The Hinky Velvet Chair (4 page)

She was fed up with having a sex demon for a roommate.

“You try having headbanging sex for three weeks straight
with no sleep.”

Said out loud, it sounded ungrateful, as well as mean.

She sighed. In defiance of the Hinky Policy, she picked up
her phone and hit speed dial.

“Ask Your Shrink,
you’re on the air, caller.”

“Yeah, hi, this is, um, Coral.”

“What’s on your mind,
Coral?”

“It’s my boyfriend. He won’t let me sleep. I mean, totally
won’t let me sleep. He can do it all night, and I’m starting to see pink
elephants, know what I’m saying? I’m afraid I’ll get in an accident.” In the
elevator, she punched twenty-three.

“Slip him a sleeping
pill,”
Ask Your Shrink suggested, and Jewel blinked in shock.
“Perhaps he has a sleep disorder.”

“The thing is, I’ve kind of locked him in my apartment.
Bedroom. Because then I get to sleep on the couch.”

“Is your boyfriend
underage? Debilitated in any way?”

“Heck, no.” He was over two hundred years old and he was
friggin’ magical. “He could get out if he wanted,” she lied. Now she felt
terrible. Clay was right. She was a jerk.

“When you say he’s
locked in your bedroom, Coral, do you mean for the night?”

“Um, no, he’s pretty much locked in. I think.” That sounded
worse. She burst out, “I can’t get anybody to see how hard it is.” The more she
said, the rottener she felt. Ask Your Shrink probably pictured her chaining
this guy down and bringing him bread and water only if he, like, performed. “Oh,
never mind.” She hung up and stuffed the phone back in her pocket.

Imagining Randy stuck in bed, all verklempt, worried she’d
ever come back for him, she raced her bike to her front door.

Maybe he was in her bathrobe, using her credit card online.

She burst into her apartment and stood in the hall.

No sound.

No Randy in the living room at the computer or the TV. No
Randy in the kitchen. No Randy in the bedroom.

She stripped and flopped on the bed. “Randy?”

No tingle. No cuddly come-fuck-me vibe.
Sulking.

Staring at the ceiling, she wondered if the woman who had
cursed him for being bad in bed all those years ago had known what she would be
doing to the lucky girl who won the Randy Raffle. Probably not. When you had
magical revenge available, you were probably trigger-happy.

“Randy?” She reached out into darkness in her mind.

Sweet heat exploded in her chest. Her eyes drifted shut with
pleasure, and she heard him say in her head,
You came back!

“I always come back.” Her body, freshened by a good night’s
sleep, yelled a big yahoo.

And fell backward, cartwheeling into that cloudy night sky
in demonspace.

She fell and fell. It was not like swimming at all.

She screamed.

He caught her from behind as they flew, or fell. The clouds
rushed up to meet her face.
You want it.

Yes, I want sex! But I
don’t want —
She turned in his arms, struggling with his strength. And
because she was in demonspace with him, she could be as strong as he.
I thought you could count my breaths!

So I can.

She felt them lift up into the air,
always in the air, he knows how scared I am of heights.

They grappled, body to body.

They were so high, there was nothing to see, above or below,
but the turbulent curling bellies of thunderclouds, purple, blue, black, and
every shade of gray. There was no ground in sight at all. Fear clutched her
chest.

In the peculiar half-light of demonspace, his eyes burned
down on hers, big and black, so intense that she froze, helpless.

Fear and exhaustion met the core of her strength.

This time she wouldn’t cave. She refused to swoon and let
him scare her into holding still while he did his magic deed.

With that thought, she felt her shoulders bunch up. Extra
muscles sprouted to pull her a few inches out of his grasp. Without surprise
she realized she had grown a pair of big leathery snow-white batwings.

She pulled her knees up to her chest, set her feet against
his belly, and kicked.

He spun away, falling. In seconds, he was a speck, far
below.

Randy!
she
screamed. She squinted down through the clouds.

He fell and fell and fell.

She beat the air with her wings, making great flaps of wind,
drawing a bead on his shrinking body. Then she aimed her head down, put her
arms at her sides, folded her wings until they touched her ankles, and
plummeted after him.

