by Twist,Tommy
He could feel the drug-like intoxication of the smell of sex and electrical popping of magic in the room, a haze that made everything feel a little better.
“Now, get to work.”
Noah’s emotions swirled in a mixture of aggravation and arousal. He was used to being treated as a toy, by women who hardly thought of him as human. In their mind, he was a tool. You don’t talk to your hamburgers when you’re hungry. Why would you talk to your companion when your magic is low?
This was different, and it made the job that much more interesting. She was toying with him, goading him. He smiled and walked behind her, rubbed his manhood against her slit.
“Work? Doing what? Is this right?”
He pressed the head into her, feeling the hot moisture of her pussy. He could almost hear the sharp inhale when he pushed inside—just the tip. He could feel her pushing against him, but he pressed her down onto the bed harder, holding her still and steady. Noah held there for a moment. He could feel the warmth, could feel how tight and hot it was inside. It took every ounce of control he had not to push in deep and fuck the girl below him as hard as he could.
The frustrated groan and squirming made it all worthwhile. Noah smiled as he pushed the rest of the way in, feeling the warmth of her pussy around him. He could feel the energy in the room now, against his skin. Electric and warm. He started fucking the girl beneath him, slow and measured strokes. She was in ecstatic near-agony now, he knew. Whatever he was feeling, he knew, were at least double for her. The transfer only goes one way, after all.
As she writhed beneath him, Noah began to speed up his thrusting, as he came closer to his edge once more. He lost the focus he’d so carefully maintained, and let out a ragged breath as he started moving harder. The sound of skin slapping against skin popped through the room, and with one final thrust he pushed in as deeply as he could, holding tight to the woman beneath him. He could feel it draining out of him with each ropey strand of cum that shot out. The power, though he couldn’t use it himself.
Noah became overwhelmed, momentarily, by a feeling of needing to lie down, of needing to rest a while while the room stopped spinning. Instead he walked back over to the chair and sat down, breathing a little ragged but under control. He leaned down and opened the mini-fridge, pulled out a can of soda. After all—he needed the sugar.
Noah Walker sat behind his desk. There wasn’t a whole lot to do without any clients, in the post-paperwork lull. It wouldn’t be too long, of course. The job was never slow for long, but few repeat customers in his line of work. If you got too familiar, if you were too compatible, if a thousand things, then it all went haywire.
Oh, the results were worth it, sure, if you could afford to cool a room by twenty degrees or cause a dozen frogs to appear in your desk drawer. But it was just too much for most folks. Noah was most folks, at least in this case.
He looked at the door, with the great glass panel and the text on it, in the 40s style, reading “NOAH WALKER” and then “Bodyguard” below in smaller letters. It was a perfectly respectable business, for those who were in the know. The sort of thing a man could tell his mother about, if he had to. Preferably, he thought, not if he didn’t.
And besides that, he was certified for protection. So if someone didn’t realize what his business really was, well, he could at least offer them that much.
He was lost in a web of social media and lazy news-checking when she walked up. They always seemed to, so that even though he’d thought the glass panel would be real neat, and let him see when walk-ups came in, they always caught him off-guard. Perhaps, Noah thought, it would be smart to invest in a secretary.
But then he decided against it. Touched girls would want a freebie every now and then. Oh sure, he imagined, it’s sex, too, but it’s just to recharge the batteries, nothing personal. And explaining to civilians would be a nightmare. ‘Bodyguard’ isn’t a synonym to ‘Escort’ in most minds. Then a long argument about professionalism ensues, sometimes a lawsuit, and it is just an utter mess.
So that’s why there was no secretary when a woman came up and knocked on the door. Noah almost fell out of his chair, scrambling to open the door. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he had a pang of anxiety. That was enough to put him on edge. It was always subtle when trouble walks through your door. Nobody ever sends you registered mail with the words ‘leave this one alone’ on it until it’s too late.
The woman had her hair pulled tight against her head, very vintage. Noah was beginning to wonder if perhaps the World War Two fashions were coming back into fashion, but he didn’t bring it up. She was blond and more than pretty, though he almost held her height against her.
“Can I help you?” He was nervous after that instinctive reaction, but he put on his business face and waited for another hint that the situation would be one to avoid. He opened the door a bit wider, stepping away from the door and letting her enter.
“You are Mr. Walker, isn’t that right?”
“That’s the name on the door.” The young woman didn’t laugh at the joke.
“I’m in need of your… services.” Noah sat down and picked up a pen. He pulled the notebook he kept on his desk open, tapped it twice with the butt of the pen.
“What do you mean, miss… ?”
“Everett. Jane Everett.”
