Scarfing shrimp scorching-hot off the barbecue with butter and good beer dripping down my chin, I felt more optimistic. I’d been afraid Baz would mock me in front of Kamadeva, who literally wrote the book on sex and has actual carvings of himself and his ex doing it on temples all over India.
But Baz forbore. He was a decent guy.
My old coworkers in the Fourth Circle of the Regional Office would have taken turns free throwing dung into my mug of hot cat’s pee over the cubical walls.
I decided that if he kept the razzing private, I’d clean his oven for him after all.
Jeff dragged himself in just as we were worrying that we couldn’t find room for the last pound of shrimp.
“Why so sad?” Kama was beer-happy. “What’s your troubles, bubbles?”
Baz threw an empty can at him. “That solves that problem,” he said, and dumped the last of the raw shrimp onto the grill.
Jeff slumped onto a milk crate. His white wings drooped around him.
“I suck at sex,” he announced.
“Sucking is good,” Kama said. “Sucking has its place in the great web. I’ve always liked it myself—”
Baz hove a full can at Kama and he shut up. “Everybody was a beginner once,” Baz said kindly.
To my indignation, Baz and Kama were patient and instructive and no-bullshit with Jeff. They didn’t make fun of him. They didn’t taunt him for his ignorance or tell him he had a bad attitude. I wondered if it was because he was a wimp, or whether maybe they were gay enough to like angels for their fluffy white wings, or, finally, if somehow I might have been stupid.
A little tactless.
This used to happen to me at work, in the Second Circle of the Regional Office. New demons would come in and I’d show them the ropes and they’d thank me and brush me off and the next thing I knew they were captain of the bowling team…the team nobody ever invited me to join.
Fuck, huh?
Instead of wasting time resenting it or feeling sorry for myself, I pulled my own milk crate closer and flapped my ears.
“So when do you think it started to go wrong?” Baz asked, when Jeff had wolfed down the last pound of grilled shrimp and butter.
“I knew for sure,” Jeff said, thoughtfully licking melted butter off his hand clear up to his elbow, “when she yelled, ‘I can’t, I can’t, enough, stop, no more!’ But I had a feeling she was losing interest a while before that.”
“And what were you doing when she yelled that?” Baz said.
“There’s this thing she taught me, where I touch the tip of my tongue to a kind of pink thing that sticks out between her legs, and sort of flick it. She got very agitated when I did that, I mean, really agitated, but she seemed to like it. Until, as I say, right there toward the end. She just lay there and moaned. And finally she made me stop.”
“How often would you say she got agitated during this, uh, process?” Kama said, visibly holding in a cackle of glee.
Jeff frowned. “Let’s see. The first few times, maybe three or four, when we were on her bed. Then we went back to the shower—”
Kama started to cough loudly.
“Back to the shower?” Baz said.
“We started there. Because I was too dirty to touch,” Jeff said. “It’s true, women are fastidious. She even cleaned me, you know, down there.” He pointed to his lap. “Front and back, with her tongue.” He pointed behind his lap. “I’m afraid I swelled up and exploded a lot. But it didn’t hurt.”
Kama got up quickly and started throwing empty beer cans into a cardboard box that used to contain a refrigerator. His back was turned.
Baz nodded. “Mm-hm. And later?”
“Later? Oh, how many times did she get agitated? Oh, maybe eighteen or twenty. We did it all over her apartment. She has a pull-up bar on one doorway, just like you do. So she hooked her knees over that—”
“Good, I’m getting a clear picture, now,” Baz said.
“So what I’m hoping you can teach me is, one, how not to explode like that. It makes a mess.” Jeff turned crimson. “I should say, I make a mess. The Home Office encourages us to take full responsibility for all our actions.”
“Uh-huh,” Baz said, deadpan. “And two?”
“Well, I don’t know.” Jeff frowned. “I realize now that it seems kind of fiddly.”
“We are masters of the fiddly bits,” Kama said, squatting on his milk crate like a cuddly vulture.
