The Ultimate Erotic Short Story Collection 19: 11 Steamingly Hot Erotica Books For Women (20 page)

***

How long was it since he and Wilhemina met? One year… Two? She was playing a game of sharpshooter when he heard her bubbly laugh. He came around to see who everybody was gamming and hawing about and shoved his way to find the most stunningly woman he’d ever seen. She was gorgeously tall and heavenly stacked. He kept thinking she could have been a goddess from another time…

When the beauty asked for a challenger he leapt up to the mini-range before anyone else could step. He was Alpha-male and the lady he was about to take on knew it. He gave his best and so did she and they wound up hovering around the Boardwalk for hours. The lady seemed to find everything about him interesting. He wanted to know everything about her.

“I’m better than you,” he said taking her hand in his.

“You dream big,” his goddess said. “You know we tied,” she laughed.

He laughed too and when he drew her in for a kiss, everything and everyone around them faded. There was just the two of them.

“I don’t belong here,” the beauty told Nate.

“Where do you belong?” Nate asked.

“With you,” she said after a long pause.

“You feel it? This pull between us?” Nate said. “It’s like an electric thrum I never knew was possible.”

“I know. I feel it too,” the beauty said.

They walked along the beach after Nate had dragged the lady to take photos. He pulled her onto his lap and the two of them made faces until they laughed with tears. Nate tore a section of the photo strip and gave the photos to his beauty. When he saw the mist tint her eyes, he did it. They kissed. He wanted her and he told her his intentions. She turned to stare at the ocean. “All right,” she finally said. “Out there,” she nodded to an outcrop of rocks several miles from the shore.

Nate told her they couldn’t. They needed permission from the law.

“You’re the law,” the lady said. She had smiled at Nate’s reaction. “No one makes every target at a game like sharpshooting unless it’s a hobby or they have trained with firearms,” she said.

“What made you think I’m someone who holds firearms?” Nate prodded.

That was when he saw the lady gaze down at his hip. He looked back up at her almost as fast. “Don’t say it,” he begged.

“Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” the beauty said, going for it.

Nate was taken, hook, line and mystery woman. And he’d arranged for a hydrofoil to take them to the embankment off the coast, but they never made it…

Nate rubbed a hand over his forehead. He looked up and nearly bumped over the bar chair. The rain had picked up. He was two for zero. No leads, only one suspect.

And he’d left the convertible roof cover down.

“Shit,” Nate grumbled.

***

The paper reported the rock concert was the biggest attraction of the century. Wilhemina read it was nothing short of Heavy Metal reborn. She scoured the Personals: nothing. She skimmed the rest of the headlines and pages — and jostled the paper back to the second page.

She read the headline below the concert column in cold, uncaring print: “Vocalist Oren Victor of the Band ‘Heavy Friction’ Dead at 32.” Wilhemina reread the story. Slowly she looked around and back while standing near the newsstand. The last time she had felt this lost was during another storm… with the love of her life. She folded the paper and headed to the park, hoping there were few people and a strong Wi-Fi signal.

***

“And that is all that was upstairs?” Nate questioned.

“Yeah. The maid had already cleaned up. Really nice, nothing to trace,” the policeman answered. “Kind of bad, huh?”

“Pardon?” Nate said.

“All that sex, money, and fame and you can’t take it with you,” the policeman said.

“Right,” Nate answered.

Nate checked Oren Victor’s laptop. “This been looked at?” he asked.

“Nothing was tampered with. The place is spotless,” the policeman noted.

Nate grabbed the laptop. “May I?” he said.

“Not if nobody sees you,” the cop smiled.

“Thanks Egan, I’ll owe you,” Nate smiled.

“Nah. Get me that Patron I told you about and we’re good,” the cop said.

Nate nodded.

Hours later he had the ISP and protocols sourced. Nate called in the findings and turned them over to the field. He had a murder to place.

***

Mina let her legs stay open. The man in front of her snarled. He was full-pissed and eager to shag. He had Mina pinned against the concrete wall.

“I let you use my phone.” You used my phone to surf the Net,” he said, legs wobbly.

“True,” Mina said.

“You said you were calling a friend,” he burbled.

“No, you opened the browser on your phone for me,” Mina said. “I asked if your phone made a Hot Spot connection… Remember?”

The man wobbled side to side. He hiked his pants up, his breath foul. Then he frowned. “You— you didn’t even tell me your name,” he pouted.

“Leigh ‘Mina’ Marley, but its ‘Wilhemina’ to you,” Mina said.

The man thought about it best he could. “Aww, yeah… That’s right..,” he agreed. “Listen. Why don’t you give me a little something-something, and I’ll let you use all the phone you want. What do you say to that,” the inebriated yuppie warbled.

“Or I could just kill you,” Mina said.

The man laughed, then hit the ground.