“Pleased to meet you, miss Everett.” Noah leaned forward and offered his hand. She took the handshake, and that’s when he knew. There was no way that he was suitable for this woman. They were too close already. Probably, even having this conversation was making things worse by the moment.
“I’ve become… concerned, Mr. Walker. You’ll understand, of course,” she touched the side of her nose. “We can’t ignore those sorts of concerns. I want to be accompanied by someone in your line of work, so that if a serious situation were to arise, that I wouldn’t be caught on empty. You understand, don’t you?”
Noah didn’t write anything. It suddenly seemed as if the pen had been a waste of time. He frowned, unsure how to respond. Obviously if she was concerned about something serious, then turning her away would be difficult. She probably would want some sort of assurance that he could put her into contact with another escort, but he had enough experience to know that sometimes, it didn’t work that way.
It was rare, certainly, but sometimes at the end of the rolodex there was a different reason why every one of them didn’t work and so please, could you do me a favor. Then they’d turn on their charms, bat their eyelashes, and maybe cry if they knew what was good for them. And at the end of it all, Noah knew, he wouldn’t say no, after all that work. It was easier, in the end, to rip it off like a band-aid.
“I’m sorry, miss Everett, but I can’t help you.”
“I’m… Sorry? What do you mean?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard the horror stories about what happens if compatibility is too high?”
Jane bushed, looking at something that seemed suddenly very interesting in her lap. Noah’s gaze didn’t waver, a tired-but-steady look he had perfected so that he could look incredibly weary moments after waking and maintain it for the remainder of the day seemingly quite without effort.
“And you think—” she didn’t look up. She was downright Victorian, for someone who had come in for full service, to be embarrassed by the notion of compatibility with a man she didn’t know. “You think that we—”
“I know it, ma’am. I’m sure you can get some recommendations for another bodyguard, and if you can’t then I can give you a few business cards but that’s all I can do. I’m sorry for the trouble, honestly I am, but this is as much for your safety as it is for mine.”
Jane squirmed in her seat. He could see the nerves, anxiety that had eaten away at her for days. It was sad, really. He felt bad, though inside him a voice whispered that there was nothing that he could have done to prevent her situation, and he knew the voice was not wrong. Noah opened the drawer, pulled out three small pieces of card stock, and slid them ac
ross the table.
“Here,” he said softly, trying and failing to sound comforting. “I personally know these three, they all run a very professional operation. You won’t go wrong with them.”
He stood up, walking around behind her. He grabbed a coat, sliding it on while she sat in the chair looking at her hands. It was truly unusual that a woman would have such trouble with the idea. No longer was this a girl who read into things too deeply; he knew that there was something deeper. She wasn’t just a little bit scared, she was terrified out of her wits. When she said she was ‘concerned,’ that wasn’t even the half of it.
Noah’s shoulders slumped a little bit, but he managed to hang on to at least a shred of his self-control.
“Come on, miss Everett.” His voice was barely above a whisper, but he knew she would hear. “I’ll make sure you get to your car safely.”
She didn’t stand up, not right away. Noah waited silently, knowing that she would come in her time. Even if she didn’t get what she said she needed, she would get it sooner or later. The only option she didn’t have was waiting in his office until he gave up. That wasn’t going to happen, and both of them knew it.
When Jane stood, it was slowly. She drifted almost mindlessly across the room, a shell of a woman whose courage had broken but whose body continued. Then, step-by-step, he saw her bring herself back under control.
By the time the door closed was open and she had stepped into the hall it was as if he had imagined the entire thing. She had the same serious, sour expression that she’d worn when she stood outside his door. She was an attractive woman, he could tell.
It would be very easy to get the gumption to spend the time with her; it wasn’t rare that he enjoyed his job, but he knew that this time would be uniquely special. It was disappointing that his professional ethics called for him to refuse her. His cock stirred at the very notion of seeing Jane Everett beneath him.
But he, like her, had an image to maintain, and a role to play. He walked a few steps ahead of her, not looking back, but taking solace in the sound of her heels on the hard floor behind him.
He was nearly to the door when the feeling hit. He had gotten a bad reaction before, predicted plenty of attacks that turned out to happen only minutes or hours later. But it had never hit quite like this, never so hard and never so fast. He turned toward Jane.
It all seemed to happen at once, though he saw it all, like it was slow motion. She saw him, and her eyes narrowed just the smallest amount. She didn’t know why he had turned. Then realization dawned, and her eyes widened, as she saw something. Noah didn’t take the time to wonder what it was. He didn’t wait to see her reaction either. He had already started pushing against the floor, lunging toward her. He didn’t feel his shoulder catch against her chest, though his mind registered it.
