Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged (3 page)

Elmo
cocked his head to look at me.

"What?"
I asked defensively. "Look, here's the truth. I don't live with Callie
yet—but of course I want to. So that raises the question, when am I considered
married?" I broke out in a sweat and began ripping my sweater jacket off
as fast as I could while driving eighty miles an hour down the freeway holding
the steering wheel with my knees. Lately I'd begun having hot flashes when
there was nothing worth flashing about.

Elmo
flopped down on the console between the bucket seats, apparently knowing from
my tone that this was going to be a long night.

"Straight
people have a wedding date after which they're never to look at anyone else,
much less fuck anyone else. Forget that the groom might have a bachelor party
the night before and screw three hookers and a beauty queen. That's still okay
until twelve hours later when he walks down the aisle and is never supposed to
do it again—never even think of hookers again, or talk about hookers, or beauty
queens, or anyone else but his wife. Now does that make sense to you? What was
different in those twelve hours that made him not guilty and then guilty?"

Elmo's
sigh sounded somewhere between bored and exasperated.

"Hold
on, I'm getting to the point." I reached into the glove box and handed him
a cookie to make him a more attentive listener. He chomped down on it, in a
slow, thoughtful crunching as if letting me know he was hearing me out, which I
appreciated.

"What's
different? I'll tell you what's different: the walk down the aisle. An aisle, a
long corridor of carpet, suddenly alters right and wrong—get it,
alters
? It interjects morality into what was formerly just sex. The walk down the
aisle announces to the world that you have decided to be monogamous forever.

"Where's
my aisle? Where is the point at which I'm supposed to be completely hers? I
need a marker. Is it after I told her I loved her? Is it after we had that
first fabulous night in bed? Is it after we move in together?

"Lesbians
have no aisle. The aisle is a finish line. You cross it and you're finished.
Straights know that."

Hearing
a muffled gurgle, I glanced down to find Elmo snoring.

"I
listen to you day and night, thanks to Callie's coaching, and I'm getting moist
snores."

Grabbing
a Kleenex I daubed at his large black nose and then patted his tricolored fur
suit. Elmo never even twitched. I turned on the radio to hear a deep-voiced
country singer croon that he would be happy to walk through hell on Sunday to
ensure that his lover remained in the garden literally fertilizing the flowers—
demonstrating what monogamy can come to if both parties don't buy into it.
Patting the white milk bone on Elmo's caramel-colored head, I continued what I
suspected was a dogalogue—one-sided dialogue with a dog no longer listening.

"Dogs
don't have to worry about the deleterious effects of random sex, unless it's
getting hung up during the deed and having some stranger turn a hose on
you." Elmo roused and looked up with worried eyes, perhaps seeing images
of himself in a compromising position. "Don't panic, it rarely happens.
Stick with girls your own size and you'll be fine," I assured him.

Driving
from the Valley to Sedona at nirvana-speed—a velocity that exceeded the
ridiculously low limit inflicted by governmental bodies but not fast enough to
induce a donut-dunking HP officer to fire up his red light and come after me—I
was momentarily content.

Callie
Rivers's sweet soul and sexy body were finally on my horizon. She had ducked
and dodged and given me every excuse for our remaining long-distance lovers,
but now I felt certain I had her on the brink of living with me. We'd been
together in Tulsa, L.A., and Las Vegas, talking, laughing, and making love in
enough places and circumstances for the test drive to be over—the test drive
Mother had always warned against when I was growing up.

"Sleeping
with a man before you're married comes to no good end. Why buy the cow when the
milk's so cheap?" Mother told me from the time I could walk, oblivious to
the troubling analogy of daughter as cow. Looking back I realized the advice
was sound and effective. I
never
slept with men—thus keeping myself on
the market and the value of my mammaries high.

