3rd World Products, Book 16

by Ed Howdershelt

  Elgin fussed with her glass, then sipped, then took a breath and asked, “Well, what if… what if, sometime before you die, you decide you want to have kids? I could see that happening, I think, even if you just used a sperm bank.”

  Hm, again. I opened my mouth as if to speak, then closed it and sipped. Would she take the bait?

  After a sip of her own, Elgin asked, “What? You were going to say something. What was it?”

  “Something funny. Or maybe not so funny, I guess, depending on whether you think I’m at all attractive.”

  That made her blink. She looked me up and down and canted her head as she studied me, then said, “For your age, you’re attractive enough. You’d find someone who’d want your children, I’m sure of that.”

  I chuckled, “That’s not saying all that much, ma’am. Some of the matchups I’ve seen make me wonder if people shouldn’t have to get breeding licenses before they get marriage licenses.”

  Elgin chuckled with me for a moment, then said, “Again, you were going to say something. What was it?”

  Sighing, I admitted, “Like I said, something intended to be witty that might have been more like half-witty. I got by fifty years without ‘em and I have a flitter who can do field stuff for me. I was gonna say that for a chance with a golden goddess like you, I’d have these things yanked outta my head like a pair of bad teeth.”

  A pink flush overcame Elgin’s light tan across her neck and shoulders. Excellent. A blush most often also meant a thrill.

  Chapter Thirty

  Elgin sat very straight. Her legs uncrossed and her knees drew together snugly for a moment, then relaxed. She took another sip and it seemed a fairly long one, then she took a deep breath and spoke rather carefully.

  “No,” she said, “Not half-witty at all. In one sense, it’s exactly the kind of thing I’ve been led to believe you’d say to a woman. To me, in particular, because I’m fairly attractive and in a position of authority. In another sense, I’ve met you and talked with you and I saw what you did to spare the world another encounter with that kid. I think you just meant it as a humorous way to compliment me.”

  “You’re right, but…” I gave her a fisheye and asked, “Who fed you that ‘fairly attractive’ crap? Marilyn Monroe was only ‘fairly attractive’ without all her makeup. From what I can see, you don’t need any. You’re as hot as she ever was when she was all dolled up. It’s different with you, but it’s there.”

  She returned my fisheye and rather skeptically asked, “Different? Different how?”

  “Different like… well, Marilyn waggled her ass and posed to get attention. She had to, because she was surrounded by herds of younger, do-anything starlets who’d have knocked her off her throne in a heartbeat. But you remind me of a woman I used to know in the Army. She was salutable in or out of uniform. It was the way she presented and carried herself, as if she knew deep in her heart something that others have yet to discover. Something that put her head and shoulders above the herd, you know? It said, ‘By God, I’m special’, and it wasn’t just self-inflation. She was special and she knew it. Confidence. Poise. Real dignity, not the imitation kind people wear to get respect and take off like a suit when they’re home alone. She had a sense of proven personal worth that most people never find.”

  Sipping, I said, “And I’m not talking about my first wife, in case you actually read that far back. I’m talking about a lady I used to work for who’d stand up to the President if she thought he was wrong about something.”

  Eyeing me for a moment, Elgin said, “Well, it can’t have been Linda Baines. She was Navy, not Army.”

  “Nope. Not her. A lot like her, though. She was a JAG lawyer. It wasn’t that she was a hardhead, either. Show her a good reason to back off and she would, but never, ever threaten her or anyone around her. I like women like her. That’s probably why I like you so much, stupid as it may be.”

  She had an ‘oh, really?’ expression as she echoed, “Stupid?”

  “Yes’m. You’re NIA. By now you know what’s said about the NIA in comparison to the other agencies and you know why. You also know that won’t change because the people appointed to lead the NIA are deeply indebted politically. And Larcon used to say something I’ll bet you’ve heard at least once.”

  As I sipped, Elgin asked, “What’s that?”

  “He’d say, ‘Until it’s proven he didn’t break the law, he broke the damned law, and it isn’t up to us to prove a damned thing‘. He was talking about a guy in Mississippi. There were a lot of questions about whether a certain Senator was just using the NIA to persecute the guy.”

