The Hinky Velvet Chair (36 page)

Nina’s laugh quacked so loud that Jewel held the phone away
from her ear. In that moment, she heard Randy say from the living room, “We can
transfer moneys from her bank into ours?”

Uh-oh.
Jewel
walked into the living room.

Clay was explaining, “But if we use our regular mail
account, the email trail leads straight to our door. Well, Jewel’s door. Which
would be bad. So what do we do?”

“What’s going on here?” she demanded.

“Create a false Internet identity and backloop it to the
mark’s email account?” Randy said in the voice of a star pupil.

“Talk to you later,” she told Nina, and hung up.

“Very good,” Clay said. “Same with the cash transfer. This
is where a Paypal account works for you. Oh, hi, Jewel. We’re bringing Randy up
to date on Internet fraud.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Sounds to me like you’re stealing.”

“Just from Sovay. Did you know that woman has twenty million
dollars?” At Jewel’s expression he said, “Don’t worry, we’ll leave her enough
for a good defense lawyer.”

Jewel ground her teeth. “Clay. No.”

“You didn’t object when Virgil cleaned out Sovay’s CD
account.”

“What? He
what?
Don’t tell me this! Argh!”

“Besides, Randy needs some money of his own. C’mon, partner,”
Clay wheedled. “The man’s got his pride.”

She was still thinking of Sovay’s CD account. “Wait, Virgil
what?”
She did a mental headslap. “Never
mind.”

Randy turned from the computer with such puppydog eyes that
she felt guilty. “Now I can pay to have your bedroom cleaned and repainted.”

She swallowed. “Randy could have had a
job
, if you hadn’t sold him downriver with Ed.”

Clay waved a hand. “Ed would never have hired him. No paper
trail.”

“I thought you were getting him an identity!”

“I’m getting it, I’m getting it. Faking a solid ID takes
time. Not like you’d use on a weekend scam, I mean, but something that’ll last
him years.”

Jewel couldn’t take any more. She clapped her hands over her
ears. “Oh, say, can you see!”

“Star Spangled Banner?” Randy said after Clay left. They’d
laid newspaper over the sooty bedroom carpet. Now Jewel tossed him an end of a
sheet. He caught it and snapped it open. His naked muscles came and went behind
the sheet like a peep show.

She felt a little light-headed. “National anthem. You know.
I think it dates back to the War of 1812.”

He tucked in the sheet. “Ah. I became an incubus in 1811.”

“You’ve heard it watching football games on TV.”

He caught her looking at him and his magic schlong swelled
up and rose in a slow, stiff salute. His dark eyes seemed to grow bigger. “Jewel.
If I may speak of serious things.”

The Relationship
Conversation. Red alert!
She touched her dry lips with the tip of her
tongue.

He smiled. “Did I thank you for rescuing me once again?”

“I think so.”

“The forced solitude gave me time to ponder. I begin to
understand what causes me to, what’s your term, ‘zap’ into bed.”

“No kidding?” She tossed the sooty coverlet into a corner.

“It is the difference between myself perpendicular and
myself prone. I am two men.”

This she knew already. “The sensitive new-age guy who tries
to please women.”
Do we have to talk
about this?

He bowed. “And the buff bastard who always wins. You have a
gift,” he said ruefully, “for bringing these two halves of myself together and,
er—”

“Rubbing them the wrong way?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know that there is a correct way
for my two selves to confront one another. I’ve realized there is no escaping
the confrontation, if I’m to be free.”

It always came back to that. He wanted to be free.

“I don’t blame you for wanting it.” Her heart pinched.

“So it is high time I begged your forgiveness for — for not
knowing whether I am an earl or an incubus.”

Those big dark eyes made her nervous. “Apology accepted. Now
say you don’t think I’m too skanky for a lord to know.”

He smiled. “That rankles, does it?”

“Someday I’ll make you eat those words.” She shrugged. “Let’s
go to bed.” She climbed between the sheets.