We
stopped only once for gas and a bladder break at a time-worn service station
whose faded sign obfuscated the name and whose gas-pump handle had endured more
hand grabs than a rock star's crotch. I bought a Hershey's Almond Bar, and Elmo
nudged me when we got back in the car, wanting a bite.

"You
know Callie believes chocolate can kill a dog," I said as Elmo swung his
head suddenly and bit off a third of the candy bar. His eyes glistened in
basset ecstasy.

"Damn!
You know I hate to eat after you because of where your tongue's been."

Elmo
kept his head down but cut his eyes up at me.

"True,
but I brush my teeth," I said in response, and bit into the candy bar,
knowing Callie would pass out before she would ever eat after a dog.

"Don't
do this in front of her, or neither of our mouths will experience pleasure
again."

I
knew the scenery from L.A. to Sedona by heart and played it in my head like a
virtual tour because it was too dark to see anything. When we began to climb
slowly up the mountain to Flagstaff, shadows of the topography announced the
world had changed. Despite the darkness, I could almost feel the mountains
ahead.

The
turn south on I-17 began a winding trip down into the canyon an hour before
sunrise. No light glanced off the red rocks, and only shadows fell on the
forest trees. Nonetheless, I was lighthearted and hopeful.

I
would write a powerful screenplay and make love with Callie Rivers in an erotic
frenzy that would grow exponentially by the day. And after the screenplay was
written, I would take her home with me and we would live together forever. I
would be so happy that the mere thought of another woman would simply be blown
out of my head right through my ears.

I
conjured up euphoric visions of our new domesticity, our concupiscent
coupledom, and our mutual joy pegging off the bliss meter. I envisioned our
dropping dry cleaning off.. .together, grocery shopping.. .together, going to
vet visits and dentists' appointments... together. I intended never to let her
out of my sight.

"That
solves monogamy right there," I said to Elmo, who was snoring.

We
drove farther down into the woods, the road hugging a crystal-clear body of
water until we came to a horseshoe curve, then a steeper descent down to a
creek and a series of cabins indiscernible from the road. Gliding slowly off
the highway onto the soft dirt and then crunchy rocks, I rolled to a stop in
front of a cabin, reached into my jeans' pocket, and pulled out a key with a
tiny white tag dangling from it that said Cabin 11.

A
small, rustic, red log cabin, buried back off the main road, peeked out of the
tall pines. I put the parking brake on, grabbed a small flashlight out of the
glove box, and told Elmo to hang tight while I figured out if this was the
right place. Serene and beautiful, it was also a bit spooky in the predawn.
Callie had rented the place from someone she knew and mailed me the key and
directions.

Shining
the light on the plaque by the door I read ELEVEN. This was definitely the
place. I put the key in the lock, opened it with a ten-degree turn, and heard
it click, making me wonder why whoever owned the place had even bothered, since
I could have jimmied the feeble mechanism with a credit card. But this was
Sedona, hardly the crime capital of the world.

No
light switch inside the door, so I eased across the room looking for a floor
lamp and bumped into furniture along the way.

That's
when I heard a swish ahead of me, like weather stripping at the bottom of a
door scraping the floor, and a shadow played across the door frame. I dropped
to a crouch to make myself a smaller target.
Who is it? Maybe the back door
was unlocked and a transient is sleeping here.

Elmo
barked loudly from inside the car, apparently trying to warn me of someone at
my back. I spun on the balls of my feet, still crouched and facing a hundred
and eighty degrees in the opposite direction. Seeing no one, I completed the
circle until I was facing the back porch again where I froze, my heart poised
to leap out of my chest.
Someone’s in the room with me.

Whoever
it was had entered through the back door and was nearly on top of me. Stabbing
my hand into my jacket pocket, I grabbed my gun and yanked it out, bounced to a
standing position, and pointed it in the direction of the back door.

"Don't
move or you're fucked! Turn on the lights!" I shouted to the intruder, who
obviously knew the room layout, where I didn't.

