"Michael Swanwick - Mother Grasshopper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

flirting through the flames so that the hem browned and smoked but never quite
caught fire.

This wildness seemed to come out of nowhere. I watched her, alarmed and aroused,
too drunk to think clearly, too entranced even to move.

Finally she collapsed gracefully at my feet. The firelight was red on her naked
back, shifting with each gasping breath she took. She looked up at me through
her long, sweat-tangled hair, and her eyes were like amber, dark as cypress
swamp water, brown and bottomless. Eyes a man could drown in.

I pulled her toward me. Laughing, she surged forward, collapsing upon me,
tumbling me over backward, fumbling with my belt and then the fly of my jeans.
Then she had my cock out and stiff and I'd pushed her skirt up above her waist
so that it seemed she was wearing nothing but a thick red sash. And I rolled her
over on her back and she was reaching down between her legs to guide me in and
she was smiling and lovely.

I plunged deep, deep, deep into her, and oh god but it felt fine. Like that
eye-opening shock you get when you plunge into a cold lake for the first time on
a hot summer's day and the water wraps itself around you and feels so impossibly
good. Only this was warm and slippery-slick and a thousand times better. Then I
was telling her things, telling her I needed her, I wanted her, I loved her,
over and over again.

I awoke the next morning with a raging hangover. Victoria was sitting in the cab
of the pickup, brushing her long white hair in the rear-view mirror and humming
to herself.

"Well," she said, amused. "Look what the cat dragged in. There's water in the
jerrycans. Have yourself a drink. I expect we could also spare a cup for you to
wash your face with."

"Look," I said. "I'm sorry about last night."

"No you're not."

"I maybe said some foolish things, but --"

Her eyes flashed storm-cloud dark. "You weren't speaking near so foolish then as
you are now. You meant every damn word, and I'm holding you to them." Then she
laughed. "You'd best get at that water. You look hideous."

So I dragged myself off.
Overnight, Victoria had changed. Her whole manner, the way she held herself,
even the way she phrased her words, told me that she wasn't a child anymore. She
was a woman.

The thing I'd been dreading had begun.