Songs From the Stars (12 page)
At this, the onlookers could not keep from breaking into audible moans, and everyone turned pointedly away, some of them shaking their heads in rueful appreciation of the knot she had tied him into. If they didn't get it on, he would not only have publicly refused to pick up her gauntlet, he could stand accused of shallow justice. And now, when they did get it on, as they both knew bloody well they were going to, there was no way that what went on between them in private could be kept out of the public giving of justice.
Just like that, she had him—by the Way and by his balls. If she was an evil sorceress, she sure was good at it!
But perversely, Lou found himself enjoying every minute of it. It had been a long time since anyone had been able to play with him on this level. Whatever her true color turned out to be, no one could say she was innocent.
Outside the Court of Justice, alone in the quiet darkness of Market Circle Park with him, Sunshine Sue began to get a little wary of Clear Blue Lou. No audience to play to now, she thought as they walked down a deserted path under a thick canopy of night-dark trees, just the two of us, one-on-one. And this was no mere teasing little sex game to end in laughing sport. Everything was at stake here. They would not sport together, and what they would make would certainly not be pure enough to be called love.
She had to bear in mind that this was not merely a quick-witted and attractive man, but a perfect master; even the Queen of Word of Mouth could not assume she was his match. Might he not penetrate her inner being and see the true color of what lay within?
And isn't that black? she thought. Aren't I an agent of black science at this very moment? Won't I be following a sorcerer's scenario even as we fuck? And am I really doing all this so unwillingly? Haven't I already decided that a World Broadcast Network is worth selling my soul for without even being aware of when it happened?
And if he finds that out...
Lou came to a halt beside a big tree, leaned one hand up against the rough bark, struck an insouciant pose, and challenged her with his eyes. "Now that we're alone..." he said.
Sue leaned her face close to his, their lips not quite touching. Slowly, she opened her mouth, rolled her tongue, closed her eyes, and made him come to her.
Their lips came together in a sudden release of tension, and Sue poured her tongue into the depths of him, throbbing in the groin and quaking in the knees but determined to make him respond to her. After a moment of this, he returned measure for measure, and the kiss became a delectable and at the same time rankling contest of wills, each trying to arouse the other, and each succeeding royally.
Sue pressed her body against him, and they moved together liquidly, thigh on thigh, until they both moaned. She pushed him back up against the tree and pressed her mouth to his ear.
"Right here, right now," she whispered. "I'm game if you are."
Slowly he pried her away and held her under the armpits at arm's length, his thumbs resting on the sides of her breasts. "What about our little talk?" he said.
"At a time like this?"
"Especially at a time like this. I think you think you have me thinking with my cock."
"Don't I?" she teased, slowly running a finger up the vee of his flying suit.
He laughed. "Don't get me wrong, I'm yours to command," he sighed ironically. "Except when it comes to the giving of justice. Just so we understand each other. I do know what you're doing."
"Oh you do, do you?" Sue shot back. But it was false bravado, for he had sent a sudden tremor of fear through her. How deep did that go? Could he taste the sorcery that tainted her soul? Could she keep that back from him when their bodies were one? So much of her being was involved, and her body was already not exactly under her control.
"I think so," he said. "And I think we're both enjoying it. No reason why justice can't be down and dirty. Just don't think he can be bought."
"I don't," Sue said, realizing that now she meant it truthfully. "But I'm hoping he likes what I'm giving away."
Lou kissed her teasingly on the lips. "I wouldn't like it half so much if I really believed you were giving it away," he said dryly.
"Back to your famous cloud chamber at the Garden of Love?" Sue said, touching a finger to his nose. "Or would you rather keep it a secret and have me right here on the ground?"
He laughed and pressed a mocking kiss into her palm. "I'm not much for outdoor sport," he said. "Let's go back to my quarters in the La Mirage Grande, where nobody will know for sure. Or do you insist on a public fanfare?"
"What's between you and me is between you and me," Sue said, taking his arm. Besides, she thought, I've already had the public fanfare. Still, she was certain that whatever happened between the two of them would not be something entirely encompassable by Arnold Harker's personality profiles and scenarios.
Everything really was coming down to one-on-one between herself and Clear Blue Lou. Therein lay both hope and danger.
Unfortunately, the walk back to the La Mirage Grande gave Clear Blue Lou time to think. The night was wearing on into the fringes of morning, and he could almost taste the tension in the empty streets. No one would rest easy until justice was given, and what was the perfect master of the Clear Blue Way doing? He was following his throbbing dowsing rod into danger and confusion, that's what he was doing!
No reason why justice couldn't give you an erection, but no reason why an erection guaranteed justice, either. And when they finally found themselves alone behind the closed door of his room, he knew all too well that it was hardly justice that he lusted for right now. This fiery creature was going to quite literally fuck him for all he was worth and all she was worth as well. And she had let him know it, daring him to refuse the challenge.
It was mad, it was brave, it was down and dirty, it was the most deliciously nasty game he had ever played, and oh, how it turned him on! It was also a little frightening, for when the truth was revealed in all its naked splendor, he just might find himself in bed with sorcery and liking it.
And he didn't understand why that possibility was just making the moment that much tastier.
"Well, here we are," Sue said, glancing around the room, her eyes lingering for a moment on the bed. "And here I am."
And she fell forward into his arms, her mouth reaching up for his. Lou moaned, and quivered at the knees, and his mind shut off, and he found himself eagerly flowing around her, surrendering to the overwhelming energy that she seemed to be pouring into him by near-desperate act of will.
They staggered to the bed and toppled back onto it, Sue uppermost, still locked in the long charged kiss. She ran her hands up his thighs in a purposeful seeking that sent a bolt of lightning up his spine and made him break his lips away in a moan when they found their mark.