But he wasn’t done.

“Miss Griffy, in the spa, spoke to you of women’s needs.”

She groaned. “I won’t go there if you don’t.”

He went there. “She said, men who want a relationship think
that if they know about sex, that should be enough.”

Ugh, ugh, relationship
talk!
Whatever happened to the guy who wanted to fuck all night?

He touched her cheek. “She said, too, that sex is easier
than love. She said, men don’t understand themselves. They want sex to be
enough, but it never is. What do you think?”

I want sex to be
enough.
“I think that’s a sexist generalization.”
Does that make me a guy?

“What do you want, Jewel?”

She felt claustrophobic. She wanted to get dressed and run
home. But this
was
home, and he lived here. “Um, a good bra without an
underwire?”

Smiling, he shook his head. “Ask me for something only I can
give you.”

He stood there, naked, as if unaware his Washington Monument
was aimed at her and bobbing as he talked, talked, talked. Her brain shut down.
Oh say, can you see, by the dawn’s early
light.

“Randy, I have what I want. I have a great job, wonderful
friends, a nice apartment,” she looked around at the sooty walls and ceiling, “a
new partner.”

His face darkened.

She added hastily, “And I’m getting used to you. Both the
hard parts and the fabulous parts.”

He began to smile.

“I — I don’t know how to make this work,” she pleaded. “I
mean, what’s the goal here?”
That
was
too close to the bone, and she backpedalled. “The first priority is getting
your life back, for real, once and for all.”

“I complain too much of my losses, don’t I? Yet your losses
are no less profound. Your privacy. Your liberty.”

She couldn’t bear to think about her losses — especially the
loss that would come when he was free at last. When he left.
What’s the matter with me? I’m not the
clingy one — what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming.

“Bright Jewel. I may know your heart, but not touch it.”

“Shh.” She rose up on her knees and stopped his mouth with
hers. Her throat was packed full of hot words she could never say, painful
thoughts she didn’t dare think.

They kissed. Pleasure flooded her, easing her tight throat.

She lifted her mouth. “Are you done talking yet?”

Smiling, he kissed her and pushed her on her back, carrying
her down slowly, never letting their bodies part.

She sank into demonspace.

He wafted her to a flowery meadow lit by a moon.

He looked different. She said, pleased,
You have a ponytail! With daisies?

I learned about the
Haight making one’s hair grow. ‘Make love, not war.’
He smiled at her surprise.
I shall take that for my new family
motto.

She laughed.
Okay, you
look hot in the ponytail.

He bowed.
Then I will let my new haircut grow out.

How did you find out about the Haight?

I read Griffy’s mind
last night.

Euw!
She so hadn’t
wanted to know that.

You know what I am.
His eyes were full of light.
Jewel, let
us make love, not war. What is my lady’s pleasure tonight?

She felt dizzy.
No sex
in the air.

I will not frighten
you tonight, bright Jewel. I must try to imagine new pleasures for you. I have
never known a woman like you,
he said in a deep voice that sent shivers
down her back.
Together we will discover
fresh delights.

He stroked her with feather-light fingertips, strumming her
back, her buns, her knees, up the insides of her thighs, skimming her sex, up
her belly, up the undersides of her breasts, flicking her nipples, brushing her
throat.

Her skin flamed all over as if his fingers were hot coals,
making her wriggle and moan.
A light
touch,
he said deep in her ear, wrapping her in his velvet voice.

He ran a hand over her from throat to knee, and all his
fingers turned into licking tongues.
Ohmigod.
He stroked her face with his other hand, and those fingers became tongues, too.
She moaned. Lick, lick, lick, he licked her everywhere rhythmically, a little
faster than her heart could pound.

Another handful of tongues sneaked down her leg toward her
ankle, and another, oh, she couldn’t keep track, she writhed under dozens of
tongues, licking every inch of her body at once.

