Hot Blood: Tales of Erotic Horror

'Well, pardon me, Miss Tease-tail. Maybe you'll get better service from your rag-head.'

'Dammit, Tommy —»

She was talking to the dial tone now, and Shelly cradled the receiver violently, surprised to find her hands were trembling. She spent a moment working on her pulse rate, slowing it to an approximation of the norm.

No stupid jock could kiss her off like that. With perfect confidence, she knew that Tommy would be hers whenever she desired. One call, and she could have him eating from her hand, or better yet…

She thought of John Assad and felt the giddy rush again. She would let Tommy stew awhile. It couldn't hurt, and after Friday night she might not want him back.

'You like this better?'

Shelly stood before the full-length mirror, naked save for nylon panties, holding up a dress for her companions to examine.

'Too much yellow,' Karen offered.

Marcy grinned. 'It makes you look Chinese.'

She tried another and another, casting each aside when they did not appear precisely right.

'So, how did Tommy take it?' Karen asked her.

'Like a child.'

'What else is new?'

A puzzled frown from Marcy. 'Let me get this straight. You want him to be glad you're seeing someone else?'

'Not glad, but Christ, he acts like I'm his slave or something.'

She was holding up another dress, dark green, and Karen said, 'That's pretty.'

Marcy giggled. 'Pretty is as pretty does.'

'Puh-leese.'

'I like it.' Shelly wriggled into it, zipped up, and made a slow turn to admire herself. 'That's it.'

'By George, I think she's got it.'

'What all's on the menu for tonight?'

'A movie and whatever.'

Marcy moaned. 'Oh, God, I love whatever.'

Karen made a face. 'I think you're turning nympho on us, Melcher.'

'Hey, don't knock it.' Marcy turned to Shelly, smiling sweetly. 'If you're done with Tommy, can I borrow him?'

'Hands off. I'll have him back before you know it.'

'Double-headers,' Marcy snickered. 'I admire your style.'

The movie was a bomb, with Whoopi Goldberg striving for a happy medium between hilarity and sensuality, achieving neither. Shelly followed little of it, concentrating her attention on the man beside her, tingling when their hands made accidental contact in the tub of popcorn. She had not been this excited on a date in months — or was it years?

Assad, for his part, had not tried to take her hand or slip an arm around her shoulders, though she would have welcomed the attention. Shelly wondered if he felt intimidated by her, if her chosen outfit had offended him somehow. If so, he had a funny way of showing it, eyes gravitating to her ample cleavage over dinner, in the small French restaurant where they had stopped before proceeding to the theater.

At half-past ten, when they emerged, a biting wind had nearly cleared the streets.

'Some coffee?'

'Better not,' she said. 'I'd never get to sleep.'

He seemed to have a sudden inspiration. 'How about a swim?'

'This time of night? You're joking.'

'Not at all. I know a place.'

'We'll freeze.'

He smiled. 'Oh, ye of little faith.'

She did not ask him how he had obtained a key to the gymnasium. It was deserted, dark inside, and Shelly felt a little like a burglar, excitement and fear playing tag with her nerves.

'Come this way.'

For the first time Assad took her hand as he led her through dark and forbidding corridors. By daylight the halls would be commonplace, bland; in the darkness they might have been paths leading down to a medieval dungeon.

The pool was Olympic-sized, dark as an oil slick. Small lights, widely spaced in the ceiling, reflected like alien moons on its surface.

'The water is heated.'

She felt herself tingling and blushing all over. 'I don't have a suit.'

'There is no one to see you.'

'You're here.'

'I won't look, if you say I must not.'

It was warm in the gym, but her nipples were puckered. Her panties felt damp.

'You go first.'

With his back turned, he stripped off his jacket and shirt, then stepped out of his shoes and his slacks. Shelly watched as he peeled off his Jockey shorts, stockings, admiring the musculature of his back, dimpled buttocks. His skin was a uniform olive, with no trace of tan lines.

Stepping quickly to the edge, he sliced the dark glass of the pool in a long, graceful dive, scarcely leaving a ripple behind. Shelly waited until he broke water, hair glistening, flat on his skull. His back arched, his feet kicked. He was gone.

Shelly tugged at her zipper, stepped free of the dress. She could swim in her panties, but they were confining her now, pinching tight at her crotch. She felt better without them.

The pool was as dark as a pit. Shelly looked for Assad, but he had not resurfaced. The water was warm on her skin as she pierced it, legs scissoring, driving her out of the deep end until she could stand on her own. Armpit-deep, she ran long, lacquered nails through her hair.

She was startled as Assad erupted from the water just in front of her, emerging like an elemental spirit. Shelly almost lost her footing, but she caught herself and laughed selfconsciously.

'You took me by surprise.'

He drifted closer, silent, leaning in to kiss her. Shelly's legs were trembling, and she let the water take her weight. His tongue slid easily between her teeth, and she responded with a rising passion of her own.

She waited for his hands to find her breasts, prepared to let him take her, but he broke the kiss instead. It was a trick of light and shadow, she supposed, which made his pupils seem eliptical.

She was reaching for him when he folded at the knees and disappeared beneath the surface of the water. Big hands cupped her buttocks, fingers sinking in the cleft and pulling her off-balance, then his lips were there, his tongue a living thing, invading her. She shuddered, clutched his hair to keep herself from falling.

Jesus, just another second. Could he hold his breath that long?

She humped against his face, afraid that she might drown him, hardly caring as the spasms hit her, twisted her, destroyed her utterly.

John rose to meet her, and she braced herself with one hand on his shoulder. She was searching with the other hand, intent on giving him the pleasure he had given her, repaying him in kind. She found him, closed her fist around his shaft.

And caught her breath.

'John?'

'There is something I should tell you. Show you.'

She could barely understand his words. His voice was thick, as if a strip of gauze was wrapped around his tongue.