She smiled smugly down at him, catching him in the opaque hidden depths of her eyes as she undressed him with teasing fingers. "And now for a taste of justice," she said, gobbling him up in her masterful mouth.
For masterful was the word for how she seized the mainline that went right to the core of him and caught his being in the iron grip of ecstasy. Slowly and teasingly, feeling out his responses, then fully and openly, until he felt his soul would pour out into her, did she catch him in her spell, a protoplasmic pleasure that reached down into his very cells, to which he could not but surrender.
Almost.
No woman who could do this could have cold void at her heart. But no woman who could do this with those knowing eyes wide open could be doing it without purpose either.
Not quite, lady, not quite yet, Lou thought, taking her by the cheeks and pulling her head away. Before he would surrender what was left of his will to the natural man, he had to see those eyes in the truth of uncontrolled ecstasy, and he was damned if he'd take his own pleasure until he did.
He pulled her to him, kissed her with mocking chasteness on the mouth, rolled her under him around the kiss, then propped himself up on his elbows looking down at her.
"And now for a taste of truth," he said.
He slowly stripped off her clothes, staring steadily into her eyes with an expression of ironic appraisal. She arched her back up toward him as he slid her garments out from under her, looking back at him with prideful self-knowledge as her breasts bobbed up into his face.
Ah, she was lovely, and oh, did she know it, and ooh, how Lou loved that!
"Well?" she demanded. "Am I worth it? Are you glad you're compromising yourself?"
"There'll be no compromises here," Lou said throatily, and he fell on one of those small perfect breasts, nibbling and licking the sweet hard nipple until he heard her whimpering in pleasure. Then he slowly trailed his mouth down over her body, savoring every inch of it—the swelling curve of her breast, the hollow of her stomach, the silly grace note of her navel, the taut skin of her inner thighs, the heat and smell and taste of her. She curled her hands into his hair and pretended to resist, but he sensed that the game was purely sensual now, and when he began to slide toward the quick of her against the teasing tension, she sighed and melted backward into the luxurious taking of pleasure, the natural woman surrendering the last veil.
Oh Lou, I think I'm afraid of you! Sunshine Sue thought as she danced on the tip of his tongue. For with that tiny point of connection, he was letting her know just who he was and how deep into her being he could reach. He had pierced the games and scenarios to the essence and left her hanging helpless on a lance of pleasure.
Oh, he was a perfect master all right, and his mastery went deep. He was dissolving her fears in pleasure, and what a loving thing to do! Her heart could not help but respond to the sweetness of that any more than her body could help respond to his mastery of her flesh.
Yet she knew all too well that this pleasure had a higher purpose than its own. He was opening her up to him, he was letting her know he could do it, he had accepted her challenge and turned it back upon her. The game was still on, but now the levels reached higher than she would have ever believed possible. Ah Lou, Lou, you're as subtle a creature as I am, what a wonderful thing to find! We both play the same games. How fortunate that we both enjoy it. And how nice that we're evenly matched.
She reached down with both hands, pulled his mouth up to hers, and then they were kissing, mouth to mouth, a dance of acknowledged equals, tongue on tongue, ego on ego, a kiss that took and acknowledged pleasure in every level of this ultimately earnest game.
"Nice to know you," Sue said, as she welcomed him deep inside her with a rolling twist of her hips.
Sunshine Sue regarded him with open and sapient eyes even as Lou felt her dancing a challenging counterpoint to his rhythm, rubbing the edge of her pleasure against his own, letting him feel her feeling him, then sending him off on a trip of his own where the master became the ecstatically willing student. Her mouth twisted and flowed in abandoned taking of pleasure even as her eyes read his with a certain knowing amusement.
It was a place he had never quite been before, a place whose elusive truth he sought with the focus of his being. He could feel the sweetness of her; he felt that in a certain sense he was looking down into her honest heart; he felt the pleasure she took in the pleasure she was giving, and the pleasure she gave in the pleasure of taking. The intimacy was real. He tasted her spirit and found it good.
Yet he knew that he neither possessed her fully nor comprehended the whole. There was something burning deep inside her that had nothing to do with him or this moment, an inner secret she both guarded and longed to have released.
Fuck me! her body seemed to tell him. Fuck me out of my mind! If you dare. If you can. It was a new level of the game, perhaps the final level; the feat of cocksmanship to which he had been challenged and the truth he sought were both somehow aspects of the path to justice.
Trust me, he tried to say with his body, with the rhythm of his hips and the depth of his stroke. Open up to me, let me all the way in. Ride me to wherever it is that you want us to go.
Up and over the top into new country went Sunshine Sue, with her legs wrapped around Lou's body, and her spirit wrapped around the taking of pleasure that she now allowed herself to the full, open to the goodness of his power to lovingly overwhelm.
For overwhelmed her he had, matching her karmic challenge measure for measure, playing every level of the game she was calling like the master he was, and now fucking her into truly letting her be fucked by him.
At the peak of this orgasm of the body and spirit, Sue felt herself floating up weightlessly toward the bright sun of ecstasy, felt Lou releasing himself into the arms of her soul, surrendering himself to the sweetness he saw there, and thereby holding up to her the mirror of her own essential goodness as she tasted him drinking deep of what he found there.
I'm all right, she thought as she lapsed into sweet repose. For he was all right, and he found her good. He was indeed a perfect master and a giver of justice, and the truth of this had been proven to her by the natural man.
She snuggled into the crook of his shoulder and just relaxed for a long moment listening to the synced rhythm of their heavy breathing. Finally he spoke softly against her ear.