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“What’s the matter, Benny?” Nina giggled and rose
from the soft winter grass. “Hungry? Daddy has steaks in the fridge.”
One second he was lazing at her feet, the next he pounced
on her.
“Steaks?” Benny’s stomach rumbled. She laughed,
shouting, “And here I though it was me you wanted.”
Benny growled at her smirk. He took a step towards her.
Nina squealed and ran. Benny shouted, “Get back here, you bimbo, and feed
me.” He raced off after her, leaving McNary to writhe in hatred on the ground.
Benny caught up with her at the kitchen door.
“Now what?” she ask, her eyelids fluttering down.
“Steaks!”
He yelped and dodged her fist, rubbing his shoulder where
she had caught him. “Hey, I gotta keep up my strength, don’t I?” Benny
grinned at her. Seeing the look in his eyes, Nina edged back into scant safety
of the house. Still smiling, he growled and lunged through the French doors in
pursuit.
Nina shrieked with laughter.
“Benneeeee, no.”
He stalked her, making a feint to the left and Nina dived
to the right, and then he was there, arms around her a loose band, warm on her
back, gently stroking, teasing Nina. She sighed a moan and leaned into him.
“Upstairs, please, Benny?”
His hand, so warm and gentle slapped down on her bare rear.
“Steaks.”
“Ooo, ow.” She rubbed her bottom and glared at him.
“Just for that, you can go hungry.”
“Huh uh.”
Benny scooped her up, tossed Nina in the air. She came down
into his arms with a squeal of laughter. Her laughter turned to outrage then
alarm when he slung her over his shoulder and barreled at top speed through the
doors of the kitchen.
Benny plowed to a halt in the broad kitchen, sliding on the
tiles. He yiked and dived behind a worktable. Nine on top, they crashed to the
floor, and he choked with the wind knocked out of his lungs. Dressed in a
bathrobe, a towel around her head and fuzzy pink slippers on her feet, a
ponderous middle-aged woman looked around the kitchen.
She wiped at the whitish facial she wore and picked up a
knife.
Benny leaned close to Nina’s ear and said in a whispered
hiss, “What the freek is that?”
In a slow, cautious peek, Nina giggled and ducked.
“It’s Ms Armbruster. My tutor. God, Benny you’re
dead.” She covered her mouth, her eyes filled with impish glee.
“What do you mean, I’m
dead?” he demanded. “You’re the one who lives in this shack.” His hand
took in the mansion and grounds of the senator’s DC estate.
Nina touched him on the cheek. “Ms Armbruster is a dead
shot. Why, I saw her once with her martial arts instructor. She shot a match out
of his mouth with a .22.” Her eyes grew sad. “Wish to God she’d been here
when that awful woman came last week.” Nina grimaced, a tear ran down one
cheek and Benny kissed it away. “It was that terrible Ms VanTur.”
Horrified, he froze.
Watching the woman, Nine muttered,
“Daddy hates VanTur something awful, but he has to do like she says. Her Party
owns the government. I thought he was going to cry with shame.” She turned to
him. Her own eyes swollen with tears, Nina said, “She’s so beautiful on the
outside. Inside she’s like a tomb, filled with dead things. Mama used to say
beauty is as beauty does.”
“I know,” he said, quiet and alarmed for Nina. “The
beauty of evil, like my mom told me, is the worse enemy we got.”
“And what of youth?” The angry gravel, harshly Germanic
voice spoke from behind them, “Filled with foolishness and arrogance.” Mrs.
Armbruster glared down at them. Nina gave a squeak of fear and hid her face in
Benny’s shoulder.
“Uh . . . hi!” Benny gave the angry woman his most
flawless grin. “You, ah, you must be Mrs. Armbruster. I’m, uh, I’m-”
“Bernie,” Nina shouted.
Benny snarled, “Bernie? Are you nuts?”
Nina hissed at him, saying to the woman, “It isn’t what
it looks like, ma’am.”