  With a small smile, Elgin asked, “Were you the guy?”

  “Nope. I was asked to help run him down, and that’s exactly how they wanted to do it. Run him down like they used to, with a pack of dogs and a good ol’ boy sheriff. I pretended to look for him and instead reexamined all the evidence. Some of it was missing. I found it in the Senator’s wall safe, so I sort of put it where it could be accidentally found by some journalists.”

  Apparently greatly amused, Elgin asked, “You ‘sort of’ put it there? How does that work?”

  “Ah. Well, my flitter opened the safe with a probe and I took the documents and the check to the sheriff’s office and stuck it all behind a file cabinet so it would show a bit. Then I used the probe to annoy a journalist until he looked in just the right direction and saw it. He pulled it out, realized he’d just found gold, and wet his pants.” With a shrug, I added, “Literally. He’d been waiting by a phone quite a while and all that coffee needed out.”

  Elgin laughed briefly, then asked, “What happened then?”

  “The hunt was called off, charges were dropped. The Senator and his land grabbing cronies had to back off and the Senator caught some heavy but very quiet flak. He was strongly advised not to run for reelection in 2007 and he didn’t.”

  “2007? Elections happen in even years.”

  “Not in Mississippi.” I used a screen to show her the stats and said, “Things happened too fast and too close to the elections for them to barf up another viable candidate who’d stand a chance. No Democrat ran in his district in 2007.”

  She read some of the display and shook her head slightly, then faced me again. Sipping her drink in silence, she regarded me thoughtfully for a time, then said, “I’ll call your friend Myra before the week is out. That’s something I should take care of back home in Alexandria, I think. Tonight, I need to make a call right now, and I just touch-checked my phone. It isn’t working.”

  “Tea, let Agent Vicky make her call, please.”

  Elgin said, “You’re so polite to your flitter. I like that.”

  Taking out her phone, she checked it, then dialed and waited. When someone answered, she said, “Harris, I’m following a lead and I may not get in any time soon tonight. That’s right, I’m still with him. He has some things he wants to copy and give me and we have to find a store that sells blank DVDs.”

  There was a pause, then she said, “No. It has to do with what happened at the nursing home. It’s a full recording of events.”

  That must have gotten Harris excited. Grinning, Elgin said, “Harris! Harris! Listen to me. That’s why I need the time. There’s a lot of material here. I know it isn’t exactly what we had in mind, but she’s already in custody and… Yes. She turned herself in. Fine. Call him. I’ll wait.”

  Sipping her drink, Elgin grinned at me as if she had feathers between her teeth and crossed her legs again, then grinned even harder when I watched them move and pretended be stricken with silent ‘she got me again’ remorse for my weakness. She snickered softly and sipped again as we waited.

  Suddenly returning her attention to her phone, she said, “Yes, that’s exactly what it’s about. So will you cover for me? Good. Thanks, Harris. No, that’s it for now. I’ll let you know. Bye.”

  Putting her phone back in her jacket pocket, Elgin said, “Let’s get those copies out of the way. I can’t go in w
ithout them tomorrow. After that, we’ll see how things go.” She looked over the side and asked, “How high are we?”

  “Twenty miles.”

  “How long have we been here?”

  “Since about five minutes after we left the motel.”

  Shaking her head in vague wonder, she said, “I was so wrapped up in things, I never really noticed. Let’s find that store.”

  We did so, landing at a big box all-nighter. I bought both a pack of blank DVDs and a 16-gig flash drive, then we returned to the flitter and I had Tea make the copies. Something suddenly seemed to occur to Elgin.

  “How would I know if you really copied anything just now?”

  “Stand by one, ma’am.” I opened my backpack and took out my laptop, put the flash drive in place, and fired up Puppy. A few moments later we were watching the show on my IBM. She hurried the show along to its conclusion as if to verify it was all there, then nodded.

  “Excellent. Thanks, Ed.”

  “De nada. For you, milady, almost anything.”

  She laughed, “Only ‘almost’?”

