Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

After a few moments, she felt his hand against her, fingers tangling her hair, thumb searching for entrance. It tickled and she jerked. He rubbed at her, but did not quite manage to find the right places, the right pressure. Finally she sat up and grabbed his wrist.

“No, like this,” she said, moving his hand away. She ran her index finger through her hair. Then she laughed, realizing that it was too dark for him to see. She fell back against the pillows.

“Thank you,” she breathed. “I appreciate the gesture… just let me rest.”

She sensed him, sitting nearby in the darkness, rigid and frustrated. She could almost feel him weighing his options. He tried to kiss her again, one hand on her breast, squeezing. But she rolled away. She did not know when he left. She remembered the light from the door again, the sound of the door closing. Then she was alone. She pulled up her skirt, jammed her fingers in deep, and rolled over onto her side, coiling around the orgasm, again… again…

“Would you like me to drive you home?”

Conny opened her eyes to the yellowed light of the bedside lamp across a pillow. She blinked and rolled onto her back. Geoffrey’s face hovered above her; the glow spilled across his scar, leaving half his face in shadow.

Her head pounded and her right arm had fallen asleep. She tried to sit up. Geoffrey helped her. She bent forward and gazed down at her bare thighs. She tried to tug her skirt down, then gave up and fell back onto the bed.

“Conny?”

“Mmm?”

“You should go home. I’ll take you.”

“Sure.” Her arm tingled painfully. She used her left arm to push herself back up. “Where’s the bathroom?”

A strong hand took her elbow. She got to her feet, then across the room to a door. Geoffrey switched on the light and gently propelled her into the small porcelain chamber.

She did not throw up. Her stomach churned, but nothing happened. She washed her face, relieved herself, and emerged feeling more awake. Her arm felt almost normal.

Geoffrey waited on the edge of the bed, a white bartender’s jacket beside him, smoking a cigarette. He let the ashes fall to the floor.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yes… you were downstairs?”

He nodded. “Saw you come in, but I didn’t get a chance to say anything to you.”

Geoffrey held her arm descending the staircase, a pleasant pressure she missed immediately when he released her at the bottom. A few people still lingered in the main ballroom. The floor was covered with debris—streamers, paper napkins, broken glass. One bartender slept in a chair behind his station. Conny did not see Brian.

Geoffrey drove her back to their borrowed house. Not for long now, she thought muzzily, we’ll have to move again. He pulled up by the front door and shut the motor off. A single lantern shined by the door.

Conny stared at him. “You were in Newport. We took a cottage in Swansea near the end of the war and I thought I saw you there, working in a dry goods shop. Then we went to London for a month, after the Armistice, and you were driving a hansom. We moved back to Newport, then to Bristol, now here to Brighton. I always felt you were somewhere nearby and now you turn up. Are you following us, Geoffrey?”

“You should get to bed. It’s nearly dawn.”

“William doesn’t expect me.”

“Maybe not.”

His arm lay across the back of the seat. Conny looked at his hand, inches from her shoulder, a dark mass of contours, faintly outlined along the knuckles from the lantern light. Between that and his nearly invisible face his white shirt looked like a mass of evening fog.

“I think he’s asleep,” she said.

She traced the shape of his thumb, the raised tendons, the blunt shafts of fingers. The texture fascinated her. She lifted it and turned it over and touched the callouses that ridged the top of his palm, just below the base of his fingers. The skin was very warm and dry.

Conny undid his cuff and pushed the sleeve back, pressing her own palm against his forearm. She could feel his pulse in the thick vein that ran from tendon to elbow.

“Conny—”

“Shh. Don’t.”

She slid her lips over his thumb and teased it with her tongue. He did not pull away. She licked his callouses, the center of his hand, his lifeline, the tendons that tented the skin of his wrist.

Conny twisted around in the seat to face him, kneeling, and fumbled for the buttons of his shirt. He grabbed her hand. She tugged once, twice, pulled loose, and continued unbuttoning until her hand came against his belt. She leaned forward. He smelled warm and sharp, as if he had been working out in the sun all day. She pushed aside the open shirt and laid her hands against his chest, surprised at the feel of hair. William’s body was nearly bald and the contours of his torso were the shapes of ribs and collarbone and sternum.

She heard Geoffrey’s breath deepen. He had not moved to touch her and she realized that she preferred it that way. To touch and not be touched—the idea fascinated her.