I yanked off my belt with fluid speed, and it snapped against the chair, close to her shoulder. Clutching the heavy buckle safely in my palm, I twined the aged brown leather once around my hand for a firm grip, pulling it taut. What’s she up to . . . ?
“So . . . ,” I said. “Are you my guardian angel?”
“Guardian, maybe. Angel? Don’t count on it. How’s Chela?”
“She’s great. Now tell me why you care.”
Her eyes swallowed me again. “Make me.”
My belt flew in a blur, snapping against Marsha’s bare thigh. Marsha didn’t flinch or blink; she had flawless control of her reflexes. Her smile was engraved on her face. “Is she still Chela to you? Or do you call her Lauren?” she said.
Even my father didn’t know Chela’s given name, which Chela had confided to me right before I went to Cape Town. Chela was only her street name.
The SNAP was louder, and Marsha recoiled from the belt’s sting. Wouldn’t leave a welt, but it had to burn. Marsha’s fixed smile broke, giving way to a fresh one—surprise and delight. She thrust her chest out, as if in reward. “I like you more all the time,” she said.
“How do you know so much about Chela?”
Marsha’s eyes narrowed with defiance. She shifted her position on the lounger, one hip down, the other thrust high, offering me more skin. Her eyes watched me, anticipating. My fingers twitched on the belt. Hurting women isn’t my thing, but nothing turns me on more than giving a woman exactly what she wants. SNAP. The belt bit into the meat of her back thigh. Lots of nerve endings. Marsha hissed, closing her eyes as she squirmed.
“How do you know Chela?” I said again, speaking slowly.
“I run a security company, Ten. Trust me, I know a lot of things.” My biography shined from her eyes. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Start with Chela.”
Marsha hesitated, not hiding her teasing smile. “My memory’s a little foggy . . .”
SNAP. The belt found her right buttock, jiggling a strip of firm flesh. Her ass was slick from oil, which brightened the pain.
Marsha’s face glowed, ecstatic. “I remember now . . . Lauren McLawhorn, from Minneapolis. Struck out on her own, getting into trouble. Until she met Tennyson Hardwick.”
I was so startled, I lowered the belt. “Go on.”
“You shared an . . . employer. And you were Chela’s black knight. Although I’m surprised you left your mutual friend free to do business. You could have sent that old bitch to rot in jail.”
My mouth went dry, and my erection was fading fast. I glanced around the rooftop, and for the first time I noticed a high-powered camera with a tripod at the far edge, pointed toward the beach. I almost hadn’t seen the camera behind the beach chair and umbrella shading it. Marsha might be a photography buff, or she might be in law enforcement; I was beginning to fear the latter. And she’d brought me right to her. The day’s colors were changing.
“What’s this about?” I said.
“My chest this time,” she said, puffing out again. Her breasts bobbed in the teddy.
“That’s gonna hurt.”
“It better.”
LASH. I gave her what she wanted. The belt must have grazed her nipple, because she whimpered and sat ramrod straight. “Shit, that’s good,” she gasped, wide eyed, as if she’d just snorted a line of fine Colombian.
“Keep talking.”
“I saw your name when you registered with SecureGuard, I remembered it from high school, and I got curious. I know people, and I did some checking. There was some guesswork, but you’d be surprised by how much information is out there—even when it’s supposedly expunged. About you. And Chela. And your mutual old lady friend. That’s the part I still haven’t figured out—did she give you a finder’s fee to keep you quiet?”
“I know everyone makes mistakes. Even old ladies.”
“Like sending fourteen-year-old girls to do things you wouldn’t want to see?”
There was more than a ring of judgment in her voice, and I took a step back. Marsha’s body suddenly looked like the dangerous weapon it was. “You want to arrest Mother, go ahead. I won’t shed any tears. You don’t need me for that.”
Marsha laughed. “Oh, please. You think I’m a cop? That’s cute.”
“What, then?”
Marsha pointed to the belt. “Try my ass again. That was nice, too.” She lay on her stomach to present her lovely brown buttocks, so shiny that they reflected the sunlight. Her ass was a ripe dark cherry, parted by the red teddy’s thong. Be careful what you wish for, I thought.
