The Hinky Velvet Chair

by Jennifer Stevenson

  “I have a stake in your behavior.”

  “You have a stake in my paycheck. You have a stake in my willingness to rescue you from random beds. But you bought and paid for the grief you got today.”

  “You, also, have earned your sufferings — if sufferings they were,” Randy said snottily.

  “I was getting to that.” Jewel lost her cool. “Anytime you get in a snit, you take it out on me by zapping into some public reclinery and forcing me to make a spectacle of myself.” She threw her shoes clattering into a corner. “After all that noble talk, ‘Simply forget where I have gone,’ you fix it so I have to let you out of your self-imposed prison! I was a mummy!”

  He waved his arms. “I didn’t know that would happen!”

  She jabbed his bare chest with a forefinger. “Self-imposed. How many times have you had a hissy and got zapped? Let’s see.”

  He looked so dangerous that she took the finger off his chest and held it up to count.

  “You zapped into a bed in the home furnishings department of Marshall Field’s. You didn’t want me to arrest Clay and, when I insisted, zappo, straight into my bed. That was convenient, guess I ought to thank you for that.” She gulped air. “Then you zapped into a sofa in Clay’s hotel suite while I was having sex with him on it. Then that stinky old wrecked car in the dump that same night! And let’s not forget the soot all over my bedroom. You knew damned well you’d end up in that massage table today.”

  Randy literally danced with rage. “I am not a magician! I don’t know why it happens!” he roared.

  “Well I think mine is a pretty good guess!” she yelled back.

  They stood nose-to-nose. He panted and looked purple and she double-dare glared. His hands were fists, but they were at his sides.

  Inside, Jewel was icy calm. So this is how he loses his temper. Good to know.

  As she looked into his stormy black eyes she had a mental image of Randy’s portrait in Burke’s Peerage: handsome, bored, all dressed up in old-timey lord clothes, looking down on a curtseying woman — who looked like herself.

  She frowned. What the hell does that mean?

  His color faded to a dull red. “Do not enrage me.”

  “This is not about emotion,” she said. “It’s about a living arrangement that’s fucking intolerable for both of us. You want to own me, I want total freedom.” She paused, because this was the part she hated. “I acknowledge that you have reason to feel some — some separation anxiety if you don’t always know where I am. That’s backwards, but it’s understandable.”

  “What does ‘backwards’ signify?”

  “If I’m supposed to keep you safe from any residual whammy that might be, like, left over from that curse, then you should be the one wearing a anklet, not me.” To his frown she said, “Tracer anklet. It’s a LoJack for people.”

  “LoJack?”

  “Oh, forget it. Although that’s not a bad idea,” she added, thinking of his habit of going AWOL in public places. Be a lot easier to pinpoint his location if and when he did disappear. “The point is — I forget what the point is.”

  “The point,” he said in a low voice, “is that you want your freedom. Whereas I want my dignity. I am not accustomed—” He stopped and pressed his lips shut.

  She said as gently as she could, “You’re a sex slave prone, but a lord perpendicular. I know.”

  “I’m not accustomed to women complaining about my services. Not in this century.”

  And back they were again at the part she couldn’t talk about. “That was girl talk.”

  He glowered. “But presumably true.”

  His feelings must be hurt bad. She guessed that if you’ve lost everything to become good in bed, complaints stung.

  “Look, I don’t know you well enough to talk about — about that. Anyway, I’m not your target market. I’m not married to a lousy lay. I’m not lonely.”

  The little red blinking “liar” light went off in her head.

  She ignored it. “I don’t have trouble finding sex partners who satisfy me.”

  The damned “liar” light was still blinking. Never mind. He can’t see it — from here.

  “What I’m saying is, I’m not like the women you met in that bed. This is a different millennium. We have different problems. If I was some little old lady with a bad back, you would know how to deal with me, am I right?”

  He stepped so close that his bare chest brushed her bra. “And were I some brainless twiddlepoop with pantaloons at perpetual cock-crow, you might use me and be rid of me.”

  She said breathlessly, “You’re always horny.”

