by Amie DeVere
“Sshh…wait.” I stretched out the word, and he stopped. “I want to taste your cock.” I licked my lips. “Close your eyes.”
He did.
Anticipation froze the moment allowing me to morph from enchanting vamp to vindictive vixen. Silently reaching around Simon I whisked away his discarded clothes and stashed them beside my own with my purse, drawing the pistol like a bandit. From Simon’s shock and reaction when he opened his eyes, I must have seemed a wild naked woman shaking a gun at him, but in my mind’s eye and memory, my hand was steady, and I was calm.
“What the—”
“Shut the fuck up and sit down,” I warned from six feet away.
He was afraid, or I should say he was more afraid than I was. I was willing to play my cards and lose what I had put down. I was all in. It was an orchestrated bluff, and I was committed to it. Cock wilting, he sat on the bed.
“Let me tell you what just happened,” I said. “I have a tape I can send your wife.” I took out the recorder and showed it to him. “I’m sure she’d be interested in the room you keep here to take advantage of opportunities.”
I had met Simon’s wife several times at firm events, and she struck me as a woman who would not suffer infidelity.
“You’ve gone mad,” he said.
“You should hope not,” I said. I didn’t know if I would pull the trigger, but I believed I could.
“I won’t tell anyone about you and Hawkins. Is that what you want?”
“Yes, but that’s not all.” He waited for me to continue. “I can’t work with you at the firm after this.” I waved the gun indicating the situation. He recoiled, and the realization that he also believed I could fire gave me courage. “I think it’s time you opened your own shop.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked.
“I want you to resign and leave the firm.”
“You’re fucking crazy.”
“No, I’m greedy, but not as greedy as your wife would be.”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Do I look like I’m negotiating?” I asked in my best George Clooney imitation because life is sometimes exactly like the movies. I almost laughed but counseled myself to remain alert and cautious. I didn’t want to be, well, cocky. While he considered, I bent down and put the recorder in my purse. Struggling to dress with only my free hand, I never lost sight of him as he squirmed, searching for a break. When I was finished, except for buttoning my blouse for which I needed two hands, I straightened with the gun still on him. “Think of it as taking advantage of a different kind of opportunity.” I picked up my purse and his clothes and moved toward the door.
“You’re taking my clothes?” he asked.
“Of course, I don’t want you following me.”
“How am I supposed to get home without my clothes?”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
“You fucking bitch.”
“Yes, but I’m not your fucking bitch.” I walked out of the room. After I shut the door, I stuffed the gun in my purse, dropped his clothes in the dumpster, and ran. I didn’t stop until I was out of breath and then leaned against a telephone pole. I buttoned my blouse with my hands shaking, my heart racing in relief and disbelief. I went back to the firm, put the gun and ammunition back in the safe, and took the cassette of our rendezvous with me. I felt like the director of a play at the end of the first act and focused on the next challenge–luring John Hawkins to the dark side.
* * * *
I got home late and poured a bubble bath with very hot water to calm me down and wash away the events of the night. Soaking in the deep tub in the dim light, my heart pounded in my ears, and the water scalded when I moved. I withdrew from the world and what I had done. I meant to plan, but instead closed my eyes and emptied my mind of schemes until all I could hear in the quiet was the sound of my breathing. The sharp burn of the water followed my hand to my crotch. Spreading my cunt lips to expose the soft flesh to the heat, I gasped as the water entered and lapped against my clit like a tongue. Bringing my other hand to my breasts, I touched the flesh, soft and warm, my chest rising and falling, nipples exposed out of the water. I caressed the tender inside of my arms and swirled circles around my breasts lightly with my fingertips until the nipples hardened. Slowly, I pushed two fingers into my cunt slippery with my arousal, the hot water invading where I opened. Hooking my right leg over the side of the tub, the porcelain pressed cool against my calf, sending a shiver through my body. I reached for the washcloth and folded it over, rolled it, and twisted it into the shape of a cock. Sometimes a girl has to improvise.
