Chapter Thirty-One

Topside: downtown San Diego, three hours earlier

Pandra gave her best effortto viewing Thomal with merely a clinical eye as he stepped out of the dressing room in her former leather clothing store haunt, Rufskin, located in Hillcrest, San Diego's gay district. But as her gaze traveled down to his crotch, her stomach went base over apex into some strange gymnastics because—

"Daaaamn, Costache," Gábor observed. "Those pants are way too tight, bro. You look like you have a vagina, but, like, a mutant one that's been injected with silicone or something."

Dev snorted.

Nyko didn't react. He was staring in horrified fascination at a mannequin wearing leather pants with the arse cheeks cut out of them. But then Nyko hardly talked anymore, anyroad.

"Screw this, I'm changing." Thomal took a backward step into the dressing room.

"No, it's perfect," Pandra interjected. "Your trousers need to be that tight for where we're going." And he didn't look like he had a vagina, rather the tight black leather formed a pronounced vee at his crotch, drawing focus to linger on the hefty bulge there. She exhaled tightly as her stomach did another backflip-double-tuck. Hells bells, she really needed to get some pull. After over eight months without sex, her nethers felt like they'd dried into an old husk. "Now let's put on your shirt." She pulled out a can of specialized spray paint and shook it with a rattle, rattle, rattle.

One of Thomal's golden brows hiked upward.

Gábor chortled. "Oh, this I gotta—"

"Say, mate," she said to Gábor. "Why don't you pop out and buy me my cigarettes. Camels. I'll need a lighter, too." She turned back to Thomal and gestured to their private dressing room. "Let's duck back in here. You'll need to take your real shirt off." And exposing a scaly dragon tattoo to public scrutiny was a topside no-no.

Thomal stepped inside and stripped off his shirt.

The door shut, enclosing them together. Alone. In intimate proximity. With one of them half-naked and wearing sexy leather pants. She heard herself breathe. She should get credit toward her debt of amends for this torture, shouldn't she?

She cleared her throat. "Turn around," she instructed him. "I need to spirit gum a layer of fake skin over your scaly dragon." Of course, she had to touch him to do that.

He gave her a dark look and didn't move.

She busied herself twisting open the bottle of spirit gum, just as casual as could be.

He turned around, and heat flushed through her. Cor blimey, her hubby had an outstanding rack of muscles cutting grooves into his v-shaped back. She licked her lips and went to work, begging her naughty bits not to juice up. A Varcolac could scent that. After ignoring how firm and supple his skin was, she moved on to the rest of his getup, applying a temporary tattoo of a scorpion on the left side of his very kissable-looking throat, then preparing him for his spray-on shirt. She taped off his neck and halfway down his biceps, then tucked a towel around the waistband of his pants, her fingers brushing against the taut muscles of his lower abdomen. Her belly tightened. A few centimeters lower and…best not to think about it, girl. She chanced a glance at Thomal's face.

His eyes were focused across the dressing room, and they were dark and intense, his nostrils flared wide.

She swiftly moved on to the next task. Picking up the paint can, she proceeded to cover Thomal's torso in neon blue. That done, she added the finishing touches, dabbing purple hair dye onto the tips of his blond hair. Removing the tape and towel, she stepped back to view the finished product, and—

Love a duck.

"Well?" Thomal asked.

She couldn't answer, momentarily robbed of speech. She'd turned him into a one-thousand-horse-powered sex machine. Considering that his shirt was, quite literally, painted on, every chiseled, carved, cut, and sculpted muscle on his upper torso, along with the flat discs of his nipples and an old bullet wound on the left of his abdomen, were displayed for all and sundry to drool over. The getup accentuated the steely blue eyes and dizzying handsomeness that were already his claim to fame. He looked hotter than a sauna in Hell, and there wasn't a man, woman, or animal on earth who wouldn't want to jump his meat and two veg the second they took a gander at him.

She finally got her mouth to produce a sound. "That'll do," she murmured. "Now out you go, love. It's my turn to change."

He didn't say anything. Just left. As the door opened and he stepped out, she heard the warriors start in on him. The door shut, muffling the voices. Right, then. Get yourself together.

She tarted herself up in an ankle-to-neck leather bodysuit a lá Cat Woman. The garment might as well have been spray-painted on her body, too, it fit that tight. Like a second skin, it left nothing to the imagination, although it still did its job of covering the dragon tattoo on her back and her fecked-up belly. Metal zippers accented both sides of her calves, her left thigh, and her right breast. All the zippers were faux, except for the one over her boob. That one was unzipped, her breast swelling through the opening, appearing naked, when, in fact, it was concealed by skin-colored material. But it took a double- or triple-take to realize it, and the effect was eye-popping sexy.

"Wow," Dev said when she stepped out of the dressing room.

Thomal's jaw locked down.

"Hey, look," Gábor chirped. "It's the Camel Toe Twins."

