by Mark Henry
Wade sliced directly atop the incision, reopening the area in three swift strokes and then spread the bloody area open with the flats of his palms, moving membrane and muscle to zero in on Demeter’s liver.
Luce peaked in and instantly wished she hadn’t. The organ looked red hot and throbbing, it twisted away from Wade’s hand as though it sensed his presence and, of course, it did. It did more than merely sense him; it was watching him. The demon’s eyes were wide beneath the man’s lids and as Wade dug the scalpel deeper, the barking stopped completely and the man’s voice returned.
“What’s happening?” he cried, the fear enveloping the small bathroom in a single instant. “Is it gone? Is the demon gone?”
“Maybe?” Luce said and the man glanced up at her, hopeful and pained. “It hurts so much, won’t you stop him?”
Luce nodded. “Wade?”
“Don’t listen to it!”
Wade made a final incision and then pulled the organ from the gap in the man’s abdomen, tossing it into the open toilet where it squirmed. Not wanting to look at it, Luce reached over and slammed the seat shut. When she looked back at Demeter the man was shaking violently, his white skin tinted blue. Wade was busy with both hands inside. “Tying him off,” he said.
Luce heard the sound of sirens in the distance, but before she could alert Wade, he was off the floor and unfurling a Ziploc bag. “Open the toilet, quick!”
She did and recoiled as the organ surfaced and began to crawl toward the lid, a gory streak in its wake. Wade snatched it, shoved it into the bag, zipped it, and slammed it against the wall in one rapid movement. The organ stilled and they were racing down the stairs. Luce carried the carpetbag, Wade the Ziploc.
The Porsche pulled out of the driveway, only seconds before the ambulance came barreling down the windy road.
“That was…” Luce searched for a word as they sped toward the blaze of lights from downtown Portland.
“Pretty amazing, right?”
She clapped her hands to the side of her reeling head. “Absolutely! I’ve never experienced anything so tense in my life! What a rush! I mean, you hear people use that phrase but you never really understand what it means until you’re thrust into the middle of an actual crisis. A damn life-or-death situation. I-I’m. I’m speechless, I guess.”
“For once, in your life?”
Luce’s mouth hung open, jaw quivering as though she were still speaking. But there was a smile there, too.
“Hold on a second,” Wade said, pulling the car off onto the isolated shoulder.
He got out of the car and came around to her door, pulling Luce to her feet. “I think maybe this might help.”
He wrapped his arms around her, lifting her into a great joyous bear hug and Luce couldn’t imagine what else to do but laugh and hug him back and seek out the tenderness of his kiss once more.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. She could think of other things to do. Several. But come on. There’s a time and place for everything and that place isn’t usually in the storm drain beside a road.
She savored the pressure of his lips this time, filing the action as celebratory rather than something else. A kiss that meant something. But deep inside Luce a fluttering had begun, a need that was growing stronger every minute.
Luce pushed Wade away and nodded with a smile. “Yeah,” she said, grinning. “That was really…”
Wade chuckled uncomfortably, but then seemed to recover, nodding. “It was your first, so…”
“Exactly.”
Chapter Eleven
Wade snared a fresh pair of boxers from his bag and ducked into the bathroom. A moment later, Luce heard the shower running.
Her idea for their surveillance of the Tiger Lounge was sound and to prove it, she needed to run next door to the twenty-four-hour drug store to procure some fashionable attire for Wade’s audition.
Upon her return, Luce shut the door behind her as quietly as she could. The door to the shower was cracked and she could see him inside, though what he was doing she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Approaching slowly, she began to make out his bizarre stance through the beading water on the clear shower curtain. Wade was crouching.
Squatting in the center of the tub.
Luce covered her mouth and backed away, screaming, “There’s a toilet for that, you freak!”
Wade jerked upright and threw back the curtain to glare at her. It was then that she saw both him in all his glory—and it was a substantial glory—and that the shower head was set so low into the wall that the flow hit him square in the abs.