“You know, she liked that agitated part. Up until the end, I mean.”
“Go on, go on,” Kama said.
Baz raised his palm. “Don’t rush him.”
“So she has this kind of rhythm where she blushes all over, and then she starts breathing faster, and then her heart bumps faster, and then her skin and her muscles heat up—”
“You can tell when her muscles heat up?” I blurted.
Baz showed me his palm without looking at me.
“—And then her breathing comes faster, and her heart speeds up, and her skin and muscles heat up, like that. In a cycle. Until I really worry if she’s going to be all right. Generally, then she told me what to do next, and that was very reassuring. I got worried.” Jeff stared off into space, apparently assembling whatever brains he had. “But about halfway through the morning she stopped telling me to do what next. I would stop and ask her, but she just waved her hand, like, ‘Go on.’ And about an hour and forty-five minutes later, she screamed at me to stop altogether.” Jeff looked at his hands dejectedly. “So now you know. I suck.”
Kama nodded. He looked at Baz and Baz looked at him. “May I?” Kama said.
Baz said, “Be my guest.”
Kama said, “You’re doing good so far, detecting and monitoring that cycle of physical changes. But you might want to try two things.”
“One thing. Don’t confuse the kid,” Baz said.
Kama rolled his eyes. “Okay, one. Insist that she tell you what she wants next.”
“When?” Jeff said. “All the time?”
“Whenever you notice she’s getting really agitated. As long as she’s telling you what she wants, you know she’s okay, and you know you’re doing it right. Eventually, of course, you’ll have her patterns figured out, and you won’t need verbal cues any more. But they’re fun to get.”
“Fun.” Baz sent him a glare. “What playboy here means is that once you enter the phase of knowing what she wants before she asks for it, you can consider yourself a fully trained sex demon.”
Kama glared back at Baz. “No, I meant it’s called ‘being in a relationship.’ Not that Mister Hit’n’run here would know about that.”
“Still miss the old ball and chain, eh?” Baz said to Kama. “How long were you married? Forty-five hundred years?”
“I miss her every day,” Kama said.
“I think I’d like to be in a relationship,” Jeff said.
“I thought you were supposed to have all the good stuff at the Home Office,” I said sarcastically.
“At the Home Office, we love everyone equally. It’s not the same thing,” Jeff told me. He turned back to the sex demons. “So what about this swelling and bursting thing? Should I be worried? She says no, but I think she may be doing…what’s that thing?” He snapped his fingers. “‘Just being nice.’”
“Swelling is good. Swell all you want,” Baz said. “Bursting on cue is great. The occasional bursting off cue is unavoidable. I think she’ll tolerate it as long as you give her a little advance warning.”
“Yeah, and it’s fun,” Kama said.
“So I have a question,” Baz said to Jeff. “Exactly how old were you when you became an angel?”
“Oh, I was just born.”
“And you haven’t spent any time in the field? Here on Earth?”
“When I was little, sure.”
“How little? When did you stop coming down here?”
Jeff pursed his lips. “Let me think.”
Baz turned to Kama. “Twenty says under six.”
> Kama said, “Twenty says under five.”
“I think I was four and a half. It’s hard to remember,” Jeff said. “It was a long time ago, and we don’t stay in the field, you know. Just visits. Time’s different at the Home Office.”
“Pay me.” Kama looked at his watch. “Shit, Desperate Housewives is on. Pay me later.” He bolted up the stairs.
“Should I go with him?” Jeff asked Baz. Baz waved him away, and the angel followed Kama.
I helped Baz pack up the dirty dishes to take upstairs.
“Leave that,” he said when I showed him the barbecue fork. “We just burn it out next time.”
“So what,” I said carefully, “was going on there? About Jeff’s performance?”
Baz chuckled. “He’s a fucking genius. An idiot savant. Throw this out, too.” He handed me the mug half-full of melted butter. “No, wait.” He drank it, then handed the mug to me.
I scowled. “So I’m an idiot.”
