She pulled away on the beat, staggering, and then turned back to him, pulling him face to face again, sliding down his body open handed, face to his chest and belly and groin before she sunk to the floor. One shoe had come loose and lay on its side, her foot bare in its black backseam stocking.
There was a sort of collective sigh of lust around the room. Or maybe it was disapproval. But nobody moved.
Mitch hauled her back to her feet. This time her arms twined around his neck and he lifted her up, holding her against his chest and carrying her off the dance floor, out of the room while she buried her face against his throat and the music ended.
The shoe lay in the middle of the floor.
There was an instant of silence and then everyone started talking.
"What the hell?" Lewis said. "Mitch?"
Alma just shook her head. It was momentarily hard to talk. "I just…."
"What the hell," Lewis said again. Outside there was the roar of the Torpedo's eight-cylinder engine starting. "What was that?"
"An Apache dance," Alma said. "You've seen them in the movies, right?"
"Um," Lewis said with a mumble that suggested he never watched the dancing parts of movies. There was a rising babble of voices around them. "The whole town's going to be talking about this."
"I expect so," Alma said briskly. "Will you get Stasi's shoe, please?"
Behind her, Teddy Bergdorf shook his head. "It's always the quiet ones, isn't it?" he said admiringly. "That's good old Mitch. And if Jerry broke the engagement, another feller's got the right to make a move, right?"
The Torpedo turned onto the main road in a spray of gravel, and Mitch let out a whoop. Stasi flung her head back, laughing. The heavy car picked up speed, clinging to the curves of the road, but he was careful of black ice anyway. You couldn't be too careful. The hazards were part of the game.
"Darling, did you see people's faces?" Stasi shrieked. "Lewis looked like he'd swallowed a fish!"
"I couldn't look at anybody," Mitch said. "I couldn't look at anybody but you. And remember what I was doing," he added quickly.
"You were perfect! Absolutely perfect!' She threw back her head, laughing all the way to the moon. "Darling, you have that perfect glower. It looked like you wanted to rip all my clothes off and have me right there!"
He downshifted for the first slope. "Isn't that how it was supposed to look?"
"Exactly, darling! Vicious and cruel and so goddamned handsome. You looked like sex on feet, darling."
"I thought that was you." Up the hill, around the switchback, the Torpedo singing and Stasi shrieking with elation, it was all Mitch could do not to yell for the sheer joy of it. Ok, maybe he would. And he let it rip.
Stasi laughed again. "That's quite a scream. Is that a rebel yell?"
"Close enough," Mitch said. Up the final part of the gravel road. The lights were on downstairs in the house, no doubt Jerry and Tesla playing chess and drinking Benedictine.
"You're an absolute scandal. You'll never be able to set foot in the post again," Stasi said.
"I doubt that. I'm the Deputy Commander." He pulled the Torpedo up under the leafless trees. "I'd have to throw myself out."
"And you look like such a nice, wholesome boy too," Stasi said speculatively as he killed the engine. "Who would have thought you'd make such a good gangster? Hard-drinking, hard-punching…."
"You don't think I'd make a better gumshoe?" he asked, coming around to open her door, the refrozen snow crunching under his feet. "It takes one to know one and all that?"
"That's true," she said. "Straight out of Black Mask or Weird Tales. The kind who's always roughing someone up and being stuck up by a dame."
"And you're just the dame to do it," he said. He was holding the door but she wasn't getting out. He looked down and she wiggled the toes of her bare foot.
"One shoe, darling," she said. "I lost the other one at the dance."
"Just like Cinderella."
"Only I have no taste for princes."
With that kind of lead, how could he resist? "Maybe you like hard-boiled dicks better."
"Maybe I do," she said. She wiggled her toes again. "Snow. Ground. Foot. I think you'd better carry me."
"I probably should," Mitch said, and bent down while she got her arms around his neck again. A familiar weight, and a familiar tugging of muscles in his abdomen, but not too much.
"Too heavy?" she asked, holding on tight.
"I probably can't carry you up the stairs," he said. "But across the lawn…." The snow wasn't that deep, but it had refrozen to ice where he'd swept the outside stairs.
"I'll hop on the stairs if you'll give me your arm."
"Of course." It was freezing. And that might be because he'd left his overcoat and suit jacket at the post, and his shirt was open down the front. Yeah. But Stasi couldn't be any warmer. She'd left her overcoat too and was just wearing the little black dress she'd worn for dancing.
There was something inherently silly about hopping up the steps with his arm around her waist and Stasi with one bare foot and one high-heeled shoe. But at least he had his keys. They fell in the front door together, laughing, and he turned the light on while she took the other shoe off and turned on the radio. The light made everything spring suddenly into focus, the stove left to warm the room, the pile of quilts and blankets on the unmade bed, his clothes from yesterday on the floor, his leather jacket over the corner of the washstand, the December issue of Weird Tales peeking out from under the bed.
"Darling, they'll be talking about it for ten years! I can't believe you actually did it!"
"I'll do pretty much anything with sufficient provocation," Mitch said, as barefooted she got up and spun around, taking one hand so she spun back into his arms.
