TWO
Just a couple of weeks ago, Macy had stepped off an elevator not into a floor of corporate offices but into a Park Avenue penthouse.
A tall, smiling, handsome man in a suit met her at the door. He was square-jawed and very solidly built, suggesting muscles on muscles beneath his attire. The man, his voice deep and strong, took her invitation card and read her name. “Macy Jacobs. Good evening; welcome to Mr. Bedford’s home. My name is Rudd Ainsleigh; I’m Mr. Bedford’s personal assistant. I’m running the party for him, so he can just enjoy his guests. Let me take your coat.”
“Thank you,” Macy said, turned around, and shrugged out of her coat, which Rudd put over one arm.
“Please go right in,” Rudd said. And with a nod, Macy did.
The first thing that she noticed inside the penthouse, other than the place being Architectural Digest beautiful and filled with smartly dressed celebrities, politicians, and models (male and female), was the music: not the obvious flavor of the month from the popular charts, but jazz. Tasteful, polished jazz. Coils of saxophone and piano music from speakers somewhere in the place wrapped themselves around everyone and everything. It reminded her of old clips she had seen of a TV show that Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner used to do, in which they would stage a swanky party with all the most glittering company in a posh penthouse and make viewers feel as if they’d been invited to some very elite, very exclusive gathering of all the most interesting and desirable people. Macy remembered that Hefner himself had seemed very posed and unnatural, even rather stiff, in those old clips, a bit like a talking mannequin. She had found his on-camera manner rather stiff.
Well, she thought, set up an unnatural situation and get an unnatural performance. Wondering what kinds of poses she would see people putting on this evening, she smiled and joined the party.
She decided the first place she would seek out would be the bar. At a party like this, she expected, there would pretty much be free-flowing everything. There were cater-waiters making the rounds with trays of champagne, but there was also a bartender on duty, and she’d rather have something made for her than something right out of the bottle. So, into the midst of the glitterati she stepped in her black cocktail dress and shoes with heels of just the right height, putting on her best party manners.
Macy was a much more anonymous person than many of the people she saw sitting and flitting about her. Though she was a producer, no one ever saw her face or her name on screen, and her work was not entertainment. As the owner of a commercial video company, she was “in” the entertainment industry in a very peripheral sort of way, but she was not “of” it. She was a part of the engine that made mass-media entertainment possible. She was what paid for all the shows that people spent their hours watching, outside of the more rarified world of public television. As such, she was in the rather unique position of watching the entertainment world as just barely an outsider. Taking a seat at the bar and ordering a Mimosa—the first drink that came to her mind, basically—she looked out across the spacious and sumptuous living room of her host and picked out all the people that she recognized, and recalled snippets of the things she knew or had heard or read about them. Macy was the sort who read or listened to celebrity gossip for about five minutes, then forgot about it and moved on to things she found more interesting or important. She knew bits and pieces of things about many of the people here, or at least she knew things that had been said or written or reported about them, and recognized them as the soup of fact and fancy and shallow rumor that they were. Odds were that a few more myths would be spun out of this occasion to which they had all been invited by their very wealthy and exceptionally well-connected host. Speaking of whom, where was he…?
Over her shoulder came a distinctly male voice: “Macy Jacobs, right?”
She swiveled around in her bar seat and was directly face-to-face with the handsomest face she had ever seen in her life. For an instant, she did not know whether she was breathing or whether her heart was still beating. Then, he held out his hand.
“Aaron Bedford,” he introduced himself, very obviously.
She shook his hand, which felt as hard and smooth and strong as the muscles that she guessed were under what he was wearing: a casual grey mock turtleneck with a black jacket, slacks, and shoes, all of which were surely from the most expensive men’s fashion labels. The man knew how to make semi-casual look formal, she granted him that. “Good evening, Mr. Bedford,” Macy said.
“Aaron,” he corrected her, letting her hand linger in his. “Please, you’re my guest; it’s a party. No business tonight.”
“Of course…Aaron.” Macy smiled, reluctant to let her hand slip from his when it finally did. “And it looks like a wonderful party.”
“And well it should be,” said Aaron. “I wouldn’t have anything less for my birthday.”
“And happy birthday,” Macy acknowledged.
“Thank you,” Aaron accepted. “And I’m very pleased you accepted the invitation.”
