My Boss is a Serial Killer (14 page)

Still, I rent or buy TV shows on DVD
expressly so each night I can watch a couple episodes. That’s my
treat for working all day. This week it was conspiracy theory and
Nowhere Man
. And that was just a coincidence. Besides, my
only alternative was to shut off my DVD player and actually watch
real television, something that had become almost unbearable.

Gus called me. He’d said, on Saturday, that
he would call me Tuesday night when he would be free to make plans,
and here he was, calling just like he said he would. My caller ID
said “HAGLUND A,” but it might as well have said, “HAPPINESS.” I
took such a long pause to appreciate his consideration that I
nearly forgot to pick up the phone.

What a nice break from thoughts of suicidal
women. I answered, and we greeted each other with shy pleasure.

“
Hey, how’s Lyvia coming with her term
paper?” I asked. The young woman had only called me once, on
Sunday, to ask how to justify her footnotes.

“
She left here yesterday morning to
turn it in, and I haven’t seen her since,” said Gus. “I assume
she’s at her apartment sleeping it off.”

“
And how are you?”

“
I’m doing pretty darn well. Some kind
of charm has been on me this week, like somebody might have kissed
me for luck. How are you?”

I couldn’t get over this man saying things
like “pretty darn well” and “kissed me for luck.” I thought that
detectives were supposed to be hard-boiled and swear a lot, smoke
and drink whiskey with Pepto-Bismol in it, and be world-weary and
glum.

“
Carol?”

“
Hmm? Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t ignoring
you. I was thinking about you, and I forgot to talk. I’m fine,
thank you. I’m just fine, better than fine, now that you
called.”

I was gushing. I shut up.

“
This weekend,” he said, “I’ve got my
son from Friday night to Sunday night, and I was thinking that next
week seems like a pretty long time to wait, you know, before I can
get any more free legal advice, and I was thinking maybe some night
this week, maybe…well, my schedule is unpredictable
sometimes…”

“
Any night is fine.”

“
Wednesday? Thursday?”

I blurted, “Either. Both. You can come over
right now, if you want to.”

There was a pregnant pause at the other end
of the line.

I put a hand over my face, though I’m not
sure who I was hiding from. Whatever happened to playing
hard-to-get? “What I meant…”

“
I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,”
said Gus.

He was there in twelve.

I was a little out of practice at the art of
seduction. Would you believe I spent the entire twelve minutes just
waiting for him, twiddling my thumbs in my lap while watching my
driveway? I wasn’t bored or overanxious. In fact I was thinking
such naughty thoughts that the time passed pleasantly. When he
actually rode up, on his motorcycle, for God’s sake, it was like a
bonus prize. The bike made a fair amount of racket, but I live in a
neighborhood full of hot rods and biker dudes, so I doubt any of my
neighbors took notice. That single headlight in my driveway snapped
me to attention, and I realized that I might have employed this
time to brush my hair, find some sexy underwear or make sure I
didn’t smell like copy machine toner. I glanced down, remembering
that I was wearing long white cotton pajama bottoms and an
MBS&K casual-Friday T-shirt that I had gotten for my
second-year anniversary. My underwear, as far as I knew, was clean
but made of faded pink cotton. I looked not awful, but not really
like a tempting siren, either.

Well, I reminded myself, it might be jumping
the gun a bit to assume he had come over to for sex.

I opened the door before he knocked and
caught him as he stepped onto my porch. For a moment we looked at
each other. Gus pretended that he was about to say something, and I
pretended that I was going to raise a hand in greeting, but then it
all seemed kind of silly. He shot a killer grin at me, and I
shrugged in grateful defeat. A moment later I was tangled in his
arms. He was so big that he lifted me effortlessly right off the
ground.

I need not have worried about my clothes. I
was out of them so fast that I doubt Gus noticed what I wore. At
first I was just clinging to him like he was the world’s best set
of monkey bars, my arms around his neck and my legs around his
waist, kissing him hungrily. His big arms went clear around me, and
I felt him smile again under my mouth. I felt T-shirt, denim, and
flesh under my hands. And I had no qualms about this; I was utterly
shameless. I mean, if there were even the slightest doubt in my
mind, some iota of restraint that tried to rear its stupid head, it
was squashed quickly enough when Gus shut my front door by kicking
it. I love stuff like that. It’s so physical. That gesture alone
would have closed the deal, had it not already been pretty well
closed.