"Oh yes," she said, "just in time with the music." The long matched steps to the right, just like they'd practiced them, around in a circle, body to body. So beautiful, so hungry, her lips parted, a world of heat uncoiling inside him, forever frustrated and burning.
She put her hand on the back of his neck, inside the open collar of his shirt, and drew his face down to hers as they stopped, swaying.
That. Just that. Hard and right and perfect, her tongue darting inside his mouth, the way she felt pressed against him, her belly tight against his pelvis, tilted forward as though she could get what she wanted. As though she could have everything.
Frustration and anger burned into pure desire. Everything. Tighter. Closer. Hotter. Enough flame would quench anything. Or if it didn't, who cared? The feel of her hips under her dress, silk stockings and soft skin and those scarlet combinations, the rough prickle of hair beneath them, oh God and wet where his fingers touched it. She was soaking, so turned on, and she shivered, shifting her weight to get his fingers where she wanted them, hanging on to him like she'd fall over if she let go.
He might fall over. They might fall over together. So it was better to make it a controlled fall, side by side on the quilts with her leg over his. Plenty of room for his hand in the loose combinations. She let out a moan, her eyes closed and her head falling back, the pulse jumping in her throat. How could he not kiss it?
And there were Stasi's hands getting his shirt the rest of the way open, pulling his undershirt out of his waistband to reach under it, sliding across his back. Her nails caught, and he took a ragged breath.
"You like that," she said, "you like it when I mark you."
"Mark me."
Those red, red nails scoring down his back. Maybe she was actually drawing blood. If so, it felt good. Mark me, bleed me, give me something…. Struggling out of shirt and undershirt, the cool air almost stinging.
She shifted her weight, hips moving to get his hand where she wanted it.
"That," he said. "Right there." Coarse hair and soft lips, that hard little knob against his thumb, slick and soft as she rocked against his hand.
"Right there, darling." Her voice was breathless, eyes half closed, her lipstick smeared. His Dragon
Lady, his dame, his tough girl completely undone, putty in his hands…. "You're a man of the world. You know what a girl needs."
"I do." And he did. He used to. Those party girls, those bad girls, they'd never complained. They'd learned it all together, Mitch and those girls who knew what's what. He liked pleasing them. He liked the abject surrender when they lost it completely, blind and deaf to anything but sex. He could give her that.
Her head fell back. "So long," she said. "Taking so long." Not quite letting go, not quite yet.
"However long it takes," he said. His voice sounded rough even to him. But he wasn't in a hurry for his own satisfaction. There wasn't going to be any, so it didn't matter, a minute or an hour. "As many times as you can. I'll watch you over and over again."
Her back arched, nails digging in as though spurred.
"You like that idea, don't you? Me watching you. Everybody watching you. Showing off for everybody." Smoking hot, the idea of anybody seeing this, logical conclusion to the dance. He'd break, he'd explode, if there were any way to do it, anything that would work.
But this worked for her. Her hips were jerking now, her breath fast, and she went rigid as he felt everything tighten. Her head snapped back as on and on she rode the wave, screaming something incoherent as her whole body shook.
So beautiful. So vulnerable. The line of her throat, the swell of breast, the tenderest tissue under his thumb, pressure and pleasure and power. Everything.
And nothing. No release for him, no end to this.
Her head dropped forward and she curled against him, spent and small, holding him with hands that were suddenly loose, and he clenched his teeth so he wouldn't shriek in frustration.
She shifted and he moved his hand. Stasi sat up, the light on the bedside table behind her silhouetting her like everything he'd ever imagined in a girly magazine, pulling her dress off over her head. The red combinations were loose, and she tossed the dress on the floor. She sounded breathless. "Take off your shoes, darling."
"Shoes?"
"Shoes." He did and she drew him up against her on the bed, hoping she wouldn't try to open his belt, but no. Just like that, bare chest against her arm, bare feet against her ankles, but nothing else. She put her hand on his shoulder and smiled, a remarkably open smile of nothing but pleasure.
"What?" he asked. He'd never seen it before, and it rang like a gift.
"Just thinking that you have wonderful shoulders." She ran her hands up his arm and over, looking at his back. "Oh dear. I'm afraid I did quite a bit of damage."
"I don't care," he said. It was hard to talk, hard to breathe, tied in a knot of everything impossible, between the devil that was her and the deep blue sea of nothing. "Good?"
"So good, darling." She leaned in and kissed him, sharp and sweet and hotter than ever, gasoline on fire. His heart was pounding, hands clenching. There had to be something. Something.
And then she pulled back a little, her eyes serious. "Do you trust me, darling?"
"Anything," he said. "Anything you want."
"Lie on your stomach and let me touch you."
The sheets were cool against his face, cool against his chest, and he turned his face to the pillow. Relief, almost, to look away. Relief to breathe. And there were her hands on his back, sweeping over the scratches she'd made, pain and touch and gentle cool hands. He took a long breath. He could ride this down. It didn't diminish, but he could breathe.
"I do like your shoulders," she said, long fingers tracing down his spine, across his ribs. "And you have a nice back too. Darling." Pressure at the base of the spine, just inside the waistband of his pants.
