I shook my head again. Spoke. "Just right. Dios, Montoya, you sure know how to rock my world."
"And you mine." His last parting thrust made me draw in a rasping breath, then he tucked away and zipped up. As he untied my hands, he murmured in my ear. "We're going to need a good supply of shirts and blouses, I think."
He buried his face in my cleavage as my arms came down. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, giving him the heat and nurture of my nipples. We ended in a mindless round of "te amos," and this time I had a Spanish soul and meant every repeated syllable I could find breath to croon.
When he pulled back, I was flushed with satisfaction and a bit of a blush.
"Yes?" he asked, reading my reservations instantly. He was a cop of sorts.
"That was, that was a bit, um, lurid."
"But you liked it. You came like a catamount almost before I could penetrate you."
I blushed more. "Yes, but bondage-"
He lifted each of my undamaged wrists and kissed them, then folded the wrinkled sky-blue silk tie and put it in his jacket pocket. The gesture made my heart pound afresh. He expected to use it again. The wetness between my legs warmed with a fresh flood.
He stroked the back of his fingers against my flaming cheek, then took my pulse under the skin he'd suckled. "Muy caliente," he murmured, "muy tempestado. Don't fight it."
"You know how I feel about being bound horizontal."
"This is being bound vertical. This is different."
True, but I still felt uneasy about my wildcat self, about how easy that self could break loose at the silken touch of his tie and the mere nudge from the head of his penis.
He smiled as his face neared mine. "You like it well enough to ravage the parts of me that the past has made sensitive." He showed his neck, the skin reddened, a new bruise already turning as dark as thunder.
I was a little shocked to see the fresh damage-and breathless. "Because it excites you and I like to excite you."
"This lovemaking excited you."
"It shouldn't have. I'm not a victim."
"Delilah. Often the things we fear the most turn us on the most."
"How do you know that?"
He chuckled. "My adopted mother, the psychologist. Oh, she didn't put it that plainly." He took my hands in his again, held them palm-to-palm as if teaching me to pray.
"Delilah, I most fear being under the control of others, but I also fear that the pleasure and release the bat-bite brought me during my youth was a sin in that desert wilderness of constant want and pain. When you use it with such wicked delight to excite me it frees me to enjoy the pleasure, because the woman I love has accepted everything I was and did and rejoices in my manhood, no matter how I arrived at it."
Tears were flowing. "Oh, God, Ric. I do! I do love you, I do want you. There's nothing wrong with you. It's me. I veer from being leery to distrustful, but it's of myself."
"I know." He lifted my hands above my head again. "But a bit of binding frees your hembra tigre, because you are not quite in control then, are you? Not quite responsible when I'm driving you so crazy."
I nodded. Slowly. Ric released my hands and leaned in to extract a string of sweet, deep kisses from my lips.
"Don't fight yourself, your own nature," he advised, "unless you don't want to feel like this again."
I hadn't known what "normal" or my own nature was since the Millennium Revelation. Somehow, I'd decided to fully accept exploring it with Ric. And I was liking it.
When I'd dressed again, I showed him to the door, where we dawdled over goodbye kisses.
"Umm," he said during a breathing break. "You look so… disheveled in those clothes."
"Linen wrinkles easily," I said demurely.
His eyelids were heavy, sexy. "I could make love again, just to your clothes."
"Guess I'll throw away my steamer, then, if you prefer me mussed."
"Absolutely." He kissed me like it was the first time, long and deep.
When he broke it off, though, he was back to business matters.
"There's one thing you can't put off, Del. "
He sounded sober, serious. My heart did a highland fling. I wasn't telling him everything about my investigations. I should, but…
"What, Ric?"
"The Cocaine groupie killing. The police still may like you as a suspect because the victim was seen pawing you in the Inferno security film. You'll need to be interviewed."
"My attorney," I told Ric, "can deal with the Las Vegas police if they want to interrogate me about the groupie death."
"You still using that Nightwine CinSim?"
"Perry Mason never lost a case or an innocent client."
"That was fiction, sweets."
"He'll be right with me all the time."
"Having a lawyer at an interrogation looks suspicious."
"They'll be star-struck, you know they will be. Perry is awesome."
"Maybe. You won't ask me to escort you there, but you'll let Mason accompany you to the police station. I'm hurt." I winced. "Meanwhile, let me work around the back door."
"With your police captain friend?"
"Colleague."
"Woman cop. Don't forget that for a moment, amigo mio. She likes you."
"All the better for you. We'll talk after it's over. When can you get in?
"Soon. Perry's on permanent retainer with Nightwine, remember. I'll have him set it up. Can you promise that Haskell won't be involved?"
"I'll hold Captain Malloy's flat feet to the fire if they don't keep that lowlife out of it."
"I don't like you holding anybody's feet but mine, but I promise I'll get in for my own special grilling."
Chapter Eight
Any sensible "suspect" would have been fretting about a forthcoming date with the police to discuss the ugly matter of the Snow groupie death.
Any sexually susceptible woman would be obsessing about hot rock-star Snow instead of one of his dead worshippers.
I spent the rest of the day dreaming about sudden reruns of the Pulp Fiction romp with Ric. I kept checking myself in the mirror to see if I looked like a woman who'd get off on light bondage and heavy breathing for a little afternoon delight.
Even the hall mirror seemed to reflect a newly disheveled me and I wondered if my sudden conversion from celibacy would make me more sensitive to Lilith's appearances. Lilith had obviously been a hot number since the apple orchard in Eden.
So I wasn't totally surprised when my own image blurred and I saw someone else posing as my reflection.