After Midnight

48
BODY HEAT

Steve stuck a tortilla chip into his mouth and crunched it.
“Uck. These are terrible.”
“They’re healthy chips,” I pointed out. “Low fat, cholesterol free, salt free.”
“Taste like paper.” He took a long drink of margarita to wash the chip down. Then he said, “Are you starving? I’m starving. Why don’t we go ahead and barbecue those steaks?”
“They’re probably still frozen.”
“Let’s have a look.”
“Fine with me.”
Steve and I got up from the table. Holding the saber in his right hand, he followed me into the house. At the kitchen counter, I lifted the T-bones out of the teryaki sauce. They were wet and slippery, and still stuck together. With Steve beside me and leaning forward to watch, I dug my fingertips into the edges where the two steaks met, and pulled hard. Suddenly, they came apart with a sound like ripping cloth.
“Bravo!” Steve said.
I set them down on the platter. “They’re still awfully frozen, but…”
“I’ll thaw them out,” Steve said. Taking me by the arm, he turned me toward him. Then, using both hands, he lifted the dripping steaks off the platter and pushed them against my breasts.
I gasped and flinched with their frigid touch.
“This’ll warm them up fast,” he said, grinning.
“Come on,” I said. “Quit it.”
“Nothing like body heat for thawing out steaks.”
“Please.”
“Don’t make me hurt you,” he warned.
I almost grabbed his wrists, but stopped myself in time.
I did back away from him. He came after me, though, grinning and rubbing me with the steaks. Before I got far, my retreat was stopped by a turn in the counter. Steve cornered me and slid the steaks all over my breasts. They felt like slabs of ice. They made my skin burn. My nipples were rigid and aching. My breasts dripped with teryaki sauce, and dribbles ran down my belly.
Finally, he tossed the steaks onto the counter. They thunked the tile surface and skidded a few inches.
Clutching my sides with his wet hands, he crouched in front of me and started to clean the sauce off me with his mouth. First, he licked the dribbles off my belly. Then he slid his tongue over my breasts. He licked and sucked.
After the frigid beef, the heat of his mouth felt good.
It all felt good, especially what he was doing to my nipples with his tongue and lips.
But I worried about his teeth.
What’s to stop him from biting me?
What’s to stop him from eating me?
His buddy, Milo, ate Marilyn.
Maybe they both did.
I clutched Steve’s shoulders, ready to thrust him away in case of trouble.
And stared at the saber.
Needing both hands for his games with the steaks, he’d left the saber propped upright against the counter, five or six feet behind him.
But he was in the way, hunched down, working my breasts with his mouth.
One good shove…
He would land on his back within easy reach of the saber.
If he gets it before I do…
I couldn’t think straight because of what he was doing to me, but I knew this wouldn’t be a good time to risk an attack on him.
Wait till it’s a sure thing.
What if it’s never a sure thing?
Just not now.
He suddenly bit my right nipple. I cried out and rammed my knee up. As it caught him in the chest, his mouth sprang open, freeing my nipple, and I shoved him backward by the shoulders. His back slammed against the kitchen floor.
Just as I figured, he landed beside the saber.
Before he could make a reach for it, I lurched forward between his legs and tried to kick him in the groin. It was a powerful kick. It would’ve knocked his balls into next Tuesday. But his hand shot down and caught my ankle and stopped my kick cold.
He could stop my foot, but not me.
Even as he gripped my ankle, I dropped onto him, driving my knees down hard into his belly.
He had solid stomach muscles. But not solid enough.
The moment my knees hit him, he let go of my ankle. His lips formed an O. He said, “Ooomph!” His eyes bugged out, and his head and shoulders came up off the floor.
For me, it was like kneeling on a raft shooting the rapids. I didn’t stand a chance of staying up. Thanks to the fact that Steve had been clutching my right foot, I’d gone down on him with my body slightly turned—facing the saber. So I fell toward it.
As Steve’s face got jammed with the left side of my ribcage, I reached high with my right hand and got hold of the blade. Then I flung myself over, trying to roll off him. But he hugged me around the rump. I rolled off him, all right, but he stayed with me. I ended up on my back, Steve on top with his face between my breasts.