“Frankly,” said Macy, “I appreciated the invitation, but I wasn’t sure why I even got it. That is, I don’t remember the two of us ever meeting before.” She had searched her memory for any occasion when she had previously seen or met Aaron Bedford and had come up with nothing. She certainly would not forget ever being in the presence of a man like this. He was incredible.
“Well, I said it’s not business,” Aaron explained, “but I still invite all my business associates to my birthday party. It’s the one time a year that I really entertain, and I like to include everyone.”
Slightly puzzled, Macy replied, “I’m sorry… We’re ‘business associates?’ Are we?”
“Indirectly,” Aaron said. “You’ve produced a lot of the spots that appear on my channel. A lot of our outside advertising is from Macy J. Video—your company.”
Macy’s eyes were lit with understanding. She nodded. “Oh, right. Yes, of course you’d know that.”
“I know everything,” said Aaron. “That is, everything that goes on in my companies. We have had a business relationship, even if you’ve only dealt with my people, not personally, directly with me. Since we’ve had so much business, I thought it was past time we met—especially after that article I saw.”
Macy rolled her eyes, thinking. “That article…” Then, she remembered. “Oh…that article. You saw that, really? That wasn’t even really about me—not specifically, anyway.”
“But you were a part of it. Manhattan Magazine, ‘The Twelve Business People to Watch in the City.’ I take notice of things like that. And the most interesting people in things like that.”
“You thought I was interesting?” Macy asked, now as intrigued with his business acumen as she was with the way he filled his designer wardrobe.
“Very,” he said. “I was interested in how fast you’ve built your business, the way you’ve gotten around town. That and the quality of your work, which I’d naturally already seen when I screened the spots you produced that ran on my channel. You’ve joined the movers and shakers pretty quickly.”
Macy chuckled softly, discreetly. “Any ‘moving and shaking’ I’ve done is thanks to my father. He’s retired now and doesn’t live in the city anymore.”
“But you worked in his advertising agency and got all your first contacts from clients of his, and from there, you were on your way,” Aaron continued.
“That was in the article,” Macy said. “You remember that…”
“I remember that,” he said. “And I wanted to meet the woman who’s come so far, so fast, who’s had so much of her work on my channel. And my birthday party was the perfect time to make an acquaintance.”
“That explains the invitation, then,” said Macy. “I was surprised to get it. And I’m glad you gave it.”
“And I’m glad you accepted,” he replied, flashing a smile.
“Well,” said Macy, warmed by his graciousness as much as by the looks of him, “most people haven’t come as far or as fast as you have. I did a little bit of homework of my own. You’re thirty-six today.”
“I am,” Aaron replied. He politely did not bring up her age, but Macy suspected he knew she was thirty-three the same as he knew everything else. Clearly, this man took it upon himself to know things—and people.
“And your family is originally from Kinross Green, Scotland.”
Aaron nodded and chuckled softly. “Yes, we are from Kinross Green.”
The meaning of that went unspoken. It needed not be said. Macy glanced out at Aaron’s other guests, those who were in the living room. “Are there any others here tonight?”
“A few,” he said. “Kinross Green is a small place, you must know, and not everyone from there is like my family. And a lot of us who are like me left and started families and businesses elsewhere. Outside of Scotland, we’re pretty spread out.”
“But still very well known,” Macy observed. “And it’s natural you would be. People naturally take notice of… That is, when you’re actually open about the fact that you’re…”
He touched her bare shoulder, which set off sparks in her. Macy was not prepared for that, and she covered her reaction by suppressing the leap that she felt inside. “You don’t need to be delicate about it,” Aaron said. “It’s common knowledge. I am Nathairfear.”
At this point, Macy looked slightly off, wondering if Aaron knew what she was doing. It was something that she had done more than once since she first started doing business with his company and looked him up online. She had “done her homework” about him well enough and knew his background. Aaron Bedford, before becoming a mogul, had been one of the most successful fitness models in the world, and he had gotten that way by virtue of who and what he was and where he had come from. He was the former Mr. United Kingdom of international bodybuilding competitions, who had parlayed his title into a career in modeling and product endorsements on both sides of the Atlantic. When one thought of nutritional supplements, exercise clothing and gear, bodybuilding equipment, and fitness machines, one thought of Aaron Bedford—both of his faces and both of his bodies. He was the Nathairfear—the dragon man—who had made himself synonymous with male physical perfection. His pictures and videos, for years, were everywhere, showing him posing in both his human form and his semi-dragon humanoid body, spreading his wings and flexing his tail as well as his muscles. He was a star of the fitness world, and he had worked it to his conspicuous advantage.
