A.K.A. Goddess (19 page)

I slid my hand under his raised leg to his inner thigh, then slid it upward toward where he’d started to regain control of himself and his desires.

My touch reversed that pretty quickly. His breath fell ragged, just as fast.

“Mag, unless you’re measuring my inseam…” His gasp sounded like a warning. And it was only fair. Like I’ve said before—I draw the line at torture.

“Just be aware,” I warned, shifting hands so that I could push his inside knee gently down, out of my way, “that this doesn’t change anything.”

“I don’t see how it could,” he agreed thickly. “I’ve wanted you for so long any—yes. Oh, Mag…”

I was sliding between his legs now, unzipping his fly, touching his arousal with my nose as I breathed in the scent of him. I wanted more than a taste of him. I wanted to devour him whole. But…

I hesitated. Maybe I’m more into torture than I think. I pushed myself up with my hands, my stomach and legs on the bed between his knees.

“First,” I decided, “you get naked.”

I’ve never seen fine Italian men’s wear so mistreated. In moments, Lex was undressed—from Armani model to Playgirl centerfold. He’d been staying in shape, too—chest, shoulders, tapered hips. Hard thighs and harder abdomen and even harder…

Mmm. And he was reaching. I drew him to me, so very gladly, but when he started to palm a spaghetti strap of my camisole off my shoulder, I shook my head.

“I stay dressed,” I warned. “What’s sauce for the gander…”

Lex groaned good-naturedly.

I said, “Let’s see how—mmm—” He’d just started licking my nipple through the fabric of my camisole, his hair soft on my arm. “How creative you can be,” I finished, almost needlessly.

Then I gave myself up to him. To it. To us.

Aphrodite. Venus. Freya. They were goddesses of sex.

His hands on me, all over me, wherever he could reach under my shirt or up my pants legs or into the waist of my panties. Him under my own hands, all flexing muscle and rich, clean skin and soft, thick, gingery hair—except when it was short, wiry gingery hair. Lex and I had all the familiarity and ease of a long-term relationship, and all of the uncertain need and excitement of a new fling. Forever later—after I’d already climaxed around his fingers a couple of times—he half laughed, half sobbed, “I’m not this creative.”

I decided to be lenient and pulled my pants down far enough that we could make use of one of the gold-wrapped condoms he always carried with him, even if that did mean rolling under him for the first time that afternoon.

I would have to strip, if I wanted to mount him.

That could wait until later. This was too incredible, too necessary to be the last time. I think I’d known it all along. There would have to be a later. There always had to.

For now it was enough for him to cover me, to slide into me hot and thick and familiar, to make me cry out my satisfaction with his first solid thrust. I coiled my legs over his naked thighs, capturing him inside of me, my pleasure no longer an ebb and flow so much as the unrelenting surge of breakers. I burned out my screams and fell into sobs, into total, full-body release. Someone pounded on a thin wall and yelled at us in what sounded like Lithuanian. I laughed until Lex reached between us during his final, shuddering thrust, sending me over yet again as he shouted out his own burst of completion.

I caught him, held him through it all. He sank gradually onto me, full body, like a penitent making obeisance. “Maggi,” he whispered against my neck, his breath humid and his voice ragged. “Maggi, Maggi, Maggi…”

Like a mantra. And something that had seemed lost and confused in me since our last breakup, no matter how legitimate our reasons had been, seemed to heal and ease.

We lay like that for a while, until I tried to move under him and hardly could. I pushed at him to roll over, then cuddled back on top of him and rested.

Rested on so very, very many levels.

In some ways, this was its own heaven. Lex’s heartbeat under my ear. Our bodies entwined, his naked, mine with my camisole up under my arms and my cargo pants down near my knees. Him still praying my name, every few breaths, and me so glad for the hope that I might be able to trust him again, after all.

Maybe I slept. I’m positive he did. But once we were both regaining our strength, and kissing each other, I had the sense to pull back long enough to ask, “So what was so important that you had to stake out my room for fear of missing me?”

Lex stopped worshipping my neck, midkiss. When he turned his face toward mine, his was surprisingly solemn. Even for Lex. Especially postsex Lex.

My throat tightened. I wasn’t going to like this, was I?

