The Hinky Bearskin Rug (35 page)

This was it.
Either he’d come back or he wouldn’t. No, he would come all right, eventually.
But would he come back to
her?

She’d finally
faced a few things. Like: it was, too, a real relationship, and she wanted to
keep him, and she wanted to treat him better, and she wanted, God help her, she
wanted him to want her. That was a lot of things to want that she might not
get.

She’d got by
for a long time by carefully never wanting anything that she had to count on
someone else for. Mudslides, a swim in the lake, a good pulse-thumping orgasm,
she could give herself. This stuff, not so much. Oh, Britney or Nina would come
if she yelled for help. They would always
choose
to come for her. But it would be a choice, weighing her urgency against their
own.

She didn’t
choose to come for Randy. She just did it.

“I guess
that’s why I’m here,” she said aloud.

She lay down
on the mattress.

On second
thought, she got up and turned on the window air conditioner, feeling guilty.
The kid probably couldn’t afford to run it. But the unit was noisy, which could
be useful right now.

She lay down
again.

Her eyes
drifted shut.

o0o

There was a
thunderhead under her feet, and more storm clouds above and before her. Warm,
damp air buffeted her. She stood solidly on her cloud. This was one of his
favorite places.

She called
out,
Honey, I’m home!
The clouds
echoed back to her like mountains.

No answer.

With a sigh,
she sat down on a cloud and dangled her legs.

He’d written
her the letter. But he probably hadn’t sent it. She was almost sure he hadn’t
included the key. That would have been impolite to Velvita. Her sex demon had a
mannerly streak.

Soooo. He
wanted to tell her stuff.

She had to
stop thinking a moment and just feel, remembering stuff he’d told her, the
clouds in his letter like the clouds around her now, and the sunshine and the
freedom and the innocence he’d written for her. After a hot sigh, she resumed
her train of thought.

So he wrote
the letter. Then she’d called him.

Then he’d
zapped into bed.

Frustration
welled in Jewel. He was always doing this. Trying to jump off a roof, zap into
a junkyard somewhere, get out of her life so she could have it back.

Out of the
cloudy darkness his voice said,
Yes.

Randy, I have my life. How can I not
have it? I’m in it.
Her throat felt hot with messages for him.
Stop
worrying about me. I’m too selfish to sacrifice myself for someone else.
Her throat clogged up.

No.

Had she said
that? Thought it? She rolled over on the cloud, which puffed up around her like
a cloudy armchair, and looked over the edge.
Randy?

You
are not selfish. You don’t know what you have to give.

She heaved a
steamy sigh. He must be near.

When
you are older you will know more about who you are. Then you will notice,
whenever you open your heart. As you do so often.

The sky below
her was full of nothing but thunderheads.

Don’t you mean, whenever I open my
legs?

Something
touched her between her breasts, not on the skin but inside her. The touch made
a little ting! sound, and left a pearl of heat that simmered comfortingly
through her chest.

I mean your heart, bright Jewel.

She lay back
in the armchair cloud. He was back! She’d always worried that somehow,
sometime, he would vanish into this desolate space and never return. Her cloudy
footrest tilted up to cushion her lower legs, and the headrest cloud cradled
her neck and head, and she stared up into the blue-gray boil of storm clouds
with tears of relief trickling into her ears.

You
don’t know what you have to give either.

Silence.

You always say you’re two men, the lord
and the incubus. The lord doesn’t bend, but the sex demon gives until he
bleeds. You’ve let me walk all over you. I thought that was why you went to
porn school.
She
stopped, surprised at the insight.
To get
some pride in your gifts.

A fat, warm
raindrop landed on her shoulder.

Maybe there’s some things that can’t be
given unless someone knows you are giving them,
she guessed.

Another drop
splashed on her right breast, then one on her belly.

Maybe we both kind of suck at accepting
what’s being given.
She
swallowed a lump. Warm rain spattered all over her.
I’m more of a hit-and-run giver. Saves having to wait to get nothing
back.
She thought of the gallery full of old boyfriends, some arrogant,
some crying, and all of them begging for more.

Suddenly she
thought she knew what Randy wanted.

Will you come back to me?
she said. She had thought it might
kill her to ask, but the words came out easily.

The sky
cracked across. The clouds opened. Rain flooded down on her, drenching her bare
skin, slipping between her lips.

It tasted
salty.

She reached
into the sky.

He formed over
her so gently that she hardly noticed. The rain beat down, and he grew solid in
her embrace, a being of thundercloud-gray warm water, his surface pocked and
rippling with every drop that bulleted through him.

Still shy. She
touched his shimmering, translucent face.
Show
me your beautiful eyes.

He smiled, and
her tight chest eased, and his big solemn black eyes appeared in his cloudman
face.

Okay, that’s a little weird.
She laughed, and tried to tickle him,
and warm salty water splashed wherever she poked, and very suddenly he was
quite solid indeed, heavy with muscle and bone and a nice, hard, solid kiss.

In her head,
as they kissed, she heard his voice.
Honey,
I’m home.

As they found
one another and Randy slid between her thighs with a sigh, the clouds parted.
The two of them shot into a blazing, brilliant world of silver and gold light.

She refused to
look down. The sun drew her.

He entered
her, rattling her bones with each stroke, and she wrapped her legs around his
waist and threw her head back, cackling with delight at the sunshine on her
face.

Kiss me,
he said. They kissed. His cock did
that thing again, swelling and shrinking inside her, stretching her, turning
her inside out, making her crosseyed.

They flew
higher, arrowing toward the sun.

