0 comments/  39060 views/  0 favorites

Better Off

By: shadowfires89



What was I thinking? I guess I was thinking about him and the sexy way he walks, the way he talks, the way his lip curves to the right when he smiles, oh god how I wanted him so. Well I guess you will see that along the way...

I was in front of Grey's Papayas with my friend Brad. I was just looking around for a hot guy to grab that night (I was sort of a nymphomaniac). 

"So Kevin, I am guessing you aren't going to eat anything today," Brad said munching on his hotdog

" No, you know I have to keep my slim figure. God I just have to get laid tonight" I said desperately

"Well you know you can always have me," Brad said with a devilish smirk on his face

"Right" I said sarcastically. 

We started to walk up the block when I spotted a light skinned guy with straight black hair, tight leather pants, and a leather jacket; I started to walk faster. His hair was so shiny; all I could think about was running my fingers through it and grabbing it roughly as I fucked him. All of the sudden I had this incredible urge to run, but at the same time I had the urge to grab him by his hair and jam my tongue deep into his throat.

I tried to stop walking but my feet kept on moving. So I did the only thing I could think of to stop moving, I punched Brad in the stomach. "

What the fuck was that for!" he screamed "what the hell did I do to you?" And it worked; I stopped in my tracks looking at Brad holding his stomach in pain.

"Dude I am really sorry…" I started to say, but I stopped as I saw my dream guy walking down the block. So I just ran after him, but slowed down when I caught sight of him.

All I could do was watch at a safe distance; I followed him down West forth street, up Christopher Street, and down to the pier, in New York's Greenwich Village. I saw him walk into a narrow alley and stopped, I felt my heart beat speed up. I started to get paranoid, so I started to look around, and as soon as I turned my head around to look for him, he was right in my face. All my fear left me and all I could feel was temptation. I was going to speak but he beat me to it

"Why are you following me?" he said seductively "do I excite you?" I couldn't say anything; his voice was so smooth…

"What's wrong?" he said running his finger down my chest "did I hit your hot spot?"

"Not really, wanna find out where it is?" I felt my cock stiffen "So, show me what's in your pants and maybe I'll show you what's protruding through mine" 

I saw his light green eyes widen with lust. I was completely in shock with myself. I didn't think I could say that to him. I felt like my balls were going to explode. He started to scroll my body with his eyes and hands.

"Oh really?" he said breathing heavily "Maybe I should just taste it" 

I started to run my fingers through his soft hair. His hands were pinching my nipples hard, I almost screamed in pain and excitement. He started to bite my neck softly, his hand moved from my nipples, down my muscular chest to my long, thick cock. I knew I couldn't take his teasing any longer, I felt my dick spurt a little cum out. His body was thin but hard, I wanted to just take him and stuff my cock deep into him, but I wanted to see him cry in pleasure first. 

I pushed to the wall, dropped on my knees and started to rub my lips against his erect cock. I could see he was very well endowed, even through his pants. I continued to rub and softly bite his rock hard dick while I took out my own and jerked it vigorously.

I could hear his grunts grow loud, I unbuttoned his tight leather pants and pulled out his extremely swelled cock. As soon as I saw it I had to stuff it deep into my throat. He almost screamed; my excitement grew. I could feel his thickness widen my throat; I almost gagged, but held it in. His cock was so warm; I could feel his veins run against my tongue as I sucked. 

His grunts grew into loud moans; I jerked harder and harder until I felt one hot shot of cum hit my hand. I tightened my lips over his dick and sucked faster. I took him in deeper and deeper until I felt his steaming seed hit the back of my throat, I swallowed joyfully as he fucked my mouth. I kept sucking his pretty cock until it grew limp.

As quickly as it started, it ended. I got off my knees and put my cock back in my pants, he did the same.

"So" he said sighing "that was easy"

"I bet it was" I said angrily I felt as if he were mocking me

"Sorry buddy, but that's all I wanted. Thanks for the sloppy head" he said as he walked out of the alley

"Oh we will see about that" I whispered to myself.

Better Off?



Before you read this work, please be aware that it is a very graphic depiction of a sexual encounter. This story is intended for adults only, and should by no means be read by anyone under the age of 18 years. 

I love to read your comments and would enjoy hearing from you if you like this story. I even want your comments if you didn't like it, provided you are actually giving constructive criticism. Please don't leave a comment if you are simply turned off by what the story contains. Just because you may not enjoy or politically agree with the portrayals, it doesn't mean that others won't.

The event in this story is true and did happen to me. After writing a few works of fiction, I was compelled to write this account of a one night stand, of sorts, that occurred more than twenty years ago now. I have drawn on my own experiences to compile the sexual scenes in my fiction, and it has brought back many fond memories; this being one of those. I hope you enjoy.

~~ Ody

*

BETTER OFF?

It all began as a rainy Saturday night home alone. I hadn't been invited to anyone's house or party and I was nearly broke, so going out wasn't an option. I had just fixed myself a bit of supper and sat down to watch the tube while I ate. "Fuckin' figures!" I grumbled out loud, to no one, when the telephone rang. Scrambling, I got there on the fifth ring and answered gruffly, "Hello." 

To my surprise, it was a voice that I hadn't heard for well over a year, maybe two. "Is Ron there?" the girl asked.

"This is Ron..." I answered

"Hey there. This is Jan; Remember me?" she wondered.

I remembered her alright. There's no way in the world I could forget her. She was a beautiful blonde with a perfect figure and a libido that couldn't be quenched. She was almost a year older than me and we had dated, off and on, for a few years prior to our last break-up. Afterward, she had gotten involved with some guy and they got married, or so I heard. Consequently, I was a little astonished to hear from her. 

"How could I forget you?" I affirmed. "What are you up to?"

"Oh nothing... Just wondering if you were doing anything tonight," she professed. 

"Nah... I was just grabbing a bite when you called," I said, "And I was going to watch some T.V."

"Oh, I'm sorry... I'll let you get back to your supper," she apologized. 

"That's okay, I can eat anytime," I maintained, curious as to why she'd called. Then I went on to assure her I had no plans and that I was just going to be sitting around an empty house all evening. 

"Want some company?" she offered. 

"Sure" I replied, still wondering why she had called me. 

Before I could question her, she said, "Okay, Sweetie; I'll see you in about half an hour," and the phone went dead. 

Not knowing what to expect, I hurried through my left-over meatloaf and headed for the bathroom to wash up a bit. I had just finished shaving when I heard a knock at the door. As I worked my way through the house to answer it, I pulled a T-shirt over my head and stuffed the tail into the waist of the clean Levis I had donned.

I opened the door and there stood Jan, just as gorgeous as I remembered her. She was a little damp from the rain, but beautiful nonetheless. She smiled at me and said, "I hope you don't mind; I brought some beer." Before I could respond, she handed me the six pack of cold 16 oz. cans and leaned in to plant a kiss on me. 

When the kiss ended, I just looked at her for a moment, a little dumbfounded, and then offered, "Come on in." I turned and deposited the beer in the fridge, pulling a pair out of the pack. Motioning toward a doorway I said, "Let's go in the living room."

I couldn't help but to watch her sweet, round ass swaying in her own tight blue jeans as we moved into the other room. "Have a seat," I told her as I flopped down on one end of the couch. She sat down on the middle cushion and leaned her head back with a sigh. I opened one of the cans and handed it to her before opening the other for myself. 

"It's really good to see you," she told me. 

"Yeah, it's great seeing you too," I returned, still wondering why she had contacted me. And not being one to beat around the bush, I stated, "I heard you got married."

"Uh-huh," she replied as she tipped the beer to get a drink. "But, I'm not going to stay with that bastard," she informed me. Continuing, she filled me in about how he'd gotten pretty rough with her a couple of times, and that he turned out to be a drunken carouser who spent more nights in other women's beds than he did in hers. 

As she related the story, I could tell that she was becoming a little upset, so I reached out my hand, offering it to her for comfort. "I don't blame you for leaving him," I sympathized. "You want me to go kick the shit out of him?" 

"No, he's not worth it," she said, "I just needed someone to talk to; someone I could count on."

"You know you can always count on me," I stated. She nodded and scooted closer to me, laying her head on my shoulder. 

We spent the next hour talking, the conversation shifting away from her failing marriage, to good times we had shared and friends we knew. The whole time, she kept snuggling closer and closer to me. Her body felt positively superb as she leaned against me, the familiar feeling of her breasts pressed to my torso reminding me of old times. 

Our first round of beers were long gone by now, so I asked if she wanted another. She did and I told her, "I'll be right back." But before I could raise from my seat, she looked into my eyes and brought her lips to mine again. This time, though, her tongue darted out and slipped into my mouth. We kissed for about thirty seconds and then she pulled away.

"Sorry..." she said, turning her head to look at the floor. 

"Don't be," I told her, "It's been a long time since I had a kiss that sweet."

I got up and went to the kitchen to secure another pair of brews from the refrigerator. When I returned, Jan settled close to me once more, and we continued our conversation. Again, the more we talked, the more she seemed to nestle into my side. At one point she laughed about something and raised her hand in the air. When it came down, it landed on my chest, and she left it there with her fingers lightly stroking me. 

I decided to reciprocate and dropped my arm around her shoulders, hugging her to me. She looked up and softly said, "I've missed you." 

"Yeah? Well, seeing you again tonight sure has brought back some memories for me too," I concurred.

I don't know why, but for some reason the situation seemed uneasy. I guess it was because she was technically married, and we were both a little unsure of ourselves because of that. At any rate, there was a long period of silence, and then I upended my beer, draining the contents. I shook the can and said "I'm empty, what about you?"

"I've still got about half of mine left," Jan replied.

"Would you be a sweetheart and get me another while I take a leak?" I requested. 

"Sure," she said, and raised from the couch. 

I went to the bathroom and relieved myself of the previous two beers, washed up and opened the door. There was Jan, leaning against the door frame with my fresh beer in one hand and hers in the other. She looked up at me with her astounding blue eyes and smiled. I couldn't help myself and leaned in, wrapping my arms around her body, and pressed my lips to hers. 

We kissed passionately for the next couple of minutes, my desire for her growing by leaps and bounds. I had nearly forgotten how good her firm body felt when I had her in my arms, and just how strong her seductive charms were. 

One of my hands dropped to her butt and I gave it a gentle squeeze. Pulling my lips away from hers, I said, "Sorry, but I couldn't resist," hoping to bring a little lighthearted fun into the seriousness of the evening. I could tell from the look in her eyes that she welcomed my hands on her, and I was pretty certain that she was prepared to go a whole lot further than kissing and petting. 

Except for a little smirk, Jan ignored my comment and said, "Would you take these," referring to the beer cans, "so I can use the bathroom too?"

"What... You can't go while your hands are full," I teased. And jesting further, I added, "It's not like you have to hang onto anything while you pee."

She shook her head and retorted, "No, but I have to be able to undo my pants!"

Feeling cocky and brazen now, I quipped, "Well I can take care of that for you."

Jan shot me a saucy grin that I had seen many times before and spouted, "Oh you can, huh?"

"Yep... See..." I said as I moved my hands to the oversized belt buckle that she wore. I worked it loose and pulled the tail of her belt free from its loops, then set about unbuttoning her jeans. Our eyes never drifted from each other's as I lowered her zipper and pushed the denim apart, exposing her satin panties. 

Still grinning, Jan shook her head again and humorously demanded, "What are you doing?"

I replied, "Just what you want me to do," as my fingers slipped into the top of her underwear, bringing them into contact with her downy bush. I once more brought my lips to hers and we resumed our passion-filled french kiss. Breaking free a few moments later I quizzed her, "Do you deny it?"

"No. But we shouldn't be doing this, you know," she charged, "I am still married, after all."

As my fingers descended over the hairy mound, searching out her vaginal cleft, I asked, "Do you want me to stop?"

"No," was her simple reply. Then a few seconds later, she added, with a twitter, "But if you don't let me go to the bathroom, I'm going to pee on your hand."

I chuckled and withdrew my paw, giving her another quick kiss. "Well, alright; if you really need to go..." I enjoined, taking the beer cans from her. Before she moved into the bathroom, Jan wrapped her arms around my waist and kissed me deeply once more. Her eyes closed and she seemed to drift into a different world, secure with me.

After we parted, I went back into the living room and sat down on the floor, leaning back against the couch. Jan entered a few minutes later with her jeans the way I'd left them; still undone and her belt flapping loosely. She strode over to me and straddled my body, then lowered herself into a sitting position on my lap, facing me. 

Her fingers traced over my chest and face while we talked a little more, neither of us in a big hurry. Jan and I had always liked taking our time with one another. When we'd been together, we enjoyed the playfulness and teasing that led up to more serious foreplay as much, if not more, than the act of intercourse itself. Rarely had we ever just jumped in the sack and started rutting away, and this occasion was no different. At that point, we both knew that we were going to make love, but we had the whole night ahead of us.

Eventually, Jan worked my shirt out of my jeans and tugged it over my head. As her hands roamed over my bare chest, I set to work on the snaps of her 'cowboy' shirt. She was an avid horse rider who was heavily into barrel racing, and dressed the part. I started at the bottom and worked my way slowly upward, one snap at a time, until her shirt was completely open. 

My hands slid inside the open garment and I caressed the soft skin of Jan's flat stomach and slender waist. Moving upward, I was soon cupping her firm, bra-covered 36C breasts in my hands, as I had done so many times before. Our relationship had begun while we were still in high school, and we had enjoyed more than our fair share of sex together. My heart rate was quickening and my dick was beginning to swell as I fondled her.

She leaned closer and our mouths found each other again. As she closed the distance between us, my hands moved away from her breasts and traced the bra around her body to meet behind her back. I quickly found the clasp and began fumbling with it. In a moment or two I had it unhooked, but in our present posture, all I could do was run my hands over Jan's unfettered back.

After we kissed and nuzzled each other's necks for a while, Jan resumed her upright position. When she did, I immediately brought my hands forward and wormed them underneath the sagging material of her brassiere. My fingers went right for her already extended nipples and I began to roll them gently. As I did this, Jan unbuttoned her sleeves, removed the shirt and then her undergarment as well, giving me freedom to attend to her succulent boobs as they deserved. 

After a few minutes, I moved my hands around her again, drawing her chest close to my face. I began placing tender kisses on her breasts, teasingly avoiding the nipples. When I finally started kissing the erect little buds, I let my tongue slip out to flick over them. Jan's facial expressions told me that she was thoroughly enjoying the attention, and it was my guess that it had been quite a while since she had been treated this lovingly. 

I ventured that she was in need of just such treatment, and I was intent on focusing as much effort on her as she wanted. I knew full well that if I took care of her, she would certainly return the favor. In all the times we had made love before, she had always given me a "Wow!" experience. I had no reason to suspect anything less this time, and was content to service her needs. 

For the next several minutes, I continued to kiss and suckle her heavenly orbs, bringing soft moans of pleasure from her throat. Eventually, Jan leaned back a bit and echoed her earlier statement. "I've missed the way you touch me," she said, her golden hair spilling around her shoulders. Her statement only made me want to touch her that much more. 

"Let's go to the bedroom where it's a little more comfortable," I proposed, my hard-on feeling like it was about to burst my zipper. 

"Okay," Jan replied, and she began scooting back to dismount my lap. Apparently, as she did so, she noticed my bulge. She got to her knees, between my legs, and reached out to rub her hand up and down my distending fly. Eyeing me with a knowing grin she said, "We better let that guy out before he suffocates." With that, she began undoing my pants, and a few seconds later she was working them over my hips as I lifted my ass to aid her in disrobing me. 

After dragging the denims down my legs and off my feet, she tossed them to me with a giggle. I caught the jeans against my upper chest, but the legs bunched in front of my face. By the time I wrestled them away, Jan was already on her belly with her head descending toward my crotch. When her lips came into contact with my stiff cock, I was in heaven. And when she parted them, taking me into the warm wetness, I wouldn't have known it if a bomb went off next to me. 

Jan worked up and down my pole a few times and then paused to lick the head, swirling her talented tongue around its circumference. Then she sucked me in again and worked me deep into her throat. I groaned with pleasure and ran my fingers through her soft, blonde hair. For the next few minutes, Jan blew me and then schlepped off my manhood with a slurp. 

"Let's go," she said as she raised to her feet. 

"Go... Oh, you mean to the bedroom?" I returned, her skills causing me to temporarily forget about my suggestion.

Snickering, she snipped, "Loose your concentration?"

I nodded and said, "You tend to have that effect on me, Babe."

"Well, come on. I'll meet you in there," she directed, "I've gotta go to the bathroom again." Then she scampered off before I could say another word. 

Before heading to the bedroom, I gathered my wits and picked up the clothing we had strewn about. Once there, I tossed my things on the floor, but hung Jan's shirt and bra on the back of a spare kitchen chair that I had no place else for. I straightened the blankets and crawled under them to wait for her arrival. 

As I waited, my mind began to wander and I closed my eyes in an effort to clear my mind. When I opened them, Jan was standing in the doorway, leaning against the casing. She was now nude and had her jeans hooked on her fingers and tossed over her shoulder. "Goin' to sleep on me?" she asked.

I was speechless for a moment, as I once again took in all of her naked beauty. Even when we were at the peak of our sexual relationship, screwing almost daily, I could never get enough of just seeing her unclothed body. Snapping out of my brief stupor, I replied, "No... Hell no! I was just... Never mind. God, you're beautiful!" 

Stepping away from the door frame, Jan drew her jeans around and held them out, still dangling from her fingers and asked, "Where can I put these?"

I pointed at the chair, where I'd left her other clothing. She draped them neatly over the chair's back and then moved to the bed. I lifted the blankets and she slid in next to me, cuddling her bare skin against mine. Turning on my side to face her, I let one hand glide over her hip and search out her sanguine buttocks. "You truly are beautiful, you know," I told her again. 

Snuggling closer as I toyed with her backside, she replied, "Thanks, but you don't have to say that to get me to have sex with you."

Pulling my hand up to her face, I caressed her cheek and confirmed my sentiment. "I wouldn't say it if it weren't true," I told her softly. Jan hugged me tightly and let out a deep sigh, her warm breath cascading down my chest. 

We lay there for the next several minutes in silence, both of us content in the others arms. Eventually, still without a word, Jan began kissing my chest and teasing my nipples with her tongue. As she did, her left hand slid down my torso and she found my somewhat deflated cock. It didn't take much of her stroking to have me totally erect again. When I was hard, she wrapped her delicate fingers around me and began to slowly pump up and down on my shaft. 

I simply laid there and enjoyed the sensation for a short time, and then started to repay her efforts. My hand descended once more, pausing to tease one of her nipples briefly, then moving lower on her body. I felt the tight curls of her sandy-colored bush and again paused to play with them, still in no particular hurry. I loved the feel of her soft pubic patch, which I had been so familiar with in the past. 

After a few minutes, I pressed on, slipping my fingers lower and between her thighs. Jan parted her legs knowingly, drawing her left foot toward her butt, letting it come to rest on the bed behind her right knee. This movement afforded me the access that I needed and I swiftly worked my index finger into her warm, damp hole. When I did, the hand Jan had on my tool stopped in mid-stroke and she let out another, longer sigh. 

Over the next several minutes, as I fingered her, Jan returned to pulling on my manhood, but with irregular tugs now, more than the smooth palpations she had been using. She also started purring and softly moaning her approval of what I was doing. It wasn't long before I had guided my middle finger in, alongside the index, filling her a little more. When I had pressed them into her as far as I could, I brought my thumb down on her enlarging clit, and rubbed it gently. "Mmm," she mewed, a little more loudly. 

Keeping my thumb in place, I started working my digits in and out of her in short movements. For the most part, they remained buried in her, quickly becoming saturated by her increasing vaginal secretions. Once more, I drove them deeply into her and increased the pressure on her clit. Jan gasped softly and then exhaled a low, "Mmmm."

Her tugging at my pole had ceased, but Jan was still holding me in her hand. She let her index finger begin running over the purple head, smearing my pre-cum all over it. While this was taking place, she brought her face to mine and we started kissing, once more. We continued in this manner for the next several minutes, both of us becoming more and more heated and passionate. 




Better Off?



Finally, I pulled away, extracting my sodden fingers. I repositioned my self and lowered my lips to Jan's firm, round breasts. After turning her onto her back, I began a tender attack on them, sucking her small nipples and massaging the globes in my hands. At times, I would rapidly flitter the tip of my tongue over the stiff buttons. I gently bit at them, and the surrounding tissue, paying equal attention to each one. 

Jan's hands were on my head, her fingers weaving through my hair while I labored over her tits. After some time, she lifted my head and looked me in the eye with a lusty instruction, "Roll over." I quickly complied, having a pretty good idea of what was to happen next. Pushing the blankets toward the end of the bed, she rolled onto her stomach and kissed me briefly.

My assumption was right on, and Jan began teasing my own chest and nipples, employing very much the same technique I had used with her. But after a short period, she started working her way down my abdomen, trailing soft kisses on my skin as she did. Between kisses, her tongue danced erotically on my body. It took her a good four or five minutes to reach my groin area and by the time she did, my cock was aching for her attention. 

Jan didn't disappoint me and took my member in her sweet mouth straightaway. Her method of fellatio was simply outstanding. She didn't give head; she made sweet love to my tool. "Oh, God that feels good, Baby," I groaned as her sensual lips enveloped my prick, slipping about halfway down the shaft. Her tongue fluttered happily along the underside as she began a slow and steady bobbing of her head above my crotch.

