Then the first tide crested and crashed over her, and she gripped his buttocks, pulling him closer and sucking with renewed vigor.
But he was not yet ready. She knew what he was doing. Holding back and saving himself.
Words—endearments, thanks, flatteries, praises, gratitude—all so hopelessly inadequate, sprang to her mind.
I love you! she wanted to cry out. Oh, Christos, you beautiful, beautiful man! God help me, how I love you and need you! I was slowly dying inside until our paths crossed. Now here you are, lighting up my darkest hour of wretchedness. Giving me the greatest gift imaginable. . .
Then he withdrew from her mouth.
A soft mewl of distress escaped her, and tears sprang into her eyes. Not having him inside her was a little like death, like losing her hold on reality and discovering a vast emptiness. 'Don't stop!' she pleaded in a whisper.
He smiled, caressing her body with gentle, loving hands. 'Who said I was through?' he mocked, scooting around and straddling her. He knelt there for a moment, cupping her breasts in his hands, his thumbs brushing a vibrato across the erect, tender buds of her nipples.
She looked up at him. A vision he was, with his tightly muscled torso sleeked with perspiration, and his phallus rigid, prepared for assault.
Then, worshipfully, he bent his head to one willing breast and rolled the rosy nipple gently between his sharp white teeth.
Little beaks of pleasure pecked and stung, shot erogenous pulses throughout her body.
'Oh, God!' She writhed wildly, whipping her head back and forth as he increased the pressure of his teeth and fingers. 'Oh God, oh God—'
'Oh God!' Now it was he who bellowed, and he threw himself across her and slammed himself savagely up into her.
The impact of penetration, like a completed electrical circuit, jolted with a galvanic burst of initial energy, diminished slightly, wavered until the voltage stabilized and then, as Christos began to thrust, jolted again and again with carefully calibrated, steadily increasing amperage. Gloria clung to him in a jailer's grip.
It was agony. It was ecstasy. It was heaven and hell all rolled into one.
'Oh, yes—' she panted, every second word cut short by the tooth- jarring impacts of their bodies. 'God, yes! Say you—love me! Love me! LOVE ME—'
'Love you,' he gasped obligingly, his magnificent body pounding her tender flesh. His every muscle rippled and strained in glorious sculptural relief, and his face was a contorted mask of determination.
Gloria reveled wantonly. She lifted her hips to meet his every thrust, so that their pelvic bones struck glancing blows as his shaft buried itself in to the hilt.
And still he hammered. Faster and faster. Harder and harder.
Faster—
—harder—
—faster—
—harder—
—until his buttocks blurred and in perfect unison they both tensed, arched their backs, and cried out.
It was as if the earth itself trembled. Darkness brightened, trumpets blared, and the four winds whipped up tempests of sound and fury. This—this precisely synchronized climax—this was the beginning and the end, the Creation and the Apocalypse.
And still the orgasm seemed to continue, forever and without end as, together, they careened out over the edge of the universe and into the void beyond.
Finally they collapsed, lying atop each other in an inert tangle of limbs, lungs burning, hearts pounding, pulses racing.
If the afternoon had ended there, Gloria would have been grateful for all eternity. But it didn't end there. As it turned out, this was merely the beginning.
After a while, when their breathing had returned to normal, they sipped vodka—sipped it, not guzzled—and cautiously tested the conversational waters. Not prying, just volunteering this and that.
Gloria telling Christos she was married, but not happily.
Christos mentioning that he was between jobs at the moment, but hey—it was a temporary setback; no big deal.
Whereupon Gloria offered to 'loan' him a couple of hundred bucks.
Which he emphatically refused to accept. 'Thanks, but no thanks. I can scrape by.'
She urged him to go ahead and take it anyway.
And this time he didn't object.
As far as Gloria was concerned, they were the best two hundred dollars she had ever spent. Christos was a bargain. Nothing, not even charging up twenty thousand an hour at Saks, had ever given her such a thrill.
Myriads of thoughts flitted through her head:
How could I have been celibate for so long?
