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It was a dark and stormy night . . . well . . . it must have been somewhere anyhow, which is why he wore the trench coat — you just never knew when the weather would change around here. He was holed up in his favorite gay bar, The Come and Go. He didn’t swing that way, but just like the weather, you never knew when things might change, and Clarence the bartender shot him well drinks all night at happy hour prices.
He was waiting to meet a new client, Scarlet, a recently widowed attorney with a mystery to solve. She promised she would explain once they met in person. Since he needed the cash, he agreed to wait for the full story. As soon as she walked in, he knew it had to be her — she was impossible to ignore. Still in mourning, she wore clothes so black, they absorbed the dim neon lights and cast a shadow all their own — skirt so tight, he could read the washing instructions on the label — heels so sharp, the floor surrendered as she stalked over to his seat. As she stood over him, she pulled a long cigarette out of her purse and sucked on it hard as she set the end aglow. Clarence rushed from behind the bar, snatched it out of her mouth, and threw it on the floor, “Bitch — do you want the fire marshall to close me down?”
Staring the bartender with an icy sneer, she smothered the embers with a sharp twist of her pointy shoe, then she slid in next to the waiting private dick, ensconcing herself in the blue vinyl booth like the courtroom queen she was.
Her green eyes drifted casually up and down his face, silently building a case as she went. It was the face of a man at war with himself — one eyebrow that of a wounded puppy, the other that of a former cop who had seen too many murderers walk free; eyes a cold, glacier blue that melted with sensual heat beneath; lips as soft as a Disney prince’s with a scar that hinted at an experienced toughness. She held out a perfectly manicured hand, “Mr. Martinsson?”
He reached out and engulfed her smooth skin with a hand accustomed to the subtleties of pick pockets and jugglers, sensitive to the betrayal only given by a pulse point or subconscious twitch of a finger. He could feel the warmth of her quickening heartbeat hidden beneath the cold, red lacquer of her nail polish, “Ms. Passion. Call me Magnus.” His grasp lingered a moment past propriety before sliding away from hers and folding with his other hand on the table in front of them, pinning her like an insect with his glacier-like eyes, “I’ve been waiting for you to explain yourself.”
The side of her mouth quirked up in a half smile that never illuminated her eyes, “Magnus, then. Yes. I can explain,” her voice a smooth chocolatey alto perfectly suited for seduction. “I have a problem,” she began, her eyes leaving his face as a fingertip traced pictures in a puddle of condensation left on the tabletop by the previous occupant’s drink. “Just after my husband’s funeral, this arrived on my front porch.” She tossed a thin envelope on the table. “It says this person has evidence linking me to one of the city judges, that I’ve been gaming the courts in favor of my clients. He wants $10,000, or they’ll turn everything over to the state.” She lifted her lashes once again to meet his gaze.
He saw it then, the predatory glint that lurked in the depths of her pupils, the knife’s edge in her smile. But just what was she hunting, or whom?
“And who is ‘he’?”
“I’m not sure, but I suspect it’s the junior partner at Balder, Dash, and Dull. I embarrassed him badly during his debut appearance in court, and he’s been pretty hostile ever since.” She smirked in a way particularly unlike a woman in danger.
Magnus raised an eyebrow, skepticism as cutting as a Montaigne missive painted on his face, “You don’t seem particularly worried. Why call me?”
She pulled her hand out of the puddle on the table and slid it over to rest atop his own, blood red nails curling around to dig lightly into his palm, as she leaned in close enough to caress his cheek with her warm breath, “I can’t afford a confrontation. I need someone to deal with this . . . discreetly.”
He nodded, eyes burning into hers with a heat born of danger — and the fact that her other hand was clamped firmly on his crotch. “I’ll be . . . in touch,” and he bared his teeth.
“I know you will.” She answered his leer by licking her lips as she pulled away. She dug a second piece of paper from her clutch and handed it to him, “Here’s my address — right next to the offices of Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe — as well as information about the sad young man himself. I’ll expect to hear from you tomorrow afternoon. She peeled her thighs from the blue vinyl bench with a sticky sound before oozing out of the booth and sauntering out of the bar.
