Ted Bell - Tsar

She leaned forward and touched her lips to the tip of him, then took a deep breath and touched him lightly with her darting tongue, first tracing a small circle, then lapping at the length of him, licking him, no longer ladylike, just greedy and hungry and thirsty, her lips moving over the taut veins, marveling at the steely flesh so soft and yet so hard. She pushed her head forward, flattening her face against him, and felt his hands at the back of her head, his strong fingers entwining themselves in her hair, guiding her movements.

“Asia,” he murmured, and she heard him from her submerged depths, heard, too, the raindrops beating hard against the roof and shutters as the storm finally broke wide open overhead, heard fierce winds screeching around the eaves, a tumult of thunder crashing somewhere above, not far above, and she lay back against the ruby silk cushions, hooked one long leg over the arm of the chaise, and waited for him.

“You certainly could have fooled me, Mr. Hawke,” she said, laughing, catching her breath, and beckoning him toward her with a curling index finger.

Skin on skin, he moved on her, his weight suddenly upon the length of her, a hardness probing first outside, rubbing against the drenched lips, then pushing deep inside her as she cried out and raised her hips, realigning them, and then he was within her, fully, searching for more and more of her, as if there were no limit to this seeking.

A groan rumbled from the back of his throat, and then his hands were beneath her, clenched, gripping, cradling, willing her to come with him to the next level, too strong to wait, too gentle to force her, his mouth finding hers, crushing her lips, and then his head thrown back in abandonment and surprise as he felt her nearing and then reaching the moment, both of them crying out as the shutters at the foot of the bed were suddenly ripped open by the tearing wind, and the hard slanting rain came down upon them like a waterfall.

“Oh, God, Alex.”

He looked down at her lovely face, quizzically, and saw her smile, breathless and panting, and heard something resembling laughter bubbling up from inside her, as she shook her head from side to side, her face full of delight and wonder, blinking the streaming raindrops from her eyes.

“We’re getting drenched, you know,” Hawke said, his face buried in her hair, his lips pressed against her ear.

“Don’t worry, darling, this can’t last forever.”

“It can’t?” Alex Hawke said, raising his head and smiling down at her, wanting her again already.

Fast Eddie Falco, the septuagenarian security guy at Stoke’s condo, One Tequesta Point, jerked his head up like a startled chicken. He dropped a worn paperback book into his lap and stared at the vision before him. One of his residents, the human mountain known as Stokely Jones, had just emerged from the north elevator looking like a presenter on that MTV awards show.

“Hiya, Stoke,” Eddie said, eyeballing his friend from head to toe and wolf-whistling through his remaining teeth.

“Good evening, Edward,” Stoke said, pausing to toss his GTO keys into the air and catch them behind his back. “How good do I look? Tell the truth.”

Stoke turned around to let Eddie get a good look at him. He was sporting a white satin dinner jacket over a black ruffled shirt with a sky-blue silk bow tie and matching cummerbund, patent leather shoes on his feet, size 14 EE.

“How do you look?” Eddie said, rubbing his grizzled chin. “I’ll tell you how you look. You look like you’re going to a goddamn rap-star coronation or something. Who’s getting crowned tonight? Scruff Daddy? P. Diddly? One of those characters? Hell’s his name, Boob Job? That Poop Dog fella? Those guys change their names so often I don’t know how they ever get any damn mail.”

Stoke laughed out loud. Poop Dog? Boob Job?

Eddie went back to his book. He was sitting in his highly customized golf cart with a stone-cold stogie jammed between his teeth, reading one of his treasured paperback mystery novels. He was in his reserved parking place, which happened to be right next to where Stokely parked his metallic black-raspberry 1965 GTO convertible.

Stokely’s GTO could, according to its owner, do the standing quarter-mile in less than eight seconds, NHRA certified. Eddie was mildly impressed. God knew the damn thing was loud enough to make a deaf man’s ears bleed. He braced himself, waiting for his pal Stoke to crank up the big mill any second now.

Eddie much preferred his own vehicle, a vintage machine built in the early sixties by Harley-Davidson, back in the glory days when Harley had the wild-assed notion of building golf carts. Totally custom job, and Fast Eddie had poured his heart and soul into his baby, one of a kind, a classic. Only one Stoke had ever seen with an actual Rolls-Royce grille on the front. Sure, it was unusual transportation for security work but right at home among the high rollers on the little island of Brickell Key.

“Poop Dog?” Stoke said again with a grin, headed for his car, twirling the keys around his finger. “Is that what you said? Poop Dog? ”

“Whatever,” Eddie said, not even looking up from his novel. “You know who I’m talkin’ about, I forget what the hell his name is.”

“ Snoop Dogg happens to be the cat’s name,” Stoke said, unlocking the driver’s-side door. “And no, it ain’t him.”

“So, who’s getting crowned?”

“Fancha. She’s the opening act at the opening night of a new joint over on the beach. Elmo’s.”

“Club El Morocco. S’posed to be very upscale according to an article in the Herald this morning. Russian money, I hear. Hold on to your wallet.”

Stoke climbed in behind the wheel. The big V8 roared to life as he turned the key and simultaneously hit the switch that lowered the ragtop.

“What are you reading?” he asked Eddie over the low rumble of the 541-cubic-inch engine, leaning out his window. He liked to let his baby warm up for a minute or two, get her juices flowing.

“What?” Eddie cried, cupping his hand behind his ear. The acoustics inside One Tequesta’s garage did wonders for a 600-horsepower engine.

“What book are you reading?” Stoke shouted.

“Bright Orange for the Shroud,” he said, holding it up.

“Again? We already read that.”

Stoke and Eddie were the founding members of a two-man book club, the John D. MacDonald Men’s Reading Society. They confined themselves to the twenty-one greatest works of literature ever written, namely the Travis McGee novels by the master himself. Sometime ago, they’d even driven the GTO up to Lauderdale on a kind of pilgrimage. They’d had lunch at Pier 66 and then visited the holy shrine, slip F-18 at Bahia Mar, home to McGee’s houseboat, the Busted Flush .

Stoke backed out of his spot and stopped opposite Fast Eddie’s cart. “We read Bright Orange last week, Eddie. Remember?”

“Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m reading it again. I like it.”

“I’m already halfway through Darker Than Amber, ” Stoke said, putting the Hurst four-speed shifter into neutral and blipping the throttle, giving Eddie a blast of pure mechanical adrenaline. “You better catch up.”

“Don’t you worry about me, pal,” Eddie said, face already buried back in the book with a babe in a black bikini on the cover. “I happen to be an Evelyn Wood graduate.”

Stoke was about to pop the clutch and burn a little rubber when something occurred to him. He hit the brakes.

“Hey, listen up a second, Eddie. I just thought of something. Serious.”

Eddie put the book down and said, “Now what?”