“I think you’re in danger,” Lex said. Then he reached out and hooked the chain of my necklace with one finger, drawing it from the folds of my camisole to reveal the vesica piscis. “You, and that strange girls’ club you think I don’t know about.”

Within months of Mrs. Stuart’s funeral, Lex and I are going steady. But suspicions have taken root, something about his confidence, his kisses, the certainty of his hands.

One weekend he takes me in his Ferrari to a drive-in movie revival. The movie bores me, so I turn down the sound and say, “You aren’t a virgin anymore, are you?”

For a long moment Lex says nothing. Then, “No. I’m not. I thought we were through last year and…no.”

“We were through.” But despite logic, my body’s angry. This feels like punishment for having broken up, which isn’t fair. I had every right to stay at the soda shop after he broke Phil’s nose. He was the one who hadn’t returned my calls. “Does she know you’re here?”

“We broke up. I kept thinking about you.” It doesn’t come out at all romantic. He sounds embarrassed. He should.

“That was rude.”

“Yes, it was. To both of you. I’m sorry.”

We continue to sit together in his car’s butter-soft leather seats, the movie dancing past the windshield. His arm was around me before I spoke, and he hasn’t moved it in either direction. I listen to how our breathing weaves together. I consider our mingling warmth. I’m disappointed more than angry.

He’s a college student now. And we really were “on a break.” But I’m also, well…curious. “Tell me about it?”

“No.”

“At least…I mean, guilt aside, was it…?”

He slides a searching glance toward my face, in the shadows of the car, and understands.

“You’re not ready,” he assures me, passing the popcorn.

“We’re eighteen.” Eighteen feels very mature.

“Our first time has to be perfect. No back seats. No grungy dorm-room mattress or anonymous motel. It has to be…holy.”

“Not to put any pressure on us or anything,” I mutter.

“That’s why I’ve been practicing.”

I hit his shoulder. He laughs and kisses me. His lips are more enticing than ever, and his hands…his hands have been learning a lot at Yale. I love his touch under my sweater, on my breasts, under my miniskirt. Soon the popcorn’s out the window and I’m fully under him, writhing ecstatically on the butter-soft seats. This is about as basic as man-woman relationships get. Not just man-woman. Lex-Maggi. This is deeply right.

I have my first for-sure orgasm against his hand, safe in his sweatered arms, at the drive-in movie revival.

“What?” I ask drowsily, sated, while his gaze caresses me.

“God, you’re hot.” He kisses me again, his tongue boldly mimicking what his fingers have been doing.

I feel his hardness through his pants, against my hip. I’m more sold on sex now than when I was just jealous. Maybe I’ve been waiting for him to come back. “Then let’s do the rest.”

“No, Mag,” he whispers, between kisses. “But thank you.”

“That wasn’t an offer, Lex. It was a request.”

“We have to be absolutely sure.”

“I am absolutely sure.”

“Good.” More kisses. “Hold that thought.”

I push him back, frowning. “How come the other women get a bad boy and I get a Boy Scout?”

“It has to be perfect,” he says again, stubborn.

When we finally do get there, over Spring Break of my first year in college, it is perfect. Holy. After almost a year of foreplay, why wouldn’t it be? We have a Manhattan hotel suite, candles, rose petals. The word love is used copiously.

Unlike what I’ve heard from other couples, love has slipped so easily into our conversations it was almost a nonevent. Almost. As if it had been there all along.

Either way, neither of us is surprised.

I doubt we could escape this love even if we wanted to.

I rolled back, completely off him, banging my elbow into the wall as I pushed my camisole down. “What?”

I hoped my question came out as dangerous as I felt.

That damned, protective coolness fell over Lex’s face again, despite him having seemed so vulnerable moments before. “I can’t say how I got my information—”

“Try!”

“I knew you were going to freak out about this. That’s why I couldn’t tell you over the phone.”

That, I thought darkly, and cell-phone captures. “So you just let me wander around in danger until I happened to come back to your side of France?”

The coolness of his expression faltered as he sat up. “Oh, Christ—something happened?”

Just a car chase. Scaling a tower that would put Rapunzel’s witch to shame. Witnessing a murder. Being held at gunpoint a few times. Getting ambushed in a secret goddess sanctuary that was later completely destroyed. Nearly drowning. That’s all.