  “So are you.” He looked big and dark and scrumptious and dammit. He’d done it to her again.

  Another long night of magical sex stared her in the face.

  She felt her insides melt. She relaxed. She smiled.

  He bowed. “If I’m to learn self-control, there’s no time like the present. Will you take the chaise, or shall I?”

  He stepped away, leaving the front of her body to cool, and pulled blankets and pillows out of a closet.

  Jewel gaped at him in astonishment. “What are you doing?”

  “I will spend the night on the chaise. You sleep there.” He pointed at the bed. “I shall not touch you in any way.” With his gorgeous bare back to her, he made up the lame-ass wicker chaise with pillows and blankets, stripped his pants off, and wedged himself between the creaking arms of the chaise. “You may put out the light,” he said with his back to her.

  She realized she was taking little panting breaths. Her fingertips tingled. Way down in secret, her happyloola twitched.

  She found her voice. “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

  She felt lightheaded and unbalanced. She sat down on the bed. “Unless you just want a quickie.” What am I saying? She should be grateful he was cooperating.

  He was silent. Punishing her.

  She realized she was giving him the satisfaction he was after. So to speak.

  She turned the light out, finished undressing, and slid between the sheets, which then heated up to scorching.

  She lay as still as possible.

  I could jerk off. That would drive him crazy.

  But she was afraid to touch herself. She might moan or something. He would take that as a victory.

  She was screwed.

  But only metaphorically.

  If I’ve got such a fabulous doggone sex life, how come I’m going to bed alone for the second night in a row?

  Chapter Fifteen

  She couldn’t sleep.

  How ironic. Randy hadn’t given her a full night’s rest for two and a half weeks, and now she lay in bed, alone, staring at the ceiling, wide awake and horny.

  Randy lay six feet away on the chaise, apparently dead to the world. The wicker creaked in time with his breathing.

  Maybe she should, like, take up meditating.

  The bed got too hot. At first she tried not to move, but sooner or later she ended up wriggling, and that made her think of wriggling on top of Randy, or under Randy, or stop.

  She thought about the Thompson case instead. Sovay planned to sting Virgil, but how? Did she want to marry him, or would she settle for selling the Venus Machine to him for big bucks? Maybe she’d stolen it. Jewel had no sympathy for anyone who bought the Venus Machine. Did Virgil think it was stolen? What did he want from Sovay — besides the obvious? She wondered if Kauz had brought any contraband potions into the house. She wondered if Randy felt different about her since her double-dose of the Venus Machine. She wondered if he was horny right now.

  Stop, just stop!

  She wondered if Clay noticed anything different about her since her second dose. She could go to his room and ask.

  And get rejected a second time tonight? No, thanks.

  Besides, as fed up as she was with Randy, she felt that sneaking into Clay’s bed would be pretty low.

  The woman she used to be stood up and yelled in her head, That’s not fair! You don�
�t owe him fidelity! This is not a ‘relationship,’ this is—

  She couldn’t think what it was.

  She only let Randy hang around because they never knew when the curse might kick in, and he would need his hundredth woman to fuck him free of some bed.

  She let Randy hang around so she could get laid every single blessed night without fail, laid in a way no woman had ever got laid in the history of wild and wacko sex.

  She let Randy hang around because he belonged to her, she owned him, he admitted it, and she loved it, and she hated that about herself.

  But she didn’t want him hanging around too close. Because clingy guys gave her hives.

  It was too damned complicated, was what it was.

  The wicker chaise creaked. A bolt of lightning shot through her lippetydip and Jewel made a disgusted noise and sat up.

  In the dimness over there, Randy wasn’t moving.

  Maybe there was a bottle of that Scotch in the card room.

  Oh, no. No more Scotch. But getting up would be good.

  She breathed through pinched nostrils for a minute. Then she got into PJs, picked up her phone, and went out.

  I’ll wake Ed up and report. Share the misery.

  o0o

  “So, yow!” Ed said, and a lion’s yawn came from the cell phone. “You got nothin’ on the spa guy and nothin’ on this golddigger with a magic machine.”