Macy called up in her mind the pictures she had seen of him in his posing and modeling days. Aaron was not the kind of bodybuilder who pumped himself up to such an extreme that he looked gross with his clothes off and ridiculous with his clothes on. He was the kind who trained for lean and sleek, but perfectly sculpted and ripped, perfection. He was built like a Thor or a Superman of the movies, not a would-be Hulk. His tall frame was wrapped in breathtakingly wrought, lean muscle like the skyscraper that was now his corporate headquarters. He was a tower of artistically honed manhood. And when he morphed to a dragon and became a creature of serpentine head and neck with horns and spines, wings and talons and tail, every inch of those superb muscles was covered with shimmering scales of green and blue-green and topaz, making him seem like a jeweled reptilian statue. Through his efforts at perfecting his body, Aaron had made himself one of the most famous of a famous breed, the Nathairfear who had captured the attention of the world. It seemed inevitable that he would become who he now was.
Macy looked back at him, retrieving herself from her memories. She could imagine that many people, upon meeting him, would mentally undress and transform him. She could guess that he knew she was doing it even now. He was probably accustomed to it, had probably learned to expect it from the humans that he met. Still, she felt a little rude and hoped she was not being too obvious and blatant about it.
“Would you like to see the rest of the place?” Aaron offered, smoothly changing the subject. “You just got here, and you’ve never seen it before. I’d be happy to give you the official Aaron Bedford home tour.”
Macy daintily finished her drink and set the glass on the bar. “I’d love to,” she said.
He gallantly took her by the hand as she stepped down from the stool and led her out across the living room. On the far side of the room, past the grand piano where a panoramic window at the top of a short flight of stairs showed the vista of Central Park and the towers of Manhattan sparkling in the night outside, there was a longer staircase leading to an upper level. Well, of course he’d have a two-story penthouse. What self-respecting billionaire on Park Avenue wouldn’t?
“Down here,” said Aaron, “there’s my living room, my game room, my kitchen, my dining room, and my pantry and wine room. Upstairs, I have my den and office, my personal gym, library and art gallery, my home theatre—and the bedrooms.”
“Lovely,” said Macy, noting the pause before the mention of the bedrooms. How many did he have? Did he use them all? And with whom?
She preferred to leave the answer to that as an educated guess. Nathairfear men were known for their spectacular masculine beauty. With that beauty came a particular reputation—one that Macy guessed he had earned as well as he had earned his fortune.
The art gallery was the room upstairs that interested Macy the most. Having minored in art while majoring in communications, she always found it insightful to see the kinds of artwork that people had when she visited their homes. The gallery was like a miniature museum filled with paintings and sculptures in a variety of styles by a variety of artists. Macy noted two distinct themes in the pieces that Aaron had collected. She saw a generous number of dragons—and a lot of nudes, individuals and couples, males and females. One subject recurred throughout the array of pieces from one end of the room to the other: sex.
It wasn’t all sex, but it was a motif that presented itself again and again. There were landscapes and seascapes and mountain views of various kinds on the walls. And on shelves and pedestals up and down the room were figures and busts. Among these, there were representations of dragons: at rest, in flight, swimming, even fighting. One painting in particular amused her, a canvas of a dragon slaying a knight, which in any other collection—or in any human collection—would be the other way around. As Macy stood admiring that one, Aaron stood at her shoulder, grinning mischievously. “I think of that one as our little revenge on Saint George.” Macy could not help but laugh at that.
But interspersed through it all were the nudes and the depictions of sex. There were paintings and statues in various states of undress and various states of foreplay (or afterplay), and the same kinds of pieces with dragons in the same situations. Macy wondered if she should be intrigued or relieved that there were no representations of humans actually having sex with dragons. Being two species in one, it would make sense for Aaron to be at least interested in the idea of cross-species coupling. But if he were, there was no evidence of it to be found in his art collection. Where she saw a canvas or objet d’art portraying sex or sensuality, whether human or dragon, it was always within a single species. It made her wonder as well whether her host ever had occasion to pleasure a human woman while in his other body. She did not know how to bring up the question, so she kept it to herself.