“You have all the same skills. You’re just not applying them. Tell me this. When, if ever, are you paying that much attention to any other creature?”
“What? Listening to their heartbeat and all that?”
“Yes.”
I hoisted the box of dishes under one arm. “What about these cans?” The refrigerator box seemed half-full when I peered into it.
“We put it out in the alley when it’s full. The bums take ’em and turn ’em in for Night Train Express money.”
I thought about his question. “In the field, when I was leading a detachment into enemy territory, we watched and listened extremely carefully. If we were approaching a sentry, say, I could tell when those guys blinked.”
“Which was what, a thousand years ago?”
“A few centuries,” I admitted.
“And how old did you get recruited?”
“Twelve. I told you. The demon bought my soul and promised to make me a soldier like my brothers and my dad and my eight uncles.”
“Right, right.” He gave all the barbecue controls a twist and picked up his beer can. “We’re done here. So what did you do before you got recruited that made you pay that much attention to another person?”
“I hunted wharf rats. Sometimes I’d sneak out of the nursery at night so I could run down through the vineyards to the dock. I had to get past five older sisters,” I said bitterly, amazed at how strong that feeling was, even now.
“Five sisters.” Baz whistled. “You have my sympathy.” First sympathy he’d given me so far.
We climbed the stairs to the Lair’s living space in the former factory offices.
I thought some more about Jeff’s disclosures. “So I should pay attention to that stuff.”
“Yes.”
“And make her tell me what she wants.”
We came into the kitchen. Kama and Jeff were watching TV from their Barcaloungers.
“Provisionally, yes. But here’s your one thing.” He set his beer down on the counter and took the box of dirty dishes from me. “Are you ready?”
“More than ready,” I said, controlling my temper.
“Go. Slow.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Listen and watch for the physical cycle, yeah, yeah. Get her to tell you what she wants, maybe. But go slow.”
“What about that list of stuff you told me before Jeff came in? Feathers and ice cubes and licking and stroking and putting things in orifices?”
“Suggest those to her and see if she’s up for them. But go slow. She’ll tell you when she wants you to speed up.”
“I got it, I got it. Go slow.” I grumbled, “All this seems to be about what she wants, when she wants it. I thought being a sex demon would be more fun.”
He eyed me. “It can be.” I could feel him testing me again.
I’d failed Mella’s test, and now I was failing Baz’s. My anger had run down. The thought of Mella’s miserable face came back to me. “I don’t want to make her cry again,” I confessed. “I can’t stand it.”
Baz nodded. “I hear you. Listen, you know how to whack off?”
“Whack?”
He made a gesture at his groin.
“Of course,” I said. “I’m a soldier.”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “You go shower and think about all that stuff Jeff said about his lady friend just now, and about doing it all with what’s-her-name, Mella, and take care of yourself.”
So I did.
I went to bed miserable. I couldn’t believe I’d messed up with a literal, actual, real-life, magic-wish boyfriend. Every woman in the neighborhood had scored except me. Keek, my goth derby lifestyle-challenged roommate, had scored.
I knew darned well that it wasn’t because hers was an angel and mine was a demon. Lots of women had gathered up fallen demons last night, and they weren’t sleeping in a king-size bed all alone. Oh, no.
I put some time into kicking myself.
Then I went back to cussing Mutt for a while. Who was he kidding? Sex demon, my sparkly pink sneakers! He had all the finesse of a fifteen-year-old. A fourteen-year-old, I corrected myself. Jerk.
The air conditioner was broken again. I stripped off my nightie and threw it in the corner.
Then I remembered the misery in his face, the second time he knelt to me. Not the first. The first time he’d been furious. That baffled me. Then I remembered the guy who had answered the door, who’d told me that Mutt believed I could control him.
And why, I thought for the first time, would he want me to believe that? Evidently he’d told Mutt the same lie.
Only it wasn’t a total lie. I’d commanded Mutt to leave, and he’d vanished. Instantly.
I was so confused, I rolled over, groaned, smashed my pillow over my head, groaned again, and rolled back.
