The Floating Girl: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mystery #4) Read Online Free Page B

another schoolgirl being raped, I’m going to throw up.”
    “But I mostly bought you shoujo manga, girls’ comics, because I didn’t think you’d like the violent ones!”
    “Isn’t the rape of Mezurashiko’s mother violent?” I put down the notebook in which I’d written Takeo’s translations.
    Takeo shrugged. “The manga aimed at women sometimes have themes that are very dark. But if the readers didn’t want to read about such things, the stories would change.”
    “It makes me wonder what women want.” I got up and stretched, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows toward the garden and, beyond it, the sea. Because the house was situated high on a cliff, I could see all the way down to the sand, where a man was tossing a ball into the ocean for his dog to retrieve.
    I felt pressure on the back of my neck and realized it was Takeo’s lips. I stayed in place, watching the man and dog play, enjoying the sensation of the kiss.
    “Is this what you want?” Takeo asked softly.
    I rested my head on his shoulder, and I thought. I had known Takeo as a friend and now a lover for a few months. I thought about him when we were together, but not a lot when I was alone. This was our first full weekend together. I wanted it to go well.
    “I want to succeed at this article. And I want to be with you,” I said, still looking out of the window. “But you know, that underwater thing that happened . . . well, I’d never done anything like that before. I don’t think I’d try it again.”
    “It was a fantasy.” He turned me so that I could see his face. “I’d had it for a long time—ever since I was a teenager, really. Thank you for indulging me.”
    “Well, maybe you can return the favor.” I smiled at him. “I have a fantasy, too.”
    “Oh, yes?”
    “It involves a bed with clean cotton sheets. Air conditioner set on low. And a door that locks.”
    ***
    I slept better that night than I had in ages, lulled to sleep by the sound of waves. We’d turned off the air conditioner sometime in the middle of the night, and the cool breeze blowing in from the screened windows felt wonderful at 6 a.m. I slid out of bed, pausing to rearrange the covers over Takeo’s long, lean body.
    As I dressed for the run, I contemplated the last hour we’d spent awake making love. Takeo had revealed himself to be passionate and skilled, capable of bringing forth feelings from me that had been locked up tightly for a long time. I’d spent the past year mourning the loss of my last boyfriend, a Scottish lawyer who had simply gotten tired of Japan and moved on, expecting me to go wherever he did. I wouldn’t go. I loved Hugh, but I loathed the idea of being his dependent. Soon enough, his letters to me dropped off, and I heard he’d started a liaison with another woman. Still, as angry as I was with Hugh, I thought about him constantly.
    I’d told myself that the best thing for me was to find a Japanese boyfriend, someone who obviously wanted to stay in the country. Takeo had not seemed interested in me when we first met months earlier at the Kayama School, but as we got to know each other, sparks began to fly.
    Could I love Takeo? I asked myself as I unlatched the house’s handsome wooden sliding doors and went out into the splendid morning for my run. When I was with Takeo, I enjoyed him thoroughly. But when I was at work, I forgot about him. Not that there were other men around that drew my attention—I thought with repulsion of Alec Tampole at the Gaijin Times. Over the last several months, work and pleasure had become sharply separated for me. When I worked as an antiques shopper or arts writer, it consumed all my energy.
    I finished stretching and started off in a slow jog down the bumpy beach road into the heart of the village of Hayama. I ran past the wall guarding the emperor’s summer villa from prying eyes. A group of stone-faced policemen were standing guard next to a dark gray police bus, a vehicle ready to cart