The Hinky Velvet Chair

by Jennifer Stevenson

  He said, “That we cannot know, unless you care to conduct further experiments.”

  She put her foot down. “No!”

  “You’d need a control group, too,” Clay said.

  “Absolutely not! Brrr! No fucking way.”

  “Although Virgil may charge rent on the machine,” Clay said.

  “Fuggeddaboddit. Oh, that reminds me. Did you know all along that was the wrong bed, that day in Sovay’s room?”

  Clay widened his eyes. “Absolutely not.”

  “You’ve always said we should experiment,” Randy said.

  She whipped her head around. Was it possible they were double-teaming her? “No experiments. Anyway I think Ed’s getting used to having you around.”

  Her partner turned to her incubus. “Say, ‘Thank you, Clay.’”

  Then Randy totally shocked her. “Thank you, Clay.”

  Boy, if these two get comfortable, I’m screwed. Thank God they’re jealous. “C’mon, let’s pick up some Thai food.”

  o0o

  Later that evening, after carryout Thai in her apartment, Jewel let Clay resume the computer lesson with Randy in her living room while she phoned Nina for some overdue girl talk in the still-sooty bedroom.

  “So you hate undercover, after you’ve bitched for it for years?” Nina said, cutting to the emotional jugular as usual.

  “I don’t know.” Jewel lowered her voice. “I know I’m not in Clay’s league. He’s perfect for it.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without him. Though I may smack him if he keeps hogging my thunder.”

  “Go ahead. He won’t mind, and it’ll relieve your feelings.”

  “I know what’ll relieve my feelings,” Jewel said, lowering her voice still further. “Thank God I have a sex demon on tap.”

  “Girlfriend.” Nina gave a raunchy laugh. “You ever think you need therapy?”

  “All the time. But if I talk about my job, Ed will have to have my shrink killed.”

  Nina’s laugh quacked so loud that Jewel held the phone away from her ear. In that moment, she heard Randy say from the living room, “We can transfer moneys from her bank into ours?”

  Uh-oh. Jewel walked into the living room.

  Clay was explaining, “But if we use our regular mail account, the email trail leads straight to our door. Well, Jewel’s door. Which would be bad. So what do we do?”

  “What’s going on here?” she demanded.

  “Create a false Internet identity and backloop it to the mark’s email account?” Randy said in the voice of a star pupil.

  “Talk to you later,” she told Nina, and hung up.

  “Very good,” Clay said. “Same with the cash transfer. This is where a Paypal account works for you. Oh, hi, Jewel. We’re bringing Randy up to date on Internet fraud.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Sounds to me like you’re stealing.”

  “Just from Sovay. Did you know that woman has twenty million dollars?” At Jewel’s expression he said, “Don’t worry, we’ll leave her enough for a good defense lawyer.”

  Jewel ground her teeth. “Clay. No.”

  “You didn’t object when Virgil cleaned out Sovay’s CD account.”

  “What? He what? Don’t tell me this! Argh!”

  “Besides, Randy needs some money of his own. C’mon, partner,” Clay wheedled. “The man’s got his pride.”

  She was still thinking of Sovay’s CD account. “Wait, Virgil what?” She did a mental headslap. “Never mind.”

  Randy turned from the computer with such puppydog eyes that she felt guilty. “Now I can pay to have your bedroom cleaned and repainted.”

  She swallowed. “Randy could have had a job, if you hadn’t sold him downriver with Ed.”

  Clay waved a hand. “Ed would never have hired him. No paper trail.”

  “I thought you were getting him an identity!”

  “I’m getting it, I’m getting it. Faking a solid ID takes time. Not like you’d use on a weekend scam, I mean, but something that’ll last him years.”

  Jewel couldn’t take any more. She clapped her hands over her ears. “Oh, say, can you see!”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “Star Spangled Banner?” Randy said after Clay left. They’d laid newspaper over the sooty bedroom carpet. Now Jewel tossed him an end of a sheet. He caught it and snapped it open. His naked muscles came and went behind the sheet like a peep show.

