If Archie had me in his sights now, then he was planning to do his number on me next. I could expect to get brainwashed in bed, and next time I saw him, I’d have some dope on my arm and the dope’s ring on my hand.
Somehow this did not appeal to me. Not at all.
Because I wanted to taste that forbidden fruit a lot before I let him dump me.
I looked at him and sighed a full-body sigh.
What Chloe looked like: She was absurdly tall, one of those supermodel-length girls. And like them, when she was paying attention, she did the runway stalk. If she stalked into the bar like that, I knew she was looking for a date, and I just poured and moved on. Sometimes, though, she was as clumsy and uncoordinated as a teenager. What must it have been like, to be that tall when she was a kid? Maybe she’d always had the power to turn on the poise.
Chloe had long black hair, very thick and straight, almost Chinese hair. It cut beautifully into all the styles Chinese girls can wear, from doll bobs to those funky rooster crests that sometimes get dyed purple. Chloe never dyed her hair purple. I used to think she was incredibly shrewd not to bow to extremes of style. Then I decided she was afraid to try.
Maybe her height had had me fooled. Tonight I saw that she was just another little girl, like all of them.
Find the little girl in a woman and you had poon every night.
Made my job so easy, it was a crime.
For the first time in a long time, I felt criminal for pulling a number on a woman. How many times had I come right up to the edge of taking Chloe home? Two years, playing hands-off with the same woman. Maybe I was nuts.
But you don’t make it to twenty-three-hundred years old without paying attention to your Spidey senses. If something had warned me off Chloe, it was for my own good. I’d always listened before.
So what made me go and be stupid this time?
What she looked like. Big doll eyes, brown and soft and warm. Rounded jaw, her face maybe too big and full, but she was so tall, it worked. When she smiled, her face changed shape in funny ways. Nice to watch.
Her hands were very soft and childlike. The first time I watched her lifting kettle bells at the gym, I was tempted to take them out of her hands and put them back on the rack. Not ’til you’re older, honey.
In fact, every time I saw her, I wanted to do that. Whatever you’re doing, honey, you’re not old enough to be out here on your own, all joyous and trusting and sweet.
I thought she knew it too. Deep down. There was a Bambi look to her—long legs, poised to sprint.
Suddenly I was worried about my rain-of-men line. Even nice guys were tempted to prey on Chloe. She had a welcome mat on her face.
Well, all I could do was keep an eye on her.
Chapter Two
“PROVE YOU’RE A SEX DEMON,” she chirped. “Absolutely.”
“I can’t get out of here early,” I warned her. “Darryl won’t be on for hours. If he shows up at all.”
She batted her eyes. “I’ll wait.”
I offered to freshen her drink. Maybe I should get her sozzled. If she passed out, I could take her back to her place and put her to bed and, in the morning, deny everything. Me? A sex demon? Hah, hah. I’m such a kidder.
No such luck. Chloe accepted the refill but she nursed it for two hours. Couple of guys came in, one at a time, and looked her over. She glanced at me as if to ask, So are these guys decent, or are they demons? I rolled my eyes. She took a sip through her tiny straw and smiled. Her lipstick was still fresh. She hadn’t touched the peanuts.
Chloe was sticking it out.
And the card with my name on it in Greek sat under the bar, glowing like kryptonite.
I had to get rid of her. For her own safety.
Chasing Chloe off would take guerilla warfare.
I went into the storeroom and called the Lair.
Baz answered. “Yo.”
“Yo, I may have to bring a woman over tonight. Can you get the place, I dunno, a little cleaned up?”
“Can I what?” Baz said, pardonably boggled. “You’re bringing a what?”
“She doesn’t need to see, uh, everything.”
“Heck, yeah. She needs to see me. She cute?”
“She’s too tall for you.” Like Baz would care.
“I don’t care.”
“Hands off,” I said bluntly. I explained my fancy lie to Chloe. “I’m hoping to scare her off, but I don’t want her to vomit on her shoes.”
