"Your place," she whispered into his ear, her fingers drifting across his lap again.
"If you don't leave me alone, we're going to crash and we'll never get there," he warned. "I don't have a very good driving record around here, if you'll recall."
"You're so tense!" she murmured into his ear. "I'm going to have to do something about that when we get there."
"You're the one making me tense!" he complained.
"You're the one making me horny," she said, pressing a breast into his arm.
Jim Harper would remember, on many later occasions, when Richard Jefferson said, "And who knows? You might come up with something interesting." That's because he came up, eventually, with all kinds of somethings that were very, as it turned out, interesting.
Among them was a discussion with a man known on the street as "Wheezer." Wheezer had asthma, which was how he'd gotten his name. He'd been in and out of jail for most of his sixty years and currently eked out a living by "doing favors" for people who paid him for it.
Wheezer would do literally anything for anybody who would pay him. He specialized in revenge and called himself a "payback artist." He could have written a book, describing the favors he'd done for people, and made a lot of money. He'd done many strange and interesting things over the years.
His personal favorite had been filling a trash can with water and dog feces, which had then been tipped and balanced carefully against the front door of a dwelling in which a woman and a man were having sex. The woman's husband - who was not the man she was having sex with in that dwelling - had hired Wheezer. Wheezer had come up with the idea to booby trap the front door so that, when the cheating bitch let the man out, the trash can would fall inward, inundating the two lovers in shit. Wheezer had thought the whole thing was so funny that he'd stood there on the sidewalk for two hours, right in front of the house, waiting for the booby trap to be sprung.
Harper had made the acquaintance of Wheezer when the man had been hired to "recover" some stolen property. A "client" had lost a very expensive watch in a crap shooting session. His wife had given him that watch and was beating him up about losing it. When it became known later that the dice were loaded, Wheezer was hired to get the watch back. He chose to do that without talking to the new owner about it, deciding that burglary was the less confrontational way of solving the problem. His wheezing woke up the new owner's girlfriend, who screamed bloody murder. He happened to run into a beat cop, quite literally, as he was fleeing the scene. It had been one of Harper's favorite cases, because he'd ended up making a case against Wheezer for the burglary, and the two men for illegal gambling. The frosting on the cake was that the girlfriend had only been sixteen, so he'd gotten a bust for statutory rape as well.
Wheezer, of course, was a man full of information, about all kinds of people and situations. He knew everybody and everybody knew him, which made him the obvious person to start with when Harper began digging into the background of the Higginbothams. Harper knew Wheezer hung out at a particular video arcade. It was his "office."
"Whudduh YOU want?" was his greeting to Harper.
"Can't an old friend just drop by to say hello?" Harper smiled.
"You ain't no friend of mine," wheezed Wheezer. "You're bad for business, too. I ain't done nothin' lately you'd be interested in."
"I doubt that seriously, Wheezer," said Harper, happily. "But I'm not here about you. I need some information on Moe, Larry and Curly Higginbotham."
"I heard about that," mused Wheezer. "Fits. Them three is dumb as a post. It figures they'd do sumpin' stoopid like that."
"You ever known them to pal around with anybody smarter?" asked Harper. "Maybe work for somebody else?"
"Them?" Wheezer's eyebrows rose. "They's a closed up bunch. They even do they own payback."
"There's some folks think somebody else put them up to this," said Harper.
"Nah," scoffed Wheezer. "They been braggin' 'bout how they's gonna hit it big for years. Ain't no bogeymen in they's closet. They's just a bunch of dumbfucks what got too big for they's britches."
"Hmmm." Jim's voice was noncommittal. "How about a guy with a missing trigger finger? Ever heard of anybody like that around?"
"Jimmy Four Fingers?" asked Wheezer immediately. "He's dumb too, but he wouldn't mess around with them boys. They got a mean streak in 'em a mile wide. They's a terrible big chip on they's shoulders." He squinted at Harper. "And anyway, Jimmy's a crackhead. He don't care about nothin' 'cept keepin' his pipe from gettin' broke and keepin' it filled. He don't have the brains to even think about a caper like snatchin' the fuckin' govenor's wife."
"Tell me about Jimmy Four Fingers," said Harper.
Wheezer looked calculatingly at the detective. "Will you go away if I do?"
"Is that all you want out of life, Wheezer ... for me to go away?"
"It'll do for starters," groused the old man. "Ain't nobody gonna talk to me for days after seein' me talkin' to you as it is."
"I just need to talk to ... Jimmy," said Harper.
"All right, but you'll owe me," said Wheezer.
Lulu pulled Kris up to the loft. He had only thrown the covers back, the last time he'd gotten out of the bed, and it was still unmade. She pushed him onto the rumpled sheets, unbuttoned her jeans again, and slid her hand into her panties.
"I'm so wet," she said, her voice throaty.
"I'm beginning to think you're always wet." He grinned.
"Are you complaining?" Her hand went still, but stayed between her legs.
"Do I look crazy?" He kept grinning. "I think every person should have a hobby. Yours is being wet and you're very good at it."
"Take your clothes off!" she ordered suddenly.
"Your wish is my command," he said, quickly removing his shirt.
"You better believe it, buster," she growled and took her shirt off as well. "You're going to pay!"
"Pay? What for?" His grin seemed permanent. He stuck his feet up in the air to remove his pants and briefs. "I didn't do anything."
