by Mary Hughes
He smirked and loosened his tie one-handed. Yeah, he’d known. I’d restrained myself from smacking him, but the instant he exposed that amazing ripped torso and fine taut ass, look out. Especially the taut ass.
“I didn’t complain.” His hand went to his placket. “You complained, about having to buy me more shirts.” He didn’t set me down to undress but simply folded me in one arm to flip buttons and pop cuffs.
Julian came in a square shirt box but inside was hot, raw male animal. The instant he was unbuttoned I tore Egyptian cotton free quick enough to smoke it. I yanked shirt and T-shirt together, nearly choking him when the tie wouldn’t come along—but as a vampire his respiration was fortunately optional.
He did something to lose the tie. He did the pants too while I stripped shirts, because when I tossed them, their flump made a duet with the belt’s thud hitting the floor.
Then there was nothing between me and my husband but a thin sheen of hot dew.
I clamped feet on taut male butt for purchase and rubbed my mons against his ripply abs. Washboard muscle striped with a delicate line of hair was better than any vibrator. He rippled his belly and added to the friction.
He started suckling my breast again. It pebbled instantly. The tugging arced searing desire through me, shooting me along Hwy O almost as fast as a fangy bite. I threaded fingers into his thick, soft hair and pumped my hips against him.
I scrubbed his swelling cock on my downskid, a good ten inches from swimmers central. My Julian is truly monumental. In the pre-preggers days that added to the fun. These days it adds to the challenge.
He relishes a challenge.
Whisking us into the bedroom, he laid me on the bed. “Five, I think.”
He’d looked up shallow positions on the Internet, for me. He already knew them but wanted to show me he was open to new spins on old tricks. We’d numbered them together, a new game. One was spoon, Two was cowgirl, Three was chair cowgirl, Four was closed-leg missionary.
There was no Five…unless he’d started chaining positions. As I got myself comfy I asked, “Two plus Three?”
“Trying something new.” He grinned and pulled up my knees, making my legs into a tent. Then he climbed into the tent, feet first. As he slid under my folded legs, his silky leg hair caressed the backs of my thighs.
When our hips lined up he turned on his side, his butt tickling my heels and his erection in a position to do some good, and pushed gently forward.
I gasped when he nudged into me. No matter how many times we did this, it was always a surprise how big he was. How hot, how heavy. God, I loved him. “Do you want me to do anything?”
“Yes. Enjoy.”
Though he didn’t often say the words, that’s how I knew he loved me too. His caring, his kindness. His simply paying attention to me.
He began to pump, a wave of hips that was like a shallow ocean tide, not deep but powerful. My entire bottom heated from his pummeling, his short, insistent thrusts creating a rising swell of sensation.
I rode desire’s swell, not working at all, just floating higher and higher until I crested in the bright sun. It was incredible, a hot spiraling sensation without cost. I just laid there and enjoyed.
While his hips repeatedly locked with mine, he half-rose to prop himself on one elbow, and twisted to start licking my breasts. Wrapped around me, pumping and sucking, that man was named Ju-Flexible-Lian. He suckled sparks into my breasts and stroked lightning between my thighs, his hot skin rasping all around me.
Then he added hands.
Julian is a tall, elegant male but his hands are square, strong and competent. When they’re spread over my skin, on breast, hip or thigh, they radiate heat and power and mastery. I love his hands.
His fingers pinched my near breast, his mouth suckled the far. His other amazing, marvelous hand stroked my clit while his big cock stroked into my pussy.
I writhed against him, legs over and body under and everything aroused. Hell, even my hair was aroused. Suck, stroke, and thrust coordinated to drive me up the crest of no return. I hit desire’s edge and arched, grabbing his hips with my feet. “Yes, now!”
He thrust one last time, putting extra roll into it.
I flew over. He flew with me, releasing wet heat with muscular contractions that thrummed through my heels.
Afterward, as I lay sweaty and sated and drowsy, I mumbled, “Okay, you can keep Five.”
“Naturally.” Julian’s tone was smug. I cracked an eye. His face was smug too. Julian did smug like no one else.
It dared me to find a Six.
