That reminded me. “What about a condom, again?”
“You’re safe. Sex demon, remember? But if it makes you feel any better—” He got up and found a condom in his pants pocket.
Rather forlornly, I watched him peel the wrapper open. “Why do you carry them if sex demons don’t need them?”
“Because women don’t like having sex with a guy who thinks he doesn’t need a condom.” He pitched the wrapper at the wastebasket and slid down beside me. “Relax. You’re not gonna get pregnant.”
“Oh.” Too bad. “Can I see?”
He let me hold it and smell it and pinch it with my fingernails, and then he took it away and rolled it onto his bone. I hoped I’d pinched hard enough.
We lay face to face.
“Okay.” He put his hands on each side of my face and made me look at him. “Here we are.” We were so close, his pale blue eyes looked white. They filled my world. “Now close your eyes and feel your edges.”
I closed my eyes. “They’re quite close.”
“What are you aware of right now?”
“You. This bed.”
“That’s it? How about the roses on the ceiling?”
“I can smell them. But they’re outside my edges.”
“So talking about condoms brought the edges in. Made your space small.”
“It made us private,” I said. “Oh. I see. I feel them!” In fact my edge passed between us, separating us. “What if I try to extend my edges into you?”
“Go for it.”
I leaned toward him. His breath puffed on my face, smelling a lot like my crotch. I let my edge pass over him.
He shivered.
“Not good?” I said anxiously.
“Different.”
I edged closer.
A spot of sunlight poked between the drapes and found my face. Light filtered through my eyelid, piercingly bright even when my eyes were shut.
Baz, what’s it like to have this thing dangling between your legs all the time? Hard or soft, what’s that like?
I edged closer.
Mm, warm. Like having a little friend who chattered all the time, wanting this, wanting that. Like having a homing device in my crotch. A guided missile. Yeah, and so often hot and hard.
I slid further into Baz’s skin, stroking all those muscles from the inside and, because I was inside, feeling them tighten with desire.
I pulled back. “Is that creepy?”
“No. I want you,” he blurted. His bone quivered, filling the condom like a knockwurst.
I pictured my edge completely surrounding him, taking him in. I thought suddenly of babies again. I want a baby.
I twitched away from that thought.
I could feel my edge now like a second skin.
I slid closer to Baz and threw one leg over him. He gave a big sigh, like, finally, and rolled onto his back. Lying there with his eyes closed, he looked blissed out, at peace. His bone stood up like the Washington Monument.
I warned, “I’m going to touch you.” I straddled him and watched his face while I stroked him. A sex demon can’t make you pregnant. Feeling my edge gather him in a protective embrace, I lowered myself slowly onto his bone.
We gasped at the same time.
He was big. My opening stretched—and he slid farther inside—and I stretched some more—wow, that was good—I kept lowering until we were joined at our pubic bones.
Boy, that felt good.
Not only was he inside me with that latex-covered bone. He was inside my edges. He was happy, I knew it. I was pretty happy myself.
I lay down over him, and a big, deep-voiced engine rumbled to life inside me as he bent and moved in there.
After that it was his skin on mine, his bone in me, his hands gripping my shoulders—he rolled over on top of me—now his full weight pressed my upper body into the mattress and that incredible sense of penetration shifted. My edges went crazy. I turned inside out every time he pulled away, and then things righted themselves when he came back in.
In the nick of time I remembered the roses all over the ceiling and I kept my grip on my edges. Don’t think about the roses. Don’t think about emeralds or gold or furs.
Don’t think about babies.
It was hard, so hard to keep my edges close, and yet feel everything, his slow, deliberate, powerful plunge into me, and that engine revving up, a freight train in my pelvis, vibrating heavily. Soon he was moving faster. Our hips met with a jarring thump, thump, thump, and a sparkle fizzed at my crotch. My eyes snapped open. “Baz—that’s—” Good, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t hold my edges in and fuck him and talk at the same time. Sneeze, remember the sneeze! He shifted until all his weight was on one arm, and with the other hand he reached calmly between us and did something to me with his finger. He leaned closer over me. His lips tickled my ear.
“Remember your edges, darlin’. Are you ready? Here goes.”
Then his finger moved, and he plunged in harder and faster than before, and the world turned over and over like a child’s balloon blowing slowly across a field and every time it touched down, boom! I went off, boom! I clutched at my edges, feeling his breath on my neck, boom! boomity boom boom! That must have been his orgasm, wow, he kept touching me off with his finger, he was so generous, giving me explosion after explosion when he only got the one, and here came another—a big one.
I grabbed for my edges and stuck mental fingers in my ears, trying to think about holding in a sneeze—
BOOM!
The blast flashed out to my edges and bounced back, driving through Baz, through me, into some inner magma core where it crashed and splashed and echoed back again, out through me, back through him, hit the hard edge and bounced inward again. Every cell in our bodies lit up. The horizon filled with lightning. Storms far away contained us, and we contained them. The lake boiled.
We both lay very still.
After a long moment, Baz breathed deeply and rolled off me. “That’s going to take practice.”
I opened one eye and squinted at the ceiling. Roses still there, but nothing else. I lifted my head. The room was free of piled emeralds, furs, flowers, and pools of molten lava.