Baz hung up. That was Baz, saving the effort of him saying or me hearing too many words.
I hung up and stared at the wall. I didn’t know what to do. I went back and tended bar.
At midnight, Darryl showed up, and Chloe was still there, watching me clock out, looking like a cat up to her ankles in cream.
“How come you’re so darned cheerful?” I grumbled.
She punched me on the arm. “I’m about to find out why all those women disappear after one date with you.” She laughed merrily. Her eyes were glittering. Oh, brother.
“I eat ’em.” We shot the shit back and forth, her poking at me, me dodging, on the walk to the Lair.
The Lair was on the northbound leg of Ravenswood Avenue, just south of Montrose, in the upper story of what was once a two-story factory. The plant was on the first floor, offices on the second. We owned the whole thing. It was roomy. You don’t really want to fix a motorcycle in your bedroom.
We went in through the center of the factory, which was cooler at this time of year.
Tonight I saw the place through Chloe’s eyes. I wondered if she could smell the man funk.
Think tough, Archimedes. Gross her out. Chase her away.
“Whoa. Basketball?” She dropped her shoulder bag at the door and grabbed a ball out of the drum. In her fuck-me heels and too-tight suit, she ran clickety-clack out onto the plywood floor and threw easy layups, one after another, effortlessly. Her black bangs swung in her eyes, her knees flashed under that little pink skirt, and she laughed.
“Careful,” I said, “this floor can be a little—”
“Whoops!” She shrieked and fell on her ass, laughing. The ball rolled to my feet. I picked it up and put it away then offered her a hand up.
My breath caught.
She looked at my hand and down at her own long bare legs sticking out in her strappy little fuck-me pumps and back at my hand, and I knew what she was thinking. This was the first time I’d offered to touch her in the two years since we met. Her eyes got round. She filled up with air and grabbed my hand.
“Upsy-daisy,” I said, ignoring the spark that zapped my fingertips when she touched them.
I heard clapping from the balcony.
We looked up. About twenty feet up the wall was a door from the executive offices, and a little metal balcony where the factory owner once looked out on his fief and snoopervised.
Baz was leaning over the rail, applauding.
“Yo, Baz. Is the cappuccino machine clean?” I hollered.
“Of course,” he said, the big liar.
“We’re comin’ up,” I said. “Here we go,” I said to Chloe. “Fasten your seatbelt.”
I cringed inwardly at the stink as we walked through the old employee locker room, with its huge round communal showers and the lockers still standing, probably too gunked up to fall down at this point, overflowing with our roller skates and hockey sticks and bike parts and punctured soccer balls and dirty sweat socks.
Chloe just looked and smiled.
We took the metal stairway up to the offices, where each of us had commandeered crash space. I wasn’t ready to bring her to my room. I kind of hoped to avoid it, actually, although what miracle was gonna save me, I had no idea.
We walked all the way back into the kitchen, with its dreadful sink, big oblong table, five easy chairs, an eighty-inch HD TV, a sixty-inch gaming screen, two nukes, five toasters—two broken—a cappuccino machine, three coffeemakers of mixed vintage, Margaritaville blender, wine chiller, four side-b
y-side fridge-freezers, marble countertops, salvaged, and George Foreman grill—all the crap Kamadeva thinks is necessary for the cool American lifestyle.
Baz was pointedly cleaning the cappuccino machine. “What’ll it be? Low foam or high?” He twinkled at Chloe.
Chloe twinkled back. She slung her bag onto a leather recliner—Lido’s, but Lido was still out, apparently. She said, “Thanks. Gimme a foamy double-shot Italian Roast with whole milk and a squirt of toffee.”
“Coming right up,” Baz said, giving me a long, slow, what-is-your-problem look.
“Make it two,” I said. I took off my white barkeep shirt and dropped into my recliner, trying to look relaxed. “This is Chloe, Baz. Baz is my oldest roommate.”
She looked from one to the other of us with her doll-round brown eyes. “You look about the same age to me.”
