SHIVER: 13 Sexy Tales of Humor and Horror (17 page)

“That sounds ominous. Do you mean you could scare me because you’re in fact a psycho killer, or scare me with a magic trick?”

His eyes crinkled at the edges, and there was mischief in his gaze. “The latter, obviously.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Your tricks are cool and everything, but they mostly astound and amaze me rather than scare me.”

I loved that Jay was an illusionist. It was so incredibly exciting to live with someone who was constantly coming up with new ways to surprise people. It was also incredibly sexy when he was on stage. However, I was now accustomed to strange things happening, so the fact that I knew it wasn’t real made it hard for me to believe I’d be frightened. If something out of the ordinary occurred, my husband was usually behind it.

“Halloween’s in a few days, too. I think I’m gonna have to come up with a spooky trick just for you.”

“Go ahead,” I told him breezily, “but it will be a waste of time.”

His grin spread wide, and devilry played on his features. “Oh, yeah? Care to make a wager on that?”

“That I won’t be scared? Sure,” I said, and presented my hand. He took it in his, his thumb brushing along my pulse as he pulled me closer. “What do I get if I win?”

Jay’s eyes went dark, his voice low as he asked, “What do you want?”

I chewed on my lip, thinking about it. Finally, I responded, “How about if I win, you have to let me choose your stage outfits for a whole week, and you can’t argue with my choices?”

I managed the wardrobe for Jay’s magic shows in Las Vegas, which was where we’d usually be if we weren’t currently honeymooning, and he was often difficult when it came to what I chose for him. I wanted to put him in designer suits and those sexy V-neck shirts, but he always wanted to wear plain old combats and vests. He said a V-neck was a man vag, and he wasn’t going to be caught dead in one. I could wrangle him into a suit on occasion, but those occasions were few and far between. Apparently, you sweat like a motherfucker in a suit on a stage (his words, not mine.) I was also dying to get him into a Dixie bow. Don’t ask why — it just needed to happen.

He looked amused yet indulgent, giving me a tickle. “That’s what you want, you little weirdo?”

I gave him an expression that was half scowl, half ambiguous smile. “We both know dressing you is a secret pleasure of mine. Remember the suit I was making for you when you proposed? It was probably the thrill of seeing you put it on that made me say yes,” I teased.

Jay smirked and knelt on the bed, his hands braced on his knees as he stared down at me, his eyes smoldering. “You would have said yes regardless, but back to this bet. What do I get if I win?”

“I don’t know. What have you got in mind?”

It barely took him a second to answer, so I knew he’d already been thinking his prize up as we had our conversation. “You naked for twenty-four hours.”

Oh, typical.

“Jason!” I scolded jokingly. “What would the neighbors say?” Technically, we didn’t have neighbors, since we were living in a hotel until he finished his string of shows, but that was neither here nor there.

“Fuck the neighbors,” he swore, and gave me a hot look. “Anyway, we wouldn’t be leaving the suite for the entire twenty-four hours, if you catch my drift.”

“Oh, so your prize is basically sex for twenty-four hours. You were simply trying to dress it up all fancy-like.”

His eyes flashed at me, and I knew he was enjoying the way I baited him. “More like strip it down.”

I smirked. “Was that a pun?”

“It might have been.”

Stroking my chin, I affected a thoughtful expression. “Hmm. Okay, I’ll agree, on one condition.”

“And that is?”

“If you win, you get your day-long sexathon, but until the bet is over, which would be Halloween, there can be no more bedroom action.”

Jay shook his head ever so slightly, his disagreement simple. “Nope.”

“Hey, hear me out. If we don’t have sex for the next few days, it’ll make the prize that much sweeter, don’t you think? Otherwise, you’ll just be getting something you already have. My prize is something I don’t have, so I think your prize should be, too.”

A breath escaped him as he eyed me for a prolonged moment. “This is presuming I win.”

“Of course.”

He narrowed his gaze, trying suppress a smile. “You drive a hard bargain, Mrs. Fields.”

I held my hand out so that we could shake on it, and finally he took it. “I guess this means we have ourselves a bet,” I declared. “I’m confident you won’t be able to frighten me, but how do we measure it? How will you know if I’m covering up my fear?”

One eyebrow rose again, and I guessed it was a silly question. Jay had studied behavioral science for years, knew all sorts of mentalist tricks and ways to read people, so I presumed he’d be able to tell whether or not I was scared pretty easily.

“I have my methods,” he replied enigmatically.

“I know that. But we need to make a checklist. Break my fear down into a science so that the end result can’t be refuted.”

He considered me a moment. “People show fear in different ways. The most common symptoms are a widening of the eyes, raised brows, increased heart rate, flared nostrils, dilated pupils, tensing in the muscles, a dry mouth, sweating, trembling, and, of course, screaming.” He reached out and stroked a hand down my face. “A lot of these reactions are similar to arousal, when you think about it. Fear and sex create the same extremes in humans, although only one brings pleasure.”

I swallowed and tried not to blush. “Well, that sounds fairly extensive.”

We might have been married, but I still got goose bumps whenever he was suggestive. It was bizarre that I could still get shy around him, but there it was. In the grand scheme of things, we hadn’t really been together for very long. Still, I knew that I loved him, knew he was the only one for me.

“I’m nothing if not thorough,” he murmured, and leaned in to place a soft kiss on my mouth before climbing off the bed. He went into the bathroom, and I heard the shower come on. When he emerged fifteen minutes later, he was fully dressed, where usually he’d come out wearing a towel around his waist, hair wet, droplets of water still on his skin….

He must have seen the dreamy look on my face, because he chuckled. “What are you thinking about, darlin’?”

“Huh?” I bit on my lip, paused, then answered, “Just about how you normally come out of the shower wearing a lot less.”

