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  The Exclusive

  (I'd Kill for Your Love – Book 1)

  by

  Rebecca Milton

  ***

  ~~~

  Copyright © 2014 - Rebecca Milton. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and locations portrayed in this book and the names herein are fictitious. Any similarity to or identification with the locations, names, characters or history of any person, product or entity is entirely coincidental and unintentional. - From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. No responsibility or liability is assumed by the Publisher for any injury, damage or financial loss sustained to persons or property from the use of this information, personal or otherwise, either directly or indirectly. While every effort has been made to ensure reliability and accuracy of the information within, all liability, negligence or otherwise, from any use, misuse or abuse of the operation of any methods, strategies, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein, is the sole responsibility of the reader. Any copyrights not held by publisher are owned by their respective authors. All information is generalized, presented for informational purposes only and presented "as is" without warranty or guarantee of any kind. All trademarks and brands referred to in this book are for illustrative purposes only, are the property of their respective owners and not affiliated with this publication in any way. Any trademarks are being used without permission, and the publication of the trademark is not authorized by, associated with or sponsored by the trademark owner.

  *** As a Special Gift for buying this book you are entitled to another 31 GREAT FREE BOOKS P-L-U-S incredible deals on new books and collections! For information on where to get all this — instantly and without any cost whatsoever — please see the last page of this book, right after the story ends ***

  The Exclusive

  Take your time.

  Baby steps, right?

  Just start from the beginning.

  Roll back, scroll back, revisit all of it. Look at it in the eyes, see what’s staring back.

  No need to rush.

  Take it apart, reexamine, like looking at old magazine clippings on one of those ancient microfiche machines that used to be in the library. Remember those?

  Just... whatever you remember.

  Oh, I remember. I remember all of it. That’s not the problem. My memory is absolutely clear.

  Anything will help.

  Who? Who is it going to help? Is it going to help me to remember all of this? Is it going to make me feel better to replay the time, the moments? I don’t think so.

  Just take your time.

  ***

  “Do you mind if I just... take my time?” he said to me.

  Like I would say no, like I would have said, can you please pick it up a little? I was hoping to catch a seven o’clock movie. Time was his tool. Time was at his fingertips. Time was his to play with. Time had no meaning when I was with him. Is that what I want to remember? Do I really want to start there? Is that what you need?

  ***

  Anything you can recall, anything will be helpful.

  No, I don’t think it will.

  Don’t worry, we understand.

  ***

  How comforting. You understand. I wish I did. I wish I understood how I got here. I wish, honestly, I understood how it became an obsession. That’s the truth. That’s an ugly little secret truth that I don’t know if I should admit. It became an obsession. From the first, when he asked my permission to take his time.

  When he whispered those words and he moved slowly down my body. As he kissed down to my center. As he breathed his hot, wanting breath on my panties, making me squirm. As I grabbed the headboard and opened my legs. As he slid the panties aside and inhaled me, took me in, absorbed me, like taking in a Caravaggio or listening to Bach. How I laid myself barer, more naked than I ever had in my entire life. How, when his tongue first touched me I believed, I truly believed, that I was going to burst, full force, through the gates of heaven and thank God, in person, for what he had sent to me. I wish I understood how I was able to receive that, for hours, and still need more.

  I have to admit it, I was obsessed. When he was not there, he was all I thought about. When he was there, all I wanted was him in me, on me, under me. I struggled when we were in public not to drag him into some dark corner or back booth and wrap my legs around his neck. I had to hold my breath, clench my fists, swallow my desire, when I watched him drink whiskey, the way he’d lick a quick drop off the rim of a glass. I wanted only to beg him to do that to me.

  I was obsessed. How did that happen?

  ***

  Would you like a glass of water, you look... flushed.

  ***

  Oh, good, I’m glad I look flushed because I wouldn’t want this to be simply in my head. I wouldn’t want this incredible, burning need to be something that I conjured up in my mind. I want my body to show it. If I am going to go down this road, I don’t want any hiding places. I don’t want to cover up anything. I want it all to come out. I need to be free of this.

  ***

  Certainly... we... we understand.

  ***

  His name is Oscar. He dressed well. He spoke well. He knew things about wine and food. He loved the theater. He loved the ballet. He also loved to sit in a baseball park on a Saturday afternoon, eat hot dogs, drink beer and yell vaguely obscene things at the players. He talked to his mother at least twice a week. He did volunteer work. He knew the value of a good, slow, deep kiss in the dark of a doorway, on a side street, while walking to a fancy dress party.

  He appeared. That’s the only way to describe it. He appeared at my work, at my desk, one day and hello moved seamlessly to lunch, which was followed by a walk back to work, the long way, to dinner that night, to a good night kiss on the top step of my apartment building that made me believe in fairy tales, princes with charm, perpetual motion and love at first sight.