Her skin
shrank and swelled. Her pulse sent her nerve endings out until she filled the
sky. He filled her mouth with his tongue, asking with kisses for everything,
and she gave it. She opened herself to him, making more room, and he grew
bigger, and the sun drew nearer, until sunlight filled her from the inside out.

Oh no, I’m coming already!
she thought, sorry to return to reality
just when their flight might carry them into the heart of the sun. Then she
came like a freight train barrelling into a hole in a mountain, with huge
rhythmic pulses of joy.

But demonspace
did not dissolve around them. They didn’t fall, sweaty, to bounce on a mattress.

They kept
flying upward, faster and faster. The sun drew near, not unbearably hot but
unendurably bright. Randy drove in and out of her. She felt every millimeter of
friction between them, his cock in her sheath, her muscles closing around him,
his silky-hard length rubbing her swollen, sensitive tissues, his thumb
twitching on her trigger, until she came, came again, came with each heartbeat,
over and over and over.

Higher and
higher they flew. At last they seemed to plunge into the sun itself. It was
like sinking into a sweet custard of light, like a scream, like dying. So much
light! With each pulse, every cell in her body seemed to burst at once, unable
to contain such light. Yet his climax came like waves of rain, a moment of
relief like a blink of utter darkness that she could sense as clearly as she
felt her own climax. She knew how he died with each throb. She felt each
squeeze of her muscle around his cock, and she felt him rise again, born inside
her, a heartbeat later. First the unendurable light, then the total darkness,
each an answer, an echo, a gift from one to the other.

Thank you,
she managed to say, even while they
kissed.

How long this
continued, she didn’t know. The universe disappeared in a thunderclap, and
burst into existence with a heartbeat, over and over and over and over and
over.

o0o

She must have
passed out, because it seemed forever before she woke from the deepest,
blackest, safest sleep she’d had in years. “Hey, sleepyhead,” she said to the
demon lump beside her.

Groaning,
Randy sat up, then clambered to his feet.

“Clay’s gonna
be really unhappy,” she guessed, as she put her clothes back on.

Randy dressed.
“Possibly.”

That reminded
her. “Hey, do you think I’m contagious? I guess what I mean is, do you think
you’re contagious?”

“Contagious?”

“You know. Can
I catch hinky sex from you?”

A smile
transformed Randy’s face. “No. Why?”

“Uh, because I
wondered. If you must know, I kissed Clay and it — it was hinky. I got scared.
I mean, what if
I
can’t be normal in
bed any more?”

“I have no
idea,” Randy said, poker-faced. “Is that what Clay suggested?”

She frowned. “Kinda,
yeah. Like, we’d done it so much that when I ate a cow plop it affected me
worse than most people.”

Randy
shrugged, as if to express mistrust in Clay’s opinion. “Perhaps it was the cow
plops then.”

“Huh.” That
was the comforting explanation. “He told me where he’d hidden your letter.”

That made
Randy look up. “Did he?”

“Yup.” She
gave her hair a lick with a hairbrush, tied it back, and called it good. “Something
not right with our con artist partner. He’s usually so focused on the main
chance.”

“Your good
influence, no doubt.” Randy’s stiff tone told her it was time to stop talking
about Clay.

Am I the only one who dreamed of sex in
the sun?
Maybe he
would be a tender, vulnerable lover only in bed, always a lord out of it. He
looked grim.
I can’t handle another fight
with him right now.

At that moment
her phone rang.

“Jewel? Clay.
I brought that stuff you got from Velvita to the debriefing with Ed and the
Chief Attorney.”

Oh fuck! The debriefing!
“How dare you do that meeting without
me?”

“Don’t worry,
I covered for you. Taylor wants to call a showdown tomorrow morning with
Bing Neebly and Tannyhill. He thinks he can wrap this up.” There was a pause
over the cell phone. “We’ll need Randy at that meeting.”

She glanced
over her shoulder. Randy had tipped the mattress against the wall and was
putting the milk crates back where Jewel had found them.

“No problem.
Is Taylor gonna arrest Bing?”

“I gather he
thinks a civil invitation will suffice. You seem to have put the fear of
Officer Jewel into him.”

“What about
Steven? One word from Bing and he’ll skip town, with all his assets in the
Caymans.”

“Uh, I don’t
think he will. He’s been neutralized. So come back to my place as soon as you
can. We need to organize that stuff Velvita sent us.”

Holy shit. “I
have to get back to work,” she said apologetically to Randy.

He turned off
Velvita’s air conditioner. His face was a dark mask.

Now what?

They left the
apartment.

“Are you
pissed with me?” Jewel felt sore and tender inside.

Shaking his
head, he took Velvita’s key from her hand and locked the door. Then he pried
open the mail slot and pushed the key through. She heard it fall, tinkling, to
the floor inside.

With a small
smile, he put his hand on her back and escorted her through the gangway, back
to her car.

Guess we’re roomies again.

She felt a
little breathless.

Jewel spent
Wednesday morning in the Chief Attorney’s office at the Kraft Building,
listening with appreciation while the Chief put the bite on Bing Neebly. Clay
was wearing a designer suit for the occasion. A seedy-looking guy in an Inspectional Services jacket marked
Zachariah
sat
beside Clay, looking scared. Ed tipped his chair back, arms folded, chewing gum.
Randy sat at the far end of the table in custody of a large cardboard box.

Steven
Tannyhill was also present in a designer suit. Above the collar, he didn’t look
much like himself. Pale, wobbly-chinned, with one eye looking left and the
other wandering, he looked like a total head case. Beside him, wearing a dark
suit and a frown that screamed Big Nurse, if not Dominella Whiplash, sat Maida
Sacker.