flubbed. The look on Lucy’s face was indeterminable, as though she hadn’t exactly gotten what was promised.
“Convince me better.”
The second kiss was a world away and dusted with starlight. Within seconds, Riona’s hand laced through Lucy’s black hair, pulling her mouth hard against Riona’s own. A fire flamed where their bodies connected, and as Lucy surrendered back to the horizon, Riona covered it with her own. They became entangled, a confusion of exploring hands, sloppy endearments, and little kitty-cat-like sighs. When Lucy’s hand began snaking its way under Riona’s shirt, she didn’t try to stop the action. The desire that burned within her was all-consuming and insatiable.
“Not exactly what I was expecting her to call us over for, but I’m game.”
Dee’s voice landed on them like a bucket of ice water. The lovers froze, jerking their heads in the direction of the door, and taking in the sight of the two men gawking at them from the other side of the room.
Riona shot off Lucy, who in turn, quickly scrambled to her feet and smoothed her Flaming Lips tee back down to her midriff.
“Please, ladies,” Dee continued, stepping further into the room, grinning, “don’t let us stop you. By all means, pretend like we’re not here. Right, Marc?”
It was then that Riona noticed Marc in detail. As far as impressions of corpses whose last earthly moments were recorded with a look of bewilderment and disgust, the priest’s was pretty spot on. His eyes were wide and glassy as his skin took on the shade of craft glue, and his muscles were tight, clenched.
Classic rigor “mortified.”
As Riona rose to her feet, Lucy cleared her throat. “Thanks for lunch and… yeah, well, everything else. I’ll, um… I’ll catch you later.”
She swept past Dee en route to the nearest exit, as anyone would when having two complete strangers, one of them wearing a priest’s collar, walk in on you and your date’s first make out session.
The second she was gone, Dee whipped back to Riona with a look of utter intrigue. “Oh, no fair, you’ve been holding out on us,” he whined as the door closed behind them. “All this time we’ve been building you up on your girl-on-goblin routine when we could have been partaking of some girl-on…”
“Dee!” She cut him off, both with words and a knock on the chest, hitting muscles that may have been made of stone. “My romantic life is not for your entertainment. Oh, my God, doesn’t anyone knock anymore?”
“We did knock,” Dee countered. “Perhaps very, very lightly, once we heard the moaning, but we did knock.”
“Marc?” She snapped her fingers two inches in front of the priest’s face, trying to drag him from his stupor. “Father Angeletti! Are you in there? Don’t you need to be invited inside by the owner of a house or something? Or is that just vampires?”
Finally, he fidgeted, his eyes blinking wildly as he turned to her. “It’s a ... ssssss…” he hissed beneath his breath.
“Huh?”
Marc’s eyes closed, his words now burning with rage as his face went from chalk to chimney. “It’s a sin!” he bellowed, his fists clenched.
Hip cocked, hand waving wildly in the air, Riona went into full oh-no-you-didden mode. “Ex-cuse me, Father, but who are you to come into my house and lecture me on morality?”
Eyebrows raised, both Marc’s index fingers pointed immediately at the ring of white, linen-covered cardboard around his neck.
“Not of my church,” Riona retorted. “This is who I am. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to accept it if we’re going to work together.”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course, you think it’s about you. Listen, Keystone,” the title coming out like an insult, “I don’t give a rat’s left nut what you do or whom you do it with. Just … don’t let me see it again.”
“Fine.”
As they stared each other down, Dee clapped his hands together. “Well, this is quaint. What do you say we take the powder out of this here keg by getting down to business? Riona, you had something to tell us?”
“Assuming the sermon is done and Elvis has left the pulpit?” She glared with the animosity of a ticked-off honey badger. “Marc?”
The priest refused to meet her gaze. It wasn’t until Dee dope-slapped the back of his head that he rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m done.”
“Good.” Riona jerked her head in the direction of the love seat and matching armchair that consumed fifty percent of her living room. Her guffawing guests seated themselves side-by-side