Magnus tore his eyes from her ass and absently wiped the water off his hand with a cocktail napkin. He could hear Clarence call out from behind the bar, “oooheee— workit, girl!” And Magnus set his lips in a tight line. This is trouble. With a capital T, and that rhymes with Me. And that’s exactly who’s in trouble.
*****
Dust motes sparkled lazily in the weak morning sun when Magnus dragged his carcass into the office the next morning. His head hurt just exactly the way a smiling girl scout’s would not, had she found herself in a similar situation, which she wouldn’t. He had just booted up his laptop when more trouble rumbled into his life and slammed the door in a way precisely unlike a good friend would have slammed the door, had Magnus had a good friend, which he did not.
Magnus leaned back in his chair which squealed in protest. “Mr. Balder. Coffee? I had rather expected a visit from you, given your careful surveillance of my activities last night.”
The enormous Norwegian’s feet shook the floor as he lumbered across the room and sank into a chair opposite Magnus — a chair that suddenly seemed much too small for the weight that the world suddenly asked it to carry. “Thank you, Magnus, but no. I’ve already downed a pot at the diner this morning, don’t you know? Oh ya, Vita sure knows how to make them ablskivers —oofdah.” The older, giant of a man patted the broad expanse of his expensive waistcoat before he continued. “No. I’m sure you know I ain’t here for a social call, young man. I’m just here to give ya warning — that Scarlet, she’s not what she wants ya ta think. She’s got it in for my junior partner, and thinks to bring him to heel because he turned down her lascivious advances.”
“Well, Mr. Balder, thank you for the warning. May I ask how you know all of this about her?”
“Let’s just say I have my sources,” and his face turned into the stony crag that so effectively intimidated any soul unfortunate enough to face him across a courtroom.
Magnus stood to indicate their meeting was over, and to keep back the whimper of fear that threatened leak out of his chest through his mouth. “Thank you again, Mr. Balder. I will add your information to the other evidence I collect in regards to this case.”
“See that ya do,” Mr. Balder retorted, an exit line that would have been much more effective had the chair-of-inadequate-proportions not stuck to his backside as he rose to leave.
Once alone, Magnus sank back into his chair which sighed out its own resignation with his weight. Apparently, I have a bit a research to do before I have my afternoon chat with Ms. Passion.
*****
“Good afternoon, Ms. Passion.” Magnus’s eyes swept first over her Marilyn Monroe figure wrapped in a black dress which left nothing to the imagination, then swept over the dimly lit sitting room behind her.
“Please, just Scarlet.”
“Scarlet, then.”
She moved languidly out of the doorway just barely allowing space for him to sidle past her and into the darkened room — a room as unlike an Ikea catalog as one could possibly imagine. He leaned against the heavy oaken shelves next to her couch as she fixed him a drink.
“Have you taken care of my problem, Magnus?”
“Oh you have a problem, Darlin’, but I don’t think Mr. Dull is one of them.”
Her head whipped around. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. I found out a few things, Scarlet, or should I say, Sandy.”
Her eyes narrowed dangerously and she knocked back the drink she had intended for him. “Just what are you playing at?”
“Oh I’m not playing. Your problem has nothing to do with the city judges. It has everything to do with a long sordid past of cutting corners and getting by with what you could. I know all about it, Sandy. You might have a high falutin’ ivy league law degree, but your real name is plain old Sandy Gunderson.”
Ice clinked its abandonment as she carefully placed the tumbler back on the table, “You know nothing.”
“Oh but I think I do. You don’t survive in my line of work without a few connections. And according to my sources, you’re just a small-town girl who got into a fancy school by cheating on your 4-H projects. You didn’t knit those tea cozies yourself, and you certainly didn’t raise those fancy roosters, either.”
She hissed in anger and strode across the room, arm raised for a sharp blow.