Folding her arms under her breasts, the woman glared down
at them.
“Honest?” Nina whispered. “I mean-”
The knife the woman carried hissed Nina into silence. A
glaring Benny shoved Nina behind him.
The woman cocked an eye, and, with a shake of her head,
walked away.
“Young man,” she called from the door, “I’d suggest
you be gone from the house before the senator returns. The last time you were
here he threatened to remove your manhood. The senator, he is not a man of idle
threats.” The door clapped shut behind her.
“Oh, God. What am I going to do, Benny? She’ll tell
Daddy.”
“Bernie, remember?”
She offered a shy smile at his scowl, and he stood over her.
Unable to resist her laughter, Benny reached own and hauled her up. He tugged
her to the stainless steel refrigerator, and they mulled over the contents.
Nina took several steaks from the meat drawer and went to
the grill.
“Won’t take but a minute.”
“I need one now.” He shrugged at the roll of her eyes.
“I’m starving.”
“But they’re raw.”
In horrified fascination Nina watched while Benny tore a
chunk out of a steak.
“It’s what keeps me -” he grinned a flash of white
teeth, “- a virile he-man.”
Nina rolled her eyes, and put hers on the grill. She lit the
mesquite wood under it. The hood fan rumbled on, the smoke easing out of the
wood, spurts of flames charring the steak. Nina turned it, poked at it with a
fork, and Benny snatched it from her, cursing and throwing it from hand to hand,
grimacing at the spatter of drops of hot grease that that splashed his stomach
and thighs.
“Serves you right.” Nina crowed and laugh and slapped a
hand on her bare thigh. “Ha.”
“Ha, yourself.” He gave her a smug look. “Who got the
meat?”
Her eye dropped lower and Benny flushed.
“I mean the beef, baby.”
She pursed her lips in a smile and tossed another steak on
the grill. Sprinkling a little red sauce on the meat, she felt something hot and
hard brush the small of her back.
“Hot in here, ain’t it?” Benny whispered a soft moan.
She turned in his arms, and the steak was forgotten.
He nibbled on her steak. Nina took a bite, chewed, kissed
Benny, and swallowed. She lay back on the table.
“Best steak I ever had here,” Benny told her, leaning
down to return the kiss. “Tho’ I only been in here once before.”
Her eyes opened in astonishment.
Benny grinned at Nina and tried to take the rest of the
steak. She nipped his arm and he chuckled.
“When did you eat here before?”
Eyes wide, she gasped, peels of
laughter soaring through the kitchen. “Lordy, Benny, did you come in here the
night -”
“Yep. I
followed ol’ Connel-the-hero up to your room. I guess,” he said slowly, not
looking at her, “that I should o’ beat him up, but he looked so scared I
figured he wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Thank you, that was brave of you. He had a gun.”
Benny showed her the scab on his elbow.
“Good thing he ain’t any better a gunman than he is a
lover. I got nailed by a ricochet.” His voice came dangerously close to
bragging. “I got these from my father’s father.” He showed her the occult
marks on his chest. “I was only six, an’ he wanted to kill me. He was a high
priest of the Asgina Nohi coven, up in Sandy Valley. It means Demons Road. A
real weirdo.” Benny preened in the gentle admiration of Nina. “This one was
from when some scuds nailed me in the reformatory.”
She ooed and ahed
over him. Benny’s chest swelled. He touched the empty socket of his right eye
and the knife thin scar that slashed through it. “I got this when I was in a
pileup in Fayetteville, in North Carolina.”
Her lips pressed the cheekbone under the socket.
“I . . . I-” He swallowed hard. “The doctors at Camp
LeJeune, they’re good.”
“The best,” she said against his lips and drew him down
on top of her. His arms went under her and lifted. Squealing in surprise, her
legs locked behind the small of his back and Nina was pulled from the table and
carried up a broad sweep of stairs.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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