Authors: Tawna Fenske
Violet was sitting on the sofa watching a nature special on TV when the doorbell rang. She glanced at her watch, frowning. It was almost midnight. Who the hell rang a doorbell at midnight?
Probably not a burglar, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She looked around the room for something to serve as a weapon. Spotting an umbrella in the corner, she picked it up and carried it like a sword to the front door.
“Who is it?” she called, gripping her umbrella in one hand as she flipped on the porch light with the other.
“Drew Watson,” replied a voice that sounded familiar enough, but strangely sluggish. “Drew. Watson, I mean. In case you know a lot of other Drews. I’m the one you were straddling in the front seat of a Toyota a couple nights ago. I’m not sure if that narrows it down, but you don’t have to call me by my first and last name. Just Drew is fine…”
Violet swung the door open and stared at him. He was leaning lopsided against the deck rail, his eyes half-closed, a funny smile on his face.
“Drew?”
“Hey, Violet. It’s raining.”
“It’s Portland. It’s always raining.”
“Inside?”
“What?”
He nodded at her umbrella. “If you can make it rain indoors, I take back every skeptical thing I ever said about your magical powers.”
She studied him cautiously, noticing he looked even more disheveled than normal. His hair was damp and spiky, and his shirt was buttoned crookedly. One shoe was untied, and he was rubbing a hand over the thick beard stubble on his left cheek.
He’d never looked hotter.
Violet swallowed hard, trying to tamp down the lust she felt bubbling in her belly. “Have you been drinking?”
He grinned. “Perhaps.”
The word came out sounding more like
prahapsh
, so Violet had her answer right there. “You didn’t drive here, did you?”
“Course not. My date dropped me off.”
“You had a date?” Violet said slowly. “And you asked her to drop you off
here
?”
“She lives two blocks that way,” he said, pointing. He frowned and pointed the other direction. “That way. She left my car over there and I walked her home. Then I came back here to say hello to you.” He grinned drunkenly. “Hello.”
Violet shook her head, trying not to feel flattered. A drunk guy turning up on her doorstep after a date with another woman was hardly a turn-on. Why the hell was her heart slamming against her ribs like some sort of defective power tool?
Drew cleared his throat. “May I come in?”
“That sounds like an epically bad idea, under the circumstances.”
“Right. So can I come in?”
Violet bit her lip, considering. She really didn’t want him to drive. And she was pretty sure she could keep from touching him or crawling into his lap or—
“I’m going to start kissing you every time you do that,” he said.
“What?”
“Biting your lip. It’s the least I can do to keep you from damaging the most perfect mouth on the face of the planet. Not that I’ve carefully inspected all mouths to reach this conclusion, but I wouldn’t mind spending a bit more time becoming more acquainted with—”
“No kissing,” Violet said, stepping back from the door. “But you can come in for a minute. Only because I want you to sober up and tell me what you’re doing on my doorstep at midnight, smelling like bourbon and cherry Coke.”
“Fair enough,” he said, and brushed past her on his way inside. He paused to kick off his shoes in the entryway, and Violet considered that he probably wasn’t completely hammered if he was clearheaded enough to remember to remove his shoes.
She watched as he wove a crooked path en route to the living room. He flopped onto the sofa and turned to smile at her. Violet felt her heart clench as he patted the seat beside him.
“You planning to stand there all night, holding the door open?”
She shook her head, still stunned to see him here in Moonbeam’s house.
Again.
She shut the door and padded toward the kitchen, where she pulled a glass out of the cupboard and filled it with water.
“Good memories on this sofa,” Drew called as Violet retrieved two aspirins from the cabinet over the sink. “Need another calf massage?”
Violet trudged toward the living room, where she handed him the water and aspirin before sitting down beside him. He took both without comment, draining the water in two big gulps. Then he set the glass down and looked at her.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Why are you here, Drew? Your date—”
“Wasn’t really a date. Not a serious one, anyway. I didn’t sleep with her, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I wasn’t asking,” Violet replied, ignoring the flutter of relief in her chest.
