Walking on Sunshine

by Jennifer Stevenson

  I wheedled, “Do the club gig with me. Cameo appearance, one or two numbers.”

  We pulled into the hotel parking ramp. He turned to me, trying to look hard-faced and blowing it. “One.”

  “One song and one encore.” I could see him wavering. “C’mon. The one we recorded this morning. Sneak preview on the new CD—we’re previewing it tonight anyway. We’ll blow ’em away.”

  “All right,” he growled, but he was kind of smiling.

  He likes me! I was such an idiot.

  The stick had worked. Now for the carrot.

  “Meanwhile,” I said briskly, “I have a couple of hours before I have to show up at the club.”

  We eyed one another, me refraining from needling him about slacking, him not needling me about overwork. It was an understanding.

  Somewhere in the depths of my belly, I was going all fan-girly. I have an understanding with Ashurbanipal!

  He turned off the engine, jerked on the handbrake, leaned over, grabbed my chin, and kissed me slow and sweet.

  “So let’s go upstairs,” he whispered.

  BAZ

  As Yoni and I crossed that palatial hotel lobby to the express elevator to her suite, I found I couldn’t look her in the eye. Her scents were driving me crazy. I could smell every single cosmetic and hair care product she had used today. I could smell sweat on her neck from our recording session this morning, and a faint hint of the humid earth of the conservatory on her shoes. I could even smell the patches of stink where I’d leaned on her, reeking of sweated-out tequila and vomit and slept-in clothes, when she magicked me out of bed and into the ladies’ room at the recording studio.

  And I smelled that she was horny.

  I couldn’t look her in the eye.

  No door-dragon waited at the foot of the elevator. At the penthouse, Yoni laid her ear to the crack before she put her keycard in. When she opened it, she turned to me, and her eyes met mine, full of hope and guessing and vulnerability and certainty. I almost fell over backward.

  “I don’t bite,” she said, showing a dimple.

  “Oh, well, in that case, no deal.” I sounded a lot calmer than I felt.

  She grinned, making me feel like fireworks were exploding in my chest. She slipped inside and I sauntered in after her.

  She hadn’t turned on the lights. Afternoon sun came in through the windows. The bar and living room area were rose-petal free, but the walls, carpet, ceiling, cabinets, bar top, and even some of the living room furniture still looked as if somebody with incredibly good aim and a powerful airbrush had sprayed them gold in soft rays radiating from . . . .

  . . . Right where we stood.

  She noticed me noticing. I swung toward her and she gave me her hand, as if we were about to dance.

  I said, “Are you ready for anything? Because we’ve got nowhere to go but weird.”

  We put our arms around each other and danced a little two-step cuddle. She smelled great.

  I noticed suddenly that I was relaxed. I never relaxed like this with women—with the guys yes, with tequila, sure. This was a drug and a homecoming. There was something absolute about it.

  Her hand slid up my jaw, and I murmured, “Careful. Feels good now, but the clean-up’s a bitch.”

  She giggled. “Let’s try.” She pulled my face down. “Little kisses,” she said. “Contain the mana.”

  So we tried little kisses. It was harder than I thought to touch lightly, give a lick to her mouth, kiss with soft pressure over and over. My lips became more sensitive. After a few kisses I could feel hers half an inch away, as if I had whiskers, as if I was leaning out of my body in my hunger for her.

  My dick burned like a frozen flagpole. I was afraid to go full clinch. We might get stuck.

  She moaned and leaned into me. I was gathering her up into a bear hug that would get my burning dick up against something solid when she pulled her head back. “Listen, I don’t feel comfortable here.”

  “Okay. Bedroom?”

  She shook her head. “I never know when someone’s going to come back here.” She ran her hands down my arms and laced her fingers into mine and bumped against me, setting off my dick again. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

  I frowned. “The Lair is compromised.” Dammit, the city was full of beds. I thought of Veek and Sophie breaking into some guy’s house to fuck on his satin sheets. The whole world was full of beds. This very building—oh, of course.

  “Why don’t I rent a room here?” I said. “Downstairs.”

