The Hinky Velvet Chair (15 page)

She jabbed his bare chest with a forefinger. “
Self
-imposed. How many times have you
had a hissy and got zapped? Let’s see.”

He looked so dangerous that she took the finger off his
chest and held it up to count.

“You zapped into a bed in the home furnishings department of
Marshall Field’s. You didn’t want me to arrest Clay and, when I insisted,
zappo, straight into my bed. That was convenient, guess I ought to thank you
for that.” She gulped air. “Then you zapped into a sofa in Clay’s hotel suite
while I was having sex with him on it.
Then that stinky old wrecked car in the dump that same night! And let’s not
forget the soot all over my bedroom. You knew damned well you’d end up in that
massage table today.”

Randy literally danced with rage. “I am not a magician! I
don’t know why it happens!” he roared.

“Well I think mine is a pretty good guess!” she yelled back.

They stood nose-to-nose. He panted and looked purple and she
double-dare glared. His hands were fists, but they were at his sides.

Inside, Jewel was icy calm.
So this is how he loses his temper. Good to know.

As she looked into his stormy black eyes she had a mental
image of Randy’s portrait in Burke’s Peerage: handsome, bored, all dressed up
in old-timey lord clothes, looking down on a curtseying woman — who looked like
herself.

She frowned.
What the
hell does that mean?

His color faded to a dull red. “Do not enrage me.”

“This is not about emotion,” she said. “It’s about a living
arrangement that’s fucking intolerable for both of us. You want to own me, I
want total freedom.” She paused, because this was the part she hated. “I
acknowledge that you have reason to feel some — some separation anxiety if you
don’t always know where I am. That’s backwards, but it’s understandable.”

“What does ‘backwards’ signify?”

“If I’m supposed to keep you safe from any residual whammy
that might be, like, left over from that curse, then
you
should be the
one wearing a anklet, not me.” To his frown she said, “Tracer anklet. It’s a
LoJack for people.”

“LoJack?”

“Oh, forget it. Although that’s not a bad idea,” she added,
thinking of his habit of going AWOL in public places. Be a lot easier to
pinpoint his location if and when he did disappear. “The point is — I forget
what the point is.”

“The point,” he said in a low voice, “is that you want your
freedom. Whereas I want my dignity. I am not accustomed—” He stopped and
pressed his lips shut.

She said as gently as she could, “You’re a sex slave prone,
but a lord perpendicular. I know.”

“I’m not accustomed to women complaining about my services.
Not in this century.”

And back they were again at the part she couldn’t talk
about. “That was girl talk.”

He glowered. “But presumably true.”

His feelings must be hurt bad. She guessed that if you’ve
lost everything to become good in bed, complaints stung.

“Look, I don’t know you well enough to talk about — about
that. Anyway, I’m not your target market. I’m not married to a lousy lay. I’m
not lonely.”

The little red blinking “liar” light went off in her head.

She ignored it. “I don’t have trouble finding sex partners
who satisfy me.”

The damned “liar” light was still blinking.
Never mind. He can’t see it — from here.

“What I’m saying is, I’m not like the women you met in that
bed. This is a different millennium. We have different problems. If I was some
little old lady with a bad back, you would know how to deal with me, am I
right?”

He stepped so close that his bare chest brushed her bra. “And
were I some brainless twiddlepoop with pantaloons at perpetual cock-crow, you
might use me and be rid of me.”

She said breathlessly, “You’re always horny.”

“So are you.” He looked big and dark and scrumptious and
dammit.
He’d done it to her again.

Another long night of magical sex stared her in the face.

She felt her insides melt. She relaxed. She smiled.

He bowed. “If I’m to learn self-control, there’s no time
like the present. Will you take the chaise, or shall I?”

He stepped away, leaving the front of her body to cool, and
pulled blankets and pillows out of a closet.

Jewel gaped at him in astonishment. “What are you doing?”

“I will spend the night on the chaise. You sleep there.” He
pointed at the bed. “I shall not touch you in any way.” With his gorgeous bare
back to her, he made up the lame-ass wicker chaise with pillows and blankets,
stripped his pants off, and wedged himself between the creaking arms of the
chaise. “You may put out the light,” he said with his back to her.

She realized she was taking little panting breaths. Her
fingertips tingled. Way down in secret, her happyloola twitched.

She found her voice. “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

She felt lightheaded and unbalanced. She sat down on the
bed. “Unless you just want a quickie.”
What
am I saying?
She should be grateful he was cooperating.

He was silent. Punishing her.

She realized she was giving him the satisfaction he was
after. So to speak.

She turned the light out, finished undressing, and slid
between the sheets, which then heated up to scorching.

She lay as still as possible.

I could jerk off. That
would drive him crazy.

But she was afraid to touch herself. She might moan or
something. He would take that as a victory.

She was screwed.

But only metaphorically.

If I’ve got such a
fabulous doggone sex life, how come I’m going to bed alone for the second night
in a row?

She couldn’t sleep.

How ironic. Randy hadn’t given her a full night’s rest for
two and a half weeks, and now she lay in bed, alone, staring at the ceiling,
wide awake and horny.

Randy lay six feet away on the chaise, apparently dead to
the world. The wicker creaked in time with his breathing.

Maybe she should, like, take up meditating.

The bed got too hot. At first she tried not to move, but
sooner or later she ended up wriggling, and that made her think of wriggling on
top of Randy, or under Randy, or
stop.

She thought about the Thompson case instead. Sovay planned
to sting Virgil, but how? Did she want to marry him, or would she settle for
selling the Venus Machine to him for big bucks? Maybe she’d stolen it. Jewel
had no sympathy for anyone who bought the Venus Machine. Did Virgil think it
was stolen? What did he want from Sovay — besides the obvious? She wondered if
Kauz had brought any contraband potions into the house. She wondered if Randy
felt different about her since her double-dose of the Venus Machine. She
wondered if he was horny right now.

