Once Bitten. Clare Willis

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СКАЧАТЬ put his hand on mine. His touch was ice cold, but he had just put down a frosty glass. “Would you care to dance?” he asked.

      Although I’d had years of physical training for the theater, my dancing was still strictly character actor. I thought up a quick excuse. “I don’t think so. The sledgehammer is not my favorite instrument.”

      Eric laughed. “Not there,” he answered. “We insiders know a much better place.”

      Still holding my hand, he helped me stand up. “We’re going to dance,” he announced.

      “Have a good time!” Kimberley trilled, like a mother sending her daughter to the prom. Before we walked away I saw her pull her chair closer to Suleiman. I knew I should stay and chat with the clients, but ever since Eric had appeared I didn’t really care about the usual things anymore. Lilith was busy trying to light a cigarette and didn’t acknowledge our departure. We went to the back of the room and through a door with a sign reading MEMBERS ONLY.

      The new room was designed like a Victorian opium den. The walls were draped with velvet curtains of indeterminate color. A group of tables, all of them set for two, lined one curtained wall. The rest of the room was divided into curtained-off areas, some open to display couches, although I suppose chaise lounge is the correct term for long sofas with one high back and side. Several couples were dancing to music that could not have been more different from the alligator underbellies. It had a slow hypnotic beat topped by the softly keening sounds of a woman singing in a language I had never heard before.

      In front of us a woman with long dark hair danced with her back to another woman. Her head was leaning on her partner’s shoulder, eyes closed, an expression of ecstasy on her face. The other woman swayed in time to the music, stroking the dark-haired woman’s body rhythmically, nuzzling her neck. And all around me was that sweet indefinable odor. I thought I was going to faint. I stumbled and Eric grabbed my arm.

      “What do you think?” His voice seemed to come from inside my head.

      “I had heard that some of the bars in San Francisco have make-out rooms but this is something else.”

      I tried to joke, but I wasn’t feeling very funny. In fact, I couldn’t tell exactly how I was feeling, but I knew I didn’t want it to end. Eric swept me into the circle of dancers. He held me away from him, as if we were in dancing school. His left hand held my arm aloft and his right hand gripped the small of my back, subtly directing me to move with him. Even though I had no idea how to waltz I was doing it, and feeling graceful besides. I realized I’d never danced with a man who really knew how to lead a partner. While we danced he gazed into my eyes, the Mona Lisa smile gracing his lips. The attraction I felt was so intense I wanted to look away, if only to catch my breath, but I couldn’t tear my eyes from him.

      The music’s tempo became quicker. With one move Eric pulled me close, simultaneously angling me so that I was pressed against his right hip. His arm tightened around me and I felt each of his fingers separately through the thin silk of my dress. He pressed his cheek against mine and just like that we were doing the tango. His skin was soft and silky, but hard underneath, like marble wrapped in velvet. His breath was cool and dry but had the same rich, heady sweetness that seemed to seep from his pores. His scent was what perfume makers had been trying to capture for thousands of years: the distilled essence of attraction, indefinable but irresistible.

      As the music morphed into a mesmerizing Middle Eastern tune, Eric moved me toward one of the curtained-off areas. He lifted me easily and laid me across the couch, and then pulled the curtain closed. He hadn’t released my left hand and now he lifted my arm and licked the inside of my wrist. I literally shivered with pleasure, even though he was barely touching me. I closed my eyes and felt his lips touch my cheek, cold enough to cause me to flinch, but warming almost instantly. His kisses moved lightly across my face to my neck. I breathed in his scent and it flowed through me like a drug, swept away my inhibitions, all my conscious thoughts. His hands slipped under my dress and moved everywhere, bringing the nerves to life all over my body.

      “Angela, surrender yourself to me, and I will fulfill all your dreams.” His voice seemed to come from someplace deep inside me. Did he really say that?

      “Yes, yes, God, yes…” Did I really say that?

      His lips caressed my face, my arms, my neck. I felt his teeth against my skin like tiny shards of glass scraping and burning, but the pain was the same as the pleasure, and my body reached out to receive him. I was overwhelmed by a yearning to be closer to him, to merge with him so that nothing could ever separate us.

      Then came a sudden pinch of pain, exquisitely sharp.

      Chapter 4

      Instinct told me to pull away, but my body wanted something else. It yielded itself up to him, pressing closer, offering every vulnerable inch of skin to his ravishment. I saw colors on the insides of my eyelids as if a bright light were shining on them, twisted vines of red against a pink sky. At each beat of my heart waves of blood crashed against my skin. I could no longer hear the music or feel the couch I was lying on. Everything was Eric.

      Then the world went black.

      I woke up sprawled on the couch with Eric smoothing my hair off my face. I heard his voice before I opened my eyes.

      “Angela, are you awake?”

      I heard myself mumble, “Yeah, okay, must have been the drink, not used to hard liquor. I think I need to go to the bathroom, wash my face…”

      He tried to stop me, telling me to lie still and rest, but I slid off the couch and stumbled away. Kimberley and the Macabre Factor people were no longer in the bar, thank goodness, so I was able to get to the women’s room without being seen by anyone who knew me. I went into a stall and sat on the toilet without lifting my dress. The fog had cleared a bit but my memory was still very fuzzy. I was fully clothed, down to my bra and black stockings. My body had the shuddery, slippery feeling of postcoital release but there was no evidence that sex had happened. At least not sex as I had thought of it previously. Something had happened, something powerful and earthshaking, and I felt excited, happy, and desperate to touch Eric again. Also scared by his power over me, embarrassed that I didn’t remember the consummation, and worried that I’d let everything move too fast.

      I smacked myself on both cheeks and told myself to snap out of it. A plan had to be formulated. I firmly believed my mother’s admonitions against being “loose,” not because I wanted to save anything for my husband, but because the few hook-ups I’d had were humiliating wastes of time and body fluids. The guys involved treated me like a piece of chewed-up bubblegum afterward. I wanted, no, needed, to see Eric again, for him to want to see me. I didn’t regret our encounter, far from it, but I felt I had to exert some control over the situation.

      I stood up, straightened my stockings and dress, and left the stall. I couldn’t use any of the mirrors because they were all occupied, one by a woman so beautiful you would never guess she wasn’t female until you saw her big hands, another by a pair of huge breasts topped by an insignificant head, and the last by a skinny man applying black eyeliner onto the eye that wasn’t covered by a pirate patch.

      In a lounge filled with threadbare velvet chairs two women were snorting cocaine off a glass coffee table. One of them held a straw out to me, but I shook my head.

      “I think I’ve had enough,” I said.

      Eric was where I had left him, arrayed casually on the velvet couch, knees crossed, arms spread. In the dim light his face and hair gave off a СКАЧАТЬ