His breath caught again. That was raw, bright as fire.
There was a smile in her voice. "Oh, you like that."
"Yes."
Her hand under the waistband, held flat by his belt, pressing and kneading. He'd liked that, once, the way a woman clutched at him when he was inside her, and the memory came to him with sharp edges, clear as it happened fifteen years ago. Every sense remembered. Or at least some did, unexpected pleasure.
And there was her other hand plucking at his belt on the side. "Take this off," Stasi said. She bent, her lips brushing his shoulder. "Do it yourself. I won't touch and I won't look."
Her lips against his shoulder, her hair sweeping across his arm as she bent, fallen from its pins and waves, the warmth of her body beside him…. She wouldn't look, not if she said she wouldn't. Stasi didn't lie about things like that. And what could she see if he was lying face down?
He undid the belt with one hand, unbuttoned the top button.
"Better, darling." Her fingers slid inside the waistband of his pants, inside the waistband of his shorts, pressure and long, sweeping strokes across his buttocks, like and unlike memory, enough to raise the temperature again. "There now, darling." There was a caressing note in her voice, as though this time she meant it, for all that Stasi called everyone darling.
"I need…." There were no words.
"I know." She bent and kissed his back, a trail of kisses down his spine, light and unpredictable. "I know you do, dear."
Mitch clenched his eyes shut. His hands closed on the pillows. Dark. He could breathe in the dark.
She shifted again, her legs moving, and then she worked his pants down an inch or two in the back, one hand still moving in small circles at the base of his spine, lower and lower.
He flinched as she touched deeper. "Um," he managed. "I don't do that…."
"Don't, or don't want to?"
Breathe. He had to breathe. How high could you go without ever coming down? He was going to break. He was going to scream.
"Never have," he whispered.
"Well, then." She turned his cheek to her. "Look at me."
She sat beside him, one leg up and one down, the combinations only half covering her pubis, lace pulled aside. "Look at me." She pulled the fabric back, his own personal peep show, everything exposed, pink with arousal and glistening. She swept her finger back and forth, rubbing and pulling at her lips, wetting it with her own juices.
There was some strangled sound he realized was his own moaning.
"Trust me," she said, and knelt up over him.
He closed his eyes and waited, arms shaking. Her finger slid inside him, slippery and enormous, wrong and tight and so hot. Torment, surely. But not pain. Terrible, unexpected, strange, pinned like a butterfly, like some noble captive in a weird tale. Her hand on his back, her finger seeking.
"There," she said.
Light. Like light behind his eyelids, like sparks jumping a firebreak. Like someone grabbing balls that weren't there, like caresses used to feel, a hand closed tight about the root in a way that did nothing anymore…. Bright. So bright, so sharp and so utterly impossible. Mitch screamed. It seized him, it shook him. It grabbed him by the neck and wrung him out, lightning through every limb. Screamed, and it washed over, one single long seizure, swifter and not as deep as before, but oh God release.
And then he was holding onto the cool pillow, tears starting at the corners of his eyes. A shadow moved over him, her hand receded, and she slid down to lie against his back, her arms around him.
"There, darling," she said. "There. Just breathe."
If he tried to speak, he'd cry. She could probably tell anyway. His shoulders were shaking. He was shaking.
"Good?"
He could nod.
Her hand against his shoulder, wrapping around his upper arm, her cheek against his back. "There, darling."
He turned over, reaching for her blindly, gathering her up into his arms, face against her hair, body to body and heart to heart. There were no words for this. There are no words for a miracle.
It was a long time before anyone spoke.
The room was quiet except for the radio, Fred Astaire singing on softly that he was caught night and day, day and night. Outside there was the rattle of Alma's Ford coming up the road, the sound of it choking back to stop under the trees. A piece of
wood popped in the stove. Sense returned.
Her hair was soft under his hand, brushing it back from her face. Her powder had rubbed off, and lipstick too, so beautiful and more human without the mask. Mitch found his voice. "Why?"
She didn't look up, only opened her fingers against his arm. "Well," she said lightly, "I suppose it's because I love you so terribly." But her voice broke.
"Oh."
Impossible and true, his miracle, his joy, his playmate. His friend and his partner in crime and his amazing, inexplicable lover. Stasi. There's only one thing you can say when you come up against magic like this, and Mitch waited a long moment in silence to find the right words, to make them good and true and real.
"Not tomorrow," he said. "Because it's Sunday and it's Christmas Day. And not Monday, because it's a federal holiday, but Tuesday. Will you marry me on Tuesday?"
She looked up and her lashes were wet as though she'd been crying too, dawning belief in her eyes. "Yes."
"Just yes?" Mitch blinked.
Stasi's lips parted in a wide smile, insouciant as ever, his bad girl, his dame, now and forever. "Yes, darling."
Epilogue
December 25, 1932
Lewis woke wrapped in a sense of complete well-being. As a child this had been the most perfect morning of the year, and now that he was a man it was still pretty much perfect. What could be better than waking up late in the snow light, listening to the radiators popping as the house warmed up, with Alma cuddled up under the comforter beside him? And there was something else too, the tantalizing smell of something baking.
Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 Page 105
