Going Dark(79)

She groaned deep in her chest like an animal feasting, her hands gripping his hands, clenching them harder against the small, perfectly rounded flesh, nipples jutting between his fingers; she rocked her head back, ready to howl. A long time coming. Beginning in his own prehistory, and hers, a bond he’d never admitted, one more deeply rooted than he imagined. The two entangled now in something complicated and serious.

This one time together would be all. This one time.

She shuddered and peeled away his hands and bent forward and kissed him, pressed her lips so hard, so insistently, he could not return the kiss. She tore open his shorts. He arched up, lifted his butt from the bed, and let her drag the shorts away. And she dismounted, whisked her own pants off, slung them toward the door.

From the bedside she bent over him and took him into her mouth, drawing him in, all of him. Back and back against the tight fit of her throat, down the length, then holding him still, she swiveled, brought her narrow butt to him. Thorn on his back, Leslie lowering herself onto his mouth, the soft patch of hair, its tart, intricate folds, spreading open, opposite poles joined, mouths devouring, Thorn learning his way among the petals while she worked her tongue over him, sampled each ball, drawing them in, holding them, letting go, then swallowing him again, all of it, so deep, so sure, Thorn found himself close to the edge, too close, teetering, and began to withdraw from her mouth inch by inch until he was free.

She rose and came back around, straddling his chest, bent forward, brought her mouth to his, a sticky kiss. Long and fragrant.

Caught in the undertow, the flood of pent-up nights alone, an unspoken ache of voluntary isolation. Starving himself. Believing himself unfit for anyone. Now this, breaking his fast with Leslie, a woman risen from the dead, a plotter. Damn him. Damn his body, his predictable hungers, the froth that replaced his reason, the heady, downward, unblinking plunge. Bingeing on Leslie.

A kid who’d fallen in love with an older man and managed to jigsaw the pieces into place so that years and years later on, Thorn was inside her, inside the slick, tight groove of her. Slippery skin in the overheated room, his and hers, oily hands, oily flesh, no place to hold, no purchase. Like the snake on the floor, the python writhing restlessly beneath the bed, its greasy, powerful body.

He couldn’t hold on. She was underneath him, then she was atop, riding him, up there, high against the ceiling, all of it finally, finally, finally overtaking her. Leslie shook her head from side to side, no, no, no, as if trying to cling to a few last precious seconds, shaking her head as if to sling away a drop of sweat tracking across her face. Mouth wincing, an ecstatic grimace. A song rose inside her chest, all vowels, chords so low and deep their echoes might vibrate in the walls of this room for years.

Thorn matched hers with his own grunts and heaves. All hesitancy gone. The coiled spring that was tightening for months, tightening until finally it was sprung, released in one long, unclenching surge. Fission and fusion. And everything went out of him as she collapsed against his chest, their naked bodies slicked with sweat, smearing themselves against each other, shadowing the sheets, sweat burning his eyes. Both of them winded, amazed, chuckling in the giddy, thudding after-thrall, while beyond the window a noon sun rang like a relentless chime above the trees.

Then a car’s horn.

Sugarman’s twin toots. The long crunch of tires on gravel.

Thorn slid away from her, was off the bed and out the bedroom door, jogging across the living room, through the kitchen, out the French doors, naked, still erect, panting, waving both hands at Sugarman to go away, leave, back up, get the hell gone from this place. Go, go, go.

“What is it?” Out of the car, standing, staring at his naked friend.

“Damn it, Sugar, go, now. Now, goddamn it. Get in your car and go.”

“Aw, shit. What’d you do, Thorn? What the hell did you do now?”

Thorn’s prick was wilting. Heart still at redline.

Sugarman’s gaze shifted left, to the slow tread of footsteps on the rock. Her bare feet padding across the sharp, pulverized stone. Thorn turned and watched her come. In her hand the .38. She was naked. Body glistening.

“Hello, Sugar.”

“Leslie?” His eyes slanted away from her exposed body. Shy Sugar. Polite Sugar. “You’re alive. Thank God.”

Thorn said, “A gun, Leslie? A goddamn gun?”

“Come inside. Both of you. We’ll talk. We’ll figure this out.”

Before they could take a step toward the house, Thorn’s VW rolled into the drive, Cameron crammed behind the wheel, Pauly riding shotgun, with Flynn and Wally in the back. Grocery bags in their laps.