American Goth (22 page)

“It’s been kitted out a bit,” he said offhandedly as I scooped up a helmet and handed it back to Fran, then grabbed the other one. Lightweight but solid, and it felt good under my arm.

“Electronic ignition,” I commented, observing the new work. “Single-cylinder engine?” I asked as I stroked the handlebar.

“Yeah, and automatic transmission. Tweaked your speed a bit too, you’ll get over,” he frowned as he thought, “seventy mph if you treat it nice.”

“That’s a little over one hundred twelve kilometers,” Fran told me, and I gave her a smile before I checked out the seats then popped the glove box. I laughed at the map he’d already put in it for me, wrapped about with a rubber band and a small clear plastic bag with almost three pounds’ worth of change, and a compass.

Mine? This was mine? I could go anywhere, I could, I could… “I don’t know what to say,” I told him honestly, “I just—”

He messed my hair again. “Seats are new, gas is full. All it needs is someone to ride it.”

Still I stared, unable to convey how much it meant, how much I appreciated it. “Go on,” he said and patted my shoulder, “you two, get out of here.” And he turned back to the door of the shop. “Oh, by the way,” he said as put his hand to the knob, “take a ride over to the local Green, that’ll give you a feel for the streets before you head out—use your American license if you get stopped, and we’ll get you a regular one next week sometime. Oh, and skip the visit to London Bridge—go by Tower instead. They’ve a tour and all that, and then you can go on to visit the Tower proper, if you’re still of a mind.”

He grinned at us both before he closed the door.

“Did you know about this?” I turned and asked Fran.

Her eyes shone a pure gold and her smile beamed at me. “Yes—and this is yours too,” she told me and reached into her coat, “because I know you never button up.”

She put a scarf about my neck, one of those wide, long ones that would fold and wrap properly, done in the MacRae tartan. “Besides,” she said as she tucked its ends into my coat, accidentally-on-purpose smoothing over my breasts to ensure it lay right, “since your haircut, your neck is almost bare.”

I put an arm around her waist and pulled her to me. “Thank you,” I said quietly, then kissed her as her fingers caressed my cheeks.

“Do you want to drive?” I asked her.

She bit her lip and smiled at me in a way that only gave one message. “Maybe…later. Let’s go.”

*

After about twenty minutes of zipping around the neighborhood, we were off, and we had more fun getting there and back than doing the actual tour. The Tower of London, other than the crown jewels, was a rather grim place, from the legend of the ravens—when the last ravens left the Tower, the Empire would end—to its often violent history: there was a heavy cast, a weight in the air of the past, proof that events did indeed embed themselves for all time in the Aethyr.

“Hey, can you feel things?” I asked Fran. Even though we might not have been learning exactly the same things, I was sure there had to be some similarities, especially if as Cort said, she would be bound to the Circle, and to the Light as well.

“What do you mean?”

“You know,” I shrugged, then waved a hand about to take in everything, “pick up on the traces left, that sort of thing.”

She gave me a slow grin. “Can you?”

The spark of friendly challenge in her eyes and the angle of her chin made me smile. “Let’s see.”

We went through the halls and galleries, extending that extra sense, allowing the memories imprinted on the walls to form images in our minds that could be described. We’d narrate what we “saw” to one another before we’d look up the history; we were both surprisingly accurate. Maybe that shouldn’t have been a surprise.

It was more than enough after a while, tiring as well as depressing given what we were picking up on, so we cheered ourselves after by taking a detour over to the dockyards, where we found the tiniest chip shop along the harbor, a small newsstand-like construction, and after I insisted on paying for the well-battered and deliciously fried fish and chips, wrapped in newspaper and soaking through a paper bag, we amused ourselves by warming our fingers as we ate them, bumping against each other while we walked along one of the piers.

“Hey,” I asked with sudden inspiration, “there’s this new club the band keeps telling me is great—wanna go?”

“Sounds cool. Do you know how to get there?” she teased, her eyes and smile bright under the lamplight in the twilight.

Her smile was killer, and I couldn’t help but respond to it. I crumpled what was left of the paper bag in my hand and shoved it in my coat pocket as I leaned closer to her. “I’m well supplied for these things, you know,” I told her, then wrapped my fingers into the thick wool of the peacoat. “
I
…have a map.” I gently pulled her to me as her hand came up and cupped my neck, while the other eased under my jacket, over my hip.

“That’s not all you’ve got,” she murmured against my lips as her fingers slipped against my back pocket, traced the projection of what they found, and kissed me.

From the sure way our lips moved and the sensual haze that clouded around us, even if I wasn’t completely sure of where we were going, map or no, I knew where we’d end up.

*

We eventually found a phone so I could call and let my uncle and Elizabeth know that we intended to stay out a bit later than originally planned—I didn’t want them to worry too much—and after promising both of them that I’d call if there was a problem, we were set and on our way.

Hannah, Kenny, and Graham had described it well. It was an old factory, and a little placard right next to the door claimed it as a one-time refuge during the— The rest was pasted over with a bit of laminated cardboard that read: “The original scoundrel who owned this place was mad as a hatter, a dashing dresser, a scoffer of parking laws, a lover of wine, and a master of the tango, both long and short forms. In short, a legend. We liked him—lots. Welcome to SPIT.”

A faint hum, a hint of beat, of rhythm, came through the door itself, which was spray-painted with a large, black message: “You don’t know SPIT.” I gave Fran a quick smile over my shoulder, then opened the door.

Even without knowing that the building had survived the industrial revolution, the moment we walked through the door and onto the worn, broad brick steps that flowed down in huge half circles to the main level, there was no hiding the age of the place. There was no missing the blast of sound either, the low sensual throb that pulsed under the electric buzz of people and the pattern of emotions, muted by the brick, that came wafting through the air.