More chuckling. “Well, I don’t want to go tempting you, now, do I? It’d be a sorry reflection on the both of us if we couldn’t stick to our sex embargo for more than thirty minutes.”

Oh, he was enjoying this. I had a feeling he was going to do his best to torture me for the next few days. I was, after all, the one to come up with the no-sex rule. A minute later, the room service arrived, and I decided to console myself with spaghetti carbonara. Carbonara consoling, I liked to call it.

After we were done eating, Jay retreated to the desk in the living area with his laptop. I got the feeling he was already researching his trick for the bet, and I began to wonder if I’d bitten off more than I could chew. It was true that I never really got frightened of horror films, but that was because I was sitting safely on my couch, watching them through the medium of a TV screen. Jay’s trick would be a trick, but there would be no safety blanket, no distance.

It would be happening to me in real time.

The idea made my skin prickle. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so difficult for him to scare me after all.

***

For the rest
of the evening, Jay had gone into “the zone,” as I often referred to it, when he was so consumed by an idea that he barely noticed the world passing around him. You could almost feel the air thickening, crackling with energy, could sense that something special was happening as he scribbled down notes unreadable to anyone but him and furiously looked for information in books or on his computer.

He was like that in most things.

Intense.

Obstinate.

Perilous.

It was a heady combination, and probably the reason why I was so fascinated by him. Often it felt like his energy consumed me to the point it was hard to focus. That was why I liked having my sewing. It didn’t take too much brainpower to stitch by hand, which was what I’d been doing while we were here, since I didn’t have my machine with me. It was a good way to distract myself from the man in my life and gain some focus. When I had nothing else to do, my hands always seemed to itch for a needle and thread.

After a while, I threw on a summery maxi dress and some sandals, and decided to take a walk around the resort. I ended up at the bar, where a handsome and flirty bartender mixed me a Sex on the Beach.
He
had suggested it, if you must know. Women who order sexily named cocktails while sitting alone at bars are just asking for trouble, especially when being served by young, available, flirty-mouthed males.

Can I have an Angel’s Tit?

You can if you show me your tits, angel.

How about a Screaming Orgasm?

Oh, those are my specialty.

I’m in the mood for a Bend Over Shirley.

I’d be happy to bend you over any time, Shirley, dear.

I could go on and on. Sometimes I wonder if some sneaky perverted barman invented all those drinks for his own personal enjoyment. Or for furthering his own personal sex life. Anyway, I was oblivious to the fact that this particular barman might find me attractive, until I went to take some money from my purse and he informed the drink was on the house while giving me a saucy wink. I was about to insist on paying, but he quickly turned around and went to serve two women sitting on the other side of the bar.

Oh, well, I might as well enjoy the free drink,
I thought to myself. I sipped on it while staring around at the patrons. This wasn’t a family resort; it seemed to cater to rich people living lives of leisure, or business types. I had a fanciful notion that the barman thought I was some rich young heiress who whiled away her evenings drinking overpriced cocktails and pondering the emptiness of her existence. The idea made me giddy, so I decided to play along with the role for a minute, running my finger along the edge of my glass and trying to affect a demeanor of jaded privilege.

Perhaps he thought he could butter me up with free drinks and then wheedle his way into my bank account. My real-life bank account was nothing to write home about, but my imaginary heiress bank account could keep him in Rolexes and designer underpants for the rest of his days.

Now that I was watching him, he did strike me as the type who could sail through life on his looks if it so pleased him. Jay was attractive in a rough around the edges, battle-scarred sort of way. The bartender was a pretty boy. I doubted he had a single scar on his tanned, muscular form.

Once he was finished with the ladies, he sidled his way back over to me and began wiping down the bar top.

“Is the cocktail to your liking, honey?” he asked, and I gave him a polite smile. I was beginning to tense up now, because the way he looked at me was like he’d already stripped me of my dress and was pleased by what he saw. Actually, it was kind of irritating.

“It’s great, thanks,” I said, stiff.

He leaned slightly closer. “I love your accent. Where are you from?”

I inwardly snorted at the idea of my accent being anything other than common and mundane. The romance languages were the ones that had the enviable accents. “Ireland,” I answered finally.

“Oh, yeah? I’m a fifth Irish on my mother’s side, you know,” he said, and winked. “What brings you to this part of the world?”

Before I could tell him that I was on my honeymoon, another voice did it for me. That voice was one part amused and another part seriously pissed off, and it came from the stool to the left of me. A stool that I was sure only seconds ago had been empty.

“She’s on her honeymoon,” said Jay, and I turned to him. He was frowning.

The whole randomly appearing thing was a bit of a habit of his, something of an occupational hazard for magicians, you could call it. One of these days he was going to give me a heart attack. It usually goes something like this: I walk into the empty kitchen, open the fridge, pull out some orange juice, take a sip, look to the previous vacant table, and there sits Jay, sending my heart racing. It’s similar to when you think you see a person standing in a darkened room, but it turns out to be a coat rack…or a cardboard cutout of Harry Styles. Only in my case, the person often turns out to be Jay.

The bartender quickly took in the dynamic, eyebrows shooting up into his forehead, nodded, and suddenly looked like he had a very important task to complete elsewhere. A second later, he was gone.

Jay took my hand in his and leaned down to sniff at my cocktail. “As if he didn’t see the ring. Prick was trying his luck,” he muttered. “What are you drinking, darlin’?”

“A Sex on the Beach,” I said wryly. “The barman suggested it.”

“I bet he did. I can’t leave you alone for a minute before the vultures start circling.”

I laughed loudly. “But of course. I might as well be Pamela Anderson in the ’90s. The menfolk just can’t get enough of me.”