  I shrugged. “No arrest. Otherwise, I’m all yours.”

  Grinning, she said, “I’m glad you said that, because I want you to find us a nice motel north of Gainesville, then I want you to get us a room at that nice motel that we can get into and out of without passing through a lobby.”

  Hell, yes, I was startled, just as I was without a doubt meant to be. Standing straight and saluting, I said, “Yes, ma’am, I’m on it, ma’am,” and pulled up a map of north Gainesville as I quietly had Tea take us there in stealth mode.

  Elgin said, “We’ll need some snacks, too.”

  “No problem, milady. There’s another big box store nearby.”

  She replied, “Excellent,” and sipped her drink. A moment later she added, “And I’ll need my purse. You’re getting the room, so it’s only fair that I buy the snacks.”

  Uh, huh. Well, we’ll see. Pointing at her purse to guide her eyes, I sent a tiny field line to slice the weld, then handed the purse to her and said, “All fixed.”

  Elgin’s eyes widened. “You just… pointed at it and… did that?”

  Pretending to studying the map, I replied, “Yeah, that’s pretty much how it works, ma’am.”

  Reaching into her purse, she retrieved her handcuffs and asked, “Could you do something like that with these?”

  “Won’t you need those eventually?”

  “I can get another pair.”

  Hm. Well, okay. I used a tendril to suspend them, then used another tendril to slice off the bit of chain and weld the two mounting beads together. Suspending the chain, I melted it into a perfect sphere and cooled it, then used the tendril to deliver everything to her.

  As an afterthought, I took the sphere back, flattened it to paper thinness, and used a shaded photo overlay to etch an image of her face into the surface. When I handed her the three-inch disk, she simply stared at it for a time, then looked up to study me with a rather amazed expression.

  At the store we picked up some snacks and drinks, then we headed for the motel. It was, as she’d requested, a nice place, even for one that had its lobby at the end of a building instead of the center. I didn’t wear my hat and the clerk never saw the flitter. When she asked about my car, I said I wasn’t driving a car. She had to call someone and added a hefty deposit to my cash price, but I got the room.

  Agent Vicky seemed a bit anxious at that point, so I took a chance that I could address her trepidations with, “Tea, nobody needs to record us entering or leaving this room. When we do so, please block the lenses of all cameras within one hundred feet of us. And wait just above the building, please.”

  Not speaking aloud, I also asked her for a wide stealth mode tunnel to and from the room.

  Elgin looked at me speculatively and seemed to have a change of mood after I’d spoken to Tea. No longer at all nervous, she practically led the way from the parking spaces to the door, but she never touched the door or the key card.

  Inside the room, I helped her out of her half-parka and said, “Don’t forget to wipe everything down, Agent Vicky.”

  Turning to face me, Elgin grinned and said, “You know I won’t.”

  “Mind if I ask why this is happening?”

  She shrugged. “No. Feel free.”

  Hm. “Okay. Why?”

  “Other than saying that I didn’t want to do this at your house, at my agency-paid motel room, or aboard your flitter, I’d much rather do it than talk about it, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Understood, ma’am. Do I call you Victoria or Vicky?”

  “Either. ‘Agent Vicky’ is cute, but that’s what my nephews call me when I’m not ‘Aunt Vicky’. When are you going to kiss me?”

  “Whenever you want, milady. As often as possible, too, and pretty much anywhere you’d like.”

  I’d said the last to invite comments and questions. I took her in my arms and kissed her softly, then less so, and the feel, scent, and taste of her instantly raised my dick between us.

  Vicky reached down my pants and asked, “Only ‘pretty much‘? What don’t you like and what won’t you do?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing anal. No toe-licking. That’s about it.”

  She laughed and nodded. “We think enough alike.”

  “Before we do much of anything, I’ve had a long day and I’d like to clean up. Shower with me?”

  “Will you wash my hair?”

  “Of course, milady. With great pleasure, ma’am. In fact, I’ll happily wash all of you, if you wouldn’t mind too much. You’ll be so clean bloodhounds couldn’t find you in a ten-foot room.”

  She chuckled, “Well, maybe not quite that clean.”