I looked at Baz. He looked happy, if sweaty. In another of those moments, I realized that I had the closeness I had always wanted with this man, even as a child, and it wasn’t too different from my imaginings.
Except for his soul wound. Even as a kid I’d sensed it was there. With my edges wrapped around him, I could feel it in him, painful but invisible.
All the same, the sex was pretty darned wonderful.
I collapsed back on the pillow. “Holy crap.”
BAZ
We did it three more times that afternoon. I had to admit to a slight feeling of fatigue by the end, but Yoni was still going strong. I suppose twenty-seven years of celibacy builds up a head of steam.
“It echoes back and forth, doesn’t it?” she said after number three.
“Yes,” I said emphatically.
In a smaller voice she said, “Is it good?”
I smiled at her. “Yes. Intense, but good. How about you?”
She smiled back. “I like being close to you.”
“But?”
“Only a little but.” She rocked her head on the pillow. “I’m beginning to know things I didn’t know I knew. It’s like I fill up with connectedness. Knowledge about you, about the world around us, even about people in the next building or down the street. It’s there no matter how I try to pull in the edges. I don’t like that flood of knowledge. It interferes with my peace of mind—unless I’m with you.” She flashed me a smile. “Before you, I was becoming alienated from the world, even though I’m more connected with it, because I know that no one else knows all this. I didn’t know all this.”
I passed over the difference being-with-me made. “Do you want to return to ignorance?”
“I can’t tell. I just want to be human!”
I patted her on the boob. “C
an’t argue with you, babe.”
“Sorry for whimpering,” she said gruffly. “Is it like this for you?”
I knew she wanted me to say it was, but I couldn’t. “Maybe because I’m a man, or a soldier turned sex demon. Or because Aphrodite didn’t choose me for Her avatar. I can tell you that immortality, like fame, sucks.”
“Oh, good. Tell me more.” Her tone said don’t, but I couldn’t stop myself.
I counted the bullshit out on my fingers. “Your friends stop seeing you as a person. Your followers stop letting you make mistakes. The public tries to tear you down. You smile at someone and they have an epiphany—or you scowl at someone because you’re tired and they jump out of a window. Everything you touch turns to gold, which gets old fast. The world the way you remember it is not remembered that way by history. Did I forget one? Oh. And everybody you know dies.”
The afternoon sun had slid away from the bed and now hit the beveled edge of the mirror across the room, where it bounced away, making rainbows.
She rocked onto her elbow and made a face at me. “Buster, we need to turn that frown upside down. You gotta wow the public in a couple of hours.”
Reluctantly, we dressed and took the limo to the Cubby Bear, because I didn’t have it in me to do the magic to hide us from the paparazzi. The car dropped her off at the club first and then drove me on to the Lair, where I picked up my old bass. I plugged it in before I took it down to the limo. Yup, still twongs. I was good to go.
Girl had stamina. I felt used up. Maybe I could grab forty winks in the dressing room.
SOPHIE
Yoni was at her makeup table in her Cubby Bear dressing room when I walked in.
She didn’t even blink. “You’re that stalker,” she said, sounding not shocked but resigned. She looked me up and down, sighed, and went back to putting on foundation.
I grinned with delight. “That’s me!” I was so thrilled to be in her presence that I forgot Veek’s problems. I had a private moment with Yoni! I’d waited years for this.
“You’re not the first person who ever got fixated on me,” Yoni said. Up close, her skin was exquisite. What a shame that she was smearing foundation on it. I watched, fascinated. “Sometimes they’re not cute teenagers like you. Sometimes they’re big, scary men. Sometimes they don’t want to leave me flowers.”
“I’m not a child,” I protested.
She just looked at me sideways.
“I want to—” I stopped. When one has wormed one’s way into the temple, it would be foolish not to listen to the goddess’s private message.
“Well?” she said. “You want to what?”
“I want to know what it feels like to achieve something.”
“You’ve achieved plenty. You can climb the outside of a hotel wall and break in through a window and get back out without leaving a trace. You speak two languages.”
“Five,” I said. Yoni looked startled. “My father insisted.”
“And I bet you have other academic achievements.” My goddess leaned toward me, looking me in the eye.
I held my breath. This would be important.
She said, “I barely got to finish high school. I was making too much money to be allowed to take time off for college.”
She wanted to compare us. Bon, I welcomed such a lesson. “But your achievements were acknowledged. I want to know what it’s like to be acknowledged.”
“You want your achievements recognized. By your father?”
She was astute, my goddess. My eyes stung with angry tears. I nodded.
The door opened, and I cringed. But it was only an old waiter bringing a pitcher of water and ice in a bucket.
Yoni didn’t tell him to get out. She smiled and thanked him, and when he asked for an autograph she gave it, and she shook his hand.
I chafed. My private audience with the goddess was ticking by. Get out! I screamed mentally at the waiter.
When the door closed behind him, Yoni spoke as if nothing had interrupted us.
“So I suppose your father slaps you down and he doesn’t appreciate your hard work and he wants you to be something you’re not.”