Randy!

He didn’t seem to get any closer. Frantic, she opened her
wings and beat down hard, accelerating her plunge. Now he was a starfish
spinning below her, now child-sized, now a naked man falling slack with his
eyes closed. She shot past him and tumbled over herself on air as hard as
asphalt, trying to brake and keep him in view past her own ankles.

In another moment she was pacing him. She seized him in her
arms and, with one powerful wingstroke, carried him up through the clouds,
cradling him. He was dead weight in her arms.

Randy?

He opened his eyes.

You saved me.

A little sneaky something in his tone, in the lines around
his eyes, made her pause in midair.

She gasped.
You — you
big faker!

She opened her arms and let him fall.

He slid down her body, clutched her ankle, and stopped with
a yank that set her rolling again.

Let go of me!

Very well, since you
will have it so.

In another instant he had his own pair of batwings, oxblood
red, making a mighty wind as he hovered before her. Even his flesh reddened.
Every muscle on his big naked body swelled. Including the sonic red boinkwurst
at his groin.

She backpedaled in the air.
Wait. I want to negotiate a—

He bounded into the sky over her and spread his dark red
wings, his face dark with lust and testosterone-flavored greed. For once he
looked demonic in a not-good way.

Jewel had had enough.

She was
not
going
to be intimidated anymore.

She too leaped up, letting her wings out with a
flump
like a parachute opening. His
equal, was she? Thinking of comic books, she flexed and stirred her fists at
him, bulking her muscles up until she had big bulgy thews.

Come and get it, fool,
she said, beckoning him with a hamlike hand. Ew, the hands seemed a little too
hulky. She smoothed them out and added long white fingernails.

He looked startled.
I
don’t want to fight with you.

Shoulda thought of
that when you were scaring the shit out of me in the air! Come on, demon. Put
’em up.

Her demon reared back on his wings.

Sissy!
she yelled.
Sunday driver! Big fat lord on the
outside, melted marshmallow on the inside!

His face darkened.
You
take advantage of my need.

You take advantage of
me
every single night!
she screamed,
and a jet of flame shot out of her mouth with the words.

Whoa. She shut up, startled.

You want it! You want
me!
he screamed back. Fire billowed out of him and played over her bare
skin, leaving sootmarks and a sizzling thrill wherever it touched her.

Just like a man. Throw dirt on her and then blame her. She
flung out her wings, letting them expand even bigger, letting them glitter like
huge white diamonds, burning away the soot, sending blazing white light into
his angry eyes.

You make me what I am,
he grated.
I offer you nothing you have
not imagined or wanted deep in your heart.

She had never bought that and she never would.
Quit trying to scare me!

He recoiled from her. His face and body swelled inhumanly.
His wings caught fire. His legs joined into a block-long oxblood-red tail that
whipped out behind him with a crack like thunder. He pulled his neck back like
a fighting cock about to strike. His neck elongated. He opened a mouth full of
foot-long fangs, flared the crimson ruff around his neck to its fullest, and
screamed a long, angry blast of fire at her.

But Jewel reacted as if he were a dark red mirror. Her own
ruff flared, white as mink, sparkling as the sun on water. Her own long sinewy
body uncoiled.

His flame licked her like jalapeño bath oil.

Oh, lord. That felt
good.

Against her will she felt that old heat, that zing, that
shimmy-shimmy-coco-pop undercarriage goodness.

He’d done it to her again.

As he sent another gout of flame at her, she darted straight
through it and bodyslammed him, wrapping him with her tail, boa-constrictor
style. He wrapped her in turn, sending pulses of raw desire through her
straining muscles.

I know what I want,
she panted. God, this was exciting. Like riding a green horse. Like
mountain-biking down a switchback. Like wrestling. She exulted in the feel of
body on body.

Their tails tangled, knotted, tightened on one another, and
their scaled bodies lengthened, twisting this way and that, striking sparks as
they slid against one another.

She wanted him so much she was dizzy with it.