Gus broke his lips away from mine to ask,
“Bedroom?”

“
That way.” I glanced behind us,
showing a direction with my eyes. My question was
“Condoms?”

“
Plural, eh?” He chuckled into my hair.
“Yes, ma’am.”

“
You don’t have to carry me,” I said
obligingly, unwrapping my legs from his waist, dropping to the
floor. He kept hold of my hand, looked like his missed me already.
I said, “Follow.”

Down the hall we went. I removed clothing on
the way. Off went my T-shirt, down scooted my pajamas. I’m not a
bad girl. I just wanted to save him the trouble of wondering when
it would be appropriate for him to slide his fingers under my
clothes. No clothes, no worry.

In my bedroom, which was badly rumpled with
panty hose on the floor and an unmade bed of green-print sheets, I
lifted my hair off my neck and asked, “Help?”

Hard warm fingers touched my back and slipped
under my bra to unfasten the hooks. “Is this some kind of dexterity
test?” asked a perplexed Gus, but his voice was a good deal lower
than usual and pleasingly rough, like his fingertips. I smiled
secretively; I was perfectly capable of undoing my own bra, but I
wanted him to do the work. I really didn’t care if he tore it off,
so long as he touched me while doing it. He managed the hooks with
only a little trouble, and I shrugged out of the battered old
garment. Without being asked to help this time, Gus hooked his
fingers in my panties and slid them right down my legs.

“
I’m winning,” I said, turning to him.
I took his shirt in one hand and gave it a tug, but he was looking
at me, and he didn’t respond for a moment. His face had turned
thoughtful, observant. That was good. I liked that he could take in
a naked woman without embarrassment or slack-jawed drooling. Not
that my body really inspired slack-jawed drooling, you know. It was
like my face: more of the same open-to-interpretation canvas,
nothing too drastic in either direction. One thing my stupid
ex-husband had taught me, though he probably had not meant to, was
that sexiness is not so much the body you have as what you are
happy to do with it. With Gus, I was pretty willing to do
anything.

When he reached out to touch me, it was to
put a hand on my waist, just above the swell of my hip. I tugged at
his shirt again. “Off,” I said to it, because I’d lost Gus’s train
of thought. “Bad shirt.” I had to manhandle it, pulling at it to
get it over his head. I flung it aside and started working at his
jeans because I was impatient and enjoying myself too much. He had
a very good chest, my Gussie did, linebacker shoulders and a
slightly rounded tummy over hard-as-rock abs, those good hard
lateral muscles, and an unbashful dose of fuzziness. I, for one,
love a hairy chest, and I think most other adult women do, too. To
hell with electrolysis. Give me a grizzly bear. Like this one. I
pushed my face into the fur while I continued to yank ineffectually
at his clothing. Finally Gus was forced to either help me or fall
down. He laughed at me.

“
What, am I too pushy?” I was still
biting big tastes of his chest and his neck, then his chin, and
then his mouth again before he could answer me. He lost the rest of
his clothes somewhere in there, kicking them aside. I was not at
all surprised to discover that below the waist he was also a
grizzly bear, and I’m not talking about hair. My Gus was one of
those guys, though personally I’d never met one in the flesh, that
make you think, I’m not able to fit that inside me. No way. But
let’s try anyway for the fun of it.

“
You’re pushy,” agreed a breathless Gus
a few moments later, “but I like pushy just fine. Wait, I need
those.”

He meant his jeans. No doubt the condoms were
in his pocket. But now they were way far off, probably three whole
feet away, and if one of us went to get them, I’d have to stop
eating him alive. Gus lifted me against him again—and as nice as
that had been before, it was a lot nicer naked. He had fuzzy parts
that tickled me and that great hot expanse of chest to hold me to.
If we separated, I would be living a lie because I didn’t want to
do much ever again that wasn’t shoved right up next to this
guy.

