Happy Hour in Hell

interlude

I WAS ADMIRING a mole on her back, a smooth brown dot just below her shoulder blade, like a fairy-mound in a snow-covered field.

“So how did Hell know to put that perfect mole right there on your perfect back to make me fall in love with you?”

She snorted. “Right. Like Hell bothered to plan for you, Dollar. That happens to be my own original mole, direct from the Fifteenth Century.”

I bent and bestowed a kiss on the icy skin, then moved up to where the first pale wisps of hair grew on her nape. I spent a little while kissing her neck and ears and savoring the smell of her. I’ll never be able to describe it, not in its complex entirety, but I will never forget it even if I somehow beat the odds and survive to become a very, very old angel. Which would be a very long time.

After a while I started back down the other direction, rubbing my face against the smooth, chilly bumps of her spine as I descended, stopping to pay my respects at the fairy-hill mole again, then continuing on down her back to the soft protrusion of her tailbone and the cleft of her buttocks. Some Greek guy, Aristotle or Plato or Onassis or someone, said there were five perfect solids, five absolute geometric shapes. To these I would like to add the shape of Caz’s ass, because if you’re looking for perfection, well, there it is. I think it’s a tribute to my maturity that I’d already pretty much fallen in love with her without ever seeing it in the firm, silken flesh. Once I had . . . well, I don’t want to overwhelm everyone with sentiment here.

A little while later:

Her slender back stretched out before me like stone smoothed by ocean waves. The curve of her backside was flattened against my groin. As I entered her, she let out a gasp, and I felt her tighten, then freeze like a terrified animal. I paused.

“Does it hurt?” I asked. I let my hands trail down her skin. “Do you want me to stop?”

“I don’t know. Yes. No.” She tried to look back at me, but the angle was bad. “It’s just . . . it feels so vulnerable. I don’t . . .” She trailed off. “I’m sorry, I do need to stop. Can you just hold me?”

“Of course.” I withdrew gently, then pulled her with me as I collapsed onto the bed, so that the cold length of her back was against my belly. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close. “I didn’t really want to have more sex, anyway,” I said. “I know people say they like it, but I think the whole fad is kind of overrated.” I felt her quivering silently against me. Was she laughing? It hadn’t been much of a joke.

When she hadn’t stopped a few moments later, I asked, “Caz? Are you crying?”

“No.” But I could feel the back of my arm getting damp. I leaned away and tried to turn her face toward me, but she wasn’t having it. She wiped angrily at her eyes before she’d let me look at her. “Just fuck off, Dollar. Don’t say anything.”

“What’s wrong? Did I do something?”

“No, you didn’t. It’s not always about you.”

“Then what?”

She blinked, scowled. “I’m just not . . . I don’t do tenderness very well.” She snuck a look at me before burying her head against my arms again. “Arsehole. Don’t make me self-conscious, or I’ll go back and get my knife and I will cut off your winkie.”

Ah, the romance of threatened castration!

I just held her until she felt better, then we kissed and whispered for a little before dozing again. The Countess of Cold Hands had many wounded places, many broken places, but what was astonishing to me is how much I cared about those hurts, how much I wanted to try to make things better for her. That was by far the scariest thing that had ever happened to me.

Caz was a high-ranking official in Hell, she was my sworn, deadly enemy . . . and she had issues. Any remotely sensible angel, even at that late stage of things, would have got up then and run out the door and never looked back. But, of course, I’ve never been that kind of angel.