Wild Cards V (55 page)

She knelt down beside him and touched his face. Hiram looked as though he were about to cry. “Is it hard for you to hear those words from this mouth?” The creature poured its knowledge into her mind and she wanted to be sorrowful, but it seemed that even the chemical reactions in her brain cells detonated more pleasure within her. How could someone feel so much of this without dying, she wondered. Perhaps she was dying. If so, that was fine, she would die, too, if it felt this good.
Whatever
, she promised the creature, begging it to like her, love her.
Whatever. Always.
She was telling it something it already knew, and such a superior form of life could hardly be bothered with her supplications, but she made the offering anyway. It deserved no less.

“We must
always
do
whatever
is in our best interests,” the creature told Hiram through her, and she felt herself wiggling inwardly like a delighted puppy because it had chosen to acknowledge her by using her words. “Hiram, my own. This is a mount with everything to discover. Everything.”
Yes, everything, anything
, she gibbered.
Whatever. Always.
“This will be a new pleasure for me, the pleasure of discovery, of gratification finally taken.” The creature using her face to smile was a sun shining within her. “Call Ezili to us.”

Hiram went to the doorway. Jane pulled herself up onto the bed, enjoying each separate part of the movement and all of it together. How was it she had never realized what a good body she had, how much feeling it was capable of? Well, she would not waste any more time. The world was full of pleasure.

“Ah. As I thought.”

She turned at the sound of Ezili's voice and laughed. “Ezili-je-rouge, my own. See this unexpected pleasure.” Jane stood up, rejoicing in the sensation, and smoothed her hands over her hips.

Ezili walked over to her and looked her up and down. “Does it please you, then?”

She was looking into Ezili's face as though it were the most fascinating thing she had ever seen. How could she have ever thought Ezili's eyes were evil? The red in those eyes was pleasurable to see; seeing was another act of pleasure, and seeing Ezili was even more pleasure because she pleased
him
so much. She could only love Ezili helplessly because Ezili made her Master so happy, and her Master's happiness meant more ecstasy for herself. “It pleases me so much.”

Jane's hand moved toward Ezili and then paused, shaking a little. Her vision swam and darkened, and for a moment she was thinking.
What am I doing, no, stop, STOP!

And then the pleasure was back, bringing with it the anticipation of even greater pleasures, and her hand was moving on Ezili's breast. Ezili quickly pulled down the front of her dress.

Jane looked over at Hiram with a smile. “Here's something I bet you never thought you'd see.” Moisture condensed out of the air and fell on herself and Ezili in a gentle mist, moving over them selectively. She bent her head to Ezili's breast. The wet flesh was soft and firm and very warm. Hiram made a small noise. It registered on her only as the vague noting that hearing, too, could turn the pleasure up higher and higher.

Absolute pleasure, she discovered, could make a person swoon. At least it did her. Sometimes it seemed she was nearly at the point of blacking out, and then she would find herself following a smooth curve of hip, or gazing down at Ezili's face. The pleasure pulsing through her would grow again until it overwhelmed her.

Once she found herself staring into Hiram's eyes while Ezili knelt before her, and she felt an almost psychic connection with him. He was hungry for her, for Ezili, for both of them, but even more for the thing on her back. He felt a bit bewildered and abandoned. He knew this pleasure, not just the pleasure of Ezili's body but of this contact, the ecstasy of the kiss. The kiss. Ezili's mouth, skilled as it was, paled next to the real kiss.

Absently she pushed Ezili away and gave herself over fully to the creature, obeying its silent commands, reveling in what it could do for her all by itself.

Eventually she found herself languid on the bed, drifting in half-consciousness, still aglow with pleasure. She was aware of the way the covers felt against her skin, of the wetness between her thighs and the water still slowly caressing her body, of the murmur of Hiram and Ezili's talking. It should have been uncomfortable with her Master on her back (
Ti Malice
, her mind told her, and she accepted the name), but it felt perfectly natural there, as though it were something that always should have been there and had been missing until now. She sighed with contentment. How had she gone all her life without the comfort of the weight there, the sweet pressure at her neck? She had been incomplete before, pathetically unfinished. Now she was whole, more than whole; perhaps even more than human.