  She felt a little light-headed. “National anthem. You know. I think it dates back to the War of 1812.”

  He tucked in the sheet. “Ah. I became an incubus in 1811.”

  “You’ve heard it watching football games on TV.”

  He caught her looking at him and his magic schlong swelled up and rose in a slow, stiff salute. His dark eyes seemed to grow bigger. “Jewel. If I may speak of serious things.”

  The Relationship Conversation. Red alert! She touched her dry lips with the tip of her tongue.

  He smiled. “Did I thank you for rescuing me once again?”

  “I think so.”

  “The forced solitude gave me time to ponder. I begin to understand what causes me to, what’s your term, ‘zap’ into bed.”

  “No kidding?” She tossed the sooty coverlet into a corner.

  “It is the difference between myself perpendicular and myself prone. I am two men.”

  This she knew already. “The sensitive new-age guy who tries to please women.” Do we have to talk about this?

  He bowed. “And the buff bastard who always wins. You have a gift,” he said ruefully, “for bringing these two halves of myself together and, er—”

  “Rubbing them the wrong way?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know that there is a correct way for my two selves to confront one another. I’ve realized there is no escaping the confrontation, if I’m to be free.”

  It always came back to that. He wanted to be free.

  “I don’t blame you for wanting it.” Her heart pinched.

  “So it is high time I begged your forgiveness for — for not knowing whether I am an earl or an incubus.”

  Those big dark eyes made her nervous. “Apology accepted. Now say you don’t think I’m too skanky for a lord to know.”

  He smiled. “That rankles, does it?”

  “Someday I’ll make you eat those words.” She shrugged. “Let’s go to bed.” She climbed between the sheets.

  But he wasn’t done.

  “Miss Griffy, in the spa, spoke to you of women’s needs.”

  She groaned. “I won’t go there if you don’t.”

  He went there. “She said, men who want a relationship think that if they know about sex, that should be enough.”

  Ugh, ugh, relationship talk! Whatever happened to the guy who wanted to fuck all night?

  He touched her cheek. “She said, too, that sex is easier than love. She said, men don’t understand themselves. They want sex to be enough, but it never is. What do you think?”

  I want sex to be enough. “I think that’s a sexist generalization.” Does that make me a guy?

  “What do you want, Jewel?”

  She felt claustrophobic. She wanted to get dressed and run home. But this was home, and he lived here. “Um, a good bra without an underwire?”

  Smiling, he shook his head. “Ask me for something only I can give you.”

  He stood there, naked, as if unaware his Washington Monument was aimed at her and bobbing as he talked, talked, talked. Her brain shut down. Oh say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light.

  “Randy, I have what I want. I have a great job, wonderful friends, a nice apartment,” she looked around at the sooty walls and ceiling, “a new partner.”

  His face darkened.

  She added hastily, “And I’m getting used to you. Both the hard parts and the fabulous parts.”

  He began to smile.

  “I — I don’t know how to make this work,” she pleaded. “I mean, what’
s the goal here?” That was too close to the bone, and she backpedalled. “The first priority is getting your life back, for real, once and for all.”

  “I complain too much of my losses, don’t I? Yet your losses are no less profound. Your privacy. Your liberty.”

  She couldn’t bear to think about her losses — especially the loss that would come when he was free at last. When he left. What’s the matter with me? I’m not the clingy one — what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming.

  “Bright Jewel. I may know your heart, but not touch it.”

  “Shh.” She rose up on her knees and stopped his mouth with hers. Her throat was packed full of hot words she could never say, painful thoughts she didn’t dare think.

  They kissed. Pleasure flooded her, easing her tight throat.

  She lifted her mouth. “Are you done talking yet?”

  Smiling, he kissed her and pushed her on her back, carrying her down slowly, never letting their bodies part.

  She sank into demonspace.

  He wafted her to a flowery meadow lit by a moon.

  He looked different. She said, pleased, You have a ponytail! With daisies?

  I learned about the Haight making one’s hair grow. ‘Make love, not war.’ He smiled at her surprise. I shall take that for my new family motto.

