It won’t hurt a bit, Wilma said, walking her fingertips up Clay’s chest like some Roaring Twenties floozie. You’ll love it. I know more about sex than any woman alive. We’ll have a ball.
“But — but—”
You need me. I know where they are. Only a woman can get them out — and I’m all woman. She blinked her cartoon-long lashes and plastered herself against Clay. Try me, sailor.
He had to admit, she was persuasive.
And that little problem with confidence—? she began.
“What do you mean, problem with confidence!” Clay protested. “Confidence is my middle name!”
You know. The girl who won’t look at you? The sex demon she likes? Wilma snapped her fingers. Poof! With me on your side, you’ll beat, she said, leaning up to lick Clay’s chin, the pants off him.
So that was how Clay found himself saying yes.
A look of wonder and joy came over Wilma’s face. She laced her fingers through his, raising her arms so that he raised his too, and then her lips met his lightly. Cool delight sank into him from her mouth to his, soaking through every inch of skin on the front of his body, a happiness like vanilla ice cream on a summer day, penetrating all the way to the back of him. She was so happy to be inside him. He was happy just because she was happy.
Now let’s go get her, she said in his head.
He felt like he was walking on air. They — she — he climbed the handful of stairs from the entrance level to the first floor and pushed open the door to the photo studio. The lights were out, yet he found he could see everything, almost as if he were a blind man who had lived here for decades, aware of every footstep, every scrape of chair-on-floor, every drawer opening or door closing. The studio dais was covered by a white sheet.
Wilma spoke in his head.
Feel that? They’re in darkness. We’ll need to call them out of there. A picture of Wilma popped into his head, pointing.
He looked where she pointed. It was dark. Duh.
Clay cleared his throat. “Jewel? Are you in here?”
No answer.
Somewhere over there he heard a big firework go off, and a million specks of light erupted in a chrysanthemum. Clay moved toward it, following the specks toward their invisible center.
He raised his voice. “Jewel! Randy! I’ve come for you!” How dumb was this? They were, uh, busy in there. Wherever “there” was.
But with Wilma inside him he laid one hand on the door — no, it was a bed — that made sense, some faraway part of him thought. He poked his head through the opening and called again.
No one answered, but the darkness seemed populated now.
Clay hesitated. Then a surge of pleasure left him weak, and in that moment of weakness Wilma pushed somehow and he — she — they stepped boldly through the opening into — what?
Where are we? he said.
Clay? Jewel said.
o0o
It was super-weird to meet Clay in demonspace. He stepped through a door from nowhere into their sky. He looked anxious. Poor guy had never walked in the clouds before. He looked down, and his arms started sawing as if he was about to fall off his cloud, and Jewel turned from Randy, catching a look of dark disapproval on his face.
Hold that thought, she said to him, and held out her hand to Clay.
Clay took it. In another moment they were kissing, and she noticed, oh, yeah, he was naked. Jewel, he seemed to say, though his mouth was busy, we have to give you an orgasm. Right now. She felt the urgency in his throat as if it were her own.
Behind her, the sense of Randy’s urgency saturated the night air.
But I — can we — Lust was churning her brains into tapioca.
Yes, she heard Randy say behind her, Have an orgasm, Jewel. The mood of the moment changed: fear gone, tenderness gone, leaving a raging lust.
Clay seemed more assertive than she remembered. More alpha. She swooned back in his arms and let him manhandle her, massaging her breasts, hoisting her by her buns to hang her, as it were, on the hook of his erection, biting her throat and nipples, taking control.
Whoa. Clay’s been taking vitamins, she thought, and her thought came out loud as a shout.
At that, Clay seemed to calm down. She had breathing space to look over at Randy and was startled to see Randy locked in a position so tangled that it could only be something from a porn flick, with a blonde she recognized instantly as Wilma, the Artistic mascot. He must have created her out of demonspace to salve his pride.
She sent him a pleading thought. I want you, too.
Randy opened his eyes and met Jewel’s look. He reached out a hand and pulled her toward him, and instantly the four of them were locked together, spinning slowly through the night sky, ignoring gravity, doing things she hadn’t done since that frat party. Too bad Onika couldn’t shoot this. She giggled.
She would have thought she could tell them apart in a situation like this. Randy and Clay were so different, their moves in bed so like their personalities. But the very effort of trying to keep them sorted out confused her, until a tongue was just a tongue, hands were everywhere, too many hands, and no matter how many ways she was penetrated, whenever she reached out, someone was wrapping her fingers around a warm cock.
Then she realized that Randy’s Wilma had got in the game.
The men floated away briefly while Wilma took Jewel by the hands and raised her arms, looking at Jewel’s naked body with wide, innocent, delighted eyes. Jewel felt suddenly shy. She hadn’t made love to a woman since that long-ago frat party. Wilma’s improbably spherical breasts seemed to point at her. Jewel reached out to touch one nipple, and a thrilling wave passed through her just as if she’d been touching Randy in demonspace, sharing his physical pleasure. Wilma drove her fingers into Jewel’s hair and kissed her, sweet and cool, long and slow, oh man, that kiss actually felt like Clay for a minute. Randy’s unmistakable number-eleven hands slid around her bottom and up her belly and down between her thighs, and Jewel gave up trying to figure it out.
Until she realized that Wilma was teasing her nipples, Randy had entered her from behind, and Clay was gently sliding his cock down her throat. The satisfaction of having all their attention made her reel.
At length she wondered, Hey, how come everybody’s doing me?
Randy craned his neck in a way that wasn’t humanly possible and whispered in her ear. Because we are all trapped here until you have an orgasm. You are the chosen one.
She protested, Chosen for what? To save everybody stuck in sex-demonspace? That’s ridic—
Come for me, Clay murmured.
Come for me, Wilma said in a silvery voice all her own.
Come for me, Randy commanded. Come now.
All of them squeezed her slightly at that moment, so that she felt crowded and crazy, and then they released a little, so she could expand like a squeezed balloon into licking tongues, stroking hands, and strong members filling her. She gasped, feeling her heart race, growing larger, and then they squeezed again, only to release, bite, drive deeper, tease her skin, and squeeze—
Orgasm finally blinded her.
Then the three of them were lying on the platform in the photo studio, sweaty, gasping, glowing, and kind of embarrassed. At least, she was embarrassed. Clay seemed as calm as usual, and Randy probably couldn’t be embarrassed with his clothes off.
“That was fun,” Jewel panted. “Let’s not do it again.”
“Shhh,” Clay said, cocking his head toward the door.
Not a sound came from downstairs. La Migra had come and gone.
She looked at Randy. “You did that on purpose. Zapped us into a bed while we were falling.”
He raised his eyebrows. “It seemed preferable to crushing our skulls on the pavement.”
“Oh, totally,” she admitted, still shaken. “But how could you be sure I was, uh, turned on?”
“Sex and death are close relatives.”
Clay’s things were in a heap on the floor. Her clothes were piled up on the edge of the platform, mixed with Randy’s. Silently, they dressed as quickly as they could.
“Let’s get out of here,” Randy said.