"No comparison," I said, smiling. "Everett didn't bring me grease and caffeine this morning, and you did."
"So what's the plan, and how can I help?"
"Okay, the plan is..." I didn't exactly have one more specific than "go through this stuff and sort it out," and Quinn couldn't do that for me.
"How's this?" I asked. "You get everything out of the kitchen cabinets, and set it out where I can see it all, and I'll make a 'keep or toss' decision. You can pack what I want to keep, and put what I want to toss out on the gallery. I hope the rain stays away." The sunny morning was clouding over, fast. "While we work, I'll fill you in on what happened here last night."
Despite the threat of bad weather, we worked all morning, called in a pizza for lunch, and resumed work in the afternoon. The stuff I didn't want went into garbage bags, and Quinn furthered his muscular development by carrying all the garbage bags down to the courtyard and putting them in the little shed that had held the lawn chairs, still set up on the grass. I tried to admire his muscles only when he wasn't looking, and I think I was successful. Quinn was very interested to hear about the ectoplasmic reconstruction, and we talked about what it might all mean without reaching any conclusions. Jake didn't have any enemies among the vampires that Quinn knew of, and Quinn thought that Jake must have been killed for the embarrassment it would cause Hadley, rather than for any sin of Jake's own.
I saw neither hide nor hair of Amelia, and I wondered if she'd gone home with the Mormonish Bob. Or maybe he'd stayed with her, and they were having a fabulous time in Amelia's apartment. Maybe he was a real ball of fire under that white shirt and those black pants. I looked around the courtyard. Yes, Bob's bicycle was still propped against the brick wall. Since the sky was getting darker by the minute, I put the bike in the little shed, too.
Being with Quinn all day was stoking my fire a bit hotter every moment. He was down to a tank top and jeans, and I found myself wondering what he'd look like without those. And I didn't think I was the only one conjecturing about what people would look like naked. I could catch a flash from Quinn's mind every now and then as he was toting a bag down the stairs or packing pots and pans into a box, and those flashes weren't about opening his mail or doing his laundry.
I had enough practical presence of mind left to switch on a lamp when I heard the first peal of thunder in the distance. The Big Easy was about to be drenched.
Then it was back to flirting with Quinn wordlessly - making sure he had a good view when I stretched up to get a glass down from the cabinets or bent down to wrap that glass in newspaper. Maybe a quarter of me was embarrassed, but the rest of me was having fun. Fun had not been a big factor in my life recently - well, ever - and I was enjoying my little toddle on the wild side.
Downstairs, I felt Amelia's brain click on, after a fashion. I was familiar with the feel of this, from working in a bar: Amelia had a hangover. I smiled to myself as the witch thought of Bob, who was still asleep beside her. Aside from a basic, "How could I?" Amelia's most coherent thought was that she needed coffee. She needed it bad. She couldn't even turn on a light in the apartment, which was darkening steadily with the approach of the storm. A light would hurt her eyes too much.
I turned with a smile on my lips, ready to tell Quinn we might be hearing from Amelia soon, only to find he was right behind me, and his face was intent with a look I could not mistake. He was ready for something entirely different.
"Tell me you don't want me to kiss you, and I'll back off," he said, and then he was kissing me.
I didn't say a word.
When the height difference became an issue, Quinn just picked me up and put me on the edge of the kitchen counter. A clap of thunder sounded outside as I parted my knees to let him get as close to me as he could. I wrapped my legs around him. He pulled the elastic band out of my hair, not a totally pain-free process, and ran his fingers through the tangles. He crushed my hair in his hand and inhaled deeply, as if he were extracting the perfume from a flower.
"This is okay?" he asked raggedly, as his fingers found the bottom back edge of my tank top and sneaked up under it. He examined my bra tactilely and figured out how to open it in record time.
"Okay?" I said, in a daze. I wasn't sure whether I meant, "Okay? Hell, yes, hurry up!" or "Which part of this is okay, you want to know?" but Quinn naturally took it as a green light. His hands pushed the bra aside and he ran his thumbs across my ni**les, which were already hard. I thought I was going to explode, and only the sure anticipation of better things to come kept me from losing it right then and there. I wriggled even further to the edge of the counter, so the big bulge in the front of Quinn's jeans was pressed against the notch in my pants. Just amazing, how they fit. He pressed against me, released, pressed again, the ridge formed by the stretch of the jeans over his penis hitting just the right spot, so easy to reach through the thin and stretchy spandex. Once more, and I cried out, holding on to him through the blind moment of orgasm when I could swear I'd been catapulted into another universe. My breathing was more like sobbing, and I wrapped myself around him like he was my hero. In that moment, he certainly was.
His breathing was still ragged, and he moved against me again, seeking his own release, since I had so loudly had mine. I sucked on his neck while my hand went down between us, and stroked him through his jeans, and suddenly he gave a cry as ragged as mine had been, and his arms tightened around me convulsively. "Oh, God," he said, "oh, God." His eyes closed tight with his release, he kissed my neck, my cheek, my lips, over and over. When his breathing - and mine - was a little more even, he said, "Babe, I haven't come like that since I was seventeen, in the backseat of my dad's car with Ellie Hopper."
"So, that's a good thing," I mumbled.
"You bet," he said.
We stayed clinched for a moment, and I became aware that the rain was beating against the windows and the doors, and the thunder was booming away. My brain was thinking of shutting down for a little nap, and I was lazily aware of Quinn's brain going equally drowsy as he rehooked my bra at my back. Downstairs, Amelia was making coffee in her dark kitchen and Bob the witch was waking up to the wonderful smell and wondering where his pants were. And in the courtyard, swarming silently up the stairs, enemies were approaching.
"Quinn!" I exclaimed, just in the moment his sharp hearing picked up the shuffle of the footsteps. Quinn went into fighting mode. Since I hadn't been home to check the calendar symbols, I'd forgotten we were close to the full moon. There were claws on Quinn's hands now, claws at least three inches long, instead of fingers. His eyes slanted and became altogether gold, with dilated black pupils. The change in the bones of his face had made him alien. I'd made a form of love with this man in the past ten minutes, and now I would hardly have known him if I'd passed him on the street.