Warm and Willing - Lawrence Block [44]
She looked like a goddess, Rhoda thought. Bared to the waist, fullbodied and magnificent, wide-eyed and beautiful. And her face showed nothing—neither happiness nor sorrow, neither excitement nor boredom. Nothing at all.
Bobbie took off the rest of her clothes. The tight black slacks, the panties, the shoes. And then she turned to look directly down upon Rhoda, bathed in half-light by the nightstand lamp, and her expression went from blank seriousness to embryonic passion. “My Rho,” she said, “I love you so very damned much.”
“Oh—”
“How soft you are, how soft and warm. And how lovely. I could look at you and touch you forever.”
She had known it would be this way, with Bobbie leading while she followed, with Bobbie bestowing and Rhoda receiving, submitting. She lay still, eyes half-lidded at first, then completely shut. She lay still and quiet, and Bobbie did magical things to her.
Bobbie nuzzled her breasts, caressed them with trembling fingers. Rhoda’s breasts seemed to swell from the touch. Bobbie kissed her there, and Bobbie’s clever tongue coursing over her soft breast-flesh was an agony of yearning aching passion. Bobbie tongued Rhoda’s nipples into stiff longing, caught up each erect nipple in between her scarlet lips and sucked on them like an infant, and yet not like an infant at all. Rhoda’s flesh quivered. The muscles in her legs and feet were tied in knots, all bound up and tense. She wanted to shout, to shriek.
“Oh, God. Oh, yes, there. There—”
All her flesh sang. Bobbie’s hands, Bobbie’s lips, everywhere, doing everything. Everything, everywhere, all.
Fancies: She was a violin and Bobbie was playing songs on her body, wild melodies that twisted and soared. Bobbie was coaxing music from her and she was trembling in Bobbie’s hands. Fancies: She was ice aflame, burning with blue fire. Fancies: There was no time, there was no space, there was no world, there was merely this.
Till human voices wake us and we drown.
In the morning she called Mr. Yamatari and said she was sick and could not come in. Then she called Megan and managed, somehow, to get though the conversation. At first Megan cursed her and called her a vicious little tramp, and then Megan cried and begged her to come back, and finally Megan swore eternal love and said she could not live without her. But Rhoda did the only thing she could do, telling Megan over and that she was going to live with Bobbie and that there was nothing else she could do.
“You’ll want your clothes.”
“I—”
“Give me an hour to get out of here. Then come over and help yourself. I still love you, Rhoda. And you love me.”
She said nothing.
“And always will. Because you never forget the first, darling. The first one everybody always remembers. Oh, kitten, we were so good for each other. What happened to us?”
“I don’t know.”
“People never do, do they? But this is the way a first affair should end, with you the one to break it up. Otherwise it hurts too much, kitten. Oh, come back to me. Oh, Rhoda—”
Silence. Then Megan said, “I’m sorry. Give me an hour, I’ll be out of here. Goodbye, Rhoda.”
The connection was broken. She put the phone down, reached for a cigarette, lit it. Her eyes were fixed on the small silver lighter, her name engraved so neatly upon one side. And she thought of a small gold circle pin. On the back, Forever. Below that, Your Rhoda.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Outside, snow was falling. It wasn’t sticking to the pavement yet, but she had heard a weather report earlier which had said that it would turn colder after midnight and that there would be two to four inches of snow by morning. The announcer had said something about having a white Christmas after all. But there was no way to tell, she thought. Christmas was two weeks off, and this was the first real snowfall of the season. There had been flurries now and then, but nothing more than that. There might or might not be snow for Christmas, and she didn’t particularly