LASH. I was a tad careless with my strength, so I knew that last blow would leave a welt. Something to remember me by.
“Yes!” Marsha cried. “Damn, you’re good. Again?”
“Not until I hear more.”
Marsha pretended to pout. “I’m in security, plain and simple. It’s my job to know things, and you’re my new hobby. It’s nice to see an old friend doing good things.”
“We were never friends.”
She smiled. “We’re friends now, aren’t we?”
“Depends on what you want.”
“It’s not rocket science, Ten. I want to fuck.”
She splayed herself in the lounger with her ass posed high in the air, her eyes calling to me. Since I was no longer worried about arrest, blood rushed back into my groin so fast I thought it would explode. Dangerous sex used to be my favorite pastime; consequences always seem meek from a distance.
I gave her a last lash across her ass, more softly this time. Then I tossed the belt away. “What about Joe-Bob the Car Salesman downstairs?” I said.
Marsha laughed. “Forget about him. But remember his advice.”
“What advice?”
“Think about it,” she said, flipping over to massage my crotch with the heel of her foot. Her practiced pressure alone was enough to lock my toes. “It’ll come.”
“Oh, I remember now,” I said, unsnapping my jeans to be free of the binding. With my briefs and T-shirt off, if I walked a few yards closer to the edge of the roof, I would have been flashing the motorists.
I sat beside Marsha on the lounger and whispered into her tiny ear: “He told me to be sure to check out the selection . . . in the rear.” I slid my hand across her ass, where hidden muscles flexed beneath my touch. She smelled like the coconut oil she had doused herself in to give her skin its irresistible shine. My finger toyed with the strip of satin nestling her crevice.
“Two can play that game,” she said, plying her bound hands between my legs, slippery fingers sliding past my testicles. Feathers from her handcuffs tickled me. She found her spot, and suddenly a single sturdy index finger plunged past a ring of muscle. I gasped, my breath trapped in my lungs when my body tightened around her, so rigid I could imagine snapping her finger off.
Most guys would rather cut off their own finger than allow a sexual partner to explore with hers, but a woman’s touch is a woman’s touch. I had given up my squeamishness during my working days, when my lady clients taught me the secret of prostate stimulation. Marsha knew how to work her finger around. Her nail must have been cut short, because all I felt was pleasure.
Still sliding her finger inside me, Marsha cradled herself over me and slipped my shaft between her lips, welcoming me with an endless throat. I would choke most women who tried, but Marsha could have been a circus act. I closed my eyes, my mouth open wide. I thought the loud wail from a nearby seagull was mine.
The cascading sensations of pressure and moistness from front to back were devastating. Marsha worked her finger back and forth, up and down, side to side, and her tongue mimicked her finger’s motion as she stroked me with her mouth. My hands were claws against the lounger’s edge. I hadn’t felt anything like it since . . . since . . .
A white hole gaped in my mind, my memory. Pleasure was all.
When Marsha’s mouth and finger set me free, I tugged her teddy off so my skin could celebrate hers. She was hot f
rom the sun, slipping beneath me like an eel. Coconut oil is one of the best sexual lubricants there is. I swam across Marsha’s hot skin.
Marsha had a Brazilian wax, so her nakedness was striking and true. Her bare clitoris was large and dark, its base as bright as blood. Only a hint of coconut taste between her legs. While my tongue played, she swelled to greet me. Her clitoris felt like a separate creature, squirming with new life. While I bent over her to tease her with my tongue, her fingers tortured me with light strokes of replenished slick oil, coating me inch by inch. Lubricating me.
Marsha was a moaner, with no apparent concern about being overheard. When she had her first orgasm at the mercy of my tongue, she screamed. I knew what Marsha wanted—it’s a human tendency to give others what we ourselves crave. Marsha wanted what April couldn’t handle.
I rolled Marsha onto her stomach. Her hands were still bound, and she clung to the raised back of the lounger with her leather handcuffs. With a strong arm around her middle, I hoisted her beautiful ass high in the air.