Intermittently, the girl would let me slip out of her mouth to kiss and nibble at my manhood. Then she would engulf me again, sometimes nearly to the base, the motion of her tongue never ceasing. A few times, Jan closed her teeth, ever so gently, on my shaft and drug them upwards, letting them tweak the crown of my penis as she withdrew. Each time she did this, my hips would flinch involuntarily with the tingling sensations the maneuver produced. 

After about ten or fifteen minutes of this treatment, Jan worked her lips up and off of me one last time. She returned to her previous place in the bed, on her back next to me. "You always did give the best blowjobs," I complimented her. She smiled dreamily, and then I informed her, "Now it's your turn."

I set about my performance a little differently that she did, foregoing the 'kiss trail' that she had created on my stomach. Instead, I slid down the bed and parted her knees, placing myself directly into her crotch. Lowering my face, I was greeted by the unmistakable aroma of an aroused female. The scent acted almost as an aphrodisiac, spurring me on to devour her that much quicker. 

Sticking out my tongue, I delved into the glistening, slightly parted folds of her labia. I could hear Jan express a muted, "Uufff,"as drew in a quick breath, followed by a quiet, "Mmmm--Uh-huhhh." 

I took my time to ensure that the experience was very enjoyable for her, working my tongue into her, then licking up her slit to center on her love button. The dense curls of her neatly trimmed nest tickled my nose as I lapped up and down her crevice, and my moustache was soon wet with her juices. While I carried on, Jan continued to twitch and mewl from the pleasure that she was feeling.

Patiently, I wiggled the tip of my tongue as deep into her tasty box as I could, and thrust it in and out several times. Then I licked upward, flattening my tongue as I crossed over her sensitive clit. I repeated this move and then took her swollen organ between my lips, sucking it in. I sucked on it as if I were nursing, with quick and repeated draws. Removing my lips, I flicked my tongue rapidly, back and forth, over the protruding gland, bringing a deep growl of adulation from my lover. 

I continued my ministrations, in varying ways, for well over fifteen minutes. By the time I relented, Jan had begun hunching her hips at my face, and she was more than ready for me to enter her. Raising up and scooting forward between her splayed thighs, I paused long enough to wipe the wetness off of my face with my hand. 

"Come on Baby, fuck me," Jan encouraged seductively. 

Without answering, I reached down and grabbed my dick, swiping it up and down her wet slit a few times to coat the head in her natural lubricant. Centering my tool at her entrance, I pushed in, burying myself about halfway. "Uhhh... Oh yesss," she cooed.  

I hooked my arms under her legs and brought them upwards, until they were resting on my shoulders, and drove the remainder of my turgid rod into her depths. "God, you feel so good inside me," Jan stated.

"It feels great to be inside you again," I returned. And after holding myself in her to the hilt for a moment, I began to saw in and out of her. Still unhurried, I stroked into her at a slow and deliberate pace. I wanted to relish the wonderful feeling of her snug vagina for as long as I possibly could. 

After a few minutes of this, I removed Jan's legs from my shoulders and leaned my body forward, assuming the standard missionary position. This allowed me to kiss my sweetheart as I pumped into her, still taking my time. Our tongues wrestled back and forth, winding around one another and alternately filling the others mouth. We gently bit and sucked at each others lips and then returned to the entwining of our oral appendages. To me there isn't anything more erotic than the french kiss, and Jan had always been an expert in the art. 

Several minutes passed while we kissed, with me plunging into her repeatedly. Then I broke away from Jan's face and started nuzzling her neck with light licks and kisses. This quickly changed to more aggressive, but still gentle, biting and sucking, which I knew was something that Jan loved. She whimpered, almost pitifully, as my teeth scraped across her skin, confirming that her desires hadn't changed. 

I worked both sides of her neck and upper shoulders for a while, during which Jan kept emitting soft moans and gasps of pleasure. Jan had never been heavily vocal, but I could sense that she was becoming more and more aroused. I knew that her climax was drawing near, and so was mine. 

"Are you still on the pill?" I asked, expecting that she was but wanting to be sure. She had told me, at one time, that she didn't feel like a lovemaking session was complete unless she'd felt the guy's semen filling her. 

"Uh-huh," she replied, almost breathlessly. 

I kissed her tenderly and then lowered my mouth toward her ear. Whispering, I taunted, "Are you ready to cum, Baby?"

"Mmmm-Uh-Huhh," was her only reply. 

With that, I kissed her cheek and raised my shoulders away from hers. I came to rest in somewhat of a kneeling position, but my legs were spread widely apart. It was a bit uncomfortable, but allowed me to rock my tool in and out of her, while being able to toy with her clitoris at the same time. I had used this technique to get Jan off on several occasions, and it was by far my favorite. I adored watching her body language and facial expressions when she climaxed, and was looking forward to seeing it again. 

I licked my thumb, coating the ridges in my saliva, and lowered my hand to her mound. I trailed my fingers through her lovely bush and landed the wet side of my thumb on her love button. Jan moaned deeply and thrust her hips upward. As I continued to dip my cock in and out, I rubbed small circles on her clit, slowly increasing my downward pressure. 

It took only a few moments of this to bring Jan to the very brink of orgasm. Her trembling legs and more frequent, albeit short and somewhat stifled, vocalizations told me she was at the point of no return. I considered stopping my actions to tease her, but decided that she was more in need of release. And to be honest, so was I. 

"Cum for me Babe," I urged, "Cum all over my dick."

"Mmm... Mmm-uh... uhh-ohHHhhh!" she yelped as she reached her pinnacle. Jan's hips began to buck against me, nearly dislodging my boner from her grasping tunnel. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, and she tossed her head from side to side, flailing her blonde hair about. Her hands were grasping the pillow on either side of her head, and the veins of her neck stood out boldly as she rode me through her orgasm. 

I removed my hand from between her thighs, to situate myself for my own completion. Hooking a hand behind each knee, I pushed Jan's legs up and back, spreading her wider than she already was. I began to slam my cock into her pussy with much more force and vigor, the cum welling up in my balls. I banged into her for eight or ten strokes and then froze with my prick buried completely in her. 

"UHHhhhnnnngg!" I growled as my seed erupted into her still twitching body. 

"Mmmmm-UhHuhhh," Jan echoed. 

As the pulsing in my dick began to diminish, I let go of her legs and slumped forward. Our heaving chests came together and we commenced a long string of breathless kisses. "God that felt good!" I was finally able to express. 

"Uh-huh. It sure did," Jan agreed. 

Knowing that my weight was becoming uncomfortable for her to bear, I carefully rolled over, pulling Jan along while keeping my softening tool still inside her. Coming to rest on top of me with her knees bent next to my hips, she sighed contentedly. "Why did we ever split up?" she questioned. 

"Good question... I don't really remember," I answered, honestly not remembering why we had. "Probably because neither of us was truly committed to the relationship," I offered. It was something that I had thought before, but now realized that it was the truth. And I didn't know why we'd never gotten more serious; just young and wanted freedom, I guessed. 

After a period of silent kissing and cuddling, I asked "What now?"

"What do you mean?" Jan wanted to know, as she dismounted my flaccid tool and rolled onto her side, next to me. 

I turned on my side and took her in my arms, kissed her, and appealed, "What about What's-his-name? What do you intend to do?" 

"I'm divorcing him. I've already talked to a lawyer," she said. "After that; I don't know."

"Well, for now, why don't you stay the night with me?" I implored, and Jan readily agreed. 

We both made routine after-sex bathroom trips and then we grabbed a late night snack, before returning to the comfort of my bed and each others arms. Our conversation continued, and for nearly an hour we discussed the possibilities the future might hold. And not just for Jan, but for us as a couple, too. We finally drifted off to sleep, warm, content, and fulfilled; for the moment at least. 

I awoke the next morning, alone. On the pillow next to me was a note with my name written in Jan's handwriting on the front. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and flipped the folded paper open. I was at a total loss as I read the words. It was only one sentence. "You're better off without me." The note was signed "Love You, Jan"

I tried everything I could to find her, but haven't seen or heard from her since.

~~THE END~~



Better Off Dead



This is my third attempt to submit this rewrite of one of my very early stories; "The Big Pay Out' which even I have to admit was a load of crap, but my previous attempts were rejected as it was deemed to be an edited version of that story. If you go to that story you will see that it is very short and that I somehow managed to have it repeated (it still only took up 2 pages). This is not an edited version of that story as it is now over three times as long and contains a great deal of new material. It is my feeble attempt to emulate the 'noir' style of such authors as Mickey Spillane, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet. It is set in the 50's when censorship laws meant that sex was implicit rather than explicit, and what there is of it in this story is something of a compromise. I hope you enjoy it. Cm. 

*

Chapter 1

The wind blustered through the man made canyons of the city driving the morose rain before it, soaking the cuffs of my trousers. The reflection of the sad street light struggled out of a muddy puddle in the road. As I trudged this soggy street a bedraggled cat hissed at my feet from the equally soggy pile of cardboard that littered the sidewalk. This was Fifth Street not Fifth Avenue, and two in the morning wasn't a good time to be here, but work is work.

In the distance a trumpet wailed its sorrow into the night. The note in my pocket had said to follow that sound. I turned my head from side to side trying to decide from which direction it came. Eventually I turned right into an even more depressing alley and the trumpet was joined by a double bass, drums, guitar and piano. From what I could hear of the notes that fought their way to my ears through the other night sounds, the band wasn't half bad.

A flickering red neon led me to a bar at the very end of the alley. Pushing the door open I entered a world of stale cigar smoke, of stale beer smells and the sounds of despair. The trumpet player took his instrument from his lips and began to sing in a voice that told of too many cigarettes, too much bad whisky and too much sadness, the raw emotion rode through his music like the freight train that he rode away from the hard times in New Orleans or Chicago and the small crowd sat in rapt silence while he sang, lost in his lament.

I grabbed a stool at the bar, "What's your poison?" The woman behind the bar matched the ambience of this place, her once blond hair tinted yellow by the smoke, her once pretty face scarred by age, a hard life and a lack of sleep, the only thing that seemed to have survived the ravages of time was her figure, or at least the part of it that I was allowed to see.

"Whisky, straight up." I slapped a two spot on the bar.

"You want change or are you going to work your way through that?"

"Keep 'em coming. I don't suppose you can tell me where I can find Laura Lee Jones?"

She served me an extra shot of whisky and passed the glass to me along with my money. "You've found her. You must be Gerry."

I took a business card from my pocket and passed it over, "This card says I am and it's my card so I guess I am." I took a swig of the whisky and wished I hadn't, I hated to think of the damage this was going to do to my guts on the way through. "Whew!" I winced to show my displeasure. "When was this made, yesterday?"

"Stick around, the band will be finishing their set in ten minutes or so and then the crowd will clear out and we can talk. Why don't you take a load off in that booth over there." Her nod indicated a booth occupied by a woman who looked as if she too had seen better days.

I slid in opposite this thing and put my glass down. A quivering hand reached out and grabbed it. The glass rattled against her teeth as her unsteady hand tilted it up, emptying it in one gulp. 

"Help yourself, why don't you."

"I just did. Got a butt?" I shook a Camel out of the pack for her and one for myself. She grabbed it like it was her last and didn't even bother to tap it on the table to tamp the tobacco before she stuffed it between her lipstick smeared lips. I took the Zippo out of my jacket and torched hers before I lit mine. Snapping it shut I tried to ignore her. "You looking for some action?"

"Nah, I gave it up for Lent."

We sat in silence, each lost in our own separate world, me thinking about what Laura Lee wanted from me and she, well I couldn't tell what world she inhabited.

The band finished their set and put down their instruments, the fact that they weren't packing them away tells me that they were coming back soon or that this was their regular gig. Regular gig won out. The customers shuffled out as the band moved over to the bar for one last free drink before heading out to wherever.

My companion stood shakily to her feet, "You sure you don't want to take me home?"

"Sorry Sweetheart, but I've gotta get home to the little lady." It was a lie but she wasn't to know that, in fact in an hour she will have forgotten all about me.

Laura Lee locked the door and came and sat down in the booth. "I see you hit it off with Sadie." She put another glass of whisky in front of me, "That's to replace the one she took."

"You did that on purpose didn't you?" I held it to my nose, it didn't singe my nose hairs so I knew it was a different batch to the other stuff, probably last week's. I took a sip and it slid down smoothly. "Nice, private stock is it?"

"Yeah, I keep this for special clients."

"How can I help you?"

"I want you to find my no-good husband." I could tell by the tone of her voice that there was no love lost between her and her missing husband.

"I gather that you would prefer it if he came up dead."

"You gather right, but that's not to say you should kill him if you find him alive. The no-good son-of-a-bitch was not only stealing money from me but he was putting it about with just about anyone and he didn't care if I knew it. He even screwed your friend that just left."

"You're kidding me right?"

"No. I went out into the alleyway out back to toss some trash in the dumpster and there he was up to his balls in that scrawny whore."

I got the picture. "When was the last time you saw him?"

"Right after I chucked him out the door Monday last week. I had just had a visit from a couple of very big and mean looking guys who told me they were collecting on behalf of one of the local bookies. It seems he was into them for several grand and these guys suggested that if he didn't pay up, and soon, he would regret it."

"I don't suppose you know the name of this bookie do you?"

"Benny someone or other, I didn't quite get the last name if in fact they mentioned it, but I gather he is big time."

"They don't come much bigger. There's a good chance your husband is currently feeding the sharks at the bottom of the ocean and I don't mean that he's down there with a copper ball over his head holding out lumps of halibut for them either."

"If he is can you prove it?"

"Probably not, but I might get lucky you never know. I don't suppose you filed a Missing Persons report."

"I did, but it's probably not much use, they didn't seem terribly interested, especially after I told them that he owed Benny money. I figure they came to the same conclusion you did."

"I'll call by tomorrow night to let you know how my investigation is getting on." I got up and walked out into a night of misery. It had come to this; Tony Goode, my ex-partner, had left to set up his own agency about six months ago taking my ex-wife with him. He was the money man of the Pretty Goode Detective Agency, (Discretion guaranteed), I am the Pretty part and before you come up with a smart-arsed remark about the name let me tell you I've heard them all. I was the poor schmuck who did all the detecting. I drew wages and he drew what was left, that wasn't the deal when we started out but after he left I found out that he had done a damn sight better from the business than I had.

I went home and grabbed a couple of hour's shut-eye before hitting the pavements. It didn't take long for me to find out that my man had run up a large tab with several bookies and was stalling for time hoping for the big payout so that he could clear his debts. Like all gambling fools he had lost sight of the fact that his chances of that big payout was on the same level as a snowball's chance of survival in hell. I got the impression that Benny had lost patience with him, and I knew what that meant. All I had to do was prove it. So I paid a visit to Benny.

My first hurdle was to get by the goon at the front door of Benny's office. "Whachewant?" He made the Neanderthal man look intelligent.

"I wish to see your Boss." Straight forward enough request I thought.

"The boss ain't seeing no-one, so shove off."

I hit him with a hard right to the bread basket that doubled him over, followed by a swift knee to the face, he stood there with blood streaming from his nose and a bewildered look on his ugly puss. He thought about having a slug at me, a minute later he had a second thought and decided against it. "Why don't you be a good person and go and speak to your boss, all you have to do is tell him that Gerry Pretty would like a chat." I could hear him muttering my name over and over as he left. After several minutes he came back.

"The boss'll see ya." He looked hurt but like a good boy he let me by.

I didn't knock, "Hiya Benny, long time no see." I held out my paw for him to shake. He ignored it and nodded towards a chair. I sat.

"What do you want?" He made it sound as if I was wasting my time even talking to him, which I probably was. "Didn't you used to be Pretty Goode?"

"I'm still pretty good, ask Neanderthal man at the front door. I'm looking for one of your clients who's gone missing. You wouldn't happen to know where Andy Jones is, would you."

"Why would I, I don't get involved with petty hustlers like him."

"I didn't ask if you know him, what I asked was if you know where he is?"

"What makes you think I'd know where he is?"

"I would hazard a guess that he has met an untimely death and is shark bait, I could be wrong mind you, but it seems that when anyone owes you as much as he did they seem to end up that way, or at least there are rumors to that effect."

"Wise guy aren't you. Okay, let's just say that I know what happened to him but I don't know where he is. You should ask your ex-partner about that."

"Why, what has he got to do with this?"

"He was contracted to carry out the hit, and I won't say who requested it, and dispose of the body."

I thanked him for his information and left, getting a nasty stare from the gorilla at the door. For fun I shaped as if to have another shot at him and he cowered against the wall. Benny will probably have to look for another goon.

My next port of call was at the new, swish, modern office of my former partner. His receptionist looked familiar, after all I had been married to her for several years. "You look great doll, now can I have a chat to Tony?" Her real name was Dolores but I'd squeezed it down to Doll and she hated me for that, among other things. The look that she gave me told me that she still couldn't stand my efforts at humor. She flicked a switch on the gizmo on her desk, I'd get one for myself if I had someone to flick the switch, and his voice came through the speaker, "Yes Sweetheart, what is it?"

"Gerry is here and wants to speak to you."

"Send him in." I went in and found him sitting at his desk trying to look as if he was flat out with work. I knew better and it didn't fool me.

"What do you want?" He said angrily. I don't know why he should be angry with me, I didn't walk out on him and take his wife with me, I didn't take the company's client records with me, thinking that I had all of the business sewn up, and I'm not having to live with the fact that the clients remained loyal to me and when he called on them they told him to shove his agency up his arse.

"Nice place you've got here, must be costing you a fortune, more than you're earning, but even I didn't think that you'd even sink so low as to do Benny's dirty work for him."

"What do you mean?"

"I understand that you took Andy Jones for a ride and fed him to the fishes."

"Who told you that?" I noticed that he didn't deny it.

"A little canary sang an interesting song."

"Why are you telling me this, what's in it for you."

"I figured that I'm due for a big pay out."

"Is this blackmail?"

"No, I've got bigger fish to fry, if you'll pardon the pun." I could have stayed a little longer exchanging witty repartee but I couldn't be bothered wasting my time. I left him there puzzling about my next move. I wouldn't keep him in suspense long. I called into see my friend Lieutenant Callaway at the precinct house. I copped the usual bullshit from the troops as I walked through the squad room, "Who's the pretty boy then?" "Didn't you used to be pretty good? Now you're no good." Crap like that. I hear it every time I come into the station.

"Hey Lou, did you ever find Andy Jones?" Lou was staring at a file on his desk, a dead cigar hanging from his lips and a mug of tepid coffee feeling neglected beside his hand.

"No, we figured if we ever found him there would be so little left of him that he'd be just another John Doe with no means of identification. What do you know?" Lou would have been good looking if fate hadn't stepped in. His face bore the scars of a few too many hits from his college boxing days, his bouts with the bottle and his worries about the fidelity of the woman who calls herself his wife.

His wife, and she still was in the legal sense, got tired of waiting for him to stagger home after a day of saving the world from itself and being too tired to perform his conjugal duties, so she took to finding relief elsewhere, the knowledge of which found its way to Callaway's attention. He would have divorced her if he could be bothered and she didn't want a divorce because he brought home a regular pay check which was more than could be said for many of her lovers.

"I don't know where he is but I do know who took him there, and probably rubbed him out as well. I think you should go take a look and Tony's Chevy, if you look around in the trunk you might find some blood which will probably match Andy's blood type."

"What makes you think your old partner had anything to do with this?"

"Business hasn't been all that good for him lately and he needs money badly, badly enough to do this job for Benny. If you can finger him for it you might get Benny as well, so lean on him a little and he'll squeal like a stuck pig."

"Sure thing." I knew that Lou had been trying to pin some sort of rap on Benny for a long time but every time he thought he had him, Benny showed up with his lawyer and a whole bunch of people who were prepared to swear on a stack of Bibles that Benny, the upright citizen, was somewhere else at the time the crime was committed.

I walked the five blocks from the station house to my office, pausing just long enough to grab a cup of what the street vendor laughingly described as coffee and a paper from the news stand. I glanced at the headlines but nothing grabbed my attention so I folded it and stuffed it under my arm, there would be plenty of time to read it in detail back at the office.

I was good at what happened next; I opened the door and as I walked into the front office I took off my hat and threw it in the general direction of the hat stand. As usual it stuck but as I took off my coat I found myself grabbed from behind, that's not usual. A voice came from the stuffed chair I had thoughtfully provided, back in the days when I had a partner and a wife in reception, for clients to rest comfortably while they waited for me to attend to them. "Very well done, a man of some skill. Nigel you may release Mister Pretty."

As I was released I turned to face the man who had held me. Nigel? The Neanderthal was called Nigel? The irony of this revelation took me by surprise to the point that I almost missed the telegraph message that came just before the punch was thrown. Like I said I almost missed it, unfortunately for the ponderous Nigel. I hit him low down in the body and, as he lurched forward, chopped him with a looping left to the jaw. He went down like a pole-axed steer and I filed away in my memory that Nigel had a glass jaw.

"What do you want Benny?"

"A word to the wise Mister Pretty, a word to the wise. After our little meeting this morning I couldn't help but ask; why would you be interested in the whereabouts of a loser such as Andy Jones? Could it be that his wife, the beautiful Laura Lee had hired you to find him? Or could it be that she hired you to confirm that he was no longer among us, having retired to that track in the sky where every horse is a winner? Or could there be another, very dangerous for me, reason? I told myself that I should call by just to reassure myself that you are no threat to my operations. Reassure me, Mister Pretty."

