“Tell you what. Can we agree you’ve been having sex with me for a couple of days and you haven’t lost your brand yet?”
“I guess so.”
“So how about a compromise. Let’s live in sin for six months and see how we feel then. If we both want marriage after that, I’ll marry you.”
He made an I-dunno sound in his throat.
I said, “Look, you’ve had many years in the Home Office, you don’t even know how many, but all your life anyway, living with your brand. I’ve lived my whole life in the field, which is a lot more complicated. I think you admitted it’s more complicated?”
“Okay.”
“So let’s be roommates for six months. You can introduce me to your brand—politely, please—you’ve learned that part the hard way, right?—and I’ll introduce you to life in the field. That way we each get a chance to experience life from the other person’s point of view. I call that fair.”
“What about the rules of love?” Jeff said. “Will we live with them, too?”
“Love has rules?” I snorted. “I’m clueless there. Guess we’ll have to learn those together as we go along.”
He made a sudden tsking sound. “I never showed you your glow,” he said.
“Hm?”
“Here.” He got up on one elbow and began drawing on my hand where it lay on his thigh. “See?”
“That tickles.”
I lifted my hand to look. He traced something in my palm with his finger, like some cheesy guy coming on to me in a bar, but I felt something different when Jeff did it. I trusted him.
A spot of golden light grew in the palm of my hand.
He touched my other palm. Then the soles of my feet.
It felt funny, kind of tickly, but mostly just warm and sweet.
“Now watch,” he said. “These are the main channels where love flows through you.”
He drew along my feet and up my legs with his finger, and a line of light followed.
It felt amazing. I had a crazy idea that when it got high enough, I would turn inside out or my head would explode or I would turn into…myself…somehow.
He kept drawing until he got to my groin. A ray of light shot up through the dim air, like, I dunno, spaceship lights or something. “Does that feel nice?”
“Hurry up,” I said tightly.
The light and the good feeling and his finger tickled up my belly to my chest. Every few inches another ray of light popped up.
“Jeff,” I said, rushing to get it out before I exploded. “I love you.”
“And I love you.”
His finger reached my heart. Golden light leaped up. Enormous peace enveloped me.
“Yes,” I sighed.
I felt his finger move up my throat—another ray of light—across my lips, my nose, my forehead—a big ray there, and I began to see him through a golden haze, and light poured out around him and I knew we were happy in a way that couldn’t ever change. Then his finger drew the line up over my brows to the top of my head.
Fireworks.
“No,” Mella vowed, “no other guy on this planet can do that. I’m positive.”
I wondered if any of those yoyos who jumped out of the black ops helo with me had thought of it. Maybe they could all make their—what-did-they-call-it?—baby gravy taste good. I decided not to mention it to Mella.
“That’s just a sample of what I can do,” I boasted.
Thunder rolled overhead. The stars came and went behind clouds.
She was looking at my cock. I thought she shivered.
“Are you cold?” I picked up her torn nightgown and tried to wrap it around her.
“No, hold me,” she said. “I like your arms better. You’re warmer.”
The two of us sat face-to-face, and I wrapped her in my arms, and she slung her knees over my thighs until we snuggled body-to-body. For good measure I let my wings out and wrapped those around her as well.
I snuggled my face into her cloud of fluffy blond hair. “I want to be the best sex demon for you ever,” I whispered.
Her arms tightened around me. “No more trying to sell your body.”
“No, no.”
The air began to smell very fresh.
“I’ll teach you what you need to know.”
“Right.” I remembered my lessons over beer and grilled shrimp with butter. “Some things take a lot of practice.” We sat holding each other. It was a pretty warm night. Her thighs felt sticky against mine. Stick us together forever, I thought. “Are you crying?” I said.
She stuck her face into my neck and shook her head. Her fingers played with the crest on my lower back.
“I can hear your heart beating,” I whispered, thinking of my sex-demon instructions. “Your hands are tightening on my back along with your heartbeat, and your arms tighten as you breathe in.”
“Is that good?” she said, muffled against my neck.
“I like it.” I thought some more. “Your breath smells a little like my baby gravy.”
She giggled.
“Is that the wrong term?”
“It’s a little low-rent.”
“Sticky, too,” I said. “But we’re about to get a shower. I can smell rain coming.”
She snuggled closer. “I’ve got my love to keep me warm.”
Love. I was her love. I sighed a happy sigh.
“Mella, what am I going to do?” I blurted.
“Do when? I’m a little sleepy,” she said to my neck.
“For money. Baz says my credit card is going to bill me, eventually, and I’ll have to pay it.”
She started shaking, and I drew back, worried. She was laughing. “You have a credit card?” she said incredulously.
