Seliah cursed under her breath, stripped down, and dove in and felt the terrible water close around her. She was only moderately claustrophobic but her sudden envelopment in the liquid felt like being buried alive. It was! She came up and drew a deep breath and looked through her stinging eyes at Amy, who was thrashing dutifully just a few meters away.
When Seliah was upon her she turned the girl and hooked her strong arm around Amy's chin from behind and drew her elbow firm. She sidestroked across the pool, trailing Amy out behind her. After just a stroke or two, the girl stopped struggling and let Seliah pull her through the water. Seliah could see the little girl's face turned to the sky, eyes big, and her mouth drawn back in a grimace of alarm so fake it would have been funny if Seliah's heart was not pounding viciously against her rib cage and her lungs weren't working so hard and getting so little air. Her skin felt as if it were crawling with something-fleas, flies, worms?
She came to the stainless steel ladder and manually clamped both of the girl's hands to the curving handles. Then gave her fingers a good hard squeeze.
Amy spit up some pool water, but not much. "You… saved… me. Seliah. Seliah."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, Amy. Climb the goddamned ladder."
"You hurt my hands."
"Get out."
Seliah hoisted herself to the deck and stood. She reached down and took Amy's hand and pulled her from the pool. Amy stood trembling on the deck and spit up another small load of water, then started crying.
"You don't like me anymore."
"No, I don't."
"I want Mom."
"She won't be her for half an hour. Cry all you want."
Amy looked up at her, bawling. Seliah registered the heartbreak in the girl's face but was unmoved by it. By then a small crowd had gathered. Some of the open-swim kids had seen this before but many had not, and some of the moms came over to comfort Amy, and the dads to size things up.
Seliah looked at the gathered faces, then down again at Amy, whose blubbering was gaining momentum, and she walked back to her stand and gathered up her things and walked toward the exit.
The Aquatics Center director intercepted Seliah at the gate. He was a former butterfly All American with wide shoulders and an easy manner.
"Sel? You okay? What's up?"
She stopped and looked at him. "I quit, Dave. As of right now."
"Well, wait a minute… Why?"
"I can't stand the sight of this place."
"What happened out there?"
"Amy again."
"You were always good to Amy."
"Not anymore. Mail the check."
"I thought you liked it here."
"I can no longer stand it here, Dave."
"Did something happen?"
"I changed."
Dave crossed his arms and nodded. "Okay. But if you change again, I'll hire you right back. I mean, I think I will. What's… what's wrong with you, Seliah? I noticed this at least a week ago. You're not yourself."
"I'm too much myself. See you around, Dave."
"You okay?"
She shook her head and pushed through the gate and strode toward the parking lot and didn't look back. At home she found a yearningly sweet e-mail from Sean waiting for her. She forwarded it to Charlie, then answered it with a slightly longer one-how strange to not even mention the secret that was devouring both of their minds right now! It felt almost good. She thought she might be starting to get the feel of being undercover-its heady deceptions and secretive powers. No wonder Sean had gone half-crazy. Full crazy?
She packed, lightly, as she had told Sean she would. Three days of clothes, the ruby choker and earrings he had given her, toiletries, a floral nightie he liked.
Charlie wrote back a moment later, asking after her, his usual polite and understated self. This must be hard for you, Seliah. Please know that I am here for you as a friend. I know we both want what is best for him. She imagined having sex with Charlie, something long and exhausting, animal-like, then rebuked herself for it, then forgave herself because she could barely control her own actions that way, let alone the thoughts that swarmed up from inside her. She'd given up on controlling those two weeks ago! Not much she could do when she saw the cute mailman in his little blue shorts; or her hot, hunk, bachelor neighbor who had a different chick every week; or the barista at her favorite coffee place, who couldn't take his black eyes off her. She had varied her routine to avoid them. She had stayed home all day to remove temptation. But that was worse, because all she had thought about was Sean, hundreds of miles away, and the Flexi-Dong, a nominally fleshlike device she'd bought online, which was right there under her bed. Enough.