“He doesn’t want me to be anything. I’m an ornament to his life. Just a spear carrier in his movie. I want my own movie!”
My goddess nodded. “I’ve met your father.”
“You have? How?” Angry blood rushed into my face. “He went to see you, to warn you—oh!” I balled my fists. “He is hateful!”
“Well, that’s kind of what I was going to say. Based on what I saw, I suggest you consider who you’re dealing with, and adjust your expectations accordingly.”
I digested this. Yoni didn’t think much of my papa, that was clear. “You think I’m wasting my time, trying to—to—”
“Impress him. Yes. Either he’s never going to be impressed, or he’s impressed already and this is his reaction. If you don’t like his reaction, well, I’d stop hoping for something else.”
“Give up?” I said, feeling bleak.
“You’re who you are, he’s who he is.” Yoni added deliberately, “Look, all I know is my own experience. I’ve been the star of my family since I was twelve. The world is watching to make sure I live up to my past achievements. Everything depends on my success. If I mess up, they’ll all starve.” She looked over her shoulder toward the door. “Any minute now they’ll come along and have something for me to do. Something about being a big star,” she added with irony.
“Is being a star—being popular—what gives you all those powers?”
“What?” she blurted, looking thrown off-balance at last.
“When you sing and people fall in love and have sex, right there at the concert. And throw away their crutches.”
“I—that isn’t me.” She looked flustered.
“Yes, it is.” I pointed at the door. “That waiter came in bent over like an old man. I don’t think he could stand up. You shook his hand and his back straightened.”
Yoni looked horrified. I couldn’t see why. Didn’t she know what she could do?
I remembered now why I had come.
“You see, I know someone with powers who is not famous. He has been hiding his whole life. He’s a member of my family, and a sex demon, and so good in bed, parbleu! I was sorry—I used to be sorry for myself,” I added, to show her I had been listening to her, to make her listen some more. “But it was much worse for him. He’s black, you see. My family would never tolerate that. Black and the heir. My father wants to get rid of him and he has this thing that gives him much power, and I’m so afraid for my Veek!”
I’d thought I could be tough, but in Yoni’s presence, because I trusted her, I found myself sniveling.
She looked away. “I’m dating a sex demon, too.”
“Ashurbanipal?” To her startled look, I said, “He is my lover’s roommate. They work together.” I had a delicious slumber-party feeling. Yoni and I were dating two sex-demon roommates. It almost made us sisters.
Yoni didn’t look as pleased as I was.
I said urgently. “Do you think they feel like whores? Or do they feel like gods? I mean, do they even notice women? And how do they stay sane, doing this job, decade in and decade out?”
“Too many questions, kid.” She sighed and looked at her watch. “Here’s some fast answers. One, sometimes. Two, sometimes. Three, oh, yeah, they notice us. Four, they’re guys, they get to have sex all the time with different women, and what’s your question again?” She smacked my shoe. “Time’s up, cookie.”
“But I have to tell you about Veek!”
Yoni shut her eyes, sighed, looked at me, and sighed again. “I have to put my makeup on. You talk.”
BAZ
When I got to the club, I found Yoni in the dressing room.
She looked up as I walked in past the security thugs at the door. “Baz, I think you should hear this.”
I blinked.
Reading from left to right, I saw Yoni on a folding metal chair in he
r dressing gown over a club gig costume, not too glitzy or naked, a li’l ol’ singer gal dropping in on open-mic night. The jeans were probably eight hundred dollars, custom made. Big gold hoop earrings. A denim top that tied in a bow between her boobs and showed off her famously slender waist. Sort of a Dukes of Hazzard down-home girl, only, you know, black.
And in the other folding chair, Sophie. She wore big baggy cargo pants and a dark-green, long-sleeved tee shirt. She was nervously eyeing a vase full of red roses.
“Okay, I’m missing something,” I said. I grabbed another folding chair, swung it around, and straddled it.
Yoni gestured to Sophie.
She let loose a torrent of gabble. “Veek is in trouble. He is the true vicomte Montmorency. I have ascertained this most positively. But my father would discredit his claim if he could. He has—my father has found a thing that was there when Veek was born, like a veil over his face.” She passed a hand over her own face with fingers splayed. “It is a true relique. Also he has Veek’s navel string, but that was false, just beef liver. I supplied a sperm sample. Now I’m afraid he will try to make it impossible for Veek to provide another DNA sample. But.” She paused for breath.
I looked at Yoni, like, Are you getting any of this?
The kid’s eyes went from mine to Yoni’s. “The veil, it has magical power over Veek. I have felt its power too. My father—this power is making him crazy I think. He may do something very unpleasant to Veek, I don’t know what, and I fear I may not be able to stop him. Maybe no one can. But then I thought, I know someone, one person who has greater magic than the veil in my father’s possession.”
She was a cute little thing, but completely crackers as far as I could see. She turned her eyes to Yoni, and I realized what she was saying.
“She says,” Yoni said, “that her Veek is your roommate. I could have security take her out and the cops would arrest her for breaking into my dressing room, but I thought I would check with you first.” She sounded stiff, but the mere fact she hadn’t already had the kid evicted was worrying me.
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