Dana laughs.
Mitch’s glare is hurling icicles at me. I’m not surprised when he moves his phone to the right, by his glass.
“Shouldn’t take you more than about ten minutes to free yourself,” I tell him as I lash his left wrist to the wooden arm with a double clove hitch.
He jumps when I squat down and grab his pants to jerk them the rest of the way to his ankles.
“What the fuck…?”
“Part of the insurance package,” I tell him, drawing the belt tight around his legs and tying it off. This would have been a lot harder if I hadn’t been able to con him into pulling his pants halfway down.
Standing up, I refill Mitch’s glass. He eyes me suspiciously. He’s learning his lesson about when he can trust me. That’s ‘never’.
I check out the label. It’s the good stuff.
“Seven thousand a bottle.” His tone is condescending. He wants me to ask for a drink.
“Yeah, I’ve tried it,” I tell him, lying through my teeth. “I’m Scottish. No true Scotsman drinks this highlands crap. It tastes like sheep’s piss.”
He starts to retort, but when I slam the bottle down a little too hard, he yells, “Hey!”
While he’s focused on whether the bottle cracked, I snatch his phone up.
“Hey, wait! That’s mine! Bring it back. I…I might need it.”
I set it on the far side by the TV. “You can pick it up when you leave, Richie. I don’t want you taking any more pictures that you could use in the divorce.”
His face pales. He jerks his head toward his wife.
“He’s lying, Dana. I wasn’t going to do that. You know I would never divorce you. I love you, honey.”
The simpering is almost comical.
I ask, “So, if we look at the last video, it wouldn’t show us kissing?”
His body deflates. He doesn’t answer.
Dana is scowling at her husband. Her faith in their marriage wouldn’t have allowed her to consider such a possibility. I expect she won’t make that mistake again.
After I make a show of ejecting the magazine from my nine-mil and clearing it, I put my hand inside my jacket but palm the mag. Mitch follows the S&W as I lay it next to his phone while I’m dropping the mag into my pants pocket on the far side.
–==[]=[]=[]==–
The opponent is neutralized. This battle is won, inasmuch as any battle truly has a winner.
‘To the victor go the spoils’, they say. My role in battle has always been the defender. I was there to protect the innocent, or to hold a critical mountain pass, or to save my marriage or sometimes just whatever was left of my pride. If I was lucky, I got to keep what I had. If not, well… The word ‘spoils’ is often not adequate to describe the sickening results.
This time, I am the aggressor. I plan to take great personal satisfaction in reaping the rewards.
I hang my jacket on a desk chair just out of Mitch’s reach. He eyes it, pinching off the grin. It’s enough that he thinks he knows something.
“Stand up, Dana.”
She has a feline grace about her as she curls her legs and crawls across the king-sized bed. Her eyes are locked onto mine. She comes up on her feet facing her husband with her back turned to me.
“Unzip me?”
The zipper begins about a hand’s width above her sacrum. I drag the tab down as slow as I can while making her shiver with a half dozen tiny kisses across her bare shoulders and down her spine. A layer of soft and sweetly scented flesh hides the muscles of her back. Her skin is velvety smooth and springy to my touch.
With the slightest pressure on her shoulder I turn her around before sliding the straps off. Dana crosses her arms to catch the fabric. The apparent modesty of that maneuver is belied by her daring eyes. Later, once I’ve learned to gauge the depths of her desires I may demonstrate a more punitive response to such defiance. For now, I use a single finger to press down gently at the crux of her arms.
Her hands obediently drop to her side. The top of the dress falls, dangling from her waist. Her ivory teardrops are neither large nor small. I cup them both in my hands. She whimpers, her eyelashes fluttering when my thumbs circle the dusky rose colored half-dollar caps then tease the thick nubs. They crinkle and harden under my touch. She balls her hands into fists.
“They are perfect,” I tell her.
She looks down. “They’re so small and–”
My finger presses against her lips. “I think they’re absolutely perfect. See how they fit in my hands?”
“You really think so?”
Nearly every woman is self-conscious about her butt and her boobs. It’s similar to men and our dicks. I’ll bet her husband stopped complimenting her years ago.
I’m looking into her eyes when I tell her, “I love your breasts, Dana. I wouldn’t want them any different.”
That buys me a warm, pleased smile.
She is partial to the left one. It’s a small gesture, but she keeps trying to push it toward my hand. I lift that teat to my lips and suckle.
“Ohgod!” she cries out, clutching my head to herself. When I clamp my incisors down to worry the peak, she exclaims, “Yes! Yes! Ohfuck…yes!”
She is breathing heavily and grinning when I back away. As I release the top button of my shirt she pulls the shirttail out of my pants and starts unbuttoning at the bottom. I pull it off and lay it over my jacket, then whisk the tee over my head and throw it on top.
I’m not in the shape I was eight years ago. I’ve lost the six-pack and grown a small paunch, but I get enough PT to keep my weight down. Dana runs her hands up and down over my abs and chest. The approving looks are a boost to my ego. I’m guessing Mitch doesn’t have anything close.
She fingers the two-inch scar just below my left rib cage. Her eyes come up, questioning.
“A local we trusted came into the mess hall one day and opened up with an AK,” I explain. “Most of us weren’t armed. He killed two of our guys and hit me and a few more before I got a shot off. He was the second man I had to kill with my backup weapon.” I gesture toward my trusty S&W.
It’s a story I’ve told so many times I could probably recite it in my sleep. That’s not the story that usually wakes me up sweating and shivering, though.
Dana chews on her lower lip. “How many men have you killed?”
“I don’t know. More than I want to think about.”
“What about the woman? Did you really–”
I press my finger to her lips again. I’m not ready to talk about that. If the little bullet scar fascinates her, she’s going to have a lot to keep her busy later.
Mitch is impatient. “C’mon, let’s stop with the stupid war stories and get this thing done so we can get outa’ here.”
I tell Dana, “If your little Richie-boy can’t keep his mouth shut, I’m gonna have to tie his other arm down, stuff my dirty underwear in his mouth and wrap duct tape around his head.”
“Fine by me,” she says, pinching her grin.
“Anything else you wanna say, Richard?”
That makes Dana snicker again. His face turns more red.
“At least take off your rings,” he grumbles. “I don’t want them touching his filthy little weenie.”
It’s a fair request. She twists the diamond and the gold band off and lays them on the TV stand. It doesn’t surprise me that he thought of that. I would bet when he meets with a lover he gets a thrill out of making her leave the rings on to add a little more tarnish to her marriage.