As she turned Syd caught a glint of silver; it took him another second to register the tiny, delicate circle that pierced the rim of her left nostril. A nose ring. Jesus. It only served to underscore her aura of mystery, an exotic addition to her already overwhelming mystique.
Syd tore his gaze away and turned to Jules. Jules looked like Syd felt: slack-jawed, bug-eyed with shock. All he needed was a spittle-cup. Syd looked around the room, saw the exact same expression on every guy in the place.
And the other women . . .
The heat of every male glance was offset a dozenfold by the arctic glare of their companions. Singly or in pairs, alone or mated, contempt and competition slam-danced in her wake as the mystery woman polarized and galvanized the room. Heads turned, eyes averted, elbows jammed ribs even as sneers fought to mask freshly torpedoed egos.
For her part, the stranger seemed to acknowledge their defeat even as she negated them. The message was clear, with every step she took. She was more than the most beautiful woman in the room.
She was the only woman in the room.
It was sexual Darwinism at its finest, and the facts spoke for themselves. This woman was no mere cycle slut, no brainless black-leather bimbo on the prowl for cock. She was a goddess in motion, a pheromonal cyclone of sexual heat. The most spectacular female, without a doubt, ever to set foot in this dive.
And she was coming closer.
Oh god. Syd gulped, watching her move. Feeling his flesh constrict around him. Oh god. Feeling completely unworthy in her presence. His gaze dropped down to his lap, which began to stir with a life of its own. Given his own snowball's chance in hell, he couldn't imagine a more irrelevant sensation.
Suddenly, he didn't want to see the lucky sonofabitch who had come with her, or whom she had come to meet. He knew that he would hate the miserable prick, purely as a matter of principle. No matter how cool that prick might turn out to be. . . .
And that was when the loneliness kicked in; worse yet, the futility of even being smitten with the urge. Because, yes, he had lusted out of his league before. And, yes, it was always a painful thing, the perfect complement to that I-am-a-piece-of-shit feeling. To crave the unattainable was to court disaster, the total destruction of his hard-won self-esteem. He didn't need, right now, to feel any worse about himself.
Any more than she needed to be stared at by him, he realized, and felt even more like a fool. It was entirely possible that she'd come all the way out here in the hope of not getting stared at by every unemployed steelworker in the state of Pennsylvania. Already, the smoky air was filled with apelike hoots and whistles and hollers. It made him, as always, deeply embarrassed for his gender. He wondered if she knew what she was getting herself into.
In that moment, he resolved to break the chain. Stop staring. Help turn the tide back to its own damn business. He had a few things to discuss with Jules, anyway. Like his sanity, for instance. Now was as good a time as any to stop torturing himself.
Having resolved all that, he turned around to look at her again.
Only to discover that she was now looking at him.
FOR A SECOND, his mind totally emptied of thought: like a flashpot had gone off between his ears, blinding his inner eye. Then thought and sight returned as one, and he was watching her scrutinize him from ten feet away: head cocked slightly to one side, one long finger absently tracing her lower lip. Her nostrils flared, just the tiniest bit, as if she were tracking on the basis of some all-but-imperceptible scent. The nose ring gleamed and sparkled in the dim light.
Then she started to smile—with her eyes locked on his—and he got the very strange feeling that she'd somehow found what she was looking for. And he realized that he'd been mistaken about at least one other thing.
She knew exactly what she was doing.
He, on the other hand, didn't have a goddam clue. "Whoa," he muttered under his breath as she took one step toward him. The word didn't begin to sum up how he felt. Panicked. Amped. Exhilarated. Confused. "Urn," he said, and then she was another step closer.
He looked abruptly away, stared hard at his lap, his knees, his boots, the floorboards beneath. He could feel her eyes upon him still. It brought sweat prickling to the surface of his skin.
Look at her, he told himself, and found that he could not. He shot another quick glance at Jules, found that Jules was staring back at him, no help at all. Suddenly, he knew that the heat on his skin was not her eyes alone.
All eyes were upon him.
Upon them both.