This was a whole different Benny to the surly bookie that I confronted earlier this morning, he was positively loquacious, he was positively polite, and he was positively scary. I hated it when people who could harm me were polite, it usually meant that I was in danger of being harmed. A smack in the head I could understand, that was the language of the streets where I lived, but this was alien and I had this premonition that I was going to be harmed, and soon, if I made a wrong move.

"If you must know I have been hired to found him, dead or alive."

"So be it. I must, however, warn you that if ever I should hear that you are encroaching on my territory my vengeance will be swift and total. Do I make myself clear?"

"Sure. I won't even ask if it was you or one of the other of several bookies that Andy owed money to who had him stiffed."

"I'm glad that you didn't ask, you have saved me the bother of lying to you." He stood, it was the first time I had ever seen him erect and for a big man he was surprisingly short, no more than five feet tall. My attention was on Benny as he walked to the door and it wasn't until I heard the slight noise behind me that I realized the danger I was in. The lights went out and I didn't hear Benny tell Nigel that he shouldn't have done that.

"Gee sorry Boss, I thought you wanted him roughed up."

"That thought was about five minutes too late. In future you don't hit someone unless I tell you to. I can't have you thinking for yourself."

Chapter 2

I don't know whether I was awake or not but there was a ringing in my ears. As consciousness returned I realized that it was the telephone making a racket on the desk. I crawled over and grabbed the cord, the phone came off the desk and must have hit me on the head because when I woke up again I thought I was dead and gone to heaven. My head was resting in a beautiful and soft lap and my brow was being wiped by a soft, damp cloth held in a beautiful hand. An angelic voice wafted down from above, "Are you alright?"

"I can't hear any harp music but I must be in heaven." It was the best that I could think of at the time.

"What happened to you? I came past your door and found you laying there on the floor."

"Are there any truck tire marks on the carpet left by the eighteen wheeler that ran me down?"

"You must be feeling better, your sense of humor has returned."

"I never lost it. In this business if you take life too seriously it will grind you into an early grave."

"Do you think you can stand up?"

"I'll need some assistance." She was a tall, slender blond and all of her bumps were in the right place. She smelt really nice, unlike the cheap dime store scent used by the women that I usually met. She was also strong and I found myself almost being lifted bodily by this angel. Of course I had to stagger a little as I got to my fee and of course she had to hold me more firmly. I was in heaven.




Better off Dead



Hi, folks. We're continuing the "wild and crazy stories," with one that while set in our time period is kind of out there, but Hey!...It could happen. My thanks as usual to the incredible Mikothebaby for her editing even though she lost 2 computers during the writing of this story she still came through. Okay here we go. SS06

*    *    *    *    *    *

As I stepped up to the gate of the large house, I was so nervous I was vibrating. I didn't know how they'd take seeing me or even if they'd see me. But I just knew I was home. I thought that they might be surprised or maybe just curious, but really...who knew? I actually never thought in a million years that I'd be trying to get back here again. It just didn't make any kind of sense, but I knew that this was where I belonged.

I guess by the time a woman is my age, I'm twenty-four, she should know where she belongs in life. Shit, rich city girls go off to college at eighteen years of age with their desired career path already set in their head. So if you judge me by their standards, I'm a little bit late.

On the other hand if you judge me not by career standards but in terms of life experience, I'm way ahead of them, because I was married as soon as I turned eighteen and my husband and I had our own home. Well okay, it was his home. And okay, it was a trailer. And okay, he was forty then, but it was the only life I knew.

Every girl I knew wanted the same things. We wanted to get out of our parent's houses and get married so we could be in charge and not have to put up with any of their shit. We wanted to set our own hours and make our own decisions.

Now most of us knew that technically our husbands would be in charge of us, but our husbands were men. Men were the easiest thing in the world to control, especially for a mountain girl. I guess technically, most of us were at least a generation or two removed from being mountain folk. But that changed nothing. Men could still be controlled just by giving them a little bit of pussy at the right time and shit that was something that most of us wanted to do anyway.

So I married Zeke because he was a friend of my dad's and he'd always been nice to me. I settled into being the queen of Zeke's trailer or so I thought. As soon as the honeymoonwas over, I got a huge dose of reality. I turned out that life as an adult wasn't easy and Zeke was not Prince Fucking Charming.

Life as an adult it wasn't what I thought it would be like. I guess I'd always figured that you could do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. Nope, it wasn't like that. There were so many things that I had to do. There were so many expectations placed on me and we didn't even have jobs. Zeke was one of the lucky ones. He was a trailer park king because he was on disability. That meant that Zeke got paid not to work. All Zeke had to do was sit on his ass and wait for the check to come.

Zeke was a God damned genius. He was one of three brothers who worked in a warehouse. Well, they pretended to work in the warehouse. What they really did was to volunteer for the night shift. Night shift workers got what was called a shift premium. That means that they got paid more for doing the same work because it was less advantageous to work nights.

What it really meant was that they were on their own almost all night because the supervisors went home at seven p.m. after starting them on their assignments. What they really did was worked for about an hour until the foreman went home and then pulled out the beer and called it quits until about an hour before they were supposed to be done.

What ended up happening was that Zeke and his brothers were sitting on a rack in the warehouse, drinking beer and listening to the baseball game one night while waiting for the foreman to go home. That night a new Hi-Lo driver had started. While they were laughing and talking shit about how terrible he was at his job, he accidentally knocked a pallet of parts down on top of them.

The warehouse foreman had been heading in their direction when it happened so he saw the whole thing. That pallet had lots of boxes of small parts on it and the brothers were knocked onto the floor. By the time the foreman got to them Zeke showed his intelligence. His two brothers leaped right up to show that they were okay. I guess they didn't want the foreman to know that they'd been drinking beer on the job.

Zeke took that opportunity to show just how smart he was. As the foreman looked at him, he uttered those three words. The three words that like Einstein's theory of what-you-ma-call-it followed him for the rest of his God damned life. Those three words are now legend in our trailer park.

Zeke looked up at that foreman and said, "Oh, my back." The rest is history and Zeke's been getting paid ever since.

There was never anything wrong with Zeke. Zeke still hunts and fishes and wrestles with all of the other assholes in the neighborhood, but every six months he goes to a doctor and complains about the pain in his back and sides. The pain is so bad now that the doctors have Zeke on Vicodin, which he gets for free due to his disability and then sells to people in the trailer park.

One of my jobs, like every good wife's, is to make sure that Zeke never runs out of beer. So I make at least daily, if not more often, runs to the seven-eleven to keep beer in our fridge. One morning, Zeke kicked me awake and glared at me.

As my eyes opened I stared up into his angry, unshaven face wondering why he'd kicked me.

"Outta fucking beer, girl," he snapped angrily. "Seriously, why the fuck did I marry you? It's not like you have a lot ta do. How the fuck did you let us run out of beer?"

"It's not like I drink it," I uttered without thinking. For a second I thought that I'd been stuck by lightning. The pain was so sudden and so severe that I blacked out for a second. I got up holding my face and stuck my feet into my worn out flip flops. I pulled a pair of jeans on and threw a worn T-shirt over my head and walked out through the open door.

I stepped out of the trailer and down onto the cinder block that served as a step. It was already over eighty degrees outside. Inside the trailer it was shady and there was a fan blowing the hot air around so it seemed cooler. I gingerly leaped over the mud that always seemed to accumulate around the trailer during the warm weather time of the year and started off.

The seven-eleven was almost a mile away and I wanted to get back before the sun was fully up and started to fry me. As I walked through the park, headed for the road, I waved and nodded to a lot of my neighbors. Those who were relatively well off were inside of their trailers watching TV. Those who weren't well off were on their porches watching people. I felt the weight of all of their stares as I walked by.

Some of them wanted to talk, which I had no time for. I could tell that a few of the older men were angry that I'd worn jeans and a T-shirt. They loved to look at young girls in tank tops and shorts. For some of them it was the cheapest and only porn they could afford.

I guess I'm pretty in a low rent kind of way. I still have all of my teeth and they're in good shape. My hair is long and full and it's a gold color. It's neither blond nor brown. It's kind of in between the two.

At five foot two, I'm just the right height for a girl. I'm not too short or too tall. I have average sized breasts and like my grandma always said, more than a handful is wasted. I also have nice hips and a nice butt for my size. I guess everything on my body is average.

Average is good. It means not too big or too small. I'm right in the middle. Usually when something good is bigger than normal, there's a price to be paid. Susie Smith has the biggest titties in the trailer park. But she also has biggest gut and the flattest ass you've ever seen. Her ass is so flat, it's like her anus is a black hole and it swallowed up her hips and both ass cheeks.

Some of the guys in the neighborhood joke about her all the time. Zeke always talks about the time he tried to pat her on her ass and his hand slipped and didn't stop until he'd karate chopped the floor. He said there was no differentiation between her ass and her back. Other guys have said that she's physically unable to use a chair because she doesn't bend until you get to her knees.

Even her father, who's a carpenter and a good one, has said that he uses Susie's back and legs as a plumb line for lining up walls and fences.

Even with Susie's colossal titties, she's never had a steady boyfriend. Guys just come by, ogle her boobs or maybe cop a feel and tweak her nipples, then they go fishing or whatever they're going to do. So maybe, just maybe, average isn't so bad.

As I walked down the road, the closer I got to the main highway, the more traffic I saw. I had a couple of guys whistle as they drove by but my face hurt so bad that I didn't smile at anyone. I figured I'd have a hell of a shiner by the time I got back. But it was my fault for not controlling my mouth.

I guess I grew up in a place where things like that were just normal. My daddy loved my mom something awful. Unlike a lot of people around us, neither one of them ever cheated on the other. My daddy loved my mom too much to do it, and my mom was too scared. I often saw my dad, slap the cowboy shit out of my mom for stepping out of her place. And Daddy always told us that respect is sometimes all a poor man has to call his own. So, if my mom spoke out of turn or disrespected him, it was his job to show her the error of her ways.

The parking lot of the seven-eleven was already crowded that morning. They really needed a drive-thru like those fancy fast food restaurants have. There were no parking spots available so cars were double parked in the middle of the aisles.

I saw a lot of beautiful cars and trucks in the parking lot that morning. I stopped and looked at them. I imagined that one of them was mine and I was driving away from my existence in that shit hole trailer park. Then I laughed as I noticed how full the inside of the store was. Then suddenly my brain started to function and I realized that with the store that crowded there was a very real chance that they might run out of beer. I stopped daydreaming and got my ass inside.

Zeke hadn't been happy with me this morning. The stinging in the left side of my face was testament to that. If I went home without any beer, things would be far worse. I pushed my way into the crowded store and through the crowd towards the back where the drink coolers were. From the way the store was laid out you could tell that they really wanted you to buy their over-priced fountain drinks and slurpees. Beer and brand name soft drinks were all the way at the back of the store. As I pushed my way towards the coolers, more than one trucker driver or just general asshole took the opportunity to feel my boobs or butt.

I turned in every direction every time I felt a hand but not one guy was ever looking at me. As I got to the cooler, I realized that I was in trouble. Zeke only drank Shotz beer. The entire area of the cooler that had the Shotz was empty except for two single bottles. I knew that if I went home with less than a case I'd be in trouble. I quickly scanned the cooler to see if the stock boys had moved the Shotz to a different location.

"Hey, Victoria," said a voice from behind me. I turned and looked into the face, if you could call it that, of Chester Crawdad. Chester and I had gone all the way through school together. Growing up he'd been the creepiest guy I knew. For the past two or three weeks Chester had been very nice to me. On one hand, I liked to think that maybe he'd matured, but on the other I had noticed that his niceness had started about the time I stopped wearing a coat because the weather was too warm.

That day I'd have been ready to let Chester have a feel or even a look if he could save me from getting my ass beaten for coming home without any beer.

"This might be your lucky day, Pretty Lady," said Chester, in that voice that was reserved for perverts. "It also might be my lucky day," he said, in that same voice.

I tried to hide my disgust as I replied. "How could it be our lucky day, Chester?" I asked as if I didn't know.

"Because there might be a case of Shotz, left in the back, where someone might've hidden it just for YOU to buy," he smiled ultra-creepily.

"Okay bring it out," I said. "I'll meet you at the counter."

"Not so fast," he said. "That would only make it your lucky day. What about my lucky day?"

"Dammit Chester," I sighed. "Couldn't you just do it to be nice? Couldn't you do it as a gesture of friendship?"

"When the hell have we ever been friends?" he sneered. "And nice...Victoria, this is ME being nice. This world just isn't a nice place. But it can be. I do something nice for you and in return you do something nice for me. That makes the whole fucking world a nicer place."

"Alright Chester," I said in resignation. "How nice do I have to be?"

He moved closer to me and whispered in a voice that was just loud enough for me to hear. "I want my fingers to smell like pussy; if you get my drift?"

"I'm not doing that out here," I said sharply. I knew that all Chester wanted was to rub my vagina for a little bit. I got the idea that Chester was afraid to ask for anything more.

"Of course not," he said back. "Just follow me to the back of the store like we're going to get your beer. There's only me and the manager here and he's so busy at the counter that he'll never know."

I nodded and followed him through a door marked, "Employees only." It wasn't like I was cheating on Zeke. Shit, Zeke often had me flash his friends or even give them a feel if he thought it would do him any good.

Chester was mumbling to himself as we went into the relative quiet of the, "Employees only," area.

"Not so God damned high and mighty now are ya," he said. "I'll bet you really thought I actually wanted to touch your stinky old pussy, didn't you. You ain't shit. Where I'm going when this is all over, the women there make you and old these other trailer trash whores look like shit."

I couldn't figure him out. And by the time I realized that I was in danger, it was too late. As I followed Chester over to a case of Shotz beer, a large muscular arm shot out from behind a stack of crates and a hand covered my mouth. Before I could make a sound, someone placed a cloth over my nose and held it there. I was so afraid that my breathing and heart rate sped up which was what they wanted. I breathed in an antiseptic smelling chemical and my legs got as weak as a newborn's.

I felt like I was falling but I never hit the ground. The last thing I remember was Chester's smiling face. But his smile was all wrong.

*   *   *   *   *   *

  Adam

  Today was the day. It was the beginning of a long journey into what hopefully would be the rest of my life. For the past five years since I'd left the service...well since I'd handled the little problem I discovered after returning home from the service, I'd mostly concentrated on building my family business.

  I hired or tried to hire a lot of other guys like me, who'd done their service and had returned to find only heartache or indifference. So now I had a group of loyal employees who when the chips were down, would do almost anything for me. And the chips were certainly down. I was so lonely that I could almost feel it.

  What good is it for me to do everything I can to help my community, when I go home every night to a big empty house? People just weren't meant to be alone. Loneliness is as deadly as cancer and just as insidious. It eats away at you from the inside until you're left just a shell of the person you once were.

  My problem was that like so many others, what I found when I came home destroyed my ability to trust most people. So I couldn't just sign up with E-Harmony and let them find the perfect person for me. That was just so much bullshit. Every time I saw those commercials, I burst out laughing. But as I laughed, my loneliness continued to grow.

  Throughout history, men had gotten women in lots of different ways. Who's to say that our current model is the best or only method? Why couldn't I follow the cave man way? Why couldn't I just go out and club some woman over the head and drag her back to my cave? And what about the Native Americans or the Vikings or so many of the early Europeans; why couldn't I just go out and capture the woman I wanted?

  On some level, I knew that what I was proposing would be wrong. I knew there were laws against it and all kinds of moral reasons that it would be wrong. But at the same time, I knew that with my trust issues, it was probably the only way I wouldn't end up alone.

  The first stage was to plan everything including my escape route. The thing about our supposedly enlightened society is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. If you have enough money, you can pretty much get away with anything. I went about setting up a totally different identity for myself. It wasn't as hard as it seemed. Through friends who are still in the service, I met and made friends with other people who work for different government departments and before too long, I became two people. Just in case my plan failed I'd have a completely different identity to step into and melt into the woodwork.

  After the planning stage and setting up my escape route, I needed to find the perfect target. I scouted women for weeks and narrowed it down to three. That stage was easy because I was picking them on the basis of attractiveness and personality. So any woman that I wasn't personally attracted to, was simply eliminated from further investigation.

  Of those three, I eliminated another because she was really in love with her husband. That left two and one of them was single. The other hadn't been married for more than a few years and from appearances, not only was she kind of shell shocked in her marriage, but her husband hit her from time to time.

  I picked the single woman anyway because to me a marriage was a marriage. I, even after what had happened to me, didn't want to fuck up someone else's marriage. Her name was Elsa and she lived only a couple of miles away from me. She was some sort of nurse's assistant and she wasn't half bad looking. I had people tailing her around the clock to get her schedule down to the point where I knew where she'd be at almost any given moment of any day.

  Then the bottom fell out. She got fired, which at first I thought worked in my favor. Then we found out why she'd been fired. She was fired for stealing drugs from the hospital. She wasn't selling them, she was using them and heavily. I wasn't attracted to druggies, so that made us look more closely at the other subject. I had a change of heart. Perhaps it was just that my loneliness was morphing into desperation, but I found myself rationalizing that a marriage to a man that beat her wasn't much of a marriage.

  I woke up this morning knowing that for better or for worse, my life was about to change. I smiled because it wasn't the first time I'd had that thought. The first time had been in a small church in Michigan where a group of our friends and family had gathered to watch me get married to my high school sweetheart. I suppose in some ways every man who takes a woman into his life feels that same way.

  At any rate, for better or worse, my life would change today. I'd gone into work this morning as usual. Perhaps I was a bit nervous but I tried my best to maintain a degree of normalcy. I think I succeeded all the way until the phone call came through. As I sat at a table with several of the managers of different divisions of my building, my assistant walked in and told me that the deal had gone through. I immediately excused myself and drove home.




Better off Dead



Normally, driving was an adventure for me. I can afford almost any car I want. But as a kid, I'd gotten hooked on old school muscle cars. I drove a 2012 Shelby GT 500 Mustang. I love that car, but today it was only a way to get from point A to point B.

  As I reached my subdivision and slowed down, as the road wound between manicured lawns and landscaped gardens, the car's 500+ horsepower growl became a low menacing rumble. I waved at a few of my neighbors before pulling into my own extremely long circular driveway. I went into the house with an unhurried air about me.

  The front door opened and a man and woman of about my age stood in front of me.

  The man looked at me and simply nodded. "No muss, no fuss," he said. I followed the two of them into the kitchen of the house. I opened a door into a large pantry. There were shelves from floor to ceiling on both sides of the pantry. They were stacked with all kinds of food items. Some contained cooking implements or pots and pans or specialized appliances. The rear wall had large and small shiny pans hung from hooks that took up a lot of the space. Everything in the room was there for one purpose. If you asked most people they'd say that it was cooking, but that wasn't it.

  The entire pantry was a gateway. The floor to ceiling shelves, are there to hide the hinges. The entire rear wall swung free easily after I disengaged the locks with a remote control similar to a garage door opener. I descended a short flight of stairs and ended up in front of another massive door. I opened this one and went inside. The two large doors were linked mechanically so that only one of them could open at a time.

  Inside of the door was a very large room. It was bigger than most apartments. It had its own large bathroom and even a small kitchen. There, lying on the bed, apparently asleep, was a young woman. She was a very pretty young woman but she didn't seem to know it yet. She was four years younger than I am and although she didn't seem to know that either, she belonged to me now.

  *   *   *   *   *   *

  Zeke

  I turned to Reb to voice my anger.

  "Where the fuck is she?" I asked. "That bitch has been gone for almost an hour and a half. It don't take that fucking long ta go ta the sebm alebm and git some beer."

  "Why the hell are ya asking me?" he grunted. "She's your wife, not mine."

  He looked around for something to spit his tobacco into. When he didn't find it, he just stepped over to the door and outside of it and spit it onto the ground. He sat down on the cinder block that served as a step.

  "Sheeeyit, it's hot out here," he said. "Maybe she had a stroke or something trying ta carry the beer back. You probably should have gone yourself or at least let her drive your truck."

  "After the way she sassed me this morning?" I spat. "She's lucky I let her keep her fucking teeth. That bitch is too ungrateful for everything I've given her already."

  "I told you from the beginning that Victoria was the wrong girl for you Zeke," he said. "She read too many God damned books as a child. Reading them books fucked her up in the head. It gave her all a them ideas. I told you from jump street that the best one a my sisters was Tammy. She's named after Tammy Wynette, so if she knows how ta do anything, it's how ta stand by her man."

  "Tammy's ass is too fat," I said.

  "Shit, when you get Victoria pregnant, her ass is gonna spread too," laughed Reb. "But that'll also settle her down a bit. Once you git her a baby in her belly, she'll realize her place in the grand scheme a things."

  "Hell, it ain't like I ain't been trying," I said. "But I'm not as young as I used ta be."

  "Uh, Zeke," said Reb. "We need ta talk, seriously."

  I felt my neck hair raise up but I nodded my head.

   "Zeke, my daddy was your best friend, so you're like family," he began. "I don't know how ta zackly tell you this. This here is a real delicate situation, but it's kind of why I mentioned Tammy before. They always say that the good lord will give us a solution to our problems. They also say that a man's home is his castle, right?"

  I nodded but I looked over at Reb for any sign of what the fuck he was hinting around at.

  "Zeke, maybe it ain't you," he said.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "Do you and Victoria fuck a lot?" he asked.

  "Probably not as much as I'd like," I said. "But the old log does git buried somewhat regularly whether she wants to or not."

  "And that's exactly my point, brother," he said. "She ought to have her uppity ass at least a couple of kids by now if not more."

