Free You Can Call Me Lucky (Kit Tolliver #3) (The Kit Tolliver Stories) by Lawrence Block Page B

better than it tasted), and breathed in his aftershave and an undertone of perspiration.
    He finished his casino critique and reached across the table to put his hand on hers. “Now it seems to me we’ve got a decision to make. Do we have another round of drinks before we go to my room?”
    For answer she picked up his hand, lowered her head and blew her warm breath into his palm. “For luck,” she said without looking up, and then her tongue darted out and she licked his palm. His sweat, she noticed, tasted not all that different from the Dirty Martini.

    He had a nice body. Barrel-chested, with a little more of a gut than she might have preferred, and a lot of chest hair. No hair on his back, though, and she supposed he got it waxed at the same salon that provided his million-dollar haircuts.
    Muscular arms, muscular shoulders, and that meant regular gym workouts, because he couldn’t have gotten those muscles simply by throwing his own weight around. An all-over tan, too, that probably came from a tanning bed. You could shake your head at the artifice, or you could go with the result—a fit, good-looking man in his late forties, who, it had to be said, was as impressive in the sack as he’d been at the crap table. And if he owed some of that to Viagra, well, so what? He got her hot and he got her off, and what more could a poor girl desire?
    And the best was yet to be.
    Optima futura —that was the Latin for it, and she knew it because it had been her high school’s motto. It was, she’d always thought, singularly apt, because anything the future held had to be better than high school.
    Somewhere along the way, after high school was just a blur, she’d come across some lines from Robert Browning, and perhaps it was the high school motto that made her commit them to memory, but it had worked, because she remembered them still:
Grow old along with me
The best is yet to be
The last of life, for which the first was made . . .
    “Part Indian, huh? I bet I know which part is Indian.”
    And he reached out a hand and touched the part he had in mind. She put her hand on top of his hand, rubbed his fingers against her.
    “A third Indian,” she reminded him.
    “So you said. You know, I was wondering—”
    She put her hand on him, curled her fingers around him. She worked him artfully, and he sighed.
    “Lucky,” he said. “Man, I’d say I got Lucky, didn’t I? But I think I’m tapped out for this evening.”
    “You think so?”
    “You drained me to the dregs, babe. About all I can do right now is sleep.”
    “I bet you’re wrong.”
    “Oh?”
    “What we did so far,” she said, “was just a warmup.”
    “Yeah, right.”
    “Can I ask you something?”
    He raised his eyebrows.
    “Have you ever been tied up?”
    “Jesus,” he said.
    “Just imagine,” she said, her hands still busy. “You’re tied up, you can’t move, and the entire focus is giving you pleasure. I’ll do things to you nobody’s ever done to you before, Hank. You think this has been your lucky night? You just wait.”
    “Uh—”
    “I’ve got all the gear in my bag,” she said. “Everything we could possibly need. You’re gonna love this.”

    Handcuffs, silk scarves, nylon cords. She had everything she needed, and she knew just how to employ them.
    The last time she’d done this she’d given her partner a couple of the blue pills first, and let them knock him out before she trussed him up. That had worked fine, but she’d been stuck with a two-hour wait for the son of a bitch to wake up, and who needed that?
    This was much simpler. And he cooperated, putting his hands where she told him, spread-eagling himself on the bed. And making little jokes while she did what she had to do.
    By the time she was done, he was already semi-erect. She wrapped the base with an elastic band. “Sort of a roach motel,” she said. “The blood gets in and it can’t get out, so you stay firm.”
    “Is it safe?”
    “Absolutely,” she