weight was going from fun to not.
'Okay, playtime's over, let me up.'
He rose, sighing, and she laughed again; she had a beautiful view of part of a sunset, if she craned her head up until her neck hurt. The way she was positioned she also couldn't rise, unless she was willing to roll onto the floor and run around with everything swaying and/or exposed.
'Get me back on my feet, would you, honey?'
'Oh, perhaps I should leave you like that while I make dinner. You look quite fetching that way, ma belle.'
Ellen laughed again. 'Another time, when I don't need to pee. Earwax! Earwax!'
'Ah, before the omnipotent power of the mighty safe word, the evil sorcerer has no choice save obedience.'
'You betcha, lover. I'm in charge here, and don't you forget it!'
'Never, my sweet.'
It was hard to sound authoritative with your stern high in the air like this and a cold breeze on intimate places, but Ellen thought she'd managed it. Adrian helped her up with gentle force and freed her from the macrame of clothing. She stretched and they exchanged a long, slow kiss.
'Now let's have a shower, and then I shall lounge about in a fluffy robe drinking hot cocoa before the fire while my adoring Paris-trained love slave makes me dinner and lights the candles and opens the wine,' she said.
His yellow-flecked eyes shared hers for a moment, then went a little cool.
He shrugged. 'Sorry. I was just thinking how good it would be if we were really coming home here now, with nothing to do but live our lives.'
'I have every intention of living our lives regardless,' she said. 'Besides, I was raised to do things. Gentlewoman of leisure will be fine later; there's a world that needs saving…and I really do have to pee now.'
'Oh, God,' Ellen said, waving her wineglass at the polished cocobolo wood that lined the big elevator. 'A secret elevator in the back of the bedroom closet leading to the underground lair? Shouldn't this be in a volcano on a tropical island, or something? Either that or give onto a wilderness with a lamppost and a talking lion.'
Adrian grinned at her, lounging back against the wall with his arms crossed; the ventilation system was so good that she didn't even mind the fact that he was smoking, much.
'So, where's the button?'
'There's a minor Wreaking in the control circuits. Unless someone more of an adept than I comes along, the door will not open and the elevator will not operate except for those whom I, mmmm, put on the list.'
'So how do I do it.'
'You are on the list. Just think open or down.'
He blew smoke at the ceiling; she schooled her thoughts, concentrating on down…
'Eh, voila,' he said, as the sinking feeling began, gesturing with the cigarette.
She had to admit it did give a nice period touch to the retro glamour of his black turtleneck and pants tucked into ankle boots. So did the sheathed knife and automatic, but she knew now that he was almost never willingly unarmed; it must have been a real effort to conceal the fact when they were first dating. She had known that he owned guns and went to a range, and mildly disapproved.
You aren't Granola Girl anymore, she thought. Then something occurred to her.
'Honey?'
'Mmmm?'
'Feeding means you really want to make out, and vice versa, right?'
'Yes. The drives are powerfully linked. Harvey has some interesting speculations on the evolutionary pathways.'
She snorted and shook her head; yellow hair still slightly damp from a shower and long soak flew around her shoulders.
'Harvey can keep his big Texan nose out of my love life. The reason I asked was…well, when we made love before, when I didn't know…wasn't that sort of hard on you? I mean, you must have wanted to bite me really badly.'
'Yes,' he said, his voice bleak.
'God, Adrian, you must have willpower like a titanium steel forging!'
He shrugged eloquently. 'If I did not, I would be a very bad man. Very bad indeed.'
'Yeah, I got some idea of that with Adrienne. But it sort of makes me feel guilty. I never had much respect for cock teasers, and there I was being an involuntary vein teaser.'
He winced. 'Now you are inflicting pain, my love,' he said. 'There is nothing I would change about you, except possibly the occasional pun. It is a low taste. I would expect better out of someone with your education.'
She grinned. 'What can I say? You can take the girl out of Swoyersville, but you can't take the Swoyersville out of the girl.'
The lift came to a halt and the doors slid open silently. Ellen whistled quietly.
'How deep are we?'
'Several hundred feet below the level of the house, and rather more in from any surface, except for the escape tunnels.'
Her imagination poised the weight of hard rock over her head. The corridor before them gave no hint of it, except for the lack of windows. The ceiling was smooth groin-vaulted plasterwork, and easily fifteen feet high; the walls were stucco, except for a strip of Mexican mosaic tile along both sides. The floor was pale streaked marble, with a rug down the center that felt hard under her slippered feet; gaily dyed sisal, with an African look. The recessed lighting brightened automatically as they entered, and the air was a perfect seventy degrees with just enough humidity to be comfortable.
Which is more than you can say about most of New Mexico; I've spent a fortune on skin moisturizers since I moved out here.
Ellen smiled a little at Adrian's boyish pride in his ingenuity as he showed her around. The living quarters were bigger than the house above; if you included some shutdown chambers rigged dormitory style, several dozen people could live here in moderate comfort. There were kitchens, storerooms with supplies sufficient for years, workshops, an armory that even now made her mind stutter a little with the illegality of it all, but which included bows and swords and an array of knives, garrotes and assorted implements of preindustrial mayhem.
'The Power,' he explained.
'Right, the more complicated, the worse,' she said, and touched a rocket launcher. 'I suppose guidance systems are dead easy?'
'Even Harvey or his friends…'
'Jack Farmer and Guha?'
'Them, or hundreds of others…could make them do loop-the-loops. Still, they are useful in some situations, particularly for a first strike if you can take the target by surprise.'
There was even a swimming pool, doubling as a multithousand-gallon water reservoir. That was perfectly sanitary, with the right filtration system. The understated elegance of polished stone that surrounded it was just a bonne bouche, she supposed.
On the way back to the library-den she spoke:
'Hate to have the lights go out.'
'Industrial-type stack fuel cells,' he said, pointing over one shoulder. 'The natural gas comes from beneath us, a trickle but good for a century or two, and there's a backup diesel system.'
'Ah-hmm,' she said, nodding her head and pursing her full lips. ' Definitely ought to be in a volcano. And you should have a Nehru jacket and be stroking a white Persian cat.'
At his look Ellen made a disgusted sound. 'You are the least genre-savvy man in history!' Then she caught his grin. 'Or the most deceitful.'
'In fact, I helped build a base in a volcano, for the Brotherhood; helped with the Wreakings for concealment and protection. That was in a remote part of Ecuador, mountain jungle east of the Andes. The local tribes were headhunters not long ago. It even had a monorail.'
Go on!
