Free Lost River by David Fulmer

more. She enjoyed the fringe benefit of these spies' energies beneath the sheets while completing the private detective's biography. And then, without warning, he had appeared in her path.
    Reclining on the divan, distracted by her musings, she was barely aware that Louis had finished his latest spiel and was readying to leave. She asked him to repeat the important points and found nothing more she could use. There was little new from his mouth these days, and she realized that he was fast losing his value to her.
    Momentarily, she thought of something he could do and gave an instruction that brought back his cloying smile. He left, locking the door behind him.
    As the pattern of the game stretched out in her mind, she settled down into the soft cushions and unbuttoned the cotton dress from neck to knees. She thought about the exotic-looking detective St. Cyr. He didn't resemble Louis Jacob or any of her other young men, with cameo profiles that would make only silly girls swoon. St. Cyr was another creature entirely.
    She lay there imagining the drama to come, and as she reached the part that the Creole would play, she dropped a hand between her legs and began to caress herself with gentle fingers.

    Valentin let Frank keep him in the saloon for another two hours, listening to stories that he had missed, some comical, though enough that were not so.
    Finally, he managed to drag himself away and rode the streetcar south, arriving home in a soft wine haze just as the October sun was beginning to dip over the river. He trundled up the stairwell, stepped inside, and locked the door behind him. Draping his jacket over the back of a chair, he wandered to the kitchen to find Justine standing over the stove. The smells of filé and peppers drifted to his nostrils as he leaned in the doorway. With her hair tied back with a ribbon, her well-worn shift, and bare feet, she looked like nothing so much as the country girl she had been not so long ago. He smiled fixedly at the way her body shifted under the thin cotton.
    She glanced over her shoulder at him. "Where have you been all day?"
    Instead of answering, he reached out to grasp her lightly by the wrist, take the spoon from her hand, and lay it aside. Backing up, he pulled her through the parlor and into the bedroom and laid her down. She turned pliant and let him lift the shift over her head. She wore nothing underneath. As the evening breeze lifted the curtains, they fell into a familiar dance.
    Valentin never got over his infatuation with her body, down to the tiniest crease and corner. He knew she had been with more than a few men; it had been her profession, after all. And yet he thought of her as his territory, over the years to be claimed, re-claimed, and held.
    He knew that she had been waiting for him to speak up for her person, to put his name on the line and take her as his wife. At the same time, she couldn't make a demand, any more than he could on her. They had betrayed each other in the past, had repelled and attracted, and much of what drove the passion between them was the exquisite tension.
    For her part, Justine sensed that he was afraid that changing the equation between them would burst a delicate bubble and that surrendering to her would somehow weaken him. But he always thought too much.
    Except in moments like this. Time stopped as they entwined, sculpted beneath the cotton sheet. Valentin knew how to make her vibrate, and he pushed her ahead of him in a mounting arc of heat and noise, feeling the tension rise beneath her
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skin like current running through a wire, working her faster and harder until he all but ground her into pieces.
    When it was over, they lay for more minutes, not speaking. She gazed blankly toward the open window, watching night come on as he half dozed, worn down by the work and the wine. She smiled and stretched to kiss his cheek, then got out of the bed, pulled on a kimono, and stood over him.
    "So what were you doing up there?"