wending his way through the cubicles. A distinctive birthmark stained his left cheek. “That’s Miles McLaughlin, right? He looks like Don Johnson on the Miami Vice reruns.” She paused. “And you’re right. He also looks like a jerk.”

Oliver eyed the head of the Information Systems Department, brainchild for the paperless FBI and co-creator of the new Quick Composite software. “What tipped you off? That he’s wearing sunglasses inside the building?”

Anna laughed, contemplating a tall, massively built black man with a shaved head who was as nattily dressed as Miles. “Yep. His sidekick looks like an African-American Bruce Willis.”

“Kevin Hall.” He was the other half of the Quick Composite team. “In their honor, I’m calling my next book Disappearing Evidence. Or maybe the Virtual FBI…”

“What about FBI Dot-Com?”

“Clever. They’re referring to this place as the E-Bureau.”

Anna giggled. “Really?”

“Really.”

“You sound cynical. I thought you backed the bureau all the way.”

Oliver had done so publicly, but for every criminal caught by new methods, others roamed free and, as far as he was concerned, the agency’s E-Bureau was siphoning manpower. Destroying hard-copy records was crazy. “You should see what’s happening downstairs.”

“That bad, huh?”

The basement was in pandemonium. On the first floor, files from open cardboard boxes were being scanned into a central database. Upstairs, Miles and Kevin were holding meetings, announcing that in the new global economy, evidence was going to become superfluous. “J. Edgar Hoover’s probably rolling over in his grave,” Oliver muttered. He slugged back a last gulp of mochaccino just as lightning flashed, illuminating the entrance to Grand Central Station.

“Big Brother,” Anna said, shaking her head, “you look grim. I think Kate Olsen hit the nail on the head.” Laughing, her eyes twinkling, Anna reiterated Kate’s words. “‘We know you deal with the darker side of life, Mr. Vargo, but what about the lighter side?’” Pausing, Anna offered her best dumb-doofus expression, then lightly mocked her brother, saying, “Duh? Lighter side? Fun? What’s that?”

Oliver couldn’t help but smile.

“Which brings me to something else,” she plunged on. “While I’m in the Virgin Islands, promise me you’ll meet some people. I’m leaving phone numbers for all my girlfriends who developed crushes on you when they saw you on TV. They all want you in the worst way.”

“So, it was you who put all those condoms in my wallet.”

“Who did you think it was? The condom fairy?” He chuckled as she continued. “You seem stressed and overtired, and you look like you need a vacation. Since it’s been so long that you’ve obviously forgotten, sex is the closest thing to a vacation when you don’t have time to go out of town.”

“It hasn’t been that long.”

She leveled him with a stare. “Did you do it with Kate Olsen?”

“None of your business.”

“I didn’t think so,” Anna returned.

Damn. His little sister had been playing matchmaker ever since his arrival. When it came to fixing him up, he was beginning to think there was nothing she wouldn’t try. While he considered calling one of her friends for a date, he looked down at the entrance to Grand Central and a sidewalk teeming with open umbrellas. People without them crowded under awnings, craning their necks to stare at the downpour as if they expected the rain to stop sometime soon. Others lifted coats over their heads and ran through the deluge.

“Have fun while I’m gone,” Anna was saying. “You work all the time, Ollie.”

So did she, and the way Oliver figured it, they were lucky to love their work. Anna’s boyfriend, Vic, was just as passionate and could talk for hours about the various ways photographers manipulated images. Kate Olsen also enjoyed working, so it was too bad she hadn’t rung his chimes. The truth was, lately he’d been rejecting most women. It was as if, deep down, he’d decided on an image of what he was really looking for and now he was waiting for that dream woman to materialize.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Anna announced, drawing Oliver from his reverie as she put the Sex Files CD into his ROM drive. “We’ll get a picture of the sexiest woman first. That’ll get your juices flowing, so you’ll be ready to call all my friends who are dying to meet you.”

This was definitely more intriguing than getting a printout of the sexiest man. “I’m working on the Most Wanted List.”

Anna leaned and jiggled the mouse, moving the cursor. “We can keep that program open,” she assured. “We’ll minimize it and work in another window.” He watched as she hit RUN.

They waited.

And then text filled the screen. Anna groaned in disappointment. “I thought you said we’d get a picture.”

