Cumhachd
Lenore’s hands slap down onto his chest, palms flat, and she starts pushing off his breastbone like he was some accident victim on the highway. Her toes are curled up to the breaking point. A slick coating of sweat has broken everywhere and streams run down from her neck, over her breasts, over his hands squeezing her breasts, rubbing her nipples. A weird, old Three Stooges-type noise comes out of his mouth. She leans forward, inclines lower and lower over his chest, pumping her hips faster as she moves. Her hands go to the sides of his head, just above his ears, and she grabs two fingerfuls of hair and holds tight, pulling, shaking her own head now side to side.
Dominari
He’s the first to let out a yell as he comes, but within seconds she’s joining him. She had hoped to dismount and dress as soon as he was satisfied, but that isn’t an option anymore. She lets her own eyes close, lets the noise pour out of her mouth, meaningless, passionate babble. Her hips buck in a last spastic set of spasms. She comes up as far as she can on her knees and still keep him in, then rams down, draws in air, and falls completely forward onto his chest.
Time seems to pull into the breakdown lane. Her sense of taste overwhelms her. Everything is salt. Woo stays quiet, but his lungs continue to work overtime. Neither of them attempts to alter their position.
The light seems a little dimmer to her. She keeps her eyes closed, realizes she’s hugging him around the shoulders. She becomes aware of a sound, a slight, almost inaudible hiss, probably from the hidden speakers.
She’s too loose to brace herself, though she knows it’s coming, so she waits, willing listener, suddenly submissive.
And then the bodiless voice says: Dominance.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Mingo likes this street, tree-lined, middle-class, relatively stable. He rolls the Jaguar at a creeping pace and studies the old houses, all Victorians, many of them painted in bright pastel colors. He finds the architecture amazing, finds it hard to believe there was a time when men would put this much effort and detail into a building. Just for the sake of the way it looks. “They must have been fanatics,” he mutters, without any explanation to his train of thought.
Cortez sits next to him, preoccupied, eyes closed, his thumb and index finger rubbing over the bridge of his nose.
“The first time I came down here, I figured this couldn’t be it. This doesn’t look like a place with stores, you know …” Mingo says.
“Commercially zoned,” Cortez tries, without opening his eyes.
“Exactly. This looks …”
“Residential.”
“There you go. First time out, I figured you’d given me the wrong directions. Then I practically broke my back carrying all those boxes up there.”
“A little suffering is good for the soul, Mingo.”
Mingo raises his eyebrows, picks up a little speed, until Cortez says, “Okay, pull over and wait here.”
He gets out of the Jaguar and stands on the sidewalk looking up at the building. A pastel-yellow Victorian. Turrets, cupola, odd angles and jogs everywhere. There’s a carved wooden sign hanging over the archway that leads up onto a wraparound porch. It reads “Ephraim Beck’s Mystery Bookshop.” Simple, Cortez thinks, tasteful. He walks up onto the porch where a long redwood picnic table holds a row of seven old-fashioned orange crates. The crates are all packed to capacity with paperback books. A small sign, propped on a tiny antique-looking easel, reads “Any three for a dollar.”
He looks back down to the street and sees Mingo behind the driver’s wheel, in a world of his own, talking to himself. He thinks to himself, Everyone I draw around myself is defective in some way, then moves inside the shop.
A bell rings as he pushes open the storm door and steps into the foyer. It’s warm inside. The lighting is soft, but bright enough for long-term browsing. He stands in one spot and does a full scan. He loves what he sees. The place is so different from Hotel Penumbra, evokes a different era. Different concerns, importance placed on different priorities.
In the front room off the foyer, a middle-aged man is sound asleep on a small couch covered with a paisley quilt. He has salt-and-pepper hair, clipped grey mustache, wire-rim glasses pushed up onto the crown of his head. He’s dressed as if he’s playing the part of the kindly, old bookseller at the community theater. A white cotton button-down shirt covered by a brown, unbuttoned cardigan sweater. Suspenders barely visible. Corduroy pants. Penny loafers over heavy argyle socks.
He looks to be in an uncomfortable position, neither sitting nor lying down, but an unusual blend of the two. His head is cocked backward on the back edge of the couch, his face pointed up to the tin-plated ceiling. His mouth is open slightly. His hands are gripping a book spread open in his lap. Cortez would like to read the title without waking the man.
Instead, he takes a step to an elaborate walnut bookcase with a sign resting on top that reads “New Arrivals.” He starts to reach out to pull down Harry Keeler’s The Book with the Orange Leaves, but stops himself and simply looks. He feels uneasy, like the confused kin of a young mother who’s given her infant up for adoption, and now returns to his school yard to simply stare at what was once hers. He turns away from the bookcase, annoyed with himself for the dramatics, ashamed of the conceit of this idea. But he can’t help one last thought—I’m not much more than the fictions I’ve sold.
The entrance bell did nothing to disturb the sleeping man and Cortez is unsure whether to ignore him and begin browsing or to try to wake him gently and announce his presence. Then the thought hits him that it’s possible the man is dead, a heart attack in the middle of the book’s climax, maybe a murder scene or a chase.
Cortez leans forward slightly without taking a step. He wants a sign of breathing. The chest to rise. The eyes to flutter.
But there’s nothing. He has to confirm the worst. He begins to move toward the couch and the man’s mouth opens and says, “You’re a first-timer.”
Cortez stops and instinctively squelches any show of surprise. The man hasn’t moved his head or opened his eyes. Cortez finds this rude. Especially to a potential customer. The guy obviously has no business skill. It’s amazing the place has stayed in operation so long.
“Excuse me?”
Now the head comes up and the body straightens itself into a normal sitting posture.
“Ephraim Beck,” he says, extending a hand that Cortez walks toward and shakes. “I doze sometimes. When it’s slow. I find it very refreshing.”
“I’m sure.”
“What I said was, this is your first visit to the store. Most of the customers here are regulars. That’s the way it is with specialty stores, you know.”
“I can imagine.”
“You from out of town?”
“Here on business.”
“Saw the ad in the yellow pages?”
“Actually, I asked the desk clerk at the hotel for some of the better bookstores in the city.”
“I see. Are you a collector?”
“Really, a beginner. An amateur.”
“We’ve got something for everyone. Any author you’re especially interested in? You look like you might be a Chesterton man. Am I right?”
“To be honest, I’m going to be doing a great deal of traveling in the near future. A lot of time on planes. Trains. I’m looking for some tides that will keep my interest. But at the same time I don’t want to load myself down.”