“Right on time,” Crixus answered. “Julie told me your previous client canceled. We made an appointment.”
A gathering tension between my shoulders informed me that I didn’t care for Julie’s name on Crixus’s lips. Or anything else that belonged to her, for that matter. Still, Crixus making an appointment as opposed to screwing his way through the door was progress. “He arrived a few minutes late,” I explained. “And he didn’t check in. For obvious reasons.”
Only in the absence of cleavage did Crixus glance down at the couch, where Marvin flicked water out of his ear. His snowy fur stuck up in crazy whorls and tufts.
“Hey, Marvin,” Crixus said, extending his hand. “What’s shakin’?”
“Nothing,” Marvin grumbled. “Ever.”
“Still trying to die?” Crixus asked, glancing at me.
“I’m already dead,” Marvin sighed. “Suicide is just a formality.”
“Cheerful as ever, I see.” Crixus sauntered past me, yawned, and stretched. “So what did else did I miss?”
Not a blackmailer, my brain helpfully supplied.
“A blackmailer?” Crixus repeated, snagging the thought out of midair like a chameleon snatching a passing fly. Truth be told, Crixus’s tongue was no less talented.
“I don’t want to talk about it right now.” An ache still radiated from a spot in my chest that felt bruised and heavy.
“We can talk later, of course,” Crixus said. “Pick up where we left off?”
“Left off?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at him. “I don’t recall leaving off anywhere.”
“Surely you haven’t forgotten our agreement already, Doctor.”
“I remember it perfectly,” I replied. “You had your night. What you chose to do with it is entirely up to you.”
“I was called away on urgent duty,” Crixus insisted. “The fate of the planet is on the line.”
“When is it not?” I scoffed. So far, the same excuse had gotten both a dysfunctional love god and a leprechaun with dissociative identity disorder through my door.
“But this is even worse,” Crixus said. “Unless you can help him,” he said, gesturing to the paper-bag-masked figure on his left, “the human civilization will be chaos and ruin within a year.”
“Good,” Marvin chimed in. “Let them burn. Except you,” he said jerking his pink nose in my direction. “You seem pretty okay.”
“Aww. Thank you! That’s very nice of you to—”
“Did you not hear what I said?” Crixus interrupted. “World, over. People die. The end.”
“What’s the cause this time?” I asked almost causally.
“There hasn’t been a single conception for the last three days. Not anywhere. Not in the entire world. The chariots are loaded, but no one’s crossing the finish line.”
“How could you possibly know that?” I asked him.
Arrogance wiped away the thin traces of concern that had occupied his face. “I told you. I know everything.”
“Okay, so there’s a trough. Patterns vary. Averages take both highs and lows into account.”
“Not like this,” Crixus said. “I know the patterns. And the pattern shows that in three days with no conception, that’s a million people the world will now be missing.”
“I’m guessing your recyclable friend has something to do with this?” The figure failed to speak any further words aside from asking whether they were late for the appointment. I found myself wanting to hear the voice applied to whole sentences. Paragraphs, even.
“Not something,” Crixus said. “Everything.”
“Historically speaking, I have trouble treating clients for everything. Can you give me something more specific to work with?”
Crixus looked toward the paper bag. “I think it would be better if you told her.”
“You’re sure she can help?” Goosebumps rose on my arms and climbed my neck. Never had I heard a voice so lovely and melodic.
“Trust me,” Crixus said, a strange little smile playing across his full lips. “Anyone can fix you up, it’s Dr. Schmidt.”
My usual ritual of inviting the new client to take a seat on the couch was interrupted by the realization that it was still occupied. Marvin, uninterested in our conversation, had set to grooming his fur with rodent-like single-mindedness.
“I would be happy to meet with you for the next half hour,” I said. “Crixus, would you like to show Marvin to the restroom so he can get cleaned up? You might want to take the stairs. Just so Julie doesn’t see…you know”
“Marvin?” Crixus asked. “Or me?”