After I got my breath back.
Chapter Two
But after I got my breath back I remembered I was stuck recruiting a pit. Pah-fooey. Checking the orchestration revealed how big a job that’d be.
Oz, Wonderful Oz was a brand new musical but I wasn’t surprised to see exactly the same instrumentation as the better known Wizard of. Judy Garland had spoiled us all.
Fortunately there were a few shortcuts. “Okay, we would need three violins, viola, cello, and bass but we can substitute a keyboard synthesizer for the strings. Except for the cello, of course.”
“Why not the cello?” Julian asked. At my eye roll he said, “Oh. Never mind.”
“Hey, if I get roped into this, you do too.” My delightfully talented husband not only lawyered something fierce, he played viola da gamba, which was like a prehistoric cello. Plus side, it made his finger-vibrato awesome in bed. “For better or for worse, remember? The sex was the better. This is the worse.”
“I thought the worst was your execrable metaphors.”
“That’s been downgraded to quirky. Okay, the Broadway conductor is still on board but we’ll need to cover everything else. So for drumset—”
“Wait.” He pointed at the scoring. “No clarinet or guitar. What will you do?”
“Reed I. Since there are exactly three doublers in Meiers Corners.”
“Doubler, as in multiple reeds? Ah, I see. Tripler is probably more accurate. Reed I plays alto sax, clarinet and bass clarinet. We’re going to have a lot of instruments to carry.” He looked at all five-nothing of me. “I mean, I’ll have a lot to carry.”
“Tough to be you. Hey, I’m carrying the kid.”
He rubbed my tummy. “The more important weight. So, you’ve got your cellist and Reed I. Who else?”
“Dream team? Rocky Hrbek for flute and Junior Stieg for Reed II.” I penciled them in with optimism (aka lookit me, Murphy!). “Lob from Guns and Polkas for the trap drum set.” Lob could play anything. He was in my band, a punk/polka combo (with Elvis impersonator), a weird mashup but if we didn’t play the polkas we wouldn’t have gotten the wedding gigs.
When I penciled in a few more names, Julian said, “Those are all good musicians. I didn’t know Meiers Corners had so many pros.”
“Dude, we’re Lutheranians. Even those of us who aren’t. We’re born singing four-part chorales and it only gets better from there.” Settled by German immigrants, Meiers Corners culture wasn’t merely bred into us, it was in the very air we breathed and the beer we drank. “But it’s because they’re good musicians that this might get tricky.”
“The pay issue?”
“Yeah. Better let me do the talking, okay?” I started throwing on clothes.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting it over with.” Since I wanted Julian to be happy I was doing this job. But the job wasn’t looking too easy and I wanted to get started.
“Problem, sweetheart. The sun is still up.”
I checked my Juke. Sure enough, only four-fifteen. “It’s still a little freaky that you know that without looking.”
Julian gets a little sunburned if he’s out before sunset. In April in our neck of the woods, that’s around seven thirty more or less, which these days coincides with my bedtime. I’m less tired than I was, but it was only going to get worse. At least the barfing had stopped.
By the time seven thirty rolled arou
nd I was drooping. I yawned as we strolled up to my first victim…er, recruit, Lob. His front lawn was littered with brown plastic birds.
They were really ugly birds, like a flock of coat hangers fucking cheap cigars. I blinked, wondering if I was asleep and this was a dream.
Lob opened the door. He’s broomstick-skinny topped with a dark blond mop, but he’s an awesome drummer and a great friend. “Hi guys, what’s up?”
“Did you know there are a bunch of winged turds in your front yard?” Without a hi or anything. Nixie Emerson, master of the social script. Being half asleep was only a partial excuse.
Lob shrugged. “They’re flamingos. It’s a fundraiser. A buck to remove each, up to fifty.”
“Not to be obvious, but those birds are brown. Aren’t flamingos supposed to be pink?”
“They’re Fulvous Flamingos. Something about not getting confused with other fund raisers.”
“Right.” I was developing a headache. “But you have to pay to get rid of them. Isn’t that blackmail? Or, um, brownmail?”