She endured a long shower and felt better when she stepped out and dried herself. In the mirror she saw a beautiful woman in her prime, shapely and fit, with a pinched expression on her face. But it was uncomfortable to look at her own reflection-it seemed… ghastly. What next, she wondered. She flung back her hair and blasted away at the roots with the blow-dryer and forced a smile. She thought of Sean. Pictured him walking into the bar at Rancho Las Palmas. Better.
She gassed the Mustang and circled the block a few times looking for Charlie or Janet or some other cagey little ATF agent trying to follow her. Nothing. She widened her circle up and down El Camino Real and saw no one, then made a series of arbitrary turns and U-turns that finally led her to Interstate 5. It was four fifteen P.M. She punched the Mustang V-8 down the on-ramp and hit the freeway at eighty miles an hour. She sat at the R Bar, nursing a Bordeaux in an oversize goblet. She'd taken a circuitous route to the resort hotel, then walked the grounds casually for nearly half an hour to make sure she hadn't been followed.
When Sean walked in, her breath caught in her throat. It took most of her self-control to remain seated as she watched him walk toward her. He'd traded out the biker gear for something more soulful-tight black leather pants and soft black boots and a cotton jacquard Robert Graham shirt open over a black tee. His leather messenger's pouch was slung across his right shoulder and hung down low on his left. A weapon, she knew. When he got closer she saw his cross and iron cross and the SEL on stainless steel chains around his neck. His hair was just washed and it flowed nearly to his back. It looked like it had grown two inches in the two weeks since she'd last seen him. The gunslinger mustache couldn't hide his smile.
He sat down beside her and set his sunglasses on the bar top. "I'm Sean."
"I'm Seliah. Let me buy you a glass of wine."
"I'd like that."
"You look very good, Sean."
"So do you, Seliah."
"You look like all of heaven squeezed into a man."
"You I won't even try to describe."
They leaned toward each other and kissed briefly. Seliah felt the rush of blood in her eardrums.
"Please once more," she said.
They touched lips again and she inhaled his smells into her when it was over. She saw the bartender glance at them.
"Where's Daisy?"
"In the Rover. In the shade. She can't wait to meet you."
The bartender brought the wine and Seliah paid for the round with cash. They pivoted their stools to face each other and she could see his whole front side now, his blue eyes and the wrinkles at the edges of them, his lightly freckled cheeks and his good strong chin and neck, the funny slope of the right shoulder he'd had his whole life, even in the boyhood pictures she'd seen. They drank the wine quickly and Seliah could see the wildness coming into her husband's expression, the same thing she'd seen in him two weeks ago. She understood it now. Or at least she knew how it felt to experience it. It was hers now, too, whatever it was. She heard the bartender talking quietly with a customer at the far end of the bar, the air conditioner humming, a mockingbird trilling from a lemon tree outside the building, heard the splashes of the swimmers in the distant pool and even the faraway pop… pop… pop of tennis balls being hit on a court she couldn't see. The sounds blended and separated and merged again as
a new sound, melodic and nimble.
"We need to be alone," he said, taking her hand.
The suite was cool and spacious and the evening sunset pushed orange light through the blinds and fixed it in a soft glow. Daisy nosed her way through the rooms. Seliah used the bathroom but when she was done she couldn't stand to look at her own reflection in the mirror.
In the bedroom Sean was naked to the waist, hanging a spare blanket over the dresser mirror.
"It's weird, Sel. I can't look at myself anymore. Am I that bad?"
"You're beautiful. But I don't like myself, either. You look at me and I'll look at you. How's that?" At sunrise the next morning Seliah lay awake on the sheets beside her husband. He was naked and snoring softly and his hair was a damp, tangled mass on the pillow. Still wet from the shower, she thought. She stared at the ceiling. Her thighs ached and her butt ached and her jaws ached and her mons was sore and her insides were tender. All night. Hours straight. Just a few bathroom breaks and short naps and a shower and a few minutes for drinks and snacks from the minibar, then they'd fall to the bed and he'd be inside her again for another insistent hour and another tremendous climax that would leave him not spent but crazily starved for more.