Instead, he caught her wrist mid-strike and leaned in so close he could count her eyelashes. “Mr. Dull was just a reminder of a past you want to erase, isn’t he? Those cocks at the state fair were his, but with a swing of your hips and the promise of a cherry pie, he let you enter those blue-ribbon birds under your own name. You went to Princeton while he got stuck at the state school working at Wal-Mart to pay off his tuition.”
Her face twisted as he cataloged her crime, and he saw the tears of desperation well up in her eyes. “You don’t understand — I had to get out of that two-bit town. I couldn’t live like my mother — they didn’t even have cable tv! No internet connection at all. Not even dial-up. When Bob showed up in that courtroom and insisted on talking to me, I panicked. He asked after my mother — right in front of the judges. I can’t let them see that. I worked too hard to leave that behind me.”
“That’s no reason to ruin a man’s career.”
Her shoulders slumped in defeat, “I know.” A tear slipped down her cheek, and as she looked up into his eyes he felt his righteous anger melt away, replaced by the bloom of another kind of passion. His eyes caressed her hair, moving over the glossy waves. Her lips parted as he leaned in close, drawn to her sudden vulnerability. The hand on her wrist pulled her arm slowly behind her back as he brushed her mouth with his own, and when she sighed, he drank in her essence as though he were a starving man.
Soon they were crushed against one another, in a dance as old as time itself. Magnus turned until Sandy’s back pressed against the wall, pushing his leg between her thighs, her skirt riding up as she sighed with dark red passion.
“Oh Magnus, let’s see if you live up to your name.” And here she moved her hand over the straining need in his pants. “Oh I think you do,” her low voice crooned as deft fingers freed his manhood from its prison. “Let me prove that I really do know how to care for a prize-winning cock.”
He groaned deep in is throat as she pulled him out, and deeper still as she switched their positions, trapping him in the corner between the wall and the shelves as she sank to her knees. She flicked her tongue over the tip of his hardness, tasting his saltiness, before licking up his full length the way she might a perfect ice cream cone at the state fair, then pulling him fully between her lips quite unlike one would enjoy a corn dog.
He knew he would lose control soon if she continued, especially as she made those glorious noises while she sucked. Grabbing fistfuls of her hair, Magnus pulled her up to kiss her fiercely while his hands worked open her dress and let it slide to the floor. “I would definitely award you a blue ribbon” he insisted, as he feasted his eyes on her perfect globes, then feasted again as he took first one, then the other into his hungry mouth, closing his eyes to better hear the cries of pleasure he pulled forth with each flick of his tongue.
Turning the two of them about once more to brace her against the wall, he lifted her up to his hips in search of her wetness, sliding into her, filling her warmth with his need. She clamped her legs around him with all the strength of the former farm girl she was — crushing his hips with her thighs as he pounded into her. Their voices crowed in a twined crescendo as they moved closer to their mutual climax, roaring like teenagers when the Kamikaze gondola careens through its downward arc at the carnival.
They held onto one another in the wake of their ecstasy, catching their breath before the awkwardness of their situation took over. They helped each other piece themselves together once more. Kissing the salty sweet from each others’ lips and necks before pulling apart.
“What will you do, Magnus? Will you tell them? I don’t ever want to be that hick, Sandy, again. It’s not who I want to be.”
His face suddenly transformed into golden doodle softness as his brows scrunched together in sympathy. “We all have to face ourselves sometime, Babe,” he sighed, “but only you should decide when to pull back that curtain — it shouldn’t be up to me.”
Relief flooded her face and she kissed him once more on his cheek, “thank you.”
Magnus walked over to the front door, and his hand was already on the knob when she stopped him, “Wait.”
Walking over to the desk, she opened a drawer and pulled out a worn piece of paper, smoothing it out on the table before handing it over. “I want you to have this — keep it safe, in memory of who I used to be.” It was crumpled to near illegibility through repeated folding, spindling, and mutilating — but he could still make out the title on the form: “4-H Yearly Report, Sandy Gunderson, 12th Grade.”
As battered as it was, he knew he would keep it safe. He carefully re-folded it precisely in a way one would not fold an origami crane, and placed it in his breast pocket, then he headed out the door forever, a forever quite unlike the one you get from a Disney movie.