“Thirty thousand dollar limit. It’s lower, now. I just bought that bed.”
“How on earth? Where did you get it?”
“Part of my commando kit. Credit card, toothbrush, condoms full of holes.”
“Condoms full of—oh my God,” she said. “I never even thought. Well, thank goodness I’m on the pill. What did they think you needed a credit card for?”
I shrugged. “The point is, I have to pay it off. I’ll need a job.”
She frowned. “Huh.”
“I promise I won’t try to sell my body.”
“Better not. I mean,” she said quickly, looking at me with anxious eyes, “I really hope you won’t. I’m not telling you what to do. I just—” She blinked. “I don’t want to share you. I feel all these feelings for you.”
I closed my eyes to savor this. “Thank you. I do, too.”
“Do you love me enough to stay out of hell for me?” she said in a small voice.
A raindrop splatted on my bare knee.
“Are you kidding?” I heaved a big, hot sigh and opened my eyes. “You’re never getting rid of me.”
That got me another marathon hug. I had that sense I was dissolving again, and the door was opening inside me.
Above us, the Chicago sky thickened with clouds. The smell of rain in the air began to mingle with the smell of raindrops on sidewalks.
“My butt is getting flat,” she said.
“Mine, too.”
We pulled apart and sat up side-by-side with our backs against the wooden wall we had just gotten sweaty. She held my hand. I looked up at the sky, where the clouds were piling in, and felt my old life drain out of me and Mella move in.
“Thing is,” I said, before the feeling could get too intense, “we went straight from programming in hexadecimal to C++. And while I’m speaking metaphorically here, C++ is the devil.”
“No argument,” she said.
“You know programmer language?”
“I’m an engineer with the gas company,” she said. “I hate C++. You don’t have anything in between that and hex?”
I shook my head. “All I can do is fix toys. I fixed Baz’s fridge, the one on his basketball court. And I was going to tackle his motorcycle this week. I can probably get him to pay me for that.”
She squeezed my hand. “You’re kidding. You can fix shit? That’s awesome! Car guys make good money. I think appliance repairmen make even more, although you might need certification for that.”
“Mella—”
“In fact, we should enroll you at DeVry, so you get your paperwork. Speaking of which, do you think your sex-demon buddies can find you a fake ID?”
“Mella, wait.”
“Because you can room with me, of course, but if you want to drive or vote or pay taxes, you’ll need—”
I tugged her shoulder around till she faced me. “Are you sure you want this?”
“What? It’ll be great when you’re working.”
I couldn’t frame my worries in words. I just felt more clearly than ever Baz’s warning that love, improperly managed, could kill me. If this didn’t work out with Mella, I’d be joining Hanrazaz in the lake.
“Do you want me living with you? Will I make your life miserable? What if I’m still a horse’s ass?”
She looked at me a long time. Finally she said, “I don’t know. Will I drive you nuts?”
I touched her cheek where a spot of minty-lemon-lime baby gravy still clung. “Weekly. Probably daily. That doesn’t count.”
“Yes, it does,” she said strongly. “You’re entitled not to be driven nuts.”
“Entitled is not a word we used in the Regional Office. It’s like taping a Kick Me sign to your rear end.”
“Don’t be funny with me,” she warned. “You make me so happy. I want you to be happy, Mutt. You—you’re the first guy to get through to me, ever. I don’t think I would have let you, if I hadn’t thought you were stuck with me. Now all I can think is to get you free, get you papers and a job and a life so you can,” she caught herself up on a hiccup. “So you can choose me. Of your own free will.”
I rubbed a tear off her eyelid. “Oh, baby. I’ll choose you.”
So far, I hadn’t tried a kiss. I leaned forward and touched her lips with mine. It was a slow, soft, quiet kiss. Very unlike us.
“You taste salty,” she said.
“It’s the rain,” I said, and laid her back on the grass while big, fat, warm summer raindrops splashed us clean.
Acknowledgments
I want to raise my voice in thanks to my wonderful beta readers, Melissa Craig, Kiki Dufoulon, Patricia Rice, Rebecca Jaxon, and Kate Early. Rich Bynum also provided the wind beneath my wings and infrastructure geekery.
About the Author
Twenty-five years or more ago, Jennifer Stevenson was born under a cabbage leaf, dreaming even in the center of those stiffly furled-up leaves of becoming a hack writer for the pulps. She longed to emulate the careers of bygone greats: Rudyard Kipling, PG Wodehouse, Sax Rohmer, Rex Stout. After a flustering detour down the rabbit-hole of literary fiction, she located a trail of breadcrumbs and followed it here, where she finds new uses for old sex demons and celebrates smart-mouth women.
Website: http://jenniferstevenson.com
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