Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones by Levine, Paul (best fiction books to read TXT) 📗

"Chrissy, I'm serious."

"So am I." She stripped the T-shirt off over her head, and then the shorts that covered her bikini bottom, and then the bottom, too. She stood and stretched, and though there was something practiced in it, back arched, breasts thrust forward, a pose she may have struck a thousand times, it was also so completely natural and innocent as to be even more provocative. Which, of course, was exactly what she intended. Some beautiful women may be unaware of their effect on men. Others, particularly those whose living depends on their looks and the moods they can create, know precisely the effect of every tilt of the head, every turn of the hip, every shadowy smile. There is neither pride nor shame in their display of naked flesh. It is just a fact, and in the perfection of details, the symmetry of features, the combination of physical strength and robust health that emanates from such a creature, there is always the knowledge that it will fade. Next year's model will soon replace it, so if you possess such beauty, the time to use it is now.

Chrissy turned toward the door, giving me a view of her tapered back, the slope of her ass. She flicked the light switch, then whirled and came back to the bed, moving gracefully, silhouetted in the darkness, a lithe, willowy sexual animal totally aware of her powers. She sat down, tucked her legs under her, and leaned toward me, her breasts pressed against my chest.

I'm sure some man exists somewhere on this planet who could have resisted. But Pope John Paul II wasn't in bed with Chrissy Bernhardt. That poor excuse for a chivalrous knight, Jake Lassiter, was there, all six feet two, 223 pounds of him, blood pumping, imagination soaring. I needed a stern warning. Caution, libido loose. Dangerous curves. Slippery when wet.

She tilted her head and kissed me again. This time, I kissed back. Slowly, then deeply. I cradled her head in my hands, and we kissed some more, our tongues fencing; then she dug her teeth into my lower lip.

I wanted to save her and savor her, taste her and devour her. I wanted a thousand things, and all of them now. A yearning moan rose from her, and we clutched at each other, hands roaming.

She reached down and pulled off my boxers, which I kicked across the room. She let a hand run down over my chest to my stomach, to my crotch. I was so hard it hurt.

We kissed some more, hungrily, biting each other's lips, sucking, searching, finding. Our hands explored each other, stroking and grasping. I cupped a hand around a firm round breast and took a nipple between forefinger and thumb.

"Harder, Jake. It won't break."

I squeezed, and she gasped, and I took the nipple into my mouth like a ripe red cherry. My hand swept down across her flat stomach and found the wet heat of her. As I touched her, she gasped, then grabbed me by the back of the neck and put her lips to my ear. "Love me, Jake. Love me, please." Her voice heavy with yearning and sadness and a crushing physical need. The sounds reverberating like a bass chord deep inside me. I wanted to cover her with my shield, to protect her from harm, to carry her away to a place where no one could hurt her again.

She spread her long legs and whispered again. "Love me now, Jake." The same desperate longing.

I pressed myself against her pubic bone, which ground into my shaft. I slid lower and she was open to me, steamy, waves of heat rising from her. I entered her, and she locked herself around me, and we fell into the same rhythm, our bodies moving to the same beat, ever so slowly. I let her set the pace, and as it quickened, she bit at my chest, clawed at my back with her nails, then grabbed my head with both hands and tore at my hair. Her breath came in short, hot blasts against my neck, and half in pain, half in delirious pleasure, I quickened my pace, thrusting harder and faster, until a growl came up from deep inside her and then me, and her eyes rolled back, and she gave a low, wolflike wail, and then she thrust her wrist into her mouth and bit down hard, as if she could not stand to hear her own pleasure.

I pounded harder, coming then, too, and she wrapped even tighter around me, and I held her there, my face pressed against hers, until finally I tasted a salty drop and saw that her tears were mixed with mine.

11

Fruit of the Earth

"Let's see if I got this straight," Roberto Condom said. "You got some babe who's charged with murder out on bond, but me— who maybe was in the vicinity of a larceny involving some fruit— me, I got to sit in this shithole."

"If you're convicted, it's three first-degree felonies," I said, "and they'll have you under the habitual offender law. Life in prison."

"Carajo!"

"My sentiments exactly."

"It's 'cause I'm Cuban, isn't it, Jake? I'm an oppressed minority."

"Sorry, Roberto. In Miami, you're the majority."

We were sitting a tiny lawyers' visiting room in the Dade County Jail. I had elbowed my way past throngs of relatives on the sidewalk, a polyglot of mothers, wives, girlfriends, and screaming babies. Overhead, men leaned out through barred windows, their women yelling up at them, screaming they'd like to suck them or shoot them, howling about unpaid rent, forgotten birthdays, and a variety of domestic ills not usually aired at mega-decibels on public streets.

From inside the visitors' room, I could her men shouting and steel doors clanging. I am always claustrophobic inside a jail, even when I have a pass that gets me out the door. With the incessant racket and the metallic disinfectant smell, I imagine myself crunched inside a