by Iris Astres
“Dinah’s busy.”
“What does that mean, busy?”
“With her friend.”
That word gave him pause. It was enough of a surprise to make Rocco forget his boy for half a second, wondering who Dinah’s friend could be.
He’d never fallen for her I-still-love-my-old-dead-husband routine. He had, however, figured it was true she didn’t want a man. And since Rocco sure as shit did not want her, he was just fine with that. Even his friends, horny as they were, were better off without Miss High-and-Mighty looking down on them. Something in that thought ticked Rocco off a second. He could feel his mouth get tight, his nostrils narrow with distaste. That bitch had sold her ass to an old man for real estate, and now she walked around this town acting like she was too good to talk to anyone. Twenty damn good men making love to their right hand night after night while Dinah played the reconstructed virgin—some wounded saint, toiling amid her precious rosebuds. And now she was fucking someone else?
“Anyone we know?” He stared down at his son.
“Malcolm.” Gordon shook his head. “But I don’t know him.”
That was interesting. An out-of-towner was worth looking into.
“What’s he like? He can’t be more handsome than you.”
Gordon made a sour face at that. “He’s big,” he said.
“Big, huh.” Rocco thought about that one. “Oh well.” And that was all he’d say for now. When the boy was older, he’d tell him a whole lot more: what woman were good for. How to get it. How to put their guilt trips and their hoity-toity criticisms in perspective. He’d see to it his boy was never led around by the nose like his old grampa. If possible, he’d also make sure the kid wasn’t blindsided like he himself had been. Joanne had taken off. So be it. Good riddance to bad rubbish. He’d kept the best of their relationship. Now it would be him and his boy.
He settled Gordon back on the bike. “Let’s stop at Bessie’s,” he said, full of fresh enthusiasm. “Get some hot dogs or something. And some pie. We’ll just forget about old Dinah since she’s busy.” For now. He’d forget about the widow Kelley for now. Later he’d go give a howdy-do to that new man of hers. No more than what a friendly neighbor like himself should do.
Chapter Six
Four days later, they had eased themselves into a nice routine. Dinah felt her housemate’s presence fold into her life, like fluffy egg white into batter, making her feel sweet and light. She went outside and Malcolm followed. His presence in the corner of her eye distracted her so many times she had to play games with herself to keep from looking at him every thirty seconds. He’s not that handsome. Not that hot. Then when she couldn’t take temptation anymore, she turned and stared. Broad shoulders, muscled arms, the angles in his face, the startling awareness in those blue, blue eyes. It was almost more than she could bear.
One day soon the burden of resisting him would lift, and he’d be gone for good. That was a sad thought, and reluctantly she took due note.
Content to sit and watch at first, Malcolm rose eventually, requesting some way to participate in her endeavors. His slacks and pullover were not exactly gardening gear, but Dinah gave him Cy’s long-handled pruners, which he quickly learned to wield with manly authority. As leery as she’d been to trust him with her hedges, he’d proven himself useful, cutting in the way she’d instructed, carting off the heavy refuse.
Helping her.
Inside he helped her too. That surprise was even easier to get used to. In fact, she made a big, dramatic point of lounging on the bed while he wiped down the countertops and stacked the dinner dishes back up in the cupboard.
“You missed a spot.”
His brilliant gaze swept over her. “I did?”
“Not on me,” Dinah squealed. “Over there.” Alarmed and pleased she crab-walked backward on the bed. He put the dish towel down, advancing purposefully toward her.
“Which spot did I miss?” Malcolm set out on a painstaking quest to find unchartered places on her body. He came upon some good ones, probing with his fingertips, his mouth, his teeth, his tongue: the hollow place between the ball of her foot and her toes, the soft half-moon of skin behind her ears.
That and similar events was how bedtime began at eight, stretching ever further into morning—a scandalous infraction on Dinah’s previous rules. But she had a real thing for Loveplay cards, and he was always ready for another turn.
Far from the silly, teasing games she’d played with Cy, their adventures always left her shaky and amazed. Her sexual tastes had been revealed. She liked it dirty. Liked the sense that she was in a free fall in the midst of all her nasty deeds. When her last thought disappeared into a desperation to be touched and fucked and made to come, that was the best of all.
Malcolm was supremely capable at pushing her into that state of sexual mindlessness. He was fearless and completely unapologetic for the things he made her do, which made the rude acts she performed more liberating and exciting. “Laundromat hookup” had been extremely good. “Truck-stop floozy” even better.
Only their little game of doctor had gone slightly wrong for her.
Not that the role play hadn’t been exciting, only that the memory of it made her pause—her face instantly flushed, a liquid feeling in her stomach. Odd, because when she’d first read the card, she hadn’t thought much of it.
As a conscientious doctor you must give your new patient a thorough examination.
Dinah had been into that. She gone into the bathroom to get creams and such that she could use on him. Unconcerned, Malcolm had lain down on his stomach while she’d oiled up her hands and traced the muscles in his back. The contours of his body were so mesmerizing that she soon found herself in a fugue state, trailing just one slippery finger over all her favorite parts of him again and then again. She could have spent days touching him, the bumps along his spine, the inside of his hands. He was so strong, but flesh was flesh, however perfect. It moved her that he lay so still and trusted her so much.
