Real Men Do It Better (9 page)

The cop lowered his weapon. “Karen? It sounded like you were in pain.”

Because you never heard me climax before.

“I’m fine.” Her face was flaming, not unlike other parts of her body. “He wasn’t doing anything to me I didn’t want him to.”

Officer Dan muttered, clearly embarrassed. But he held his spot. His head snaked forward as he peered into the barn, trying to get a good look at her companion.

Karen blessed the darkness that had saved them from complete exposure. “Um, Dan, could you give us some privacy?”

Gabe laughed shortly. “And can I put my hands down?”

“You think this is funny?” the officer blustered. “For all I know, you were forcing her.”

“Then you didn’t listen very well to the sounds she was making.”

The cop advanced, the gun at his side, but unholstered. He grunted. “I heard enough.”

“Stop it,” Karen snapped. “I don’t need you two cock-a-doodling at each other right now.” She gave Gabe a shove forward. “Turn your back, please. Both of you.” She stepped into her jeans, saw an old work sweatshirt on a hook nearby and grabbed that, even though it smelled like manure from mucking out stalls. She yanked it past her breasts. “All right. You can look now.”

She was
not
going to say “I’m decent” when she felt so fabulously and indecently fucked. Despite Officer Dan’s interruption.

Gabe was shooting black glares at the cop while he straightened his clothing. “Next time, knock.”

“The door was open,” he said defensively, “but don’t worry, there won’t be a next time.”

Coming closer, Karen saw that Officer Dan’s face was as red with embarrassment as hers must be. He couldn’t look at her. Stiffly, he added, “I apologize for barging in. I had it figured that there was something fishy going on last night, and what with not knowing who was out in the storm, and what they—
he
—” Dan’s lip curled in Gabe’s direction “—might do to you, I felt it was my duty to drop by to see that you were safe for the night.”

“I appreciate the concern,” she said.

Gabe snorted rudely from behind her.

Officer Dan was regaining his bluster. He stalked toward Gabe, demanding, “Who are you?”

Gabe’s eyes were flinty. “Tomzak. Gabriel.”

“Step into the light where I can get a look at you.” When Gabe didn’t immediately obey, Officer Dan took hold of his shoulder. A spark zinged and the cop let go, then quickly gave Gabe a shove to urge him forward.

“Am I under arrest?” Gabe asked.

Karen rolled her eyes.

Officer Dan used short punching stabs of a fist to push Gabe toward the doorway. Karen gasped. Directly in their path was the welding machine. And she’d been so carried away—literally—that she’d left it running.

“Careful,” she warned, darting forward. “Let me shut down the buzz box.”

The motor gave a couple of coughs as Gabe stepped around the machine. Officer Dan wasn’t as watchful, or maybe too flustered to care. He stumbled, catching the toe of his boot on the cord. It yanked free of the outlet.

Karen was only able to cry out, seeing the impending disaster but helpless to stop it.

Dan went down, grabbing at Gabe as he fell. Reaching instinctively for something to keep him on his feet, Gabe’s hand wrapped around the base of the sculpture.

The welding machine cut out with a loud
bzzzt
and a burst of sparks that showered down upon the men like fireworks. Gabe yanked his hand back. Too late. An arc of electricity streaked from the metal sculpture and into him.

Karen was too stunned to scream.

Gabe snapped upright. A wisp of smoke rose from his palm. She smelled scorched flesh. For an instant, he seemed to be looking at her, but his eyes were blank, frozen.

She opened her arms.

He collapsed in a heap on the cement.

*   *   *

Gabe swam in a darkness punctuated by arcs of colored lightning that streaked by at the corners of his vision. There was no direction, no sensation, no reason.

Except for one small pinpoint of hope.

An insistent pressure at the side of his neck.

He focused on it, his determination growing stronger. The pressure became a connection, drawing him toward consciousness. He swam the current of heat. Hearing his name. Seeing a blur of light.

“Gabe.” Karen, sobbing. “Please, Gabe. Be all right.”

His mouth tasted like old pennies. He opened it to speak, but nothing came. His tongue was too thick. Oxygen knifed his lungs. He sucked it in, ribs heaving in pain and relief.

“Gabe.” She was kissing his face, washing him with tears. “Can you hear me?”

He nodded.