  “Good night,” he said, his mouth millimeters from mine, the kiss still lingering, roaming through my mind and trembling in my hips. “I had such a wonderful day.”

  His eyes smiled at me and I was ready right then and there. Anything he asked for I would have gladly given it.

  “Me too,” I said, “it was kind of...”

  “Magical.”

  He finished my sentence and, truly, with all the words to choose from, with the entire Oxford English Dictionary at his fingertips, he picked the word that was slipping gingerly from my lips.

  “Yes,” I said surprised and so very thrilled, “that’s exactly what I was going to say.

  “How wonderful,” he said and that sealed it.

  If he had said, I knew it or we are simpatico or some other cheese ball line that guys so often use to fully and completely ruin the moment, things may have gone in a different direction. He didn’t. So I didn’t and then, we did. Not that night. Not the next night either.

  He wasn’t in a rush, as he proved so beautifully later.

  ***

  I worked for the Atlanta Herald Examiner, city beat. I had worked at a few papers when I got out of school, a degree in journalism hanging on my wall, a reporter’s pad and six freshly sharpened pencils in my bag. The dreams of being Woodward or Bernstein. The dream of making print news relevant again.

  First job was writing for the Pinched Penny, a small, mostly ad-driven little weekly. I wrote stories about extreme coupon clippers and inspiration
al mothers that fed a family of six on a single income. All the while, I was writing op-ed pieces and sending them to the Examiner. I was writing stories about crime and politics, sending them out, putting them in a file.

  From the Pinched Penny, I moved up to the Welton Times and Chronicle. This was a little paper, but, more of an actual newspaper than the Penny. I covered PTA meetings, town council meetings, small time crime, politics, anything that Gavin, a hefty, whiskey drinking, chain-smoking editor, told me to cover. Sometimes, at night, after we had put it to bed, I’d sit in Gavin’s office and drink with him. He’d tell me stories of his time at the New York Times, his stories for Newsweek and US news and World Report. The times when he was young and free. The times before he got married, had two kids and didn’t feel like leaving them fatherless just to get an inside track on arms dealers for a magazine that, most likely, was funding the arms dealers indirectly.

  We’d drink and talk until his wife would call and ask if he were planning on coming home and if he could pick up milk or butter or something. He’d tell her he loved her, and mean it, drain his glass, and wish me goodnight. The longer I worked there, the more our sessions became. I picked his brain, I fed him questions that would lead him into stories. After about six months, I showed him some of the stories I was writing and sending out to other papers. He read them, said nothing.

  “You’re coming to dinner Sunday night,” he said to me one Tuesday afternoon, “Grace wants to meet you.” Grace was his wife. Other people in the newsroom raised eyebrows. Mumbles of awe and dissatisfaction from other reporters. Seems some were pissed because they had never been invited to dinner, some were jealous, a few were actually encouraging. I went to dinner.

  The evening was good. Grace was lovely and charming, his kids were well behaved and scrubbed. The food was great, the conversation was fun, family stories sprinkled with a few tales of covering stories in jungles and embassies. Stories that, by their reaction, the kids hadn’t heard before. After dinner, coffee and dessert, Gavin invited me into his study to talk. I was very excited. I was thinking he was going to promote me, give me my own column, and make me an assistant editor. I saw my future opening up right before my eyes.

  “So, you’re fired,” he said to me as he placed a glass of scotch on the table in front of me.

  I had just sat down in a leather chair, was still taking in the thousands of books on the oak shelves. The room was like a living history of journalism to me. I couldn’t have been happier.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, not really thinking I had heard what he said.

  “I said, so, you’re fired,” he repeated, sat down and sipped his scotch. I was struck dumb.

  He went on to talk about budget cuts and seniority and other things that sounded like pure bullshit. Then, after the scotch was done, after he had walked me to the front door, after I had said good-bye to the kids and thanked Grace for a wonderful evening. After I tried to decipher her glowing smile and warm hug, after I laughed that Gavin had fired me, after he walked me outside to his car, he said, what I thought, was the most bull-shittiest of the bullshit statements he had made all night.

  “You’ll be fine,” he said, “I’ll make some calls.” He closed my door and walked back into his house.

  I sat for a moment, stunned and confused.

  ***

  The next morning, as I reviewed my pitiful finances, drank too much coffee and steeled myself for the whole job hunting process, the phone rang and it was Trevor Griffin, Editor of the Herald Examiner, on the line.

  “Gavin sent some of your stories over,” he said, without a hello, just a brusque introduction. “It’s good, all of it, good, strong stuff. Gavin says you’ve outgrown his little fish wrap so, you want to come over and write for me?”

  I was shaking, from too much coffee, from excitement and shock and, also, from something else.

  “Screw you,” I said, though that’s not really what I said. Obviously the other thing that was causing me to shake was anger. “That’s no fish wrap, that’s a fine paper and I won’t have you talk about it like that.” The line went silent. For a very uncomfortably long time.

