Super Born: Seduction of Being (29 page)

After a moment, I was confident that my words
and not my powers were the cause, and I smiled. With the fear of
being discovered gone, my heart rate must have dropped by twenty
beats per minute. I breathed a sigh of relief and shook my head.
But as the fear subsided, it was replaced by a sudden warmth, like
the arm of a friend suddenly being draped around my shoulders. It
was weird but it felt really good.

* * *

While I was feeling better, the north shore of
Maui was hitting me again. When the true impact of being this close
to finding her hit me, it was a Maui wipeout. How would I talk with
her, for starters? The last time I was near her I had babbled
“SSSs,” and Dr. Jones had drooled. How would I keep from screwing
up?

I had almost exposed her by posting her
picture. That could have gotten her in trouble, or hurt. The mob
surely would love to know who she was and where her family lived.
The mayor had been nearly ruined by her. And Jennifer Lowe—what was
she doing at the Searchlight Event? Did she have plans for the
B.I.B. too?

The reality and the responsibility crashed over
me. The room suddenly got hot. Perspiration beaded on my forehead.
Either my thoughts were making me terribly ill, or I was in the
middle of an alien movie with something about to burst from my
chest. I ran to the bathroom, afraid I was about to get violently
ill.

After I began to feel better, I stood up and
put one hand on each side of the doorjamb. I reflected for a moment
and sighed. Sometimes getting what you go after can be a bitch.
“Damn chili fries,” I mumbled. Blaming innocent bar food made it
easier to deal with the fact that getting what I wanted most in
life had caused me to get sick.

When the warm pulsations came again, they
mellowed me. The memory of the gray eyes of the woman I’d met at
O’Malley’s reassured me like deep, comforting breaths

Chapter
2
4

Jennifer and Carmine Get
Lucky

Being Jennifer Lowe, superwoman, was no
guarantee of an easy life. A day of dealing with the small minds
that helped run my financial empire had left me with tight muscles,
short breath, and full of racing thoughts. The frustration of them
being unable to keep up with me was like trying to herd kittens.
Two hours of drinks and a half-hearted search for a man who could
soothe my supersized libido at this upscale, mirror-filled lounge
had brought me no more satisfaction than had waking up this
morning.

I sat at the bar without company, as I was
often forced to. The time it took to run my business didn’t leave a
lot of time for friendships, and I was pretty much the only one in
my league anyway. I finished my drink and stood up to leave,
gathering my purse and coat, then realized that my cleavage had
attracted attention from a nearby booth. A tall, muscularly built
oilman here from out of the state, by the look of him, took my
leaving as the cue to make his move. He stood and brushed back his
dark hair, then stepped to my side. “You can’t leave just yet,” he
started.

“
Why the hell not?” I responded with
disdain.

He brushed his drunken erection against my
thigh and whispered in my ear, “Cause you are just about the finest
thing I’ve ever seen, darlin’.”

“
Oh, please. What kind of line is
that?” I said.
Great, another drunken
Texan. Another fucker come to frack our oil and gas. Why couldn’t
they leave my oil fields alone?
I
started to leave, but then a new thought made me turn back to him
with a grin, much like a lioness might grin upon spotting an
injured gazelle. There was no need to be coy or waste any time with
a juvenile like this. I shocked him by taking a handful between his
legs. “You know how to use this?” I asked, giving him a
squeeze.

“
Yes, sweetness, I believe I
do.”

“
Come with me,” I said, pulling him
by his tie for a few feet before moving out in front of him. He
followed me out, down the street, and into the lobby of the Maxim
hotel. As I approached the front desk, the man behind it saw me,
smiled, and straightened his coat. “Good evening, Ms.
Gladstone.”

“
Good evening, Anthony.” Anthony was
used to my generous tips in exchange for his discretion. He knew me
solely as Ms. Gladstone, and he knew which security cameras would
suddenly not be working whenever I visited as well. I could depend
on him when one of my midnight sessions with a man went
badly.

“
Will you want the same room this
evening?”

“
I believe I will, Anthony. Is 411
available?”

“
Yes, it is,” he said. Anthony
handed me a passkey whose origin had long been wiped from the
computer.

I took the key, handed Anthony a folded stack
of bills, and then turned to my victim/companion. “They keep 411
for me when I’m in town.”

“
I’m impressed,” he said, staring
down my dress.

We walked to the elevator, pushed our floor,
and when another couple tried to sneak in the lift with us, I
pushed the button to close the door, held out my hand to stop them,
and said, “Sorry, we’re full.” After the car had started to move, I
pulled the stop button and slowly dropped the straps of my dress.
“Is this what you want?”

He was all over me with his hands
and his mouth. When I heard him make a snarling moan, and saw his
nostrils flair, I knew he was done for, and pushed him away, lifted
the straps to my dress, and released the
stop
button. “Be a good boy, or you
won’t get your dessert,” I teased.

He laughed and probably couldn’t believe his
luck.

When the lift opened, I led him to an unmarked
door just to the right of the elevator. “Here we are, 411,” I said,
sliding in the key and pushing open the door.

It was an expensive but small room with a bath.
I led him to the expensive, solidly built wood bed, then turned to
face him.

“
My turn,” I said, and had his suit
coat and shirt off in a flash. He tried to reach for me, but I
pushed his hands to his sides. “Let me do the work,” I said,
unbuckling his pants and letting them fall to the floor before I
began running my hands over his chest and down his
shorts.

“
Oh, baby,” he moaned. I knew my
body temperature would feel like a furnace to him, and the warmth
had its effect on him. He moaned again. They all did.

I knew I was completely in control, and this
made me laugh a wicked little laugh, “You are a big boy,” I teased.
“Take those shoes off, and make yourself comfortable.” He greedily
complied and lay back on the bed. “The socks too,” I instructed.
(Why did they always leave their socks on? What woman has ever
said, “Oooh, baby, those socks turn me on?”)