She gripped his hand. “Help is coming.”

Her face filled his field of vision. Big brown eyes, quivering mouth, her complexion bleached with worry.

“I’m okay.” He lifted his head, moved his arms and legs. “Shit. That hurt.” He let go, smelling leather and realizing that her work apron was wadded beneath his head. “What happened?”

“Well, I guess you were electrocuted.” Her voice caught. “My fault.”

Gabe was remembering. Falling. The bite of metal against his hand. The sudden jolt of heat and pain.

“Accident,” he whispered through dry lips. The corners hitched. “Those tend to happen around me.”

Karen’s laugh became a snuffle. She rubbed her hand beneath her nose. “Dan’s up at the house, calling nine-one-one. His police radio wasn’t working. Imagine that.” She lifted Gabe’s shoulders into her lap, hugging him and rocking and panting. “I thought you were a goner, but your pulse was strong.”

“I felt that.” He turned his face against her thigh. “Your fingers on my neck.” A horrible thought slammed into his brain and he struggled against her. “You shouldn’t be touching me.” He pushed up to a sitting position. “Let me go.”

She wouldn’t. Her hands remained steady and warm, her arms encircling him. She kissed him over and over, on his shoulder, his neck, saying, “I won’t let go, I won’t let go.”

“But—” He moved his fingers and heels against the cold concrete. “What if I’m worse?”

“What if you’re cured?” She gave another shaky laugh. “That’s the way it’s supposed to happen. You know. The amnesiac gets a knock in the head and can suddenly remember everything he forgot. So maybe you’re…”

“Normal?” He had no hope of that. Everywhere she touched him, he felt the charge of electric attraction.

“Let me try.” She pushed up his shirt and drew a fingertip along the line bisecting his abs. No sparks flew, but there was the same magnetic, sizzling chemistry. Not any kind of normal chemistry. Way too hot for that.

Karen hugged him. “Not bad.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I am.” She brushed her lips over his ear. “I don’t know how this happened or where we’re going with it, but I’m not letting go of you, Gabe.” Her tongue licked his lobe.
Sizzle.
“Remember, I’m the only woman who can take you and like it.” She caught her breath in the hesitant, nearly shy way she usually tried to disguise with teasing smiles and distracting talk. He thought she was done until she added, her voice soft and throaty in his ear, “Take you and love it.”

He closed his eyes. He’d come to this place full of questions, and although most of them remained unanswered, he knew that he’d found what he needed. Because in the end, after the lightning bolts and flames and hot electric sex had died out, there remained the simple need to be loved.

Epilogue

Two Months Later

Soft jazz played inside the house, the sweet strains floating out the open windows on the warm night breeze. Gabe and Karen had wandered into the grass barefooted, dressed in the skimpiest of clothing after a long evening of lovemaking. He took her into his arms, cupped her bottom, swayed her to the music. The sky above was vast and silent, its infinite reaches dotted with faceted stars.

After a while, Karen opened her eyes. “Look. The fireflies are out.”

“You sure that’s not me? I’m still feeling kind of sparky.”

She rubbed against him. “You are not.”

“I always am when you’re around. Even if it’s only inside.”

The lightning bugs floated above them, blinking on and off. Karen sighed. Pure joy.

“Did I say that I loved meeting your family? And they seemed so glad to see you happy and settled.”

“Oh, yeah, my brothers got a lot of enjoyment from calling me a househusband.”

“A houselover. Every woman should have one.” She gave him a squeeze. “Don’t worry. You’ll decide on a plan.”

“I almost had them believing the one about buying a rubber factory.”

“Thor Condoms. It’s a possibility.”

“In the meantime…”

“You do enough. Gardening.”

“Kissing.”

“Painting.”

“Sucking.”

“Sawing.”

“Screwing.”

She laughed. “I thought that was my job—to keep you screwed like a light bulb.”

“M-hmm. You do it well. I haven’t shorted out the electricity since the last storm.”

He put a hand on the small of her back. The familiar pulse of attraction throbbed between them.

“My dad was impressed with your welding skills.”

“Your brothers said I should try you as the torch.”

“Figures.”

“I didn’t tell them that I already sort of had.”

“No more guilt. I survived with no ill effects, except for the usual.”

“Well, your mom thought the sculptures were too erotic, even in the abstract.”