And then he felt her proximity, the heat of her skin, as she took that final step. He could smell her: a steamy, luxuriant musk that unraveled what little remained of his composure. He could feel his pulse thud through his borning erection, a terse yet jubilant echo of his own hammering heart.
When at last he looked up, she was already beside him, leaning into the bar. She smiled at him, nailed his gaze once and for all. Her voice, when she spoke, was silken, lethal.
"Hi," she said. "Is that your brain?"
"What?"
She pointed to his drink. It took a second to track. "Ah . . ." he said, and numbly nodded yes.
Again, she smiled. "May I . . . ?"
And before he could answer, she reached across to take the glass and raise it, ever so slowly, to those lips.
But when her tongue snaked out—glistening, frighteningly long—to scoop the lump of congealed and bleeding Baileys from the glass, he could stand it no longer.
He started to laugh.
Amusement gleamed in her emerald eyes as she swallowed. "Now," she said, "you'll have to tell me why you're laughing."
"Umm . . ." Laughing some more, slowly shaking his head. "I guess it's maybe because I'm in shock."
"Ah." Waiting for him to elaborate.
"Because . . . umm . . . I don't understand what's going on?" He hoped that, by his phrasing it as a question, she might show him some mercy.
No dice. "And what is going on?"
He laughed again, harder this time. "You're not gonna give me a fucking ounce of slack, are ya?"
At last, she laughed as well. "Well . . . no." Her eyes positively danced. Her laugh was deep and rich and dirty. What a surprise.
"Okay." The simple act of making her laugh broke the tension at some subtle but critical level. "Maybe it's because you just swallowed my brain, and I don't even know who you are."
"Ah." She took the bait, proffered her hand.
"My name is Nora."
And Syd didn't know what else to do, so he took her hand into his own. And the rush of that first contact sent a physical shudder through the muscles of his back, made the filament nerves running down his spine glow green with the light from her eyes. He looked into those eyes, searching for some clue as to her intentions, saw only wry amusement and the purest molten fire.
And he wanted to say my divorce is final. The wreckage of my life has begun to settle, and I think I might be ready to try and live again.
And he wanted to say I almost died today. Twice. Maybe three times, if you count that letter. And I am such a mass of scar tissue and damage that it's a miracle I can feel you at all.
And he wanted to say just don't lie to me. Please. That's the only thing I ask.
Because it's the one thing I don't think I could survive.
But he couldn't. And because he couldn't bring himself to find or speak the words, couldn't cough them up from the depths of his soul and hack them out into the world, he found himself at a crossroads. What he feared— more than anything—was that this would all vaporize should he try to hold on to it. What he wanted—more than anything—was to believe that a moment such as this could actually be this direct and real.
As real as the hand he now held in his own.
That hand was warm and slender, surprisingly calloused and strong. It hovered expectantly, neither giving nor taking, but simply awaiting his next move. Syd didn't know what else to do, so he brought it slowly to his lips, kissing the web of
flesh that joined finger to finger to hand.
It was clear, from her eyes, that she approved.
"Nora," he said, her name thick and powerful in his throat. "So what are we doing?"
"That remains to be seen," she told him, smiling. "But I think we're off to an excellent start."
6
IT DIDN'T TAKE long, in the grand scheme of things, to move from point A to point B.
Nora was nothing if not direct. She had no interest in small talk, past the barest fundamentals: his name, his beverage of choice, did he live alone. Syd found that this was not a problem, so long as she kept touching him like that. Thus far, she had displayed no inclination to stop.
It started with the barest of fingertip contact as he handed her her drink. Nora drank Southern Comfort, neat. As he raised the glass to her grasp Nora's little finger curled into the palm of his hand, the nail grazing the calloused skin there, then raking outward as she withdrew. Her fingernail was long and sharp, and the resulting sensation set off a chain reaction in Syd's nervous system that left him visibly shaking.
He sloshed the shot glass as she took it, spilling a dollop of sweet liquor on his fingers. Nora took his hand in hers, brought it to her lips. He watched her tongue emerge, soft and pink and darting, to lick them clean.