Closing my eyes, I thought of John Hawkins, and only him. I dipped the stiff washcloth into the bath and brought it swelling with water between my thighs and against my slit, moving the hard tip between my nether lips and against my clit. Drawing it to my opening, I pushed it within, feeling the resistance and the pleasant slide against the walls of my cunt as it filled me. Releasing the rest of the washcloth, it blossomed in the water, floating and licking against my clit and the inside of my thighs, gentle and rough. My breathing grew heavy, and beads of sweat trickled from my temples down my face. I passed my tongue over my lips, tasting the saltiness and gripped the sides of the tub, savoring the sensation of my throbbing cunt. One hand pulled and pushed the cloth, while I teased my clit with the other in a slow motion fuck suspended between a dream and a fantasy. I came panting, my cunt clenching against the washcloth wedged in my body, and I pulled it out slick with my fluid. I unraveled the cloth, soaped it up, and washed my face and body until my skin turned red from the heat and scrubbing, soft and clean. After my bath and exhausted, I slept without dreams or thoughts straight through until the morning.
Then, like an unexpected avalanche on a clear cold day, everything went to hell.
In the light of the morning what I had done the evening before frightened me. Only then did I realize how horribly wrong it all could have gone and could still. Putting substance to my fears, the first sign that the fickle gods had turned against me came on the train in the form of the gray-bearded overweight conductor who’d replaced the one with beautiful hands. When I arrived at work, I learned Simon had called in sick, which set me on edge, and my first assignment was to sort out his schedule and get continuances. I walked over to court for the nine o’clock call. On my way over through the parking lot, I saw John Hawkins leave his car with a tall stunning woman with long dark hair. The silent movie unraveled as I did the same. They kissed. When they parted she walked away, laughing and waving. He smiled and waved in return.
My heart stopped and suffered the instant stabbing pain unique to heartache when it resumed beating in a different broken world. My mind, hoping to spare my heart, and calling in reserves rationalized. “Well, he didn’t waste any time, did he?” and “He’s obviously not worth it. You deserve better.”
What made matters infinitely worse was not that I had committed at least two felonies—probably more—to protect him, but that she was by far more beautiful than I could ever be and I had no claim to him, anyway, no basis in reality for my mass mutiny of emotion. I shook off the scene and whatever it meant, what I knew it meant, and concentrated on the work I had to do.
For the following week I lived in a world where I controlled nothing and anticipated disaster around every corner, a juggler losing concentration. Simon stayed away from the office. I could only guess he was planning retaliation, but could do nothing but wait. I was never good at waiting. I tried to put John Hawkins from my mind and in the process of trying, defeated the purpose.
On Thursday night of this hell week, I attended the Horace Gray Society’s annual Shakespeare and the Law black tie event at Faneuil Hall, Othello and the Art of Judging, or from my perspective, A Mid-Hell-Week Intellect’s Dream. I was alone. No one else from the office had wanted to go. In spite of the formality, I hoped for respite, an island of distraction, wrapped in history and austerity in the hall where Daniel
Webster once eulogized John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and now haunted the trays of hors d’oeuvres and stingy yet seemingly endless glasses of white wine. I nibbled and drank without counting, reveling in the abundance and anticipation of a pure academic exercise. Sitting toward the back, I used the chair beside me for a table and surveyed the assembled strangers who promised an evening free of any drama except for that of the Bard.
Then I saw John Hawkins across the room. I tried to ignore how my heart beat faster and the hand holding my glass became sweaty. I couldn’t ignore how beautiful he looked, a lock of hair falling on his forehead, smiling, at ease with one hand in his pocket. Before I could move he saw me and raised his glass in my direction. His gaze pierced through me like an arrow, agitating the pain and pleasure of our connection, a pittance of pain compared to when the arrow came out and focused on the woman who joined him, the same woman from the parking lot. She tossed her head and waves of auburn settled on her shoulders. She smiled and spoke to John, and he didn’t turn back to me. I looked away to my pathetic plate of appetizers that had suddenly become unappetizing and swallowed the rest of my wine.