“More like a chain letter. When I pay the money, the Fulvous Flamingos go to whoever I want.” He considered me. “Say, do you suppose—”
“I find those things on our lawn,” Julian drawled, “And they’ll be the Flaming Plastic Lump Flamingos.”
“Just a thought,” Lob said. “So what can I do for you?”
I explained. “The musical opens next month. We’d like you to do trap.”
Lob smiled. “Sure. Sounds like fun.”
“Great.” As we dropped off the stoop I said to Julian, “That was easy. Kewl. With the pregnancy I could use easy.”
I might as well have hung a sign on my ass that said, “Plant cosmic foot here.”
“Who’s next on your list?” Julian asked as we hit the sidewalk.
“Rocky’s. She’s living at the old Fangtastic Flat.”
My best friend Elena had once had a crashpad on Eighth and Eisenhower. I’d taken it over when she married her master vampire, playa Bo Strongwell. Then I’d married my MVP and Liese Schmetterling moved in. Now Liese was marrying Logan Steel (you got it) and so Rocky Hrbek, who was looking to get out of her mother’s garden-gnome-infested double-wide, sublet the place.
As far as I knew Rocky hadn’t been bitten (heh) yet by love. Coming up Eisenhower though, I saw she had been bitten by the fangs of fundraiser. Flamingos covered her lawn like the sky had pooped plastic birds.
Rocky answered the door. With her slender curves and glossy chestnut hair, she’s a hundred ten pounds of hot, but in high school she was a lump and still saw herself that way. I’d tried to correct her once, went way too far and got creeped out by myself. Oh well, sooner or later some guy or gal would grab her in the love arena and she’d figure it out.
She was just shutting her cell phone as she let us in. “Hi, guys.”
I nodded toward her lawn. “Looks like you got the full load of Fulvous Flamingos. There must be fifty of them out here.”
“Fifty-five.” Her alto was as smooth as a sax. “It’s overkill, really, since they can only charge me a max of fifty dollars to have them removed. Although even fifty is tough for me to come up with these days. So no.”
“No, you won’t have them removed? Are you nuts?”
“No, I can’t play for your pit. I’m working three jobs as it is, trying to make ends meet. I already play gratis for the MC orchestra and can’t afford to do another gig for free.”
I stared at her. “Where did you hear that it’s no pay? Dolly Barton Gossip Network?”
She indicated her phone. “Anonymous tip. Is it true?”
“Well yeah. And I was going to tell you.” I flashed a look at Julian, who was frowning. “After you signed on. Damn it, who am I going to get to play flute now?”
“I teach a couple high school students who are pretty good.”
“‘Pretty good’ implies part bad. The actors are professionals. Broadway professionals.”
She grimaced. “My kids are good, but not professional. I’m sorry, Nixie.”
I sighed. “Next time, maybe.”
As the door shut behind us I noticed Julian was still frowning. “What?”
“There are only fifty-four flamingos. Rocky must have miscounted.”
I started counting the flock of turd birds, quickly got a headache, not from counting but because they were so ugly. Aren’t flamingos supposed to be beautiful? These had been tenderized with an ugly stick, breaded with repulsive, and deep fried in vile. I scrunched my eyes closed, never wanting to see a Fulvous Flamingo again. So I didn’t. When I opened my eyes and jumped off the stoop my gaze skidded over brown as if it wasn’t there. “I’d count them but it’s not like Rocky to make mistakes.”
“No, it isn’t.” Julian’s frown deepened but he followed me off the stoop.
We hit Eisenhower headed east, destination Fifth and Jefferson and Junior Stieg’s sausage store. We hadn’t gotten more than a block when my Juke went off. “Talk to me.”
“Nixie? It’s Lob. Hey, I got a call… Is this a paying gig?”
I winced. “No, but it’s a world premier, with Broadway talent. And I’m getting some of the best of the best to play—”
“Yeah, can’t do it. I have a dentist appointment.”
“For the whole month?”
“No. Just the days you need me.” He disconnected.
Skewer me with a cactus. “I should have known it was too easy.”
“You were right, though,” Julian said. “The cash—or lack thereof—changed their minds.”