What she did say to him openly was, “It’s a really nice collection you have.” It was the most complimentary and least specific thing she could think of.
“I’m glad you like it,” Aaron said. “A lot of these are commission pieces, and some of them are things I’ve found in museums, traveling in different countries. I know that a lot of the museums here in the city have expressed interest in some of these pieces. I could probably make myself another fortune selling off some of what I have in here.”
“Some,” said Macy, thoughtfully. “But probably not all.”
“How do you mean?” Aaron asked.
“Well, some of them are a bit…provocative, you might say?…For the general public.”
“Such as…?”
Macy directed him to one particular sculpture a few steps away. Wrought in black marble, it was a human couple lying in a kind of spooning sex position, the man behind the woman, his one hand encircling her torso and fondling her breast, the other resting—or perhaps reaching—at her abdomen towards her pubic hair. “This one, for instance. I don’t see a lot of parents wanting to bring their children by this one, or a lot of tour groups from schools.”
“Some of them are more for private collectors, I agree. Or colleges, maybe,” Aaron suggested.
“Colleges,” Macy allowed. “But no younger students.”
“I guess so,” Aaron conceded. “Humans do seem to have a problem in that area, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“No, I don’t mind,” said Macy. “I studied art myself. I understand.”
“Having two bodies and having to be naked when we change from one to the other,” Aaron pointed out, “we’re more relaxed about nudity than humans usually are—outside the art world, that is. And we have a bit less of a problem with sex. We don’t like to keep it as a dirty secret or act as if it’s not something natural to be enjoyed. Again, no offense.”
“None taken,” said Macy. “Though you’ve traveled around and been to enough places to know some of us are a little less provincial than others.”
“That’s true,” Aaron agreed. “Some of you have a better attitude about these things. My friends are usually…not so provincial. It goes with being a dragon. Or being friends with one.”
“I guess it would,” Macy pondered aloud.
“Tell me,” said Aaron, “am I the first Nathairfear you’ve met?”
“Oh no! Not at all!” Macy said. “My father knew some of your people socially and had business with some. I’ve been to parties with weredragons. Your people have a way of getting around, getting invited to places, being asked to attend certain things…”
“I know. Any place where people want the attention of other people, generally. It’s helped us a lot that humans are so…interested in us. You know, for many years we didn’t advertise our presence because we assumed humans would be afraid of us. We thought there’d be violence, bloodshed, if we…to borrow an expression from another group…‘came out.’”
“Well, I remember my history from school well enough,” said Macy. “I remember that at first, when the Nathairfear…‘came out’…there was a certain amount of…tension.”
Aaron chuckled. “That’s a very diplomatic way of describing something like one of your old horror movies come to life—villagers with torches and pitchforks, to use a cliché. There was some violence, some rioting and fires. And there were some deaths—our people and yours.”
Looking about the room again, Macy recalled, “And it was the artists who started to turn things around. Slowly at first, but it happened. It was the artists and poets first, then the musicians and the painters. And the filmmakers. It took a long time, but the artists helped people see the weredragons weren’t really monsters.”
“The artists and the scientists,” Aaron reminded her. “Science loved us from the beginning because of what we had to say to the world just for the fact that we exist. The world, and life, and what’s possible. And what’s out there, beyond Earth…”
“But not on other planets, though.”
“No—not on other planets. But still—beyond Earth. When we revealed ourselves to the world, it was only natural that the scientists were the first to want to be our friends. Just by existing, we redefined what’s real, what’s out there waiting for people to discover it—the whole way that people understand the world. Religion had a big problem with us, of course. Religion is easily threatened. But not science, and not the artists.”
“I’ve always been most sympathetic to artists,” Macy reflected.
“And it didn’t hurt that some of us were artists,” Aaron continued. “When humans started going to Nathairfear concerts and poetry readings, and we started publishing books, it made a difference. A little difference at first, but a little became more. And when it became more, we weren’t quite as scary. Today, most of the richest, most famous humans are our friends. They invite us places. They like to be seen with us. They invest in our companies. We’re good for business, and they think we make them look good. We’re practically a status symbol.”
“I guess that’s been a big help to you,” said Macy.
“It hasn’t hurt,” replied Aaron, grinning—a sexy and disarming grin.
