by Jillian Boyd
“But I want to talk to you...”
“I said...”
“We can make this easy or hard, Glenne.”
She stared at him with wide eyes.
“We need to talk,” he reiterated. She turned on her heel, and he grabbed her wrist.
“Russell, let go! You’re hurting me!” She tried to pull her wrist free to no avail.
“You’re making it hard not to.”
Glenne opened her mouth to scream but, like in a dream, no sound came out. Her mouth was covered, as she was pushed into a shiny black car that reminded her of a Black Maria. She was breathless when Russell uncovered her mouth. She was afraid to scream, because she was afraid that no sound would ever come out again.
“Are you going to behave?” he asked without looking at her. Glenne was silent.
“I assume that means yes,” he said. “Now I need you to tell me everything you know about your friend Gina.”
She remained silent.
“Glenne, I’d start talking pretty fast if I were you. We’ve been monitoring all of your movements for the past month, and we know that you’re thick as thieves with her.”
In her peripheral vision, she saw Russell stare at her as she looked out of the window like an uninterested child. But in her black latex dress, there was nothing childish about her. She crossed her legs, and ran her hand over her body out of nervousness.
“Gina is in a lot of trouble. But you can save yourself.”
Glenne stared at him, with the same wide eyes she had given him in front of the bar.
“What are you talking about?”
Russell finally looked at her fully.”Tell me what you know about Gina.”
She shrugged.”What’s there to know?”
“Do you understand you’ve been under surveillance for a while now? Tell me what you know, Glenne. Tell me what you know about Gina.”
“Do you have a cigarette? You made me drop my lighter outside of the bar, and I can’t think until I have another.”
Russell’s face was tantalizingly close to hers, as he ran his hand over his pants to get his lighter. She felt herself moisten, because damn it she needed to think about something else besides what was going on now. He was quite the distraction again, the graceful way his suit covered him. His tie hung loose and casual, with a subtle design that was almost like a Bridget Riley. Hypnotic, but she wasn’t distracted by it because of the moonlight on his thighs. She pushed off on them just to feel the firmness.
A flame caught her eye when she steadied, as he flicked the lighter before lighting her cigarette, his hand on her thigh and his fingers flayed.
She closed her eyes as she took her first inhale, his fingers shifted almost imperceptibly on her thigh.
“So, now are you going to tell me what you know about your Gina, Glenne? Or tell me what I have to do to get it out of you?”
She felt like she was being hypnotized now by the pattern of his tie, and the sensation of his voice moving over her as she smoked her cigarette while looking out of the window.
She exhaled, and turned to blow smoke in his face again.
“What else would you do?” She smiled at him dryly.
Russell studied at her, and she wondered how much longer he was going to let her play with this much bravado. The answer came so swiftly, she lost her breath.
“Why,” he paused, his fingers digging into her thigh. “are you acting like a pro when I know that you aren’t one? We’ve been watching you. I mean in the beginning, I thought you were...the way you dress...”
His voice lingered over the latex of her dress, and she felt naked and not in a good way. “But it’s just your style. Damn sexy style at that. But Gina, well, you know what she is doing? Or you suspect something, because I heard you talking to you friend Bridge.”
“What the hell are you, a spy or something?”
“I can’t tell you who I work for, but I’ve been assigned to keep tabs on Gina, and then you came along. And now I need you to tell me what is going on, and if you can’t I need you to figure it out.”
“I don’t know who you think I am, but I don’t know what Gina’s doing. And if it is illegal, I want to know even less. If you have nothing else to say, I’ll forget that I ever met you.”
Glenne tried to get out of the car, but it was locked.
“Let me out of here. I don’t want to be here with you.”
“You don’t have a choice. Give me what I want and I’ll let you go.”
“I don’t believe you! Christ, you scare me more than Gina ever has. Let me out of here!”
She panicked, hitting the roof of the car and the door with her palms. She started to hyperventilate when she felt the burn of fire across her face. Glenne put her hand on her cheek, her eyes filled with tears she didn’t realize she’d shed.
“I’m sorry. You were getting hysterical,” Russell caressed her cheek and, when he first touched her, she cringed. But when his cheek moved softly over hers, and he leaned so that he could press his lips to her temple she was soothed.
“Okay,” he kissed her temple, and placed his hand on her thigh again. “Now tell me what you know about Gina. Be calm this time. I know that you know something, because you said I scare you more than she does. Why does she scare you?”
His hand slid further up her thigh, and she was not sure that he was even aware of it.
“Are you trying to fuck me, or get information from me?”
She could tell by the way that he moved his hand from her thigh that he’d not been aware of what he was doing. She hated that her body couldn’t forget how he’d come onto her just moments ago in the bar. She could still feel his trail on her body where they had touched, but her emotions were sobering up.
Russell stared at her, and she shrugged again.
“I really don’t know who you are. Why should I tell you anything?”