  "Dam right," I said.

  "And you are obviously not getting your fair share of poon tang from Victoria, yet you refuse to beat her," he said. "You're too nice that girl, by double," he said.

  I nodded in agreement.

  "But a man needs ta take care of his itches, Zeke," he continued. "That shit is in the bible somewhere. So nobody would fault you if you went somewhere else ta git your itch scratched."

  He looked me in the eye and I blinked.

  "I thought so," he said. "And I also think, or at least I have an idea that you did it in a very thoughtful and family oriented way didn't you?"

  "I guess..." I said. "I'm sorry Reb, but I..." He held his hand up to silence me.

  "Zeke, ain't nobody complaining. You're getting what you need. Tammy, who has been alone since Denny run off and got his ass kilt in Iraq is as happy as a pig in shit, and until recently nobody else knew."

  I nodded, expecting there to be a "BUT" coming.

  "But," he said, right on cue. "Something is coming up." My heart dropped.

  "And the something that's coming up appears ta be Tammy's belly, because fat ass or not you done knocked up the wrong sister. That got me ta thinking that maybe the problem with you and Victoria ain't with you. Maybe my baby sister is just barren. I mean the two of you have been married now for five God damned years and even if as you say, she just don't like ta fuck, SOMETHING should have happened before now."

  I nodded my head. "Shit, I wish your father was still around," I said. "He was a man of honor. If he sold you a bad pig, he'd make it right and..." He held up that hand again then.

  "I'm gonna make this one right too," he said. "But this ain't zackly easy as if it was pigs. My daddy would have given you another pig..." he stared off into space for a moment. "That's it," he said. "You can have Tammy too."

  "What?" I asked.

  "You're legally married to Victoria. But we all know there are problems there. Now you could go through all of the hassle of trying to divorce her and going through the courts because you really shouldn't have to put up with her shit. Putting up with it like you have for all of these years for a woman whose insides are broken is just saintly, but if you divorce her you're gonna have to give her half of your shit. It's cheaper to keep her. But just take Tammy too."

  "What?" I said again.

  "Look at it this way," he said. "Victoria don't like ta fuck. Tammy does. Victoria apparently can't get pregnant and give you kids. So she's pretty much useless except for standing around and looking pretty and even then you have to deal with her smart ass mouth, right."

  "So you take Tammy too," he continued. "That way you have the best of both worlds. Ya got one woman ta show and one woman ta go. Move Tammy into your bedroom let Victoria sleep on the couch. Hell, that way you've even got someone around ta watch all of them kids you're gonna be puttin' into Tammy." He slapped me on the shoulder and smiled.

  "I'll leave it up to you to tell them," he said. "Don't worry about Tammy, she's all for it. And Victoria needs some comeuppance anyway. God Damn, that thinking is thirsty work. Where's the beer?"

  Two hours later our mood had changed from ticked, to pissed, to God damned sullen. "Let's go get her," he said. I nodded again.

  We jumped in my Dodge Ram pickup and headed for the seven eleven. It was so hot by then that you could fry an egg on the road and we didn't have any fucking beer. Victoria was obviously trying to kill me.

  I looked all over the store and I saw plenty of beer, but no Victoria. I snatched a case of Shotz beer out of the cooler. It wasn't very cold so it probably hadn't been in the cooler for very long. When I got to the counter, I saw that stupid kid behind the register. I think his name was Chester or something. He went to school with Victoria when they were younger and had always had a crush on her.

  "Chester, what time did Victoria leave here?" I asked. He looked back at me with a blank look.

  "Victoria's coming over here?" he asked smiling. Before I'd mentioned my dumb assed wife, the boy had been all business and too busy to even look my way. But now he looked like he'd happily suck my dick for a bit of info on that lame brained bitch.

  "Chester, she should have been here and been back home three times by now," I said.

  He shook his head vigorously. "Victoria ain't been here. If she had, I'd have seen her," he smiled. "Hey Harlan," he yelled to an older, bored looking guy. Harlan came over to us.

  "What can I do for you gents?" he asked, in a bored sounding voice.

  "Was Victoria in here earlier?" asked Chester.

  "Who?" asked Harlan.

  "You know Victoria, the woman I..." began Chester.

  "Oh, that purty gold haired girlie that you always go on about," laughed Harlan. "How would I know? There've been so God damned many people in and out of here today already that I can barely remember which trucks came in, let alone individual females that I have no interest in. But I'll tell ya. She sure is purty, so I think if I'd seen her in here, I'd have remembered that. So if ya nailed my ass to a wall, I'd have ta say that she ain't been here. But if she had, Chester here would have seen her."

  As he stepped back over to where he was working, my blood started to boil. "That bitch took my beer money and went off to do something stupid with it. She's probably off buying some damned clothes or something," I hissed.

  "Spare the rod and spoil the wife," laughed Reb. "But while we're here, we may as well buy some beer, brother. And look at it this way. Since she's obviously fucked up big time this time, it'll make it easier for you to tell her that Tammy is moving into your bed and she's moving out to the couch."

  "There is that," I agreed.

  *   *   *   *   *   *

  Victoria

  I woke up tired and confused. I looked around me and realized that I was lying on a very soft, very comfortable bed. Except for a very dry mouth and some ringing in my ears, I felt better than I'd felt in a long time. Then, of course, the stinging in my face started up and I remembered Zeke slapping me that morning. I looked around and there were no windows in the room. I wondered what time it was.

  "Zeke is going to have my ass," I thought. I tried to estimate how long I'd been gone. I knew that I'd been asleep for a while. I looked around the room. The first thing I saw was a huge flat screen TV mounted to a wall. I wished that I was going to be here long enough to watch that TV. We only had a tiny little TV at home and I only got to watch it when Zeke let me. Most of the time he watched NASCAR, Swamp People, fishing shows, sports and porn.

  I looked to the other side of the room and saw a closet that was nearly bursting with clothes. There were lots of beautiful dresses and jackets and blouses. I realized then that some really lucky bitch lived in this room and they'd probably brought ME here to recover from whatever it was that knocked me out. I tried to remember but it was fuzzy.

  I put one leg down on the floor and tried to stand up. Everything started spinning. That was when I saw him. I sat back down on the bed and looked at him. He looked up from whatever the thing he held in his hands was.

  As his eyes focused on me, I saw his face. He was a really handsome man with very kind eyes. Some of those pretty guys are so stuck up and so full of shit that it shows through their eyeballs. Not this one. His eyes showed nothing but kindness mixed with a kind of sadness. He stood up and walked over to the bed. He looked at me and smiled. It was as if he was really happy to see me. As he scanned my face he noticed the bruise on the left side.

  "Who hit you?" he asked sharply.

  "Oh that'll be gone in a couple of days," I said. "My husband, Zeke, did it this morning. I guess I got a bit too lippy for him and..." I stopped talking when I noticed that the kindness coming from his eyes had disappeared. There was a darkness coming from his eyes that was scary.

  "He'll never hit you again," he said calmly.

  "I wish that was true," I laughed. "But speaking of which, I guess I should be heading for home now and..." The kindness had returned and he was shaking his head.

  "Victoria, you are home," he said confidently. "And no one will ever hit you again. I swear it."

  "Zeke hits me whenever he wants to," I said. "But he's my husband so he has the right to..."

  "No one has the right to hit you and Zeke is no longer your husband. Victoria..." he hesitated. "This is really hard to say and I hope that you can understand it someday...I guess I'm hoping that over time you'll more than come to accept it...But you're mine now."

  I started laughing my ass off. I figured it had to be some kind of joke. Zeke had to have set me up. Maybe it was one of those reality TV shows. I started looking around for hidden cameras, but I couldn't find any.

  "Okay," I said. "I'll play along. How long does the joke last?"

  "Forever, I hope," he said. I looked in his eyes and there was no trace of humor in them. There was also no trace of deception. This whacko really thought that I'd stay here. I got to my feet and tried to run past him on my still shaky legs. I got to the big metal door and couldn't open it. Shit, there was no handle on it to open it with.

  "Let me the fuck out of here," I screamed. "Let me out of here, right God damned now. When Zeke hears about this he's gonna beat your pretty ass. He's probably looking for me right now."

  He shook his head. "First off," he said "Zeke isn't actually looking for you. He waited for about three hours after you'd left and then he drove over to the seven eleven and bought his own beer. He did ask the clerk in the store about you but after that he just went home and started drinking. You've been gone for a full day now and he hasn't even called the police yet to report you missing." I was shocked.

  I wasn't shocked that Zeke hadn't reported me missing. I was shocked that I'd been gone for a whole day.

  "If Zeke knows what's good for him, he will never approach me," he said. "I might have to kill him for hitting you and..."

  "Wait a minute," I said. "You think it's wrong for Zeke to hit me, but you'd kill him for doing it?"

  He nodded. "You're mine now. No one can ever hurt you and I will never allow anyone to do it again."

  "Uh, dude, this is the United States of America," I said. "We kind of got rid of slavery and ownership of people about a hundred and fifty years ago. No one can own anyone anymore."

  "I don't know about that," he said. "From the second you opened those big pretty blue eyes, you owned me."

  I got weak in the knees when he said that and it wasn't from whatever they'd knocked me out with.

  "But you're wrong about that Victoria. Slavery isn't legal here but it goes on all of the time. There are thousands of European and Asian women shipped over here and sold into brothels every day in almost every state in the union. It's not..."

  "Is that what I'm here for?" I screamed. "I won't do it. I'm not going to be anyone's whore. I'll kick the shit out of every guy you bring..."

  He started laughing so hard I thought he was going to pee on himself.

  "What's so God damned funny," I hissed.

  "You're perfect," he laughed. "God, I wish I'd met you some other way. Victoria, I didn't go through all of this trouble and all of this expense to get a prostitute. And certainly not for one I'd give to other men. If you do have sex with anyone around here, it will only be with one person; ME."

  I was shocked. I wondered why the hell he had gone through all of the trouble. He was a good looking man. He could probably get any number of women just by smiling at them. And judging from the looks of the place I was in, he had some money too. That meant even more women he could get.

  "So let's have a little talk about how this works," he said.

  "I have a better idea," I said. "For some reason you want me. So okay, I'm not going to argue with you. How about if I just give you some pussy and you let me go?"

  He looked at me sadly then. His face was so sad that I almost wanted to cry myself.

  "Well, I really wanted to start our relationship out the easy way," he said. "Victoria, I don't love you yet. I mean I've studied you. I know everything about you. That's why you like this room so much. It was designed based on things that you've said you liked. I hope that in time you come to at least like me too. But this really isn't about sex. And you're not going to just get out of here. We're going to be together for a long time."

  I could tell he was serious. Then he did what I least expected. He must've pushed a secret switch or something because suddenly the huge metal door swung open. I bolted without a hint of warning. As I got closer to the door, I thought my hair stood up. I just felt a buzzing. I saw him shaking his head sadly.

  "Later, pretty boy," I thought as my feet rocketed across the plush carpet. I wondered why he wasn't trying to stop me. As I approach the door the buzzing increased and it was around my neck. A few steps away from the open door and freedom, the buzzing became painful. It was like white hot agony coursing through my neck and shoulders. I screamed in pain and started writhing on the floor.

  He walked over to me and bent down and picked me up. He calmly walked me back away from the door and the pain stopped.

  "I'm sorry Victoria," he said. And for some reason, I could see that he really was.

  "Can we talk now?" he asked. I nodded my head. My nerve endings were still on fire.

  "Are you hungry?" he asked. "We could eat while we talk. I'm sure that you have lots of questions. What would you like to have?"

  "What do you have?" I asked. I really was hungry and starving wouldn't improve my situation.

  "Victoria, my job is to make you happy," he said smiling. "You can have anything you want."

  "Then let me go," I said.

  "Well, anything except that," he said.

  "Can I have pizza?" I asked. He smiled and nodded. He stepped over to the wall and pressed a button. He spoke into and intercom and came back a few minutes later.

  "We're having it delivered. It'll be twenty minutes. Why don't you put on something comfortable," he said.

  "These are all the clothes I have," I said. "I do have a few more pieces back home but..." I stopped as he started laughing again.

  "Victoria, this is your room," he said. "Everything thing in here is your size and was bought for you."  

  I got up and avoided the doorway. I looked through the closet and saw everything lined up and organized by color. I looked into a drawer and saw all kinds of lingerie and underwear. I saw everything from thongs to granny panties.

  "Is that what you want me to do?" I asked, with my voice dripping contempt. "You want me to wear some sleazy lingerie and walk around with my titties hanging out so you can get your jollies?"

  "Victoria, I just want you to be comfortable," he said. "You have lots of pajamas, even some like little kids wear with bunny ears and feet in them. Pick out whatever you want."




Better off Dead



He walked out through the open door and was gone for a few minutes. As I looked through the drawers, I found out that he was telling the truth. Not only did I find the pajamas with actual bunny ears and feet, there were three of them in different colors. There were also sweat shirts and sweat pants that were so thick and soft that they probably cost more than my entire wardrobe. 

The strangest thing about it was that every single item was my size. They were also all in colors that I liked. A few items were in colors that I probably wouldn't have picked but when I thought about them or held them up to the full length mirror I noticed that they went really well with my hair, eyes and skin.

I had to admit that my kidnapper had actually taken the time out to be both thoughtful and considerate. A nagging thought in the back of my mind had already started to compare the man to my husband.

I pulled my raggedy T-shirt over my head and skimmed my jean shorts down. As I looked at myself in the mirror, I didn't see anything that would make some guy go crazy over me. I looked at my dirty bra and ancient panties and decided that I needed a shower before I put on any of those beautiful clothes.

I walked over to a small door...well, it was small compared to the giant one that held me prisoner. I didn't feel any buzzing. I figured that meant that I was allowed to go there. I turned the handle and then I heard a sound behind me. I turned and noticed that he'd come back into the room. As he saw that I was standing there in just my underwear, he quickly turned and went back outside of the room. 

"Sorry," he called out. "I didn't think you'd be nearly naked."

I was confused. As he ducked back out of the room, I stood there in my underwear totally perplexed. The guy had kidnapped me. He was clearly not going to allow me to go home to my husband and family, but he left the room like his ass was on fire to avoid seeing me in my underwear.

On the other hand, he'd already told me that if I was going to be having sex, it was going to be with him. None of this made any kind of sense. If I had been in his position, I probably would have gone ahead and raped me, just to get it over with. Maybe he wanted to spoil me a bit or fatten me up, before he raped me. That way he could claim that he'd treated me well at his fucking trial.

"Hey," I called out. He ducked his head around the wall and noticed that I was still practically naked and pulled his head back.

"You do have several robes hanging in your bathroom," he yelled out. I looked into the bathroom and found that he was right. I wondered why there were three robes. I put one on.

"Okay, I'm decent," I yelled and he came into the room. I noticed that he had a bottle of wine and two glasses in one hand and a bottle of Shotz beer in the other. He ducked back out of the room and grabbed a cart that he had soft drinks on.

"So what the hell is going on?" I asked. He just looked at me curiously. "If you're going to rape me anyway, why the hell are you acting so weird about seeing me in my underwear?"

He looked really hurt. Then he nodded his head. "I guess I can understand that," he said. "But you have the wrong idea. You're not going to be raped, ever. You're not going to be hurt, or mistreated, ever."

"But you said that we were going to have sex," I insisted. 

"I said I wanted us to," he reiterated. "It will always be up to you." I was shocked.

"So you mean, you're willing to kidnap me and keep me away from my husband and my family against my will, but you won't rape me."

"It sounds kind of stupid doesn't it?" he admitted.

"So why didn't you want to see me in my underwear?" I asked.

"Victoria, I'm hoping that someday you'll trust me and maybe even like me a little," he said shyly. "I'm not going to earn your trust by invading your privacy. This is your room. It's your part of the house. You're in charge here and..." the intercom on the wall chirped and a voice told us that the pizza had been delivered.

He went back to the intercom and told them to bring it down. A few moments later the woman I'd seen before came in carrying the pizza. She wasn't surprised by anything in the room which told me that she'd been there before. She didn't look directly at me. It was as if she was trying to pretend that I wasn't there. I filed that fact away for later. Maybe she felt guilty about being a part of kidnapping me. She might be useful in helping me to escape.

My captor, whose name was Adam, and I had a conversation that was almost pleasant. He explained everything about the room and the things in it to me. I actually had a computer that I needed to learn how to use. I had full incoming internet access but only limited outgoing access. I even had a credit card for online shopping. He seemed sad when he explained to me that I could order anything I wanted but I couldn't email, message or text anyone. 

He even explained the three robes thing to me. One of the robes was pure silk, another was Cotton and the last was terry cloth. He didn't know which type I preferred. I had to admit that I didn't know either because I'd never owned a robe.

I had cable hooked up to my 72 inch TV and I could watch whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. If I wanted to eat something, I had only to go to the intercom and ask for it. Or I could cook myself. If I needed to cook something that I couldn't do in my small mini kitchen, I could cook it in the huge kitchen in the main house.

As soon as I got used to things and proved that I could be trusted, they'd give me more freedom. The freedom would, of course, come in levels. If I was good, I'd be allowed the use of the entire house and then the grounds of the property. If I proved trustworthy then I'd be allowed to go off of the property and eventually we'd go on vacations and trips.

"Like where?" I asked.

"Like anywhere you want to go," he replied.

"So how do you know that I wouldn't go nuts and start screaming as soon as I got outside and saw the first person who'd listen to me?" I asked. "I could just string you along and be very good until I got outside and then start screaming my head off."

"You're a very young and beautiful woman, Victoria," he said. "I know that this is a very unusual way for people to get together, but I want very much for us to be very good friends. At the same time I'm assuming that you want to live and I assure you that I have no intention of spending the rest of my life in jail. I've taken certain precautions to prevent that. Among them is your implant. I and several of the people on my staff have small key fobs that control your implant. Even when we travel or you go out one of us would always be with you. If you did anything like that, from the first sound you uttered, we'd have our own freedom at stake so we'd push the button immediately. When you tried to go out through the door that was only a small sample of what you'd get. You'd be in too much pain to tell anyone anything and that pain, if left unchecked, could easily kill you." He looked down as he said it.

"All of us have killed people before in the service of our country. We might not like killing, but if it was necessary to assure our own freedom, we wouldn't hesitate. So as much as I think I could love you, I'd push the button in a heartbeat and then start all over again. Even if you got lucky and the person who found you was a skilled surgeon, he'd need to know exactly where the implant is and how to remove it safely. The chances of him having the equipment to do that out on the street somewhere are very remote."

From the look on his face I could tell that he didn't like talking about that.

After that, we just generally chatted about what I could do and what I couldn't. He told me that when he got home from work the next day, he'd take me on a tour of the house and the grounds. When I asked him what I had to do during the day he just smiled and said, "Whatever I wanted."

And he'd told the truth. The following day, when I woke up, I stretched and looked around me thinking that I'd just had the best sleep of my entire life. I was going to eat the rest of the pizza but I noticed a note that he'd left on the table beside my beautiful bed. The note told me to have a great day and that when I woke up or needed anything to simply speak into the intercom and I'd have it.

I took a long bath with real bubble bath. Then I looked through the closet and the drawers to find an outfit. There were so many God damned choices that I didn't know what to pick. I turned on the TV and looked at what some of the women on TV were wearing. I put together an outfit that looked like some of the TV hostesses' clothes. I took my hair out of its customary ponytail and tried to comb it out.

I looked through the drawers and found an assortment of makeup. I'd never really worn much makeup. I was experimenting with some of the stuff when I heard a laugh from behind me. I turned and saw that it was the woman from the previous night.

"You don't know how to put that on do you?" she laughed. I just glared at her.

"And what exactly are you dressing up for? Is this some kind of dress up game?" she asked.

"Excuse me," I said coldly. "I didn't major in kidnap etiquette."

"Look Victoria," she said. "We may as well make the best of this. He's a really good guy and trust me, he went to a hell of a lot of trouble for this. So let's just put the details aside and try to make this as pleasant as possible."

I still got the idea that there was something that she wasn't telling me. She showed me how to put on the eye makeup and everything else. Over the next few weeks, I found out that she'd actually been the one who'd bought a lot of my clothes and set up my room.

She stepped back and looked at my face and nodded her head. "You are pretty," she said. "But we need to do something with this hair. Now, as far as the clothes, Honey he's probably going to show you around the house and the yard. So you're not really going anywhere. I'm pretty sure you'd be more comfortable in just some jeans or some shorts. It's going to be over ninety degrees today. You'll have a lot of chances to get dolled up."

And although I knew she was right, I loved the dress I'd picked out so much that I stubbornly refused to change. When Adam did get home, I knew it immediately because as soon as he got home, he came straight to me. Even though the big door was open, he knocked on it before coming in.

"It's your house, Adam," I said.

"Not this part of it," he answered.

"Well, by all means come in," I said. He came over and looked at me and his entire face lit up. It made me feel really weird. "What?" I asked.

"You look so beautiful," he said. "I wish..." then he stopped.

"You wish what?" I asked.

"I wish we could go out and do something tonight that was worthy of that dress. I would really enjoy showing you off," he said.

I got the weirdest feeling in the pit of my stomach and I had to lock my knees together. Again, I could see that he wasn't lying to me. He was being honest. I'd been married to Zeke for over five years and he'd never made me feel that way.

Adam held out his hand and slowly walked me through the big door to my room. He showed me the entire house and I loved it. The house was beautiful and there was so much of it. We went out and looked at the deck in the rear and the pool. There was a small wooded section off to one side but the entire property was fenced in.