While I debated whether to get another glass or leave, I heard Simon’s voice. “Mind if I sit with you?” he asked, sitting beside me with his own plate of food. “Looks like Hawkins has found someone else to review his briefs.” He stuffed his mouth with a miniature Beef Wellington.
I wondered how long it had taken Simon to come up with that witticism, but the remark cleared my confusion and self-pity like the sun on morning fog. I’m fond of double entendre, although not at my expense. The line was also sufficient to push the button that transformed me into Iron Man ready for battle, complete with armored skin plating. “I thought you were sick.”
“I was considering your offer.”
I scoffed. “Offer. That’s putting quite a bright spin on it. I’m glad to see you’re optimistic.”
“More optimistic than you.” He pointed with another hors d’oeuvre in the direction of where I sensed rather than knew John Hawkins stood. I kept my attention fixed on Simon.
“It didn’t mean anything anyway,” I lied and in tribute to my weakness in deceit, I raked him up and down. “And now you have less than you had at the Estate…so to speak.” I stared at him with enough intensity he put down the hors d’oeuvre poised at his mouth. “No one would believe you.” I paused. “By the way, how’s your wife? Is she with you tonight?” I smiled and looked around.
“She didn’t want to come.”
“Didn’t want to or couldn’t?” I turned back to him and let my double entendre sink in. When Simon looked away, I continued. “The time for consideration is over. It’s time to decide.” He glanced at me sideways. Even with clothes and without a gun, the power from the motel returned. I narrowed my eyes. “Or the decision will be made for you.” I stood to go and collided with John Hawkins who had managed to make his way over to us. He was alone.
“Whoa, where are you going?” he asked.
I had wanted to make an exit, throw the gauntlet at Simon, and leave. This was not in the battle plan. “I need to go,” I said under my breath.
“I’d like you to meet someone.”
I stared at him with genuine surprise. Shocked, mortified would not be too strong to identify the emotion that left me speechless. Meanwhile, Simon slinked away, likely not willing to be in the direct vicinity where he expected an explosion. He was good at slinking.
“I need to go,” I repeated and saw what may have been bewilderment in John’s eyes or something like hope. It may just have been that my eyes at the time were beginning to blur. I left before my tears fell, a stellar evening marred by clouds of uncertainty.
Still early when I got home, I changed into my pajamas and found my copy of Othello determined to immerse myself in the play, forget Simon and John Hawkins, and redeem the evening. Shakespeare did not play along. Iago has a lovely soliloquy in the first scene that ends, ‘I am not what I am.’ I was in hell and sympathized with the devil.
* * * *
The following Monday, or on the eleventh day of torture, my boss told me Simon would not be returning to the office and to place an ad in the legal weekly for an associate. It was as though some unseen director had flipped a switch and yelled, “Action!”
“I know someone who might be interested in the position. Can I let him know and give you his résumé?”
“Sure. Do I know him?”
“I don’t want to speak for him, but he’s a DA.”
“Good, someone with experience. I like him already. Place that ad anyway though. Not everyone wants to do what we do.”
Emboldened by my triumph with Simon I walked over to the DA’s office ready to take on any comers. I felt like I could rule the world and be good at it. Granted there was still the issue of the woman from the parking lot, but I suddenly held the added attraction of employment that paid at least twice as much as the Commonwealth. I swaggered until I thought about what I actually had to accomplish, the conversion of the angel. The closer I got, the more I believed my mission was impossible in the plainest and most straightforward sense of the phrase. DAs held the moral high ground. It was their currency, their raison d’être. They ate, drank and slept moral high ground. Defense attorneys and their assistants were relegated to the eighth circle of hell where, I had to admit, we rightly belonged. I once helped defend a client who extinguished his cigarette on the forehead of the seventy-year-old woman he had raped and killed. We checked our judgment and cashed our checks. Sure, we held out our adored founding father John Adams, as the patron saint of defense attorneys who steadfastly defended the British soldiers following the Boston Massacre and obtained an acquittal, but that was an illusion. Defense attorneys will try to convince you that John Adams did this noble deed because he believed in justice and that everyone deserved a defense. I had done the research, and the truth was he wanted to control the propaganda surrounding the trial and minimize the role of the crowd in inciting the soldiers. He would not have defended the soldiers unless he had had complete control of the defense and had been assured of the outcome. Control had been the key, as it was to me now.
