with her fingertips. Keegan put his arm around her shoulder. She snuggled under it, her breasts crushing against his side. She was breathing heavily as they watched the performers reach their climax.
And it was over. Somehow, the performers were gone and the lights were up. The audience began murmuring.
“Now you know the secret of the Gold Gate,” Keegan whispered, but she was too entranced to answer.
They drove back to the hotel along deserted streets, the SA predators having finished their foraging for the night. She clung to him and he took her mouth between a thumb and forefinger, puckering it up and softly kissing the swollen lips. She responded with a moan, her tongue searching for his, her arms wrapped around his waist, pulling him to her.
“I want to see your room,” she whispered.
“It’s just like yours.”
“No it isn’t. Deenie isn’t in it.”
“You know, the Our Gang kids were right. Your father would drop dead on the spot if he saw us now.”
“Who’s going to tell?”
“How about Deenie?”
“No way.”
“Why not?”
“I’d rip her little heart out and she knows it.”
A bottle of Taittinger champagne wallowed on its side in half- melted ice in a silver bucket. A towel was thrown casually over it. She poured a glass but there was not a bubble in it.
“Flat,” she moaned.
Keegan got a lemon from a plate in the kitchenette, pared six or seven inches of peeling from it, and dropped the yellow curl into the champagne glass. It began fizzing crazily the moment the peel hit the wine.
“How clever,” she said.
“I used to be in the business,” he smiled.
“I keep forgetting.”
“No you don’t. Not for a minute.”
She snuggled against him, put her hands in the small of his back and leaned into him, staring up, her mouth slightly ajar. She unbuttoned his shirt and ran her tongue across his chest and around his nipples. “They get hard, just like mine,” she said with surprise. She dropped the slender straps of her dress over her shoulders and wiggled out of it. It fell around her ankles. She was naked underneath, her body youthfully trim, her breasts full, and she stood on her toes and rubbed her hard nipples against his.
She reached up and put her hand gently behind his head, drew it down and kissed him, her lips soft and full. He wrapped his arms around her, lifted her slightly and, slipping his leg between hers, lowered her on his thigh.
She whimpered and looked at him through smoky eyes. “Oh yes. Oh yessiree, Francis.”
She moved his hands with hers, cried with joy every time they found the perfect spot, her response reckless and candid and open. She moved with her feelings, unhampered and uninhibited, embracing and coddling her own passion without a trace of modesty or conscience. She asked him what to do, followed his whispered instructions and then experimented on her own. And she transferred her joy to him. Stroking, kissing, touching, she finally rolled over on top of him, squirming to his touch until suddenly almost by accident he was inside her.
She was stretched out on her stomach beside him, propped up on her elbows.
“Frankie,” she said earnestly, “that was even better than I imagined it would be all these years.”
“You mean you coveted me as a child?” he said, feigning shock.
“I was thirteen. That’s not such a child.”
“I’m glad I didn’t know,” he said. “I probably would have had a terrible guilt complex.”
“Why should you have had a guilty conscience over the way I felt?”
He stared up at the ceiling for a moment and said, “That’s a good point. Something subconscious, maybe. I don’t think I care to pursue it.”
She laughed and ran her fingernail very lightly across his bottom lip and he almost jumped out of bed.
“Tickle?” she asked.
“My nerve endings are still twitching.”
“I know, isn’t it terrific! Want to do it again?” She suggested eagerly.
“Give me a little while to recuperate.”
“Humph,” she said, pretending to pout. She leaned closer to him and put her chin on his chest.
She lay across him, her legs straddling his, her warm body pressed against him, smelling of expensive perfume. He stroked the small of her back, caressed the perfect swell of her buttocks.
“No one’s ever made love to me like that before,” she murmured, suddenly.
“Made love to a lot of men, have you?”
“Two,” she confessed. “Little boys, always in such a hurry. I didn’t know you could make it last that long, or
