him did understand. He was certain that they forgave him his selfishness-if any forgiveness was needed at all. He had given them so much too, don't forget. No other man had ever treated any of them with the love and tenderness and expertise that Cap'n Luv could bestow. He gave them the love of their lives-and they gave Luv their lives… And so few of them, really. Only 9 out of 128 women that he had loved since becoming Cap'n Luv. He did not even count the few fumbling fucks he had had before he learned what it was all about. He had been crude, incompetent, just like other men, too preoccupied with his education, then his profession, to give the proper attention to his true calling.
It required a way of life, not just a few minutes' frenzied passion, to be a lover, a proper lover, a man women loved. It was not until he devoted his energies and his imagination to it that he had become Captain Luv. And he was not able to make that dedication until he was professionally secure and domestically stable. A single man could not do what Luv had done, just as a ship could not sail without a rudder, and so he owed his wife a debt that he could never repaynor even acknowledge, of course. It was the need for deception that added much of the zest to the game, and it was the wife that produced the need as much as the victims. She needed to be deceived, just as Luv needed to deceive her, and they moved around each other in a gravitational system, like a planet and its moon-but only the planet was conscious of the movement. Because he had acquired his professional skills and a spouse before discovering his true calling, Luv had begun late, essentially losing his youth to labors. If he had not, the total would be much higher, of course, but he did not regret his tardy entry. It was not numbers alone that counted, but quality, and without the money and flexibility afforded him by his work, he could never have accomplished what he had. Or what he would accomplish in the future. He was not finished, no matter how many cops they put on his tail. Luv had surpassed mere mortal struggles, he had become a force of nature and would persist.
All that he required was a plan, and it did not take long to come up with one. He would do what he did best, he would play to his strength and strike with such cunning and bravado that the cops would have to clear him of all suspicion.
He emerged at last from his study and found his wife in the bedroom, removing the polish from her fingers and toes, the white cat beside her, its fur fading into the matching coverlet so that its green eyes seemed to balance in space. Her face was already scrubbed clean of paint and pencil and her hair fell loosely around her beautiful features. She had been his first great conquest, a woman so lovely, so prized that she had initially looked upon him with illdisguised scorn. Luv had worked on her tirelessly, learning much of his craft with her-the way a woman's mind worked, the way to play upon her emotions, her sensitivities. He learned from her what women really responded to as opposed to what they thought they needed from a man. In the end he had won her and had kept her ever since, pampered and given pride of place like the great trophy that she was.
'Sorry to take so long,' he said. 'I had some things to attend to.'
She smirked at him, a trait that had become stronger over the years, as if she thought everything he said was a lie. 'You usually do,' she said.
Luv looked at her for a moment, seeing the long legs, scrupulously waxed as always, as if for the first time. Her robe was partially open and he could see the swelling of her breast. She was still magnificent, he thought, and he was going nowhere else tonight, not with his tail out there waiting for him. When he sat beside her and slid his hand up her leg, she gasped with surprise. Luv realized how long it had been. After a few moments she dropped the cat to the floor.
He took his time, trying to treat her as if she were a new conquest, using some of the things he had learned with all the others, and as he made love to her the others cascaded through his mind so that it was someone else's breast he pressed his lips to, someone else's legs he caressed, another woman whose ears and eyes he kissed, and still another victim who cried out when he entered her.
Afterwards, in the dark, she asked in wonder, 'Stanley? Was that you?'
He smiled to himself. It was Cap'n Luv, not Stanley the shmuck ' 'That was incredible,' she said. His smile broadened. He knew.
After she had taken her sleeping pills and he heard her breathing change, after he felt the weight of the cat as it reclaimed its place on the bed, Luv slipped out the back door, across the yard, and into the woods. If he was working under new restrictions, he had to know what they were.