***

The rain sluiced from trickle to downpour. She had to sidestep more than a wake of puddles or two to find a place to lie. She finally found a coffee house a block away from the park. She ducked her head under the sign advertising Internet service and hurried inside. Cold and uncomfortably sticky, she pried off the overcoat she’d borrowed from somebody who would no longer need it. She hunched in a booth and tried to block the memory of the man’s pallid face, the life drained from him.

She was grateful when the proprietor of the coffee house set a cup and saucer down and topped it with a delicious smelling ground roast. She lifted a hand to stop him but the man poured the rich Brazilian liquid to the brim.

“Sir—, I don’t—“ she started.

The man cut her off. “At this hour of night, we serve our guests free,” the coffee shop owner said. He pointed to a sign over a novelty jukebox stating the same. Wilhemina smiled, weary. The coffee shop owner leaned forward.

“Anything you want, it’s on the house,” he said.

Hair stringy, clothes too big a fit, Wilhemina knew she must look a fright. She ran a hand through her hair and it tangled when it struck her ring.

“Thank you,” Wilhemina said to the man.

“I’ve been there,” he said with a wink.

Wilhemina let the sorrow flood in. It washed over her and sank into an ache in her heart. She had set out to find the woman who had started the morbid chain of death and circumstance. The only way she could do was to hide under the radar and live deep undercover.

The coffee shop owner sat a plate of steaming bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast, topped off with another round of dark brew. Wilhemina looked up at him again, thankful. The man floored her with the sweetest smile.

Like another man she’d met had…

***

He was close. Damn close.

Nate had trailed the data down to Chicago. There was no question the body that struck into the ravine was Leigh Marley. After Wilhemina had confided in him she had a past, he had understood the sadness that sometimes flickered behind her eyes. She always smiled — God, he loved her for that — but her eyes were more cornflower than just blue. A blue he wanted to fall into for the rest of his life.

She had told him she worked as an assistant to an investigator in Philadelphia. Her prowess with paperwork and undeniable athleticism won her assignments no one else could close. Before the two of them met she had helped a girl escape an abusive relationship. The girl matriculated at the prominent university and Wilhemina was sure she had secured the girl’s chance to live her life anew.

Wilhemina didn’t establish a new identity for her. That much was clear. The records from three precincts and stations across three counties pulled up zip with any noticeable changes in Leigh Marley’s routine. His fed contact confirmed the same. Except when she dropped enrollment and about the same frame of time ‘Leigh’ had begun making purchases and renting a small motel room not far from Chicago. Nate realized Wilhemina was Leigh.

Except Leigh Mina Marley was now six feet under, and Nate didn’t give a crap load what the theorists said about Quarks. In his world, no two objects could occupy the same space, and he didn’t give a screw about parallel dimensions. Someone had taken care of Leigh and anyone she was connected to after being helped by Wilhemina.

Nate pulled around to a garage a block from the coffee house. He’d called in his badge at the precinct before leaving for Chicago. If he was right, Wilhemina wasn’t Mina, which meant she was in for the heroic fight of her life.

There was so much he wanted to tell her, share with her. And they had a date to keep he wasn’t about to let her get out from under…

***

“Take it, take it all,” the coffee house owner said.

He stared down the barrel of a gun and glanced at Wilhemina.

“I don’t need your frickin’ money. Don’t look this way. I told you!” the attacker whined.

The man looked down at the gun.

“Much better,” she said. “You,” she nodded to Wilhemina. “Get up.”

Wilhemina looked at the coffee house owner. They would have made great old acquaintances any another time. They shared a glance.

“I said, get
up
!” the woman screamed.

Wilhemina tried to hit the send button at the PC at the Internet station. The woman spun her around. “Out,” she said.

Wilhemina nodded at the shop owner and blinked two times. The man saw her point two fingers at the computer. The man looked back at Wilhemina and blinked twice. Good, Wilhemina thought. He got the message.

The woman shoved her outside into the pelting rain. It was icy but Wilhemina saw it as a sign, a comfort of a kind that said everything would be all right. She hadn’t eaten for days except for the kindness of the coffee shop proprietor and everything she had done to protect Leigh Marley, Oren Victor and the people in Leigh’s trajectory looked like it had all been done for nothing. She scoffed. Fine P.I. Indeed. She’d never make in the field, she realized.

“What are you snickering at?” the woman said. Her gun was trained on Wilhemina. Funny how everyone she seemed to come into contact with had a troubled past or knew how to wield a firearm, she thought.

The woman pushed Wilhemina taking her to the park. She shoved Wilhemina under the bridge. The rain made seeing anything except what was right in front either of them hopeless. The angry woman aimed at Wilhemina’s throat.

“So what..? No final request?” Wilhemina managed over the clacks of rain.

“Greener pastures,” the female officer from the eatery in Philly sneered.

***