“We will when you scroll down.”

“Oh, but this is good,” she whispered, reading the words. “America’s Sexiest Woman would be named Cameron,” she announced breathlessly.

“And according to this, she’d be tall,” he added. “Five-eleven.”

“Her measurements are thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six,” continued Anna. “And she loves wearing sexy clothes.”

“She sounds like a walking cliché.” Still, as he continued reading, there was no denying the pull of arousal. Barely suppressing a shiver, he tried to ignore the tightening below his belt, but it only increased when he read that Cameron never wore panties under her Lycra slacks, body-hugging knit dresses and silk teddies.

When she has to get dressed at all, the text read, Cameron likes to get out and have spicy, erotic adventures. She especially loves the excitement of world travel and meeting new male playmates. She likes a hint of danger, too. Exploring kinky aphrodisiacs is her favorite pastime, and she dabbles in everything from body paints to edible undies. Cameron will do absolutely anything—and everything—to please her man.

Oliver was surprised by how easily he was getting sucked into the fantasy. He prided himself on not being sexist and for liking a woman for her mind, though he thoroughly enjoyed the rest. “If I was a woman,” he commented, dragging a hand through his hair, “I’d hate this kind of thing.”

Anna laughed. “But you’re a man.”

As such, he had to admit that he found this fantasy woman appealing. “Point taken.”

Anna merely shrugged. “Ah. You don’t scroll. There’s a link.” She clicked on the mouse. In the instant before the image of America’s Sexiest Woman filled the screen, she said, “So, this is what Cameron would look like if she were real.”

Oliver felt as if somebody had punched him. Her hair was dark blond, a shade most would call honey, but it was shot through with everything from pale straw to bumblebee yellow to strands of brilliant white. Looking as soft as silk, it hung in loose waves past her shoulders, tightening into curls where the ends rested on a tan cashmere sweater.

His eyes dropped to her breasts. Slightly aroused nipples pebbled under the shirt. In contrast to what he’d felt with Kate Olsen, he found himself imagining cupping those mounds, then slowly stroking their creamy sides and swirling his tongue around their excited, satiny tips. When his eyes traveled toward her face, he couldn’t tear them away. Her neck was so nice. Very round, very creamy. And her face… “She reminds me of film stars from the forties.”

“Veronica Lake, maybe,” Anna agreed.

Parted in a jagged line, her hair framed her face, waving over one of her unusually wide-set dark eyes, lending an air of mystery. Miles McLaughlin hadn’t been kidding about the photographic quality of the pictures generated by Quick Composite, either. Cameron definitely looked real.

And familiar.

He could swear he’d seen her somewhere, but that was probably because she was such a cliché-woman, blond and dark-eyed with a perfect body. Because the picture looked so real, he had to remind himself that she didn’t really exist as he continued surveying her.

Her face was closer to round than oval; her cheekbones high and slanted. Light-brown eyebrows arched on poreless, pink-toned skin. Her mouth was decidedly kissable, the red, glistening lips parted slightly. The velvet tip of a tongue was exposed, touching a very slight, sexy gap between her two front teeth.

“Before you get carried away, Oliver,” murmured Anna, studying his expression, “please remember she’s not real.”

He barely heard.

“I’ll come back when you’re not so bedazzled,” she continued on a sigh, planting a kiss on her brother’s cheek. “I still want to see the sexiest guy. But now I’m late. I’ve got to run to Bloomie’s for another bathing suit to take to the islands. See you for dinner? After work, Vic and I want to take you to Little Italy. We want you to meet a friend of ours. If you hit it off, you can spend time together on Thanksgiving or Christmas. Her family—”

“Is going out of town, just like you and Vic, and Mom and Dad. C’mon, quit worrying about me. I’ll be fine over the holidays. And I’ll get my own dates.”

“When?”

He merely shrugged, his gaze returning to the computer screen. When he looked up again, Anna was gone. Because he turned instinctively toward the window to catch a glimpse of her, he was staring down at Forty-second Street when lightning jagged across the sky, illuminating the entrance to Grand Central Station.

The flash lasted only a heartbeat, just long enough for his jaw to slacken and for his heart to miss a beat as the angry sky turned dark again. He felt sure he was going crazy. But she’d been standing there, hadn’t she? He shook his head in disbelief, but he could swear he’d seen the same woman whose image still filled his computer screen.