That evening and every one that followed, Adam and I spent a lot of time together. I honestly believed that he spent more time with me during those first couple of months than Zeke and I spent together during our entire marriage. We played games together and watched movies. There were some nights that we grilled steaks and just watched the stars before I returned to my room. 

He actually taught me to swim. I'd never learned because I'd grown up in a trailer park that was nowhere near any water. The closest I'd ever gotten to swimming was taking a bath. And during all of that time, he never touched me. He didn't so much as hug me. 

And I was enjoying it. The strangest thing about it was that he gave me regular reports and no one had reported me missing for the entire first month that I'd been gone. I watched the news every day and there was nothing mentioned on the TV news or in the newspapers about my disappearance. 

Finally, almost three months after I'd left, I saw a short piece on the TV news. They'd interviewed my brother about my disappearance. They'd only reported me missing because my birthday was coming up and some of our extended family had sent me cards and asked about my whereabouts. 

While they interviewed my brother Reb, who didn't seem to be too broken up by my disappearance, they panned slowly across the park. I caught a glimpse for just a second of Zeke. He was trying to stay out of the frame but they caught him anyway. My husband, Zeke, the man I'd been trying to get back to was lying on the sofa on the porch with his feet up and a bottle of beer in his hand. He really didn't seem to be too broken up about my disappearance.

My birthday was a huge deal. Adam celebrated my birthday for a fucking week. Every day of the week he brought me another present home. At the end of the week on my actual birthday, he took me out to a really fancy restaurant. I could tell that he was nervous about it, but he didn't need to be. My need to escape had faded. I was slightly depressed and slightly pissed at the same time. 

I was depressed because the people who'd known me and lived with me all of my life didn't seem to care that I'd gone missing. I was pissed because my fucking husband just took my disappearance in stride. All this time I'd thought that they'd be out putting up posters of putting my face on the back of milk cartons. I guess I'd thought I needed to bide my time and then escape because my family was tirelessly walking the streets looking for me and none of that was true.

The guy who'd kidnapped me, cared more about me than my fucking family.

At the restaurant, I could tell that Adam was nervous. "Adam, Honey, just relax," I said. "I give you my word that I won't try anything tonight. You can trust me."

It turned out to be one of those magical nights like in the movies. It was the most romantic night I's ever had. After we got home from dinner, we had a glass of wine out on the deck and then lay down in the grass watching the stars while he pointed out different constellations to me. I wasn't really looking at the stars though, I was just listening to the sound of his voice and remembering that he had never said a cross word to me. He'd never hit me and all he'd ever done since I got there was to try to make me happy.

On an impulse, I just turned towards him and kissed him on the cheek. He stopped talking and just glowed. I went into shock for a second realizing that I'd kissed the guy who was preventing me from going home. I half expected him to grab me and rip my clothes off right then. But he didn't. He just smiled back at me. I felt awkward so I started talking to fill up the silence.

"I only meant that as a thank you, for all of the trouble you went to for my birthday," I said. "It didn't mean anything else." He nodded silently, and I felt like shit. I was confused. 

On one hand, the guy had been nicer to me than anyone ever had in my life. On the other, I had to constantly remind myself that he had taken me against my will and was preventing me from going home to my family and my husband.

I was also very sure after seeing that story that they were looking for me and would find me sooner or later. 

It was so weird. He was just standing there awkwardly, smiling in front of me, like the little kiss I'd given him meant the world to him. Over the next few weeks, things got even weirder. We went for walks through the neighborhood and I got to meet a few of the neighbors. They all scanned me like they wanted to see what was special about me. And they all seemed to like Adam. 

Shit, I liked Adam. If he hadn't kidnapped me...If he hadn't kidnapped me, I'd still be back in that fucking trailer, fetching Zeke's beer. I think that was the moment when I just stopped thinking and started living.

There were times when I still thought about escaping and looked around to see how closely they were watching me. There were also times when my guilt made me retreat to my room. Adam seemed to sense those times and he never got angry, he just gave me my space until I went looking for him again.

When December came around, bringing snow and cold weather, I realized that Adam and I had been together for six months. There were no longer any stories on the news about me. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about me.

I thought about what winter had been like in the trailer park and laughed. I often ended up having sex with Zeke more for the warmth than because I wanted to. On the other hand, Adam and I frolicked in the snow like a couple of kids and then ran inside to cups of delicious raspberry cocoa. We sat in front of the fire either inside in the fireplace or outside by the fire pit on the deck. We played video games or watched movies together on my giant TV.

Adam always let me pick the movies we watched. He just sat there with that silly smile on his face and watched me out of the corner of his eyes when he didn't think I noticed.

Over the past few weeks, as Adam and I grew closer, Tela, the woman who watched over me had grown more sullen. She was never rude to me, but I got the impression that she'd never approved of them taking me. At first, I'd thought that it was because she was on my side, but later I realized that she was afraid for Adam, not me.

A few weeks before Christmas, I was talking to her and I mentioned Adam's habit of staring at me and she lost it. It was the first time I'd ever seen her lose her cool.

"It's really weird how he just sits there and watches anything I want to watch," I said. "We even watched Steel Magnolias last night. My brother once told me that no man in the world could sit through that movie without throwing up several times. But Adam just sat there smiling. Most of the time, he didn't even look at the screen. He just watched me. I wonder why he does that?"

"Fuck! what a moron," she suddenly screamed. "He does it because he loves you. For some reason he thinks you're really God damned special. Do you even have any idea of how lucky you are? Shit, I wish I could just dump your ass back in that trailer park..."

"I wish you could too," I said. "I'd go in a heartbeat. Let's go now!" She just walked out of the room and I didn't see her for the rest of the day. The next day she apologized. I finally saw what was going on. Tela loved him. The problem was that I wasn't sure that I didn't myself.

That evening as Adam and I watched Game of Thrones, I stared at him out of the corner of my eyes too. I kept catching him staring at me. I finally waited for him to do it again and I stared right back at him. I could see it shining out of his eyes like a big puppy. He really had feelings for me. It made me feel strange. 

The next thing I knew, I was kissing him again and this time it wasn't a quick peck on the cheek. My mouth opened and I wrapped my arms around his neck and my tongue went after his. He responded and I don't know how long we kissed for. It felt like forever and I enjoyed it. Adam has his own taste. It was like mint and pizza combined. I loved the fact that he didn't taste like stale beer and rotting teeth.

Another thing that I loved was that he pulled me to him gently, not forcefully. It was as if he was happy with whatever I gave him. He wasn't interested in taking what he wanted.

I hadn't had sex in six months so I got heated up really quickly. I pressed my tits against his chest and threw a leg over his waist. The next thing I knew he was pushing me away from him. I was shocked.




Better off Dead



"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Tori, you've had more than a couple of glasses of wine and you're all heated up," he said. "This is a big step. Maybe you should think about it first."

I was really kind of hurt so I spoke without thinking. "Are you sure you want to pass this up?" I asked. "I probably won't offer it again." He just looked at me. I got up and walked over to the big door as if I was showing him out. He got up and followed me to it.

"Good night, Tori," he said sadly.

After he left, I jumped on my bed and cried. Later that night, I thought about it and I felt awful. Worse than anything, I realized how stupid I'd been. Adam had given more thought to my own feelings than I had. I'd actually been kind of tipsy and kind of horny although I really didn't consider myself to be a very sexual person. 

I think I'd been kind of insulted that he didn't want to just jump on me and fuck me. But he'd been more concerned with how I'd feel about it and him afterwards. I think that was the moment that I understood what love really meant and that Adam loved me. My own husband treated me like a combination sex toy and slave. Zeke only wanted his beer and his dick wet, but Adam actually cared about my feelings. It was too fucked up to think about.

I woke up the next morning with a hangover and felt even worse. Tela brought my breakfast and looked at me like I was shit on a stick.

*   *   *   *   *   *

Adam

I couldn't believe that I'd blown it with Victoria. It had taken me months to get to the point where we were comfortable with each other. The kisses from the night before had told me that we were making progress and we were doing it steadily. I'd begun to believe that regardless of the situation that brought us together, we'd become a real couple. 

As I slammed my way through the gears, my Mustang growled and grunted. It's brutish power making short work of the drive to work. I buried myself in work that day trying not to think about the mess I'd made of the previous evening. 

For the first time since she'd been with me, Victoria had actually asked me to leave her room. All I could do is hope that someday she'd understand what had really happened and my reasons. I wasn't rejecting her. I just wanted her fully aware of what was going on.

Perhaps I should have told her about Julie. Maybe if she understood what had happened between us, she'd see why I had to be so careful. My heart was barely stitched back together. I wasn't sure it could handle being broken again.

Victoria was a very divisive presence in my life. I'd surrounded myself both at work and at home with a very loyal group of former military people, most of whom I'd personally served with. Some of them, especially Tela, thought that Victoria simply wasn't worth the risk.

Tela had volunteered to put a bullet in Victoria's brain and dump her back at the seven eleven. I had no idea why Tela was so convinced that Victoria needed to go. But she'd always been overly cautious.

The problem was that I already loved Victoria, there was no going back. I loved her far more than I had ever loved Julie, my first wife. Up until last night things had been going almost too perfectly between Victoria and me. I hadn't expected perfection. Nothing worth having is free from a few bumps in the road. So I expected us to have our ups and downs. What I hadn't expected was for it to hurt so much.

And this was all something that was outside of my area of expertise. In business, we analyzed the competition with military precision. We determined their weaknesses and attacked those. We then bought the competition, partnered with them, or put them out of business. I had to admit that we could be ruthless at times but it was business. 

If only romantic pursuits could be handled the same way. But I was no good with emotional attachments. If it had been up to me, I'd have already married Victoria. I'd have told her that from the first day that I saw her in her room, I'd loved her instantly. My head on the other hand, reminded me every day of how badly Julie had hurt me. So I had to be cautious. I'd decided from the beginning that I would never tell her how I felt about her until she told me.

So last night had been a setback but I could handle those. I'd give her some space for a few days and wait for her to come back.

Every day I got reports on all of the people we watched. Surprisingly, Victoria's husband had already taken up with another woman. Less than twenty four hours after Victoria disappeared, he'd moved her into his trailer. The strange thing about it was that the woman was Victoria's own sister. Even stranger was the fact that Zeke had apparently impregnated the woman. 

Yet somehow everyone in the family seemed to be fine with it. There was also the apparent case that no one seemed to really be looking for Victoria. It was almost as if Zeke had just requested another sister to take over her place and gotten one. The police had interviewed Zeke and had gotten him to admit to popping her one that morning before she left to get his beer. They assumed that she'd just taken off and left him. They wanted to charge him with domestic abuse or battery, but without a person to raise the complaint they couldn't. On the other hand, they couldn't charge her with running off with the twenty dollars he'd given her to buy beer because they had no proof he'd given her the money and since she was gone there was no one to charge. They also assumed after visiting the trailer that wherever she was, she was better off. So it was easy to see why the police weren't really pursuing the case with nearly as much vigor as would normally be expected.

*   *   *   *   *   *

  Zeke

  I craned my neck trying to see around Tammy's ass. The woman was never more than two fucking feet away from me. 

  "Tammy, get your fat ass from between me and the TV," I said. She smiled at me and came closer to me so I could watch the end of the race. Dale Jr. hasn't won a race yet this year so I wanted to concentrate because he was in the top five with five laps left to go.

  Tammy, with her huge, fat ass and bulging belly, got down on her knees in front of me. She pulled my pants down and started sucking. After a few minutes, I really didn't care who won the race. She just sucked away and edged me ever closer to the edge and then she pulled her mouth off of me and tickled my balls. I had no control over it. I shot my spunk all over her waiting face. Some guys like their women to swallow. I loved shooting it all over her face. She just smiled there at me with lines of spunk all over her face. 

  Then she took a warm, wet wash cloth and wiped her face down thoroughly, before leaning up to kiss me. It was, as usual, one of the best blowjobs I'd ever had. She even knew that I wouldn't want to kiss her with all of that shit on her face.

  "God damn it woman," I screamed. "You made me miss the end of the race. Now I won't even know who won."

  "Jimmy Johnson was first," she said. "Kyle Busch and his brother Kurt were second and third. Kevin Harvick was forth and Jeff Gordon was fifth. Dale Jr. got passed on the last lap and faded to eleventh. He was running top five all the way to the last lap."

  There was no doubt about it the bitch was amazing. She gave the best blowjobs in the universe and would do it without even being asked. There were some days when she just seemed to appear on the hour and suck my dick. If I even looked at her funny, she'd bend over and spread her legs. She really, really liked to fuck. Even while she was pregnant, we fucked every night. She let me do anything I wanted to her. If I told her to hold her shirt up and let my friends look at her titties, she did it. 

  Of course, there were problems with her too. First off, she's a big ole girl. She's got some tig ole bitties that I just love to squeeze and suck on. But she's also got a huge ass and big hips to go with them. Her pussy ain't exactly what you'd call tight either and after she has my kid, it's probably going to be even looser. There's also the problem that she ain't exactly a looker. But my word is law to her and I can tell just by looking at her that she loves me.

  The only thing Victoria had going for her was that she was pretty. Victoria questioned everything I said to her. She had a smart assed mouth. Victoria gave the worst blowjobs in the world; that is when you could make her do it. And when I got ready to cum, she'd get up and run across the room to make sure that none of my stuff landed anywhere near her. I remember one time when she screwed her face up so badly I could tell she just didn't want to do it. She looked like she was in such pain that I just told her to stop and get the hell away from me. Strangely enough that was the only time she ever did something I wanted her to do, immediately. 

  Then there was the time she invented the air blow job. She held her mouth open so big that she didn't even touch my dick. She just moved her head back and forth while huffing over it.

  And every time that I had sex with Victoria, it was like I had to tie her down and rape her unless she wanted something. When my check came and she wanted a shirt or some panties or some other outrageous demand, she'd have sex with me. But even then she just laid there with her fucking eyes closed. I swear to God, I sometimes thought the woman was asleep while we had sex and then woke up when it was over. That does something to a man's ego.

  I also found out that the bitch had been running a game on me. After she left, running off with my fucking beer money, Tammy had moved some of Victoria's things to put her own clothes in that dresser. Tammy found Victoria's birth control pills. For all of the years that we'd been married, I'd thought that my age had caught up to me and I couldn't make babies. But Victoria had been on the fucking birth control the whole God damned time. It was like she didn't want to have my babies. It was as if she was saying that I was good enough to get her out of her parent's house, but not good enough to have kids with.

  My greatest fear now, and Tammy's, was that someday Victoria would come back. And Victoria was too fucking stuck up to sleep on the couch. Even her God damned name was uppity. She only answered to Victoria. If you called her Vickie or Vic or any other nickname she just refused to answer. She wouldn't even look at you. It had to be Victoria. How the fuck could a woman grow up in a trailer park and have a stick that far up her ass? How could two sisters be so different? The only thing up Tammy's ass was my dick. She's already told me that as soon as we had this first baby, we're going to make another one. I wasn't sure if she just liked kids or if she just liked to fuck. But I wasn't looking forward to Victoria coming back. I was sure she would someday just to spite me, but it wasn't something I wanted to have happen.

   *   *   *   *   *   *

  Victoria

  After her outburst, I knew that I couldn't talk to Tela. In fact, there was no one I could talk to about the events of the past evening. When I thought about it, I realized that this was just one more reason why I needed to get the fuck out of this place. I knew that my family had to be going crazy by then and I doubted my own mental faculties. I believed that I had Stockholm syndrome. 

  Stockholm Syndrome happens when a person who's been kidnapped begins to empathize with her captors. Victims who are abused begin to believe that they deserve the abuse. They also begin to believe in causes that their captors support. 

  In my case I'd actually begun to believe that what Adam was doing to me wasn't that bad. The worst part was that I was beginning to fall for him. I'd actually been ready to cheat on my husband for a man who'd had me snatched off the street and wouldn't allow me to return to my family. I was fighting an internal debate about whether or not I should even try to escape.

  The worst part of all though, was that every time I remembered looking into his eyes when he'd pushed me away. I could tell that it was really hard for him. I got the idea that he'd wanted sex with me as much as I'd been willing to do it with him. But something was more important to him than having sex with me. And the thought of it scared the shit out of me. I got the idea that Adam really loved me. Not the way my husband did. I'm talking about that, in the movies, dying for me if he had to, staying with me forever love.

  Then there was the fact that sex with Zeke was like my Grandmother always described it. It was just something a woman did for her husband. "Ya just close your eyes and take it until it's over," she'd told me. "The first time it hurts like hell, but after that it's just unpleasant."

  And she'd been right. Maybe it was the combination of the fact that my body had gotten used to having sex and I hadn't since I'd been here and the fact that I was slightly drunk, but I'd wanted to have sex with Adam. I couldn't figure out why I'd been ready to do something with a man who held me prisoner that I hated doing with my own husband and only did if I got something in return.

  It took me a couple of more hours of thought to remember my plan for escape. My goal had been to lure them into trusting me and then when they let their guard down to escape. Last night would have been the perfect time for me to advance my plan. Like Mata Hari or Charlie's Angels, I could have advanced my plan by letting Adam fuck me. If he was anything like Zeke, he'd have rolled over and went to sleep after he fucked me. After a few times of that, I could have just snuck out of the house while everyone slept. Of course I'd have to have a way to disable the doors connected to my implant. I also thought that the remotes they carried were like the car door fobs. If I could get a certain distance away from them, they wouldn't be able to hurt me.

  So I spent the rest of the day making myself beautiful for Adam. I knew almost down to the second when he'd be home and sure enough within five minutes of when I expected him, I heard the rumble of his Mustang's engine. I arranged myself casually on the sofa of my room waiting for him.

  I really did have to admit that the way his face lit up every time he saw me did wonders for my ego. I sat there posed for a while waiting for him to come in, but he didn't. After a while, I turned on the TV and watched an episode of Big Bang Theory on demand. He still didn't show up. I remembered that there had been a couple of times when Adam brought people or work home and had to deal with it before he came to see me. But usually, he'd call me on the intercom and let me know what was going on.

  I got on the intercom myself. I spoke to Tela. She told me that Adam was definitely home, but didn't say another word. She asked if I wanted dinner and I told her I did. The cook had made one of my favorite meals and when Tela brought mine to me, I asked her if Adam would be joining me for dinner. We always had dinner together.

  She shocked me when she told me that he'd already eaten. I really couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. By that time, I was allowed the run of the house and even the grounds within reason. If I got too close to the gates I'd feel a warning buzz. There were days when I felt like a dog that lived in a yard with one of those invisible fences.

  I went to Adam's room and noticed that the TV was on. He was lying on his bed, watching one of our shows without me. I peered around the corner and stared at him. He was obviously sad for some reason. He wasn't all lit up. It made me feel sad too. I went back to my room and asked Tela to come to see me.

  "What?" she said when she got there.

  "Why is Adam sad?" I asked. She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  "Tela, I don't need your fucking attitude," I said loudly. She just turned and looked at me. "I already know that you have feelings for him," I continued. "And the best way for you to handle this really shitty situation is for you to do your God damned job and take care of me. Now why is he sad?"

  "Because, he really loves this really stupid bitch, who is really not any good for him," she said acidly. "And that same stupid bitch threw him out of her room last night," she continued. "So, all day long he's been moping around like his fucking dog died."

  "I'm really sorry," I said. "I had no idea. No one has ever gotten upset over me, ever. I just..."

  I was at a loss for words.

  "Victoria, you aren't in a situation to see him at his best," she says. "He really is the kindest, nicest guy I've ever met. But he's just all twisted up inside. I really shouldn't tell you this..." She sat down next to me on the edge of my bed. She pulled her remote out and pressed a button. The big door closed solidly, leaving us alone.

  "You know that a lot of us served in the army together right?" she asked. I nodded my head. "Adam was our CO. We all depended on each other and we never left anyone behind no matter what the situation. We'd all come from different backgrounds and situations but once we got together we were a team no matter what."

  "Anyway, we all had our reasons that we needed to stay alive and get out of that hell in one piece. Adam's was Julie. She was his sweetheart for most of his life. They'd just gotten married a couple of days before he had to report. He had to leave during their honeymoon. The two of them had waited until after they were married to have sex, which is really stupid in this day and age, but they did." I nodded.

  "I didn't have sex until after I married Zeke either," I said. "All of my sisters were fucking anything that walked but I just didn't see the rush. After being married to Zeke for almost five years and having sex with him, I still don't see it."

  "Anyway," she continued. "We were out of the country for eighteen months and when we got back we all went back to our lives. Julie was living in the house that Adam had grown up in. His dad had passed while Adam was away. He had been allowed to go home for the funeral but that had been the only time Adam had been home during the eighteen month deployment."

  "He must have been really happy to see her," I said.

  "Not exactly," said Tela. "She was five months pregnant. Adam was shattered. It destroyed his trust in everything. He had to go through hell to get her out of his life. At first, she tried to run that whole, "I was lonely," bullshit on him. He hired a group of PI's who went around all over the place and found out what had actually happened. Julie had gone out with a few of her girlfriends and gotten really drunk and fucked some guy. She didn't even know who the guy was. They spoke to one of her girlfriends who admitted that it had happened. She even claimed that Julie had cried about betraying Adam for weeks and about how bad the sex had been. But over the next few months, she apparently decided that some sex was far better than no sex at all so she started hitting the bars. She was stupid enough to think that Adam would never find out."

