have sex with me. A simple invitation will probably do the trick.”
His hands stilled and he stared at her. When she laughed, he closed his eyes and groaned. “You’re good. Too good.”
“I know. You should have seen the look on your face. A weaker woman would have been fearing for her virtue.”
He snorted out a laugh. “One thing you aren’t is weak. But you are sexy as hell and I can only take so much. So please, keep that in mind.”
“I will,” she said with another smile. In the next moment, however, her smile faded. “Thank you for bringing me here. And for making me laugh. I know—I know we need to talk about things. About that man. About the initials.” Nina pulled the bottle, now unstopped, out of his hands and drank from it long and hard before handing it back to him. A few stray drops of wine clung to her lips.
His cock jerked to attention. They’d joked about him seducing her, and that had been the furthest thing from his mind. But as it was wont to do in her presence, his mind suddenly detoured toward true and urgent desire before he knew what was happening.
Although he hadn’t been planning on drinking himself, he took a swig of the wine, too, letting the roundness of the cabernet sauvignon melt in his mouth before swallowing. He cast a glance at Nina; her gaze was firmly fastened on his throat. When she saw he’d caught her looking at him, she averted her gaze and swallowed hard. He struggled to keep himself from tossing the bottle aside and grabbing her, kissing the hell out of her, lying her back on the blanket and getting her naked.
The wind picked up Nina’s long hair and blew a strand in his face.
He tucked the strand behind her ear, staying too close for too long just to inhale her scent.
She turned her head slightly, and looked at him out of the corners of her eyes.
“Sorry,” he said with a grin. “I got a little distracted.”
Her expression remained serious for a few seconds, but then she finally smiled back at him. “Wasn’t that the point of coming out here?”
“Yeah. And I’d love to distract both of us in the most pleasurable way possible. But you’re right. We need to talk.”
Her eyes shuttered, an automatic refusal to deal with reality.
Message received. She wasn’t quite ready for him to launch straight into the subject of two murdered men, so he said, “Can I ask your professional opinion about something?”
Her eyes cleared. “Sure.”
“The police are taught that most homeless people are mentally ill, and I’m not an idiot—I know when someone hears voices in his head, his perception of reality is vastly different than mine. But how can someone who was once a functioning member of society suddenly get there? How does someone start believing everyone is after them? Why does he suddenly start to wear aluminum foil hats to prevent the government from invading his thoughts?”
Nina smiled sadly. “I can’t teach you everything in one day—I went to school for twelve years to learn the answers to your questions, after all—but I will say that the brain is immensely complex. A lot of mental illnesses are hereditary, but they can also be induced by one’s environment or experiences. A person can be completely fine and then—” she snapped her fingers “—things change. Schizophrenia, for example, usually starts in young men in their late teens or early twenties. A person might have a mild case of bipolar disorder that is suddenly exacerbated by stress. Or sometimes someone who isn’t mentally ill one day undergoes a profound trauma and is thrown into an altered mental state. There are so many ways that a person’s perception of reality becomes completely different from the way the rest of the world sees it.”
“Can you give me a more concrete example?”
“Sure. The girl we helped, Anne, could have been experiencing some sort of altered mental state brought on by her father’s controlling behavior. It’s not too different from one’s fight-or-flight response when cornered. Suddenly, everything and everyone is a threat. If you remember, she was calming down as I talked to her. But when her father showed up, when she heard his voice, she snapped again. She didn’t want to hurt me, but she felt, in that moment, that she had no choice. It was either her or me.”
Simon picked up a handful of sand, allowing the minuscule particles to trickle from his