Read Online In This Skin by Simon Clark - Free Book Online Page A

posters. They'd have been a pile of crap to them. Grab this. I'll go first.”He handed her his flashlight as he went down on all fours to crawl into the shadowed interior of the Luxor. With a tingle down her spine she saw how rounded his buttocks were, while the muscled thighs made her knees begin to twitch. Stop it, you idiot, she scolded herself. This is Leon. You've hung out with him since you were ten. The strongest emotion you ever felt over him was when he threw a Star Wars action figure at you and cut your lip. You kicked him between the legs so hard he'd had to sit on his rear for a full ten minutes, nursing his bruised nuts with both hands. Of course, they'd only been eleven years old then.
        They were still out enjoying adventures together, even though they'd hit seventeen. This time Leon had suggested they visit the old Luxor where his ma used to work as a waitress twenty years ago. He'd been trawling through the auction pages on eBay and found that collectors were paying hard cash (and plenty of it) for old pop and rock memorabilia. High on the list of collectibles were concert posters. A dog-eared Talking Heads poster from 1977 fetched twelve hundred bucks, while an early REM poster signed by the band brought some lucky owner more than five thousand. And if you had a poster of a pre-Army Elvis or pre-Yoko Beatles, then you had the price of a new car. Leon's idea was simple. Get into the Luxor.
        Get some posters. Auction them on eBay. ”You've gotta believe it, Kay!”he'd told her. ”There's gotta be posters in there. We'll be banking thousands, just you wait and see.”
        So she went along with it. They'd ridden out here in Leon's decrepit Honda with a pair of flashlights and high hopes. Only now she found herself taking a weird turn. She couldn't stop gazing at Leon. She found herself scanning his face as if she half expected to find something hidden there. And she kept finding reasons to touch him, whether to make a joke so she could pat his muscular arm or playfully jab him in the stomach with her fist. He took it in good fun, just like when they were kids, laughing and dancing around her. But the reasons why she patted him or play punched him were… well, they were different now. She tingled in his presence. She couldn't stop touching her hair, fluffing it, pushing it back, stroking strands down over her shoulder.
        ”Whoa. Kay. You going to stand there all night?”
        ”Uh?”
        ”Flashlight. It's black as midnight in here.”
        ”Sorry.' She handed him the flashlight, heard a click and saw the wash of radiance illuminate a red-painted concrete floor.
        ”Pass me your flashlight through first. Take it easy coming through; there's some tacks jutting out of the doorframe. There's no broken glass or nothing. You'll be okay.”
        She crawled through, then held up her hand for him to help her up. She wanted to feel that big strong hand around hers. He misinterpreted.
        Instead he gave her a flashlight.
        ”There's no windows here, so no one's gonna see lights from the road.
        Come to that,”he flashed her a beautiful neon-bright grin again, ”we could scream our heads off and no one would hear.”
        ”That doesn't fill me with confidence, Leon.”Her voice fell to a whisper. ”What if there's a bunch of crack addicts in here?”
        ”Yeah, they're having a violent offenders convention, can't you hear the music and happy laughter?”
        ”Hardy ha-ha, Leon, you big dope.”Kay wanted him to walk with his arm protectively around her, only he'd laugh like a loon if she even suggested it. She could even imagine his incredulous, ”You gone crazy, girl?”Then a booming laugh.”'Cause you walk, talk and look crazy!”
        Instead he scanned the walls, looking for posters, no doubt hoping to see them covering the building like wall57 paper. Here there was zilch. They'd come in via a door that