  She beamed. “Perfect. You call for the room. I’ll pack some stuff for the club gig tonight.”

  “What?” How could she remember work with her brain clouded by lust?

  “Well, I won’t have time to come back to the suite after you and I have been—you know.”

  “Jesus, you’re organized.”

  She pecked me on the lips and pushed off again. “I know, right? Hopelessly.” She disappeared into the bedroom.

  Thinking of that bedroom only a few feet away, I sighed and got out my cell phone.

  They were efficient down there. By the time I got down to the front desk, they had the charge sheet and my key ready. I told them, “No turn-down service,” and pranced to the elevator, where I phoned my goddess and told her the number of my room.

  YONI

  The room downstairs that Baz had taken had one king bed and heavy drapes that closed all the way. Much lower-rent than the penthouse suite. I think the coverlet was dark brown. Baz turned off the air conditioning and snapped on a lamp. I threw my backpack into the corner and stripped off the ugly coverlet in the same movement.

  “Whoa. Eager, much?” he said.

  I slid my arms around him from behind. “I want your hands on me,” I said to the back of his ear.

  He reached behind him and took hold of my hips. His head tipped back and rested on my shoulder. His skinny dreads fell over my chest. I slid my hands under his waistband and over his—wow—big, hot, smooth, hard—

  “Wow,” he breathed. I tickled his bone with my fingertips. “You’re a bad influence, girl. I stopped working and started letting go and feeling you.” He blinked up at me. “You’ll get me drummed out of my union.”

  I stroked his bone between my hands as well as I could inside his cargo shorts. “Stagehands union?”

  He gasped out, “Sex demon union.”

  I squeezed, and he spun around and grabbed me. That’s more like it. He pulled my hands behind my back. I was bent backward now, my hips bumping into that big, hot, hard bump in his cargo shorts, his dreads tickling my face.

  “Now,” he growled. “How do you want it?”

  Making him lose control was a roaring hoot. “Is that what happens when you let go? You start manhandling me?”

  He backed me up until my thighs hit the bed. “Oh, honey,” he crooned. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Then he tapped me on the pubic bone.

  There was a tiny explosion, and I got wetter.

  Then I realized I was floating, weightless, above the bed. I shrieked. “Stop that!”

  He slid my shoes off and dropped them. “Nuh-uh.” He was busy at my fly. “Much easier to get you naked this way. These fucking tight jeans. I’d like to kill the guy who invented jeans that cling all the way down to your ankles.”

  “But I’m—I can’t feel anything under me! Baz, you know how I am about flying!”

  “Yeah.”

  He stopped yanking my jeans toward my ankles and grinned at me. I could lift my head to look at him, but I felt nothing under me, no weight, no support. My own smell gushed up at me. So that’s me, smelling horny. I kind of liked it.

  “Baz,” I whimpered.

  The jeans came off and he flung them across the room. One moment later he had his cargo shorts off. Then he slipped my chambray shirt over my head and let it fall.

  “No bra!”

  “You know I don’t. I’m too small.”

  He looked at my bare breasts. The tips squinched up. He smi
led at them. Then he transferred the smile to my face.

  He pushed me gently and I coasted through air up toward the headboard. He crawled up the bed after me and settled on his knees between my knees, which hovered conveniently at his shoulder height.

  “Hold me, I’m scared!” I whispered.

  “That,” he said, taking hold of my thighs and moving me around in the air like a balloon, “is the big idea. You control-freak women. Somebody’s gotta convince you it’s no use. Time to relax.” His voice dropped. “Let yourself get wound up. Let yourself go. Lie back now and shut your eyes. This’ll be easier if you don’t confuse yourself with notions of up and down.”

  “So you can scare me?” I said, lying back and looking at the ceiling. He was warm between my thighs, and then even warmer. I lifted my head. He’d taken off his tee shirt. Naked, he didn’t look like any man I’d ever seen—not slim and sculpted like a performer or a model, not bulked out like an iron freak. He had an old-fashioned, work-shaped body, a body that got that way by bashing up against tools and weapons and horses and other men until it could do anything. My mouth went dry.