  “But a very fertile, creative nothing, with lots of potential. Plus I’d like some background checks.”

  “All right, all right, gimme a second, I gotta get a pen. Where the fuck does Nina keep pens around here?”

  “Don’t wake her up!”

  “Got one. Okay, shoot.”

  “Butler. Name of Mellish. Age thirty, about six-two, big shoulders, thick neck, lantern jaw, I think brown eyes but who can tell behind the squint. He’s from Household Temps. There’s also a cook, at least one maid, and a chauffeur.”

  “Got it. What else?”

  She bit her lip. She hated to do this. “Have we got a LoJack I can plant on somebody so I can follow them around?”

  “Not without a warrant.”

  “It’s for Buzz,” she lied.

  “Oh, okay.” Ed’s oft-publicized feeling was that Buzz had caused him so much grief, he would look the other way if somebody tied a rock around the kid’s neck and tossed him in the river. “You want a tracer anklet.”

  “Make it two. I want one, uh, for his backpack and one for him.” Hm, she wondered if the backpack ever stayed at the spa while Buzz scurried away. She doubted it. “How do I track him?”

  “How the hell do I know?” Ed grumbled. “We don’t do parolees in the DCS.”

  “I need those files yesterday.”

  “That all, Miss High And Mighty, or can I go back to sleep?”

  “That’s all. Nightsy-byesy-boodly-kins.”

  “Fuck you,” her boss said, and rang off.

  The air conditioning was icy in the upstairs hallway of Virgil’s mansion. Jewel’s bare feet chilled on the marble. The collection room was one floor up. She wondered what she could learn about the Venus Machine without mad scientists in the way.

  But as she started up the big staircase, she heard a rustle.

  Looking up, she saw Sovay descending the stairs, gripping the bannister with both hands, looking pale and slender and rich in an old gold satin negligee set and matching marabou mules.

  Jewel drew back too late.

  Sovay spotted her. Half a word escaped her throat, and then she clapped her hand over her mouth and glared. On a scale of one to ten it was the juiciest glare she’d ever aimed at Jewel, who found it puzzling. What’ve I done now?

  Behind her hand, the bitch heaved — a childish, you-make-me-wanna-hurl gesture.

  Jewel stared. I know she hates me, but jeez.

  Somewhere in the echoey stairwell, a faint creaking started.

  She admitted now that Randy had a point. If he slept with the snake, he might learn something useful.

  Sovay passed Jewel as if she didn’t exist.

  Jewel decided not to inspect the Venus Machine. Today had been too exciting.

  Besides, Randy might have changed his mind.

  o0o

  He hadn’t.

  o0o

  “We need to talk,” Jewel muttered to Clay at breakfast.

  “Don’t be friendly with me,” Clay muttered back. “It’s not in your cover.”

  “Screw my cover,” she hissed. She had tough questions for him. Plus she would need his help getting the tracer anklet onto Randy. “You have some explaining to do.”

  “Meet me out back in the alley,” Clay muttered. “One hour.”

  “Meet me in my room,” she countered. “Now.”

  Randy looked up from flattering Griffy. His face darkened.

  Jewel’s head filled with a picture of Randy locking her in a chastity belt and chaining it to a bed. She felt her eyes widen.

  Randy dropped Griffy like a hot coal. He turned and cooed, “More coffee, Miss Sacheverell? Perhaps a slice of ham?”

  Sovay smiled like a snake. “You are too kind, Lord Darner.”

  Jewel’s phone rang. She checked the number. Ed.

  “I’ll talk to you in a minute,” she hissed to Clay, and went out of the room to take the call.

  “What is it?” she hissed into the phone. “I’m undercover!”

  “Go get that Buzz kid. Somebody’s phoned in a complaint.”

  “Who?”

  “George Dopposomethingpopolopolis, proprietor of a beauty salon up on The Mile.” Ed read off the address. “Says the kid was hanging around his place of business this morning, selling unlicensed beauty products and driving away customers.”