Furious with lust, she opened her jaws as far as they could
go, then farther, calling up the fire in her belly. His throat came in view.
With a roar of white-hot flame, she chomped down, shutting her eyes and pulling
him to her with her claws, grappling with his thrashing, glowing body, tasting
him, feeling his muscles move in her jaws.

When she opened her eyes she saw the impossible.

He clung to her face-to-face, his dragon’s eyes dark as old
lava.

He opened his mouth wide. Wider. His fangs were the height
of tall buildings. Wider still.

The impossible happened every night, in demonspace.

His dragon-dick found her opening and slid home, and she
squeezed around him a if she would never let go.
I love this.

Down inside his throat, she saw the heart of his volcano.

All right. Let’s do
it,
she thought, and she dove into the fire. Her wings expanded. Her tail
thrashed, knocking against his gullet. He swallowed her down, down into the
spiralling sparks, even as she swallowed him into her burning center.

They reached the magma core at the same moment.

The fireball blew them into a million tiny pieces.

o0o

Jewel found herself lying in bed, tangled with two hundred
pounds of sex demon. Her body sang like a comet tail, all sparks inside, sooty,
sweaty, stinky, satisfied. Randy’s naked body was curled around hers. She
sighed.

With one hand she ruffled his hair. “You’re a pain in the
ass, but you are
so
good at that.”

“I know,” he said, his breath cool on her shoulder. “And yet
it angers you. I don’t, er, ‘get it.’”

“I know, buddy, I know.”

Now she saw soot on the ceiling, walls, closet door,
venetian blinds, rug. “Time to get up. Gotta go to work.”

Randy looked at the soot all over the room. “My powers
increase while I am with you.”

“Yeah. My cleaning bill increases. Unless you care to spend
the day washing and repainting this place. You understand what I was saying in
there — out there — wherever we were? I don’t want you scaring me for the hell
of it. It’s rude.”

He smiled, sooty and naked, looking unfairly adorable. “Sex
is rude.”

“It can be. But can we please try something else?”

He blinked. “Very well. But I don’t see—”

In the living room, her cell phone rang. She crawled out of
bed and went to answer it. “Heiss.”

“I’m in,” Clay’s voice said. “Be here this afternoon
sometime. I’m a well-known criminal, insinuating myself into an innocent
antique collector’s home so I can burgle the joint or something. Think you can
remember that?”

“What do you mean, you’re in?” This was what came of Ed
hiring a former con artist for her partner. “I told you to wait!”

“Too late. My cover is set up now. You and Randy don’t have
to pretend to be anybody. You’re you, a six-foot DCS fraud cop with the razor
blue eyes, and Randy’s your partner. I don’t know you guys are coming.”

“Randy is not coming!”

“We need Randy.”

This was the man who swore up and down, three weeks ago when
she busted him for selling fake sex therapy, that he never used an accomplice. “What
do we need him for?”

“Lots of things. He knows about magic. He has presence.
He’ll impress the marks.”

“He’ll screw up and do something suspicious.”

“Thus drawing attention away from you. He’s foreign. That’ll
get him slack, and at the same time distract people from any little undercover
slips you might make,” Clay said, putting his finger on Jewel’s insecurity. “We’re
still training you there. Randy’s a pretty good liar. You suck, girlfriend.”

“Thanks,” she said. He had a point.

“Plus he’s a hunk and we may need one,” Clay said with
unprecedented modesty.

“Jewel?” The hunk came out of the bedroom. “Do you want to
shower first?”

Jewel put the phone on her knee, swearing hard but silently.
She looked at Randy. He might clean up okay. She bit her lip. “Go shower and
put on some nice clothes. No tee shirts or jeans.”

Randy disappeared into the bathroom.

She said to the phone, “I’m going to have to kill you.”

“That’s part of your cover.”

“I’ll enjoy it.” She spread the yellow afghan over the couch
and put her sooty behind on it. “Don’t hang up yet! Brief me. Who’s in the
house besides you?”

“Besides the old guy, there’s his sister and the golddigger,
plus a bunch of servants, butler, cook, maid, chauffeur. You can ID them when
you get here. I’m kind of hampered.”