  She laughed. Okay, you look hot in the ponytail.

  He bowed. Then I will let my new haircut grow out.

  How did you find out about the Haight?

  I read Griffy’s mind last night.

  Euw! She so hadn’t wanted to know that.

  You know what I am. His eyes were full of light. Jewel, let us make love, not war. What is my lady’s pleasure tonight?

  She felt dizzy. No sex in the air.

  I will not frighten you tonight, bright Jewel. I must try to imagine new pleasures for you. I have never known a woman like you, he said in a deep voice that sent shivers down her back. Together we will discover fresh delights.

  He stroked her with feather-light fingertips, strumming her back, her buns, her knees, up the insides of her thighs, skimming her sex, up her belly, up the undersides of her breasts, flicking her nipples, brushing her throat.

  Her skin flamed all over as if his fingers were hot coals, making her wriggle and moan. A light touch, he said deep in her ear, wrapping her in his velvet voice.

  He ran a hand over her from throat to knee, and all his fingers turned into licking tongues. Ohmigod. He stroked her face with his other hand, and those fingers became tongues, too. She moaned. Lick, lick, lick, he licked her everywhere rhythmically, a little faster than her heart could pound.

  Another handful of tongues sneaked down her leg toward her ankle, and another, oh, she couldn’t keep track, she writhed under dozens of tongues, licking every inch of her body at once.

  For God’s sake, Randy, fuck me! She twisted, striking out, but even though her hands met his and his fingers laced through hers to hold her, it seemed he had still more hands, more tongues-fingers-tongues to lick her with.

  He hoisted her up until she straddled him and sank slickly, gratefully down onto his cock, feeling anchored while his hundred tongues licked, licked, licked. Now she could thrash in his arms, but she was pinned to him at that one spot, Randy big and hard inside her, something to struggle against, while pleasure and confusion made her lose herself.

  His tongues began licking in unison, one for every few inches of her body, as if she were an ice cream cone, and he bent her backwards until her head fell back and she arched against him and her hot button met the root of his amazing thing.

  And then he bit her gently, once. All over. All over.

  Pleasure shocked through her.

  Time stood still.

  She screamed, long and loud.

  Her bedroom came back around them, still and quiet and dim and safe. They lay face to face on the tangled sheets.

  “That was interesting,” she said when she could speak.

  “Not vastly original, but a popular selection,” he said with a smirk in his voice.

  “God. I think I came out the soles of my feet that time.”

  “Was that fast enough for you?”

  “God yes.” She pressed her face to his neck, her heart thumping.

  He brushed her hair away and kissed her ear. “I promise I will neither scare you nor rob you of sleep.”

  She drew in a shaky sigh. “Big talk. Now if you can keep surprising me in bed.”

  “I can promise you — hm—” He shifted and she dared to look at him, admiring the planes of his angular face and his shock of midnight-black hair. “I can promise at least three hundred and eight new experiences.”

  She laughed. “That’s next month taken care of, then.”

  o0o

  Excerpt from

  The Hinky Bearskin Rug

  Jewel Heiss sat white-knuckled in the back seat of her aged Tercel with her ex-con-artist partner in front and her sex demon at the wheel. It was a steamy Chicago Monday in late summer. They were headed for the Eleventh Ward, responding to a consumer complaint. This one had come down from the Fifth Floor. The complainant had gone to her alderman, and her alderman, knowing what was good for him, had brought it straight to da mayor, and from there it trickled down to Jewel’s Hinky Division.

  Today’s mission was to make the consumer’s problem go away, without publicity. That, and to get out of this car alive.

  Jewel sat in back with the files, so that Clay could take the risk of a head-on with Randy at the wheel. Randy’s model for driving was obviously a Hollywood chase scene. He had flair.

  “Here’s the turn. Jesus, Randy, slow down!”

  Wordlessly, Randy slewed the Tercel into a squealing halt.

  Jewel put a hand on her throat. “That was way too exciting. I hope I didn’t pee my pants.” If it hadn’t been ninety degrees in the shade, she’d have been ice-cold with terror.

