[b]Black Boa[/b]


Judging by the lack of personal effects in Jed Garrett's home, Cleo concluded that the green-eyed golden retriever lived a solitary life. He was alone in world but rarely lonely, his existence simple, minimalistic and void of social clutter.

Dressed in a heavy winter coat, Cleo Blacksad padded over to Jed's naked bed and laid down. Even with the sheets stripped away, likely for cleaning, the mattress smelled of him. "Jed Guitar Garrett," she said aloud, the name a bittersweet midnight snack on her tongue.

They couldn't have been more different, Jed and Cleo. He was a golden retriever, she a black cat; he was a loner, she a lover of good company; he was a dog living by a strict code, she a feline with a heathen's scruples.

He was a good mark, too--Chloe's best in a long time. A freewheeling hitman for any mob boss with deep enough pockets, Jed was responsible for the murders of thirty-two agents of the Chestnut City's criminal underworld. His victims were a mixed bag of drug dealers, rapists, serial murderers, crime bosses, cops, and even a few hitmen like himself.

Jed got around. And while his resume was a checked off to-do list of exactly the kind of underworld filth Cleo spent her days and nights sweeping off the streets, it did contain one unforgivable blemish. A single zit on an otherwise flawless face.

Chloe glanced down at her wristwatch. 11:43 pm. Not much longer now. 

She drew the Beretta 92FS Inox from its shoulder holster and crept out to the living room. There was no reason to tread so quietly--the apartment was empty except for her--but years doing this kind of work had fostered certain habits.  

The living room was dark and quiet. She turned a recliner toward the front door and sat down, her legs crossed, pistol loaded, cocked and ready to shoot. A cigarette would have been nice right about now, but she'd already smoked her last one on the way here.

A minute passed.

Another.

Keys jangled out in the hall. The door knob twisted. Cleo thumbed back her gun's hammer.

She tensed as the door creaked open. She heard whistling, the heavy thunk of booted footsteps, and waited for Jed to flick on the lights. One trigger squeeze would end it here and now, but that would've been unfair to the blemish on Jed's record. Cleo knew the hitman's methods. He hadn't just murdered that innocent little girl; he had tortured her first, maybe for days. 

The footsteps went silent, but Jed was still whistling in the dark. He fumbled with the change in his pocket, taking his sweet time. Cleo leaned forward, impatient, wondering what this moron was doing. She didn't realize how close the jangling sounded, how loud, until it was too late.

The barrel of Jed's Desert Eagle was a death-chill against her temple.

"You got some balls breaking into my house," he said, twisting the muzzle of his gun against Cleo's head. "You have exactly three seconds to convince me not to blow your brains out... One..."

Cleo flinched as the Desert Eagle's hammer drew back. It felt... exhilarating. She hadn't flinched like that in years.

Jed had just counted to two when Cleo said, "You want a reason?"

"I do," he answered, amusement in his voice.

"Then turn the lights on. I promise it'll be worth your while."

"Hold still." A strong paw groped blindly at her shoulder, her arm, her wrist, then seized her gun and tossed it away. She squirmed as that same paw patted her down from chest to lap. It slipped between her legs, cupped her mound. "Nasty little whore, aren't we? Already so warm, and we haven't even started yet."

"The lights, Jed," Cleo reminded him. She gave a start as a warning shot struck the ceiling.

"Give me another order, bitch," he dared her. Cleo couldn't see his face, but she felt him there, scowling in the dark. He was close, his breath warm on her cheek.

"That's some bark you got there. But can you bite?" She turned her face and leaned in, guessing at where he was, then smiled once her teeth found his ear. "The. Lights." It was at once a flirty invitation and a venomous threat. This time Jed obeyed.

He was handsome in the light. A touch shorter than she'd imagined, but broad-chested and built like a linebacker--a weekend hobbyist, not a pro. Blonde fur bristled along his brawny arms like short wheat stalks, and his too-snug tank top had molded to the contour of his sculpted chest and abdomen.

