"YOUwent to the Karnak? Alone? Jesus, Delilah!"
Ric had caught me on the cell phone coming back from the Inferno in Dolly. We'd met on the far fringes of a Sonic Drive-in lot. Now we were leaning against our parked cars and exchanging sour little nothings.
"Why are you getting so bent out of shape? It's a tourist attraction, for God's sake."
"It has an evil reputation."
"Worse than the Inferno?"
"Maybe. People have been disappearing there."
"People?"
"Yeah. Humans like you and me. The Karnak is an even newer player on the scene than the Inferno and nobody knows much about it."
"Nobody until now."
I'd been ready to bubble over about all I'd encountered there when I intercepted Ric, but I was reaching the threshold of my endurance of running around like normal with the constant pain throbbing in my stomach, back, and thighs.
"You scouted the place?" he asked, finally getting curious instead of overprotective.
"The place scouted me. I had an accidental audience with the owners, I think, and they are into attack spirit-hyenas, drawing out precious bodily fluids-a.k.a. embalming-ancient Egyptian sexual perversity, Old World depravity and death and tattooed genitalia."
"You found all this out in how long?"
"Uh." I checked my wristwatch. "Four hours."
"And you couldn't leave me a message before you went because-?"
"I was just Strip-hopping. I didn't expect to find out anything interesting. Once I was inside, the Vegas Strip's famous inhospitality to cell phones kicked in."
"But you did find something and probably it was dangerously interesting and nobody knew where you were."
"I did."
"No one who could sound the alarm if you didn't come back. I'm only worried because I care, Del. If you'd had parents, you'd have known about making sure the ones who love you know where you are."
A girl is supposed to go all gooey when she hears those words from male lips. Ilove you. Especially from deeply familiar male lips. Maybe I would have on another day, but today I hurt and just felt antsy, like I did when my dreams pinned me flat on my back and vague bad things happened to me. I felt a panicked need to dodge.
"Does this mean I can't go anywhere without you?"
"This means that you shouldn't go anywhere risky without telling me, or at least leaving me a message so I know where to send the coroner. Grisly Bahr would love to get you naked under his high-intensity lights."
I made a face. "He likes me, but he's not sadistic about it."
"Okay, I'd love to get you naked under his high-intensity lights, but not dead."
Only Ric could make me laugh and blush at the same time.
"See how oversensitive you're being, chica? If you worked on my FBI team, I'd ask no less. Okay. You're an independent operative. So don't ask me to go somewhere you think warrants investigation, but don't forget to tell me where you are."
"The law enforcement version of the armed forces' issue-ducking credo: don't ask, but do tell."
"Right." He was laughing now too.
"Please don't rag on me, Ric. I had to leave the Karnak via a very rough exit, and I'm still feeling a little shaky. Plus, I've got menstrual cramps that could wake the dead."
I'd never confided my female troubles to a male before. Letting him in was my way of making up, and also getting him off my back.
"Querida." He drew me close, fanning his hands on my lower back where it felt like a guillotine blade was pushing in. My equally aching belly was tight against his pelvis. That male metabolism warmth was sandwiching my pain between his hands and torso. His body heat made me feel instantly better and I couldn't muffle a purr of contentment.
"Sorry," he whispered. "You're coming to my place for some sangria and heat and massage. And then you can tell me all about what you found out today." His kiss before he let me loose promised that I wouldn't get to do much talking at all.
But it all sounded wonderful to my worn body and mind.
"I'm in your custody, ex-agent Montoya. P.I. Street reporting in, but I need to do some errands first."
First, we stopped by Hector's estate to check my cottage and see how Quicksilver was doing. His food bowls were empty, his water bowl was half down, and he was out on doggy business of his own. Good. He wouldn't complain about my going off with Ric. I refilled both bowls, which were the size of large casserole dishes. Stainless steel, though. I grabbed my messenger bag with the fresh reload of tampons. Really romantic and just what a P.I. who should be packing a semiautomatic and spare clips needs.
I was happy to leave Dolly parked there. I didn't feel like driving for once.
Sliding low into Ric's Corvette took a lot of pressure off my aching back and environs.
Ric started the therapy as soon as we were off the Strip and well on the way to his house. When he didn't need to shift the car, his right hand was pushing inside my clothes and caressing my skin in lazy patterns that-heavens to Betsy!-interrupted my fiendishly resistant cramp pain pathways to the brain.
My toes curled in my sandals.
"So tell me about the Karnak," he asked.
"It's kinda hard to concentrate on that right now."
He glanced over, his dark eyes even darker. "You shouldn't be out on the edge when you're feeling lousy."
"Actually, it gives me an edge. You don't want to irritate me just now."
"No irritation, just soothing."
My belly was almost numb from the hypnotic caresses. Ric brought his fingers to my mouth. "No trespassing there tonight. I'll just have to find another way in." He thumbed open my lower lip, then penetrated my mouth, his thumb pushing between my teeth and against the roof of my mouth.
The shaft of pleasure that arrowed through my belly made my feet flatten on the floorboard and my mouth turn into a suction machine, keeping his thumb captive.
He laughed at the fierce physical pull of my response. "I need to drive this baby," he said after a moment, reclaiming his thumb and the stick shift.
Whew. I contemplated the possibility that not having sex might be as exciting as having it.
The Vette turned a corner and then another, rocking me in the semi-recumbent cradle, and we were home. His home, anyway. Ric could never relax at the Enchanted Cottage as I did here, mainly because he didn't have an overzealous guard dog on duty.
He escorted me inside, arm around my waist, stopping only to pull the day's mail out of the box as we passed. The sky was darkening, long past twilight. Gravity was helping my cramps make a comeback, big time, on Broadway. Standing Room Only.
I almost welcomed having the leisure to do nothing but experience the agony, knowing what Ric would and could do to make me forget it.