“Oh, I’m much older,” Baz said loudly over the roar of the milk steamer. “Ancient. I’m a thousand years older than this kid.”
She accepted the latte. “That must mean you know a lot more than he does,” she said, sipping demurely.
“Four hundred years older,” I snarled.
He just smiled at her. The gigolo. What takes me an hour of small talk takes him one smile.
The place did look a lot cleaner than I’d expected.
Baz caught my glance. “I called in some favors,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said, and I meant it. But nothing short of a fire hose would ever make the place look other than desperately lived-in.
Chloe, always fastidiously neat, should be getting major icks off it.
“Sorry about the mess,” I said, feeling a bit like BP apologizing for an oil spill. “And the smell,” I added, in case she hadn’t noticed.
There were porn posters on the walls, I remembered now, looking at them and trying not to cringe. Big, split-wet-beaver shots. Japanese school girls shaving each other, pantyless under their plaid microskirts. Really tasteless stuff.
Chloe followed my glance. She got up and wandered around the kitchen, clutching her latte, smiling faintly at the posters. “Hey, Jenna Jameson!” She pretended to high-five a poster.
Oookay.
Then her face lit up. She put down her latte, plucked a basketball out of the salad bowl on the table, pivoted, and shot a perfect basket through the hoop on the far wall.
Baz went, “Awwww.”
She threw herself back into Lido’s chair. “Are you in the same line of work as Archie?” she said to Baz.
“That’s right. He works harder than I do, of course.” Baz shot me a pitying glance.
I leaned back in my recliner, trying to look casual, and heard something crackle under the cushion. So that was where he’d hidden all those Doritos bags.
She glanced down into her latte. “They don’t make latte at Cheaters.”
Was she actually trying to play me off against Baz?
He paused while wiping down the cappuccino machine. “Want another?”
She shook her head.
Baz tossed the paper towel on the countertop. Then he leaned over her, putting one hand on the back of her recliner. The jerk. He was ugly as sin—too pale, with no eyebrows and these totally unconvincing white-guy dreadlocks, a bad complexion, and almost no color in his eyes at all, the only guy among us with scary demon eyes.
And he scored four times as much as I did, bless him.
I sent him a warning look.
He whispered to her, but his eyes locked with mine. His stringy blond dreads dangled in her face.
“I’m only an amateur barristo. My regular job title is sex demon.”
Chloe smiled. She was looking at me, too. Somehow she slithered right out from under Baz where he postured over her. She stood up on those high, high heels on those long, long legs.
Baz stared up, up, up at her, his jaw dropping.
She said to me, “Can I see your room?”
Archie looked flustered. It was adorable. I could see why I fell for him two years ago.
I could also see that I was going to have to take charge here, which wasn’t what I’d bargained for. The whole point of a guy telling you he’s a sex demon is, he does all the work.
I explained this to Archie in his room, which was a worse hellhole than the kitchen. “You were going to seduce me.”
Blue Oyster Cult started up outside the bedroom, loud enough that a roommate wouldn’t have to hear anything while the scrunchie was on the doorknob.
“Right, right. Listen, I’ve been thinking.” Archie looked rattled. “I think the Home Office is gonna be mad if I, you know, anticipate your, uh, rain of men.”
I felt myself stiffen. I should have known. No sentence goes well that begins with “Listen, I’ve been thinking.”
Somehow he was halfway across his dark, funky bedroom. Not nearer to the bed, though—nearer to the far wall.
I got a prickle and decided to ignore it. “You mean, don’t poach?” He nodded. I lifted my chin. “Did you drag me over here just to reject me?”
He was gnawing his lips. Top lip. Bottom lip. Strong, white teeth. Blood. “To prove to you I’m a sex demon. And introduce you to my roommates.”
Now I remembered the rest of his goofy line. “So I won’t fall for them when I date them.”
“So you won’t date them,” he said.
I took a step closer to him. He backed up and bumped against the wall, tripping over a jai alai stick on the way.
This could be fun. Chasing a scared Archie around the bed was almost more fun than having a sex-demon Archie seduce me with mythical magic mojo.