What is it about this beautiful man that he alone should be able to awaken me, like some fairy-tale princess, from a hundred-year-long slumber?
And irony of ironies: To think I have Althea, of all people, to thank for meeting him!
Now, seated in the rear of the taxi, Gloria smiled, complacent and appeased, out at the passing traffic on Van Ness. Briefly she wondered whether her expression of satiated overindulgence was a dead giveaway.
Could strangers tell, merely by looking at her, that she'd just gorged herself on the most splendidly prodigal and gloriously masculine of all male flesh?
Well, what did she care if they could?
Humming to herself, Gloria thought of him during the entire ride home. Christos Zzzyonopoulos. So he wasn't rich. So what? His hidden assets more than made up for any financial shortcomings.
But best of all, they'd made a date to meet again tomorrow.
Would wonders never cease?
Gloria certainly hoped not!
She was crashing. He could tell from the way she paced the room, rubbing her thin, crossed arms and drawing deep, rapid puffs on her cigarette. Eyeing his progress each time she passed by.
'For chrissake, will ya sit down,' he said harshly, without looking up. 'Stop bein' so damned jumpy. You're actin' like you're gonna jump outta your skin.'
'Okay . . . okay.' The naked girl with the waist-length black hair parked herself on the edge of the sagging mattress. 'But she's a live one?' Her eyes glittered greedily. 'Which means she's rich, right?'
'You'd better believe it, babe.' The naked man didn't look up from the dinette table, where he was cutting thin lines of cocaine on a square of mirror with a single-edged blade.
'Money!' the girl breathed dreamily.
She dropped backward on the rumpled bed, both arms extended, and stared ecstatically up at the peeling ceiling.
'Soon's we get some dough, first thing I wanna do's move outta this dump! You know, into one o' them nice new high-rises with views like you only see in pi'tures?' She rolled over onto an elbow. 'What about you, hon' bunch? What do you want?'
He humored her with one of his stretched grins. 'I just want you, Amber.'
'Yeah?'
'Yeah.' He bent over, stuck a short straw up his nose, and snorted a line. Sniffed and swallowed and changed the straw to his other nostril. Horned another line.
From the bed, Amber was watching avidly, her eyes bright.
'Hey, babe.' He held out the straw. 'Want a toot?'
Did she want one? She launched herself across the room in a flash.
'Unh-unh.' He held the straw out of her reach and grinned. 'Didn't your momma teach you any manners?'
Amber giggled. 'Uh-huh.'
'Well, lemme see 'em.'
Dropping to her knees, she reached for his penis and gently peeled back the foreskin. Then, cupping his heavy testicles in one hand, she flicked her tongue across the swollen head of the glans.
'Please?' she asked softly, glancing up at him.
'That's better, babe. I'd say that's a lot better.' Grinning down at her, he let her have the straw.
She seized it, popped to her feet, and tossed her hair back out of the way. Hunching over the table, she snorted a line expertly.
The coke flew up inside her nostrils and burned. Flinging her head back, she shut her eyes for a moment. Then she repeated the maneuver with the other nostril.
/> The kick of the drug made the nipples of her small, hard breasts rise from the dusky pink areolae. 'Wow!' she breathed. 'That's good shit.'
'Only the best for us, babe. Got us two whole grams. Best Bolivian on the street.'
Her eyes opened wide. 'Then you already got hold of some money?'
'Yeah.' He laughed softly. 'Cash. Good old Ben Franklins.'
'So you weren't shittin' me? You really did find a live one!'
'Hey . . . ' He reached out and pulled her close. 'Does your old man ever shit you?' His white teeth blazed like flashing neons.
Amber shook her head, her left arm sliding languorously around his neck, her right hand trailing slowly along his tightly muscled body and down to his crotch. Gently her fingers curled around the base of his penis. She could feel it throb and rear under her touch.
'Tell me about her,' she said softly. 'Everything you know.'
He laughed. 'Don't know much yet, 'cept she's got moolah comin' outta her ears.'
