Sail by James Patterson, Howard Roughan Read Free Book Online Page B

There was a rule about women, and a very good one: half your age plus seven. Bailey was close enough.
    “I couldn’t stop thinking about you all day,” he gushed, and that wasn’t far from the truth.
    Bailey tilted her head. “Even when you were kissing your wife goodbye on her sailing trip?”
    “Especially then,” answered Peter without any hesitation. Bailey at twenty-five, Katherine at forty-five. There was no contest in his mind; it wasn’t even close—although Kat did look pretty good for her age. Which just happened to be
his
age as well.
    He stepped inside the apartment, blindly closing the door behind him with his heel.
    Bailey edged up against him, whispering in his ear. “I want to fuck you so bad. I want to suck, then fuck you.”
    The feeling was way beyond mutual. Peter was so unbelievably turned on he was nearly dizzy. He leaned in to kiss her, her thick lips only inches away. Before he could reach them, Bailey stepped back with a giggle. She motioned with her index finger. “Follow me. This is
my
house.”
    She led him to the bedroom but not to the bed. Instead she sat him down in a brown leather chair by a window that looked out on her quaint, attractive neighborhood.
    What was she up to? he wondered. So many dirty, hedonistic, illegal-in-seventeen-states kinds of thoughts crossed through Peter’s mind. Then came another idea, this one comical.
God bless NYU Law School!
    That was where Peter had met Bailey only a few short and deliriously thrilling months ago, when he was a guest speaker at a class symposium on the role of Miranda rights in the criminal justice system. Bailey approached him afterward and tentatively, most respectfully, asked if she could pick his brain for a paper she was writing.
    Maybe she was hitting on him, maybe she wasn’t. All Peter knew for sure was that she was double drop-dead gorgeous. Within a week the two of them were between the sheets.
    And in the backseat of his limo.
    And in the men’s room of the Guggenheim.
    And in the elevator of the Crowne Plaza overlooking Times Square.
    But as the third-year law student lit a few candles on her dresser and slowly closed the curtains on the downtown world, Bailey Todd was beginning to make a strong case for there being no place like home.
    Chapter 22
    “DO YOU LIKE the Supreme Beings of Leisure?” asked Bailey, pressing Play on her iPod Nano. “Do you even know who or what they are, old man?”
    Peter assumed that was the group whose music was beginning to fill the room from her small Bose speakers. True, he’d never heard of them, but they sounded decent enough. Hypnotic. As for their name, well, what could be more perfect?
    “They’re my new favorite band,” announced Peter. “And don’t call me old man, little girl.”
    Bailey smiled, showing off her perfect teeth.
    Then she danced, just for fun.
    To the sultry beat of the Supreme Beings of Leisure, she began to gently sway her hips and arms, her smooth skin glistening in the low candlelight.
    Peter gripped the arms of the leather chair, his eyes refusing to blink. He didn’t want to miss even a millisecond of this performance.
    “You dance beautifully,” he finally said.
    “For a lawyer, I guess.”
    And she was just warming up to the music.
    Slowly she lifted her index finger to her lips, slid it in her mouth, and sucked on it.
    What Peter wouldn’t give to be that finger.
    Soon enough, soon enough!
    Then out it came.
    Bailey removed her finger and began to work it south. She traced a line down her neck. She lingered on the curve of her breasts jutting up perfectly from her bra.
    Down across her ribs, counting them, it seemed to Peter.
    Her navel.
    The line of her panties, over a tiny bow on the left side.
    Until the finger disappeared behind the black lace as she spread her long legs very, very wide.
    Bailey closed her eyes and threw her head back, her hand working up and down as she moaned softly.
A Supreme Being of Leisure indeed,
thought Peter.
    What