The gun was still in his paw when he said, "You promised this would be worth my while."

"It will." Cleo started to rise and remove her coat, but he barked for her to sit back down. [i]Now[/i]. 

"So touchy." She forced a smile, hoping she didn't look as nervous as she felt. "I thought you wanted to play?"

"That depends."

"On?"

"On how you answer my questions." He scowled at Cleo, his patience waning. "First: how do you know my name?"

"You mean your real one... Jed." She let the name hang in the air a moment, gauging his reaction. Then she said, "Give a girl some credit. I do all my homework before engaging any target, especially one as dangerous as Jed Guitar Garrett. Or would you prefer I call you String."

Jed didn't flinch at the mention of his old underworld nickname. Back in his prime, he'd been known for strangling his victims with a wire garrote he kept hidden in his sleeve. He'd long since traded the wire for his bare hands, but the old nickname 'String' still stuck. It was a wad of gum under his boot. And no matter how hard he scraped, it never came off. 

"I don't go by String anymore," he said. "See?"--he held up his free paw, fingers wiggling--"Nothing up my sleeve." Sighing, he scratched his ear with the muzzle of his gun. "So, which of my enemies hired you to rub me out?"

"This one." Cleo pointed a thumb at her chest, grinning fiercely.

Jed laughed, a smoky sound that billowed up from deep down in his belly. "Don't tell me you're another punk looking to make a name for yourself? You think dusting ol' String will make you famous, that it?" His laugh ebbed, and he gave his unwanted guest an amused head shake. "You punks never fail to split my sides. And you especially, bitch. I've buried more would-be killers like you than I even care to remember."

"No," said Cleo, "not like me. I'm special."

"Like hell you are."

Cleo flashed a smile designed for seduction. Holding her hands above her head, she slowly rose from the recliner. She paced closer to Jed, stopping at the edge of a timber coffee table that resembled a too-short barstool. Smiling languidly, she placed a boot under one of the table's struts and began unbuttoning her coat.

"I say you could get up?" said Jed.

"There's that bark again." She held her seductive grin, consciously trying not to sweat, as if thoughts alone would keep her brow and palms dry. "You should really drop the act, Jed, 'cause we both know you're not gonna shoot me. We also know you don't care how I found you, or who sent me. You only care about one thing, String. You always have."

She let her coat drop to the floor, exposing a muscular yet shapely frame clad in a sleeveless grey bodysuit. Two perky breasts overtopped a wrought-from-iron six pack, both clearly visible through the sheen of gauzy spandex. Giddy now, she watched Jed look her up and down--and especially down--his gaze drawn to the ridges and dips of her corded thighs.

"I'm up here, handsome," said the black cat, gesturing for Jed to look her in the eye. It was all a show of course--the racy togs, the minx-like glances, the slow smiles, so dangerous, so seductive--all a ploy to make her prey lower their guards. And it always worked.

Jed's gaze trailed up her legs, scaled her abs, swept over her breasts, ventured past the choker around her neck, journeyed up toward...

"Oh crap," he said, staring back at the choker. It was the same gray as her body suit, and bore a medallion emblazoned with the likeness of a coiled snake. "B-Boa," he stammered, raising his gun. "You're the Black Boa!"

And then it began. 

As the Desert Eagle barked and spat its searing led, Cleo punted the coffee table, launching the mass of wood at Jed. A bullet missed her by centimeters, grazing her whiskers, but the table-turned-projectile found it's target. It struck Jed's collar bone, splintered on impact.

Shit. That was meant to hit his paw. 

Two heartbeats later, Cleo's heartbeats--[i]bump-bump, bump-bump[/i], the muscle pummeling her inner sternum--she sprinted, bounded over a sofa and tackled Jed, shoving his back to the wall. She slammed a forearm into his adam's apple, making him sputter and croak, then snatched his shooting paw at the wrist and angled the gun away. It fired, fired, fired into the wall as Jed thrashed.

