To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him (9 page)

“Oh, my lord,” she sighed, losing her senses to what was right or proper anymore as his hot breath bathed her neck.

“Chastity,” he groaned, as an emotion like an arrow with a thick volcanic shaft pierced the very center of his manly feeling.

Suddenly, he pushed her down onto the emerald grass, his muscular form soon closely joining hers as he covered her with his virile hardness and scent.

“What is it, my darling?” she whispered, tossing back her hair and panting like a randy jackal.

“Oh, I’ll show you what it is,” he husked in his warm, moist baritone. Reaching over her supple form, saying, “I’ll show you what it is, all right . . .”

Lord Hawk pointed at the horizon.

“Highwaymen, coming this way. Stay down! I’ll be right back!”

Somewhere in Chapter 23

ripped off her bodice, crying, “Oh, my darling, here it is!”

And she quickly wrapped the sprigged muslin around his bloody head, wondering if she’d ever see him conscious again, just when she’d started to think that she realized she didn’t hate him so much after all.

Somewhere Near the Beginning of Chapter 30

And so he had finally explained it all, and she couldn’t be mad at him any more. “The fortune was rightfully mine all along, and he was a spy for the King!” she thought again, smiling contentedly.

Middle of Chapter 30

“Come sit on my lap, my lovely bride,” he rumbled. Just then, Lady Dogatha trotted in with a whole litter of adorable puppies following behind. Chastity’s musical giggle tinkled in harmony with Duke Ian Hawk’s low chuckle as they laughed and laughed.

Page 297

Up the stairs, onto her satin-coated bed.

“But wait,” she said, suddenly remembering. “Whatever happened to the . . .

Page 300

very, very slowly and softly on her brow. And then he sat up and removed her first slipper, stopping to remark on the daintiness and petite rapturous beauty of each toe.

Page 301, which is the last damned page and had better be good

“My darling, darling, darling Duke of Hawkston,” she groaned musically as he caressed her swollen bosom through the silk-ribbon-embroidered microfiber of her shimmery lingerie. Her miniscule hands traveled along his rippling chest while he buried his head into the vastness of her cleavage, kissing her there with wistfully delicious abandon. Then, with a swirling phantasm of pleasure, he unbuttoned the top of the gown and exposed her glorious orbs for all of himself to see.

“You’re so, so beautiful. You’re the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispered tenderly, moving his fingers lightly along the sides of her large, free-standing mounds. And then those same fingers touched the tiny buds of passion, causing a torrent of molten ecstasy to course through her blood like a freight train.

“My darling!” she moaned orgiastically. “Have all of me! Have all of me now!”

Before she could cajole him sweetly further, his mouth was upon those soft, hardened nodules of pleasure at the tips of her satiny globes. He sucked at them sensuously, eagerly, deeply, causing her blood to sing with molten joy. She didn’t think such joy was possible, not until, gently pushing her down among the silken heaps of pillows, he lightly parted her velvety thighs and, in a heated frenzy of titanic desire, inserted the male gloriousness of himself into her very core, all the way up to the fire-driven hilt.

Her head swam in the depths of a passion so intense, it was as if a thousand rose petals had floated down onto two thousand pink candles, igniting into a rich, fiery glow that infused her very soul with its turbulent, torrential, volcanic warmth. She felt herself falling over into an immense canyon of searing desire, only to be buoyed up again by a flowing current of dense, turgid, pure animal lust. And that sweet, gentle, soft lust slowly swelled beneath her, around her, alongside her, above . . . bringing with itself a need for something greater than herself. That sugary need, that soaring want, that heavenly aching within her most womanly center built and carried her higher. And still it built, and built, and built up some more. And then . . .

With one, final, soft kiss, the Duke of Hawklington, her new husband, rolled off of her and next to her side.

“My sweet darling Chastity,” he sighed, “you have just made me the happiest man in the world.”

With a brilliant smile, the new Duchess closed her pretty eyes and went to sleep.

Fin.

The Gai Jin Perspective

WORKING TITLE UNTIL I GET A JAPANESE OR CHINESE DICTIONARY

The second shot grazed his ear. By the third he was plunging into the icy cold water, moving downstream and out of range. He could hold his breath for seven minutes if necessary. But the bomb in his hand had thirty seconds left. If he emerged now he could throw it into the midst of the guerrillas and kill them all. He could also be shot. Better to wait until he’d reached the shadows under the concrete ledge.

There wasn’t much time left to consider the matter. His shoulder was starting to ache from the sword gash. The sharks were probably attracted to the smell. He kicked another one away.

Fifteen more seconds.

Just then he remembered: N always set the bomb timers wrong. Dangerous affliction, dyslexia. That meant . . .

Zero.
The ashes rained down.

Major Anthony Kendrick—not his real name, of course; no one knew that—watched the woman from across the room. At first he’d thought her a local peasant but the unconvincing rhythm of her tread as she carried him to her hut made him suspicious. Once in front of the fire she removed her yak hide
njingitsa,
revealing a tight, short dress and five inch heels, and then he knew. She was probably a member of the American press.