Information is power, and I wasn’t about to give him anything just yet. Anything else, anyway.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” I said.

“Damn it!” Lex looked worried anyway.

“It’s nothing compared to the danger you’ll be in if you don’t start talking. What do you mean, that weird girls’ club?”

I knew he meant the Grail Keepers. But did he?

He slumped gracefully back against the wall. “Christ, Mag. You’ve worn that pendant since we were fourteen.”

“And yet you never asked about it.”

His jaw set, stubborn now. “I figured if you wanted to tell me about it, you would.”

Uh-huh. “And you already thought you knew what it was. So what do you think it is?”

“So what is it?” he countered.

I rolled off the bottom bunk and pulled up my pants. Now I really had to go shopping. Soon.

“If I wanted to tell you about it, I would have.”

His bare shoulders sank with annoyance at my answer. But he also gave. Just a little. “It’s a symbol of feminism, right? Some kind of old, hereditary feminism.”

I stared. If that was all he knew, that was okay. But how could I tell? “And why would hereditary feminists be in danger?”

He then pressed his lips together and scowled, clearly fighting with himself. It occurred to me that he was still in bed, albeit sitting up a bit. He was still completely, totally and gloriously naked. And he didn’t even seem to care.

Was he that conceited, or that stupid?

Or did he just trust me that much, even now?

I didn’t want to think like that. Him trusting me made me want to trust him back, the way I used to, and I had a freaking goddess grail hidden beneath the striped mattress he lay across.

Then again, just because Lex knew about Grail Keepers—and maybe the Comitati who threatened us?—didn’t yet make him a bad guy. He hadn’t known I’d already been attacked. Was I going to continue fleeing my involvement with him every time I scented a hint of treachery? Or might I finally accept that I could handle whatever happened? What if I stayed put long enough to gather some informational power of my own?

Slowly I sat on the plastic folding chair that the hostel so kindly provided its residents. “Lex,” I said, a touch less confrontational. “I really want to know. I’m the one you say is in danger, so how did that happen? Who’s endangering me?”

He sighed—but he seemed to come to a decision. He swung his feet off the bed so that he could sit up too, leaning forward, hands clasped between his bare knees. I tried not to think of the Melusine Chalice so close to his feet. “Try to hear me out?”

I raised my eyebrows, but waited.

“There are some powerful men—I mean, powerful people in this world, right?”

You should know. But taunting him wouldn’t exactly move this along. “Riiiight.”

“They don’t all get along. But, understandably, they share a vested interest in keeping what power they have. Right?”

So did he mean personal power, or power over other people? I had my suspicions. “Most of them,” I hedged.

His lips tightened with that annoying edge of condescension he sometimes lets slip. The one I’d first met in kindergarten. “All of them, Mag.”

Again, it wasn’t worth the argument. Yet. Not when I had more to find out. “So we’ve got a group of mob-boss wannabes clinging desperately to their tenuous illusions of power.” We definitely weren’t talking about personal power, since that can’t be taken…only abdicated. “Gotcha.”

Lex blinked at me. Then he continued, choosing his own battles as well. “One thing anybody in power has to watch for—in business or politics or organized crime—is future threats,” he continued. “We’ve got to identify threats before they become problems, and make preemptive strikes.”

“You know I hate military metaphors.”

“Stop the trickle so it doesn’t become a flood,” he tried as an alternative. “And rumor has it there are some people out there who have decided that a group of hereditary feminists pose some kind of future threat.”

“Who?” I asked.

Lex shook his head, spread his hands, shrugged. “People.”

“Not good enough,” I snapped.

“All you’re getting,” he snapped back. “Maggi, I’m telling you everything I can.”

We glared at each other—and took deep, releasing breaths at the same time.

I tried, “Okay, so how do you know about them?”

He seemed surprised by the question, as if that part were obvious. “We move in the same circles. You’d be surprised what gets discussed on a golf course.”

“If you know they’re doing something illegal, why not contact the authorities?”

His brows came together in what looked like honest confusion. “Who said anything about illegal?”

“You think these are the guys who broke into my apartment and who attacked Aunt Bridge, don’t you?”