She replayed the events a dozen times and saw him rolling onto his back. Her breathing and her pulse sped up each time the moment poured into her consciousness. She would have spent a lot more time exploring all the muscles in his stomach, but his cock had been so hard and straining toward her. In her mind she stroked it all over again. She warmed more oil with her hands and rubbed him slowly like a woman hypnotized. Hand over hand in a deep sexual daze, she stroked his shaft until she felt him twitch and jerk. His cock went granite hard and pulsed. Hot, white seed overflowed onto her fingers, spilling over the back of her hand.
She couldn’t stop thinking about it, even now.
They’d finished lunch. Dinah pulled her thoughts back to the present, looking at the window, listening for anyone outside.
“Do you have a weapon?”
She turned to Malcolm with her best beleaguered look. Half a second, that was how long she’d let herself worry that time. “I thought you said you don’t read minds.”
“I don’t,” he assured her. “I observe. All Bods observe. We spend years perfecting our powers of perception. Mine are very good. Much better than what anyone on Earth is used to. Subtle changes in the patterns of the breath, slightly different colorations on the skin, the finest movements of the face and body—these shifts are just like words to me. But”—he leaned toward her with a confidential look—“where you’re concerned, my dear, those years of study were a waste of time. You are the most transparent person I have ever seen on any planet. I could have read your body as a twelve-year-old. ”
“What’s that’s supposed to mean?” She pushed against his arm. It was hard to argue with the fact she had no poker face, but transparent was a little harsh.
“It means what you think and feel are written on your face in broad, repeating patterns that I know by heart. Take irritation for example.” He cocked his head to one side with a slightly sneering look of sheer annoyance on his face. “The moment you’re the slightest bit irate, you have a tilted
sort of swagger that is pretty hard to miss.” Dinah recognized herself immediately. It was a stellar imitation. If she were famous, he could make a lot of money doing that. “When you’re happy,” he continued, smiling, “you bounce a little and your toes wiggle. When you’re anxious you just tear around the place like someone set your ass on fire.”
“What do I do when I’m turned on?”
He paused and eyed her, looking thoughtful.
“You don’t know,” Dinah crowed. “You’ve never seen it, because you’re not that hot.”
“Wrong on all three counts.” He smiled in a way she’d seen many times—the faintest curving of his lips that could veer into true solicitude or domineering insolence in under half a second. Both attitudes seemed to come naturally to him. Salacious behavior took its toll on her despite how much she liked it. He always went further, deeper, all the way out to the edge and came back as unruffled as a man returning from the corner market.
And that was only one of the good things about the man.
“So tell me what I do when I want sex,” she said.
“Okay.” He shrugged agreeably, leaned back in his chair. “When you’re turned on, your body goes completely still.” He demonstrated this, his body poised, his breathing shallow. “Then your eyes start shifting from the bed to me and back again.” With his gaze darting all around the room, he looked like her but also like a horny lunatic. Dinah threw a napkin at him.
“I don’t do that.”
“You do.”
“So what do you do when you feel like fucking?”
“With any luck at all, I fuck.”
“That’s right,” she said. “It’s luck all right.”
“I don’t care what it is.” His lips curled in that special way again. “I do care that you never answered me, however.”
“Answered what?” Dinah frowned and tried to think.
“I asked you if you had a weapon.”
“Oh.” She got up, pulled open the kitchen drawer, and showed him one of Cy’s service pistols. “You could say that. The truth is, I’m armed to the gills.” Scary to think how many Rockwells had been handed out during the Civil War. Scarier to wonder how many of those guns now sat in people’s kitchens just like this one, loaded up with thirty rounds and ready to spray death around. Cy had left her two, in working order. She fired them the first of every month to see. “There’s another in the drawer beside the bed. I also have Cy’s father’s guns. Turn-of-the-century Lugers, I think. There’s one tucked in the closet. And one taped under an inverted pot out by the lemon tree. So yeah. There are weapons. In my twenties I was very antirape. I’m less frightened of it now, but still.”
Dinah never claimed to be a mind reader. She wasn’t an expert at body language either, but she could still tell something in what she’d just said had seriously pissed him off. His disposition closed up like a slamming prison gate.
“What?” she asked, pulling away. “Is there no joking on your planet?”
“Was that supposed to be a joke?” He shot out of his chair and paced the room, his energy so agitated it began to set her hackles up. “I don’t like it that you take risks. You say that now they’ve seen you with a man… Why did you offer your home to me if it put you in jeopardy?”
“I answered that already.” Dinah cocked her head and knew she looked pretty much the way he’d shown her five minutes ago, but it could not be helped—hulking, hovering men were something she could live without. “There’s no relationship between you and my situation. I’m a thirty-year-old woman living alone in the Outlands, not two miles from a town full of horny dickheads. That’s not the safest way to live your life. The way I figure, it’s always been a coin toss, about a fifty-fifty chance no one would ever take it in his head to ‘court me.’ Cy’s been dead over a year, which is already better than expected, to be honest. But any relationship between my signing up with Citizen’s First, or whatever, and some redneck coming after me is pure chance. A twist of fate. So this is not on you.” She was close to yelling it this time. “It sucks that Gordon saw us, but it can’t be helped. Most times, I can go three weeks without seeing a soul. We just weren’t lucky.”