"Fucked?"
A soft chuckle. "I'll take you up on that—and forget the lights."

I
recognized Callie's sultry voice. "What are you doing here? You're not due
until tomorrow," I said, delighted to be near her under any circumstance,
and laid my gun down on the nearest flat surface.

"I
was on the back porch having a drink and waiting for dawn, and something told
me my lover was coming."

"You
scared the hell out of me."

"I
have since the day I met you." She slid into my arms in the dark and
covered my face with kisses.

"I
could have shot—"

Her
mouth muffled my words as she renewed her kisses and reached under my shirt to
unhook my bra. Her hands were down the back of my pants pulling me to her,
strong and sure of what she wanted, her mouth searching mine as if she'd lost
her life there and was determined to find it.

As
we kissed, she walked me backward through a doorway and pushed me onto a narrow
double bed with squeaking coil springs buried deep inside the old mattress that
had obviously seen plenty of action over the years and still had the strength
to bounce us when we flopped onto it, making us laugh like kids.

"Wow,
this'll be like making love on a trampoline."

"Hang
on and don't lose your place," she said and put her hot mouth on my
breast. Her fingers searched for me and I tried to adjust to how quickly I'd
gone from highway to heaven. "Have you missed me?" she asked as I
pushed my body into her, so insane I couldn't remember my own name.

"Incredibly,"
I managed to whisper.

"Good,
because you belong to me, and I want you to remember that. I just got out of
the shower. Why don't you hop in and I'll be waiting for you right here."
A seductive tone belied her functional intent that anything she put in her
mouth would definitely be washed first—be it fruit or friend.

I
broke free, dashed into the bathroom promising to be back in sixty seconds,
stripped by the dim glow of the bathroom night-light, jumped into the
two-by-two tin box, and cranked the rusty metal shower nozzle that squealed on
my behalf as the ice-cold spray temporarily shocked all thoughts of sex right
out of my brain. I immediately understood why Eskimos, obviously too cold to
disrobe, only rubbed noses and undoubtedly adopted children from Brazil.

After
jumping out and toweling off, I dove damp and naked into bed beside Callie.

"You
smell great." Her warm arms around me, she picked up where she'd left off.
I marveled at how good I felt every time she touched me and wondered if our
lovemaking would always remain as intense and incredible as it was right now.

Suddenly
my mind jumped its track and fixated on the idea that this would be the last
woman I would ever touch like this—not that I wanted to touch another woman,
not that Callie Rivers wasn't the most phenomenal lover on the planet, it was
simply that this was...
it,
that moment when I'd gotten what I was looking
for. I'd come to earth to find love and here it was and now it was done. The
thought of my perpetual quest for love being done, over, finished made me break
out in a sweat.

"Are
you okay?" Callie whispered. "You're tense."

"Sorry,"
I breathed. "Must be flying down the highway all night, thinking I was
about to be shot by an intruder, then jumping into an ice-cold shower."

"Clear
your mind, darling." Callie kissed my closed eyes, down my nose, and onto
my lips and suddenly, thankfully, I mentally re-engaged and slid my knee
between her legs. Arms around me, she kissed me—that hot, wet, wild kiss that
uncoupled all my synapses—the touching of tongues igniting a lust that began at
my loins and exploded through me, an insane heat that would make me do anything,
promise anything, searing common sense right out of me and soldering my soul to
hers.

Our
hearts beat in the same rhythm, our breathing simultaneous; wired and wanton
she slid in and out of me in a rhythmic pulsing that increased in speed and
intensity until I thought I would pass out from pleasure. Then, trembling, my
body begged her to do it again. Sexually spent, I lay still, attempting to
breathe as she gently stroked my chest and hips. "I think you missed
me."

"I
can see that you're very proud of
yourself." I smiled, slowly rolling her onto her tummy as she protested,
insisting I should relax and enjoy the feelings she'd created while I assured
her there were other feelings I would find equally thrilling.