For a moment, Aaron let Macy go on admiring his collection while he admired her and sensed her silent admiration of him. Then, he said, “You know what’s my favorite piece in the collection?”
She faced him, intrigued again. “What?”
Aaron led her down one side of the room to a tall sculpture that she had noticed as they passed through. It was a statue almost the full height of the room—which had a high ceiling—of two dragons facing each other, plunging downward, their wings folded against their backs, their tails coiled together, their nether parts and their forward talons both locked together. Macy guessed that they were a male and a female.
“You know what this sculpture shows?”
Macy repeated, “What?”
“This is a mating flight,” he said.
“Mating…?”
“Yeah. According to legends, when dragons mated—real dragons, not weredragons—they did it like eagles. The male and the female flew up together as high as they could go, over the mountains. They’d lock themselves together, him inside her, and they’d go into a long, steep power dive, spinning all the way. It’s a dive that would kill a human, and it could kill them unless they timed it exactly right. While falling and spinning, they had to join together and do the deed. Then, they had to come and pull apart before it was too late and they hit the ground and wound up smashed to a pulp. Dragon sex and reproduction was supposed to be about sex and death twining together—playing ‘chicken’ with gravity, you might say.”
Macy could not suppress a shudder. “My God. And if they survived and got themselves to fly apart in time, the female flew out of it pregnant.”
“And pretty soon, she’d lay herself a clutch of eggs with his babies in them. Big risk, big reward—a bit like real life.”
Studying the sculpture, Macy was ever more fascinated. “You know, there’s something I’ve always wondered.”
“What’s that?” Aaron asked.
“Well, I’m not an expert on mythology, but I’m pretty sure human myths about dragons are older than your people—that is, older than real weredragons.”
“Yeah, they are,” said Aaron. “People imagined dragons before Kinross Green got its visitors, who created the first of our kind.”
“So, if we had myths about dragons before there were…your people…my ancestors were imagining something they’d never seen. How did humans come up with the idea of dragons before what happened in that village in Scotland? How did they even think to imagine creatures like that? Is that just some wild coincidence?”
“I see what you’re saying,” Aaron said. “You know, I’ve read that ancient humans cobbled together the idea of dragons by combining different creatures they already knew: snakes, birds, crocodiles, lions. They took different parts of different animals and invented this creature…”
“…that just happened to look like the travelers who came to your ancestors’ village. That’s some imagination humans had.”
Aaron smiled. “Humans have always been good at imagining all kinds of things. They were then; they still are. And you know, we are part human. We have a pretty good imagination of our own.”
Now, they were quiet again. They stood before the statue of the mating, plummeting dragons, locked in a clinch of life and death, and said nothing. They just smiled at each other, a guest intrigued with her host, and the host equally intrigued with her.
The sounds of jazz wafting up from downstairs nudged at them as a reminder. “You know,” said Macy, “there’s a party going on, and you’re the guest of honor. We should be getting back to it.”
“True,” said Aaron. “And there are still a few things you haven’t seen yet. Shall we?”
Macy let Aaron lead her from the gallery. There were definitely, as he said, a few things she had yet to see. There were any number of things she might be seeing, any number of things that her host might yet show her. The evening had hardly even started.
They rejoined the party, and Macy, having gotten acquainted with her host, relaxed and enjoyed herself thoroughly. She mingled about with Aaron’s other guests and found herself in the company of all sorts of people she recognized. There were stars of shows and films that had been on Aaron’s channel, which had commercials in them that Macy’s company produced. There were athletes she recognized from watching the channel, and musical recording artists she knew, and others she didn’t know, who made her wish that she were better acquainted with jazz, which Aaron obviously enjoyed quite a bit. She drank with them, munched hors d’oeuvres with them, took dinner from the gourmet buffet with them, laughed with them, sensed the eyes of some of the men on her—and some of the women as well. And Aaron, in his own mingling, was never far away.
It was not difficult to figure out who the other weredragons were. While they did not take on their full dragon forms, nor did they assume two-legged half-dragon bodies, these were not their only ways of expressing their reptilian selves. Sometimes, it was only a matter of letting parts of their skin change. Macy noticed a couple of them, taking part in the evening as casually as if they were only showing their human-ness. There was a young man who could very well have been a fitness model for one of Aaron’s magazines or exercise shows, nursing a martini and chatting up some young women who could have been models themselves, or starlets. He was clad in an expensive suit, and he had let his temples and a part of his forehead go into shiny blue-green scales with just a hint of horn points at either side of his hairline. Macy watched him hold out his hand and let the back of it also go to plates of shiny scalation, which the young women touched as if they were petting a cat. Macy could imagine what would be getting petted as the evening wore on.