Marsha hissed, squirming with anticipation. I pressed my rounded swelling against her tight, puckered skin, spreading the oil to smooth my passage. My fullness quivered against her, craving the tightest embrace her body had to offer.
I pushed and retreated, then pushed deeper, an inch at a time. My belt had been her first sweet torture; now, she had a new one. Marsha made a sound midway between animal and human as she sank down into the lounger from my weight. While I invaded her, prying her open, my fingertips rubbed and massaged her slick areolae and nipples. Marsha screamed again.
“My . . . neck . . . ,” she whispered. Begging.
Say no more. I wrapped a tight hand around her throat, pressing in rhythmic, deep strokes above her. Breath control heightens sexual response, creating a kind of tunnel vision, a world of pure sensation. I concentrated my grip on the sides of her neck, pressing only slightly against her windpipe with my palm. With breath control, it’s not about pain—it’s about pressure. I would never choke out a woman, or completely stanch her breath. I gave her exactly what she wanted, no more, no less. Don’t try this at home. Hey, I’m a trained professional.
Marsha whimpered and yelped, her voice thinned by my grip. The tighter my hand squeezed her neck, the more her body opened itself up to me. Finally, my pelvis reached the satin mounds of her buttocks, and I was as far inside her as our bodies would allow. My breath was shallow, too—Marsha’s tightness pulled and snatched at me, a dizzying massage.
I thrust, and the lounger squeaked against the wooden deck. After each partial retreat, I pushed myself a little deeper. Marsha surrendered more with each squeak of the lounger, raising herself against me with whimpers and moans.
Only the rare woman can tolerate anal sex with me.
Years ago, a philatelist client had shown me her proudest possession, an 1856 “Black on Magenta” from British Guiana, one of the world’s most valuable, and rarest, stamps.
At that moment Marsha was rarer, and more precious still.
TEN
SUNDAY
“New girlfriend?” Chela said, blocking me in the upstairs hallway.
She was just getting up at twelve thirty when she met me on my way to Nandi Maitlin-Dimitrakos’s birthday party. The party didn’t start until two, but I’d been asked to arrive an hour early. I would have preferred another hour’s prep time at the house, but Roman had insisted that he didn’t need me sooner. Maybe his hospitality was wearing thin.
The rest of that week, my major pastime had been sex with Marsha. We both had matching appetites and empty calendars. I’d been home for dinner with Dad and Chela every night, but Marsha usually paged me by ten. Since the Chateau Marmont was only a fifteen-minute drive, I didn’t mind the late-night booty calls. She always got straight to the point, and each night was a new adventure. Visiting her made me as horny as a teenager.
“Uh . . . not a girlfriend,” I said. “Just a friend. Why do you ask?”
Chela smirked. “Check your neck. Is your friend a vampire, or just a freak?”
Shit. I ducked to peek in the bathroom mirror, and found a huge purple hickey on the right side of my neck, too high for a summer shirt to hide. I remembered Marsha gnawing on my neck the night before, but I had no idea she’d left a mark. Now I looked like a teenager, too.
“Damn!” I said.
Chela laughed. “Real smooth, Ten.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.” I didn’t have makeup on hand, so I was stuck with it.
“This is your last chance to invite me to your dumb kiddie party,” Chela said, trying reverse psychology. Chela had been begging me to take her to Sofia Maitlin’s party for days.
“Sorry, but this is work. No distractions, Chela. I’ll try to take pictures.”
“Right. It’s way better if I’m not there when the helicopter commandos swoop down to kidnap her baby.”
That’s exactly what she said.
“Next time. I think we’re becoming friends. I told her about what we talked about a few days ago.” The same day I’d heard from Melanie Wilde, I told Chela about my adoption hopes. She seemed surprised and pleased, until I said we needed her mother’s consent. Well, screw that, then, she’d said. She had been somber the rest of that night, and we hadn’t mentioned it since.
“You told Sofia Maitlin you want to adopt me?”
“Hope that’s okay. I just—”
I saw Chela’s girlish smile in her reflection in the bathroom mirror. “No, that’s cool,” she said. “I just didn’t know you . . .”
