F. Paul Wilson - Reprisal

Lisl was sure some of her fellow faculty members and their wives tsked and shook their heads when they saw them together downtown, but no one had told her to cool it and drop him. She was sure it would have been a different story if Rafe were doing graduate work in her department. Their relationship then would be perceived as a blatant conflict of interest and she had no doubt that Harold Masterson, as chairman of math, would have come down on her like a ball of fire. But since Rafe's work was overseen by the psychology department, their relationship was tolerated, viewed not with disdain, but rather with wonder and astonishment.

Go ahead and stare , she'd think with a smile. I've got mine, you get yours .

But did she really have hers? Or was she only fooling herself?

She loved him. She didn't want to. She hadn't wanted to place herself in that vulnerable position again, but there was no helping it. And she couldn't help but wonder how he felt about her. Was he stringing her along, playing with her?

Lisl paused as she stood before Rafe's door, unannounced. He was so young—she could not let herself lose sight of that fact. Would he tire of her? Could he ever be truly satisfied with her? Was somebody else inside with him now?

Only one way to find out.

Taking a deep breath, Lisl knocked. And waited. No one came to the door. She tried again with no result. Maybe he wasn't home. Or maybe he wasn't answering the door because…

Better not to know.

But as Lisl was turning away, the door opened. Rafe stood there with dripping hair and a bath towel around his waist. He seemed genuinely surprised.

"Lisl! I thought I heard the door but I never dreamed—"

"If—-if this is a bad time—"

"No! Not at alü Come in! Is anything wrong?"

The whiteness of his condo never failed to strike her—the walls, the furniture, the rugs, the picture frames and most of the canvases within them—white.

"No," she said, stepping in. "Why should there be?"

"Well, it's just that this is so unlike you."

She felt her confidence draining off. "I'm sorry. I should have called."

"Don't be ridiculous. This is great!"

"Are you really glad to see me?"

"Can't you tell?"

She glanced down at his towel and saw how it was tented up in front of him. She smiled, her spirits lifting. That was for her. All for her. Hesitantly, she reached out and loosened the knotted portion of the towel at his hip. It fell away.

Yes. For her. Just for her.

She stroked him ever so gently with her fingernails, then knelt before him.

"I don't deserve this," Lisl murmured.

"Don't deserve what?" Rafe whispered in her ear.

She sighed. She was so happy and at peace now she could almost cry. The exhausted afterglow of their lovemaking was almost as delicious as the lovemaking itself.

"Feeling this good."

"Don't say that," he told her. "Don't ever say that you don't deserve to feel good."

They lay side by side, skin to skin, on his white king-size bed. The waning sun was beaming through the window, suffusing the pallor of the room with red-gold light.

"Want me to pull the shade?" Rafe said.

Lisl laughed. "A little late for that now, don't you think? Whoever's out there looking has already gotten quite an eyeful."

"No worry about that."

Right. Rafe's bedroom was on the second floor. There were no other windows in sight from the bed.

Making love in the day or with a light on had bothered Lisl at first, back when she had been a pudgette. She'd preferred then to cloak the excess fatty baggage on her body in darkness. But now that she had slimmed down some, she didn't mind. In fact, it was kind of exciting to exhibit her new, trimmer proportions for him.

"You've lost more weight," he said, running a hand along her flank.

"You like?"

"I like you any way you want to look. What's more important is how you like the thinner you."

"I love it!"

"Then that's all that matters. I'm for anything that gets you thinking better of yourself."

"And I'm for anything that makes you enjoy looking at me as much as I enjoy looking at you."

Lisl loved looking at Rafe. He'd told her that his mother had been French, his father Spanish. His features favored the Spanish side—his almost-black hair, the thick lashes around his eyes, and the irises of a brown so very dark they, too, seemed almost black. His smooth caf6 au lait skin was utterly flawless. She could have resented that skin. Its perfection was almost feminine. She could have wanted it for herself.

But there was nothing feminine about the way he approached sex. Lisl had only made love to one other man in her life: Brian, who she considered, in her limited experience, to be good a lover. After her first night with Rafe, she had learned just how limited her experience had been. She thought that maybe there was some truth after all to that old cliche about Latin lovers.

He put his face between her breasts.

"You're a Prime. You deserve to feel good about yourself. You've allowed the host of lesser creatures around you to determine what you think of yourself."

Primes—Rafe had called them Creators when he'd broached the subject after Metropolis in the Hidey-hole Tavern, but that had been for simplicity's sake. In private he divided the world into Primes and everyone else. Primes, he'd told her, were unique people, like prime numbers, divisible only by one or by themselves. It was his favorite topic. He never tired of it. Always pointing out examples. After weeks of listening to him, Lisl was beginning to be convinced that it might have some validity.

"I'm not a Prime," she said. "What have I created?"

Rafe was a Prime, no doubt about that— Homo superior in every way. But Lisl? Not a chance.

"Nothing yet, but you will. I sense it in you. But let's get back to what you think you don't deserve. What don't you deserve? And why not?"

"Don't you think…" she began, then paused as Rafe nuzzled one of her nipples and sent new chills up and down that side of her body, "a person should have to do something special to merit feeling so happy and content? It's only fair."

Rafe lifted his head and looked into her eyes.

"You deserve the best of everything," Rafe said. "As I said, you're a Prime. And after the kind of life you've had until now, after what you've put up with, you're long overdue for some good feelings."

"My life hasn't been so bad."

Rafe flopped onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

"Right. Sure. A lifetime of being knocked down and kicked around by the people who should have been supporting you and encouraging you to keep going. That's a long way from 'not so bad.'"

"Since when do you know so much about my life?"

"I know what you've told me. I can guess the rest."

Lisl rose up on one elbow and looked down at him.

"Okay, wiseguy. Tell me all about me."

"All right. How's this? Nothing you ever did really pleased your parents."

"Wrong. They—"

Rafe overrode her. "They were always on your case, weren't they? Even though all through grammar school and high school you got straight A's. Right?"

"Right, but—"

"And I'll bet your project took first place at the science fair, didn't it? Even though you did it all on your own. With no help from your folks—who always seemed to have better things to do—you beat out all those other kids whose fathers and brothers and uncles—who also had better things to do, by the way, but who gave a damn—did most of the work for them. And how did your folks respond when you came home and showed them your blue ribbon? I'll bet it was 'That's nice, dear, but do you have a date for the prom yet?' Am I far off?"

She laughed. "Oh, God! How do you know?"