Aaron was always somewhere within Macy’s field of vision, whether in the corner of her eye or just over her shoulder. Aaron, in networking for work and business, had made an art of “working the room.” He seemed to know intuitively how to pay attention to all of his invited guests while also seeming to follow and circle one guest in particular—Macy. He was never rude, always genial, always gracious, good at listening and good at engaging. But there was no doubt in Macy’s mind that he was keeping an eye on her, especially when another man was near her. He had a way of slipping himself into her conversations with other men without it looking obviously territorial. He did it without appearing to be aggressive about it. But he was always there. Macy did not quite know how to take this, except to suspect that it was Aaron’s way of saying that there were other things he was interested in slipping into besides her party talk.
A woman was sitting at the piano, but not playing. She had short red hair and a peach-colored dress. Her shoulders and bare arms were streaked with scales of light and dark green, disclosing her own dragon nature. People were gathered around her, looking rapt and fascinated. As soon as Macy noticed her, she also found Aaron back at her side. “That woman,” Macy said softly. “Who is that?”
“Oh, her?” Aaron replied. “That’s Sophia Leland. She’s a columnist for some of the newspapers I own. She promotes herself as a psychic and a dream interpreter.”
Macy looked over at Aaron, mildly startled. “A weredragon and a psychic?”
“That’s her reputation, yes.”
Macy eyed the woman, shaking her head. “That’s a lot for one person. Do you really believe she’s for real?”
Aaron wore a somewhat bemused look. “What’s important, businesswise, is that other people believe her. There’s always an audience for someone like Sophia. People like to believe unusual things. That’s why my people have done as well as we have, remember?”
“Right,” said Macy. “There’s always someone who wants to believe. And I guess psychics are as much fun to think about as…people who can turn into dragons.”
“Exactly. And her column is one of the most popular things in the papers where it runs. She brings in readers, and the readers bring in money.”
“Well, if she’s good for business,” Macy said, “good for her.”
“And me,” said Aaron.
Macy and Aaron watched Sophia Leland work the little crowd that she had attracted. One by one, she took them by the hand, and when she did so, she closed her eyes for a moment while her small audience hung on the moment of silence, awaiting whatever pronouncement the redhead would make at the end of it. She told one man that his dream of riding a bicycle meant that he needed a better sense of balance in his work life. A woman who dreamed of an automobile accident learned that she was very anxious inside, that she needed to “slow down” in certain areas of her life, and that she could not control the actions of others. For a woman who dreamed of playing chess and finding her King piece in danger, Ms. Leland advised that it meant she was feeling threatened by some other woman.
“Is she always so…literal?” Macy asked Aaron.
“I know what you mean,” Aaron replied. “I hardly ever read her column, really, but she seems to be pretty much like that.”
“And people always accept what she says? They really believe that she knows what they’ve been dreaming?”
“Either they believe it, or they don’t want to let on that they think they’re being manipulated in front of other people, so they just go along with whatever she says. They say she’s being accurate, but maybe only they know how accurate she really is.”
“And she makes the big bucks for that, does she?”
“As I said,” Aaron shrugged a bit, “she always has an audience. We pay her as long as it pays to have her.”
“Nice work if you can get it, I guess,” Macy said.
“I guess so,” Aaron agreed.
Rudd appeared and ushered out the cater waiters, who brought a large table on wheels, on which there was a large and fantastical cake in the shape of—what else?—a dragon. It was an amazing creation, the work of bakers who were also sculptors. They had rendered the edible beast in green, maroon, and gold frosting, and given it wings and talons and a serpentine neck and tail. The dessert drew a chorus of ooh’s and aah’s from all the guests, and an appreciative smile and nod from Aaron as he saw how impressed they all were with this commemorative confection for his birthday. Cameras came out to snap photos of it, and Macy couldn’t help whipping her iPhone out of the little pocket in the sash of her dress to get some shots herself. The one thing she found regrettable was that it would be a shame to cut and eat this beautiful thing.