“Cameron,” he murmured. But it was impossible. It wasn’t really her. It couldn’t be.

No. The lightning had come as fast as a camera flash. Oliver was far away, too. And besides, Cameron wasn’t even real. She was just a computer-generated image they’d gotten by crossing the Sex Files with Quick Composite.

And yet he could swear he’d seen her standing under an awning, staring up at him. She was exactly the same as the picture in every detail, tall and curvy with blond hair that fell over one eye. She’d been wearing a green raincoat. His mouth went dry as he edged closer to the window. Not a man usually given to flights of fancy, he set his mouth in a grim line as he stared down, his eyes piercing the rain and darkness.

When the lightning flashed again, the woman was gone.

2

“WHY, YOU KNOW I’ll do absolutely anything—and everything—to please a man, Oliver,” Cameron was murmuring huskily a few nights later. As Oliver dreamily splayed his hands on the warm mattress and buried his face in a down pillow, she continued. “I live to make a man happy! Exploring kinky aphrodisiacs is my favorite pastime. I’m the kind of woman who lives only to titillate, and tonight I’ve decided you’re the special man who’s going to be my bed partner. Hmm…isn’t this exciting? Doesn’t this feel good, Oliver?”

Clad in only a black silk teddy, Cameron was purring into his ear as she ran a rose-red nail down his chest, tickling the unruly black hairs that bisected his muscular pectorals before slowly tracing each nipple. As she brought him ever closer to the brink, his eyes roved hungrily over her. Her breasts were creamy and spilling from the low-cut garment, but unfortunately not enough that he could catch more than a glimpse of her tight, straining nipples, something that made him groan. Heat pooled in his belly when he took in the teddy’s hem, which hit where her shapely thighs met. And when she moved, he could see matching panties that covered just enough to hint at the hidden temptations she had in store for him.

“Are you enjoying this, Oliver?” she coaxed, dampening a finger with her tongue before continuing her exploration of his chest in a way that made him shiver. “What about this, Oliver?” she queried, using both hands to massage his pectorals. Inching down, her thumbs dipped into crevices as she explored his rib cage. “Or this?”

“It all feels great,” he managed hoarsely. “Just great, Cameron.” He’d had sex with a lot of women, and he’d fallen in love with some, but he’d never experienced anything like this. Cameron was wrapping him around her little finger.

Pulling in her scent, he awaited more maddening teasing as Cameron’s hands traveled farther southward, her usually soulful brown eyes turning wicked with sensual intent as she paused to swirl mind-shattering patterns on his lower belly, leaving his skin awash with ripples of tingling warmth.

Tensing expectantly, his backside tightened; as pressure built in his loins, he let her do whatever she wanted, silently begging for mercy when she used the backs of her hands to stroke his upper thighs. Every inch of him felt prickly as her now-splayed fingers came closer to the wild tangle of his pubic hair. He arched as she twined her fingers in it, but she still wasn’t touching where he most wanted…

Suddenly, she stopped and merely traced lazy circles around his navel as if she was bored out of her mind. “Cameron,” Oliver warned, his eyes raking down her body, his distracted mind becoming hazier with need as she tortured him.

“What?” she asked innocently.

Shutting his eyes in frustration, he dragged a hand into her hair and closed his fist, lightly tugging. “C’mon, Cameron. Quit fooling around. Touch me.”

“I am touching you, silly.”

“You know what I mean.”

He was throbbing, wanting her so much it hurt, and if she didn’t caress him more intimately, he’d die from the need. Why wasn’t the woman doing something more? Hadn’t she said pleasing men was her sole reason for living? She’d said it in that encouraging voice he couldn’t resist, too. “I thought you were America’s sexiest woman,” he challenged.

“I am,” she purred. “That’s why you’re feeling so…” She whisked a finger around his navel again.

“Frustrated?” he supplied. Yes, he definitely preferred more cerebral women. Of course he did. And yet every time Cameron insisted their relationship be focused on pure pleasure, she left him no choice but to respond. Sex was all this woman wanted….

Cameron was smiling at him mysteriously, looking just like the Mona Lisa as she continued drawing mindless designs on his sensitized skin. He uttered a strangled sound as she reached between her own legs, cupping herself. “Say pretty please, Oliver,” she whispered, a wavy lock of hair falling over her left eye.