Wade glowered. “Did you really think I was taking a crap in here?”
“I didn’t know what to think.”
And she still didn’t.
Watching him had completely discombobulated Luce. His bare chest, rippling beneath the layers of cross tattoos, his abs tight and so lightly furred they seemed to be a mirage and then, down below, swinging gently from a trimmed patch of dark hair, long and thick, his prick, the shower water sluicing off the end obscenely. She had to squint the image away like dust from her eye just to gather her thoughts. “Uh…okay. Let’s just pretend I didn’t think that. That’d be better right?”
Luce needed to change up this dynamic. Reframe it, her doctor would have said—if she had one, which she didn’t. Not anymore. So shut up about it.
“Dance monkey, dance!” she yelled, tossing the bag of adult incontinence briefs onto the floor between them.
Wade raised an eyebrow, which in this instance, apparently, did not signal the beginning of a strip-tease jig or gyration or whatever they called those moves.
“I’m not dancing in those. Ever.”
Luce shrugged, she had never been to a strip club, so her idea of male stripping was only informed by Mister Rogers removing his shoes at the beginning of each episode and changing into something…more comfortable.
“Well you’re already naked, and, gloriously so, I might add, I can’t keep my eyes off you, if that does your ego any good. Also, oh my God, get a towel before I molest you.”
Wade shook his head and wrapped his waist in the threadbare motel towel, his penis making a sizeable bulge in the thin fabric.
“And you said that was a Raid can,” she said, pointedly.
Wade cocked his head. “Only partially.”
Luce sat back on the bed. She couldn’t take her eyes off Wade. He scruffed his hair beneath a hand towel, his chest rippled with each motion, each stroke of his hands. His stomach tensed, abs pulsing. Her eyes followed the trail of hairs downward. Her hand rose to her chest, already flush with excitement.
But for what exactly?
Was he merely teasing her again?
He had said that they couldn’t and then did stuff that was very reminiscent of dating. That they had to be professionals one minute, kissing the next.
He was a conundrum. A hot one.
The answer came with his entrance into the room. He tossed the drying towel behind him onto the bathroom floor and approached her, a look on his face beyond humor, beyond the gentle ribbing to which they’d grown accustomed.
Need. Desire.
His towel sagged, revealing a thickening, hardening want.
Luce realized in that moment that she might not be prepared for this. A fear welled up in her. Had she been with a man like Wade before? She scrambled her memory for a recollection and her list came up with three—not like him, but in total—and none as clearly manly, so wanton with lust as he, eyes burning with a fire that demanded to be stoked. She clutched her fist to her chest and focused on breathing.
Don’t panic, she told herself, don’t close yourself off, and for Christ’s sake, don’t think about Hitch. The last thing Luce needed was for Hitch to pop back into the picture. For him to reappear in the corner of the room with that horrified, judgmental scowl. To play out some sick running commentary as Wade ravaged her.
Would he?
Ravage her?
She hoped so.<
br />
She needed this. And she needed Wade.
Luce needed the experience of a man like him, so forceful, possibly brutally so. What she had no question about was his desire for her. There would be no faking with him; he’d have none of it.
Or at least she didn’t think so.
Hell, she didn’t know what she was even considering here. Didn’t have a thing to compare it to.
Wade crossed the room and she stood, instinctively. It would have been rude somehow not to—and she could have gone on and on processing that moment, dwelling on the nuances of whether or not she should have stood or sat, but she wasn’t that girl. Not then. Not in that moment.
Luce found herself different, rising to the challenge that Wade put to her, matching his desire. She reached for him, running her palm up his chest, feeling the hardness of him, relishing the spasms of reaction as she ran her fingers over his nipples. He reached around her and pulled her tight, trapping his hardness between them. Luce looked into his face with wonder at the singularity of need expressed there with the subtlest nuance, the pained expression in his eyes, the intensity of his stare, the way his incisors clung to the pout of his lip. She wanted nothing more than to give herself over to him. To let him fuck her, take her in any way he would. Any way a man could have a woman.