Amber frowned. 'How're we gonna play it? The usual con?'
'Hell no! This time we're in it for the long haul. If we play our cards right, we can milk her for years to come.' He tightened his grip on her. 'We'll be set for life.'
Amber rubbed a nipple across his face. 'You know this mark's name?'
'Yeah. Snuck a look in her wallet while she used the john.'
'So what's she called?'
'Gloria Winslow,' said Christos Zzzyonopoulos.
17
From the twelve-thousand-foot summit, as rescue team leader Chuck Renfrew first laid eyes on the steep slope where, far below, the Learjet lay buried beneath a yard or more of snow, the location had looked deceptively benign—hardly more dangerous than the expert slopes of the Cirque at Snowmass, which he skied regularly.
Now, glancing up at the two- and three-hundred-foot vertical drops that divided the slope like some giant's looming rocky steps, from which his team's rappelling lines hung like threads, he had a healthy respect for the diciness of the location. Besides the sudden drop-offs, a good seventy inches or more of powder blanketed the 130-degree slopes—thousands of tons of potential avalanche just waiting to come rushing down, annihilating everything in its path.
And mere feet from where the aircraft was precariously lodged, a precipice plunged another thousand feet straight down.
A perilous spot under the best of circumstances.
And then there were the winds.
Thirty- and forty-mile-an-hour gusts shrieked and howled, battered his orange-dad rescue team as the men stared at their accomplishment. Racing against the clock, they had succeeded in digging the snow from around the wreckage before nightfall.
What they had uncovered was not a pretty sight.
The fuselage of the Learjet was lying on its side, a wounded black bird with a broken wing thrust beseechingly into the sky.
The nose and flight deck had been accordioned by the impact. The passenger section, still round as a scorched tin can, lay drunkenly on its side, its charred, blistered shape giving rise to images of campfire provisions cooked directly in the can—an image Chuck Renfrew tried desperately, unsuccessfully to quash.
He breathed deeply several times. Faced with the pried-open cabin door on what was now the roof, he quailed at the odiousness of the task ahead. He knew only too well what lay in store.
He looked around. The looming mountains were darkening and pressed closer. The snow was tinted faint pink as the sun began to disappear behind the peaks.
He leaned his head way back and gazed up at the shimmering sky and its vivid blue eternity.
Fire. No explosion. Curious, that . . .
'Sir?'
Renfrew started and drew his eyes back in.
It was Kligfeld—the newest and youngest addition to his team, eager to prove himself and win acceptance from the others—as if this appalling tragedy were some perverse rite of passage.
'We got it open, sir.'
'Yeah, yeah,' Renfrew said testily, and thought: Well, enough procrastination. Here goes . . .
He tramped to the plane, leaned forward, and shaped his body to the curvature of the fuselage. Reached overhead. Grasped the bottom edge of the horizontal doorway with both gloved hands and hoisted himself up. Then, swinging his legs up and around, and feeling his way carefully with his feet, he lowered himself down into the cabin as if through a trapdoor.
He let himself drop, absorbing the impact with bent legs.
Darkness here; soot covering everything. The portholes above blackened by smoke and flames, the door a skylight barely able to penetrate the gloom. Air acrid with smoke and jet fuel burned his lungs. His eyes began watering.
After the howling wind outside, the silence was unearthly. Tomblike.
He found himself shivering. From experience, he knew that disasters always held unknown terrors. The only question was: What specific horrors awaited him here?
'We'll soon see,' he muttered grimly, unclipping the flashlight from his web belt. He switched it on, played the powerful beam around—and recoiled.
'Aw, Christ!' he whispered, shutting his eyes. 'Oh, sweet baby Jesus . . . '
He pressed his hands to the sides of his head and shook it in denial.
To no avail. He had seen what he had seen.
All the eye shutting in the world was futile against that; nothing could banish the horror from his mind's camera. Even now the terrible afterimage swam on his closed eyelids, provided fodder for a lifetime of nightmares.
