Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

She lashes her train high, letting it quiver in time with her steps.

Our feet are silent, we are silent. The stage is silent for all the intense motion at its center.

She spins away again, and I follow fast. She turns. I turn.

She suddenly slides close along my side again and we turn and turn, our sides undulating together and apart, together and apart.

After another intense round of these steps, she suddenly executes a slow slide down my shoulder and rolls on her back, her golden eyes never leaving my face, her lithe body curled into calculated surrender.

I know this is the climax of the dance, that we will hold our triumphant pose for a few seconds and accept the silent applause of our kind that our routine has won for centuries.

But this is the twenty-first century. Midnight Louie may be a fearless crime-fighter, conquering hero, and primal tiger of the night but he is also a canny suitor.

I move to the side and pick up the small something I have been guarding ever since the stage finally cleared and I could find it. My many schemes to ID the perp for later plucking weren’t needed when he gave himself away but that is no reason to let a jewel languish underfoot, unclaimed by the jewel to whom it belongs.

I pick it up delicately in my fangs and turn to Topaz.

Those glorious eyes had narrowed at my seeming desertion at so critical a moment, but now they flare with understanding and renewed passion.

She lies still as I approach her supine beauty. I bend down and with the most skilled ministrations of my teeth and tongue, reattach the precious topaz pendant on her collar so the set is whole again.

Now the dance is truly over.

Let the games begin!

Ciao Ciao Ciao

Max awoke, alive and well.

What do you know?

He awoke with Revienne draped over him, asleep and looking like a Botticelli angel. Of perhaps a couple dozen positions he could recall at this point, he was only physically capable of one or two so far. Apparently they’d sufficed.

He felt . . . mahvelous. Rested. Relaxed. He’d managed to satisfy this gorgeous woman with two game legs and a memory that couldn’t access High School Seduction One, much less the Kama-sutra.

He supposed, on reflection, that he owed an awful lot of that to her. As he owed his very survival. He felt the double afterglow of fulfillment and escaping mortal danger.

Not that he could trust her any more than before.

Still. He caressed her tousled yellow hair, kissed her pale temple.

Temple. The word gave him a twinge of something. Guilt?

Revienne stirred.

“I’m going to have to buy you clothes today,” he murmured into her Venus-pink ear. “I sorta hate to do that.”

“Sorta?”

“I’m reluctant to do that right now.”

She stretched, using him as a bed. “We could stay like this for weeks, couldn’t we?”

“Weeks,” he whispered back. “I’d be getting stronger every day. You wouldn’t have to work solo to satisfy me. I’d satisfy you every day from Sunday.”

“’Every day is nice, but why ‘from Sunday’? I do Sundays, Mr. Randolph. You can come with me after to church, to sanctify us.”

He gazed into her changeable gray-green eyes. “You have no sense of sin?”

“Over this? No. Do you?”

He did a quick examination of conscience. Where had that phrase come from? Ireland, probably, and the Church. He was aware of bitter bile rising from his gut. Ireland. The Church. Examination of conscience. He knew Revienne the psychiatrist could make hay of these phrases if she knew their effect on him.

An unwelcome thought, or maybe emotion, pricked his conscience. “You mean I could have been cheating just now, cheating on an unremembered woman?”

Her fingertips stroked his frown lines. “A man like you must have at least one woman somewhere. Cheating would be a way of life.”

“No. I can’t tolerate liars.” He frowned. “If there is such a woman, I’ll have to find her and find out if she and I can fall in love again.”

“And . . . this, you’d confess it?”

“Yes. If she asked.”

“And if you did confess?”

“If I’d been in love with her, she’d understand.”

He shook away the thought of this hypothetical woman. “What did you mean, ‘a man like me’?”

“Rich, clever, with enemies. Sexy even flat on his back with two broken legs.”

He shut his eyes. He was more than the sum of all those enviable things, flattering as the last evaluation had been.

If he’d been rich and powerful, as she’d assumed, his current situation had stripped any pride he’d taken in that anyway. He’d needed this encounter. Desperately. Needed her. A woman’s touch, and what passed for her love. He’d been wounded in body and mind.

He would not apologize to anyone for the human connection and bliss and self-confidence he’d gotten from her this past night, whatever she was, whether her intentions toward him were for good or ill. Why did he have to have this suspicious core? Why couldn’t he take anyone or any act at face value? He must be a very lonely man. Rich, yes. And with that came certain kinds of power, probably overrated.

He had the right instincts. Revienne had loved the expensive room service feast. Or had she loved his thoughtfulness, his thinking of her? That was free. That cost nothing but caring for another.

He looked at her again, remembering the moment of mutual orgasm. Thinking of hers, not his. How cool it was to be part of it, like he was rediscovering sex. Rediscovering himself.

She opened her eyes as his fingers stroked her brow. Caught him unawares.

“You are a very strange man, Mr. Randolph. You almost look right now as if you loved me.”

“This is only a situational liaison,” he said, smiling.

“Exactly what I’d call it, professionally. We are two, mostly healthy, heterosexual individuals forced by danger into close quarters. It is only natural that our will to live should manifest itself in an overwhelming attraction and sex. Classic.”

“I’m glad you didn’t say ‘underwhelming sex.’ Classic feels very good.”

“Yes,” she said. “It does. Are you still determined to be rid of me right away?”

“What about your sexual liaisons? A woman like you wouldn’t sleep alone unless she wanted to.”

“And what is ‘a woman like me’?”

“Intelligent, beautiful, sophisticated, compassionate.”

Her smile faded. She bit her lip on his last word. “You think this was a pity fuck.”

“Where’d you hear that phrase?”

“I’ve treated Americans before.”

“In bed?”

“Americans are not usually such a treat in bed. Nor Irishmen.”

“Based on your wide reading, or personal observation?”

“You think I’d tell a monogamous prig like you?”

“We don’t know for sure that I’m that warped. Check it out.”

“Again?”

She did.

He sat in the sleek Italian chair at the Hugo Boss Black collection shop in the Jamoli department store. This was where he’d bought his stressed champagne suede thigh-long jacket, to go with his slightly glossy gray casual pants and black silk T-shirt. The army-green silk shirt and toffee tie were in the Bally duffle bag at his feet. He’d been attracted to black, so avoided it. Might be a giveaway.

He still carried the cane, more as a weapon than a crutch. Necessity and the mountain had made a molehill of the process of rebuilding his leg muscles. He’d not be doing acrobatics for some time, but they were definitely in his future, he thought with some regret as Revienne came out from the dressing room wearing a Hugo Boss Black silk suit. The cut and sheen were fabulous, but it wasn’t pink, like her ruined one. Only Parisian designers tried something as surprising as that. The Swiss liked the colors of money, muted tones that whispered of great wealth.