When Syd could see straight again, he looked at her. Nora was smiling.
By the time the band took the stage at a quarter past ten, it had started to get truly disgusting, so they moved from the bar to a booth near the back. It was dark and warm, semiprivate and cozy; and from there, things heated up with mind-bending speed.
The first kiss, for example. From the moment they sat her lips were upon his, bluntly bypassing all pretense of seduction, the better to get to the heart of the act itself. There was no mickeymouse subterfuge, no jockeying for position or storming of the psychosexual ramparts; just a straightforward escalation of intensity that left Syd simultaneously unnerved and elated.
Nora was the kind of kisser for whom the act commanded total concentration, and absolute devotion. He could feel her soul moving through the delicate interplay of lips, the perpetual subtle shift and glide of her head: nuzzling sideways and leaning in to deliver one liquid punchline after another; then drawing back, to taunt and tease, to let her teeth and the soft pointed tip of her tongue provoke him to passionate attack.
She was aggressive, but she knew when to relent, in fact had an exquisite sense of give-and-take. She liked to have her mouth invaded. She liked to let her mouth invade. Her kisses consisted of peaks and valleys and long slipsliding continuums, wherein nothing existed but his mouth and hers and the hot swirling dance in which they were entangled.
And then she would start to move her hands, ever-so-slowly; and it was as if time had shifted gears and he could glimpse all the subtle mechanisms at play. Suddenly, time was measured in the long, slow seconds it took for her graceful fingertips to glide through his hair, luxuriantly trace the outer whorls of his ear, then slide back to settle on the nape of his neck, where they would inscribe intricate little patterns at the base of his skull.
It was at that moment that the world went spinning away, only to return a microsecond later, strangely amplified. It was as if all of his senses had expanded a bit beyond their normal boundaries, rendering his impressions of the woman before him and the room around him in over-saturated clarity.
And then he would remember that he had hands, too, and the universe would instantly expand to contain the multiple dimensions of the game: one hand cupping the back of her head, basking in the richness of her hair; the other exploring the strong muscles of her back, the delicate ridge of her spine, the long graceful slope to her ass.
And all the while, their mouths would be moving: breathlessly working in tandem, wordlessly communicating their intention. And when her other hand came up to stroke his chest, squeeze one nipple erect inside his shirt, he would run his hand along the firm high crest of her hip, and her fervent mouth would grind into him hard as her body pressed flush against him.
And then he would submerge again, coaxing a moan from deep inside her, fingers circling and probing the secret space inside her jacket in the seconds before she peeled out of it. Occasionally they would break for a moment, come up for air and each other's eyes.
They had just done both when the bass drum thudded, and the voice boomed out from the p.a.'s speakers:
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PLEASE WELCOME THE FINEST BLUES SINGER THIS SIDE OF THE MISSISSIPPI! LET'S HEAR IT FOR QUEEN BEE AND THE BLUE HORNET BAND!!!"
The applause that followed was thunderous. Queen Bee was a house favorite, and the place was packed. But Syd was more than a little surprised to see Nora pull back and break the spell. She let out a war whoop, joining in the general clamor. She beamed at him.
"Wow," he began. He stared at her, slowly regaining his senses. "You know . . . ?"
And then his voice was lost as the band kicked in, a full-tilt boogie that walloped against the walls. There were dozens of folks who had come for one reason. They took over the dance floor and made it their own. The tune was a smokin' instrumental: no Queen Bee as yet, just the Hornet Band a-buzzin'. Guitar Mark's gray fedora was pulled down over his eyes as he dug down deep into the evening's first solo. He had a face like Satch from the Bowery Boys, but damn that boy could wail.
"YOU KNOW THIS BAND?" Syd hollered out. He had no other choice.
She nodded with vigor. "I LOVE QUEEN BEE!"
He grinned, shook his head. "I KNEW THERE WAS A REASON I LIKED YOU!"
She laughed and snuggled in close, brought her lips to his ear. "We need another drink," she said, just barely loud enough to be heard. "And then you need to dance with me."
