“Hurry up!” Jenny urged the cab driver. Damn, it was almost two o’clock. Even though she’d told her family she’d be out late on a story, this was pushing it.

      Regretfully she stripped off the bow tie, then reached into her backpack and found the pink cotton blouse she’d been wearing when she left the house after dinner. It fit over her crop top, covering her pierced belly button.

      Chances were, no one would be up this late to watch her walk in. But with her family, she couldn’t count on it.

      She grimaced. Twenty-three years old, living at home and still under her parents’ thumbs. Not to mention her auntie’s and granny’s.

      Yeah, sure, Scott. Let’s go back to my place and fuck like crazed weasels.

      She grinned to herself.

      Nope. Couldn’t take him home. But that hadn’t stopped her from making out like a weasel. Okay, so she wasn’t entirely under the collective family thumb. At least in the second—secret—life she lived. The tingly ache between her thighs was proof of it.

      The taxi driver headed out Hastings Street to Chinatown, which was quiet at this time of night. He turned onto Keefer. It was lined with parked cars including her own black Jeep TJ.

      “It’s the house over there.” She pointed to one in a row of two-stories that sat a little higher than the street, each with a flight of steps leading up to the yard. “You can double-park.”

      She paid, got a receipt and then closed the cab door quietly and went up the steps. She tiptoed along the path that led to the front door. The house, attractive with its creamy yellow paint and maroon trim, sat waiting.

      From old photos, she knew it had been in rough shape when her parents bought it twenty years ago. They’d renovated patiently, uncovering and honoring the house’s heritage beauty. It was cool how her family, so traditionally Chinese, had been able to appreciate the Western style of the house. Pity they couldn’t appreciate her own Western-ness.

      Of course, inside the house they’d feng shui’ed it within an inch of its life.

      Her family treated her and the house a lot alike. They didn’t mind if Jenny wore modern Western clothes so long as they were relatively modest. It was her brain and heart and soul they claimed for China.

      The porch light was on, of course. Just to make sure she knew that they knew she hadn’t been home when everyone else went to bed.

      Yeah, it sucked big time living at home with her folks, especially at times like this.

      She slid her key into the lock, wincing as the bolt clicked over loud enough to wake the dead—or, at least, one of the older-generation females. Not her dad or younger sis; they’d sleep through anything.

      The good news was, her room was downstairs so she didn’t have to climb the flight of creaky wooden steps. Originally the room had been a study, and all the bedrooms were upstairs. When her big brother Anthony had hit adolescence, he’d coveted the downstairs study for its size and relative privacy, and—spoiled little prince that he’d been—taken it over.

      When he moved out to marry Linda, Jenny had been starting her journalism career. Independent and ambitious, she hadn’t wanted a bottom-of-the-heap job writing obits. She was going to freelance and build her career at her own pace. Her family approved—so long as she lived at home and worked from there. And so she’d inherited Anthony’s room.

      She closed the door to her combined office/bedroom and flicked on a light. The room’s soft rose walls gave it a warm glow. She had a fondness for rattan and flowered fabric, so the room had a light, feminine feel.

      Even the filing cabinet was ivory. She unlocked it, remembering how she’d told her family she had to keep her files confidential. Yes, she did keep notes here, but the cabinet also stored the essentials of life. Like her Pearl Butterfly vibrator, birth-control pills and the latest style in condoms from Rubber Rainbow on Denman. Also, the clothes and accessories her folks wouldn’t approve of, and all the other goodies she required for life outside Chinatown.

      This secret-life thing could be a real pain in the butt. If only her folks weren’t so hopelessly old-fashioned and Chinese!

      Into the cabinet went a couple of condoms and her crop top, to be washed when she could do it in privacy. She turned the key in the lock, then slipped into her pink-and-white striped sleep shirt and went down the hall to wash up. No shower tonight. The rumbling pipes would for sure wake the household.

      Despite the tissues she’d used in Scott’s truck, she was sticky between her legs.

      She soaked a washcloth in hot water, then paused.

      Unprotected sex. She didn’t do unprotected sex.

      Scott had reassured her he was clean, but she didn’t know this guy. Should she be worried?

      First, did she think he was honest? Her gut instinct was excellent, and it told her yes.

      Then, was he bright enough to know what was what when it came to risks and protection? Firefighting was a blue-collar job, so he probably wasn’t any intellectual bright light, but he’d had EMT training. Yeah, he’d know what was up with bodily fluids.

      Feeling reassured, she began to wash between her legs. Gingerly.

      Man, he was big! Bigger even than her Pearl Butterfly. She’d never been with a guy who had such a big dick. Was that why the orgasm had been so powerful?

      Crap. Had he ruined her for smaller guys?

      Size wasn’t supposed to count; it was what the guy did with the equipment. And, to be honest, Scott hadn’t done much of anything except get hard and ejaculate.

      Not fair. He’d gone way above and beyond the call of duty, making sure she got that first orgasm.

      Still, on the scale of good lovers, he wasn’t anywhere near a ten. Did he even know foreplay had been invented?

      So why had she responded so wildly? Why did her pussy swell and ache even now as she touched herself with the washcloth and thought of him?

      “Jen-ny?” The soft call was followed by a gentle tap on the bathroom door.

      Damn, damn, damn. There was absolutely no privacy in this stupid house.

      “Yes, Auntie, it’s me.” Fang Yin, in her mid seventies, was her great-aunt. Granny’s younger sister, and a widow, too. Jenny tossed the washcloth into the sink and went to open the door.

      Her aunt, tiny body bundled up in her maroon bathrobe, looked concerned. “You all right, Jenny? Is late night. Everything okay? You hungry?”

      Jenny, hoping she didn’t still smell of sex, gave her a quick hug. “Everything’s great, and I’m not hungry, thanks. I needed to stay late to get an interview.” Thank God she wasn’t much of a blusher.

      “What this story? Is one of your hus-hus ones?” Although she spoke English, Auntie, like her sister, had never become 100 percent fluent.

      “Yes, Auntie, it’s hush-hush.” Journalism was a perfect career. Jenny could always play the “confidential” card when her family got too nosy.

      “We see this story in the paper soon?”

      They would, if they picked up the Straight. But they wouldn’t know the article was Jenny’s. She wrote under two pseudonyms, with her real name going only on the stories she didn’t mind her family reading.

      “I hope so,” she said. “I still have more interviews. We’ll see how it comes out.”

      “Your job such a big mystery,” her aunt said, widening her eyes. “So exciting.”

      It sure had been tonight! “Sometimes. And sometimes it’s a lot of boring research.”