Yes, much more than human. She had been waiting for this all her life without knowing it, to be ridden by this creature of beauty that could bring her spirit to new heights of awareness. This was living a plane above human. All the new thoughts it gave her … but most of all, the pleasure. She had been made for pleasure, she thought happily; how fortunate that she had been able to find that out.

“Ezili,” her voice said. Somewhere out of the range of her vision she felt Ezili snap to attention.

“I have been waiting,” Ezili said, sounding acquiescent and yet petulant all at once.

“It is not done yet.”

Ezili sighed. A moment later she felt the touch of Ezili's hand.

“No, not that. Is your traveling cloak here? We wish to … travel.” Jane heard herself laugh softly.

“What about me?” Hiram said.

“You can help me dress.” Jane's hand lifted in his direction. “Come, help me up.”

The traveling cloak was a long, flowing cape with a cowl and a large collar in layered ruffles. The ruffles hid the hump the creature would have made under the more conventional covering of a sweater or a jacket. The cloak itself was a bit ostentatious, but on the streets of wild card New York, it wouldn't cause much comment. The shrouded forms of jokers hiding some prominent feature or another had been commonplace for years.

Ezili pulled up the cowl so that it hid Jane's face completely. Jane gathered the cloak about herself, enjoying the small pleasure of the way it touched her.

“Somewhere interesting,” she told Ezili. “Something in a man this time.”

“And I just stay here and wait for you?” Hiram said. His tone was satisfyingly servile.

“You know I will come back for you later. Be here.”

“Yes,” said Hiram. “Always.” He kept his gaze on the carpet. “I'll phone for the car.”

Jane was delighted to see that Hiram was traveling by private limo these days, with a driver who left the soundproofed partition up at all times. It gave her the privacy she wanted, with Ezili or anyone else.

It was like being a queen, Jane thought; a queen or an empress. Now she could understand what it must have been like to be the Astronomer, the way he was. She had been calling him poison and resisting certain aspects of her own power—it was to laugh. What she had thought of as evil was just a matter of power. There wasn't really even such a thing as evil or good—only power and the pleasure that it brought. And anything could be sacrificed for that, anything at all, and everything if necessary.
Whatever. Always.

They passed a newsstand and she had a glimpse of a magazine with a picture of Jumpin' Jack Flash on the cover. Something twanged within her. How nice it would have been to have him now. But there were plenty of good-looking men in the world, red-haired or not. And what did good-looking have to do with it anyway? There were whispers about jokers, about how sometimes the more grotesque the deformity, the more endowed and skilled they were for certain things.…

Hey, baby, I got more than just the
ears
of a donkey!

She gave Ezili an attention-getting pinch, once more generating a burst of pleasure just in the movement, and told her where she wanted to go. Then she sat back while Ezili told the driver, experiencing the ecstasy of just breathing in and out. In and out.

If the joker with the donkey ears recognized her, he gave no sign. He stood gawking with his squirt bottle in one hand and a filthy rag in the other as Jane beckoned through the open door to him. For a moment he looked as though he were going to climb in, but when he saw Ezili, he suddenly bolted. Surprise and anger surged through Jane, and that, too, was great pleasure to feel. From now on she would feel every emotion there was to feel, anything that pleased her Master.
Whatever. Always.

Ezili shut the door and told the driver to go on. “Don't worry,” she purred, to Jane or to Ti Malice, it didn't matter. Sound was exquisite. “We'll find another that isn't all talk.”

The next joker they found was eyeless, but he had no problem climbing into the back of the limo. Jane studied him; his head was elongated, bullet-shaped, with just a blank expanse of skin running from the straight hairline to his nose. Seeing deformity was as delicious as seeing Ezili naked.

The joker sniffed suspiciously and turned his face to her. “How many of you are there?” he said in a ridiculously high voice. Jane reached down between his legs and he jumped. Ezili held him back against the seat.

“Hey, hey,” the joker shrilled. “You don't have to pin me down, I know what you want.” He began to undo his baggy trousers.

Her Master rode her awe as if it were a wave. “Is that … standard equipment?” she was allowed to ask.

The joker gave a high laugh. “It is on this model. God bless the wild card, hey, ladies?”

Her Master bent her head for her; even the anticipation of pleasure was a whole pleasure in itself. As was having Ezili watch.