“Are you sleeping with the doctor?”
“Are we really having this conversation?”
“Should we?” Drew looked at her a moment, then shook his head. “Never mind. None of my business, right?”
He glanced away, then frowned at the television. “What the hell are you watching?”
She followed his gaze to the TV screen, where two porcupines were engaged in an enthusiastic act of copulation.
“It’s a special on unusual mating rituals in the animal kingdom.”
“Is that your idea of porn?”
She smiled in spite of herself. “It’s fascinating.”
“I’m certain it is. Is this how you acquire so much random trivia?”
“I’ve been learning a lot. Did you know that female hyenas have a pseudopenis?”
“A what?”
“A fake penis. It’s basically an enlarged clitoris the hyena can erect at will. In order to mate, the smaller, meeker male has to insert his real penis into it and—”
“This may be the hottest thing a woman has ever said to me.”
She laughed. “If you came here to seduce me, you’re not off to a very good start.”
“That’s actually not why I came here,” he said, sounding surprisingly sober as he sat up straighter. “I came to apologize. For yelling at you earlier today. And for grabbing you. Well, I’m actually not that sorry about grabbing you, but the yelling… that was bad.”
Violet swallowed and resisted the urge to reach out and touch his arm. “It’s okay.”
“No it’s not. I can be kind of a hothead sometimes, but I shouldn’t have gotten so angry. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Violet said slowly. “My mom told me about your ex-wife, so I understand now why you reacted the way you did about Jamie.”
Drew frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“I just thought… well, I thought maybe that’s part of the reason you’re so upset about Jamie. About any psychic conferring with someone close to you. Telling them something you don’t want them to hear.”
Drew closed his eyes and leaned back against the sofa. Violet watched warily, wondering if she’d said the wrong thing. Wondering if he was going to fall asleep or pass out. Maybe she should just cover him with a blanket. Maybe she should call him a cab. Or maybe she should give him a quick kiss on the forehead and—
“My wife didn’t leave me because of a psychic reading,” Drew said, opening his eyes. “My wife left me because it was a lousy marriage and we were lousy for each other. She just happened to beat me to the door.”
“Oh,” Violet said.
“I knew when I caught myself thinking Jamie was the best part of the whole union that the marriage was probably doomed. Catherine just figured it out faster than I did.”
Drew held her eyes for a moment and Violet felt her breath catch in her throat. From the corner of her eye, she saw him start to lift his hand. Then he stopped, dropping it back in his lap, and Violet couldn’t help but wonder if he’d intended to touch her. His eyes still held hers, the electric blue of them reminding her of the sapphire ring Moonbeam used to wear.
She broke the gaze first. “You need more water.”
She grabbed his glass and stood shakily, feeling his eyes on her as she stumbled toward the kitchen again. In the background, the television droned on.
“The bonobo is a species of great ape, also known as
Pan paniscus
. Sexual relations play a significant role in bonobo society, with sexual acts used as a form of greeting, a means of conflict resolution, and in exchange for food.”
Violet glanced at the refrigerator. “Can I get you anything to eat?”
“Will I have to exchange sex for it?”
“What?”
“Like a bonobo. Not that I’m protesting. It actually seems like a pretty good arrangement.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know, Violet. I was kidding. I’m fine. Come back and sit down.”
Violet glanced at the bottle of Pinot Noir on the counter and thought about grabbing a glass for herself.
“Bonobos have been observed tongue kissing, engaging in face-to-face copulation, participating in mutual masturbation, and performing oral sex on members of…”
“You can change the channel if you want,” Violet called.
“Why would I want to change the channel? This is the best thing I’ve seen all month.”
Definitely
no
wine
, Violet thought. She flushed and gripped Drew’s water glass in one hand before trudging slowly to the living room and handing it to him.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He took a small sip and set the glass aside. Then he looked at her again. “Violet, we should talk.”
She looked down at her hands and swallowed. “If it’s something serious, do you think it should wait until you’re sober?”