For God’s sake, Randy,
fuck me!
She twisted, striking out, but even though her hands met his and
his fingers laced through hers to hold her, it seemed he had still more hands,
more tongues-fingers-tongues to lick her with.

He hoisted her up until she straddled him and sank slickly,
gratefully down onto his cock, feeling anchored while his hundred tongues
licked, licked, licked. Now she could thrash in his arms, but she was pinned to
him at that one spot, Randy big and hard inside her, something to struggle
against, while pleasure and confusion made her lose herself.

His tongues began licking in unison, one for every few
inches of her body, as if she were an ice cream cone, and he bent her backwards
until her head fell back and she arched against him and her hot button met the
root of his amazing thing.

And then he bit her gently, once. All over.
All
over.

Pleasure shocked through her.

Time stood still.

She screamed, long and loud.

Her bedroom came back around them, still and quiet and dim
and safe. They lay face to face on the tangled sheets.

“That was interesting,” she said when she could speak.

“Not vastly original, but a popular selection,” he said with
a smirk in his voice.

“God. I think I came out the soles of my feet that time.”

“Was that fast enough for you?”

“God yes.” She pressed her face to his neck, her heart
thumping.

He brushed her hair away and kissed her ear. “I promise I
will neither scare you nor rob you of sleep.”

She drew in a shaky sigh. “Big talk. Now if you can keep
surprising me in bed.”

“I can promise you — hm—” He shifted and she dared to look
at him, admiring the planes of his angular face and his shock of midnight-black
hair. “I can promise at least three hundred and eight new experiences.”

She laughed. “That’s next month taken care of, then.”

o0o

Jewel Heiss sat white-knuckled in the back seat of her aged
Tercel with her ex-con-artist partner in front and her sex demon at the wheel.
It was a steamy Chicago Monday in late summer. They were headed for the
Eleventh Ward, responding to a consumer complaint. This one had come down from
the Fifth Floor. The complainant had gone to her alderman, and her alderman,
knowing what was good for him, had brought it straight to da mayor, and from
there it trickled down to Jewel’s Hinky Division.

Today’s mission was to make the consumer’s problem go away,
without publicity. That, and to get out of this car alive.

Jewel sat in back with the files, so that Clay could take
the risk of a head-on with Randy at the wheel. Randy’s model for driving was
obviously a Hollywood chase scene. He had flair.

“Here’s the turn. Jesus, Randy, slow down!”

Wordlessly, Randy slewed the Tercel into a squealing halt.

Jewel put a hand on her throat. “That was way too exciting.
I hope I didn’t pee my pants.” If it hadn’t been ninety degrees in the shade,
she’d have been ice-cold with terror.

In the rear-view mirror she caught Randy smiling at her. “I’ll
wager that you had no notion you could get such performance from this vehicle.”

“Clay, you’re supposed to teach him how to drive like a
normal person, not a cop show rerun.”

Clay showed her an innocent face over the back of the front
seat. “Well, we’re sort of cops.”

“Sort of! As in, not really. In fact, where traffic is
concerned, we’re not cops at all, and we do not get to drive like idiots. Ever.”

Clay made his pouty lips into an O and twinkled at her
through his shaggy blond bangs. “I think he’s doing very well.”

“It’s sabotage. He’ll be busted and grounded within a week
of getting his license. Which we cannot afford.”

“Getting busted and grounded is the best education for a new
driver. Worked for me when I was sixteen,” Clay said. “Hammers home the rules.”

“Which you ignore for the fun of it,” she said. “The
difference being, you were a citizen on a learner’s permit, and Randy can’t
even get a learner’s permit until he has an identity. You were going to fake up
ID for him, remember?” Jewel hated to think how many laws she was breaking, the
longer Randy stayed in her life. “If he gets busted, he’ll be deported.” Did
the Immigration and Naturalization Service have a special way of dealing with
hinky wetbacks? She shuddered. “He could end up in hinky Guantanamo.” She
didn’t know which would be worse. “For nasty experiments.”