  Jewel wrote down the address. “That’s Giorgio lo Gigolo.” She remembered Leo over at Spa On The Mile complaining about a bad peddlar selling his customers love potions. “I’m on it.”

  “Do it now. I’d-a given it to the Health Department, but you got a soft spot for the little shit.”

  She didn’t bother trying to defend Buzz. “Believe me, I’m on it.” She snapped the phone shut. She needed Clay. Bring him with her on a Buzz hunt and she could discuss things with him at the same time.

  But when she got back to the breakfast room, Clay and his father were nowhere to be found.

  “Where’s Virgil? And where’s Clay?” Jewel sent Sovay a nasty look. Shouldn’t you be sucking up to the meal ticket?

  “Experiments are in train in the collection room,” Randy said loftily, “to compare psychespectrometric readings with Kirlian photographs. Mr. Thompson and Dr. Kauz are there.”

  “And you’re not?” Randy seemed to be blowing off his cover, too.

  “I have been telling Miss Sacheverell about the family ghost at Llew’s Howe. Mr. Dawes,” he said with distaste, “went shopping with Miss Griffin.”

  Jewel rolled her eyes. “Okay. Well, Lord Darner, I’ve got a lead on that, uh, street practitioner we were talking to the other day. We should go find him. Right now.”

  Randy stared at her. For a moment she saw him in a plaid, earflappy cap with a curvy pipe in his mouth.

  Is that what he’s thinking? That was the trouble with magic, you never knew how the darned stuff was supposed to work. Or is it what he wants? Jewel licked her lips. “You can play detective again.”

  He almost leaped out of his chair. “Very well.” Randy bowed over Sovay’s hand. “Another day, dear lady.”

  Sovay smiled up at him. “Any time, my lord,” she said in a throaty voice. She turned the smile on Jewel, where it soured, and her lips made the word cow but nothing came out.

  Jewel said, “Let’s go.”

  Behind them, as they left the breakfast room, Jewel heard Sovay gagging into a napkin.

  Taking this joke a little far, aren’t you, bitch?

  In the car Jewel said, “So you want to play Sherlock Holmes? I thought he was after your time.”

  “I want what?”

&nb
sp; “I saw what you were thinking just now. Had me stumped for a minute, but I figured it out. You want to play investigator.”

  He flushed. “You cannot know what I am thinking.”

  “I can.” The light changed. “Remember that argument we had the other morning? You didn’t like me flirting with guys. You said, ‘I wish you could see what’s in their minds before you open your thighs to them.’”

  “That stung, did it?” There was a smile in his voice.

  “Well, ever since my second ride in the Venus Machine, every time I make eye contact with a guy, I see what he wants.”

  “Indeed.” Randy sounded pleased. “I did not realize the Venus Machine dispensed justice as well as beauty.”

  “Neither did I. But what you didn’t think about is that I can see what you want.”

  Silence from Radio Randy.

  She risked a peek at him. He sat still, staring out the windshield. Then he faced her, and their eyes met, and she had a mental image of him in his lord costume, bowing to her.

  Horns blared. She looked ahead in time to jam on the brakes and avoid broadsiding a taxi.

  Important safety tip. Don’t make eye contact with Randy when you’re driving.

  She mimed, Sorry, sorry, to the cabbie as she turned past him, and he glared at her. She got a disturbing image of the cabbie jabbing her in the eye with something long and sharp and she almost swerved into a Mini crammed with tourists.

  Don’t make eye contact with ANYONE!

  “What are we investigating today?” Randy said.

  “It’s Buzz. We find him, take his stash off him, and find out what he’s been doing — who he sold it to, stuff like that. Get a statement from him. With luck, we can get him free of prosecution, if he’ll sing.”

  “Sing?”

  “Testify against Kauz. Depends how dangerous the doctor’s little potion turns out. Which reminds me.” She rummaged in her purse and the Tercel swerved.

  Randy took the purse from her. “I will find the potion.”

  “Later.” She gnawed her lip. “I wish I could send you to the lab with it. Clay could do it if he wasn’t being a moron.”

  “He wants to save his faux stepmother from being abandoned. Why not send me to the lab?”