  In the rear-view mirror she caught Randy smiling at her. “I’ll wager that you had no notion you could get such performance from this vehicle.”

  “Clay, you’re supposed to teach him how to drive like a normal person, not a cop show rerun.”

  Clay showed her an innocent face over the back of the front seat. “Well, we’re sort of cops.”

  “Sort of! As in, not really. In fact, where traffic is concerned, we’re not cops at all, and we do not get to drive like idiots. Ever.”

  Clay made his pouty lips into an O and twinkled at her through his shaggy blond bangs. “I think he’s doing very well.”

  “It’s sabotage. He’ll be busted and grounded within a week of getting his license. Which we cannot afford.”

  “Getting busted and grounded is the best education for a new driver. Worked for me when I was sixteen,” Clay said. “Hammers home the rules.”

  “Which you ignore for the fun of it,” she said. “The difference being, you were a citizen on a learner’s permit, and Randy can’t even get a learner’s permit until he has an identity. You were going to fake up ID for him, remember?” Jewel hated to think how many laws she was breaking, the longer Randy stayed in her life. “If he gets busted, he’ll be deported.” Did the Immigration and Naturalization Service have a special way of dealing with hinky wetbacks? She shuddered. “He could end up in hinky Guantanamo.” She didn’t know which would be worse. “For nasty experiments.”

  “No, he won’t. He’ll end up in a bed somewhere,” Clay said, which didn’t reassure her at all.

  “I shall be on my guard,” Randy said, his smile gone now. Randy had once been an English lord — pedigree, gold, estates, and all — and then he was turned into a sex demon by a mistress who thought he needed basic nooky training, and then, two hundred years later, he’d turned up in Jewel’s life. Gorgeous, arrogant, now brilliant in bed, dirt broke, and unemployable in the twenty-first century.

  Clay had turned up in her life at the same time. It was a testimony to his con-man skills that he was now her partner and not beh
ind bars. Jewel never worried about Clay.

  But the competition thing worried her.

  It was barely seven o’clock, but the complainant had a funeral to go to that morning, and she’d insisted on speaking to an investigator. Jewel led the team up to the house, a solid red brick two-story bungalow with beautiful stained glass windows in front, and knocked on door.

  “Best behavior,” Jewel said sternly. The door opened. She said, “Mrs. Othmar?”

  A tough-looking old battle-ax in a long black cocktail dress looked her up and down. “I am.”

  “I’m Senior Investigator Heiss with the Chicago Department of Consumer Services. We’re responding to a complaint you made through your alderman.”

  Mrs. Othmar said stuffily, “I made no complaint.”

  Oookay. Jewel backed a step and checked the house number over the door. “Pardon me, ma’am, but it came down to us from the mayor himself. We take your concerns seriously.”

  Mrs. Othmar seemed about to shut the door in their faces and then she didn’t. “Come in.”

  She led Jewel’s team into a dim, cool living room full of antiques. She thawed when she got a load of Randy’s dark blue Armani. “Please sit down.”

  Jewel took a deep breath. “According to our report, you told your alderman that a man from the Department of Inspectional Services came to your door two days ago and asked to see your smoke detectors and electrical boxes. He found something unusual in your basement—”

  “There’s nothing down there,” Mrs. Othmar snapped, and Jewel thought, Uh-huh. Not any more.

  “And when he found it, he told you he would condemn your property if you did not remediate within ten days. He also said that remediation probably wouldn’t work.”

  “He said it would cost ninety thousand dollars!” Mrs. Othmar said indignantly. “That’s ridiculous! Even asbestos remediation doesn’t cost that much.”

  Patiently Jewel resumed, “Then he suggested that since you couldn’t afford remediation and it wouldn’t work anyway, you should sell your property to a man he knew who buys such houses and remediates them on the gamble.”

  “Search my house,” Mrs. Othmar said in a shrill voice. “You won’t find anything.”

  Randy had a faraway expression. Clay tapped his knee and raised his eyebrows. Randy shook his head.