her breasts peek out almost to the nipples showing all that tanned flesh from the top of her navel to the jutting rise of her bosom. But it was.
“Why is Tod looking at me like that?” she asked me.
“You’re a walking orgasm, doll,” I said.
“To him or you?”
“Skin isn’t new to me, sugar.” I told Tod and he looked back at his customers. “You’re sure kicking him around.”
“Legs or tits?”
“All one big package, and he can only take a little bit at a time.”
“Which one first?”
“You mess with Tod and you’ll get your face splashed up.”
“So I’ll mess with you.”
“I can do worse.”
“Talk.”
“Look at me,” I said.
“I am.”
“Don’t you know yet?”
“You must be kidding.”
“Sorry, baby. It’s real. Watch it.”
Her smile came on so slowly it was like the sun rising. I watched her lift her drink and sip at it deliberately, with eyes so deeply blue it was incredible washing over me like a gentle, laughing waterfall.
“Tiger?”
“Of a sort. Just be careful. Even tigers can purr.”
“You’re a mean one.”
“Don’t go to too much trouble finding out,” I said.
“Somebody’s been telling you lies, Dog.”
“Don’t you think they’d waste their time trying that?”
“Would they?”
I nodded.
“How did Cross really get that crease on his head?”
“He probably told you the truth. I hit him with a rock. I was too young to do anything else. My baser instincts took over at the moment.”
“Oh, how he hates you.”
“Nuts. He hates the Barrins.”
“Only you’re not a Barrin.”
“But I’m the one with the rock, remember?”
Sheila held her glass up and looked at the sunlight coming through the ice and the liquid. A spectrum of color danced across her face for a moment, then she put the glass down. “You know what he’s going to do to you?”
“He’s going to try,” I said.
“All the way.”
“That won’t be enough,” I told her. I finished my drink and waved for Tod to bring me another. “Are you as pretty all the way naked as you are now?”
I watched her eyes change shape, then go back to their original oblongs and heard her laugh. “Prettier.”
“Hair color the same?”
“Identical.”
“Leggy?”
“All beautiful thighs right up to my whoosis, then down again.”
“Nipples sensitive?”
“See them pointing at you?” she smiled.
“Come fast?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Often?”
“Certainly.”
“Only when you’re doing it to yourself?”
She twisted the glass in her hand and held it up again. The sun had gone down and there weren’t any multicolored spectrums showing on her face now. “You really
“Want to find out?”
“No.”
“Better to just talk about it?”
“By far,” she said.
“We have a lot of talking to do, haven’t we?”
Sheila finished her drink and set the glass down gently. Her eyes came up and smiled at me. “I think so,” she said.
“You know women pretty well, don’t you?”
“I think so,” I said.
“Can we go someplace and talk?”
I put a bill on the bar and helped her into her jacket. Tod was looking at me as if I were in a cage and shook his head, then threw a wave as if he were giving up all hope and took the curse off with the kind of grin only one man can give to another. I grinned back and Sheila walked out ahead of me. When we reached the car she got in, sat there looking straight ahead a second, then said, “Somebody’s got to lose.”
“Always,” I told her
She opened the buttons on my shirt down to my belt buckle and let the edges of her nails trace little lines of fire down my chest. “Like?” she asked me.
“Nice,” I said. Overhead, the moon was a thin crescent in the black of night, fuzzing out occasionally behind the cloud barrier. The dim glow of Linton outlined the turrets and the Moorish-looking left wing of the old beach house and when I looked back over my head I could see the corner of the widow’s walk I had fallen from when I was six years old.
“You’re not paying attention,” Sheila told me.
“I’m enjoying myself,” I said.
“Men are supposed to be aggressive.”
“When the need arises.”
“I felt you. You have arisen.”
“Sheila, I think you have penis envy.”
“Weren’t we going to talk?”
I reached over and ran my hand down her leg. I could feel the muscles tighten under my fingers, then relax as if somebody had pulled down the handle on a rheostat. Her fingers on my chest stopped a minute, then started the tracing action again and ran under my belt, but it was still mechanical and forced, an actress on stage doing her part the way the script called for.
“What’s Cross doing?” I asked.
The tips of her nails dug in just a little bit before they softened. She didn’t even know what had happened. “Working. He’s a very dedicated person when it comes to business.”
I took my hand away and put it back under my head. Her fingers started teasing again and she rolled onto her stomach to look down at my face. “He should be home dedicating himself to you,” I said.
“We’ve been married quite a long time.” Her fingers tugged at my belt buckle and opened it. “I was