A feline snarl met its negative canine reflection--the former dark and raw with nerves, the latter bright and fierce. In that moment Cleo failed to see her enemy, and glared instead at herself, her murderous visage captured in Jed's eyes.

"I expected more from you," she told herself, eyes riveted to her own reflection in the dog's skull. "Tell me something, killer, do you even remember her name?"

"What?" Jed managed through a cough. "What are you talking about?"

"Her name." She growled and slammed his wrist against the wall, pinning his gun there, its barrel turned up toward the ceiling. "The little girl your boss hired you to murder--do you even remember her name?"

Jed grinned, a sudden comprehension flashing behind his eyes. "Do you?" 

A heavy boot stomped Cleo's instep. As she staggered backwards, Jed swung the pistol in a tight arc and bashed her temple with the butt. Dizzied, she tried to recapture his wrist before he took aim, but suddenly the dog had two shooting paws--each clutching a Desert Eagle, each blurry and distorted--and she didn't know which to make a grab for. 

Her hesitation would've meant death, if not for the merciful click of Jed's empty gun. Lucky, she thought, stupid and lucky. 

The gun lashed out again, this time whipping across her bottom jaw. The impact spun her around. Half-formed stars muddled her vision, making the living room pop with color. 

She was still reeling when arms like fibrous ropes lassoed her neck and pulled her close to Jed, her back meeting his chest. His body felt warm and solid.

"Now it's time you told me something, Boa," he said, grabbing his bicep and cinching her neck in a sleeper hold. "While you were digging into my past, did you ever learn why I stopped using the garrote?" Steamy breath teased her ear as he whispered. "I'd tell you now, but with the reputation those legs have earned you, I'm sure you already know."

"What was her name!" Cleo roared, stabbing Jed in the ribs with a sharp elbow. He winced, but took the blow well.

"What's it matter?" he said, setting a paw on the cat's crown, his fingers gripping hair as he sank in his choke nice... and... tight... "You don't really care about that little brat. If you did, you would have shot me through the door when you heard the knob turn. It's just a game to you, isn't it? The slutty getup and the flirting and the 'righteous cause'--it's just something to get you off. No one sent you tonight. No one ever sends you, because you're not even in it for the money."

Cleo twisted, pulled, clawed, but the arms around her neck didn't budge. 

"I'd say you and I are the same, but you're a lot worse than me," said Jed. "So what's your story, bitch? Did some evil prick tie you up and make you watch as he butchered your parents? Or maybe Daddy touched you one too many times, and Mommy knew but never tried to stop him." Still choking her with one arm, Jed slid a paw across Cleo's breasts, fondling her.

"Do I remind you of Daddy?" he whispered, his member hot and throbbing against her backside. 

When his paw traveled lower, slipping between Cleo's thighs, her leg snapped up with a ballerina's flexibility. It rose parallel with her body, as if she'd meant to throw an ax kick, and her boot hooked around her own shoulder, its steel toe catching Jed between the eyes.

She gasped as his arms fell away, then dropped to a crouch, spun around and swept the dog's feet with a trip kick. His legs swung out from under him, and the floor hopped up to bludgeon his temple. The fall stunned him. Before he could recover, Cleo pounced and sat astride his trunk.

"My father was a good cat, you piece of shit!"

She drove a fist into Jed's face. 

"My mother loved me! She died giving birth to my baby sister!"

She hit him again.

"Don't you ever presume anything about my parents, or what kind of life I had growing up! Don't..."

Another punch.

"You..."

Another.

"Ever!"

Another and another and another, the blows raining down until Jed's eyes rolled back in their sockets, open but seeing nothing. Then she pinned his wrists to the floor and snaked her legs around his, snaring him in a grapevine pin.

"But you're right about one thing, Jed," she said. "I don't do it for the money."

