“Okay. Alan?”
“Hmmm?”
“You miss him, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Alan agreed simply. “Every day.” He was appalled to find himself suddenly on the verge of tears. He turned away and opened a cupboard at random, trying to get himself under control.
The easiest way to do it would be to re-route the conversation, and fast. “How’s Nettle?” he asked, and was relieved to hear that his voice sounded normal.
“She says she’s better tonight, but it took her an awfully long time to answer the phone-I had visions of her lying on the floor, unconscious.”
“Probably she was asleep.”
“She said not, and she didn’t sound like it. You know how people sound when the phone wakes them up?”
He nodded. It was another cop thing. He had been on both the giving and receiving end of a lot of telephone calls that broke someone’s sleep.
“She said she was sorting through some of her mother’s old stuff in the woodshed, but-”
“If she has intestinal flu, you probably called while she was on the throne and she didn’t want to admit it,” Alan said dryly.
She considered this, then burst out laughing. “I’ll bet that was it. It’s just like her.”
“Sure,” he said. Alan peered into the sink, then pulled the plug.
“Honey, we’re all washed up.”
“Thank you, Alan.” She pecked his cheek.
“Oh, say, look what I found,” Alan said. He reached behind her ear and pulled out a fifty-cent piece. “Do you always keep those back there, pretty lady?”
“How do you do that?” she asked, looking at the half-buck with real fascination.
“Do what?” he asked. The fifty-cent piece seemed to float over the gently shuttling knuckles of his right hand. He pinched the coin between his third and fourth fingers and turned his hand over. When he turned it back the other way again, the coin was gone. “Think I ought to run away and join the circus?” he asked her.
She smiled. “No-stay here with me. Alan, do you think I’m silly to worry about Nettle so much?”
“Nope,” Alan said. He stuck his left hand-the one to which he had transferred the fifty-cent piece-into his pants pocket, pulled it out empty, and grabbed a dishtowel. “You got her out of the funny-farm, you gave her a job, and you helped buy her a house.
You feel responsible for her, and I suppose to some degree you are. If you didn’t worry about her, I think I’d worry about you.”
She took the last glass from the dish-drainer. Alan saw the sudden dismay on her face and knew she wasn’t going to be able to hold it, although the glass was already almost dry. He moved quickly, bending his knees and sticking out his hand. The move was so gracefully executed that it looked to Polly almost like a dance-step.
The glass fell and plunked neatly into his hand, which hung palm up less than eighteen inches from the floor.
The pain which had nagged her all night-and the attendant fear that Alan would tumble to just how bad it was-was suddenly buried under a wave of desire so hard and unexpected that it did more than startle her; it frightened her. And desire was a little too coy, wasn’t it?
What she felt was simpler, an emotion whose hue was utterly primary.
It was lust.
“You move like a damned cat,” she said as he straightened. Her voice was thick, a little slurred. She kept seeing the graceful way his legs had bent, the flex of the long muscles in his thighs. The smooth curve of one calf. “How does a man as big as you move that fast?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and looked at her with surprise and puzzlement. “What’s wrong, Polly? You look funny. Do you feel faint?”
“I feel,” she said, “like I’m going to come in my pants.”
It came to him, too, then. Just like that. There was no wrong about it, no right. It just was. “Let’s see if you are,” he said, and moved forward with that same grace, that weird speed you would never suspect if you saw him ambling down Main Street. “Let’s just see about that.” He set the glass on the counter with his left hand and slipped his right between her legs before she knew what was happening.
“Alan what are you do-” And then, as his thumb pressed with gentle force against her clitoris, doing turned to do-ooooh!-ing and he lifted her with his easy, amazing strength.
She put her arms around his neck, being careful even at this warm moment to hold with her forearms; her hands stuck off behind him like stiff bundles of sticks, but they were suddenly the only parts of her which were stiff. The rest of her seemed to be melting.
“Alan, put me down!”
“I don’t think so,” he said, and lifted her higher. He slid his free hand between her shoulder-blades as she started to slip and pressed her forward. And suddenly she was rocking back and forth on the hand between her legs like a girl on a hobby-horse, and he was helping her rock, and she felt as if she were in some wonderful swing with her feet in the wind and her hair in the stars.
“Alan-”
“Hold tight, pretty lady,” he said, and he was laughing, as if she weighed no more than a bag of feathers. She leaned back, almost unaware of his steadying hand in her growing excitement, only knowing he would not let her fall, and then he brought her forward again, and one hand was rubbing her back, and the thumb of his other hand was doing things to her down there, things she had never even considered, and she rocked back again, calling his name out deliriously.
Her orgasm hit like a sweet exploding bullet, rushing both ways from the center of her. Her legs swung back and forth six inches above the kitchen floor (one of her loafers flew off and sailed all the way into the living room), her head fell back so her dark hair trailed over his forearm in a small tickling torrent, and at the height of her pleasure he kissed the sweet white line of her throat.
He set her down… then reached out quickly to steady her as her knees buckled.
“Oh my God,” she said, beginning to laugh weakly. “Oh my God, Alan, I’ll never wash these jeans again.”
That struck him as hilarious, and he bellowed laughter. He collapsed into one of the kitchen chairs with his legs stuck out straight in front of him and howled, holding his stomach. She took a step toward him. He grasped her, pulled her onto his lap for a moment, and then stood with her in his arms.
She felt that fainting wave of emotion and need sweep her again, but it was clearer now, better defined. Now, she thought, now it is desire. I desire this man so much.
“Take me upstairs,” she said. “If you can’t make it that far, take me to the couch. And if you can’t make it to the couch, do me right here on the kitchen floor.”
“I think I can make it at least as far as the living room,” he said.
“How are your hands, pretty lady?”
“What hands?” she asked dreamily, and closed her eyes. She concentrated on the clear joy of this moment, moving through space and time in his arms, moving in darkness and circled by his strength.
She pressed her face against his chest, and when he put her on the couch she pulled him down… and this time she used her hands to do it.