“My concern is for Marvin,” I answered. “But if you feel compelled to re-dip your wick, I’ll ask you to do so when she’s not on the clock.” With herculean effort, I forced my gaze back to my notepad where I wrote Paper Bag Guy at the top.
“When does she get off?” Crixus asked. “Work, that is.”
“You can discuss that with her directly,” I said, my knuckles turning white as I resisted the urge to hurl my pen at Crixus’s head. “If you would kindly see to Marvin, I need to call Liam before Ba—your friend and I can get started.”
“How is old Whatthefuck?” Crixus sent a meaningful glance toward the photo still facedown on my coffee. “Or has he been too busy murdering people for you two to catch up?”
“Marvin” I said, ignoring the demigod to pick up a card from my desk, “I would really like to talk with you some more. Can we schedule another time to meet?”
Marvin took my card and tucked it into the pocket of his vest. “Sure,” he said, hopping down from the couch. “I’ll be around.” His fluffy white tail bobbed up and down like a self-willed cotton ball as he hopped toward the door.
“So will I,” said Crixus.
“I’ll just be a moment,” I said to Bag Guy, as I picked up my cell phone.
“Take your time.”
A flash of weakness set my knees wobbling as the first ring sounded in my ear. Whether from Bag Guy’s voice or the anticipation of Liam’s, I couldn’t say.
One ring turned into five. I hung up on the sixth, not willing to wait for another pre-recorded rejection. With Crixus so close in range, I didn’t have the luxury of conjecturing what might cause Liam not to pick up.
Crixus would not only feed my worries but throw a few more upon the heap.
I silenced my phone and resumed my place in the chair. “I’m afraid Crixus didn’t introduce us. I’m Matilda Schmidt.”
“Call me Don,” he replied.
I crossed out “Bag Guy” and scrawled “Don” at the top of the page. “Okay, Don. I’m fairly certain you can ascertain my first question.”
“The bag?” he asked.
“Yes. Why do you feel the need to wear it?”
“For protection.” A well-groomed hand picked at invisible fuzz on his designer jeans.
“And what are you protecting yourself from?”
“It’s not me I’m protecting. It’s everyone else.”
His answer took me aback for a moment while I filtered through possibilities. Self-consciousness due to a facial disfigurement, perhaps? This theory wasn’t consistent with the care he took in cultivating the rest of his appearance. “What are you protecting them from? What would seeing your face do, exactly?”
“Monsters,” he said. “I turn people into monsters.”
“Can you delve into that term a little deeper for me?” I suppressed my natural inclination to point out the overgeneralization and dramatization in his statement. If the last couple weeks had taught me anything, it was never to assume. For all I knew, looking upon whatever lurked behind the paper might very well cause me to grow horns and sprout a tail.
“I bring out the baser instincts in human nature. Things they’ve repressed. Ugly things.”
“Is that what’s causing the recent lack in conceptions? People becoming monsters?”
His laugh was small and sad. “Nothing that simple, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t under
stand. What does you wearing this bag and people failing to conceive have in common?”
“Women. Human and divine. They fight over me. Do terrible things to each other. There is no end to the acts of savagery they’re capable of.”
“Surely not all of the women in the entire world,” I said.
“All of them. All the time. This world and any other.”
A wave of vertigo had the room leaning off to one side. Other worlds? I shook the thought out of my head. No way was I ready to let that one sink in.
I took a deep breath, set my pad and pen aside and looked directly at the small eye-holes cut into the paper bag.
“Don, I’m a professional. I counsel clients about intimate matters every day. That requires me not only to be very in tune with their feelings and appetites, but mine as well. This is a safe place. We’ll only be able to work together if you can trust me. Would you be willing to try that?”
“You mean, you want me to take the bag off?”
“I think it would be a step in the right direction, yes.”
The paper made a crinkling sound as he shook his head “no.” “Not a good idea.”