Stop, just stop!

She wondered if Clay noticed anything different about her
since her second dose. She could go to his room and ask.

And get rejected a second time tonight? No, thanks.

Besides, as fed up as she was with Randy, she felt that
sneaking into Clay’s bed would be pretty low.

The woman she used to be stood up and yelled in her head,
That’s not fair! You don’t owe him fidelity!
This is not a ‘relationship,’ this is—

She couldn’t think what it was.

She only let Randy hang around because they never knew when
the curse might kick in, and he would need his hundredth woman to fuck him free
of some bed.

She let Randy hang around so she could get laid every single
blessed night without fail, laid in a way no woman had ever got laid in the
history of wild and wacko sex.

She let Randy hang around because he belonged to her, she
owned him, he admitted it, and she loved it, and she hated that about herself.

But she didn’t want him hanging around too close. Because
clingy guys gave her hives.

It was too damned complicated, was what it was.

The wicker chaise creaked. A bolt of lightning shot through
her lippetydip and Jewel made a disgusted noise and sat up.

In the dimness over there, Randy wasn’t moving.

Maybe there was a bottle of that Scotch in the card room.

Oh, no. No more Scotch. But getting up would be good.

She breathed through pinched nostrils for a minute. Then she
got into PJs, picked up her phone, and went out.

I’ll wake Ed up and
report. Share the misery.

o0o

“So, yow!” Ed said, and a lion’s yawn came from the cell
phone. “You got nothin’ on the spa guy and nothin’ on this golddigger with a
magic machine.”

“But a very fertile, creative nothing, with lots of
potential. Plus I’d like some background checks.”

“All right, all right, gimme a second, I gotta get a pen.
Where the fuck does Nina keep pens around here?”

“Don’t wake her up!”

“Got one. Okay, shoot.”

“Butler. Name of Mellish. Age thirty, about six-two, big
shoulders, thick neck, lantern jaw, I think brown eyes but who can tell behind
the squint. He’s from Household Temps. There’s also a cook, at least one maid,
and a chauffeur.”

“Got it. What else?”

She bit her lip. She hated to do this. “Have we got a LoJack
I can plant on somebody so I can follow them around?”

“Not without a warrant.”

“It’s for Buzz,” she lied.

“Oh, okay.” Ed’s oft-publicized feeling was that Buzz had
caused him so much grief, he would look the other way if somebody tied a rock
around the kid’s neck and tossed him in the river. “You want a tracer anklet.”

“Make it two. I want one, uh, for his backpack and one for
him.” Hm, she wondered if the backpack ever stayed at the spa while Buzz
scurried away. She doubted it. “How do I track him?”

“How the hell do I know?” Ed grumbled. “We don’t do parolees
in the DCS.”

“I need those files yesterday.”

“That all, Miss High And Mighty, or can I go back to sleep?”

“That’s all. Nightsy-byesy-boodly-kins.”

“Fuck you,” her boss said, and rang off.

The air conditioning was icy in the upstairs hallway of
Virgil’s mansion. Jewel’s bare feet chilled on the marble. The collection room
was one floor up. She wondered what she could learn about the Venus Machine
without mad scientists in the way.

But as she started up the big staircase, she heard a rustle.

Looking up, she saw Sovay descending the stairs,
gripping the bannister with both hands, looking pale and slender and rich in an
old gold satin negligee set and matching marabou mules.

Jewel drew back too late.

Sovay spotted her. Half a word escaped her throat, and then
she clapped her hand over her mouth and glared. On a scale of one to ten it was
the juiciest glare she’d ever aimed at Jewel, who found it puzzling.
What’ve I done now?

Behind her hand, the bitch heaved — a childish,
you-make-me-wanna-hurl gesture.

Jewel stared.
I know
she hates me, but jeez.

Somewhere in the echoey stairwell, a faint creaking started.

She admitted now that Randy had a point. If he slept with
the snake, he might learn something useful.

Sovay passed Jewel as if she didn’t exist.

Jewel decided not to inspect the Venus Machine. Today had
been too exciting.

Besides, Randy might have changed his mind.

o0o

He hadn’t.

o0o

“We need to talk,” Jewel muttered to Clay at breakfast.

“Don’t be friendly with me,” Clay muttered back. “It’s not
in your cover.”

“Screw my cover,” she hissed. She had tough questions for
him. Plus she would need his help getting the tracer anklet onto Randy. “You
have some explaining to do.”

“Meet me out back in the alley,” Clay muttered. “One hour.”

“Meet me in my room,” she countered.
“Now.”

Randy looked up from flattering Griffy. His face darkened.

Jewel’s head filled with a picture of Randy locking her in a
chastity belt and chaining it to a bed. She felt her eyes widen.

Randy dropped Griffy like a hot coal. He turned and cooed, “More
coffee, Miss Sacheverell? Perhaps a slice of ham?”

Sovay smiled like a snake. “You are too kind, Lord Darner.”

Jewel’s phone rang. She checked the number. Ed.

“I’ll talk to you in a minute,” she hissed to Clay, and went
out of the room to take the call.

“What is it?” she hissed into the phone. “I’m undercover!”

“Go get that Buzz kid. Somebody’s phoned in a complaint.”

“Who?”

“George Dopposomethingpopolopolis, proprietor of a beauty
salon up on The Mile.” Ed read off the address. “Says the kid was hanging
around his place of business this morning, selling unlicensed beauty products
and driving away customers.”

Jewel wrote down the address. “That’s Giorgio lo Gigolo.”
She remembered Leo over at Spa On The Mile complaining about a bad peddlar
selling his customers love potions. “I’m on it.”