Waving a gun in her face, Glenne realized that she did not have the upper hand. With false calm, she gave him what he wanted.
“Who would resist a free trip to Paris? Gina’s a recent acquaintance, but it’s Paris.” Her eyes floated over the city lights outside of their tinted car windows. “I came because she said that her boyfriend got the trip for her for her birthday. But he was working so he said she should take a friend so she’d not be so alone.
“Have you seen her boyfriend?”
“No.” Twisting her hands, she fished for another cigarette. This time Russell handed her the lighter. Her reprimand made him stop touching her. She wasn’t sure now if that was what she wanted. “Well, I have ended up spending a lot of time alone in Paris. And then I met you...I’ve spent more time with you then I’ve spent with Gina.”
Turning this time and not blowing smoke directly in his face, she saw Russell smiled at her. It was the softest expression he’d had since they were in the bar. She kept wondering what would have happened if she hadn’t left. Would he have taken her in the car under the guise of...and then started this same verbal assault?
Resting his hand with the gun on his thigh, he put his hand back on her thigh with ease.
“What I am about to tell you is confidential, Glenne,” he said. “The agency I am working with has reason to believe that one of our agents is part of a sex trafficking ring, and he is intimately involved with Gina. We also have reason to believe that he is using Gina to help him recruit women...”
“Was she trying to recruit me?”
“No, no,” Russell smiled. “But she was involved with some recruiting activities, which explains why you might not have been seeing a lot of her.”
Glenne eyed his gun nervously, but added softly, “I was seeing a lot of you. Are you telling me everything was just a ruse?”
Russell held the gun tighter, and she faked calm again.”I w
anted to get to know you better.”
“Did you?”
“Glenne, we’ve been monitoring you. I know your background. My agency thinks you’d be a perfect recruit, starting right here, right now. We need you to get closer to Gina; I need to get closer to Gina...”
The tension that she felt burst around her, and then Glenne laughed wildly. She stopped when she realized he might think she was getting hysterical and slap her again.
“So you’re telling me that Gina wasn’t trying to recruit me as a sex worker, but you’re trying to recruit me as a secret agent?”
His hold on his gun loosened slightly, but was still firm on his thigh.
“I admit, this is an unconventional method of going about. But with your background, we’ve vetted a lot of agents and recruited them.
Glenne truly couldn’t believe that she left her academic life behind in the States, and would have landed in this position in Paris. While she thought she was going to get carried away dreamily, and then got nervous when she thought it was going to happen with Russell. Why she’d run out of the bar, to think about what she wanted. Her mind was a jumble because she could still taste their whiskey-tinged kisses. But now she was looking at Russell in a completely different way.
“I can’t believe this is happening to me. I really only thought that things like this happened in fiction.”
“Like I said, this is highly unconventional. I can show you my credentials, but the thing is you haven’t got a choice. You’re part of this now.”
To Glenne’s relief, Russell put the gun back in its holster.
“Now, I’m going to tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to walk out of the car, and we’re going to be like we were before. We’re going to go back to the bar, and we’re going to pick up where we left off...”
“You have got to be kidding me. You think that I’m going to go back to the bar with you and carry on as before? Just like that?”
“Yes,” he said, putting his hand on her thigh again. This time, it felt seedy. “You’re going to call Gina, and ask what she’s up to and if she can meet us there.”
“I don’t know if she’s going to come. I don’t even know if I can trust you. And then to bring her into this too?”
“Well, you’re going to try. If she doesn’t come, then I won’t. Like I said, you really don’t have much of a choice right now.”
Glenne pouted sullenly, but gave in. She remained silent and cringed when her touched the small of her back. Then eased back into his touch from familiarity and resign. When they went back to their table, they were greeted by empty glasses. The waitress who had served them looked at them with familiarity.
“Would you like another round?” she asked them with her heavy French accent that nonetheless annunciated each English word perfectly. Glenne wondered if she was referring to their drinks, or to the fast and furious make-out session that they were tangled up in before.
She nodded, feeling Russell’s breath on her shoulder and tilted her head so he could kiss her neck stiffly. The feel of his lips made her body relax, and she closed her eyes.
“Make the call.”
Eyes open, she stiffened again as she nodded.
“Let me see the phone so it looks like we’re looking at something together. I need to be sure you’re calling her.”
Her lips tightened as she nodded and made the call swiftly so he could see. Gina’s gorgeous face showed up on her screen. Her picture looked like something out of a Vanity Fair Hollywood portfolio. She placed the phone on speaker.
“Hello?”
Gina’s heavy seductive voice filled the room as if she were right there next to them. Glenne took the phone off speaker to talk to her friend. The conversation was brief, and the entire time she eyed Russell, who was kissing everything but her mouth with such fervor she could barely talk.
“Okay. Okay honey, I’ll ask him. Au revoir...”