Pandra called Duane to find out where the Iron Cock was tonight. Her former minion copped an attitude with her for being gone so many long months, but he also sounded creepily excited when he promised to meet her at the club tonight with Bo Bo. Sorry, chums. She planned to have all done and dusted well before those two showed. "Here's the address." She handed a piece of paper to Dev.

Ten minutes later they pulled up in front of a grubby four-story apartment building, the entire top floor of which was supposedly dedicated to the sex club tonight. They got out of the Dodge van, and Dev stepped up to Pandra and Thomal. "Here are your earpieces." He held out two on the palm of his hand.

Thomal took one.

She took the other and jammed it into her right ear.

"Gábor, Nyko, and I will man the perimeter." Dev glanced between the two of them. "We're here for you if you need us."

Thomal shoved his earpiece deeper. "I think I can say with reasonable accuracy that my old lady doesn't need help in the seduction department." He spun around and stalked inside the building.

She and Thomal had to walk up all four flights of warped stairs, the elevator being clapped out—hardly surprising in a place like this. They passed a long line of scantily-clad people assembled on the stairs. Hungry, devouring stares followed their progress, heads craning, although for the first time ever in an arrival at the Iron Cock, she wasn't necessarily the headliner.

At the top, she blazed up a Camel, puffing smoke sideways to avoid giving the bouncer a face full. "'Ow do, Curtis," she greeted the large black man. "Some good bagging off happening in there tonight?"

"There's a cover charge." Curtis didn't bother to look at her as he passed on this information. His attention was stuck on Thomal. "Economic downswing."

She tut-tutted. "Cor, what's the world coming to when good folk won't spend their brass on a proper felching or snowballing? Anyroad, get knotted. I brought a toy with me." She waved airily at Thomal. "He's my pass."

Thomal played his part, forming his lips into the kind of cocky smile that had Curtis rapidly reconsidering his straightness, his eyes nearly pin wheeling in their sockets.

She pushed past the bouncer and made her way inside, Thomal next to her.

The Iron Cock's typical dark, sordid atmosphere instantly engulfed them: loud music, streaks of white light slicing across the shadows, the suffocating heated whoosh of too many bodies packed into a too-small place. The smell of sweat and the distinctive musk of sex assaulted her senses. It had never bothered her before, but now she had to drag hard on her cigarette to keep the vom down.

Beside her, Thomal lifted his lip into a derisive sneer. "Look at them," he said, a glare aimed at the dance floor, where people were moving in an undulating mash of simulated sex acts. "They're making a travesty out of what sex is supposed to be. It's grotesque."

She held her Camel between the vee of her fingers and flicked her pinkie against her thumbnail as she surveyed the crowd. Edgar had to be here. The Iron Cock only operated one night a week, and he never missed. "Didn't know you were such the romantic type, hubby."

"With the right woman."

Pandra clamped her teeth into a tight grind. Aye, that's right. She was Dirty Pandra. Polish a pence to a high shine and underneath the gloss, it'll always be copper, never gold. She squeezed her eyes closed against a spike of temper. God's balls, why was she doing this? If she were back in ??ran? right now, she'd be making faces out of snack time pretzels and raisins for her students. Not being reminded of all the arsed-up things she used to do. And be.

She felt Thomal stiffen beside her, and turned to see what had snagged his attention. He'd spotted a couple in the act of oral sex, the man propped against a wall, neck arched and mouth open around moans the music was drowning out. The woman was on her knees in front of him, her hands wrapped around his naked buttocks, her cheeks hollowing and bulging as she worked the guy's stalk. Both the man and the woman were blonde, probably creating a decent facsimile of what Arc and Pandra had resembled the night of the "event."

Pandra's heart slumped into her stomach, and then both dropped away. That's that, then. The end of the road, girlie-girl. Accept it. Thomal would never forgive her. Time to give up the fantasy that he'd eventually see all she'd done to make amends and give her a chance. He'd never acknowledge the changes in her. Never. There was just too much wreckage on the road between them.

Oddly, such a thing would've been a doss for Old Pandra to deal with. But New Pandra had feelings, too many for her not to care about that loss. "Let's push off." Her voice grated through the narrow opening of her larynx. She'd come so far these last months, only to discover she'd moved the sum total of a gnat's whisker.

Thomal frowned. "You don't see the guy?"

She did, actually. Edgar was at the bar. He'd already spotted her, his gaze zeroing in on her as if through a gun sight. "He's here."

"What's the problem, then?"

She held her cigarette in front of her and stared at the glowing red tip as she worked to ice herself down, shoving emotions back into the trap of her ribcage like biting cobras. "Nothing," she said in a jaundiced tone. "Everything's brill." She mashed out her cigarette against the wall and tossed it aside. "To the dance floor, love. It's time to put on a show. We'll have to pretend to get into a fight." Her smile felt like it deformed her face into a unnatural mask. "Think you can pull that off, snookums?"

The hubby gave her a strange look.