He didn’t move, still staring down at her with lowered brows like they were midway through a game of Principal’s Office.
“You didn’t ask to come here,” she repeated wearily, “so you’re not to blame. In any case, you’ll be home soon enough.”
He stood completely still. The air around him seemed to change direction. “Do you really think I’m leaving you?” Dinah stared at him and saw a touch of curiosity come over him. It tamped down some of the hard glint in his blue eyes.
“You’ll have to go, won’t you?”
“No,” he said.
“Never?” She dipped her chin and raised her brows. Her skin was tingling with excitement, but there was no way he could stay forever.
Malcolm didn’t answer her. His anger had evaporated. Now he just looked lost, unhappy.
“What is this?” Dinah said, pretending to be all aflutter. “Are you proposing?”
She’d tried to tease him out of his bad mood. Her efforts made him close down even more. Clearly, this man didn’t find her funny.
Cy had laughed a dozen times a day. At stupid things. At anything. And she’d laughed with him because that’s the kind of laugher he had been.
“Are you still in love with him?”
“What?” She gaped at him in disbelief. If that wasn’t mind reading, it was fucking close and pretty damn invasive too. Dinah walked the dishes to the sink and turned her back on him. Let him read the language of her ass for a while. She’d had enough of him for now.
DINAH WAS, IN fact, the most transparent woman he had ever met. An utter waste of all his training. Ask about her husband, she shut down. Now she was upset with him. Agitation always equaled busy-making. Her actions were as clear as words scrawled on a wall.
“Are you proposing?” That question had been cruel. The truth was, Malcolm wished he could. Although in his tradition it was called declaring.
You and no one else. You above all else.
Those were the words traditionally used. Traditional for some, of course. Not for those in sexual service. Never once, until Raj had fallen in love with Jane a few months back.
“It must be something in Earth’s atmosphere.” That’s what Dinah had said that first morning they’d spent looking at each other. “A woman’s touch is firewater. You’ll soon be addicted to our feminine concern.” That was closer to the truth. Scientists on Backus had assured them there was no lethal toxicity in the makeup of the planet, but surely there could be other effects. He was among the first hundred Backusian settlers on Earth. Part of a great experiment. Outcomes guessed at but not known.
Raj once told him it was daily contact combined with his wife’s compassion that had opened up his heart. Another vote for firewater. Whatever was pulling him toward Dinah didn’t matter. He wouldn’t ever leave her willingly, which was another way of saying he was bonded to her. But if her heart was unavailable, that would be a problem. No man of honor would declare intentions to a woman who belonged to someone else. Even if the man in question happened to be dead.
“Could you love again?” he asked.
“Could I love again?” She stared at him over her shoulder, and then she turned back to the dishes, shaking her head.
“I need to know.”
“Know what?”
He stepped behind her. “In your opinion, are you free to love again?”
Dinah shut the water off and turned around. He didn’t like her look: impatient, veering toward dismissal. He also didn’t like the way she fidgeted and searched the room for things to do instead of giving him her full attention. This constant need to do something was getting on his nerves.
“It’s an easy question, Dinah. You’ll only have to answer once. I won’t ask you again.”
“I can’t answer something so dumb.”
Anoth
er step toward her made him loom, a fact he couldn’t help. “What’s dumb about it? Yes or no: does your heart still belong to your husband?”
She turned on him, impatience burning in her eyes and something else. What else? For once, he had to look more closely. “My heart never belonged to Cy,” she said with an edge to her voice. “I didn’t marry him for love. I married him because he offered me this house and all his money if I kept him company while he got old.” She closed her eyes and sighed, a sick look on her face. “We had a deal. It was a friendly deal. And I kept up my end the absolute best I could. I cared for him, and we were happy. Really. We were very happy.
“I’m not sure I can take much credit for it, since Cy had a gift for happiness. He was silly, like a big, round, white-haired kid. Loveable was in his DNA. On top of that, he liked me. He thought I was a genius. He thought my cooking was delicious. He thought my jokes were funny, unlike you.” She lifted one bare foot and pushed against his leg. ”After five years together, I can truly say I loved him too. It hurt like hell when he was gone. But I was never in love with him.” She looked humiliated now. Ashamed. Defensive. “Does that shock you?”
“Shock me?” Shock was not what he was feeling.
“Getting into bed with some old man for personal gain is some people’s idea of gross behavior. Wait.” She blinked at him. Embarrassment drained color from her face. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Malcolm had to think before he grasped her meaning. “Sorry that you’ve mentioned sexual ethics to a whore?”
“That isn’t what I—”
They both heard it at the same time—a high-pitched buzzing, like a giant insect speeding toward them. Dinah froze until the engine slowed and stopped. Malcolm estimated it had shut off midway up the drive. She stared at him, her features set
“Stay here,” she said.