  “All right,” he said, “point taken. Gavin says you’re ready to move... forward, we’ll say. Are you interested in writing for us?”

  I said yes, didn’t apologize for my words and agreed to be at the paper the following morning at seven. I danced around my place for an hour, got online and bought a new reporter’s pad and looked at desks that I couldn’t afford for my one-day home office and then, I called Gavin.

  “You told him to—?” Gavin said before hello.

  “No, I told him he could—” and I laughed repeating it. “But, he insulted the Chronicle, I wasn’t going to have that.”

  “Well, we here at the Chronicle thank you for your loyalty, now go and make me proud.”

  I thanked him, promised I would and then spent the day thinking about what to wear to work the next morning, being nervous, calling my mother, the usual stuff when you start a new job.

  The next morning, I got my key card, filled out paperwork at Human Resources, got my cubical, a new computer, an assignment and I was off. City beat. I was writing about crime, crime and, oh yes, crime.

  At first, I wasn’t too happy, I wanted to cover politics, maybe be on the international desk. Then, as the months rolled and I watched the financial writers get shown the door, I realized that city beat was job security, there was never going to be a shortage of crime. Also, I was good at it. I had a good eye and no trouble standing over dead bodies or in the middle of blood-spattered rooms. I liked it.

  ***

  Take a breath, relax, you’re doing great.

  ***

  Six months in, I started to cover the story. I had noticed that three murders that had happened in the park district were remarkably similar. I took a walk to the police headquarters and talked to a few contacts there.

  Jimmy Fitz, a ten year veteran of homicide, who had a thing for me, which I encouraged to a degree, gave me some details that had not been released to the world yet.

  “All three of them were strangled with a silk tie,” he told me dropping the file on the metal table, we were having coffee in interrogation room three. “The ties are real top of the line, fancy-schmancy stuff, you can only get in Europe.”

  He told me that the victims, two men and one woman, were all on the cusp of becoming incredibly rich.

  “Nothing shady, just hard working, smart investor types,” Jimmy told me. I looked through the file.

  “Now, listen to me,” he said, checking the door and pulling his chair close. “We are keeping this tight, we don’t need a panic about a serial killer running around, you understand.”

  “Do you think it is a serial killer?” I asked.

  “Off the record,” he said and I nodded, closing my pad and putting my pen away, “yeah, I think we have a serial killer on our hands.”

  “You want to keep me posted, Jimmy, give me first crack at anything you get?”

  “Sure,” he said, “and what do I get in return?” He gave me a sly smile.

  Jimmy was a good guy, a family man, but he was all talk when it came to the ladies. He liked to flirt, but he’d never do anything to hurt Nelly, his wife. I knew that. I called his bluff. I moved close to him, put my hand on his legs, way up on his thigh, and put my face about an inch from his.

  “You tell me what you want, Jimmy,” I whispered, “you just tell me and I’ll do whatever you want.” He gulped, turned red and moved back.

  “All right, easy there, Mata Hari,” he said, standing up. “You just... just print what I give you, don’t get all speculation, don’t cause any panic and you’ll get exactly what I get. Good?”

  “Good,” I said, gave him a kiss on the cheek and went back to my desk.

  ***

  Over the next month, I wrote five pieces on the Silk Tie Killer, a name I gave him. The cops were hitting dead ends left and right, but Jimmy, true to his word, was g
iving me everything he had. Then, just as quickly as he showed up, the killer vanished. No bodies, no news for over three months. I moved on to covering a drug gang setting up its new home in downtown.

  I did a few pieces on a prostitution ring that was working its way through the local government that I had called The Moveable Brothel. I was getting a little national attention, praise from my editor, admiration from other reporters and a few calls from Gavin.

  “Making me proud, kid,” he said to me on the phone one evening, “really great stuff.”

  “I can’t thank you enough for firing me, Gavin,” I said. We talked about the paper, his work, the fact that he quit smoking, his family and the future of print media. The usual stuff.

  It was good to talk to him.

  ***

  “I am... well, the best way to say it is... a fan,” Oscar said to me at the first meeting.

  He was standing in the door of my cubical. Kate, from reception, had sent him back, telling me in a whisper over the phone that a hottie was in the lobby wanting to speak to me. He stood there, smiling down at me, clenching and unclenching his hands like a little boy. He was nervous and very excited.

  “Sorry, but I have been following your work since... well, since the Pinched Penny, actually.” I was shocked and didn’t believe him, but he named several stories I had written back when I was on staff there and I was convinced.

  “Here’s the thing,” he said, looking around the room, “I know this is not ethical, but I am putting together a magazine and... I was wondering if you’d be interested in contributing.”

  He told me a little about his idea and then, asked me to lunch. I went, we talked. He was charming, smart, witty... basically everything you could ask for in a guy and a future, possible employer. As I said, lunch turned to dinner, dinner to home and that first kiss. That first kiss.

  ***