His breath was still knocked out, so he was wheezing and gagging and not very strong.
He was trying to pull his arms out from under me.
Clutching the saber where I’d first grabbed it—high on the blade—I pounded the top of Steve’s head with the hilt. The blade hurt my hand. That close to the hilt, though, it wasn’t very sharp. I didn’t think it had cut me.
But the hilt clobbered Steve.
I got him with the metal part that curves over to protect your hand during a sword fight.
He grunted and flinched. Then he jerked his arms out from under my ass and I was afraid of what he might do, so instead of worrying about my hand, I hammered him with the hilt about five more times hard and fast. My hand hurt with each blow, but I bashed the crap out of Steve’s head and knocked him out cold.
He lay on top of me as if he’d suddenly fallen asleep.
Blood poured out of his torn scalp, soaked his hair, spilled all over my chest.
Bucking and twisting, I threw him off me.
He landed on his back, and I got to my feet. My right hand hurt like mad. I switched the saber to my left, then checked the damage. Not much. The blade had pressed several deep dents across my hand and fingers, but there were no cuts.
I’d gotten off lucky.
In more ways than one.
In plenty of ways.
I stared down at Steve. He still seemed to be unconscious. His head was lying in a nice puddle of blood.
I was all bloody, myself. I looked as if a small animal had died a messy death between my breasts.
Steve could’ve had a jolly time licking me clean.
I thought about waking him up and making him do it.
But he might bite me again. Or worse.
Over at the counter, I tore some paper towels off a roll and wiped the worst of the blood off me. I would’ve liked to take a shower.
But—as usual—I had too many other things to do.
Steve wouldn’t stay unconscious forever.
Probably.
Right now, I had a choice to make: either kill him, or not.
No, that’s wrong. Letting him live wasn’t a real option.
For one thing, he knew too much. He knew my name and where I lived. He’d seen me kill Tony and Milo. He’d seen me abuse Judy, and had probably made her talk before killing her. If the cops got him alive, he would likely “turn over” on me to get a deal.
For another thing, the guy had murdered Elroy and Judy and maybe Marilyn (the dead woman in Milo’s tent). God only knows how many other people he and Milo had murdered as a team. He’d called himself a “thrill-killer” and he was probably a cannibal, to boot.
Besides, given the chance, he would try to murder me.
So the real choices were between killing Steve here and now, or killing him somewhere else, later.
I was very tempted to do it here and now. Immediately, he would stop being a threat. (Dead men not only tell no tales, they get no tails. They don’t rape, torture, or murder anyone ever again.)
But I would be stuck with Steve’s body on the kitchen floor. And Elroy’s headless body in the guest bathroom. And Elroy’s head in the swimming pool. And various other, more manageable messes.
Quite frankly, I’d had enough of that shit.
He made the messes, let him clean them up!
YEAH!
It would be risky. But I had the saber, now.
While I waited for him to regain consciousness, I wondered about tying him up. Some manner of restraint seemed necessary. But how could he pick up Elroy, and so on, if his hands were tied? How could he carry the body away from the house with his feet bound together?
Pretty soon, I came up with a good solution.
I hurried into the laundry room. Serena had a fifteen-foot electrical extension cord that she mostly used for her iron. I unplugged it, gathered it up, and hurried back into the kitchen with it. Steve looked as if he hadn’t moved.
I set my saber on top of a counter, then took a small knife out of the butcher block knife holder. In Serena’s “junk drawer,” I found some heavy-duty strapping tape. The sort that has threads running through it, so it’s almost unbreakable.
Kneeling by Steve’s bare feet, I tied one end of the electrical cord around his left ankle. I knotted it as well as I could, but cords make lousy knots. You just can’t pull them tight enough. So then I unspooled about a yard of tape and cut it off with the knife. I used the tape to wrap his ankle and the cord. Then used another length of tape, just to make sure.
When I was done, the cord seemed completely secure.
I had fashioned a “foot-leash” for Steve.
I retrieved the saber. Then I put all the sharp kitchen knives into a drawer so they wouldn’t be handy for Steve. When that was done, I picked up my end of the extension cord and gave it a couple of tugs.
“Hey, Steve!” I yelled. “Wake up! We’ve got work to do!”