Mo's flying in tomorrow.
6: CHARLIE VICTOR
I MAKE IT BACK TO MY HDTEL ROOM WITHOUT BETTING lost, falling asleep on my feet, or accidentally looking at the screen saver. I slump in the chair for a while, but there's nothing on TV except an adventure movie starring George Lazenby, and it'll take more than that to keep me awake. So I hang out the DO NOT DISTURB sign, undress, and go to bed.
I fall asleep almost instantly, but it's not very restful because I'm in someone else's head, and I really don't want to be there. Last time this happened, the fifty-something engineering salesman from Dusseldorf trapping off with the blonde call girl was just sad, and a bit pathetic on the side; this time it feels dirty. I (no, he: I struggle to hold myself aside from his sense of self) work out daily in a gym round the corner from the casino before I go in to work, and it's not just pumping iron and running on a track — there's stuff I don't recognize, practice routines with odd twisting and punching and kicking motions, somatic memories of beating people up and the warm sensual excitement that floods me when I stomp some fucking idiot for getting in my face. I've had a call from the customer, and I'm about ready to go off work and go looking for the merchandise he wants, when this blonde American princess comes out of the salle and what do you know, but she's giving me a come-on? She's lost the rich nerd she showed up with, and good riddance; guess I'll have to take her home and that means ... yeah, she'll do. Two birds, one stone, so to speak. Or two stones, in my case. Mind you, she's a customer — I'll just have to be discreet. So I smile at her and make nicey-nice while she giggles, then I offer to buy her a drink and she says, 'Yes,' and I tell her to meet me over the road at the Sunset Beach Bar so I can show her the town. She heads off, shaking her booty, and I go and get squared away.
Time to do another line of Charlie in the John.
Checking out, walking over the road I get that thrill of arousal. I'm on top of the world again with cold fire coursing through my veins, like the time in the village near Bujumbura when Jacques and I caught that kid stealing and we — the memory skids away from me as if it's made of grease, only an echo of the blood and shit-smell of it and the screams lingering in my ears — and I get the hot tension again, like lightning seeking a path to earth. Sex, that'll help.
Long as she doesn't make a fuss.
She's waiting for me on a bar stool, legs crossed and face hopeful. Plump cheeks, lips like throttled ... I let my face smile at her and order her a drink and make chitchat. She smiles sympathetically and asks me questions trying to find out if I have — hey! She's worried I might have a regular girlfriend, the stupid cunt, so I explain that no my Elouise died in a car crash two years ago and I have been mourning since.
She's so stupid she laps it up, asks me lots of questions and sounds concerned. I figure I'll drop her off with the rich guy's pilot at Anse Marcel tomorrow: but first we'll have some fun together. I act coy but let her draw me out because half the bitches want to be fucked hard by a stranger, they just have to convince themselves he's sensitive and caring at first to get over their inhibitions. After a while she looks at me slack-mouthed like she's already dripping, and I figure it's time. So I ask if she wants to come back to my place and she accepts.
We walk — it's only three blocks — and she doesn't bat an eyelid at the rubbish and the locked shutters. I show her upstairs and unlock the door, and when I turn back to pull her inside she actually gropes me! Normally they get cold at this point and start making excuses but this is going really smooth. I'm hard, of course, and when she kisses me I get an arm round her and start hiking up her skirt. The Rohypnol's in the fridge and it'd be more sensible to slip it to her first, then add a geas on top for safety's sake, but what the hell, she seems willing enough. This one really does seem to want a rough fuck — shame for her she doesn't know about the customer but those are the breaks. I pick her up and carry her inside, kick the door shut, then dump her on the bed and jump her. And the funny thing is she lets me, she doesn't fight, and my heart is in my mouth pounding away between her legs, wet meat, warm meat, it's like she doesn't even know the father says it's wrong to do this beat my meat it's not ever this easy and I can't let her talk afterwards even though she's biting my shoulder and sucking me, and oh father my chest hurts — I open my eyes and stare at the hotel ceiling until my pulse begins to slow. I'm engorged and erect and freezing cold on the damp sheets, and I feel as if I'm about to throw up. 'Ramona!' I croak, my larynx still half-paralyzed with sleep.