“Strictly speaking, Rocky didn’t change her mind. She knew from the start.” I stopped. “She got a phone call. And Lob got one too.”
“Even if they found out from someone, call him X, how did X find out? You didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. Unless there’s a mole in the mayor’s office?”
“Twyla’s a world champion mole whacker. And Heidi’d whip their flesh into jerky strips.”
“Pleasant image,” Julian said. “What do we do now?”
“What can we do? We soldier on.”
“How noble. Doesn’t mean you have to wear yourself out, though.” He picked me up and did his vampire speedwalk to Junior’s.
There were no Fulvous Flamingos pooped on Junior’s front lawn, but that might have been because Junior didn’t have a front lawn. She lived in the attic of her parent’s storefront and the only yard she had was city sidewalk and a strip of municipal grass.
We caught Junior—whose real name was Gunter Marie in honor of her dad, maybe hoping she’d get a sex change and they could go back to calling the store Stieg and Son—as she turned the sign to Geschlossen. In April, the Wurstspeicher Haus was only open until eight. Come tourist season it’d stay open until the sidewalks were rolled up, at the late-late hour of nine.
We waved and she unlocked the door for us. It opened with a cheery tinkle.
I liked Junior. Not only was she a doubler like me, she was one of the few people I didn’t have to look up to, being only a couple inches taller than my own five zilch. We’re both slim but while I have short blonde hair, Junior’s coal-black braid hangs to her butt.
“Have I got an opportunity for you,” I said as she hung up her apron. “Pit orchestra for a brand new musical. Broadway stars. Reed II.”
“Sounds interesting,” Junior said. “Are we being paid?”
“Damn. I hoped you wouldn’t…” I frowned. “You mean you don’t know?”
“Not until just now. You’d say if there was cash involved.”
“No mysterious anonymous phone calls?”
“Nope. And nope, I can’t do it. If I’m gone evenings, I’d have to pay someone to run the register. Rent-a-kids don’t come cheap.”
I argued, but Junior was a logical and determined businesswoman as much as a musician. She wasn’t prey to cheap emotional manipulation, not even piteous whining. Hey, love made me do this job. It didn’t give me any good techniques how.
/> Finally I surrendered to the inevitable, a Julian phrase which sounds nicer than the truth—I caved. “Thanks anyway, Junior.”
“What do we do now?” Julian said as Junior locked the door behind us. “Continue on?”
“No. I’m discouraged. And tired.” My stomach growled.
“Ah. You’re hungry.”
“A little. Not bad.”
“True. You’re not gnawing at my arm yet.”
“Or other vital parts. Did you bring my protein bars?”
He pulled one out of his pocket. “Do I look stupid?”
“Are we playing questions only?”
He smiled as he unwrapped the bar. “Do you want to?”
“Only if you do—damn.” I pouted. He always won questions only. But in my defense Julian’s smile short circuits my brain. “You have an unfair advantage, being a courtroom shark.”
“With you, sweetheart, I need all the unfair advantages I can get.” He held the bar out for me, but when I grabbed for it, pulled it out of my reach. Which was only somewhere around his mouth, another game, but we were talking food here. So when he waggled the bar at me, teasing, I went straight for the kill. I launched myself at him, grabbing his shoulders. He caught me under the butt as I knew he would, and I shimmied up his torso to plant a huge smoochie on his edible lips. He laughed, distracted, and I snatched the bar, slid back down his body and stuffed half in my mouth before he could play any more games.
The instant I swallowed he grabbed me and twirled me behind a convenient garage where he winched me in for a more serious kiss, grinding tongue and hips. Ooh, Mr. Big Gavel had raised for a pounding objection. My kiss and my slide past home base had apparently raised a fine point of law.
“Hey,” I said around his tongue. “I thought we were going to figure out what to do next.” Or actually it came out more like “wha we goonna doo nix”, what with the tongue action.
He nibbled down to my neck, one of his favorite haunts, only kissing it because of the “moratorium” on biting (yeah, that was my lawyerly Suitguy, to everyone else in the universe it’d be “stop”) while I was pregnant.