I handed the bouncer a few bills, then asked where the bar was.

“First time, huh?” he asked with a wide grin as he handed me back my change.

“Here, yes,” I agreed.

“Well, don’t miss the show—or the house drink.”

I wasn’t certain I wanted to drink anything called “spit,” and he smiled at my expression.

“It’s not spit, really,” he assured me. “It smells like a suntan and it’s a real treat. Get one for your girl,” he said, nodding at Fran next to me. “She’ll like it.”

Down the steps we went, through another corridor, following the beat that became a buzz under our feet until we passed through a darkened archway and there…

I hadn’t known how thick the walls were, how effectively the combination of layers of brick and iron could contain the thoughts, the feelings, the nonsubtle sendings of intent, but because there was nowhere for them to flow, they gathered, concentrated, a thick soup of sensation, accentuated by the music that poured through the speakers, the press of bodies that moved to it under the lightning strikes of color and the illuminated panels that played a variety of images, only to darken as others lit up. Somewhere, farther in through the cavern, was an unlit stage, hinted and highlighted by the occasional glancing strobe.

I stood still for a moment, letting it all run through me as I peered through the dimness for the promised bar. I felt the lift under my skin, the rise of my blood, the automatic body response to the call that sounded out across worlds, and the heady, reckless feeling that accompanied the unmistakable, unavoidable sense of hunger.

I shut down the extension of myself that echoed through the Aethyr, shut out the sense of others as well until all I felt directly was Fran’s presence, the barrier that surrounded us both, and the remains of the tide the wild call had roused through me. When Fran’s thumb brushed along the column of my neck while her fingers tickled under my collar, we exchanged a glance, and I knew she’d felt it too.

It figured. It simply figured. Soho may have been a hunting ground, but Spit? Was a lair.

*

“Dance or drink first?”

“Hmm?”

“Dance or drink first?” Fran repeated as we came to stand near one of the many steel columns, the bare supports for the floor above us, and she gave me a smile.

I glanced around and decided there was no time like the present to know for certain whether or not my “hide in plain sight” plan would work.

“Drink,” I said and could feel the tiniest quirk of a grin work my mouth.

“Wait here, then,” she asked, “otherwise you won’t let me pay for them.”

I rolled my eyes at her and was about to argue the point when she curled her fingers into the edges of my jacket and tugged me to her. The kiss she gave me was purely sensual—and she didn’t merely slide her tongue between my very willing lips, she pressed her body to mine and kissed my mouth with intent, an intent I answered even as it made my knees loosen, made me force a hand around her waist and the other to the nape of her neck, everything forgotten but the race of blood through me, through her, the very real need to—

“Wait,” she whispered into my ear, and leaving me with another small kiss, she strode through the crowd to the bar.

With my heart rate and my knees unwilling to let me move very far, I leaned my back against the steel column and fumbled into my pocket for a cigarette and a light as I watched her, the set to her shoulders, the toss of her head, the pure “don’t fuck with me” confidence she radiated as she moved. She was beautiful, on every level, inside and out, and I knew it.

Fran, I thought, was every inch, every bit, the golden champion everyone had so admired in high school.

It had been…interesting, I reflected.

When we finally had “switched,” since I’d promised we would, it had been a little awkward at first, and as I caressed her hips, untwisted the strap that had gotten caught up and smoothed it along the silken skin, I realized something: she was afraid, afraid of her own strength, her own power, and as much as she’d helped me find and explore myself, she hadn’t done that for herself, not really.

Something had changed, between us, within me. She accepted me, welcomed me, let me be whatever I was, without reservation, without hesitation, from the embrace of my cock within her to the deepest hurt of my heart, a hurt we shared honestly. And it was the sharing, the sincere and accepting acknowledgment, that somehow set yet another part of me free, a part even I didn’t know was there; it allowed me to love her with an ease I hadn’t had before.

As her friend, I wanted to help, wanted her to know herself; as her lover, I wanted to see that, to feel it, because I saw it so clearly in her. Her bravery awed me, left me humbly honored knowing that she would dare so much, face so much, test herself so deeply, with me, for me.

I watched the muscles play in her back as she took another step away from the bed, and she adjusted whatever she needed to. I took in and admired the fall of her head, the drape of her hair as she set her hands on her hips, then glanced down her own body. And then, suddenly, something shifted for her, in her—I not only witnessed it, I could
feel
the switch.

She squared her shoulders and tossed her head, and as she turned to me with the light from the window glancing from her eyes, the tiger no longer prowled behind them, trapped within. From the bronze cast that lit her skin in that same light, the jut of her jaw, the proud, proud set of her body, she
was
the great hunting cat, the lion unleashed.

She really was. That beautiful body, the muscles that built her shoulders, stretched across her chest, the lush breasts I couldn’t fill my hands enough with, nipples dark, hard, tight…the taper of her ribs to her waist and the split, the narrow channel that led down her stomach to her navel, down to the lovely curve, the demarcation sharply heightened by the dark leather that skimmed skin over skin on compact hips. She wore that cock nice and low, good and proud. She wore it perfectly.

I
wanted
that, wanted
her
, all of her, and I did my best to let her know it. “God, how I want you,” I told her, the words barely audible above the beat of my heart. “You…that…you’re just so fucking hot!”

“You think so,” she stated more than asked, her voice silky and low as she neared.

I glanced up at her eyes, the bright flame in them. “Yeah,” I breathed against her lips and I wrapped my arms around her and drew her down, the warm fit and weight of her on me very welcome as I covered us against the chill of autumn.

Fran sucked the tip of my tongue, drawing it between her lips and into her mouth the same way she did my clit as her legs fit along, then became a velvet slide between mine.