**The fucker just flatlined on me!** I can't feel his mind anymore, but he's lying on top of her, still twitching spastically, and I can taste her desperation and fear. **He must have had a dodgy heart, done one line too many. Finish me off, Bob!**
**What — ** I realize I've been holding my penis and yank my hands away as if they're covered in chili oil.
**Finish me off! Please!** I can sense her succubus now, coiling like a black vortex of emptiness behind her conscious thoughts. There's nothing human about it, nothing warm — it's like death itself, not the small oblivion of orgasm but its complete antithesis, freezing and vacant, a hunger for life. It needs filling, it's searching for a sacrifice and she'd set her eyes on Marc but he checked out early and now — **It needs a little death to go with the big one, and the longer you wait the hungrier it gets.** She sounds breathless. **If you don't give it one it'll eat me, and you may think that would be a good thing but in case it's escaped your attention we're entangled — **
**But I — ** I want Mo, don't I? Don't I? Mo isn't hiding behind a glamour. Mo doesn't eat people like a fuck-vampire.
Mo isn't a drop-dead gorgeous blonde, she's just Mo, and we're probably going to end up getting married sooner or later, and I feel guilty and frightened because Mo won't understand what Ramona wants me to do.
**But nothing!** I can sense Ramona's arousal and, behind it, a canker of upwelling fear. **Jesus, Bob, do something, please help me here ...!** She's helpless and small before the emptiness of her hunger, and Mo isn't here, and neither is she. I feel the empty hunger, and I try to wall it out, but Ramona needs me. She's teetering on the edge of an orgasm, the hunger is waiting for her, and if she meets it alone she won't come out the other side alive. I can't not do it.
Can I?
**I'm not cleared for sex magick,** I tell her, gritting my teeth. But she sends me a touch-sense picture of herself: the warm weight on her chest, Marc's head lolling, the turgid stretch of her vulva occupied by a dead man's dick, a delicious sense of proximity to catastrophic nothingness, teetering on the edge of a cliff — and I clutch myself and begin to spasm wildly because I'm still massively turned on from the overspill of her sex. The sense of doom recedes immediately, and then something I wasn't expecting happens — Ramona comes, taking me completely by surprise.
She goes on and on and on until I'm almost ready to scream for mercy. Finally the waves of sensation finally begin to slow down and recede, leaving her panting and pinned beneath Marc's cooling cadaver. A warm afterglow floods her with life. I can feel her reveling in it.
**Thank you,** she says fervently, and I can't tell at first whether she's talking to me or to the dead serial rapist. **If you hadn't joined in, it would have had me for sure.** The corpse's head lolls on her shoulder, a drop of spittle dangling from his mouth. She reaches up and shoves it aside. **Was it good for you, too?** she asks, and tenderly kisses his soft, unresponsive lips.
My skin crawls. **You enjoyed that a whole lot,** I tell her before I bite my tongue. But it's too late.
**You enjoy eating, too, but pleasure's not the only reason you do it,** she snaps. **And don't tell me you didn't enjoy this.** I cringe at her anger: What will Mo say when she finds out? It's not sex — no, it's just having a simultaneous orgasm with a consenting adult, my conscience jabs me. Oh hell, what a mess. I gingerly sit up and shuffle towards the bathroom and a late-night appointment with the shower.
**Hey, what about me?** Ramona complains bitterly, bracing herself to dislodge the drained husk of her prey.
**I don't want to taik about it right now,** I mutter. I twist the shower dial, feeling dirty.
**Typical fucking male ...**
**Look who's talking! You're a real piece of work.** I turn the temperature right up until it hurts, then bite