“I’m here to see John Hawkins,” I said to the receptionist.
“Is he expecting you?”
“No,” I answered with authority and assurance, no excuses. People respond to confidence.
“Do you know where—”
“Yes,” I said before she finished and walked over to his office. I knocked on the open door, and he looked up, surprised to see me.
“Come in.” He got up and walked around his desk much in the same way he had done the first time we met and went behind me to shut the door. He put his arms around me from behind, and I stiffened even though my heart quickened at his touch.
“Really?” I asked and turned to face him, feeling my anger rise to destroy any leverage I might have had. I expected subterfuge, some betraying glance, an attempt at humor, but not a guiltless welcome. My aspirations for control vanished, replaced by an overwhelming desire to smite him, the person who, I decided in that instant, had been the cause of my turmoil from the moment I first saw him. In a single countering gesture, I tossed the well-rehearsed script I’d written to convince him of the merits of consorting with evil and tease him into compliance out the window into the path of an eighteen-wheeler, and replaced it with a barely coherent stream-of-consciousness diatribe that began, “Do you buy condoms in bulk?”
I know jealous rage is not the most appealing emotion in a woman, but you must know by now that I have limits to what I can endure, which I grant are fairly low. The invective had to be sufficiently fierce to strangle the part of me wanting him more than ever. I had intended a prolonged plan of revenge for after he joined our firm, exquisite in its conception and detail, and as excruciating as it would be satisfying in its execution. But, have I mentioned I’m not good at waiting?
He didn’t respond immediately, but he did let me go and took a step back. Wh
en I finished, I expected him to be defensive but the silence lengthened uncomfortably, long enough for my mind to hiss at me, Shit, he’s going to be nice, you fucking idiot.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
With this open-ended remark I had several options. I could have tried to take it all back, say I was sorry and burst into tears. I could have launched into the saga of Simon and how I’d saved his ungrateful ass. I could have said, you know exactly what I mean, or reverted to the old standby really? Instead, realizing I had just confessed that he hurt me and had the power to do so, I said, “I don’t know, either,” and looked away.
“The woman you saw the other day…”
His words trailed off and I looked back at him steeling myself for the next phrase. “What?” I asked irritated, frustrated.
“She’s my sister,” he said and smiled. “You could have met her the other day, but you ran off.”
“Fuck you,” I said, tears now stinging my eyes. The old ‘She’s my sister’ routine did not happen in real life. No one mistakes a sister for a lover. “You kissed her on the mouth,” I added as proof and instantly realized I had just admitted exactly how much attention I had paid to them. The hole I was digging was getting deeper, and there was no end in sight.
“It may have seemed that way to you.” He moved over to me and ran a hand under my hair. “But it’s not the same as kissing you,” he whispered and mercifully shut me up.
His lips were soft, and I was so relieved not to talk I sighed. He pushed his tongue into my mouth and his taste spurred my memory of our encounters and the promise they held. He placed a hand on my breast while the other stroked across my back. I wanted more, but couldn’t escape the thought of our ever present predicament.
I broke the moment. “I need your résumé.” He looked at me with a confused expression. “There’s an opening at the firm. The job’s practically yours if you want it,” I continued stumbling as my mind scrambled to rescue the remnants of my rehearsal. “Don’t even think of turning this down.”