There was a moment of electric silence.
For no reason at all, the hair stood straight up on the back of his neck. He looked across the table to find her eyes fixed on him, narrowed and hostile. The look pulled him to his feet, ready for fight or flight. “Kate?”
It was purely involuntary, a knee-jerk reaction. She didn’t stop to think about it; she just picked up the little tin lockbox and let fly. Its arc was swift and her aim was true. The box caught him just above the left eyebrow and burst open. A paper blizzard fluttered out and down.
“Ouch!” Jim slapped a hand to his eye and rocked back a step. “That hurt! Damn it, Kate!”
“Is there a woman left in this Park you haven’t slept with!” She grabbed a coffee mug and let fly with that, too.
The mug missed, which was a good thing, since he never saw it coming. He heard it slam into the sink and shatter, though. Warm fluid was running down the side of his face and obscuring his vision. He took a stumbling step forward, trying to preempt future missiles. He nearly fell over the coffee table, which movement, fortuitously for him, caused her to miss his head with the big red Webster’s Unabridged. It hit his right shoulder instead.
“Shit!”
“What’s with all the noise?” Dandy Mike said, peeking in the door, and ducked back just in time to avoid the poker. It missed Jim, striking the wall next to the door instead and landing at his feet with a clang. “Never mind, none of my business, just checking in. I’ll be leaving now,” said Dandy Mike, his voice barely audible over the sound of feet rapidly retreating down the stairs.
She’d snatched up an Aladdin lamp, the reservoir still half-filled with oil, when he tackled her and wrestled her onto the couch. The chimney fell off the lamp and miraculously did not break as it rolled beneath the table.
“Stop it, Kate,” he said, breathing hard. “Damn it, I said stop it!”
This as she dropped the lamp and he got an elbow to the jaw that made his teeth snap together painfully. He caught her hands and pushed them into the small of her back. She head-butted him. “Ouch! Jesus!” The only way to immobilize her was to lie on her full length, which he did. It wasn’t even funny how long he’d been waiting to get her horizontal and this was the only way he could get it done.
“Get off me!”
“What the hell is the matter with you!”
She tried to knee him in the groin. He shifted at the last possible minute. “Kate,” he said. He was angry now. “Knock it off.”
She heaved beneath him, trying to throw him off, and they both rolled to the floor, Kate on the bottom. She inhaled sharply. “Get off me!” He’d lost his grip on her hands in the fall, and she tried to hit him. He grabbed her hands again and held them over her head.
“Jesus!” he said. “What the hell is the matter with you!”
“Get off me, you son of a bitch! Get off!”
Their eyes met, hers narrow and furious, his widening as realization struck.
“You’re jealous,” he said.
She erupted in a fury of denial, kicking, butting, hitting, elbows, knees, feet, everything in action. “Let me go!”
He felt as if he were trying to hold on to an earthquake. “Christ! Stop it, Kate! Ouch!” This when she kicked him in the shin. “Kate!” She tried to head-butt him again. She was strong and agile, but he was bigger and getting angrier. After another attempt on his balls, he kneed her legs apart and pressed her down.
She froze. He froze. Sight of the edge of the cliff they were about to go over came to them both at the same moment, but then he’d been hard since they hit the floor.
“Kate,” he said, her name an unrecognizable husk of sound. He bent his head.
“No!” She erupted again, fighting, clawing, even trying to bite him.
Maybe it was the click of her teeth in his ear. Maybe it was just the result of all that friction. Whatever it was, something inside him slipped off the chain, something famished and feral and prowling, something totally out of his control. He could smell it, smell the need in her, the craving. It was as strong as his, as basic as his, and if it wasn’t, he didn’t care. He would take what he wanted anyway. His hand tightened around her wrists and she cried out. He used the other to yank up the hem of her shirt and tear off her bra. Her breasts were small and firm, the nipples hard and brown, and he took them into his mouth in turn, suckling as if he were starving. She cried out again and arched up, her body a tense bow. He slid his hand between her legs and rubbed the heel of his hand hard against her. She screamed then, in ecstasy or outrage, her body pressing into him, her head pressed against the floor, and he went for the snap of her jeans before she could start fighting him again.
But she wasn’t fighting him now. She had one hand free and knotted in his hair, holding his head still while she kissed him, her teeth and tongue voracious, one hand clawing at his shirt, one leg hooked around his waist. The coffee table got in the way and she kicked it over. It smacked into the unsteady pile of paperwork leaning up against the wall and the classics dictionary came crashing to the floor, barely missing their heads.
Oblivious, she ran her teeth down the side of his neck and he nearly came then and there. “Wait, damn it, wait, wait,” he said, tugging desperately at her jeans. Her hips gave a quick wriggle and the jeans slid, oh thank god, all the way down; he managed to pull them off one leg before she went for his belt. One second he was free and in the next he was caught again, driving into her, the one place he’d wanted to be for a year and a half, longer than that, an eternity of wanting, back where it was tight and hot and wet and Kate, Kate, Kate.
He was pretty sure she came again. He knew he had, hard enough to wonder why the floor hadn’t splintered beneath them. Hard enough to wonder if he’d hurt her.
Jim Chopin in the sack was all about control, all about subtlety and skill and patience. He liked women, and he was self-aware enough to know that he was one up on most men in that he didn’t fear them, either. He liked the getting and giving of mutual pleasure, mutually arrived at, mutually satisfying. He was proud of that, taking a certain amount of smug satisfaction in his expertise. He was not into pain, he liked to take his time, and it just wasn’t any fun if his partner wasn’t enjoying herself as much as he was. Life was too short to have bad sex.
But this time, this one time, he had been hasty, rough, and reckless, frantic to get at her, ridden by a red devil of lust that whipped him on and over the edge into madness. This time, he had displayed all the refinement and sophistication of a moose in rut. This time, he still had most of his clothes on.
So much for control. So much for finesse. Ah, shit.
He summoned the strength from somewhere and raised his head to look down at her. Her eyes were closed, her neat cap of hair a tangled dark halo. Her lips were swollen and parted as she gulped in air. A pulse beat frantically at the base of her throat, and he couldn’t resist-he had to bend his head and settle his mouth over it, sucking at the warm, throbbing lifeblood beneath the skin. He could hear her breathing. He could feel her hands on his back, the sting of the scratches she’d left there. She radiated heat like a furnace. He could smell her, the aroma that to him was redolent of a cold draft beer after a long, hot day, a piece of Auntie Vi’s fry bread, Bobby’s special caribou steaks, quick-fried in hot oil and then baked in a wine and cream sauce, a shot of Ruthe’s framboise-every good thing to eat and drink he’d ever had in his life, that’s what Kate Shugak smelled like to Jim Chopin. Her pulse beat against his tongue and he wanted to eat her alive. For the first time, he understood the eroticism underlying the story of Dracula, and the unexpected thought made him laugh low in his throat.
He felt her lashes flutter, and he looked up, to see her eyes open.