He really could be adorable, on his knees, with his heart in his eyes.
He needed a major technique makeover, however.
The scary thing was that, in a terribly dumb, backward, politically incorrect corner of my brain, I hadn’t much minded his lousy technique.
In fact, I kind of liked it.
My sheets felt hot. I rolled to a cooler spot.
Mutt, Mutt, Mutt. What am I supposed to do with you?
I put my mouth guard in and drank the last of my hot milk.
My brain wouldn’t quit. If I could just keep him on his knees long enough to teach him some stuff.
Keek’s voice came back to me. You think you’re unworthy, so you come down on everybody else in retaliation. Let up! Forgive yourself! You’re allowed to hit the jackpot!
The thought of Mutt on his knees in the tall grass, looking so unhappy, sent my heart pounding in my throat. For a moment, he’d looked like he cared. Not afraid, but…I dunno. As if he’d really cared.
And I’d sent him away.
“Mutt, Mutt, Mutt, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I sighed aloud. “We could try again.”
Wham!
There he was at the foot of my bed.
He looked huge in my bedroom, even with his wings hidden. My pink bedside lampshade made his skin look redder, so that his fabulous abs and chest rippled with shadows, and his arms and legs shaded off to a dark maroon.
He was looking at me. I realized I’d tossed my sheets off. I pulled myself up to a crouch on the bed. In his eyes I thought I saw determination, longing, fear, hunger—
Mella, are you making all that up?
Shut up, I told myself.
“Are you going to kill me now?” he said. He seemed fascinated by my mouth.
I realized I still had my mouth guard in. I pulled it off my front teeth and tossed it on the nightstand.
His fight-or-flight posture relaxed a bit.
I swallowed. “Come here.” We would see if he really thought I was the boss of him. I knew I could get rid of him if I wanted to. So far.
He took a step closer to the bed. I’ll swear, he was counting the tiny white hairs on my thighs.
His thighs looked li
ke tree trunks. And so did his most demonic part. For a crazy moment I wanted to lie down and let him ram me with it.
Yeah, and we already know how much fun that’ll be.
Shut UP, Mella-brain!
I compromised. “Lie down here. On your belly.” His eyes were unsettling me terribly.
He did, and I skittered away so that we wouldn’t touch.
His back was fabulous. That shock of thick, red-black hair grew all over his head, down his neck, and then down his back, tapering to a point somewhere above his tailbone. I wanted to pet it.
He had strong haunches, like a Greek statue of a warrior, the kind with a beard, a real man, not a boy. Small knees. Big, knotty calves.
I reached out and stroked his shoulder where the wings might be hiding.
He convulsed and cried out.
I snatched my hand away.
I’d meant to talk to him.
Just talk.
I’d been telling myself we just needed to get to know each other better.
Now I knew I wanted to make his body mine. Sex first, talk later. What was happening to my cautious old self?
His face was turned away from me. I walked around the bed so I could see his face. His eyes were huge, and the fear was back in them.
I reached out. He squeezed his eyes shut.
“Mutt,” I said gently.
His hand, lying by his side, squeezed into a fist.
“Oh, baby,” I said. I wanted to gather him up and cuddle him. He’d probably stroke out.
Go slow, then. “I’m going to touch your hand.” I almost added, Okay? Then I remembered those wings, the feel of him slamming me against the wall.
He’s a demon. Don’t ask permission, Mella. Stay the boss.
I lay my hand on his fist. After a long moment, it relaxed. I teased his hand open and stroked the palm gently, exploring his long, thick fingers. He tightened all over. Poor baby, he really expected something awful.
His palm was darker than the back of his hand, the opposite of a normal person. I turned his hand over, then back, stroking, marveling.
In fact he had very odd coloring, paler in the center and darkening toward his extremities. More like a Siamese cat than a human.
I wanted to climb on his back and hump him. I wanted to rub my nipples on that red-black mane and see if it was bristly or soft. I wanted to—
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