Virtual Virgin

“Not a bad deal, Delilah.” His mouth pushed under my hair so his words vibrated against my ear. “Your Enchanted Cottage is teeming with unseen little helpers, not to mention Hector’s intrusive security-voyeurism. No real privacy. My house may be technologically smart, but it’s not secure on a level to keep out Loretta Cicereau’s fey new physical form, not to mention El Demonio’s zombie legions.”

“So you’re actually thinking about changing residences?” I tilted my head to let his tongue take full liberties.

“Right now, paloma, all I’m thinking is that we do need a room . . . somewhere. And soon.”

“Not here,” I said.

Not with Christophe so close, Irma seconded for my ears only. The last time you made healing love to Ric here, our favorite hotelier paid the price in pain.

Snow loved rubbing that in as much as Irma, now that we both knew the touch of my lips could undo the secondhand scars I’d unintentionally inflicted any time I chose.

Since any lip-lock mojo I had resulted from Snow’s Brimstone Kiss in the first place, you could say I owed it to him. Even if I could ever zone out and regard such healing intimacy as not quite sex for me, I’d learned from healing Ric it would be certain orgasmic pleasure for him and that was a deal breaker.

I liked to think of myself as true to my friends and a one-man woman with a conscience. Snow seemed bound to prove that everyone had her price.

Past secret history apart, I could understand why Snow would want Ric on board. Mi amor had dowsed the Silver Zombie from the film screen, a fully 3-D entity. That was a first even in this newly paranormal world, and Ric was the only one in it who had a prayer of controlling her. Plus, I knew he felt obliged to help her, to help any zombie he’d raised.

Talk about voyeurs. Hector Nightwine was a piker. I bet Snow would love Ric and me getting romantic under his own admittedly big-as-a-small-country roof, knowing how creepy I’d feel about it now. Get a room! Somewhere else for sure.

“Delilah.” Ric’s desire-deepened voice thrummed on my throat and sent all thoughts flying. “We’re safe now. The music is hot and so am I, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Oh, I’d noticed. You’re carrying concealed . . . a dowsing rod.”

“That’s right.” His lips moved to my neck as his breath and tongue warmed my skin and inner chambers. Then he whispered, “I want you. I want you fast and flat on your back, under me. I’ll take the Inferno bar for a bed right here and now if you don’t think of a private place pronto.”

This “under me” talk got me simmering now that I could finally make love on my back without panicking from my childhood phobia. Once a fear is conquered, the new freedom can become addictive. Doing it on the Inferno bar with the liquor bottles from my cocktail recipes winking above us sounded even hotter.

“You’d do that, would you?” I murmured. “Right here, right now?

“In a heartbeat.”

I wished I was wearing flame-red chiffon and scarlet spike heels. “All right. I give up. We’ll get a room.”

“I don’t guarantee we’ll make it to the bed.”

“Let’s just make it to the registration desk and improvise from there.”

Chapter Thirteen

A LONG, LONG hot walk later we were ensconced in a classy room at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel across from the Inferno. Neither of us had wanted to sleep where Snow had told us to, for mutual but different reasons.

We had made it to the king-size bed, if not fully undressed, and I had made it on my back like Everywoman.

Now we lay beside each other in dreamy satisfaction, gazing up at the gilt ceiling, a softly reflective surface of gold leaf.

“Gilt” was the right word. The Phoenix would never be so obvious as to install a mirror over its beds, but seeing our hazy figures reflected above us, I guiltily recalled Snow’s first words to me, that our twined black and white long tresses would look sexy in the mirror above his bed. An even more evil thought, maybe Lilith could spy down on us. There wasn’t mirror enough here to do more than glow, thank . . . uh, badness.

Back then, I’d had no clue about my paranormal partiality to silver-backed mirrors and other reflective surfaces. Right now, my silver familiar was a ring clamped onto my belly button, wearing a zircon teardrop. Or maybe the semiprecious stone was meant to emulate sweat.

Of course a rock star would have ambitions of bedding anything female new in town that moved. And of course said female would feel rotten for harboring any pulse of response to such a blatant booty caller.

Ric shook my hand, which was wrapped around his. “Now can we talk?”

“Guys never want to talk after sex. I read it in Cosmo Unplugged.”

“Usually murderous ex-ghosts don’t show up as foreplay.”

“So we talk. Forget Snow’s visions of making us in-house dependents. On to Metropolis. What did you think of the movie?”

“I didn’t stick around to see it.”

“What? I swallowed my pride and sent you up there specifically to see the complete, uncut edition. It’s vital you see it now that Her Serene Silverness has imprinted on you like a duckling on its mama.”

“That’s exactly why I didn’t swallow my pride and get herded into his penthouse theater for a long, awkward sit-down with him observing my every reaction. Plus, he had the robot there and she, uh, came on to me.”

“What?”

“She sort of . . . wakes up when I’m around. I didn’t want Snow witnessing that again, calculating how he can use that fact and me and . . . it. His penthouse has this vast semicircular screen and theater house with only six seats in the place. Kinda sad. I think he was expecting you to be there too.”

“Well, here’s to doing the unexpected. So you left?’

“Right. I wanted to thoroughly check out the ‘CinSim experience’ at Inferno areas other than the very public bar before I make any decisions about anything involving the Silver Zombie.”

“For the big picture, you need to see the uncut film, mi amigo, and you just blew the one opportunity on the planet to do that.”

“You saw it. I can rely on your reporter savvy.”

“Secondhand won’t cut it here. The Silver Zombie responds only to you. You need to know her inside and out.”

Ric winced. “Not that intimately, I hope.” He glanced at his suit coat, crumpled on the floor. “There’s no blood at all there. Or on me. Satisfied?”

“Yes, but I did see it at the time.”

“Must have been a reflection from the boiling river of blood.”

“Is that the Styx?”

“No. The Phlegethon.”

“Ick. That sounds like something green you’d cough up.”

“The name is based on the word ‘phlegm,’ and Hell was supposed to be icky in those days. Dante wrote in his own Italian Tuscan language, not the usual Latin, and he used Greek mythology and words. I know one thing. Where we escaped from was not part of the Inferno Hotel’s Dante theme attractions.”

“We were deposited in the real Hell?”

“Maybe we’ll figure it out if we discuss larger issues, like why and how you tried to contain Loretta Cicereau and how and why she got loose to track me through the Seventh Circle of Hell. You’ve never explained much about your solo adventures at the Gehenna Hotel. I respect your right to conduct your own investigations, as I do mine, but we weren’t as together then. Now that my hide is on the line, Del, I need full details.”