  "After a while, some of her friends refused to go out with her because she'd become such a whore that it was embarrassing to be seen with her. And a lot of people in town turned their backs on her because Adam was out there fighting to defend our country while his wife was back here spreading her legs for any cowboy with a swinging dick. The worst part about it was that Adam didn't have to go. He was the only offspring of his parents. He could have gotten some sort of stateside duty. His dad owned a business, he had enough connections to get Adam at least a non-combat unit. But Adam didn't want any special treatment."

  "Adam loved her a lot, so when she tried to convince him that the baby was his somehow, he tried to believe her. He'd even started going to the doctors' appointments with her. But one day the two of them ran into one of Julie's lovers. The guy never assumed they were together. In his defense, Julie had never even told most of those guys that she was married. So he just walked up to her and squeezed one of her tits. He told her he'd drop by that evening and she'd better be ready. Adam knocked him out cold on the spot. When the guy woke up a few minutes later with an enraged Adam sitting on his chest he told the whole story. That was when Julie hit Adam with her, "I was lonely story," and Adam hired the PI's to get the real skinny."




Better off Dead



"Once he confronted her with the real situation and got the doctor to confirm that he couldn't possibly be the father, he filed for divorce. Julie did everything she could to tug at his heartstrings. She also tried to block the divorce. Adam felt betrayed and got his dander up. He hired the best lawyers he could afford and there was simply too much evidence around and too many people in town who'd seen Julie and hated her for her actions. The weird thing was that even some of the guys she fucked came forward to help. Most of those guys were just guys. If a pretty woman offered them some pussy, they were going to take it and not ask questions. Most of them felt really badly when they found out that she was the wife of a guy serving overseas and admitted in court what had happened. The final blow to Julie was when her doctor testified that it was not possible for Adam to be the father of her baby, but she'd been trying to make him believe that he was."

  "That alone was fraudulent and the judge, who was sympathetic to soldiers, gave them the divorce. In lieu of Julie facing charges for fraud, she agreed to just go away and leave Adam alone. He didn't have to pay her any type of support or alimony. Most of us looked at it like we'd won. But Adam fell further and further into depression. He didn't date. He didn't trust anyone, especially not women. Do you know that until recently, even most of the secretaries and clerical workers at Adam's company were men. He simply didn't hire women period. Julie not only broke his heart, she broke his spirit."

  "Well, why did he hire you?" I asked.

  "That's part of my problem," she admitted. "Adam sees me as a member of his squad. I'm a soldier to him and I'm also like family. As much as I love him and would never ever betray him, he just doesn't even see me as a woman. It's just not fair."

  "Anyway, we figured that going to hookers might be the next best thing. We tried explaining it to him. There'd be no emotional attachments. He'd simply pay for a service and then walk away when he'd gotten it. If he liked the girl, he could ask for her again. If he didn't, he'd just get someone else. We went to one of the best brothels in Reno. It simply didn't work. Adam isn't exactly a zipless fuck type of guy. He needs some kind of emotional attachment. It isn't just about sex for him."

  "Shit, neither of you have had sex in months and from the day you got here he's been as happy as hell. You said it yourself the other day when you asked me why he lit up every time he sees you. He feels good just being around you. That's why I'm glad the two of you are going through this. He's becoming too attached to you. Sooner or later, we're going to screw up and you're going to get out. We have contingency plans for that. We know that we'll all just have to disappear with new identities, because as soon as you get out, you'll go straight to the police and they'll try to arrest us. But trust me, they'll never find us."

  "Like I said, it's stupidly risky, but most of us love Adam. We'd do anything for him. So if you make him happy, so be it. I just hate seeing him sad because you're playing fucking games with his head. He deserves better. And yes, Victoria, I know that what we did to you is awful. But none of us, especially him have ever hurt you. All he's tried to do is make you happy. I see this as the beginning of the end. He really does have feelings for you; very strong ones. I think if the two of you stay miserable for a while, he'll offer you a deal."

  "What kind of deal?" I asked.

  "Adam is a really fair guy," she said. "I think that as soon as he's emotionally stronger, and I don't know how long that will take, he'd probably let you go and give you some money not to pursue prosecution."

  "How long would that take?" I asked. 

  "I don't know," she said. "But all of this is really up to you. I'm pretty sure you're happy not to have him there in your room staring at you, aren't you?"

  As she walked away and left the door open, I turned off the lights in my room and the TV as well. It was well after ten o'clock and I thought about everything we'd discussed. And I realized for the first time then something that I would never have expected. I wasn't happy either. I had gotten all dolled up waiting for him to come to me and he'd done exactly what I'd told him to do. I'd given him the idea that he wasn't welcome in my room and he hadn't returned. The funny thing was that when he hadn't returned, I went looking for him. His sadness bothered me and it wasn't Stockholm syndrome. I had to admit that I missed him. I pulled the covers over myself and went to sleep. It took me a long time to get to sleep too.

  The next day I got up as usual and went to his room. He was at work already as usual. I got all dolled up again and this time I wore things that he loved to see me in. Adam didn't like to see me dressed like a whore but he loved my legs and my tummy. So I put on a blouse and tied it up under my breasts and a casual pair of short but not too-short shorts. I went out on the deck and sat on the edge of the pool and splashed my legs in the water. 

  He went into the kitchen once and he saw me. I'd been watching the kitchen out of the corner of my eye and saw him when he went in there. I turned and we made eye contact. He was even sadder. It was like being away from me was hurting him. My heart broke even more. I found myself wishing that he'd act like Zeke and just come over and slap the shit out of me and tell me to get myself straight.

  In my marriage, even when Zeke was wrong he was right. He was the man so his word was law. In this case, I'd been wrong as hell. Adam had tried to protect me from my own stupidity. He had refused to take advantage of me while I was drunk and he was the one suffering for it. The funny thing about it was that I was suffering too. I missed his company and his laughter and the way that he treated me. And if that was Stockholm syndrome, fuck it.

  He left the kitchen and I knew that I couldn't take another night like the previous one. I went back to my room through the darkened house. I took off all of my clothes and got into my bathtub. I got the best smelling bubble bath I had and I took a long bath. When I got out, I grabbed the silk robe off of the back of my door and left my room. 

  I walked up the stairs and went to Adam's room. I didn't bother knocking on the door I just turned the knob and pushed it open.

  He was lying on his bed watching TV.

  "Victoria, you're supposed to knock before you just walk into someone's room," he said. "I could see how surprised he was to see me. I think he'd just blurted that out in a panic because he couldn't think of anything else to say. I turned off his TV and climbed up on his bed.

  "Victoria," he whined.

  "Shut up," I snapped. I shed the robe as I crawled across the large bed and straddled him. "You were right, Adam," I said, kissing him. The first kiss was just as peck on his lips. The second had more passion and the third was like our last kiss. Our tongues wrapped around each other and I got weak in the knees as he sucked the breath out of me. 

  "Vic..." he began.

  "I'm not drunk this time," I said softly. He relaxed under me and started to kiss me back, equaling my passion. His hands started to stroke my back and they made me feel really good. Something strange was happening to me. His hands moved further down my back and they tentatively cupped my ass cheeks. As he pulled them, I could feel my pussy opening and I started to get wet. I began for the first time to question my grandmother's ideas about sex.

  "Sorry," he mumbled between kisses and moved his hands back up to my back. I reached down and put his hands back on my ass. After a few more kisses, he rolled me over onto my back. My pussy was so wet it was making squishing sounds. I didn't know what was going to happen but I was afraid. 

  I felt like a whore because I knew that we were going to have sex and I'd be cheating on my husband. I'd often suspected that Zeke cheated on me, but then all men did or at least I suspected they did. But I had never cheated on him. I think that in a lot of ways that had always been because I'd never really been that deeply into sex. But at that moment, for the first time, I wanted to get fucked. My insides were straining, even as he started kissing and sucking on my ears. 

  By the time he got to my breasts, I was egging him on and begging him to suck my titties and suck them hard. 

  And he did. He licked and sucked and nipped at every square inch of them. By the time he got to my nipples, they were so hard I thought they would snap off. I was already sweating and we had barely started. Adam licked my tummy. He stuck his nose in my navel and alternated between kissing and biting the flesh of my tummy. I had tingles all over. I had never even thought that someone touching my tummy could get me so hot.

  When his tongue touched the flesh of my inner thighs, I was embarrassed. I was gushing so much juice that I didn't want him down there. 

  "Adam, please fuck me," I begged. Even as I said the words I was shocked. I couldn't keep my legs still. They splayed open like some nasty porn star's legs. Then his tongue touched my pussy. It was only the outer lips but I couldn't stand it. I started humping my hips up to meet his tongue. All thoughts of cheating on Zeke vanished. Fuck Zeke. If this was how cheating whores got treated, I was ready to sign up. Sex with my husband had never been this exciting and we still hadn't done it.

  That tongue started teasing me. "Oh yeah," I grunted. Adam moved in and tentatively licked my engorged inner labia. I looked down and was surprised. For most of my life I've been an innie. My inner lips don't stick out much. Zeke always said that I didn't have much lunch meat on display. Not that he ever went down there. We'd been married for years and the only part of his body that had ever touched my pussy was his dick. He had never even fingered me. He said it was unnatural.

  My entire body was throbbing as Adam probed me with his tongue. My inner lips were actually so engorged with blood that they stuck out a bit and were so bright a pink that it looked like they glowed.

  Adam took his fingers and gently pulled them apart and then he blew a gust of air across my most sensitive parts. I thought I was going to piss on myself. Then he started lapping up my juices like a dog licking up soup. My eyes rolled back in my head and I screamed. 

  It was almost as if I'd been tasered. My entire body started shaking. After I came down from whatever he'd done to me, he just smiled up at me. Then he started again. This time it was different. He took very long strokes, starting almost at my asshole, which really had me embarrassed and each stroke got longer and longer, until he gently flicked my button. When his rough taste buds touched my sensitive clit, I went through the roof again. He held my legs down to keep them from flailing around as he climbed up to my face again. I kissed him desperately, tasting the mixture of his skin and my juice on his lips.

  Then I felt him gently rubbing the head of his dick against my hungry vagina. He looked at me as if he wanted to know if I was sure I was ready for this final step.

  "Tori?" he asked.

  "I'm ready," I gushed and I really was. I craved him at that moment.

  "We can't take this one back," he said.

  "Who wants to?" I asked. "I want you, Adam."

  He pushed forward and it felt so different from anything I'd ever done before. With Zeke, all I ever felt was pressure. It just felt like he forced his dick into my opening and I followed Grandma's rules and just let him do it.

  This felt like the two of us just melted together. Nothing that I'd ever done in my life felt as natural or as right. I was so wet that there was no pain or any unpleasantness. It felt heavenly. And when he started to thrust himself inside of me, I had no choice. My body just reacted to his and pumped itself right along with him. My arms reached up around his neck and pulled him closer to me. At that moment I needed to kiss him. My legs curled around his back and one hand rested on his ass pulling him even deeper inside of me.

  My head was fuzzy and I could barely make coherent thoughts, we were just locked together in a rhythm that was as old as time. It felt like my insides just opened up and swallowed him. I felt the walls of my pussy fluttering. I had never in my life felt anything like that. Then it felt like I just fell over a cliff trying desperately to hold onto him. A few moments later, like a dam bursting, I felt his hot stream, pulsing and watering my inner flower. It started me to convulsing again.

  Adam tried to roll off of me but I wanted to feel his weight on me. I clutched at him like I'd die if he stopped touching me and that was the way I felt. "I...I...love you Tori," he said. I was shocked. I didn't know what to say. I should have told him that I loved him too, but I was just too shocked. It was one thing to have Tela tell me that he loved me. It was completely different to have him say it. His words just carried more weight. It was as if he'd trusted me with a very special gift that I just didn't deserve.

  Then I ruined it all with what I thought was a joke. I looked deeply into his eyes and I wanted to tell him how I felt. But a combination of guilt about what I'd just done and my dumb assed sense of humor destroyed that beautiful moment. "I thought you said you'd never rape me," I said flippantly.

  The look on his face spoke of pure horror. The eyes that I'd grown to love having stare at me opened in surprise. He drew in a rasping gasp as if someone had punched him in the stomach. I knew I'd hurt him then because he actually grabbed his stomach and ran for the bathroom where he retched loudly.

  I was in as much shock as he was. Where he'd reacted to my poor joke by taking it seriously, I remembered something very important that I'd somehow forgotten. Just that afternoon, Tela had explained to me how fragile he was when it came to emotional situations. The poor man had already had his heart shattered and been screwed over by one woman in the worst possible way. Then he reached out to me. Sure he had a truly bizarre way of doing it, but I truly didn't care about that at that moment. After the experience we'd just shared, I really didn't care about the details, I felt like we'd touched each other's souls. 

  He had made me feel more loved and more alive in those few minutes than in the rest of my life in total before then. He had to understand that. He just had to know that I'd meant it as a joke...didn't he?

  I mean, I'd been the one who came to his room looking for HIM. I'd walked in and closed his door and taken my clothes...well my robe off and climbed up on top of him. I had even informed him that I wasn't drunk. I had begged him to suck my tits and I'd begged him to fuck me. He had even stopped and asked me if I was sure. He had to know that I was joking.

  "Adam!" I called out. He didn't answer and then I heard it. That God awful sound like Satan's claws scratching on the gates of hell. I knew instantly that Adam had somehow gotten into that car of his and he was gone.

  I had no idea how he'd gotten out of the bathroom let alone the house. I was nearly hysterical. I jumped off of the bed and ran down the stairs naked as a jay bird. Damon and Tela were in the main hallway trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Adam obviously hadn't had time to tell them a thing. I tried to rush between them and out the front door. Damon tried to stop me, but I was determined and I ducked past him and right at Tela who didn't even lift a finger to try to slow me down.

  I heard Damon's voice scream, "No," just as I got to the door. I felt the buzzing, but it had been so long since Adam had shown me what could happen that I'd forgotten about it. I had free reign of all of the grounds but outside of the front door was a no-no. Just as I crossed the threshold White hot pain lanced through my body. It was so intense that I actually wet myself. I blacked out almost immediately. 

  The first time that I'd been hit by it, I'd been walking, so as I'd felt the pain increase I'd been able to slow down and back up. But this time, I'd been running as fast as I could. The pain was so intense that it had been like running into a fucking wall. Even as I fell, I felt Damon's strong arms grabbing me and dragging me away from the door until the pain stopped.

  Through a haze I heard him angrily addressing Tela. "You could have at least tried to stop her. It is our job to protect her you know?" he said sharply.

  "Fuck her," she retorted. "If the little bitch has hurt him or started him down that path again...They'll never find a body. Put her ass back in her cage, while I try to call Adam. And until he gets back and says otherwise, she's on lockdown in her own room. No more running around the house naked for her."

  I woke up in my room later. It must've been sometime after midnight. Tela was sitting in the chair by my bed watching my TV.

  "My head hurts," I said looking at her. "Where's Adam?"

  "What did you think would happen?" she asked sarcastically. 

  "You could have tried to warn me," I snapped. "I was out of it. I had to try to catch him."

  "His car puts out over five hundred horsepower," she smirked. "What were you hoping for? Were you going to flash your magic boobs and hope they'd slow the car down?"

  I just glared at her. "Where is he?"

  "I have no idea," she said. "I don't even know why he left, but I have a feeling that you do, so spill it."

  "It's personal," I said. She looked at me with her head tilted then. I don't know why she did that but I had a feeling that it wasn't good.

  "I can't kill Damon, he's family," she said sharply. I got the idea that the fact that Damon was still in the house had saved my life. "Look we both want him to be okay," she said levelly. "As a matter of fact, when you think about it, both of us really want the same end goal. We both want you the fuck out of here. So lets' try to work together on this one for now and maybe we'll get you home later."

  I didn't have the heart to tell her that I really wasn't sure I even wanted to leave anymore.

  "We uhm...Well, we uh," I stuttered out.

  "You fucked," she supplied. "Jeezus just say it. It's not like it was a God damned secret. The whole neighborhood probably knows about it as loudly as you were screaming." She looked at me with jealousy written all over her face. Not even her sarcasm and nasty attitude could mask it.

  "Anyway," I said. "We didn't just fuck. We did something really special. It was beautiful. I've never felt that way or done anything like that."

  "Aren't you married?" she asked. "Your husband f..." she stopped talking abruptly. I thought she'd been about to say, "Your husband fucks you."

  "But it's never been like that," I said. "I swear that was the best time I've ever had in my life. I don't just mean the best sex. That was the best thing I've ever experienced. Then he said it. He told me that he loves me." Her eyes turned to narrow slits and her whole mouth hardened.

  "Tela, it was the weirdest moment. I didn't know what to say, so I made a joke and..."

  She just looked at me as if I was stupid. "He bared his heart to you and you joked about it?" she asked, as if she hadn't heard me. It only made me feel even worse.

  "It must have been one hell of a joke," she said shaking her head. "Let's hear it."

  I told her what I'd said and she almost fell out of her chair. "You're a fucking moron," she hissed.

  "Rape is nothing to joke about. It's one of the most horrible things that can ever happen to a woman. It's also one of the most heinous crimes you can ever accuse a man of. Then there's the fact that Adam is carrying a lot of guilt about you.."




Better Off Dead



She led me to the chair recently occupied by Benny. I sat down gratefully and she walked away from me, out of my door and out of my life. I was in the middle of feeling sorry for myself when she walked back through the door and back into my life. The angel of mercy had returned with two paper cups of coffee. She walked past me into my office to return a moment later with the flask that I kept in my top drawer for special occasions. "Take a sip."

"Yes Ma'am." I obeyed and she topped my cup up with whisky from the flask. I decided I liked this person more and more.

She put the flask on the reception desk and sat on the arm of my chair. "Wow! That's a huge lump you have on your head, it's no wonder you thought you'd been hit by a truck. Who did this to you?"

"It was a truck called Nigel."

"Nigel? Now that has really smashed my preconceptions. All of the Nigel's that I have met have had difficulty holding their hands straight because they have had no real strength in their wrists."

"This particular Nigel is around six feet twenty, two hundred and fifty pounds and an intelligence that wouldn't bother the scorer at an IQ test. Now the important question; who are you and what were you doing walking past my door?"

"My name is Lucy Jones. My mother, Laura Lee Jones, hired you to find my father. I was actually looking for you and the reason I walked past your door was because it was open and I didn't see the sign on it the first time. It was only when I came back that I saw you on the floor and when I came in I saw the sign. You could at least have it rewritten instead of just taping some paper over the other name on it."

I must admit to some confusion here; Laura Lee didn't look old enough to have a daughter Lucy's age, although the lighting when I met her could have confused me, and Lucy looked far too old to be Laura Lee's daughter, unless she was the result of Statutory Rape or the Bible Belt breeding cycle. "What do you know about your father's disappearance?"

"I knew that he had financial problems, there was nothing particularly new in that. Ever since I went to college he would ring me asking for money, Mom wouldn't give him any more so he figured he could tap me for some of the allowance that Mom gave me. If I could I would help but a couple of weeks ago I couldn't and he sounded really desperate. He begged me to see if I could get an advance on my allowance but I couldn't do that because my next allowance was already committed to books and tuition."

"So you told him 'no'?"

"He sounded as if he was crying over the phone. I couldn't tell if he was genuine or it was just an act, but I was really tired of him ringing me begging for money so I got my room-mate to answer it for me and tell him I wasn't there so he couldn't do it anymore. The last time I spoke to Mom I asked for an advance. She wasn't happy when I told her why, I couldn't lie to her because she was always able to see through my attempts at lying to her so I gave up."

"You're close to your mother aren't you?"

"Yes, we are very much alike and I admire her for what she has achieved with her life. She has really had to struggle you know. She was married young and I believe that it was because of me that she married, unless of course I was six months premature. No, she didn't tell me that but I came across her marriage certificate among some papers I was looking through and I can do basic Math."

"She worked hard to make ends meet because my father was always broke, he didn't work much, he couldn't keep a job for long, so he began gambling to try to make money but more often than not he lost it. Mom got a job working in the bar and she ended up running the business and doing it so well that when the owner retired he sold it to her for a very reasonable price. Pop accused Mom of having an affair with him but I knew that couldn't be true, Mom wasn't like that."

"Did your Father work there too?"

"If what he did could be called work. He used to strut around behind the bar serving drinks but he probably gave more away than he sold, especially to the women. At nights when Mom needed him most he would disappear for hours at a time. Mom eventually caught him having sex with one of the regulars out back in the alley so she threw him out."

"Which just about brings us up to now?"

"Yes. Do you think that you can find him?"

"It looks highly unlikely that I will ever find him alive. The person who dealt the cowardly blow to the back of my head is a goon who works for one of the bookies your father owed money to and Benny, that's the bookie, all but admitted that he was behind your father's disappearance. If that's the case, well let's put it this way, when Benny makes people disappear they stay disappeared."

"Are you satisfied that Benny had my father killed?"

"Why do you ask?"

"What if he is taking credit for the hit just to bolster his reputation?"

"Well then I sure as Hell wouldn't want to tell him he's lying."

"Can you think of anyone else who wanted him dead?"

"The line forms on the right Babe, you can take your pick. If I didn't know better I should even include your Mother, she wouldn't lose too much sleep if he turned up dead."

"Where do we go from here?"

"What do you mean 'we' white girl?"

"I want to help, I want to be there when the answer is found, whatever that is."

"It could get nasty, we're not dealing with the organizers of a Sunday School picnic here."