“What?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t know you were that serious about it.”
Maybe the plan wasn’t dead! I turned to meet Chela’s eyes, which were uncharacteristically soft and open. “Yeah, girl, I’m serious. You think I would play with something like that?”
Suddenly, Chela darted out of the bathroom doorway. Had I said the wrong thing?
“Chela?” I called after her as she disappeared into her bedroom. I found her squatting on the floor beside her bed, and she opened her bottom nightstand drawer. She pulled out a dirty white manila envelope, stained with everything except tire tracks, bound by a frayed string.
She handed me the envelope. “I promised myself a long time ago I wasn’t gonna spend another second of my life looking for that lame bitch, but go for it. That’s all I’ve got.”
It was already ten minutes later than I’d planned to leave, but I peeked inside. The envelope was stuffed with loose scraps of paper—scribbled telephone numbers, a photocopy of a birth certificate for a woman named Patrice Sheryl McLawhorn, and a single four-by-six photograph. In the photo, a grinning blond-haired white woman with Chela’s nose cradled a lovely brown-skinned toddler whose forehead was hidden by an unkempt mop of curly hair. As I’d suspected, the resemblance between Chela and Nandi at that age was uncanny.
Chela had never told me that she had a picture of her mother. The woman was acne scarred but pretty. The photo had been taken at a kitchen table in what I guessed was Chela’s grandmother’s house, a rare moment of joy in a home filled with chaos. The camera’s flash made a starburst against the microwave, and I could see the reflection of a portly woman, Chela’s grandmother. When Chela was ten or eleven, after her mother had been gone for more than two years, Chela’s grandmother had died after a long illness.
Chela lived in the house with her corpse for days.
She’d had no one to call and nowhere to go.
“She never went by Patrice. She hated that name,” Chela said. “I called her Sherry, from her middle name, like her friends. My grandma called her Bunny. Don’t ask me why. Pretty dumb nickname for a grown woman, if you ask me. I kept every phone number I ever got for her in there. She was so heavy into the meth, I figure she’s dead by now.” No emotion in Chela’s voice. “You wanna look? Fine, whatever. Just don’t expect me to talk to her. We’ve got nothing to talk about.”
Carefully, I closed the envelope, as if it might break in
two. “Are you sure?” I said. “Like you said . . . she might be dead. Or . . . she may not want to cooperate with us. She hasn’t been here for you, but she still may try to fight.”
Chela’s eyes sparked fire. “Then let’s hope she’s dead. And if she tries to cause a problem . . .” Chela shrugged. “Hey, you could always kill her.”
“I don’t kill people. And you wouldn’t want me to.”
“I wouldn’t?”
“But if you’re ready, I’ll start looking for her,” I said.
Chela nodded. “I’m ready . . . Dad.” And she grinned.
No word had ever sounded better to my ears. I would have hugged Chela, but hugs weren’t a part of our repertoire. Dad. As mighty and mysterious as my father had been to me when I was a kid, the word Dad was profound to me. During the drive to Maitlin’s house, I thought about nothing except finding Chela’s mother, dead or alive.
I thought I was having a good day.
The only helicopter at Nandi’s birthday party had been rented by paparazzi, a mutant mosquito buzzing overhead to try to get photos despite the cover of treetops, huge balloon bouquets, and large white tents. A long white canopy protected the identities of celebrity guests as their drivers deposited them on the same shaded path I’d walked on my first visit.
Think of a celebrity couple in L.A. with young children, and they were there: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith. Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart. Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner. Even celebrities without kids came to Nandi’s birthday bash. The party was the summer’s hottest ticket, the lead story on the entertainment tabloid shows and the celebrity coverage on CNN Headline News—but not for the reasons it should have been.
None of the guests learned the true story that day.
Red flags were waving in my mind as soon as I arrived. I was surprised by the army of support staff on the grounds: valets, caterers, animal handlers, jugglers, and clowns. I counted at least thirty; I hoped that Roman and his team had done their homework to give them security clearances. A lone nutball can ruin a party.
From Cape Town with Love Page 11