She bandaged his forehead. Her breasts jutted before him like fleshy Z19 missiles—the missiles no one knew about but N, the Prime Minister and, of course, him.

“Water?” she asked.

“What’s your name?”

Her mouth was all over his. Her tongue moved in quick short thrusts. So much like the other woman. But that was so long ago. How could this woman know about that? So many years ago, and her breasts like grenades . . .

It almost worked. She had succeeded in distracting him for a moment but once he smelled the cordite and mercuric iodide residue in her hair, he knew.

This was the one he’d been searching for.

The only question now: what action would be best for the Crown? He could easily reach around to her right earlobe and smash with his fingers the
lo-tsin-nguyen
point just under the skin, killing her instantly. He could merely disable her optic nerve and then ransack the room. He could give her a really bad case of diarrhea . . .

No. He knew what he would do. Three years of being Commander Kruskatov’s whore made a woman useful for one kind of punishment:
Dosinjai.

The hand reaching to smash her ear instead gave it a hair-trigger-light touch that caused her to moan with intense pleasure. He followed this with a firm slapping motion on her left buttock that was in counterpoint to the rhythm of his pulse. Her moans became louder.

It was all coming back to him. All those years of training at the hands of Master Qxackwan and his many concu bines with breasts shaped like a wide variety of things. His years of studying
Dosinjai,
the ancient art of conquering a woman’s body with a man’s
bo lo nai.

A deft touch here, a short caress there, a quick poke . . . he was done. She was finished. She had undergone a physical experience so potent it would leave her unable to respond to any other man. She would forget all about The Cause and wander the streets in delirium.

Once again Her Majesty’s kingdom was safe.

For now.

How to Be a Trailer Trash Housewife

The Choice

I picked sky-blue for the color of our doublewide, figuring that if I had to become trailer trash, I might as well do so whole-heartedly. The mortgage companies wouldn’t entrust us with even the lowliest of houses. My swollen womb called out for a nest. My prejudices had no say.

A thick buffer of half-dead grass separated us from the rest of the neighborhood, leaving me to spy on them in solitude. I saw that there were two clear paths from which to choose.

On the one hand, bright aluminum foil gleamed from windows below in which objects existed without explanation or shame. Beer cans, broken appliances, dogs, cats, carburetors, Christmas lights, cacti, old calendars, chickens, children, doilies, afghans, colored bottles, Easter baskets, tomato plants, seashells, tankless toilets—all of it splatterpainted across yards, living rooms, kitchen tables in not reckless but perfectly languid abandon.

Wasn’t it art?

Where else could an American be that free?

But how did one avoid the salmonella and the fleas?

My alternative, on the other hand, was the battle to legitimize mobile home living—to pretend it was middle class. A tidy beige manufactured home filled with slipcovers and cozies, imitation-wood paneling hiding the fact that it was all on wheels. All of it bought on credit from Wal-Mart or Fingerhut.

Fingerhut catalogues were (as required by law?) mailed to every trailer in the world every month. They showed us beautiful toasters, leather-look jackets, and gun racks available for just ten dollars a month, just ten years, for just ten times the price by the time the interest had all been paid. I heard someone accidentally call it Fingerfuck once, a most appropriate Freudian slip on the sweepstakes contests or the government-sponsored lotteries. They don’t just want to screw us out of our money, they want to tenderly, teasingly tickle it out of us, bit by bit, leaving cheap gifts on our plywood dressers in return.

I straddled the fence between the proud-to-be trailer trash and the modular-home gentry trash. It was so hot and dusty outside, so air-conditioned and mind numbing inside. Living in a mobile home made it easy to put off decision making for a while.

The Mail

Every morning, I went out tO get the mail. Sometimes I went two or three times a morning, then once or twice in the afternoon, becoming more frustrated and desperate if it wasn’t there. Calling the post office to bawl them out like you would a drunken husband.

After a while I stopped hoping for letters from friends or the notification that I had won a million dollars. But I could always count on the catalogs. Usually there were at least two or three, more on a good day. I would hug them tightly to my breast and run them through the flames shot down by the Hill Country sun, crashing through the front door and then safe to my bed, kids and cats calling far behind.

There was a procedure to follow. No straying or shortcuts allowed. First, I looked at the entire catalog, one page at a time. My favorites were the ones with clothing in my size—Lane Bryant, Roaman’s, Big Beautiful Fashions for Her. But I perused anything the mailbox awarded me: house wares, garden bulbs, cowboy boots, lingerie. After a long, leisurely flip through the glossy images, I had a good sense of what version of happiness they were offering: Affordable style. Timeless classics. Decadent luxury. Plain old sex.

After the last page, I would lovingly set the catalog on my bedside table, gaze at the ceiling for a while, then get up and resume my chores. Clothes always needed washing. Children wanted to be fed.