“Pretty please,” Oliver murmured, his voice gruff, his pulse quickening as he played along, knowing he’d be happy to indulge in any game this woman initiated… “Tease,” he accused.

“You love it.”

He smiled, looking down into the gaping neckline of the teddy, able to see perky nipples. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

“Is this all a big boy like you wants, Oliver?” she taunted. “Wouldn’t you rather feel something more substantial on all your hot, quivering skin? Wouldn’t you rather feel my mouth?”

As he twisted on the heated water bed his sister usually shared with her boyfriend, Oliver’s eyes remained shut in sleep although his body was radiating with damp, feverish desire. Every time he tossed and turned, hoping to end the frustration of this dream, his movements displaced water. Warm waves rolled back, further exciting him by massaging his pelvis, and as he got even hotter, he thought of wet, cool things such as Cameron’s mouth.

“Oh, Oliver—” Cameron was chuckling naughtily. “Maybe you’d like to model a pair of edible briefs for me. I know you read about how much I like them in the Sex Files. I bet you wish you could feel the languishing lap of my tongue as I lick off all your clothes…?”

He wasn’t wearing any clothes in his dream, but Oliver didn’t bother to correct her, not when she was whispering to him in that sweet voice, her breath fanning his ear in a way that made his lower body surge.

“Edible briefs?” he whispered, hoping she’d say more. He’d heard of the novelty item, of course. Who hadn’t? But he’d never felt the need to bring props into a bedroom. He loved women, and he enjoyed binding them to him using only his body, just the way he planned to do with Cameron.

“Oh.” She panted, her hand dropping another fraction. “Ah,” she added as she scooted downward, settling between his legs, her eager eyes fixing where he’d gotten so hard. Reaching, she grasped the hem of the nightie and, as she lifted it over her head, he ceased to breathe. Lightly licking his lips, he took in her breasts…then the inward curve of her waist…then hips that flared down to…

After he eyed her panties—a scrap of black held together by two tiny red side bows—his hands reached up, brushing the erect tips of her breasts. “You have no idea what I’m going to do to you, Cameron,” he warned, imagining tugging those bows with his teeth…

“Why don’t you tell me? We’ve got all night.” Before he could, she raggedly whispered, “Yes,” her hands bracing against his thighs, her breasts thrusting for his caresses. She threw back her head, her pleasure building, her fingers squeezing into his thighs, the sight of her red fingernails against his skin sending another rush of heat through his veins.

His chest was tight now. Strong bands were wrapping around his ribs. Her hands had turned gentler, and they were rising on his legs like a river about to flood, moving higher…and higher…and higher…

When they bracketed his erection, his eyes settled on her inviting mouth. “Kiss me, Cameron,” he commanded hoarsely, threading his hands deep into hair that felt like corn silk. Strands spilled through his fingers and curled against his wrist, most the color of whiskey in candlelight, the others shot through with different shades of blond. Dragging his nails across her scalp seemed to drive her wild. Good, he thought. Because he wanted her wild and abandoning herself to pleasure.

Her breath caught. “Where exactly do you want me to kiss you, Oliver?”

His voice lowered. “You know where.”

“I have something else in mind.”

She was making him writhe with annoyance! “What?”

Instead of doing him the courtesy of answering, she hopped from the bed, and as she reached for the bedside table, Oliver’s whole world seemed to stop. A thong left her backside bare. Before he could react, she whirled, a bottle of mint-scented oil in her hand, and he watched, fascinated, as she squirted some into her hand. His mouth slackened as she set aside the bottle and massaged her own breasts, pressing them together, deepening the cleavage, and then slathering on the oil until the tips glistened and she was begging for relief that only he could give.

“Oh, yeah,” he whispered as she lowered her chest toward his thighs, her lips only inches from his aroused flesh, her breath warm on his erection, her slender fingers feeling like heaven as they circled where he’d gone so taut. When she squeezed, his head reared back, the pressure more than he could stand, and when he felt her blond hair sweeping his thighs, the sensation added to his delight—and torture. The water bed churned as she kneeled astride, urging him between her luscious, waiting breasts.

