As the world continued to wobble on its axis, Danny wondered if he was drunk not on beer but on this pretty woman, and the silly, giddy sense he was falling in love. He hadn’t felt this way about a girl since high school. They just seemed to connect.
“Good thing you’re in my group,” he said.
“Is it?”
“Dangerous for a girl to come to a bar alone.”
“Really?”
“There’s a lot of date rape, and worse.” He couldn’t believe he’d said that. Not exactly romantic...
“You said you were a cop. You must deal with some bad people.”
He’d told her he was a cop in Santa Monica; she’d told him she worked for a Chicago company and made regular California visits.
“Bad people? Sometimes I do, yeah.”
He told her about this morning. It had suddenly become an hilarious anecdote, and she laughed often and in a sweet, fetching way.
“Now I know I’m safe,” she said, and she looped her arm in his. “With you.”
“I don’t know. I know some pretty rough characters on the PD.”
“Then am I in danger?”
“From me? No way.”
“Not even... date rape?”
She said that with a smile. A suggestive one. His head was doing a dipsy doodle.
Suddenly his voice sounded defensive to him. “I wouldn’t... force a woman. I would never take advantage.”
“I was just teasing... Look, it’s getting a little loud in here. Crowded, too. Maybe we should find someplace quieter. Where we can really... talk.”
The noise was getting to Danny, too, contributing to his wooziness. Leaving the bar seemed like a good idea. He tried to think of some quiet place in Reseda, maybe a restaurant, when she made a much better suggestion.
“My motel’s not far from here,” Gail said, her smile just a glimmer at the corner of her mouth. Her expression held promise but also excitement, and a certain nervous edge.
“Uh, sure. Sounds good.”
“I don’t ever do this.”
“What?”
“I don’t pick up men. You need to know that. It’s just... Danny, you’re different. I feel like I’ve known you forever. So please... don’t think badly of me.”
“I don’t! I’m not!” This was the soberest he’d felt in about an hour.
They rose, Danny hoping he could hold it together — his legs unsteady, his stomach, too. He was feeling like he might be getting the damn flu or something.
Following the lovely redhead toward the exit, he had the fleeting thought he should maybe beg off, collect her contact info, and just head for home. He could just see himself folding her into his arms and moving in for the kill and... throwing up in her lap.
But her swaying hips, in those tight blue jeans, were like the swing of a watch in a practiced hypnotist’s hands.
Outside, with the sun down, a cool breeze swept in off the ocean, providing the fresh air Danny needed to feel a little better.
A concerned Gail took his arm. “You look a little green around the gills, honey. You okay?”
“I’m fine... never better.”
Screw it.
He drew her close and kissed that lovely moist mouth, and she kissed back, her tongue darting into his mouth, like a teasing snake’s. They kissed again, and again, then broke the clinch to come up for air.
“You’re fine, all right,” she said, her smile taking on a wry tilt. “You up to driving?”
No.
“Sure,” he said.
She studied him. “Honey, you had twice as many beers as I did...” “Did I?”
“Why don’t you just ride with me, and we’ll bring you back here when you’re feeling better?”
This was a decent enough neighborhood and his off-duty piece was safely hidden away in the spare tire compartment and locked inside the trunk.
“Good idea,” he said. “You drive.”
She led him to a white Kia Sorento. And then they were inside the vehicle, kissing in the darkness behind tinted windows. When he started nuzzling her shoulder and trying to get a hand under her top, she said, “Whoa there, big fella — don’t leave it all in the gym. Save a little for the big game.”
He grinned at her goofily. “Is there gonna be one?”
“I’ve got a nice big king-size bed in my motel room where we can discuss that.”
“Okay,” he said, with an even goofier smile.
As she pulled out of the parking lot, he asked, “What kind of work you do?”
“I’m a headhunter,” she said.
“That sounds scary.”
“Not for the one doing the hunting.”
“... If I wanted a better job in police work, could you help?”
“Sure.”
Gail made a right onto Roscoe and he settled back into the seat and enjoyed the ride with the window down, the fresh air gliding over him. By the time they got to the motel, he was feeling better and — given this company — he figured he wasn’t likely to pass out or fall asleep on Gail.
Tomorrow, he would have something to talk about with Nucci that wasn’t the goddamn Gruners. In fact, when he got to Gail’s room at a former Ramada Inn, and they were safely inside, her arms wrapped around him tight, his ribs — where Lloyd Gruner had piled on him — didn’t even hurt anymore.
They kissed standing up for a while; then Gail fanned herself, let out some air, rolled her eyes, said, “Wow,” and took a short breather. She built them each a mixed drink from some bottles of liquor and soda on the dresser; these they downed quickly, both eager to finish what they’d started.
Soon she was wrapping herself around him as they stood by the bed, kissing him hard, tongue darting in and out of his mouth, his hand on her blouse cupping a full, firm braless breast, its tip diamond hard.
The lightheaded feeling was coming back, but Danny didn’t think that was the drink — he was drunk on Gail, and anyway there wasn’t any blood in his head, not the big head, anyway...
She unsnapped his shirt, quick but methodical; then her mouth moved down his neck onto his smooth, nearly hairless chest, even as her hands started fiddling with his belt and that giant, prizewinner’s buckle.
Her kisses reached his stomach as she pushed him backward onto the bed, where he sat, legs dangling off its edge. She peppered his stomach with kisses as she unbuttoned his jeans, then tugged them to his ankles.
Danny fumbled with her top, but wasn’t having much luck. For some reason, his hands seemed to be about half a minute behind his brain.
She stuck a thumb inside the waistband of his shorts, tugged them down, too, as his erection sprang up and had a look around, as if seeing what it had missed. The throb of his member was a pleasant ache, oddly the only feeling that seemed to dent the haze.
Then everything turned soft and warm as she slipped him into her mouth, suckled, then moved up and down the shaft as hypnotically as her swaying hips when they had lured him to this room.
She must have sensed how close he was and let him ease away. Rising, she said, “I have to slip something in me, lover, before you can slip inside me...”
“Mmmmmm,” he said.
“Only be gone a minute. Get those damn boots off and be buck nekkid when I get back. I’ll show you the kind of dancing you don’t do in a line...”
She smiled mischievously, and moved away.
Groggily, Danny sat up and tried to focus on her fine, sweet shape as she headed toward the bathroom. She was still dressed, but there was no mystery about the heart-shaped bottom awaiting under those tight jeans. Slowly, she pulled the spaghetti-strapped top over her head and showed him the ivory skin of her lovely back.
With a smile, before ducking into the bathroom, Gail turned off the room light, scant illumination filtering in through sheer curtains on this second-floor window. For a moment she was caught in a shaft of light from the bathroom, a topless beauty with a wicked smile.