I mean. I know we were kissing earlier, but I feel weird about that right now,” I said. “And don’t pull my shirt off—it might take the glove with it. Mother Karen would be really mad if we scorched her quilt.”
“Aye, Cap’n.”
Cooper gently pushed my T-shirt and sports bra up under my arms, planting small kisses across my back that made me shiver in delight. I sucked in my breath as he slid his hands around my sides and cupped my breasts in his hands, squeezing my nipples between his fingers. He pushed my hair to the side and began to kiss the sensitive spot behind my left ear. His goatee tickled my neck. Goose bumps rashed down my spine.
“It feels like it’s been years since we did this.” I pulled away so I could lie back and start to take off my khakis and undies. I wanted Cooper in me as quickly as possible, but in the back of my mind I was aware that the pants weren’t mine, and I suspected I had only one other pair of clean underwear in my knapsack. So the fewer bodily fluids I got on either, the happier I’d be once the afterglow of our lovemaking had faded.
“Last week was work,” he replied, meaning the erotomancy we’d used to call the rainstorm. He nudged my hands away from the front of my pants so he could finish unzipping them himself. “This is me showing my proper gratitude for you coming to rescue me.”
I laughed as he tugged my khakis down my hips. “Honey, that still sounds a lot like work.”
He tossed the pants into the corner and stripped my underwear down my legs. “I think you’ll see the difference once I get started.”
“Then I leave myself in your capable hands.” I closed my eyes as Cooper gently spread my thighs and applied himself with all the dedication and enthusiasm of an Eagle Scout who’d just earned a merit badge in ear breathing.
My anxiety melted away as the sweet tension built and built, a hormonal freight train, fast even for me, but that was okay. Oh God was I ready—
—my thighs involuntarily clamped down on Cooper’s head as the orgasm took me and I arched my back with a sudden gasp, my body rigid—
—a tiny part of me was aware of a sudden coolness on my left elbow and a faint fwap! that might be the sound of a satin opera glove hitting the wall—
“Mmmmph! Et oh, et oh!” Cooper frantically slapped my ass with his free hand.
I released him and opened my eyes. My flame hand was jetting burning purple jelly all over the wall, all over the dresser, all over the ceiling, and the stuff was simultaneously corroding and igniting everything it touched. It looked like napalm from a particularly bad hell, and stank of sex and sulfur. The paint, plaster, studs, even the exterior bricks were flaring bright and burning down to noxious black ash with astonishing speed.
Cooper spoke an old word for “blizzard,” a flurry of snow and ice bursting from his fingertips, but the spell fizzled against the flames. Parts of the wall were entirely gone, and I could see the neighbor’s house through the smoke.
“Oh Jesus, make it stop!” he hollered.
My climax had well and thoroughly ended, but the arm wasn’t stopping, and I couldn’t even feel the jet. It wasn’t part of me. I shook my head, frightened and baffled. “But I’m not doing this!”
“MAKE IT STOP!”
I closed my eyes, focused all my energy on the flames, trying to get them back under my control.
I heard the door bang open.
“What are you doing in here?” Mother Karen sounded like she was ready to kill someone.
“Why isn’t this place fireproof?” Cooper yelled back.
“It is!” Karen protested. “This … this is insane, I’ve never—”
“Wow. Incendiary ectoplasm,” I heard the Warlock comment from the hallway. “That’s pretty unusual outside a hell.”
I finally turned off whatever diabolic spigot had been opened in my flame hand, but I’d dripped enough in the process that now the bed was on fire, too, my ectoplasm eating huge holes right through the mattress and melting the steel springs. So much for the quilt. I scrambled to safety, then quickly used my flesh hand to pull my sports bra and shirt back down over my breasts, belatedly realizing it was a completely pointless gesture since I was naked from the waist down.
“I—I didn’t mean to do this,” I stammered. “I don’t know how this happened.”