New Title 1 (8 page)

“I—” And that was all Straker could manage. Her hand reached out, holding tickets. Straker’s cock thumped to something close to full hardness again when he took them. Idly, and nearly dizzy, he read:

SALLEE COUNTY CIVIC CENTER,

7:00 P.M., OPEN SEATING

DEEP SOUTH WRESTLING CONFERENCE

REGIONAL SUMMER RUMBLE

“Great,” Straker said dully. “I can’t wait.”

“Goon’s on the card, grappling against Slick Dare.”

“Great.”
I would pay anything,
he thought.
I would sell my soul just to rub my dick against one of those tits for one second. Then I could die, and I’d be fulfilled.
The image of those bra’d breasts socked him in the eyes. The sleek lounging legs stretched out to the arm of the couch. Age-old high school cliche’s came to mind:
I’d gargle with her piss…and ask for more. I’d eat a mile of her shit just to see where it came from. If she was fucking dead, I’d dig her up and marry her…

“Are you all right?”

Straker’s eyes snapped open. He’d been musing again, about her. “Yeah, uh, sure. I’m fine.”

“You were standing there kind of fidgeting your hips.”

That’s because my dick’s hard again, and it got stuck in the trapdoor of my shorts.
“Just a…cold chill.”

She inclined up, then rose and grabbed a bag off the motel desk. “Put these on, you need to look the part.”

Straker peered into the bag: jeans, sneakers, a black t-shirt with the Armageddon Riders logo. “The part for what?”

“Tonight we’re going to this card. I’m going as a ringrat, and you’re going as a fan. You can’t expect to gain any credibility going to a wrestling match dressed in a suit that makes you look like Jack Webb.”

Straker recoiled. “There’s nothing wrong with this suit. It cost two hundred bucks.”

“Wow. Big spender. I’ll bet Ward’s loves you. Listen, Captain, you can’t walk into a wrestling match wearing a suit. You’ll stick out like a sore thumb. So why don’t you get dressed now, and I’ll go take a quick shower before I get into my ringrat gear.”

“Yeah, sure.”

She sashayed off into the bathroom, pushed the door shut behind her. Then he heard the hiss of the shower crank on and almost lost it. It was the image…

Her.

In there.

Taking her clothes off and stepping into the shower, all shiny and perfect and nude.

Straker couldn’t help it. He whipped it out and began masturbating over the plastic, bag-lined wastebasket.

Aw, fuck, aw, fuck—
His climax spasmed; he nearly fell down.
If Collier could see me now,
he thought, wringing out his cock over the garbage can. His sperm plopped to the bottom. Then he sluggishly disrobed and put on the clothes in the bag.

I look like a horse’s ass,
he thought, appraising himself in the motel mirror. Brand-new dark-denim Lee jeans fit so tight he couldn’t even fasten the brass button. He pulled the black t-shirt out over his waist and frowned more deeply. The shirt read ARMAGEDDON RIDERS! KICKIN’ ASS AND NOT TAKIN’ NAMES! On the front with the DSWC logo on the back. Just what some ignorant cracker would wear on a Saturday night out, basic attire for hard-liquor and handgun night. Hard as he may have been trying to quit, he sat down on the couch, and listlessly lit a cigarette.
I’m undercover with the woman of my dreams, and I’m wearing a fuckin’ wrestling shirt.
If any of his ex-girlfriends could see this, they’d laugh to wake the dead.

“Close your eyes,” came her muffled voice.

Stifled, Straker closed them. “All right.”

He heard her come out of the bathroom, bringing with her a scent of herbal soap. Then he heard clothes sliding against skin, and imagined her dressing; an unconscious reflex nearly caused him to squeeze his crotch, but he repressed the impulse.
Jesus,
he thought.
If she knew I’ve jerked off three times since meeting her—twice right in this motel room—I’d have to kill myself.

“Okay. Open.”

Straker opened his eyes and nearly shit and came in his pants simultaneously. She stood there with her back towards him, wearing nothing but a tight denim skirt whose hem barely reached the bottom of her buttocks. She was bare up top, cradling her breasts in her hands.

“Pass me that pink halter over there, will you?”

Straker grabbed the halter on the dresser, draped it over her shoulder. It was all he could do not to do a rebel yell when she raised her arms and slipped herself into it. Only a second, true, but in that second Straker stared at sideshots of both breasts from behind. And nearly collapsed.

“Zip me now, okay?’

She leaned slightly forward and Straker caught what she meant. The back of that tight denim skirt—it had a zipper in back.

Straker’s finger’s shook like an alcoholic with the DTs; eventually he grasped the tiny metal tab, caught his breath, then pulled it up with a rasp.

“Thanks,” she said and turned. The haltered breasts blared at him. Hard City yet again. “One more thing,” she requested. “I need you to do my toes.”

Oblivious, Straker only fought not to stare, and didn’t do much of a job. His own jeans were so tight, his cock felt like a snake in a closing crevice. Only in the most nebulous fog did he recall what she said:
I need you to do my—

“My toes,” she repeated, pulilng up a chair to face the couch. “While I do my nails.” She placed her hands on his shoulder and pushed him down into the chair, then sat down herself.

“I—,” he said.