She rang off, and put the phone on the table. Almost in the same movement, her lips were pressed to Russell’s and his hands were all over her again. He caressed the side of her breast, moved down her hip and then was onto her thigh, before she pulled her lips away from him.
“She can’t make it. But she wants to invite us to the sex club her boyfriend owns tomorrow night so we can all catch up.”
“Will he be there?”
Glenne parted her lips as his fingers slipped under the latex edge of her dress.
“No.”
“Did you tell her we were going?”
“No,” she said even though she was nodding.
“Well, we are...”
He pulled her onto his lap, and kissed her hard as she gnawed on his lips. Her arms went about his neck easily, as she kept pace with the facade. Because it was a facade, but a pleasurable one at least. They both turned when their drinks were put on the table, but continued kissing each other.
But then, Russell jerked away unceremoniously, and swung his hand back.
“What the devil?”
“I guess you got her to agree, Russ. And we had no doubt you would!”
Glenne stared at the men behind Russell, and at the woman who looked them both up and down.
“No, we didn’t doubt it at all,” she said.
***
The woman was Russell’s boss and after she got off of his lap, Glenne was briefed of all of the things that he had told her about outside of the bar in a secret location. She’d been taken to the location blindfolded. Russell sat beside her on the drive there. She really hoped it was him caressing her in the car. She knew what his touch felt like, but without her sight she was disoriented.
It was reiterated that they were going to go to the sex club together at the secret location, and that they were going to make sure they did whatever they needed to do to make sure to insure they fit in with the rest of the attendees.
“From what I saw in the bar, you should have no trouble with that,” his boss, Odette, said without even looking up at her. Odette was her code name, since the operation they were working on was nicknamed Operation Swan Lake. “Remember, Ms. Harper, you are under surveillance so that should insure your discretion. You’re a smart woman, and I have complete confidence in you executing this assignment to perfection.”
Glenne was quiet throughout the entire thing. When it became a reality to her, there was nothing that she knew to say. In ways it amused her that her trip to Paris had ended up being a foray into the types of novels that she enjoyed reading. She followed a series that starred the cracker jack agent Harper Grey, which she was teased about since Harper was her last name.
But now she had to be Harper Grey...
“I’ll take you home, Glenne,” Russell announced at the close of the briefing.
The cavernous place where they were was indecipherable, and she wanted to tell him no. But she realized that he was the only person who was going to be able to take her out of there. She submitted to his hands on her shoulders again, as he pulled up her hair and put on the blindfold.
She figured they must have been in some part of the Catacombs, from things that she had read. She wondered why she had to be blindfolded when she wouldn’t have been able to find this place...
When they were back in the car, they drove away before Russell told her she could take the blindfold off now.
She felt anxious fiddling with the knot, and rolled it over her eyes in an awkward way before she got it off. Paris at night was even more gorgeous after the darkness.
“I hope you understand now,” he said. “I’m sorry that I had to be so forceful with you before, but how else would I have persuaded you?”
Glenne continued to stare out of the window.
“Forceful with your body, or with your gun you mean?”
Russell stared straight ahead.
“Let’s just get this assignment done and then we can sort through everything else, okay?”
She sighed, as he put his hand on her thigh.
“And I definitely meant sorry for being forceful with the gun.”
Glenne was happy when she went to Gina’s apartment. Gina wasn’t there as she’d told her that she wouldn’t be. Russell took off his suit jacket, and she stared at him
“I didn’t invite you to stay.”
“But I am staying. It looks more legitimate that way and it will make it easier for you not to have any slips.”
“I can be trusted, I promised Odette, and I am not going to be one to mess with the agency.”
“I am staying because it’s safer for you too.”
She was too tired to argue. “Alright. You can stay with me, but I’m too exhausted and I’m going to save all the rest of my energy for tomorrow at the club. I’ll need to have stamina for then.”
Russell slept over and spent the day with her. Glenne had to admit that it felt like more of a punishment for her that she’d said she wouldn’t touch him until they were in the club. She was overrun with desire by the time that they got there, having felt him touching her like he had in the bar in her mind all day. She wore a sheer blouse, a latex skirt, back-seamed thigh highs and Roger Vivier pumps, looking like a retro pin-up girl compared to what most of the women were wearing... or not wearing.
Russell had on the suit that he was wearing the night before, and the scent of him was driving her half insane. He kept his arms about her, and even though the club was for swingers it didn’t look like either of them were going to participate in anything that didn’t involve the other.
Two couples had decided to play early. Watching them, intoxicated by the scent of Russell’s cologne, made her so wet she wasn’t sure what she was going to do. Shifting uncomfortably, the thigh highs allowed her to feel the moisture wetting the inside of her thighs even more.
She wasn’t sure if it was for real or for show, but the two couples tried out every variation that they could between the four of them. In a heaving pile, sweat glistening like diamonds on their bodies, Glenne pressed against Russell and felt his hardness against her back. His breath was getting more labored...or was that her own?