“But how,” I said, stalking him, enjoying how his eyes got wider the closer I came, “can I mess with their heads if I don’t date them?”
We were chest to chest now. He was wearing this skimpy little white wife-beater and his head was tipped back, looking at me, all bird and snake. His shoulders and arms were beautiful—shiny with sweat, thick with muscle. He had ink on one shoulder. I tried to remember what picture it was—I’d stared at it enough at the gym—but I couldn’t. My attention was on his mouth, so very not relaxed.
Clever Archie, trying too hard to be cool.
I was breathing on his lips now.
He grabbed my arms. He mashed me, pulling me against his sweaty pecs. His mouth was too hard. I didn’t care. Archie was finally kissing me!
I was finally kissing Chloe, and my brain dove straight into my pants. She tasted spicy and sweet: milky coffee with toffee. Chloe, two inches taller than me in those shoes; Chloe always female, even when shooting layups; Chloe, poor, fragile, helpless, clueless Chloe, with a taste for lousy men. She smelled all woman.
She didn’t feel fragile in my hands. Good thing. I realized I was gripping her with all my strength, and then I remembered Lido sashaying into Cheaters and whispering in her ear.
And the envelope labeled “Archimedes” in Greek.
My chest tightened.
I tossed her away from me.
She landed like a boxer on the balls of her feet, bouncing a little. “Your technique needs work,” she said.
“Seriously,” I said, panting. “I’m gonna fry if it gets out that I’ve done it with you.”
“Who’s gonna fry you?”
“The Home Office. Well, the Regional Office. The Home Office doesn’t get its hands dirty. Like the Inquisition, they just write you off. What happens to you after that comes from the secular arm.”
“Prove it,” she said, her eyes glittering. “Just prove it to me. Somehow. Do something sex-demony, so I have to believe.”
“You gonna make me?” I said, still breathless. “How? You can’t stake me out on a mile-high anthill. You can’t drown me in molten lava every day for a hundred years.”
Her face softened. I saw the little girl in her.
“I can decide you’re a mean man,” she said softly. “Just a mean old tease.”
Bless it, she had my number. I sighed. “Anything but that.”
I reached fo
r her, and I was gentle this time, but once she was in my arms again I found myself kissing her with maximum tongue. I sent bolts of electric lust through her, pulsing to the beat of Blue Oyster Cult. She breathed deep through her nose, so deep, I realized she was probably suffocating, so I switched to kissing her chin dimple, under her jaw, her neck, her throat. I didn’t let up on the electric mojo shock therapy.
When she was hyperventilating like a racehorse and little wheezing screams were coming with each breath, I stopped.
She hung in my arms like a wet rag.
With some difficulty, I pulled her up on her feet again.
She leaned against my erection. That hurt. In theory, I have self-control. In practice, I don’t usually have to exercise it.
Her head rolled back and flopped around like a baby’s head on her long-stemmed neck. Her eyelids fluttered. It was nice to get that kind of applause. I felt myself smiling like an idiot. Her eyes opened, and she licked her lips.
This was not a kiss. I don’t know what it was. Archie was like an octopus, all over me on all sides at once. He squeezed. And there was this feeling in my bones like music, sort of hummy but loud, and it only got louder. Crazy as it sounds, I felt a mother orgasm coming on. I had two heartbeats to panic in—one—two—then bam! It hit me, and I nearly passed out.
But still the humming came and went, pulsing like a strobe in a dance club. Waves of humming shot through me. Little orgasms popped like firecrackers after the big boom. My brain began to short out.
I began to realize I couldn’t breathe, and then he started kissing my eyes, my neck. I gasped for air, but the humming didn’t stop—it just washed over me. Was I going to come to death, right here, with my clothes on? It was as if his tongue vibrated, and every nerve in my body vibrated along with it—all the way down to my hoohoo. Was he licking my neck? At that thought, I sucked in a bushel of air past all those orgasms, and, thankfully, the noise shut off.
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