I sobered when he slipped down to his knees, fingertips grazing my ribs, flanks, as he settled between my legs. I swallowed hard, looking down at the top of his head. His fair hair gleamed in the lamplight, soft and springy as a child’s.
He began to lap at me, tasting and teasing, his tongue rasping pleasurably warm on fragile skin and delicate muscle. Everywhere he touched, my skin seemed to flare into life. I closed my eyes, let my head fall back against the wall, giving in to it, giving in to all that delicious sensation. Fraser buried his head in my crotch, kissing the thin skin over the femoral artery, nuzzling me.
I reached down, fingering his hair, and it was so soft. I stroked him. The words to encourage him were lodged in my throat, and if they tore loose I was afraid I’d embarrass myself completely, so I settled for patting him.
His mouth closed over the head of my cock and he began to suck me. I made a stifled noise, just managing to stop the unholy cry that nearly tore out of me. I felt almost sick with the excitement and tension. Dear
doing
Talk about technique. But I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to think. I just wanted to feel. He was giving me so much to feel: a groundswell building, building, beginning to whip itself in a great rhythmic lashing whirlpool of a serpent’s tail. Swirling faster and faster, and then my hips bucked and it surged up and over. I was coming. Splashing sea spume everywhere, coming so hard and for so long you’d have thought I’d been celibate for weeks, months. A tidal wave of a climax.
In the wake of it, as Fraser rose, holding me in his arms, I thought dizzily,
Uncomfortably, I thought about this generosity, and I began to wonder what he’d want in return. I had a pretty good idea. I’d been all right with the possibility when we’d first started ripping our clothes off, but now I wasn’t so sure. That wasn’t fair, of course, but it was the truth. In fact, I was wondering what the hell had got into me.
Or, more precisely, what I had got into.
Fraser ran a gentle finger down my profile.
Okay, true, the danger would have been Fraser’s, and as such it was nonexistent, but the danger wasn’t the point. The point was that I’d had a fight with Noah and I’d raced off to have sex with the first stranger I could find.
Except…I hadn’t had a fight with Noah. I’d ended our relationship.
Except I couldn’t
And I had
“Was it that bad?” Fraser asked, aghast.
“No, no.” I wiped hastily at the wet spilling over my cheeks. “It was…the best. Seriously.” I managed a smile. “You weren’t exaggerating.”
He couldn’t help looking a little smug, his confidence bouncing right back, though his eyes were still concerned. “You want to tell me about it now?”
I laughed shakily. “I don’t know. Isn’t that how we got into this mess?”
Fraser chuckled. “True. Very true.” He reached out and brushed his thumb against my cheekbone, curiously examining the tear that glistened there. “Anyway, not such a mess, is it?”
“Isn’t it?” I wiped my eyes again. I glanced past his shoulder and froze. I’d left the curtains open about two feet. And neither Fraser nor I had given them a second thought. Anyone standing in the pool yard would have a perfect, if narrow, view of the inside of my room. And someone
As disturbing as that was…it got worse.
I gawked at the figure staring in at us. I
“Uhhhhh…” I gargled, my gaze fixed on the pale figure still hovering outside the door.
“A what?” Fraser asked, smiling down at me.
“There’s someone watching us.”
“
The white figure scrambled noisily over the wooden fence and sprinted away. I heard the pound of feet down the courtyard, the muffled, iron clang of the gate just as Fraser wrenched open the door to the patio, nearly throwing it off its track.
I had to stop to drag my jeans back on before I could follow him outside. By then Fraser was down at the end of the courtyard. His shadow smacked the gate and then cradled its hand, cursing quietly, which I took to mean our Peeping Ptah had escaped unscathed.
I gazed uneasily up at the wall of lit and unlit windows overlooking the swimming pool. Nobody home? If they were, they weren’t paying us any attention. I glanced around the empty yard. The scattered towels had been picked up, the chairs and tables tidied. The underwater lights illuminated the white cement belly of the empty pool, the pale, glimmering steps. It appeared unearthly in the dark night, like the watery entry chamber into another world. The courtyard itself was silent.
“The son of a bitch got away,” Fraser called, loping back my way.
“Did you see where he went?”
“The parking lot.”
“Did he drive off?”
He huffed a laugh. “What, in his monster mobile?”
“I mean if he’s still there—”
“He ran across the parking lot and I lost sight of him behind the McDonald’s.” Fraser followed me through the little gate in the fence around the patio. “That
Fraser’s cheeks were flushed with the cold and his sprint down the courtyard. “That mummy costume? Yeah. Freaky.”
“You should have seen him from the front. His eyes were glowing red.”
“Or hers.”
Our eyes met. “No way,” I said. “Not if you’re suggesting that was Merneith.”
“You have to admit this is a little out of the way for the average trick-or-treater.”
“That was no woman. He was too big for one thing. For another, did you watch him vault the patio fence?”
“This isn’t much of a fence. Karen or Jeannie could do it. My granny could do it.”
“Hold on. You’re not seriously suggesting—”
“No.” Fraser flashed me a dazzling smile. “It would make a great story, but no.”
“Good, because among other things, the princess isn’t wrapped up in swaddling, and her remains are about a third the size of that monster.