“I’m not drunk. I am very lightly buzzed, and that’s only because you’re everywhere—at the bar, on my dates, on my stereo. I can’t get you out of my head.”
Violet started to bite her lip again, then stopped. She flicked her eyes to the TV, where a pair of snails were circling each other in a flirtatious fashion.
“Though snails have both male and female sexual organs, they do not self-fertilize. Snails’ genitalia are located on their necks, behind their eye stalks.”
She glanced back at Drew, who was grinning broadly.
He reached up and skimmed a finger behind her ear. “Does that mean we’ve had sex?”
“What?”
“I was kissing your neck the other night,” he said. “In a snail’s world—”
“We should stop.”
“We aren’t doing anything.”
Violet closed her eyes and concentrated very hard on her breathing. Slow and steady, not wild and lust fueled or frantic and passionate.
Nice
and
easy.
“You’re not my type,” she said. “And I’m not your type. This is a bad idea.”
She opened her eyes to see Drew still grinning at her.
“Is that why you’re touching me?” he asked.
She looked down to see that she was, in fact, gripping his thigh through his jeans. She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but seeing her fingers fixed around that denim-clad muscle didn’t do much to make her want to draw her hand away.
“The argonaut, or paper nautilus, is a species of octopus with a highly divergent sexual dimorphism. While females can reach four inches, with shells spanning eighteen inches, the male of the species is only three-quarters of an inch long.”
“Poor guy,” Drew murmured, not looking at the TV. “Size matters. Or so I’m told.”
Violet felt her stomach clench, remembering the feel of his erection pressed into her palm through his jeans when she’d touched him in his car the other night.
Based on her cursory examination, Drew Watson had nothing to worry about in that department. It also said something about the old wives’ tale about the correlation between the size of a man’s hands and the size of—
“The male argonaut has a special tentacle known as a hectocotylus. He uses his hectocotylus to produce a ball of spermatozoa, and when he encounters a female of the species, he detaches the hectocotylus to swim toward the female and…”
“So he removes his dick and sends it to her,” Drew mused, sliding his hand over Violet’s and holding it in place on his thigh. “Convenient.”
Violet licked her lips. “Seems like that would defeat the purpose.”
“Depends on the purpose you have in mind.”
“Did you know that most snakes have two penises, also known as hemipenes?”
“Is this supposed to be turning me on? Because it kind of is.”
“You’d be turned on by an armchair.”
“If you were sitting in it, yes.”
Violet flushed. “Drew, I don’t think we should—”
Her protest was silenced by Drew’s mouth moving over hers. She kissed him back, not remembering anymore why she wanted to protest in the first place.
Somehow, she found herself crawling on top of him, straddling him the way she had the other night in his car. She was wearing thin cotton shorts this time and panties under that, but she could still feel every inch of him straining against the fly of his jeans.
His hands slid around her back and he pulled her hard against him. Violet whimpered at the feel of her breasts pressed into his chest. She moved her hips, grinding against him, reveling in the feel of all that hardness between her legs.
“The Lake Duck can be found in Argentina and has the longest penis of any bird species. When a female attempts to escape from a drake’s amorous efforts, the drake can use his corkcrew-shaped penis to lasso the female…”
“Oh, God,” Violet murmured as she ground harder against Drew. He laughed and began to kiss his way down her throat.
“It’s only fair to warn you that I’m pretty sure the lasso thing is outside the realm of my capability—”
“Shut up, Drew.”
“Right.”
He kissed her again and slid his hands under her shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra—just the ridiculously useless shelf bra in the cami top—and his hands found their way under the elastic in no time at all. Violet gasped as the tips of his fingers grazed her nipples. She kissed him harder, tasting bourbon and cherry Coke and something she thought was desire.
She twisted her fingers in his hair, loving the soft disarray of it, the idea of rumpling him more than he already was. She slid her palms around to savor the roughness of stubble on his cheeks. Her neck already felt raw from beard burn, but the rawness of it just excited her more.