In the wake of the outburst of applause for the cake, Aaron half-whispered at Macy: “And now, the singing starts. One…two…”
On cue, the assembled guests broke into a chorus of “Happy Birthday,” and Macy looked right at Aaron as she joined in the song. Accepting the tribute to the birthday boy, Aaron smiled at her, then joined in the renewed applause at the end.
The bow-tied woman who was the head of the cater-waitstaff called to Aaron, “And now, Mr. Bedford, if you’d like to come over and make the first slice into the cake…”
“It’s kind of too bad we have to cut it up,” said Aaron, echoing Macy’s sentiment, “but it’ll taste as good as it looks.” And he shot a look right at Macy when he said it, which sent a hot tingle right down her back. She blinked and smiled, and he gestured gallantly at the cake, inviting her. “Come on, join me.”
Keeping her smile and still feeling a bit of the tingle, Macy accompanied Aaron through the throng of guests over to the table, where he looked the baked and frosted reptile up and down, wondering aloud, “Where should I start on this…?”
“How about the tip of the tail?” Macy suggested.
“Tip of the tail.” Aaron studied the part in question. “That’ll make someone a good piece.” And again, he gave Macy that same look, and again she felt that same tingle. There was nothing like subtext with dessert. Raising the knife, Aaron said, “The lady has called it. Tip of the tail and work forward to the head.”
Aaron passed the knife through the part in question, then removed it. The blade was slathered with frosting, into which Aaron dabbed a couple of fingers. He handed the knife to the head cater-waiter, who undertook the task of cutting the cake for the rest of the staff to put on plates and distribute. Aaron took his frosted fingers back to Macy. He licked the frosting from one finger. “Cream frosting,” he told her, a mischievous sparkle in his eye. He offered her his other finger. “Go ahead—taste.”
Macy rolled her eyes back and forth, noting that the attention of the other guests was more on the fate of the reptilian confection than on her and Aaron, at least for the moment. Then she let him move his frosted finger to her lips, and darted out her tongue to lick the sweet dollop from the digit. Cream frosting, the words echoed in her mind. She had no doubt he’d said it quite deliberately.
“Taste good?” Aaron asked.
Licking her lips and knowing that in doing so she was helping him with the subtext, Macy said, “Very good.”
The head cater-waiter brought Aaron the first piece of cake, which he took—and gave to Macy. “For you,” he said.
“But it’s your birthday,” Macy replied. “You should have the first…”
“It is my birthday, and I insist.” And he beamed a smile at her that could have melted the sugary scales into a green puddle.
Shrugging, Macy said, “If you insist…” She took the little cake plate and fork from him, and Aaron let the serving woman bring him another.
So, they and the rest of the guests ate the cake, which was chocolate under the frosting and utterly delicious. As they enjoyed it, Aaron said, “The way my parties go, people will slowly start leaving after eleven. By about two or a little after, the place will be empty and quiet.”
“Oh…?” Macy responded, sensing where this was liable to be going.
“I like to ask one guest to stay for an…after-party.”
Yes, she had guessed right. That was exactly where it was going. “After-party?” she replied in that way that one does when one knows what the other person means but doesn’t want to sound as if one knows.
“Yeah, an after-party. Something more private.”
“Oh,” said Macy, more definitely. What had been subtext was a little more overt now.
“Interested?” Aaron asked.
“I don’t know,” Macy answered. Actually, she did know—in a way. He was charming, he was handsomer than the Devil himself, and he was built like a superhero. There was every reason for her to take him up on the offer. But still, there was the natural hesitation of having known him for only a few hours. She wanted to tell him that she’d like to think it over…
But before she could, Aaron said, “Maybe there’s a way I could encourage you. Or maybe…persuade you a little.”
“How?” Macy asked.
“When I showed you around down here after showing you around upstairs, I deliberately skipped the wine room, remember? I said I’d rather show you that later. Can I show you the wine room now?”
“What’s in there besides wine?” Macy asked, curious but a little cautious.
“Something I think you’ll like,” Aaron replied with a tempting grin.
He took her cake plate and handed it, with his own, off to one of the waitstaff. Then, he gestured to one side of the living room. “Shall we?”
Macy looked up at him, searching his tantalizing look, for what she did now know. Should she trust him? She decided she would.
And so, Macy let Aaron lead her from the living room down a little corridor to one side, where he kept his collection of fine wines—and whatever else it was that he wasn’t mentioning.