Seliah timed her husband's breathing against the beat of her heart. For the first few minutes last night she had felt something like she had always felt with him-desire and an urgency slowly building inside. He always loved finding her rhythm and following it and he had found it last night, too. Again and again. After an hour, and five strong orgasms that left her legs trembling and her heart racing, she had felt that familiar sensation of pain and hypersensitivity that had always signaled her full satisfaction and no more now, please, but Sean had gently spread her arms out wide and interlocked his fingers with hers and used his weight and strength to demand more. And she had given more-eight, ten; what did numbers matter? They were pained things, twisting and nerve-sharp, and she gave herself over to where the pain might lead. She had looked over at the bedside clock. It was ten oh five.
After that Sean had made a wobbling raid on the minibar. He brought Seliah a bag of pretzels and a bottle of water and a little bottle of vodka, then took some candy and water and a bottle of gin to his bedside. Daisy begged most of the pretzels from her. Seliah could hardly drink the water but the vodka was good. She sat cross-legged on the floor with a bedsheet over her shoulders and wondered what wonderful/terrible thing was happening to them. At least they were together now, and things seemed possible and at moments, even good. Sean sat on the edge of the bed with a bath towel over his lap, breathing deeply and watching her with the wildness in his eyes. Black eyes, she had thought, eyes I want to climb inside of. While he ate and drank and told her about a nice young couple he'd helped down in Puerto Nuevo, Seliah knelt and brushed away the towel and took his unrested cock in her mouth. After a while she took it out and stroked it, saliva-drenched, in her strong good hand. She thought he could burst. Delicious. Then back into her mouth until her neck and jaws couldn't take any more; then she rose and pushed him back onto the bed and rode him. Later her arms and legs gave out and she lay all of her weight on him but he buoyed her easily and it was like riding a mountain of muscle. She laid her head on his chest and he stroked her hair.
A few minutes later she had eased into a strange dreamlike state in which she felt physical sensation somehow after the fact, and she felt emotions not quite when she thought she should feel them, her whole being tilted off its axis. It wasn't a bad thing. She drifted in and out, aware of everything but focused on nothing. Vivid memories of girlhood, the Rockies and the rivers and her beautiful Boulder home, brother Scott and brother Jake, all of the several Labs they'd always had as family dogs coming back to her in singular detail. Friends. Relatives. Trips. School. College and swim team. On and on. It felt like a hallucination of some kind, but it was a factual hallucination-nothing invented, nothing changed. Like floating on a cloud of your own life, she had thought, on the cloud of your history.
Suddenly she had free-fallen back to this earth, this room, this bed, and she renewed her full devotion to the man surrounding her, straining deep into her with a need for something she badly wanted him to find. My gift to you, husband. From me. Here. Oh. My. God. She had pulled his face down and kissed him as she came, as her pain inverted and blossomed into a pleasure that she had never had before, one so large and consuming that she knew she was getting only a small part of it. Sean, too. He growled and began to quake and he shuddered and shuddered more and he was like a man discharging electricity. How long could it go on? Finally he collapsed onto her and Seliah stroked his hot wet hair and said, I love you so much, so much, and she saw the clock said eleven twenty-two and then he was in her again, driving powerfully, yearning and unsated, searching for her rhythm once more. Seliah searched, too. Gradually she found it and led him to it, a spark of pleasure waiting for her at the end of each long, slow stroke. Our love, she thought. Our journey.
"Give me a child, Sean."
"Soon. When I'm finally home with you. He will be perfect. She will be perfect."
Seliah was regular with her pills but out of motherlike speculation she had noted the moments of possible conception. Which one was best? The twelve forty-eight? The two oh five? The three twelve? The four forty? Now she looked over at him sleeping and she ran her hand over the sheet and felt his hardness and took her hand away. What was this? What had happened? She touched herself, and beneath the surface pain she felt the ache of unsatisfied desire.