Wade took the lead, pressing his lips to hers quickly, deeply, and then trailing those kisses down her throat, to the hollow there—a clear favorite of his. He paused to draw his tongue tenderly lower before roughly drawing her shirt over her head and undoing her bra with the skillful dexterity of a sculptor. Her small breasts appeared smaller in his hands but he looked upon them with wonder, with hunger.
“Beautiful,” he murmured before taking each nipple into his mouth lightly, teasing Luce’s already hard buds into lightning rods, lynchpins of passion that swelled into a panic inside her.
Luce gasped for air as Wade’s tongue flicked and stroked, his lips puckering around her, coaxing coos. It was as though he were puppeteering her and the string stretched straight from her sex into their brains, into passion itself.
Luce grappled with her belt, pushing down the waist of her pants, before Wade was there to help, nodding, agreeing. This was the only way. This was right.
“I want you inside me. If I could I’d shove all of you inside me…” Luce didn’t even know what the fuck she was saying.
Wade yanked at the yoke of her fly and slipped the pants off her so quick and then his face was there between her legs and she was watching and hoping and then squealing as he pressed close, lapping across her cotton panties with that wide tongue of his, flicking at her quivering folds. Luce threw her leg up over his shoulder as Wade ground his mouth around her, enveloping her cunt, kneading it and then pulling away.
“No!” she cried. But his face was maniacal, mad with lust for her and he slipped his fingers into the waistband of her panties and ripped them clean off and then plunged to take her again. His tongue was expert, pointed with desire and as he licked and flicked her tight bud she shuddered with pleasure and forethought and wonder.
She wanted him more than anything, more than sanity, more than normalcy.
“Fuck me!” she cried and suddenly, as though he hadn’t moved at all, as though he had merely washed over her in a wave.
Wade’s chest slipped across her stomach, his nipples tracing threads of pleasure up her breasts. His tongue cut a swath of heat up, and by the time his mouth found hers, she could feel his hard manhood weighty against her thighs, his hand reaching down between them and clutching himself.
Luce cried out as Wade outlined her sex with the head of his cock, sluicing it in the wet cleft of her wanton need and then he was at her opening and she was clutching him, clawing at him to take her, to plunge himself deep within her.
She thought she knew what she was asking, but when he filled her, it was with a force so passionate, so strong, that she wasn’t sure she could take it. Take the full breadth of his desire.
“Oh slow!” she cried.
Wade responded, slaking off until she could accept him fully, giving himself to her in slow, shallow strokes, coaxing her pussy open, wider, wider. Luce clutched at the sheet, pulling it free of the mattress and crying out for, “More! More!”
Until he was making love to her, deep, slow, long, shallow, every way it could be. Wade took her to the brink and then relaxed back into kissing, kneading her breasts tenderly, teasing her nipples, steepling them until she was chewing out her lips, trading off between crawling away from him and clutching him to her.
Luce wasn’t certain when Wade had begun to build up a rhythm, his thick tool filling her completely, his pelvis tight against hers, but she noticed his face had changed, his expression one of such pleasure he appeared to be aching, sore, tortured.
And that was enough, Luce’s desire for him washed over her, rushing in with such intensity, that she found herself bucking toward him, wanting him deeper inside her, deeper than possible.
She tugged at him, struggled to find his ear, and hissed, “Turn over.”
Wade gripped her around the waist and rolled onto his back, Luce straddling him, riding him. He cried out as she fell on his cock, tensing around him, coaxing pleasure from each thrust, teasing the length of him.
He groaned and moaned and gasped for air and Luce found herself matching him, stroke for stroke, rising off him and falling with such enthusiasm that they were both laughing hysterically, grappling for each other.
Until, it couldn’t be sustained, the moment beyond subsiding. Luce felt herself tightening around him. Wade’s cries becoming too wanton, out of control, the depth of his tone wavering.
“Oh God!” he cried, pounding the mattress with his fists, his teeth clenched. “Luce! Oh my God, Luce!”