He drew back for a second, made a broad comic grimace, then shook his head sadly and mouthed the words I don't dance.
She drew him back. "You do now," she whispered.
At that moment, her hand landed on his thigh and squeezed, thumb sliding up the inseam. Syd sucked in breath, shut his eyes, let them open. It was definitely time for a drink. He found his gaze casting around for the waitress. Jane was at the next table; he brought a hand up and waved. When she looked at him, he saw her eyes were dark with disapproval. Then she nodded, finished up her business, collected her tip and headed toward them. Nora turned just as Jane drew near.
Abruptly, Nora rose.
Syd looked up, startled. Her hand left his crotch, took hold of his as she stood. He could feel the tension coursing through her. She pulled, and he rose as well, confused. He looked at Jane.
Jane had stopped dead in her tracks.
And though Syd couldn't see Nora's face, Jane visibly stiffened, then averted her eyes. Was it fear that he saw there? He wasn't sure. Without another word, Nora brushed past her, heading for the dance floor with Syd in tow. He tried to meet Jane's gaze as he passed, could not. Nora was leading him too quickly away.
And then he was weaving through the crowd, following her, in awe of the swath that she cut through the masses as he trailed in her wake. The back of her dress was deep-cut and laced, scooping down the exquisite expanse of flesh clear to her sacral dimples. As he moved he found himself torn between the contours of her ass and the sight of all those eyes upon him: familiar faces, transformed by surprise and naked envy, viewing him in an entirely new light. The light her proximity cast upon him.
And he suddenly remembered not wanting to see the prick she'd come with, or come to see. Remembered what an automatic response that was, how deep it ran, and how ashamed it made him feel. Now somehow, in the course of the evening, he had become that prick. For all of its perks, it was not an entirely pleasant place to be.
He could see it in the eyes of the good ol' boys, clustered around the bar. He could see it in the eyes of the small hairy man, his shapely companions for the moment all-but-forgotten. He could even see it in his good pal Tommy's eyes: a cold spark of jealousy and pain, beneath the plastic smile and supportive thumbs-up gesture.
He wo
ndered, for a moment, what it was that Jane had seen.
Then Nora was bellying up to the bar, the crowd magically evaporating before her, re-forming at her periphery. He sidled up beside her, and looked in her eyes for the first time since they'd left the table. They sparkled with mischief, only barely contained. At least one significant factor hadn't changed. But there was something else there, too: something hard, and harder to place. It was the knife-edged glint of experience, and it summed up her feelings for the whole room and everyone in it, save himself.
"TWO DOUBLE SHOTS OF COMFORT!" she called across the bar to Jules. He nodded, shot a quick glance at Syd. Syd looked at Nora. "For us," she said.
He hesitated a second, then leaned close to her ear. "I don't do shots," he said. "They make me go away."
"Relax," she assured him. "You ain't goin' nowhere."
Then Jules was there, with his customary flourish, dispensing the rich red liquor. Nora carried no purse or wallet, save a little woven drawstring bag she dangled from one wrist. From this she withdrew a ten-spot, then slapped it on the bar just as the Hornets brought their jam to a close. By the time they all finished applauding, the ten was gone, and her change had replaced it. She left it where it lay, turned back to Syd.
"To us," she said softly, in the pocket of silence.
And raised her glass to his.
The sweet whiskey burned a track down his gullet, made a beeline for his medulla oblongata. Shots always went straight to his head, and this one was no exception. He could hear the applause well up again, Guitar Mark's voice shouting something over it. Over the heads of the crowd, he saw the Queen Bee herself take the stage. "Come on!" Nora said, taking his hand once more.
And then they were wending once again through the crowd—up onto the dance floor, toward the front of the stage—just as the band broke into its slow shuffling four-bar intro. Queen Bee positioned herself behind the mic stand: a big wide powerful-looking angelfaced black woman, beautiful and gifted and strong. Her face and voice had the kind of character that takes lifetimes to accumulate. When she sang, all the world's sweet sorrow, heartbreak and pain found embodiment in that voice, that soul.
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