~Lark~
"You're not going to touch me tonight," Doyle said.
He said it from the armchair, in his undershirt and his work trousers, with a glass of whiskey around his fingers and his ankles crossed like a man settling in for the evening. The bedroom lamp was on. The clock on his bench downstairs was ticking loud enough to hear through the floor.
I was standing at the foot of the bed with my shirt already half unbuttoned and my mouth open. "At all?"
"At all." He took a sip. "You're going to sit on that bed and get yourself off. I'm going to watch, and then we'll see how you feel about it."
"Doyle."
"Take the rest off. Slowly. I'll tell you what to do after that."
Fifty-eight years old. Repairs clocks for a living, sits with a loupe screwed into his eye six hours a day, has hands like a