She slipped from the bed and into the bathroom. She brushed her teeth without water and looked at her reflection and wondered why it had been impossible to behold the night before. It didn't seem so bad now. She ran a cool shower. The sight of water unsettled her. It took some willpower to let it have her but she was exhausted and finally she tilted her head back and let the jets beat against her scalp and run down her straight white hair. Her eyes were closed but she could sense the bathroom door being opened and shut, and feel a cool gust of air as Sean came into the shower behind her and ran his hands down the length of her hair as the water rushed down. She moved back into him. He told her about how great it was to fly Betty again, and how much he looked forward to taking her up, and they could make a nice little spot for Daisy behind the seats, though she would probably be a little bit miffed when Seliah deposed her. He wondered if they could get her an aviator's scarf. He was thinking maybe Colorado was in their future, back closer to her roots. Seliah heard him take the shampoo off the rack and she felt the cool puddle that dropped to the crown of her head; then she felt his big strong fingers spreading it over her hair. When it was spread he began kneading it in, working up the lather. It smelled of grapefruit, lovely and light. He massaged her hair and scalp and neck and shoulders. Indescribable pleasure in this. He bent her head back for a long, cool rinse, rubbing firmly at her temples, then gently tilted her face forward to rinse the other way. He parted her legs and slowly entered, cupping his hands under her butt and lifting her to her tiptoes. She braced herself on the shower wall, the tile cool on her palms and her cheek, and let the water come down.
"Don't stop."
"Can't."
"Don't ever."
An hour later they finished together, an ecstasy she could hardly stand, but not quite get enough of. She turned to him, her legs trembling, and saw the smile on his big face and the love in his eyes. She saw no wildness in them, just love and gratitude and relief. He held her for a long time under the cool water; then he soaped her and washed her.
"What if we make something grow in here?" she said, patting her tummy and whispering into his ear past the water.
"When I'm home. When this is over."
"But we're not right, Sean. We have to be right to be parents. And we are clearly not."
"No."
"I love you. I love doing all this. But I should be able to control it, like normal people. See? Even when I'm talking about controlling it, I can't." She kissed his ear, running
her tongue along its contours.
"I can't control it, either. Maybe we're really not normal people, Seliah."
"Then what are we? There must be an explanation. Should we try another doctor?"
"I'll go online."
"I've been online. According to them we might have flu, PTSD, fibral neuralgia, lead poisoning, toxic levels of mercury, rabies or syphilis. Or maybe HIV, schizophrenia, hysteria, drug interactions, environmental toxins. And it's possible we're being poisoned by someone and don't know it. Online won't cut it, honey."
"Okay. It has to be a flu. Or a reaction to something. Last week I had headaches. They were terrible."
"You didn't tell me."
"I can't tell you everything. I think, yes. We should go to a doctor."
"We can do it together."
"Okay. Good."
"And we'll go to another doctor for the baby. We'll make sure the baby is perfect."
"He'll be just a cell or two, won't he?"
"You can't be too careful in the first trimester."
When he had finished washing himself and gotten out, Seliah was still there, the water that she had loved for so much of her life splashing over her body. It was good again. Water was good. Maybe all she had needed all along was her husband. This was the beginning of their new life. She lifted her mouth and drank from the stream.
She took a few extra minutes to comb out her hair and put on some makeup that fit her mood. Even though she would be a mother soon, and it was early morning and the fierce desert sun was already outlining the curtains with bright slashes of light, she was still hungry for something dark and primitive, so she painted her eyes and brushed her lashes thick and hollowed her cheeks and painted her lips dark plum. In the mirror she saw a platinum-haired, blue-eyed predator. She smiled at herself. Little white fangs in a blood-drenched mouth. She growled, then giggled. Her pussy was tingling and wet and when she brushed it with her finger she felt the air cool on its outer fold. She left the towel tied up under her armpits and stepped out. They spent nearly all of Monday in bed, curtains drawn, AC blasting, both televisions turned to sports and muted, with breaks for room service and brief naps. They ate ravenously and drank fruit juices by the quart.
The border Lords ch-4 Page 9