She couldn’t restrain her own pleasure, the waves of it spilling through her, quaking out of the split between her legs. She tensed around him, taking him deep, and then she screamed.
The orgasm pulsed through her, lightly first, slow, subtle waves of pleasure. She rolled with it, calmed, dizzy in it. But as Wade began to thrust feverishly, he massaged that spot so deep within her that she lost control. Her breath caught in her chest and the room exploded. Lights stretched into flares, her moans reverberated, echoing, and she collapsed atop him, still quivering, the pleasure draining from her so slowly she thought she might feel this forever. Or for a long enough while that they’d be dressed, talking and she’d still feel the thrust of him within her, the repercussions of their lovemaking.
The aftershocks of passion.
At some point, Luce because aware of Wade and understood from the slack of his jaw, the weight of his eyelids and the flush of his chest that he had come. But hadn’t been aware of it during their sex.
“That was insane.” She fell on her back beside him. “I could live on top of you.”
“Not very practical, but I’d buy into that.”
Luce laughed, her hand drifting to Wade’s chest, the back of her wrist caressing his still-thick nipples. His shoulders shuddered.
“Tickles,” he said, but didn’t pull away. “Give me a few and I’ll be ready to go again.”
Luce’s mind stuttered at that possibility. Her mouth had fallen open and before she could shut it, she felt Wade’s lips press down on hers as she felt it again.
The fluttering.
Stronger now. Insistent. Undeniable.
She wasn’t certain—how could she be?—but Luce had a niggling feeling that love was stirring within her. She’d try to convince herself it was just lust when Wade wasn’t sliding across her skin like raw silk.
But that’d be a lie.
Chapter Twelve
Light streamed through the moth-eaten motel curtain like it had been shot through with a spray of bullets. Dust swirled in the glowing columns.
Wade had certainly woken up in worse places, but this was pretty bad and particularly after the night he’d just shared with Luce, he wanted more than anything to
improve her conditions, to show her a luxury she wasn’t used to. Hot water in a bathtub would be a start.
Luce chortled in her sleep. Wade loved that she seemed to have fun even while she was sleeping—not as much fun as the previous night, mind you but fun. Her lips curled into the prettiest smile. He wanted to kiss her awake, to make love to her again, but he had plans.
Slipping from beneath the sheet, he snatched up his cell phone and crept into the bathroom shutting the door with the quietest click he could manage. He dialed the number for The Parts Department and waited for someone to pick up.
“Jesus,” the groggy voice on the other end answered. “Did you kill a hooker?”
Wade sighed with relief, Sister Mary-Agnes would have been a bear at this time, but he could talk to Quince at any time and get the kind of help he needed. Not that she wouldn’t grumble, she’d grumble even in a field of flowers surrounded by rainbows, riding a unicorn.
“I need your help,” Wade said, whispering. “I forgot my wallet and we’ve been forced to stay in the ninth circle of hell.”
There was a notable tongue click on the line and a brief pause before Quince asked, “Why are you whispering?”
“Um.” Wade glanced down at himself, naked and clearly spent, even a little shriveled from the abuse they’d perpetrated last night. Finally, deciding he couldn’t lie to the woman without generating global-crisis levels of suspicion, he answered truthfully, “Luce is sleeping.”
“I knew it!” Quince shouted, so loud that the sound of it echoed in the small bathroom, pinging around on the cracked tile, the moldy grout doing a crappy job of muffling.
“Shh!” Wade scolded. “Seriously, I need you to get us booked into the Portland Grand and wire some money. Can you make that happen?”
“A four-year-old could make that happen.”
“Well then you’ll be able to get it done ten times as fast.”
There was silence on the line and then a throat clearing, “Are you implying I’m forty years old?”
Wade choked, “No. God no. Jesus, I’m so discombobulated on this trip, I don’t know whether I’m going or com—” He stopped short of the word, suddenly concerned that he’d give up the ghost.