“Tell her your new gallery guy says sex sells.”

“And it’s better than phone sex.”

“Or Cock-a-Doodle.”

“Maybe we should get more chickens.”

“Are you trying to turn me into a farmer?”

“God, no. Unless you want—”

“I want to do something I really like.”

“Biking?”

“Licking.”

“Hiking?”

“Hugging.”

“Fishing?”

He chuckled. “Fucking.”

“Two months, and you still have sex on the brain.”

He nipped her. “’Cause what I really like doing is you.”

Bed and Breakfast

by

Susan Donovan

1

The high desert air snapped at Kate’s cheeks. She inhaled the sharp fragrance of wood smoke and glanced overhead at the ink-black sky alive with swirls of stars.

She listened to the Santa Fe shuttle van bumping its way down the dirt road behind her and, with a sigh, grabbed the handle of her suitcase and dragged its wheels through the hard-packed soil. She lugged the case up the wide wooden steps of what she could only assume was the Windwalker Lodge. But hey—the shuttle driver could have dumped her at a psycho killer’s lair for all she knew. It was utterly dark up here. Not even a porch light to welcome her. Some hospitality.

Kate pushed against the heavy, carved front door. The door didn’t budge, but her bladder did, reminding her that she hadn’t used the rest room since her connecting flight in Denver more than four hours before.

She put a hand on her hip and decided to recap, because recapping always made things look rosier. Just a month ago, her boyfriend disappeared, only to turn up in Vegas married to his nineteen-year-old receptionist. Because the emotional blow left Kate a bedridden mess for three days, she missed a meeting in San Diego and lost her company’s most lucrative client. At her father’s birthday party soon after, Kate’s brother chose to announce to the extended family that he was a woman trapped in a man’s body at the exact moment their father began to blow out the sixty-seven candles on his cake, which sent Dad into cardiac arrest. And a week after that, Kate was driving down Wilshire Boulevard, reached for her ringing cell phone, drove her brand-new Land Rover LR3 into a palm tree, and broke her nose.

And that was why she was standing there in the cold and the dark, her bladder ready to explode, her nose pounding, her head throbbing, exhausted and pissed off because she’d been forced to come to some God-forsaken spiritual retreat in the northern New Mexico mountains.

“Open the damn door!”

This was Monica’s fault. Her boss and occasional best friend had pointed out that the universe was telling Kate it was time for her to change direction, and Monica insisted that she start the change here. Apparently, Monica experienced her own life-altering awakening up here a couple years back by hugging trees and smoking cactus or some such garbage, and insisted Kate go have the same alteration. How had Monica put it?
“This will be your first vacation in seven years. Use it to get yourself centered or don’t bother coming back.”

Kate fumbled around in the dark until she found the doorbell. She pushed it six thousand times. She began to shiver. She heard a low moan from somewhere in the dark that could have been a cow. Or the psycho killer. A dog barked. Her patience snapped. And Kate managed to center herself well enough to kick the big wooden door with her pointy-toed Jimmy Choo ankle boot and flip her middle finger into the face of the night, yelling,
“Open this butt-ugly door right now!”

The door opened. Kate gasped. A yellow sliver of light appeared, then a dark eye, which gazed out at her from a thickly fringed, heavy eyelid.

“What’s up?” asked a deep male voice.

Kate’s mouth fell open. She was left speechless by the man’s rudeness.

He yawned. “Sorry. Can I help you?”

“For God’s sake.” Kate rolled her eyes. “I’m here for my freakin’ spiritual awakening, so let’s get this party started.”

She watched a corner of the doorman’s mouth tighten and twitch, and it was then she noticed his scruffy five-o’clock shadow speckled with gray. However, being the uncouth man he apparently was, he said nothing.

“My name is Kate Dreyfuss.”

“That’s cool.” The man yawned again. Kate watched one of his hands travel up to his chin and rub his scratchy beard. Then he ran his fingers through his dark hair. And he just stared.

“Excuse me,” Kate said, with all the sickening-sweet politeness she could muster while squeezing her thighs together. “I can’t help but notice that you haven’t yet opened the door. Is there a reason for that oversight?”

“You could say that.” The guy opened the door just a bit more and, unbelievably, he let his dark, lazy gaze roam down the full length of her body, doing nothing to hide his audacity.