He flopped back onto the bed, naked, as he watched her take her jeans off.
She slid her panties down, stepped out of them with one foot, and kicked. Kris' eyes followed the tiny scrap of fabric across the room, and he felt the bed move. He turned to see her climbing up onto the mattress to stand. She looked impossibly tall, standing near his waist. Almost delicately, she managed to lift one foot and step across him to stand with a foot on either side of his hips. Though the mattress shifted under her feet, she didn't lose her balance. Her sex glistened and looked shiny.
"I was horny all day," she said, looking down at him. Her hands came to rest on her hips. He reached for one thigh and she slapped at his hand, then went back to her former position. "I had to play with myself, because
you
wouldn't make love to me."
"In the museum?" He put one finger up to his lips. "Oh ... you mean in the car."
"I wanted to suck you, and you wouldn't let me." She was trying to frown and look angry, but it wasn't working.
"I wanted to get back here alive," he said calmly. "And here we are! You can suck me to your heart's content now."
She dropped her hands and walked forward, stopping with her feet on either side of his face. She began to squat slowly. He had been astonished at how easily she balanced on the moving bed, but was distracted as he gazed at her entrance getting slowly closer to his face.
"I don't think I want to suck you anymore," she pouted. His eyes shifted to see her head, bent over, her hair falling to shroud her face in shadow. "I think
you
need to make
me
happy instead."
He was amazed at how strong her legs must be, to let her hold herself there so steadily, her shiny skin only inches from his face. Ever so slowly she lowered herself, until it was like she was kissing him gently with her sexual lips. He stuck his tongue out, lifting his head to drill the tip between them.
Then, suddenly, she dropped her weight and her knees hit the bed. She pushed his head deep into the mattress as she started rubbing all over his face. Within seconds his whole face was wet. Initially, there was nothing he could do. Her gyrations were so wild that he couldn't center his attention on any one thing. His hands came up and grabbed her ass and he was finally able to keep his lips in one basic place.
She sounded like he was killing her. He realized that the insides of her thighs were pressing against his ears and that for him to be able to hear her as clearly as he could meant she was being really loud. All those neighbors Mitch had said were so happy about how quiet he'd been so far were probably standing up right now, looking toward his house. He imagined some woman saying, "Walt! That weirdo who moved in next door is sacrificing some poor woman to his Pagan gods!
Do
something!"
He saw her arms stretch out in front of her, her hands reaching for the headboard. Once she had a grip on it, her hips became a blur and there was nothing he could do to keep her still. Again, he became just the thing she was rubbing herself off against.
He let her have an orgasm ... could tell when it happened ... and then, in a burst of energy, he scooted out from under her, wiggling downwards.
"No!" she moaned, turning as her prisoner seemed to be getting away.
He flipped onto his belly and grabbed her ankles. Using them as an anchor point, he pulled himself to his hands and knees and then leaned back, to pull until she fell flat on her stomach on the bed. She lost her grip on the headboard and tried to flip over onto her back.
He let her, because it was part of his plan anyway. Then he spread her legs and slid his arms under her thighs, falling to the bed again. Her knees bent and seconds later his face was back between her legs and his hands were folded together on her belly. Her thighs were now on his shoulders, so she couldn't use her feet for leverage.
He dropped his head. Now he could keep them in one place for as long as he wanted to and there was nothing she could do about it.
Ten minutes later, she was making noise again. Her hands were alternating between gripping the sheets and pounding them, as she had another orgasm.
All the time he'd been loving her with his mouth, he'd also been inching upwards. He was watching, looking up past her heaving breasts at that headboard. When her head finally bumped up against it, he rose to his knees and crawled forward.
This had the effect of folding her up, and her thighs slid down until her knees were hooked over his shoulders. He kept going until she was bent almost double, unable to straighten out because of the headboard in the way.
"Kris!" she complained.
He leaned forward until she was hanging by her knees from his shoulders, helpless. He reached for his penis, which had been achingly hard for half an hour, and stifled a groan as he swabbed it up and down her split.
"Oh yes," she moaned.
But all he did was tease her, rubbing her, entering her only enough to spread her a little and then pulling back. He stroked himself, because it was the only way he could resist slamming into her.
"Kris!" she moaned. "You're teasing me!"
"Uh huh," he admitted.
"Stop that!"
"Nope."
"Kris! Fuck me!"
"I don't know if I really should," he sighed. He pushed forward until the head was almost in and then pulled it out.
"Stop teasing me!"
she yelled.
He dropped his head to suck a nipple. That folded her up so tightly that he knew she could barely breathe. He let the nipple pop out of his mouth and looked at her wild eyes.
"How come you get to tease me, but I don't get to tease you?" He frowned. "That's not fair at all."
He pushed, holding himself firmly so that his hand kept it from going into her more than a couple of inches. She felt deliciously hot around the tip.
"I'm sorry," she moaned. "I won't tease you again."
"Yes you will," he said firmly. "You love teasing me."
"Kriiiisssss," she moaned.
"Admit it," he said, pulling back out of her. He rubbed the tip all around her opening.
"Oh
please
put it in me," she groaned.
"Admit you love teasing me," he said.
"Never!" she whined.
"You're worse than Henrietta," he laughed.
Her eyes opened wide and her head lifted. It was obvious she was thinking about the parallels between what was going on and what he'd written.
She suddenly reached through his arms and he jerked as she pinched his nipples firmly ... very firmly.