Cleo's full breasts blanketed his snout, and her arms locked around his head, dense biceps hugging his temples. Flaring her legs made him cry out, the sound muffled by her heaving chest. He flailed at first, panic-stricken, then clutched her arms and tried to pry them apart. 

She let a moan slip out, aroused by the damp snout wedged between her breasts. He was completely at her mercy now, and the thrill of domination made her head swirl with a kind of lusty drunkenness. Digging her chin into the crown of his head, she drove her pelvis into his gut and flared her legs wider, wider, testing the limits of his flexibility.

When he started to fade, his breath coming in gasps that tickled the mounds of her chest, she broke her hold and scooted up his torso, coming to rest on his chest and neck. Her inner thighs seared his cheeks with their intense heat, and her lap was an oven burning his throat. 

"You called me by that other name not too long ago," she said, stroking her choker. "And if you really know who I am, then you must know how this ends." She scooted up and sat on his face, her rear covering his mouth, her warm mound nestled against the snout her breasts had smothered. "Who was the little girl, Jed? Tell me now, and I promise to end this quickly."

She lifted her crotch off his face, was treated to a harsh "fuck you, you crazy bitch!", then lowered her rear and reclaimed her seat. 

"Naughty, naughty," she said, grinning from behind a wagging finger. She bowed her head, leering down at the face caged between her thighs. "I gave you an out. Remember that when you're begging me to end your life."

Jed's cheeks rumpled like blonde marshmallows as Cleo pinched her thighs together. She grabbed his ears and hiked his head up off the floor, burying his muzzle deep in her crotch. Her legs bent into a four shape as they enveloped his skull, and her thick quads went taut, hardening from flesh to steel.

Crushing his head was pure bliss. But her crotch had all but swallowed him, and she couldn't enjoy the agony playing on his face. 

"Please... no more," he pleaded as she splayed her legs, spun around and snared him in a reverse scissorhold. 

"Her name, Jed." Cleo was almost shouting now. "Tell me her name."

"I don't... uh... wait... I don't remember."

Cleo tensed her thighs again.

"Wait! Wait a minute!" he pleaded. "She was, ah crap, she was that banker's kid. She was twelve, a little pup with--" His voice broke off into a choked noise.

"She wasn't a dog, Jed. I'm starting to lose my patience with you."

Cleo crushed his neck this time, the point of his jaw poking at the line where one sculpted ass cheek met its twin. She held her legs straight for a full minute; she counted the time in her head--thirty seconds... forty seconds... fifty... 

She craned her neck to look past her dimpled rear, and there it was, that delicious look of agony she had been denied while sitting on his face. His cheeks were red and scrunched, and his eyes welded shut, sweat dappling his brow.

"You like that, killer?" she taunted. "Is that tight enough for you?"

Her bodysuit rode up as she reached behind her back, grabbed Jed by the hair and plunged his snout deeper into her smothering rear. He groaned into the crevice between each orb. She tossed her head back--her spine arching into a crescent, back muscles shimmering with sweat--and assumed a kind of push up position.

"I'll crush that name out of you sooner or later." The edge in her voice had all but vanished. She was having fun now, slowly forgetting why she'd come here with every pulse of her thighs. "Well if you can't say her name, then say mine, you bastard! Say mine!"

She was laughing now, and starting to feel light headed from exhaustion. Sweat rolled down her back like white rapids, soaking spandex until it clung to fur. Her chest heaved, her thighs ached from squeezing. 

"Say my name," she called again. And when he didn't--his voice a bygone memory she'd crushed from his throat--she dropped to her hip and applied a side scissorhold. With one inner thigh digging into his nape, the other tucked under his chin, bearing down on his windpipe, she grabbed his arm at the wrist and pulled it between her breasts.

By the time she broke this new hold, Jed had gone boneless between her legs. Wrestling him now was like manhandling a pillow. Still not finished, and half mad from the sweet intoxication of her dominance, she cycled through ever scissorhold she knew. She squeezed the color from his face, then released him, changed holds and did it all over again.