“
Okay,” I said. “Down on three.” I
counted it off, and we lowered to the floor, me underneath Gus with
a pillow under my back, a sandal by my head, a pair of panties half
in my armpit, and an old popcorn bag visible under the bed. So
that’s where that went. Gus apparently forgave me my slovenly
housekeeping. He didn’t comment on it, anyway, but reached for his
jeans and fumbled around in the back pocket.

“
Carol,” he said with a desperate
little gasp. “Carol, honey, we need to slow down.”

“
No,” I pleaded. “No, come on, let’s
speed up.”

“
First impressions are important,”
argued Gus, but I had him laughing again, and I think I may have
been shocking him a little with my busy hands. But notice he did
not complain.

“
Oh,” I said hesitantly, looking up at
him with unwarranted wariness, “are you one of those guys who gives
it one shot and then doesn’t much like to be touched
afterwards?”

“
God, no.” Now I had offended his
sensibilities. “But I…oh, um…” My hands were busy again. He had
impressive expanses of flesh just everywhere. The condom packet
fell out of his fingers, and he pressed a strained smile against me
as he kissed my throat.

“
Then it’s all right,” I told him.
“Fast first. Then slow. Takes some of the pressure off, I think.
Anyway, there’s no one here you have to prove anything to. It might
not be perfectly obvious, but I’m throwing myself at
you.”

“
Carol My-Last-Name-Is-Frank,” said Gus
as he reclaimed the condom package and opened it. “I’m a little
tired of you taking all the credit for this.”

I looked properly chastened and took the
condom from him. Funny little things, condoms, utterly ridiculous
yet necessary and so sexy in a silly rubber way, like a slutty
little sock from a school-girl uniform. “Let me,” I said. I was
well-practiced at this; it’s another thing marriage can teach you.
Aim and unroll, and a little affectionate squeezing was usually
appreciated. Gus sucked in his breath and barked laughter at the
same time. He seemed to think I was terribly funny. “Are you giving
me an attitude, Detective Haglund?”

He was giving me attitude six ways from
Sunday, and I had a sudden moment of top-of-the-roller-coaster
panic when I wondered if maybe I should have been a little less
impetuous because he felt enormous. Maybe there were guidelines to
body sizes and men the size of grizzly bears could kill the average
woman. But then he eased and pushed, face intense over me as one of
his strong hands slid under my back and cushioned me, and I didn’t
die after all. He felt heavenly.

“
That’s very, very good,” I assured
him, because he wanted to know that all was well.

Then, maybe because all I was really
interested in was watching him and I forgot about myself, I was
suddenly having some really, amazingly exciting sex. My stupid
ex-husband and I, ill-matched in life though we might have been,
had exquisite chemistry in bed when we weren’t angry at each
other, so I knew my way around the intercourse racetrack—and this
was quality stuff. I believe my opinion was colored by the company;
I liked this one an awful lot. Plus it had been a while since I’d
had the pleasure. I was writhing like a snake in half a minute in
response to this huge controlled rhythmic pounding. I was unable to
concentrate on his face. I wanted to see if I’d get the Haglund
family’s killer grin out of him, but I couldn’t focus, damn it; my
fault for asking him to get the first surge out of the way fast.
I’d had no idea he’d comply so beautifully, or that I’d be the
benefactor.

And it did happen fast for me, amazingly
fast, so fast I wasn’t sure I hadn’t been tricked somehow. Once I
regained coherent thought, I found Gus Haglund looking down at me,
not with a killer grin but with something a bit more sly, and I
blushed. He continued to rock on me, slowing to the pace that
suited him even though a break of sweat shone over his face.

“
Almost had me there,” he said with a
flash of triumph in his eyes, “but not yet.”

I was thudding inside and out,. I was
throbbing, and every stroke of his flesh threatened to drive me
mad. I came to the edge of begging him to stop, but each time my
body recommended that I just wait a second, just a second more,
just let it ride a second more. I felt like three hot points of red
light. Gus kissed my breasts and my throat, and put his hands in my
hair. He turned my head the way he wanted it and put his thumb on
my lips, and I thought, there is no way, there is no way, that I’ll
be lucky enough for him to do it to me again.