“Would you be willing to try it for ten seconds?” I suggested. “You can always put it back on if you begin to feel uncomfortable.”
The paper bag was silent for a moment. “Three seconds,” he countered.
“Why three?” I asked.
“Because I don’t think you can get across the room that fast in those shoes.”
How wrong he was.
*****
The paper bag got as far as his lips before I took a flying run at him. The shoes turned out to be not much of an impediment as they slid from my feet when I dove across the coffee table.
Don was fast, for his part, and managed to slide to the other side of the leather couch by the time I got to him. He had made it half way over the sofa’s arm when I tackled him from behind, sending the paper bag to the floor.
And that’s when the real trouble began.
My fingers found silky strands of shoulder-length coffee-hued hair and jerked them backward, releasing a short yelp from Don’s full, lush lips. “Gotcha!” I heard a foreign entity say in my voice.
“Doctor,” he panted, breath cut short by my weight crushing his broad chest against the couch. “You really don’t want to do this.”
By this time, I had seized his hips with my knees, attached myself to his muscular back like a bespectacled iron-on applique. We went to the ground this way, him, clawing the carpet to try to get purchase, me, death-rolling like an alligator to try and get at his zipper.
“No!” he grunted, shackling my wrist in a strong hand and pulling it out from under him.
I released his hair in time to grab his arm and pin it behind his back for the briefest of seconds before he rolled, crushing me to the floor beneath him.
The ripping sound announced my skirt tearing as I wrapped my legs around him and tore open his shirt from behind. More buttons scattered to the floor to join the ones I lost earlier.
“This would be much easier if you didn’t fight,” I growled, biting his earlobe and following it with my tongue.
“Doctor, please,” he begged. “You’re not in your right mind.”
The skin of his neck was warm and salty beneath my lips. “I wonder what your cock tastes like,” I said aloud. “Never tasted one of those before.”
“You—what?”
“Want to teach me how it’s done? I’m a very fast learner. See those diplomas over there? I’d study the fuck out of your cock. I graduated Magna Cum fucking Laude, with fucking honors.”
“Gods almighty,” he groaned. “Would you just listen to yourself? This isn’t you, Doctor.” He had hold of my wrists again, pinning them out to both sides in a T position. “I’m so tired of sex I can barely breathe. It doesn’t even turn me on anymore. That’s why Crixus brought me to see you, okay? I can’t even get it up for Aphrodite.”
“Really?” I asked, stroking his crotch with my bare foot. “What’s this then?”
I felt his breath quicken through the back crushed against my chest. His grip on my wrists tightened. I increased the pressure, pushing against the hot, hard length of him through the fabric. “Deus,” he groaned.
My head filled with a red cloud of heavy, drugging lust as the need to see his face roared through me like a firestorm. I surged beneath him, throwing him off balance enough to get out from under as he scrambled to his feet, backing away.
Perfection.
His face, his naked torso, the muscles shuddering and rippling beneath skin so smooth it shamed marble. He was a living rebuke against all things base, every line of him a paean to beauty beyond human comprehension.
And in the presence of something so fine, I could not help but fall and fawn, the animal all that remained of me.
He followed my ravenous gaze to the substantial bulge straining the front of his jeans. “What are you doing to me?” he asked.
“Anything you want,” I purred.
“Crixus will be back any minute,” he said, taking a cautious step backward toward the bookcase. “And what he would do if he found us would make an eternity in Hades seem like a summer in Elysium.”
“Nah,” I replied, taking a step forward. “He’ll most likely screw my assistant again. That will give us a good ten minutes at least. Probably longer since he’s a demigod and all.”
Don retreated another step. “But he can hear your thoughts, can’t he?”
“Not while he’s engaged in other pursuits,” I pointed out.
“And how can you be so sure he will?” Eyes the color of whiskey flicked toward the door in anticipation or longing.
“Because he’s Crixus,” I said. “You gonna take those pants off, or do I need to do it for you?”
