The Lover From an Icy Sea (68 page)

“
Tell me—” he said.

“
Show me!” she countered. The stop, he thought, was drop-dead glottal.

He reached under her coat as she rotated and let his hand rise slow as unguent on a hotplate along the inside of her thigh. Like a pirate on a picnic, he felt a tremor, paused, waited till it had subsided; then eased his hand on up until it met with an impasse of pure silk.

He was Marco Polo—but also Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo. He’d found the road to China, but was about to blow it off for a date with the Milky Way.

*  *  *

Like a lonely Reverend, he pulled the silk aside, unzipped and slipped in with a simple prayer. It was now too late to recant. He’d surely fry—but he had the rest of his life and then some to contemplate how hot the coals. He bowed his head to the nape of her neck, found tiny hairs with his lips, inhaled, flicked the salt of her skin with tip of his tongue.

The sight, feel, smell and taste of her sent his synapses into overdrive, while his cortex collapsed in a smooth smolder. She’d burned her way in—and the memory, he knew, would stick to him like a brand.

The End