I, dropped my dress and bra, and then returned
to the bed. From the nightstand I pulled out a preplaced item and
turned to sit on the bed beside him. When he reached for my breast,
I gave him a long feel while I grabbed his wrist, wrapping it in a
scarf and nimbly tied it to the bedpost.

The Texan chuckled. “You’re kinky,
huh?”

“
Oh, you have no idea.” Then I took
his other wrist and likewise tied it to the bed.

“
Man, oh man, you are one sexy
bitch.”

I turned to look at him and smiled confidently.
“I know.” I went to the foot of the bed and ran my fiery hands down
his thighs to his ankles, making him moan again. I tied his ankles
to the bed and laughed. That made him all the more
excited.

I walked to the dresser and took out another
pre-staged item, a bottle of scotch and a crystal tumbler. I poured
a triple shot amount into the tumbler, turned to him, and took a
long drink, giving him a good long show. The drink was mostly for
me because I found his tiny brain and ease of conquest repulsive.
Hopefully, he could provide me with at least a drop of pleasure,
but even that had become less and less frequent from these men. He
watched me greedily, the excitement of his anticipation clearly
swirling his blood.

When I got back to the bed, he
moaned loudly and began to shudder. I loved when they did that,
like little boys at Christmas. The fact that I already knew the
outcome and he did not was the only thing that made this little
game fun anymore
.. But I could see that he
was a little too far gone already and needed to be calmed down if I
were to get any further pleasure from him.

I climbed over him and put my finger over his
mouth. “Not yet, big boy. I’ve got plans for you.” I took another
sip of the scotch, put the tumbler to his mouth, and tipped it up.
He drank from it and then tried to stop. My free hand moved between
his legs and squeezed until he opened his mouth again and finished
the glass. “Good boy,” I said. I got up and let my thong drop to
the floor before turning off lights.

I loved hearing the aching moan he made from
the darkness at his weak-minded premonition of the events to come.
But it was only I who knew the future, and the feeling was
cold.

I felt the sensation begin in my toes and build
until my eyes began to glow. But I couldn’t even bring myself to
make them flash—I’d tried and failed too many times, with too many
men. There was no connection between us, no warmth. I looked at him
the way a wolf looks at a rabbit.

My body became engulfed in a dim
moonlit glow caused by millions of tiny fingers of energy dancing
from my skin in anticipation, eagerly searching for a connection
that would allow the power to flow. “Whoaaa,” he said from the
dark.
Yeah, yeah, tell me something I
haven’t heard before
, I thought, trying to
drown out the insignificant, irritating sound of his voice. When I
got on the bed and straddled him, the moonlight glow instantly
disappeared.

“
Don’t worry Tex, this won’t hurt a
bit.”.

Chapter
25

The Trail Leads to the Eastern
European Jungle

My Pub Crawler avatar, a fellow built like
Grecian god, was now staggering, then dropped to all fours,
crawling toward Skelly’s. It was no use. I watched in horror as his
blood alcohol level tripped the limit and he smiled and then rolled
over into the gutter, with Skelly’s—and the B.I.B.—a mere two
minutes’ stagger away.

I had been playing Pub Crawler for an hour now,
in a concerted effort to keep from doing anything that might better
my life. But now the frustration of being so close to finding the
B.I.B. in the video game and failing had turned me back to real
work.

It was time to recover my old notes on the
other women born during the 1976 Super Bowl from my intricate
filing system—I found them right where I had left them, beside a
stack of unwashed jeans. () It was already getting late at night,
but I convinced myself, with a little help from a bottle of Miner’s
Lite, that I did my best work late, drunk, and without the
slightest clue as to how to proceed.

I fumbled through the papers, trying to
remember where I had left off before the website and celebrity
status had caused me to drop them like a blind roofer. Jennifer
Lowe’s name had an X beside it, which told me how perceptive I had
been. Rebecca also had an X. Of the fourteen or so names, eight
were either X’d or had moved away. So I began an Internet search,
just as I had done on Jennifer Lowe, checking public
records.

I chugged my Miner’s and got down to business.
The next searches opened even my blurry eyes. Both, including one
that was the second closest born to Dr. Jones’s magical halftime,
blinked up on my screen as deceased. When I began checking
newspaper articles and obits, my eyes widened yet again. They had
died accidental deaths within six days of one another; one died in
a car crash and the other in a bizarre cycling accident. Could it
have been a coincidence—two relatively young women, out of a group
of just fourteen, dying within a few days of each other? I followed
the leads as far as they would go, making notes, and bookmarking
sites where I had found pictures and other relevant info. It was a
long, time-consuming effort.

Of the final four women, three showed up
married—one in Washington, another in California. The third married
woman was living in town, though she had clearly made some efforts
to conceal her contact information. But the final Super Born was
not even trying to hide, as her listing showed an address and
phone. By then, though, my mind was too unfocused to go on. The
time at the bottom of my glowing computer screen read 5:32. At
first, that seemed weird, but then the light coming in from the
windows made it clear: 5:32 a…m. Shit, I was right. I did do my
best work late and drunk. Who knew?

But when I got to bed I couldn’t sleep. I just
stared at an empty spot on the wall, thinking of the blond from the
bar An hour later, the spot hadn’t moved, and I still felt my blood
racing. No deep breathing or reasoning quieted the anxiety. All I
had of her was the image of her at O’Malley’s and the photo of her
at Skelly’s; both played over and over in my mind (minus the part
where she had spoken to me and I’d been unable to respond,
naturally). Then I thought of her words on the website the night
before, how I had almost exposed her. I could feel the veins in my
neck pumping rapidly, uncontrollably.