“I know. That was my thought too.” Fraser seemed remarkably cheerful about the whole incident. I, on the other hand, still felt seriously creeped out. How long had that weirdo been watching us? “I’m guessing our segment on the princess is pretty big news around here. Someone was probably trying to get in on the act.”
“Except this isn’t your room. It’s mine.”
He considered that. “Well, then someone probably heard you’re doing an article on the princess and same deal.”
“But what’s the point?”
“The point?”
“How can someone ‘get in on the act’ of an article in
I tucked my shirt inside my jeans. “You could say that.”
“Which part are you upset about? The BJ or the mummy watching me blow you?”
I groaned and put my hands over my face. “God. Don’t.”
“Well, jeez.” Fraser sounded astonished. “What are you getting so worked up about? You think the mummy’s going to go tell your boyfriend?”
I lowered my hands. “Could you just not say anything else?”
“All night?”
“All…night?” I stared at him blankly.
“We’re still going to dinner, aren’t we?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why?” He looked so disappointed, I felt guilty. More guilty than I already felt, which was not a bad trick.
“Because…well, because.”
“Because you had a fight with your boyfriend and you let me—”
I put a hand up and he stopped. “Could you not keep saying that? Anyway, we didn’t have a fight.”
“Oh.”
My stomach suddenly growled so loudly that I half-expected to see an alien poke its head out of my belly.
Fraser gave a short laugh. “Well, if he gets a vote,
“I guess I do need to eat something,” I admitted. I heard the echo of that and blushed, but Fraser let it go.
“Great. Grab your jacket. I saw a steakhouse about half a block from the hotel. We could walk it, if you want. Talk.”
So that’s what we did. I grabbed my jacket and we walked over to the Carving Knife. We passed dimly lit shop windows decorated with paper goblins, piles of carved pumpkins and mannequins dressed as witches. Now and then we spotted kids dressed like cartoon characters or superheroes flitting across streets. No one went for gypsies or witches or ghosts anymore. It was all Harry Potter and Lady Gaga and the blue people from
The restaurant was busy but not packed, and we got a table right away. The waiter arrived to take our drink order.
Fraser ordered another Jack Daniels. I said, “I’ll just stick with the iced water.”
“Water?” Fraser asked after the waiter departed with our order.
“I don’t really have a head for alcohol,” I admitted.
“Are you an alcoholic?” He asked it in such a straightforward, understanding way, as though he really cared and would be willing to accept any confession, that the question wasn’t offensive.
“No. Nothing so interesting. I just have a really low threshold for alcohol. A couple of drinks and I’m dancing on tables.”
“That sounds promising.”
I laughed. “Slight exaggeration, but I’ve learned the hard way to go easy on the booze.” Especially because Noah had zero tolerance for the silliness alcohol brought out in me.
I didn’t have the energy to pretend I didn’t know what he meant. As much as Noah would loathe the idea that I sat here spilling my guts to a stranger—never mind everything else I’d spilled—I did need to talk. I felt like I hadn’t talked, really talked, to anyone in two years. Not since Noah and I got together.
“I think I broke up with my lover.”
“You
“I broke up with him, but I don’t think he believes it.”
“Do you?” Fraser’s eyes were intent.
“I think…maybe I do.” Unexpectedly my eyes stung, and I had to reach for my water. I took a couple of sips.
“I’m sorry,” Fraser said. He sounded comfortingly sincere. “What happened?”
“You mean aside from the thing that happened in my hotel room?”
He snickered. “Sounds like a fifties B film.
.”
I laughed too, but feebly. “The sequel to
.”
“No pun intended, right? Anyway, I get the feeling that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t already broken it off with…what’s his name?”
“Noah.” My throat closed and I said huskily, “Dr. Noah Chadwick. I’ve been in love with him practically since I started teaching at Claremont McKenna College.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Four years.” Just like that I was telling Fraser everything. How much I’d admired Noah long before we ever met and how kind and supportive he’d been to a very junior professor and blah, blah, blah.
The waiter came with Fraser’s drink in time to stop his eyes from glazing over.
“Sure you won’t have something?” Fraser asked.
“Maybe a glass of wine with our meal.”
“Then I guess we better figure out what we’re eating.”
The waiter sighed. We looked hastily at the menus again. I was too hungry to be picky. I went for the porterhouse with mushrooms, a side of baked potato with the works, and grilled veggies. Fraser started by ordering an onion loaf. Then he went for the prime rib, rare, and added a lobster tail as an afterthought.
“Lobster in Wyoming? Brave man,” I observed.
“I
The waiter and I were respectfully silent.
“You were going to order wine,” Fraser reminded me, handing his menu over at last. He didn’t say it as though I was scatterbrained and needed a keeper, but like he was attentive and looking out for my comfort.
“You know, I think I’ll have a cosmo after all.”
The waiter removed the menu from my hand before I could do further damage and retreated. Fraser took a hearty pull on Jack Daniels. “Wow. So your dream guy is a fifty-five-year-old anthropologist whose idea of a rip-roaring time is his mother’s garden party?”
“He looks like George Clooney.”
“
“I’m just teasing you.” His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. It was pretty attractive.
I started in again. I told him about the huge scandal of Lionel’s affair with his TA, and how I’d basically got Noah on the rebound, and how everyone said it wouldn’t last, and how afraid I was that Lionel wanted Noah back—and that Noah wanted Lionel too.