“Doctor, I—”
I tore open my blouse Hulk-Hogan style to reveal the lacey red bra through which my erect nipples were visible. Don’s eyes locked onto them like a sniper staring at the crosshairs of a gun scope. “Hurt me,” he said.
“Deal.” I was on the move again, my office becoming a blur of dark, polished wood and leather punctuated by the staccato burst of accent pillows. Books tumbled from their shelves as my body collided with his, driving him backward into the credenza. My hands buried themselves in his hair and pulled, exposing the underside of his jaw, which I scraped with my teeth.
His moan was gasoline thrown on a fire already flaring far beyond control. I couldn’t move fast enough to keep pace with the beast roaring within, couldn’t shovel fuel with the speed required to keep the burning from starving out and turning angry. My lips found his, and from this wellspring, I pulled every ounce of passion I could take, glutting myself on the feeling of his lower lip between my teeth, his tongue inviting my every assault.
“My panties,” I ordered. “Get rid of them.”
Hands disappeared under what was left of my skirt, and with one rip, the silky scrap of material fell to the floor at my feet. I jerked the hair at the nape of his neck until he grunted in what might have pain, pleasure or both. “Open your pants.”
His fingers worked quickly at his buttons and zipper. Beneath them, he was naked and ready. Hands dug into his shoulders, leg over his hip, I impaled myself, taking all of him in one frantic plunge earthward.
“My God,” I breathed, tightening around him to release a strangled groan. “No wonder women fight over you.”
Bruising pain registered in the round slopes of my ass as his fingers dug into my flesh. “Take it,” he urged. “Take everything I have left.”
It was equal parts invitation and challenge. I accepted them both.
I sank my teeth into the mound of muscle connecting neck and shoulder as the cool wood of cupboards dug into my knees, the hot, hard flesh covering his hipbones pressing in against my scissored thighs.
Anchored this way, suspended by only the joining of our two bodies, I rose and fell against him. The planes of our chests sliding aga
inst each other in a dance more elemental than the plates shifting over the earth’s molten core. Forces larger than ourselves shearing against one another, destroying and creating the world anew.
Rhythmic slapping of flesh against flesh marked time not in minutes, but eons, eternities of endless pleasure.
Chaos fell like rain around us—leaves of paper, pictures, vases, curtains all gave way as we took turns shoving and being shoved against every available surface in our frenzied coupling.
A new sound of destruction, a thunderclap of splitting wood, and a primal roar filled the air.
It was not mine or Don’s, but belonged to the pair of hands that seized my shoulders with painful force and dragged me backward, leaving me empty and dazed.
“Put me back on!” I heard myself scream. “I’m not done with him yet!”
“Doctor,” a voice growled in my ear, “you are done with him forever. Because immortal or no, I will see that he pays for this in perpetuity.”
Not a voice. The voice. I knew this voice. But from where?
“Crixus,” someone said. “I didn’t mean to—”
Crixus. Now, this sounded familiar. I was almost certain I knew one of those.
“You took the fucking bag off! What the fuck were you thinking?” The Crixus certainly sounded angry, whatever it was.
“She said she was—”
“Come to momma!” I heard a feminine voice hum. A blur of hot pink shot into the room with a fluffy white satellite on its heels.
“A little help, Marvin?” Crixus said.
The woman in hot pink reached Don—who was crab-walking backward on the heels of his hands—at precisely the same moment the white ball launched itself at her head of golden curls.
Her ear-piercing shriek rang through the office as she flailed at the furry projectile.
“For the gods’ sake,” Crixus ordered. “Put the bag back on!”
Don scuttled over to the couch and retrieved the bag, his head disappearing into it.
And just like that, the spell shattered into millions of shards, and I saw it all.
My office.
The ruin of my desk, the books flung in all directions, the coffee table tipped onto its side.
Unhoppy: The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist #3 Page 3