Thrusting into the slippery cleavage, he gasped. The oil was mentholated, and with every mind-bending movement, it warmed him and made him tingle. Now he was so unbelievably hot…the oil was frothing…the essence of mint was mixing with Cameron’s heady musk. He was going to come. The cool autumn-night air was bursting with scents, just as Oliver was about to burst…

Vaguely, he realized a siren had sounded.

It came from far off, edging into his consciousness at first, then becoming deafening as an ambulance or police car passed beneath the window overlooking Barrow Street. Blinking, he opened his eyes and sat up in bed, his head pounding from the sudden movement. Whatever he’d been dreaming must have taken him to the outer reaches of REM-phase sleep, because he felt completely groggy.

Dragging a hand through his hair, he realized the strands were damp with perspiration. And that he wasn’t in his own bed in Quantico. Nor was he in a hotel.

“Anna’s,” he whispered, feeling mildly disoriented and surprised to find that his mouth was bone dry. He’d kicked away most of the covers, and the remaining sheet was twisted around his legs.

He was as hard as steel, too.

A groan rumbled in his chest as the dream came back to him: Cameron’s red nails tracing patterns on his skin…the soft stir of her warm, panting breath…the searing feeling as he’d slipped inside her cleavage. Realizing he was still hovering on the brink of release, he drew a sharp breath, his eyes adjusting to the room’s darkness. “Some dream,” he murmured.

It wasn’t the first time the nonexistent woman had entered his nocturnal world, teasing him to distraction. As he’d awakened, he was actually feeling that he couldn’t live without her. Heaven help the woman if he ever really met her…

But of course that was crazy. She wasn’t even real. She didn’t even exist. “I feel like I’m losing my mind,” Oliver whispered.

It had all started when Anna insisted on running the Sex Files statistics through the Quick Composite software, generating the picture of “Cameron.” Ever since, the fantasy woman had been wreaking havoc in Oliver’s life. On two occasions, he’d been convinced he’d actually seen her.

It was impossible, of course. Computer-generated women didn’t materialize. But after Anna left his office, a woman who looked exactly like Cameron had been standing in the street outside Grand Central Station. He could swear to it. She’d been looking at him wistfully, as if she’d desperately wanted to approach him.

And then yesterday at five o’clock, when Oliver left his office, he’d been sure someone was following him. That, of course, was possible. He was a well-known FBI agent and author, and he’d been approached by fans often. Criminals, too.

As he’d been swept along by the rush-hour crowd on Forty-second Street, he’d glanced around, but it was raining hard and he didn’t see anyone suspicious. After he’d ducked into a subway entrance, then transferred at Times Square to another train, he figured he’d lost the person.

But then, at the West Fourth Street station near Anna’s apartment, he’d seen Cameron across the platform. Two train tracks separated them—one going uptown, one downtown—and a train was passing on Oliver’s side; through the windows, he could see her in bits and snatches.

Astonished, he’d felt as if someone had breathed life into Cameron’s computer-screen image again. But how? What was going on?

He’d taken in her tall figure, the wavy blond hair falling over her left eye and the green raincoat she wore over a black knit dress. Before he’d been aware he’d moved, he’d given chase. He’d grown up in Manhattan, and even after he’d moved to the D.C. area and his parents retired in Utah, he’d continued visiting because Anna was here, so he knew the subways like the back of his hand.

He’d jogged upstairs, passing turnstiles as he headed for the uptown platform, but just as he’d reached it, another train pulled in. The electronic doors opened, and he’d cursed inwardly as people spilled out of cars, then back inside. He’d reached the doors just as they glided shut. Cameron had been right on the other side of the glass! Her brown eyes had widened, and she’d swung her head, so hair fell across her face as if to disguise herself. She’d tried to back away, but she’d been hemmed in by other passengers. Futilely, Oliver had lifted a hand as the train pulled away, as if to wave goodbye.

Now he shook his head to clear it of confusion. None of this made sense. He was haunted by a woman who didn’t even exist. As a psychologist, he knew the mind could play tricks, so his best guess was that Anna was right. He was overworked and lonely, a state that had made him ripe for suggestion when he’d seen the image of “Cameron.”

Besides, what man wouldn’t fantasize about America’s most erotic woman? Yeah, this was definitely a case of wishful thinking. That, or his subconscious was trying to tell him something. “Yeah,” he whispered hoarsely, his body still aching with need. “That you need a woman.” A real woman.