She placed her bare feet right smack dab in his lap. Zombiefied now, all he could do was look. Her nude feet flexed very close to his groin—even her feet were perfect—but when he noticed her blue-painted toenails, he could only think to say, “Your toes are already done.”

“No they’re not. I’m posing as a ringrat. That means I’ve got to look as tacky as possible. Decals, Captain.” Then she handed him a strip of paper, adhered to which were a dozen tiny silver decals of falling stars. She held a similar strip and daintily affixed each decal to her fingernails. Straker doddered, peeled each one off and clumsily affixed them to her veneered toenails.

“Perfect,” she appraised when they were both done. She alternately glanced first at her fingernails, then her toenails.
I need to beat off again,
Straker thought.
Bad.
Then she briskly rose, and in doing so accidentally brushed one of her heels across his crotch.

Shit!

“Sorry,” she said.

One more brush like that and he’d have come again. He winced, rising, trying to hide his fifth erection of the day. “All right, I guess we can go to this wrestling match now.”

The pause hung in the air. She looked at him forlornly, her lips pursed. “Listen, Captain, I can tell something’s wrong, and I think I know what it is.”

Straker had to sort the statement; he had to struggle against his lust. “What? There’s nothing wrong.”

“Yes, there is, Captain. It seems that you’re incredibly attracted to me.”

“What, uh, what makes you say that?”

“Well, for one thing,” she responded, “you’ve either had the end of a broomstick in your pants since the minute we met, or you’re carrying around a raging erection.”

The observation jostled him. All he could do was lie. “That’s ridiculous. You don’t know what you’re talking ab—”

“And it seems that you’re so attracted to me, you’ve had to masturbate to relive your tensions.”

Straker gaped. “I have not!”

She looked scoldingly at him. “Captain. When you used the bathroom, you forgot to flush the toilet. I saw your sperm floating in the water.”

Straker’s mouth formed an O like a grouper’s, but no words came out.

Then she glanced intermittently into the wastebasket. “And it looks like you’ve done it again right there in the garbage.”

Straker could only stare. He could say nothing as his face turned red as a radish.

She patted his shoulder consolingly. “Listen, Captain, I understand. I sometimes have this effect on men, and I apologize. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll go wait in the car, and you can masturbate again if you’d like.”

Straker nearly threw up as he watched her leave the motel room. Could anything be more embarrassing than this?

The answer was simple: No. Nothing in the world.

Nevertheless, he whipped it out one more time, and masturbated desperately until he was able to deposit yet another string of semen into the bag-lined plastic wastebasket.

Asshole,
he thought.

««—»»

She didn’t say a word when he summoned the courage to actually walk out to the car and get in. They rode in silence for at least five minutes, heading for Route 154. Finally, Straker could bare no more of it.

“Listen,” he said. “I couldn’t help it.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “Men find me attractive. I know that.”

Straker scratched his face. “Well, what about…”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Well, I was just curious. I mean, do, uh, do you find, uh, me attractive?”

 
“No,” she said. She steered down the road, unaffected. Only after a commensurate pause did she add, “But that’s not to make you feel inadequate, Captain. I’m sure a good many women are sufficiently attracted to you. It’s just that I’m not one of them. It’s not an insult, you know.”

“Sure,” Straker said. But what could he expect her to say? 38 now, growing a pot and losing his hair in back. He hadn’t lifted a weight in ten years, and the last time he’d had a suntan, Carter was in office.
I’m a pud,
he condemned himself.
I’m an blithering idiot. I just let the most desirable woman in the world catch me beating off…

“You’re not, uh—you know—you’re not like going to, uh, tell anyone are you?”

She smiled as she drove. “Of course not, Captain. That’s not really the sort of thing I’d want to have put in the case file. And I don’t know what you’re so embarrassed about. Masturbation is a normal, healthy mode of sexual release. Everyone masturbates, Captain.
I
masturbate.”

His gaze roved dismally out the window. “Oh yeah? How often?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Periodically.”

Periodically. That probably didn’t mean four times in little more than an hour. He’d really done it this time; humiliation could not be more complete than this. When had the last time been? Two months ago? No, more like three or four. And today’s earlier shenanigans with Traci Wilcox had been his first intercourse in over a year. It was Melinda Pierce’s fault, he knew. It was her presence that had revived the long forgotten sex drive. She was the bolt of lightning that could resurrect the dead.

There seemed little point now in preserving any professional acumen. She’d caught him beating off, for Christ’s sake! “Are you married?” he asked.

“Oh, no. My job is my priority,” she informed him, steering down the road. “You’re a cop, you know what I mean.”

At least that much was true. “Yeah, but I’m sure you’ve got a boyfriend.”

“Nope. Not interested.”

This seemed unfathomable. As good-looking as she was? She could walk into any New York modeling agency and leave with a contract. She could be in movies or tv.
She could be anything,
he realized.
But she’s chosen to be a reporter instead, and she accepts the sacrifices.
Straker had accepted those same sacrifices but more by default than anything less. Yet her resolve was crystal clear.

“Let me ask you something,” he said, taking the thought a step further. “You’ve gone undercover as a ringrat. It’s the same as a narc, in a way. You lose your credibility when it gets down to the wire, don’t you?”

She glanced confused at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, if a narc is posing as a dopehead, his credibility only lasts as long as it takes for someone to wonder why he’s never been seen actually taking drugs.”