"I'll give you one thing, String," she said, kneeling beside his prone body. "You know how to show a girl a good time."

Nearly done now, she dragged his half-dead form to the edge of the recliner and propped him up on his knees. To her surprise, he swayed this way and that, but didn't fall over. Sitting in the chair, she scooted to the edge and took her prey's neck between her thighs, slowly, gently, her usual vice grip reduced to a hug. A snuggle. Almost a kindness.

"Last chance for repentance, killer. What was the little girl's name? Say it. Show me you cared enough to remember, and I might let you go." 

But there was no point in speaking anymore; Cleo's words couldn't reach him now. He was done, gone, a husk of the dog who had stolen so many lives. Good. He deserved to die this way, broken and helpless.

Still, Cleo wasn't without some mercy. "There, there," she cooed, her grip still loose as she combed her fingers through his hair. "It's okay. The pain will be over soon. I promise."

She adjusted her hold a little... and then a little more... still cooing as she nestled the point of his chin against her pelvis. Her calves rose off his back, hovered behind his head, and her ankles laced into an unbreakable knot.

Still, she didn't squeeze.

Slender fingers twined into an intricate lattice weaving, and palms cut from black velvet cradled the back of Jed's head. Her arms extended as straight as her legs, ready to pull.

Still no hint of a squeeze. This would be her last time with the handsome golden retriever. She wanted to make it last.

Her thighs glistened under the florescent lights, limned in a glossy sweat-sheen, thick and muscular, but with curves for the eyes to ride on. "Touch them," she said. Jed obeyed, his paws rising through molasses to palm her textured quads, her almost-taut hamstrings.

She took a deep breath, her stomach expanding noticeably, chest rising, heat burgeoning between her thighs... and then she squeezed. 

As tight as her holds had been all night, she had been holding back--not much, but enough to make the ending special. Her legs bulged around his neck, eating him alive, and ridges like cuts of black diamond rose to slice into soft, vulnerable flesh. Tugging on his head with both arms, she forced his chin harder and harder against her pelvis, until her lap ached from being stabbed by the pointy bone.

"Oh, that's it," she moaned as Jed mounted his last bit of feeble resistance. "That's it. Keep fighting. Don't stop fighting." He tugged at the knolls of packed muscle with whatever he had left. It wasn't much, but Cleo loved the feel of his paws gripping and his arms flexing.

Clutching the arms of the chair, she pushed herself up so that her haunches hovered just above the seat cushion. Her eyes bolted shut, her teeth gritted, and every muscle in her body flexed and shuddered as she gave her hardest squeeze of the night. 

A breathy sigh escaped her when Jed's neck muscles finally gave out, and her eyes fluttered open to find his ruffled face pale and bloodless. His paws slid from her legs. He sputtered and wheezed and made ghastly gurgling noises. His eyes pleaded from behind flickering lids, cloudy as they searched for a reprieve that wasn't coming. 

Cleo stared, impressed that he was still awake, and for a heartbeat her expression softened and her grip slacked. She started to utter some needlessly cruel taunt--"Sweet dreams," maybe, or perhaps "It's been fun, baby". But no, she thought again and opted for quiet.

In the end, she blew him a sweet kiss in place of stinging words, then twisted her hips with a loud grunt, snapping his vertebrae. At that point, killing him was a kindness.

She held on long enough to ride out his death rattle, then freed his neck and let him drop to the floor. Standing over his corpse, Cleo took a moment to bow in respect... or perhaps she was only mocking him. 

Finding her coat took less than a minute. She left her Beretta, not caring if the police found it when someone contacted them after discovering Jed's body. She had done this more times than could be counted, and the cops hadn't caught her yet.

With her coat bundled around her sweat-stained togs, she boarded a subway heading to the opposite end of the town, where she had yet another mark waiting for her. 

During the ride across town, she racked her brain trying to remember that little girl's name, or at least her face. At the moment, she couldn't seem to recall either.