  He hung his arms over my thighs as if over a fence rail, and looked at me. His big, white, bony face was ugly and familiar, and so expressive that I thought I could read his mind.

  “Darlin’,” he murmured. His big hands came up and he slid his palms over my breasts, keeping his fingers splayed out. He watched my face the whole time. He could touch me anywhere. I couldn’t stop him. My thighs trembled. He could probably feel that. Desperate for something to hold onto, I gripped my own hair, shut my eyes, and lay back, panting, anxious but eager, wound up but relaxed, ready for anything, having no idea what could happen next.

  He kept brushing my nipples. His palms was smooth, then slightly rougher. My nipples tightened up hard. His palms became unbearably rough. I squirmed and arched in mid-air. His skin burned hot where he knelt between my thighs. Wetness trickled to one side of my bottom. The whole room smelled like my crotch.

  “You’re embarrassing me!”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s the big idea?” I burst out. His fingers plucked softly at my breasts, pulling my nipples a bit and then letting them bounce back. “Scare me—embarrass me—what’s next?”

  “Excellent question.”

  That was all he said. For the next few minutes he stroked my body all over, topside, underside, taking advantage of my position where I floated helplessly over the bed, paying attention to one spot at a time: inside my left thigh, my throat, the nape of my neck, the soft place on my right side between my bottom rib and my hipbone, even my hands. That part drove me craziest. He smelled my fingers, then licked between them very slowly, then rubbed my palm over his five-o’clock shadow.

  Then he wrapped my fingers around his bone. I felt safer with my hand on his bone. He had me every way he could, but I had him there.

  As if he could hear me think it, he said, “That’s my girl. Here comes the scary part again.”

  Then he moved. If I didn’t still have hold of him where it counted, I’d have thought he left the bed altogether. I opened my eyes. He was floating beside me, then moving over me, blotting out the light.

  My breath caught. It was pretty scary. His dreads fell to my shoulder and dragged along my arm, raising goose bumps. He orbited me, a moon man, radiating heat wherever he came close enough to touch.

  But I have his bone in my hand! I couldn’t see anything—his chest hovered over my head—so I groped along his bone, reaching for his balls. His bone—oh God—it seemed to go on forever. No matter where he was in his orbit, it lay hot, hard, and smooth in my hand. I slid my hand farther, trying to picture how long it could be, was it bending around my body? Was that what seemed like a hot, smooth, pulsing rope across my belly and back? I tried to twist and found myself motionless, that hot, smooth, pulsing rope pulling taut, pinning my free arm, lying like a gentle warning across my throat.

  “Here it comes,” he said from somewhere near my inner thigh. I arched again in protest, but it was no use. His tongue moved like a nursing puppy across my crotch, exploring, lapping, burrowing, until he found that slippery, sensitive spot. Then he went to work.

  I relaxed. Everything was against me—I had no grip on thin air, my one hand was wrapped against my side and the other hand was busy squeezing his crazy-long bone convulsively every time he hit a good spot, all I could see was the ceiling, his hands were strong on my ankles, pulling me open and making me stretch wonderfully, and his tongue fiddled and probed and flicked and thrust and the drums in my blood beat furiously until I went deaf and dark all over, inside and out, as black fireworks went off and underground mountains moved silently.

  “Baz,” I groaned. “Oh dear God, Baz.”

  His length warmed me, ankle to shoulder. The scary, floating feeling relaxed ever so slowly. At last, I realized I lay on my back on the bed. He lay beside me, propped on one elbow, his hand between my thighs, and his thumb working back and forth gently, sending me into hiccuping aftershock.

  Finally I put worked my hand free and laid it over his. He stopped moving. He relaxed off his elbow and came closer, putting his lips near my ear. I could hear him breathing. He didn’t sound relaxed.

  I became aware of a powerful scent of roses. “Uh-oh.”

  “What?”

  “Look up.”

  He shifted his weight and turned over.

  I looked straight up at a ceiling covered with rose blooms packed so closely together, I couldn’t see any stems.

  “That’s different,” he said calmly.

  “Argh!” I buried my face in his armpit. “Not again!”

  “I think it’s a nice variation on a theme. It could have been live lynxes.”