The passenger—rather, what had once been the passenger—was fused to a seat frame bolted to the floor, now an upright wall. Frozen sideways in a seated position. Hairless, fleshless, sexless. Skeletal and charred. Destroyed by fire and then ice. No longer human but . . . a creature. Something Hollywood had concocted for a horror flick.
And the face! Oh, Christ Jesus, the face! Frost sheathed and grotesque.
Eyeless sockets leering . . . mouth stretched in a rictus.
I've seen hell, Renfrew thought. This is hell . . . hell . . . hell . . .
His stomach churned, the odors of jet fuel and smoke slowly nauseating him.
Have to get moving, he told himself. The sooner this is over with, the better.
Renfrew calmed himself by concentrating on the minutiae of things that had to be done:
Getting dark soon . . . need to have the men set up camp here on the ledge . . . start recovering the bodies at first light . . . search for the black box. But first . . .
The flight plan had listed one passenger and two crew.
First, he had to account for the pilot and copilot.
And then radio in his findings . . .
The sun had fallen from the sky and the night was purple as the rising and dipping headlights probed the dark, snow-laden incline leading up to the house. Dorothy-Anne stared out the wall of windows at the approaching vehicle, thinking: If it were good news, they would have telephoned. They only come in person when it's bad.
She sat there with prim dignity, hands clasped in her lap. Incredibly, her breathing was normal. Now that the moment was at hand she felt curiously calm. There was something strangely anticlimactic about the predictability of what was to come.
The others sensed it also.
Venetia rose from the sofa to stand beside her. Fred, Liz, and Zack quietly gathered behind her in a protective semicircle of linked hands. Even Nanny Florrie, who'd nodded off, came to with a start, looked momentarily bumfuzzled, then pushed herself to her feet and took up a position behind the children like a hen guarding her brood.
No one spoke. There was no need for words.
It seemed to take the car forever to crawl uphill. To Dorothy-Anne, it was like watching a film in slow motion. She was aware of seeing and hearing everything with an acute, brutal clarity. The leaping fire in the grate roaring and crackling and snapping up a storm, tinting everything with a flickering red and yellow glow. The gusts of wind buffeting the Thermopane wall, causing the grids of glass to quiver
. The headlights finally disappearing around the back . . .
Soon now . . .
Slam of a car door.
Very soon.
The doorbell did not sound like a chime; to Dorothy-Anne, it seemed to toll.
She could hear the housekeeper's heels clack briskly on granite and fade; the hissing sighs of the airlock as the two sets of front doors out in the entry, one after the other, slid open and shut. The murmur of low voices drifting, like a conspiracy, on currents of warm air. And, after what seemed an interminable time, two sets of footsteps approaching the Great Hall—Mrs. Plunkett ushering in someone with a quieter, longer-legged stride.
Slowly Dorothy-Anne raised her eyes. She saw a lean, farmerish- looking man with a long thin face, weathered skin, and pallid blue eyes. He wore what looked like a uniform of sorts and held the inevitable Stetson, this one light gray, which he kept turning this way and that in front of him like a steering wheel.
His glance took in the phalanx of six anxious faces, then settled upon hers. 'Ma'am,' he said.
Mrs. Plunkett introduced him, agitatedly twisting her apron between plump-fingered hands. 'This is Captain Friendly,' she said.
Dorothy-Anne felt her world contract and then expand.
'Yes, I remember. We spoke on the phone. You're the coordinator of the mountain rescue teams.'
He nodded. 'That's right, ma'am.' His Midwestern twang sounded more pronounced in person than on the phone. 'You must be Mrs. Cantrell.'
She met his gaze directly. 'I am.'
He heaved a sigh, glanced down at his feet, then looked back up and held her gaze once more. 'I wish I could say it's a pleasure, ma'am, but under the circumstances . . . '
Dorothy-Anne sat there and nodded. The poor man. He looks like he'd rather be anywhere but here. Not that she could blame him. I'd rather be someplace else, too.
'I'm awfully sorry, ma'am. When we reached the plane, there was nothing we could do. Everyone on board was long dead.'
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