Becker called his house, waited for the answering machine, then left a message that he was working late and not to wait up for him. It was an excuse Karen would not question. By agreement, they never asked each other about their work except in an official capacity. The burdens of the job were grim enough without adding to them. If either wanted to talk and initiated the conversation, that was acceptable. But to inquire without solicitation was not. He hoped that she would take his advice and not wait up. He wanted her to be asleep when he came home-he could not speak to her, could not look at her without feeling the sickening anger rising. And mingled with the anger was the nugget of doubt and hope, the only thing that kept him from total despair. It was the hope which drove him now; it was the chance, however small, that he would be proven wrong about her that propelled him into the woods to take up his lonely vigil for the third night in a row.
Driving home from work, Kom decided to go via the Merritt rather than his usual route on the local roads. It was a marginally faster trip-although he normally shunned it because of a tendency for traffic to sink into a bottleneck around construction at exit 42 during rush hour-but its real value lay in giving him a choice of exits. The logical exit was 42, but Kom got off at 4 1, watching his mirror. Anyone who got off the Merritt behind him and ended up in Clamden was his tail.
The car that had followed him to his office in the morning and from there to the hospital and back was gone, which he had expected. They must be working in a team, since they were on him around the clock. Kom knew that they were capable of all kinds of sophisticated maneuvers, running agents in front of him, changing tails every few miles, even tossing in a bit of aerial surveillance, but if they were doing anything that complicated, he doubted that they would be doing the relatively sloppy job of keeping one car in his wake. It only confirmed his notion that he was still a lowprofile job, still nothing more than a guess.
Two cars followed him at the exit and Kom thought at first it was a man in a blue Buick, but in the end only a young woman in a gray Taurus was still behind him on the twisting roads of Clamden. He had momentary doubts because his shadow was a woman, but he soon realized that Feds came in all shapes and sexes. Karen Crist was probably this young woman's superior, after all. Police work wasn't limited to men anymore, and Kom was glad of it. He preferred women in all circumstances-he was an expert at dealing with them.
He made love to Tovah for the second night in a row, attacking her with a fervor that surprised them both. In the end she stood at the foot of the bed, bent over and gripping the footboard while he took her from behind, one hand around her waist, the other grasping her neck. He tore at her, snarling as she grunted with each thrust, her voice cracking with excitement. Kom felt his fingers tighten on her neck and suddenly the mania was unleashed and ripping at him to be free of its confines in his soul. He tightened his grip further on her neck, felt her shake her head slightly in pain and protest, but he held on, simultaneously squeezing as he increased the pace and power of his thrusts. There had been no prelude, no request for tolerance of discomfort. He had not prepared her and she struggled against him now, trying to dislodge the uncomfortable grip from her neck while not disengaging from the sex. He squeezed harder, feeling his climax approaching, and began to howl crazily as both his groin and the mania flung him about, on the edge of chaos and release.
He tore himself away from her and fell on the floor, spurting onto his belly as he lay there, trembling from his demon and his orgasm. Tovah turned to look at him, astounded. He lay on his back, quivering, panting in deep gasps as spasm after spasm shook him, his eyes closed, tossing his head from side to side. She had never seen him like this, shuddering with passion, all restraint gone, completely vulnerable. She felt a sense of her desirability-and her power-that she had thought was gone forever, destroyed by the same man who had just restored it. She stood above him, her own body still shaken by the force of their passion, still tingling as though his hands were yet upon her. He could not be more exposed, he could not even see her. She could kick him, stand on him and jump up and down, smash his face with her foot, crush his testicles. It was a matter of a few inches, she had but to stretch her leg, shift her weight. She had him, after the years of betrayal and psychic torment, exactly where she wanted, a quivering, helpless victim of her sexual strength. She could hurt him any way she chose.
But she still throbbed from his presence, he was too much with her for such thoughts to last. As quickly as the urge to vengeance had welled up, it was gone, replaced by the realization that she indeed had him where she wanted, but not as her victim. As her lover. As a man reduced to jelly by his passion for her, but not to be