"I'm a big girl, I'll take my chances."

"Speaking of big; just how old are you?"

"I'm twenty, I'll be twenty-one next month."

"How old is Laura Lee, I wouldn't have put her much past forty?"

"Good guess, she has only just turned forty although I wouldn't mention that to her, she's a little sensitive about that milestone."

"What are you like at rustling up some more coffee?"

"When I said help I meant the real thing, not just running errands."

"Okay, you stay here and I'll get the coffee, how do you like yours?"

"I'm sorry. I'll get the coffee. How do you like yours?"

"Black, strong with three sugars. Actually if you get from the delicatessen downstairs just tell them it's for me, they know how I like it."

When she returned, it had taken longer than I thought it would, she had this strange look on her face. "I've been having an interesting conversation with the people downstairs. You've had a hard time of it of late haven't you?"

"You can't believe everything that you're told, especially not from those gossip mongers."

"Your partner left and took your wife with him, that must have hurt?"

"Yeah it did, now can we drop the subject."

"All right consider it dropped. Now what do we do, are we going out to rough someone up to get him to talk?"

"You've been reading too many dime store novels for your own good. It doesn't work that way, it's usually just a lot of boring foot slogging."

"Okay then, let's go."

"Yeah Boss, right Boss, anything you say Boss, just how high would you like me to jump, Boss?'

"Sorry, that's what comes from being my Mother's daughter."

I took my coffee and walked into my office and sat down. By the time Lucy had thought about it and followed me in I had taken a note pad from my top drawer and was making a list.

"What's that?" Lucy asked pointing to the list.

"My grocery shopping for the week. No, it's a list of what I know, what I suspect and what I need to confirm before I venture forth."

"Oh. What do you know for sure?"

"Monday two weeks ago your mother caught your father in a compromising position with the 'beautiful' Sadie and decided that she'd had enough of him so she threw him out. This was just after she had a visit from a couple of Benny's thugs demanding money with menaces. Since then nothing has been known of his whereabouts or whether he is in fact still with us."

"I know that he is, in all probability, dead, and if that is the case I know who it was that would have carried out the dastardly deed. What I don't know is; where the body is, that is if there is one, who ordered the hit, although our friend Benny is the prime suspect for that, and just how he met his untimely demise."

"What I need to confirm is the identity of the person who ordered the hit, where the body is if there is one, if not where the elusive Andy is now. It could be that he is lying low with one of his lady friends. In fact that would be a good place to start. A trip to see Laura Lee for some directions, I think."

I locked the door behind us and we walked down to the stairs. "Why don't we use the elevator?"

"This way is quicker."

Once on the pavement I began looking for a cab. One thing that is certain in this world is that when you need a cab to get somewhere there is never one around and by the time I saw one cruising towards us it would have been a waste of time hailing, it we were that close to our destination.

"Don't you have a vehicle of your own?"

"No. They are too much trouble in this part of town, you can never find a park when you need one, and even if you do you would be very lucky to find your wheels still on it when you returned." The bar was open so we went inside. There was a layer of smoke drifting through the room, it hadn't quite filled the space between floor and ceiling. Give it time.

"What are you doing here?" I was just about to come up with some sort of witty riposte when I realized that the question was directed at Lucy. "Why aren't you at college?"

"I had to come and see what was happening. Pop hadn't called asking for money in over a week and then you tell me that he is missing but you didn't seem concerned about him. I found out that Gerry was helping out so I went to see if I could help in any way. It was just as well, I found him unconscious on his floor. Someone had taken a dislike to him."

"I'm not paying good money for your tuition to have you drop out of college."

"Don't worry. I'm up to date with my assignments so I can take some time off."

"What have you found out?"

My turn to speak. "I can safely say that Benny knows more about this than he cares to admit. If he is responsible I know that my former partner is somehow involved and I can't wait to pin something on him. Apart from that, I can't prove anything at this stage so I just keep looking. I don't suppose you know the address, or where I can find his friend Sadie do you?"

"There's a rooming house just around the corner that she uses during the day, they rent rooms by the hour but she has a long term deal probably involving favors to the caretaker, so she stays there full time."

I wasn't looking forward to this but I went anyway. There was an alleged man who answered my knock on the door marked 'Caretaker' in the foyer. "Go easy on the door will ya."

"I'm looking for Sadie."

"Aren't they all, room six upstairs."

I wasn't depressed when I got here but I was by the time I reached her door. I hesitated for a couple of minutes before knocking. I could hear a shuffling noise from the other side, it was getting closer. There must have been at least four locks on the door and eventually it opened a couple of inches. "What do you want?"

"I want to ask you a few questions, can I come in?"

The door opened up fully in answer to my request and I followed her into her room. There was a double bed against the wall and it looked as if the bed linen hadn't had the benefit of soap and water for some time. Over by the window there was a table and two chairs. On the table was a pile of dirty dishes, several glasses with the remains of drinks in the bottom, an ash tray overflowing with ash and dog ends of cigarettes. To complete the picture the room had a smell about it that turned my stomach. How anyone could contemplate any involvement with this person in this place was beyond me and believe me I had seen some pretty disgusting places in my time.

"You know Andy Jones don't you?"

"Who?"

"Andy Jones. From the bar around the corner where you were drinking last night."

"I don't remember last night."

"You got caught by his wife screwing in the back alley a couple of weeks ago."

"Shit, I would have screwed dozens of men since then, you don't expect me to remember that far back."

"If you do happen to see him or remember anything about him or where he is at let Laura Lee know at the bar, she can get a message to me." I was going to give her my business card but decided that it would be a waste of time, she'd probably lose it, beside which the nearest pay phone was further away than the bar.

I walked back to the bar. I was almost going to go back to the office but figured that this would upset Lucy and it would be good to have assistance with this investigation. Mother and daughter had overcome the tension of their meeting and were both working behind the bar.

I had hardly slid onto the stool when they both descended on me. Laura Lee pausing just long enough to pour both of us a double from the bottle of good stuff under the bar. She slid mine across to me. "Where's mine?" Lucy asked.

"You're too young to drink."

"I've drunk before."

"In this place you will not be served a drink until you're twenty-one, do you think I want to lose my license?"

"Lucy, how did you know that I was looking for your father?"

"I went to the police and spoke with Lieutenant Callaway and he told me that you had been in asking questions this morning and he told me where your office was. By the way he said to tell you that your ex-partner isn't happy with you after they impounded his car."

"Boo hoo to him. I'm not about to lose sleep over him." 

Chapter 3

There was a meet at the local tack today so I thought that I could kill several birds with the one stone by attending. I also thought that it would do my reputation no harm at all to be seen with a gorgeous young thing called Lucy, so I invited her along. "Where are we going and what are we going to do?"

"We're going to the track where all of the self respecting bookies hang out. We will wend our way to the mounting yard where they congregate to check out the horses before the off."

The track was crowded for a mid-week meeting and we had to force our way though the punters to get to the mounting yard. We stopped just inside the entrance and I pointed out the bookies to her. "That guy in the dark pinstripe and the snappy hat is 'Four-finger Freddie'. He had a disagreement with a pair of bolt-cutters wielded by a goon working for the man over there in the camel hair overcoat, one Miklos Theodopolous aka Mickey the Greek. Over there hiding behind my new best friend Nigel is Benny, don't let his size fool you, he is one mean son-of-a-bitch, it doesn't pay to cross him, just ask your father if we ever find him alive." Benny was deep in conversation with his trainer. "He's probably discussing whether to pull his horse to get better odds next time up or let it run on its merits today."

"Are you trying to tell me that the races are fixed?"

"You got it, and that is why the mug punters don't win, they don't stand a chance."

"But isn't that cheating?"

"It's called tilting the odds in your favor. Now there's someone we should have a chat to," I said, pointing to a well dressed woman casting a knowing eye over the runners. "That lady is Sophie Lawrence, her husband is one of the top trainers but she is the brains of the team. She can spot a horse that's performance has been chemically enhanced one way or the other. I wouldn't go as far as to suggest that her husband educated her in the finer points of equine pharmacology, but what she doesn't know about doping isn't worth knowing. I think a chat is called for." I led the way to where Sophie was watching the last minute preparations. "Hiya Sophie, which horse should I stay right away from?"

"Gerry Pretty, long time no see, I thought that you were smarter than to hang around the track, it's a sucker's game."

"I know. Don't worry I'm not here to lose what little money I have on the roulette wheel of equine endeavor, I just thought that I should come over and pass the time with the most important person here."

"Get to the point Gerry, what do you want from me?"

"You keep your ear to the ground, I'm looking for Andy Jones who, it appears, owes several of our bookmaking fraternity large sums of money. I'm tossing up whether he has gone to ground somewhere or he's currently shark bait. Have you heard anything?"

"Sorry lover, I can't help you. If I was him and in his position I would have been long gone, Mexico has a certain attraction for those who don't want to be found. Just a suggestion, but you never heard it from me. Hmm, I hope the connections of Black Prince have paid the stewards to test yesterday's sample because any taken after he wins will show positive, and you never heard that from me either. See ya Gerry." She gave me peck on the cheek and walked off.

"You seem very friendly with her." Lucy was watching Sophie's back looking for a place to put the knife.

"You're not jealous are you? We've known each other less than a day."

"I'm not jealous! I'm just making sure that you keep your mind on the job. Now, are we going to place a bet on Black Prince?"

"If I want to eat tonight I guess that I'd better." So we joined the queue, just making it in time before the off to get my fortune on Black Prince to win. We walked outside and made our way to the finish line. My money finished a good ten lengths in front of the next horse.

"Where are you taking me tonight?" Lucy was hanging off my arm as if I was the Shah of Persia. I hadn't even counted the notes before I shoved them into my pocket. 

As we left the track I checked to make sure that my packet had remained un-picked and headed for the office, stopping for coffee at the downstairs delicatessen. "Good to see that you're not mortally injured Mister Pretty." Maurie Schwartz the owner greeted me as we entered, "I was certain that you would have been in hospital for some time when this beautiful young lady told us that you had been badly assaulted."

"I guess I've just got a hard head Maurie, it comes in handy in my line of work." Lucy was looking over the pastries in the display counter.

"She is a very beautiful girl, no?"

"She is a very beautiful girl, yes. She is also very much too young for me to even think about."

"Mister Pretty, you should never stop thinking about such things, touching is another matter."

"Please, may I have a couple of these pastries?" Lucy was pointing at some pastries that would send my blood sugar levels through the roof.

"Certainly my Dear, are they just for you or do you want enough for Mister Pretty as well?"

"Sufficient for both of us."

"Then four it should be." He picked four from the display and placed them in a bag. I noticed that Lucy made no attempt to pay him so I had to peel off some more money from my winnings.

"When are we going to Mexico?" Lucy was sitting on my desk, her stocking clad legs dangerously close to my hands, fingering cream from the side of her mouth and sucking it off her finger. The way that she sucked her finger had me disturbed, this was not something taught in the best schools.

"Who said we were going to Mexico?"

"I thought that the lady at the track, who you forgot to introduce me to by the way, as much as told you that that was where Dad was hiding."

"She was just saying that if he was smart, and someone who owes bookies as much as he does hardly qualifies as smart, that would be where he could possibly be hiding. It was a long way from telling me that he was definitely there."

"But you will try to find him won't you?"

"Look Lucy, Mexico is a big place full of people who don't speak English and call us Gringos, what makes you think that they would help us find him?"

"We could start by going to the race tracks to see if he was there."




Better Off Dead



"Possibly, but I think that we should explore all lines of enquiry here before we think of traipsing off to sunny Mexico. Now, next item on the agenda, if I am to take you to some Ritzy restaurant for dinner, you may need to change, and possibly freshen up a little, I have my pride you know, and I don't want to be seen squiring a young lady, pretty as you are, who has the appearance of just stepping off a Greyhound from LA, so where are you staying?"

"I haven't checked in anywhere yet."

"So you're not staying with your mother then?"

"Hell no. Much as I like my mother, one of the reasons that I went to an interstate college was to get away from her. She's fine in small doses, very small doses. I thought that, seeing as we're working together, you would put me up at your place."

"That's out of the question, aside from the moral issue of having a young girl staying in my apartment, there's the fact that you're my client's daughter, what would she say to that arrangement?"

"She doesn't need to know."

"What if she asks?"

"I'll tell her that I'm staying at the 'Y'."

I'll give Lucy this, for a pushy broad she's fun to be with. We went to my apartment and I waited while she did what she had to do in the bathroom and then I hit the shower. I was just lathering up the important bits when I heard her come into the bathroom. "Sorry but I forgot something." I could see her take a quick look at me before turning away and leaving the room. One part of me was feeling disturbed again while another part was hoping that she was impressed with what she saw. I'm going to have to stop having these thoughts.

After her primping she looked stupendous and out of the league of the bar and grill I was going to take her to, so I had to change my plans quickly and call a restaurant that owed me a favor and make a reservation. She was no slouch when it came to eating, she reached across the table and took a couple of fries from my plate, stuffing them into her mouth like she was sucking a . . . I'm really going to have to stop having these thoughts.

"Tell me about your ex-partner, did he really run off with your wife?"

"Yeah, they apparently had been lovers for some time. While I was out detecting he was in my wife. They're now getting everything that they deserve, their business isn't as profitable as they had hoped."

"Is that why you told Lieutenant Callaway that he was mixed up in Dad's disappearance?"

"Partly, It gave me great pleasure thinking about him squirming while the cops tore his car apart. I hope that they found something."

"Do you speak to your ex?"

"As little as possible, just enough to make her feel guilty. Let's change the subject, you're in college Right?"

"Yeah, Mother insisted that I should get an education so that I didn't end up working in some sleazy bar like she did."

"So how is it going?"

"Good, I'm ahead on my course assignments and my grades are good too."

"I bet that you have lots of friends."

"No, not really. I spend most of my time studying so I don't have time for friends."

"No boyfriends then?"

"No, I have had the odd one or two, not at the same time of course, I'm not that sort of girl."

"What about lovers? You're not going to tell me that you're still a virgin are you?"

"No, I'm not still a virgin and you can blame one of my professors for that. He convinced me that I needed extra tuition, unfortunately for me he seemed to have forgotten that I wasn't studying reproductive biology. It didn't last long after I caught him with another student."

We talked about this and that while we ate our food and drank our wine. It was quite late when we arrived back at my apartment. I gave her my bed and made up the fold-up bunk for myself. I was just drifting off to sleep, having thoughts that I shouldn't have been having, when I heard her come into the room. She slipped into my bed, I know this because there's barely enough room for one, and snuggled against me. "Are you asleep?" So I pretended to be asleep. Then her hand reached around me and she grabbed my stiff cock. "You've been having naughty thoughts about me haven't you?"

"What? No, never, I don't have those kinds of thoughts."

"Bullshit, you're just like every man I've known."

"Listen to the vastly experienced girl, how many men have you known, I presume you mean in the biblical sense, thousands?"

"I'm not that kind of girl." They way that she was stroking him suggested otherwise. I rolled over to face her. If I thought that she was beautiful fully clothed, she was even more beautiful fully unclothed. I just had to touch her, my hands just had to cup her breasts and my fingers just had to go to work on her nipples. She was moaning softly and her hand was working wonders on my ego. I was king of the hill, cock of the roost, all of those things, and I was in danger of a premature end to this pleasure. She had other ideas and she was going to drag out the pleasure, so she stopped what she was doing and, opening her legs, she fed him into her waiting body. She must have read the Karma Sutra or something because she was able to hold me in a state of almost climax for simply hours, or at least it felt that way. She could become addictive. When she eventually relented and allowed me to reach my climax it was like heaven for me. 

"Can I get some sleep now?" She had headed to the bathroom to clean up before returning to drag me out of bed and back to my own bed.

"Isn't this more comfortable?"

"Yeah, and much more dangerous."

"I don't feel in any danger, do you?"

"Only of falling in love with you."

"Are you really falling in love with me?"

"I think so, Is that going to be a problem?"

"No, not to me. Mom might have a problem with that because I think that she fancies you."

"Please tell me that we're not here because of some sort of rivalry between you and your mother?"

Chapter 4

Today was the first time in I don't know how long that breakfast was anything more than coffee and Camels, it was Lucy, coffee and Camels and it put me in a good mood for the day ahead, a mood that wasn't about to last.

My office door used to be a half-glass door with a sign on it that read 'Pretty Goode Detective Agency' on the glass half. It used to have the Goode covered by a piece of paper. The one failing of half-glass doors is that if the glass is broken, as it is now, one has only to reach through the former glass panel to unlock the door. Once inside it wasn't hard to access the filing cabinets, as long as you have a large jimmy bar, which someone had, and rifle the files searching for something, which someone had done.

If they were looking for my file on Andy Jones then they were out of luck because, what with one thing or another, I hadn't yet begun to write up my notes. "Well that takes care of today's activities." I stood in the mess trying to decide where to begin.

"You get the coffee while I make a start." Lucy said as she began picking up papers off the floor and stacking them on the desk ready to be sorted into the proper files. I was glad to get out of there even for a couple of minutes because filing was very low down on my list of priorities.

"Did you see Mister Goode?" Maurie asked as he poured the coffee. "He stopped by looking for you. He didn't look very happy at all."

"No I didn't see him but he left his calling card, I must catch up with him and soon." I paid for today's coffee as well as last week's, the track winnings have certainly come in handy. My mind was turning over this latest development when my path up the stairs was blocked by, you guessed it, Nigel and behind him I could make out the diminutive form of Benny and the struggling form of Lucy.

"Before you decide to be a hero Mister Pretty you should cast your eye on Miss Jones' side." I cast and saw a small silver plated hand gun.

"What do you want Benny?"

"I want to be brought up to date with your enquiries, it would appear that you have been somewhat remiss in your report writing."

"Is that why your tame gumshoe was ransacking my office?"

"Yes, I sent him to check your progress with you but he found nothing."

"That's because there was nothing to find, I'm no further on with my investigation than I was the last time we spoke. Now would you be so kind as to unhand the young lady."

"Very well, but I must warn you again that if you don't appraise me of your findings I will be forced to harm this lovely thing, or better yet let Nigel have his way with her." He sounded as if he spent his spare time reading Mr. Webster's dictionary.

As I stepped to one side to allow the large Nigel to pass me he took a swing at me. His telegraph was working much better than his swing and I was able to avoid colliding with his massive fist. Because he missed me it threw him off-balance and when I shoved my foot across his path he fell, tumbling down the stairs and crashing against the wall of the landing loosening lumps of wall plaster that crashed onto his head giving him a bad case of dandruff.

"Most impressive Mister Pretty, I trust that you will not attempt the same maneuver with me, otherwise my finger might just tighten on this trigger with unfortunate consequences for Miss Jones and you wouldn't want that, would you?"

"And I trust that you will not contemplate harming the future Mrs. Pretty or I might just get a little peeved, if you get my drift."

"I think we understand each other Mister Pretty."

"I hope so and while we are in this cooperative frame of mind, would you pass a message onto my former partner for me, would you tell him that the next time he even thinks about trashing my office I'll do more than have the police demolish his car."

"I'll pass on your message although he is still angry with you." He shoved the gun into the inside pocket of his snappy coat and walked down the stairs, stepping over the still prone form of Nigel. "Come Nigel, I don't pay you to lie around all day." Nigel grumbled to his feet and ambled after his boss. 

"What do you mean the future Mrs. Pretty?" Lucy was having a hard time hiding her disgust as she sipped her coffee. I didn't know whether her disgust was for my statement or the coffee.

"Do mean to tell me that you're not thrilled at the prospect of life with yours truly?"

"I didn't say that, it's just that this is so sudden, you've given me no time to think about whether I want this or not."

"How much more time do you need, my patience isn't inexhaustible you know."

"I need a couple of days to think this through. Oh don't worry it isn't you that I'm worried about, it's your lifestyle and the people that you meet and, it appears, offend on a regular basis." She came and sat on my desk again, with her stocking clad legs dangerously close to my hand. The filing and detecting can wait.

I stopped by the bar to update Laura Lee on my progress or lack thereof. To keep up appearances Lucy had left the office earlier than I did and was serving behind the bar. "Look after things for me Lucy, I need to talk to Gerry."

"Sure thing Ma." She gave me a wink from behind her mother's back.

We went into the storeroom out back that served as her office. "Lucy tells me that you've upset some people."

"If you mean Benny, it goes with the job, I shove and he shoves back. No-one is really hurt and He feeds me tit-bits and I feed him some as well. I have fun with his goon Nigel and at the moment I think I'm 2 for 1."

"I don't want you getting yourself hurt or worse still dead because of Andy, he's not worth it. Do you know anything new?"

"Things are slowly falling in to some sort of shape. I actually suspect that he may still be alive and holed up somewhere, he may even be contemplating some sort of insurance scam."

"What sort of scam, he doesn't have insurance, at least none that I know of."

"I'll run some checks with the insurance companies tomorrow but I wouldn't be at all surprised if I discovered a policy."

"How are you and Lucy getting along? She's not making a nuisance of herself is she?"

"Far from it, she's been a great help."

"I caught the way that she's been looking at you, I think that she's falling for you and I need to warn you to be careful. I had to ship her interstate to college because she was attracting attention from the wrong kind of guys, rough types, and I want more for her than I ever got." She had that look in her eyes that told me that, while she loved Lucy, she regretted falling pregnant and having to marry so very young.

"Don't worry, I think that I can handle her."

"Don't say I didn't warn you. I'd better be getting back, can you make sure that she gets back to the 'Y' okay?"