  “Don’t!” I propped myself on one elbow. “Don’t put ideas in my head. Oh God!” I added as I thought about the future.

  “What’s the matter, babe?”

  “Is this going to happen every time I have sex? Oh, hell!”

  “You’re overreacting,” he said calmly, and started to tickle me.

  I pushed at his hands. “No, really! I spent all these years not having sex—stop that!—and now that I found out I like it—”

  “You like it?” He tickled more. “Maybe I should pull some roses down on us.”

  “Aaaaaaugh!” I buried my face in the pillow and screamed into it.

  He tickled me until I had to fight back. I found myself irrationally comforted.

  “We can pull ’em all down before we go,” he suggested. “Or hey, we can tell the catering manager we’re florists, and it’s a special decoration for a reception, only the front desk told us the wrong room. C’mon. This is supposed to be fun.”

  I shoved him away and sat up. Something irresistibly drew my eye. I looked at his lap. It wasn’t four feet long anymore, but his bone was still wide awake. “There’s still one thing I haven’t done.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Only one? Oh, honey.”

  “Seriously, I am not quitting sex until I get the—the full treatment.”

  He scooted closer. “You’re not quitting sex.”

  I searched his face. He was calm. Maybe a few roses weren’t the end of the world. “No?”

  He put both arms around my head and pulled my face against his chest. “I have an idea. Know how you use the monitors at your concerts to moderate your mana output? Keep the audience from going crackers?”

  “I thought the idea was to let go control!” I wailed.

  “Stay with me.” He kissed my scalp. “Let’s try something. I think I might have been on the wrong track there before.”

  “Oh, no,” I vowed, shaking my head and rubbing my face on his chest. “I don’t think so.”

  “Let’s see if you can feel your edges.”

  “My edges? My skin, you mean?”

  “Don’t look.” He lay me on my back and brushed his hand over my face. I closed my eyes. “Further out than your skin. Can you feel my hand stroking you?
”

  I held still. “Just now. On my face.”

  “Further out than that.” I heard the lamp click, and the light coming through my eyelids went out. “Try feeling for it in the dark.”

  I breathed slowly and paid attention. There. Over my belly, warmth. “Belly?”

  “Very good. How about now?”

  The thought of his big hand hovering over me made my nerves jump. “Breast. Right breast. Right nipple—uh!” I arched.

  “Open your eyes and look.” The light clicked on again.

  I looked. His hand was two feet above my body. His fingers twiddled thin air, and my nipple sent crazy feelings shooting through me. I slapped my hand over my nipple and craned my neck to look at him. “How?”

  “It’s your personal space, babe. You’re a goddess. You extend far outside your body, probably more at some times than others. Get a grip on that, and see if maybe you can contain the special effects.”

  I frowned. “But we went to all that effort to make me let go.”

  “And you did great. Now let’s try the next step. We kiss, and you feel for your edges, and pull them in around you. Think of it as pulling down the shades in the limo, so the paparazzi can’t see in.”

  “Oh, there’s a buzz-kill,” I said, but I narrowed my eyes, picturing it. “It could be like a clear dome. Or a clear spot in the middle of a fog. What about orgasm?”

  “I’m in favor of it.”

  “Clown. I mean, I think it’ll be hard for me to hold that in when I, um.”

  “Suppose we try to be very, very quiet. And when you feel like you’re gonna bust, think of holding it in, like holding in a sneeze. You get the sneeze. But you don’t spray germs everywhere.”

  “So romantic.” But it made sense. I looked at his lap again. “And I still haven’t had, um, penetration.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” He clambered up on his knees again and looked down at me, looking bulkier and nuder and stronger and safer than I could have imagined.

  Suddenly I had one of those “what” moments where all kinds of thoughts occurred to me. This was Ashurbanipal, the man I’d fallen in love with before I ever thought of sex, even before I got braces. He was my friend, my collaborator, my mentor. He was about to put that thing inside me, an event I’d anticipated with misgiving in the past. I was naked, and I’d just crammed about four thousand red rose blooms up against the ceiling of a mediocre hotel room, through the Power Of Horny alone.