  “As you command, milady. I’ll leave a small dirty spot on your left ankle or something.”

  Shaking her head, she sighed, “Oh, no, you won’t. I’ve seen this act before. You’ll wash it and say you didn’t, just to keep me happy.”

  Pretending shock, I asked, “Am I that transparent?”

  Vicky laughed and sat down to remove her shoes as she asked, “You know what’ll happen, don’t you? We won’t get to sleep until around three and I’ll have to get up at seven to get back to Ocala by nine.”

  I toed off my shoes and said, “Nope. We have Galatea. Five minutes or less to Ocala.”

  She started unbuttoning her blouse as she replied, “Nope. Another shower and breakfast first.”

  “Damn. You’re right. Okay. Up at seven.”

  When we both stood naked a few moments later, I discovered I wanted her almost achingly right then and there. We regarded each other for another moment, then Vicky let herself fall back on the bed and said, “Now. First.”

  “Oh, lordy, you read my mind.”

  She snickered, “It wasn’t too difficult.”

  Stroking her legs as I climbed onto the bed, I made no reply and simply let her see the pleasure I took from touching her and kissing my way up her lovely thighs. I faintly smelled soap at her knee. Had she showered before I’d called? My fingers found her slick damp readiness, surprising and strongly calling to me. I kissed my way to her bush and found it smelled very slightly of soap, too, but that wasn’t the scent that hardened my dick and made my heart pound.

  Vicky felt my breath on her bush and caught her own breath as she tensed slightly. I marveled at the feel of her skin against my face and slid closer until I could just barely touch her dampness with my tongue. She startled, let out her breath, took another quick breath, and that’s when I gently dove in.

  Her legs startled hard with the rest of her, then they rose to better present my target and I got down to business. Wound up as tight as she was, Vicky had a couple of small ones almost immediately. I let my hands roam as I pleasured her and soon found another, larger orgasm within her.

  Vicky’s fingers laced with mine and she squeezed my hands as she came again. Her legs wobbled and one leg fell away to my left, then rose back upright to cradle my
face. When her hands squeezed mine again and a low groan began, I bore heartily into the task of helping what seemed like a big one find its way out of her. Warm, firm thighs suddenly gripped my head and her hips bucked against my tongue as she came so hard she did a half-situp. Her breathing was harsh and quick and she groaned again as her thighs squeezed a bit harder for a time.

  Then Vicky’s coordination seemed to fail. Her thighs trembled, her belly bucked a bit, and she let herself fall flat as she breathed in short, harsh gasps. I took the opportunity to move upward against her and slide myself inside her. Vicky’s face turned toward mine and I kissed her as I drove myself in to the hilt.

  I didn’t care that I was on top, looking down. I didn’t care about anything but Vicky’s pleasure. Once I was fully within her, I rained kisses on her face, neck, and shoulders and lightly licked the side of her neck. That made my dick buck hard. Vicky turned her face to see mine as I licked again and my dick throbbed within her.

  She asked, “You aren’t coming already?”

  “Oh, no. God, no, ma’am. I just love the taste of you. Every fresh lick seems to make my dick jump.” I laughed, “When I finish with you, you probably won’t need a shower.”

  She chuckled and kissed me and said, “Oh, I think I will. You promised to wash my hair and I’m holding you to it.”

  “Yes, milady. Hair. Got it.”

  Laughing again, she took a deep breath, but something caused a hitch in it when I slowly moved myself in and out of her. Her magic spot. I’d found it that quickly. Most excellent, indeed. I carefully worked that spot with short, slow strokes. It felt almost like a thin, flexible button.

  Resisting her efforts to pull me deeper, I gave that magic button a few more short, solid, slow strokes, then I plunged in to the hilt again. Vicky groaned softly and her legs came up around the small of my back, then slid down where her heels could pull me in tighter, deeper.

  She grabbed my head and kissed me, breaking away to groan again as her hands tremblingly gripped my face. Several short breaths later, she groaned again and pulled me to her for another kiss, then her arms quickly wrapped around my shoulders and she hugged me hard as she groaningly came again.