There was something strange going on here, either one or both of them have been lying to me. Lucy told me that she had chosen an interstate college to get away from her mother while Laura Lee had just told me that she had shipped Lucy off to get her away from the attention of the local low-life. 

Tomorrow I will have to ditch Lucy for a while because there was something that I had to check on and I don't want her around while I do, but for now I have to make sure she gets back to the 'Y', ha ha.

While the night with Lucy was very enjoyable and I was caught deeper and deeper by her sexual attraction, I managed to convince her that I had to drag myself away from her for a couple of hours while I undertook some tedious leg-work. I peeled a couple of notes from my roll, handed them to her and told her to see a movie or go shopping or something and that I'd see her for lunch at the bar and grill on the next block from the office.

I wasn't kidding when I told her that it was dull and boring, I spent the best part of two hours traipsing around town spinning yarns to insurance companies about trying to trace one of their clients so that I could forward a large sum of money to him. When I tracked down his policy the clerk was most obliging and turned his back while I made a note of Andy's address. If he saw me writing further details he didn't show it. I thank him for his kindness and left. This was getting more interesting by the minute, there was a recent change of address noted along with account details. 

Using the clerk's name, I rang Andy's bank telling the clerk that answered that I was enquiring about a notice that the company had received that there were insufficient funds to cover his previous premium payments and could they rectify this problem. "Oh, I don't see how that could be possible sir, Mister Jones' account has more than enough money to meet any premium deductions."

"Wait a minute, I'm sorry, it wasn't Mister Jones' policy that hadn't received payment, it was his daughter Lucy."

"That is equally strange, her account has a considerable amount in it, while I can't divulge the amount I can assure you that it is a very healthy balance,"

"Thank you for your assistance, I'll have to go back through our fund transfer procedures and find out where the problem lies, it must be with our system."

Now I was beginning to work out what the scams were that they were pulling. Firstly there was the one involving Benny the Bookie. Here he was running around the city like Shylock looking for his pound of flesh while Andy, if he owed anything at all, had more than enough to cover his losses. Could it be possible that Andy had been far too successful of late with his race selections and Benny owed him money and saw the way out would be to eliminate Andy. Could Andy have perfected a betting system that could beat the bookies? Could it be that knowledge of the existence of such a system would have all the bookies running scared and desperate to stop it spreading and they were all spreading the word that he owed them money to cover up the opposite? If this was the case then Andy was a marked man. 

Then there was the insurance scam. If he had been reported missing and the word around the traps was that he owed the bookies a lot of money, then a John Doe corpse that fitted his general description, preferable without a head full of teeth, could be passed off as Andy and his insurance policies would be paid out to the beneficiaries and they were Laura Lee and Lucy. Lack of an identifiable body would mean a wait of seven years before he could be legally declared dead. An identifiable body had the added benefit that, if it could be proven that Tony had been involved in disposing of the body and that Benny had ordered the hit, then the police would get Bennie for murder and Tony as an accessory, something that would please me no end.

It was still some time before I was due to meet Lucy and I was sitting at my desk pouring over the copious notes that I had written in my note book when she came in with a couple of small shopping bags in her hand. She came round to my side of the desk and kissed me. "I have a surprise for you but you'll have to wait until tonight to see it." She sat on top of my notes. "What have you discovered while I was out shopping?"

"Not a lot of any use. I don't think we'll be able to prove anything without a body, and none has been forthcoming, very inconsiderate of people don't you think?"

"Did you, or did you not promise me lunch?"

"I did, let us away to find a feed-bag." I walked to the framed certificate that told the world that I was once a member in good standing of the Police force, pushed it aside, dialed up a number on my safe and shoved my notes inside. Closing it, I took her hand and we left. 

Josie was behind the bar as we walked in. "Hi stranger, long time no see and I know why. What'll it be?"

"Now don't get jealous on me Kid."

"Kid? She's the kid, is she old enough to come into this joint, she doesn't look a day over thirteen."

"She's plenty old enough. We'll have a beer each and one of your T-bones, mine rare as usual and Lucy will have hers," I looked at Lucy who nodded to me, "rare too."

"Okay lover, coming up. Take a seat and I'll bring the beers over straight away."

We sat in a booth and sipped our beers. "Tell me Lucy, what are you studying in college?"

"Mathematics, why?"

"I know so little about you and if we're going to get married I should at least know something about you."

"It's all pretty boring really. Not too many people are interested in Math as a career."

"I'm interested. What part of Math interests you?" She was saved from answering by the arrival of our steaks, huge succulent slabs of rare beef all but covering the plates with a pile of fries hanging desperately to the side. Lucy cut a piece of beef and forked it into her mouth, chewing on it occupied a couple of minutes before she attacked the rest of it.

Neither of us spoke until the plates were clean. "Wow! That was some meal, now I know why you come here. Here I was thinking that it was just the help and that we'd have to gnaw our way through meat so tough that it could be used for shoe leather washed down with some weak brew, how wrong I was."

"Would I take you to a joint like that? I'm offended by the suggestion. Enough small talk, we have work to do." I got up from the booth and peeled off enough money to cover the meal and then some and we left. Josie didn't help matters by blowing me a kiss as I opened the door for Lucy.

Callaway was waiting for me back at my office. "It looks as if we may have discovered the late Andy Jones. A floater was pulled from the river this morning, the body had been in the river for a while and we couldn't get enough blood from him to match it to Andy's blood type but what clothes the body was wearing matched those he was reported to have been wearing when he disappeared. The only thing that we don't have is an intact head."

"Do you mean the body was decapitated?"

"No, but there wasn't enough left to enable us to positively identify it. Laura Lee said that she was ninety percent certain that it was her late lamented husband and if the Coroner agrees with her I guess that we can start looking for whoever it was that did this."




Better Off Dead



"Do you still think that Benny is the main suspect?"

"Yep. Your ex-partner, in response to a little pressure has agreed to sing. He has told us of getting instructions from Benny telling him to drive to a location where there would be a package waiting for pick-up. He has given us the pick-up point, a warehouse owned by guess who?"

"Benny the Bookie."

"Correct, where the package was waiting for him along with an envelope with the agreed fee and instructions as to where to dispose of the package. He didn't look to see what was in the package but he did tell us that it was large and when pressed he admitted that it could have been the body of the late lamented Andy Jones."

"It's still pretty flimsy evidence and who's to say that Tony won't change his tune at Benny's trial?"

"What we're hoping will happen is that Benny, knowing that we have taken an interest in Tony, will want to make sure that he does change his mind, and in his usual subtle manner that will mean handing him over to Nigel. If Tony survives that chances are that he won't be able to talk. We will have Tony watched at all times and when the move is made we'll be there with the cavalry to arrest him."

"And Tony let you do this?" I personally couldn't see him doing that.

"Oh, he doesn't know about it, if he did do you think that still be in town?" 

He left me deep in thought. Did I hate Tony enough to hope that the cavalry arrives too late to stop Nigel doing a pas de cheval on his face, or do I take pity on him and warn him of his impending doom? Pas de cheval won out, I found that I couldn't muster up enough affection for the miserable bastard to intervene.

Lucy had sat through all of this in silence which I found unusual. "What are we going to do? Are we going to warn Tony?"

"What do you think? I think that we should go see your mother to see how she's coping with her grief."

"Are you suggestion that Mother is going to lose sleep over the news, she's probably serving free beer to the crowd."

It wasn't quite like that but there were a lot of commiserations being thrown around the bar. "Hi you two, you've obviously heard the good news. Have a drink on the house." She poured both of us a hefty slug of the good stuff. "Lucy could you look after the bar for a while, I want to have a chat to Gerry."

Lucy went behind the bar and started refilling glasses. Laura Lee and I went out the back door to the storeroom cum office. 

"Gerry, it looks as if Andy isn't coming back any time soon so I suppose that your work is finished and you want your payment."

"Not so fast. We should wait for the Coroner to finish his report before we go off and spend our money, you get your insurance payout and me my fee. There's something bothering me, a few things that don't ring true about this whole case."

"What do you mean? Surely you don't think that he's still alive do you?"

"Nah, nothing like that, I just have this feeling that all isn't as it seems but I can't put my finger on it."

"Whatever, but thank you for what you've done, I appreciate it." By way of showing her appreciation her hand looped behind my head and drew my face to hers, her lips covering mine and her tongue searching for mine. Mother was a better kisser than daughter, maybe she had more experience at it. She moved her lips from mine and whispered to me, "Lucy isn't staying at the 'Y' is she?" Her hand grabbing my balls prevented me from lying to her.

"No, she's been staying with me, to save money." 

"Is that the only reason?" Her grip tightened.

"No." I managed to tell her in an almost falsetto voice.

"I should rip these off, but I won't if you make me a promise."

"Which is?"

"That you don't hurt my baby girl, ever."

"I hate to tell you this but she hasn't been a baby for a long time." Her grip tightened even more and if I didn't give her the answer she wanted and soon I would be no use to any woman. "Okay I promise." The relief was amazing, this was one tough lady.

"Come on lover, we'd better be getting back to the bar or she'll be thinking that you've been raping me, not that the prospect doesn't hold some attraction." This woman was making it obvious that her interest in me wasn't purely commercial and I suppose that I could do worse.

Much later I was sitting on my bed when Lucy emerged from the bathroom. Her surprise was a see through negligee with matching see through panties that left nothing to the imagination. While I appreciated the vision this wasn't to be the evening that I'd anticipated. It should have been a night of carnal bliss but she had become somewhat subdued in bed, she seemed almost reluctant to let me make love to her although she did let herself go late in the process. "What's bothering you? You haven't been yourself all evening."

"I. . . . Oh Darling. . . I have to go back to college soon, too soon, tomorrow in fact. I spoke to my professor while you and Mother were out back, talking, last night." The way that she emphasized the word 'talking' meant that she was sure that we were doing more than that. "And he told that if I don't return very soon I'll be too far behind in my course work."

"Well if you have to go, you have to go. I won't stop you even though it will leave a huge hole in my heart." If I was an actor I would have shed a couple of tears about now just to make her feel bad about walking out on me.

"But I'll be back at the end of the semester and we can take up where we left off, that is if you want that."

I held her face in my hands and whispered to her. 'I want nothing more than that."

It was with sadness that we blew kisses to each other over the ever widening gap between us as the Greyhound pulled away from the bus station. Through the sadness that uneasy feeling returned and I had work to do.

Callaway was putting the finishing touches to his report to the Coroner when I emerged from the gauntlet of wisecracks from the cops. "Hi Lou, how is the case going?"

"Just about got it wrapped up. We got your friend Nigel for playing bongos on Tony's skull and Benny was sitting there watching and pleading with your ex to stop screaming, He's pleading innocence of course, he claims that he accompanied Nigel on a visit to his cousin who, he would have us believe was your former partner one Tony Goode. It would seem that Tony was not in a talking mood and tried to push Nigel out of his apartment. Nigel was showing his affection when we rolled up. When we told Benny that Nigel doesn't have a cousin let alone one living in the same apartment building as Tony he was astonished that Nigel, who he had come to trust totally, should have lied to him. Anyway his lawyer posted bail for the both of them while they try to arrange the usual alibi. Tony's in hospital and will be for some time, we were sadly a little tardy in coming to the rescue and we feel awful about that. By the way, where's your new assistant?"

"She had to go back to college. I think I might drive down on the weekend to visit her."

"You sound as if you've fallen for her."

"You could say that." I wasn't about to tell him or anyone else that the visit was more than me missing Lucy, it was my gut telling me that I needed to see her but I couldn't explain why.

I went back to my office via the track. "Tell me Sophie, the other day you told me that if I was in Andy's position Mexico held a certain attraction, could it be that instead of him owing the bookies money the opposite was the case and that they owed him money and they suspect that he was doing something not entirely legal?"

"You're not just a dumb shamus are you Gerry? The word is that he has devised a system to beat the odds and has become too successful for his own good, not to mention for their financial livelihood, so there seems to be some sort of contest to see who gets to him first. It would seem as if Bennie has won." I didn't mention to her that I had a feeling that all wasn't as it seemed.

A bleary eyed brunette leaned against the dorm room door. "Who are you and what do you want?"

"My name is Gerry and I've come to talk to Lucy Jones, is she here?"

"You're about two months too late. She dropped out of college around then and moved out." If I was the dumb shamus that people expected this should have been my first shock, along with finding that Lucy had lied about having to return to college to catch up on her course work, then to find that she had dropped out of college some weeks ago and that she was no longer living in the dorm. Her former room-mate told me where she was living now and that led me to the crashing sound of the next piece of the puzzle falling into place. 

I was sitting in a cab that was parked in a leafy suburban street opposite one of those picture postcard cottages you see in real estate brochures when she walked out of the front door and turned into the arms of a man. Her kiss was that of a lover and the position of her hand at the front of his trousers confirmed that it was in no way platonic. She left carrying a small hold-all and the door closed behind her. I caught a brief glimpse of the man and the puzzle was now complete so I told the cabbie to wait and walked up to the door and leant on the bell push. The door opened a crack and I shoved my foot in the crack. "Hi Andy, you're looking very sprightly for a dead man."

Chapter 5

"Who are you and what do you want?"

"I'm Gerry Pretty, the poor schmuck that your wife hired to find you, dead or alive she didn't much care which. I guess that I've found you."

"What do you want?"

"You already asked that. What I want is some answers, like whose idea was it for Lucy to latch onto me to make sure that I looked in the right places for clues and made sure that I didn't get too close, was it yours?"

"No it was Lucy's."

"What is she to you and don't try to tell me that she's just your daughter, the kiss in parting I witnessed just now tells me otherwise."

"You're right, she isn't just my daughter, in fact she isn't my daughter at all, I'm just someone who Laura Lee married to legitimize Lucy's birth. It was an inconvenient marriage of convenience and there was never any love between us."

"She seemed to have been upset that you were spreading it around."

"I think I just embarrassed her because it looked like she couldn't hold her man."

"Then why did you do it?"

"It was all part of the plan."

"What plan?"

"I guess that I'd better explain everything. Lucy has used her Math skills and turned it to betting on the horses and before you say that it's a mugs game that no-one can win, she has turned it into the science of probability theory. It involves calculating odds and working out which horses will make a reasonable pay out whether it's a win or show result. Sometimes the odds are such that we don't bet on a race while at other times we will back more than one horse."

"Does this theory take into account that horses are sometimes pulled or that their performance is chemically altered?"

"Sure. We study the form and the track work figures, if we see that a horse has run better in track work than recent race results would indicate, we reason that it's being held back to win big in a big race, and if the odds on a horse are better than indicated by training track performance, and there is money on it at the track then we know that its race performance will be boosted." 

My mind went back to the day at the track with Lucy and how she seemed to know so little about what went on. "Then, tell me why did you have to go through this whole charade about you going missing and the convenient discovery of your body?"

"I couldn't just disappear, for this to work I had to turn up dead."

"Whose body was it by the way?"

"Some bum from Skid Row who got beaten to death for stealing a bottle of hooch from another bum. When the bum and his friends had finished with him he was perfect for what we needed, so we wrapped him up and dumped him in Benny's old warehouse. We then contacted your former partner and told him that Benny wanted him to pick it up and dispose of it in the river, we had asked around and knew that he would be so desperate for money that he wouldn't ask any questions, and then we spread the word so that Benny would hear that I had been disposed of and by whom. Lucy suggested to Laura Lee that she should hire you to look for me."

"I take it she hoped that I'd fail?"

"Yes it was, it was our plan that you'd fail, but in the process of failing you would make enough noise and point the police in the right direction so that they would find the body, it's just that the body they found wasn't mine."

"So Lucy was right when she told me that she thought that Benny could have been taking credit for the hit to improve his image, because she had already worked that out."

"Yeah, she's one smart cookie, I would be proud of her if she really was my daughter."

"How long have you been lovers?"

"Over a year now. I think that she figured it out that I wasn't her real father and she was feeling sorry for the way that I had to jump to Laura Lee's every whim. What are you going to do now that you know that I'm still alive?" 

"Nothing. I suppose that you could say that I'm an old softy at heart, but I see no reason to stir up a can of worms now that everyone seems to have gotten what they deserve."

"Except you maybe?"

"Forget about me, I don't count. You and Lucy have managed to beat the system so I guess you deserve what success you make of this, Lucy and Laura Lee both benefit from your insurance policy so they're a winner there. Benny deserves everything that he gets, hopefully, from the cops while Tony has already gotten his just reward. As for me I think that I can still come out on top. One word of advice before I leave the two of you to enjoy each other and that is get out of town, out of the country would be better, and soon, before Benny hears that your could be still alive and tries to find you. Officially you're dead and believe me, you're better off dead."

"We were planning to leave soon anyway, we hear that there are races every day in England."

"Okay, I'm off to break the amended version of what has happened to Laura Lee. Give my love to Lucy."

"I will. I hope that you enjoyed her." I had nothing polite to say to that. I had the answers I was looking for and all that remained was to pass the message on.

Chapter 6

The wind blustered through the man made canyons of the city driving the morose rain before it, soaking the cuffs of my trousers. The reflection of the sad street light struggled out of a muddy puddle in the road. As I trudged this soggy street the same bedraggled cat hissed at my feet from the soggy pile of cardboard that still littered the sidewalk. This was Fifth Street not Fifth Avenue, and two in the morning isn't a good time to be here unless. . . .

In the distance a trumpet wailed its sorrow into the night. I didn't need the note to tell me to follow that sound. I turned right into an even more depressing laneway and the trumpet was joined by a bass, drums, guitar and piano. What I could hear of the notes that fought their way to my ears through the other night sounds, the band wasn't half bad.

A flickering red neon led me to a bar at the very end of the lane. Pushing the door open I entered a world of smoke, of beer smells and the sounds of despair. The trumpet player lay down his instrument and began to sing in a voice that told of too many cigarettes, too much bad whisky and too much sadness, the raw emotion rode through his music like the freight train that he rode away from the hard times in New Orleans or Chicago and the small crowd sat in rapt silence while he sang.

I sat at the bar and Laura Lee reached under it for a bottle of her special whisky, poured a generous one for each of us and came over to me.

"What news have you got for me?"

"I have either good news or bad news, you decide." I couldn't think of a gentle way to break the news to her so I came straight out with it. "What does it feel like to be a widow?"

"You mean?"

"That's right Babe he's very dead. I know who did it and the police will probably even have enough to convict Benny over it."

"That's great! I know this sounds callous but I'm not sad that he's dead. He was a worthless bastard living so he can't be any more worthless dead. I had a look at his insurance policy and there's a large amount of money coming my way, enough to pay off what's owing on this joint, leaving me with a little funny money just for myself, I might even be able to hire someone to look after the joint while I take a vacation."

"Well it seems like a satisfactory result and I guess I have another satisfied customer."

"Are you? Satisfied I mean."

"As satisfied as I can be under the circumstances."

"Stick around, I would like to pay you tonight."

I stuck around. We were in her office. She gave me a wad of notes that was more than I was going to charge her. "Now I'll give you your bonus." She came into my arms and kissed me hard on the lips, her mouth opened and her tongue snaked forward meeting mine. The meeting of tongues was with a hunger that scared me, I hadn't realized that I needed this sex so bad. Lucy was good but she didn't match the strength and urgency of her mother and that had me wanting Laura Lee more than I ever imagined.

My hand went to her breast, I could feel her hard nipple through her blouse and bra. She moaned and pushed herself against my hand, her hips pushed forward and ground against my hard cock. One of her hands released itself from my neck and she reached between us and undid my trousers, it pushed under the waistband of my shorts and grabbed hold of my cock. "I want this inside me now." There was an urgency in her voice that told me that she was as hungry for sex as I was.

I swept aside the papers on her desk and picked her up, laying her down I took off her skirt and blouse leaving her with only black lace panties and bra. From my angle she looked very inviting so I slipped her panties down over her hips and she opened her legs revealing her dripping wet pussy, even more inviting. I lifted her legs up over my shoulders and pushed my cock inside her. She was tighter than I'd expected, I had thought that by her looks she had been around the block a few times but her pussy was squeezing my cock as it went in and out.

"Oh this is so good, you are much bigger than my bastard of a husband, not that I got that much from him, he was too busy spreading it around." Her eyes closed and her breath was coming in short gasps "Oh God this is good, I'm coming, quick, harder, harder." I was an obedient kind of guy so I fucked her harder and we both came in a fireworks display that was equal to any Fourth of July. 

I took my cock out of her, bent down and licked her pussy clean. So of course she reciprocated, licking the juices from my cock and balls. We adjourned to her apartment over the bar and were side by side on her bed. I looked at her closely for the first time under a decent light, she must have been something of a beauty not that long ago because she wasn't as hard looking as she appeared under the lighting of the bar, in fact she was still good looking and I could get used to this. I kissed her softly on the lips and she rolled over onto her front and lifted her hips into the air. Moving behind her I mounted her and fucked her until we both came again.

Laying back and enjoying a post fuck Camel, she rested her head on my shoulder and exhaled a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling. "Here I was thinking that I would give you a bonus by letting you fuck me, but it was me that got the bonus. We, Stud, are going to have to keep this up until you catch up to me."

Like I said I'm and obedient kind of guy so I agreed with her that we should keep this going. It was some vacation we had and Laura Lee tells me that I still haven't caught up. I've closed my old office and opened a new one in the storeroom in back of the bar and we've got one of those gizmos with switches set up behind the bar that Laura Lee flicks when a client comes in or when she's not busy and just wants to talk sexy to me.