The sound of the bullet shattering the window and thudding into the wall couldn’t have been separate sounds, but Noah could almost make them out individually, among the chaos. And then, as if to balance out, as he hit the ground time sped back up. His breathing wasn’t just hard, it seemed like he needed to suck all the air down for the rest of the day, to get ready for whatever was to come.
Noah edged back over in sight of the window, looking out cautiously. Nothing happened. He hoped that whoever it had been, was gone now. He slumped down onto the stairs, trying to stop his heart beating a million miles an hour, steady his shaking hands, catch his breath. He turned around just in time to catch Jane running back into his office.
He let her have her space for a minute. Everything had happened so fast, so unexpectedly. A voice in the back of his mind told Noah he had done right by the girl, that he’d done everything he had to do. But his pulse pounded in his ears, and the adrenaline was pumping. He barely registered that he was clenching his hands tight, tighter than he had thought possible. It took a very real force of will to pry them open again. His nails had dug into his palms, leaving four round red indentations in the skin of his palm.
Finally he got back up. He could see the door was still slightly ajar. Jane must not have been paying close attention when she closed it, and who could blame her. The bodyguard pressed the door to his office open. Jane Everett was sitting on the broken couch he hadn’t gotten around to replacing, sobbing and hyperventilating. He sat down at his desk again and reached into the drawer. He pulled out a cigarette with one shaking hand, trying to light it. He dropped it twice before he managed to hold it still long enough to get the light to catch.
He pressed it between his lips and dragged. The smoke burned his throat. It had been a long time since he’d needed a smoke so badly.
He had been telling himself that the pack was just there for old time’s sake, and before now he’d believed it. Now it seemed like the only thing that could stop the sick feeling in his stomach and the shaking in his hands. His teeth chattered.
Jane finally looked up at him, wild-eyed. Her expression was hard to read, mixed as it was between so many different directions. There was the fear, and the ‘I told you so’ that would never quite come. She was too smart for that. There was no helping her case by pissing off the man she had come to for help. Yet there was more, still, behind it. Emotions that Noah couldn’t place.
“Mr. Walker, please. I… I can’t leave the house, I can’t leave my room. I don’t know what this is about, and this is the first time I’ve known to a certainty. Please.”
Noah took another long drag on the cigarette between his lips. He took the pen back out. He scribbled, drawing nothing in particular. It seemed to him that the right thing to do would come to him eventually. He let the breath out he hadn’t noticed holding.
“Alright, then, miss Everett.”
She looked up, her face as white as a sheet. Whatever she had expected, it seems it hadn’t been acceptance. She got up, opening her mouth to say something. But she didn’t speak. Finally Noah decided to wait no longer.
“I’m not going to recharge you, got it? If you want to retain someone else’s services then I won’t make a fuss about it. But if you need someone to deal with this problem of yours, someone to keep you company? Someone to deal with that?” Noah gestured toward the hall. “I can give you the same service I give normals.”
Jane’s face screwed up in disappointed confusion. Then her face dropped. She reached into her purse and pulled out a pad.
“Very well, if that’s the best you can do. What’s your day rate?”
Noah could feel the box of cigarettes in his pocket. The bulk of them had been gone long enough that it felt new again. He sighed and tried to think about something, anything else. It had to have been this roof, he knew. But if he was going to do a real job of this protection he needed to know what he was up against.
Sure, the girl had to have some money, but he couldn’t figure that for something like this. It had to be for some sort of personal reason. A reason he hadn’t figured out yet. The only thing he was sure of was that nobody went after girls with the gift for unrelated reasons. It’s never a coincidence, and that meant keeping the cops out of it.
The stress was eating him up. There was nothing here, he knew. But in the back of his mind he kept thinking that if he just stood there, looking at the balcony, he’d notice it: the thing that would make everything that much simpler, the clue that would tell him what he needed to know. The cigarettes called out to him, telling him that they’d calm him down.
Finally Noah’s determination broke and he pulled the pack out. It was so easy to pull one out, put it between his lips, and light it up. He leaned against the waist-high wall that surrounded the roof of the building across the street from his office. The sun was high in the sky and he looked down, examining his shadow.
The only answer, he supposed, was to try to work through everything in his mind. He’d looked, and nobody had been here, or anywhere else for that matter. That meant that the shooter had either ducked down, or he’d bolted as soon as he saw the shots missed.
That, Noah thought, wa
s the hint. Could the shooter have taken the casing? Did he have time? Noah squatted down, checking cracks all around the wall, but there was nothing. He did find a fairly recent-looking ring from a cup that had been placed on the wall. He guessed that must have been where the shooter had been firing from.
With that on the table Noah tried to look closer. He found a half-smoked cigarette, smashed into the concrete. He picked up up and slipped it into his pocket. He tried not to think too hard about what sort of havoc it would wreak on the inside of his jacket.
Finally he stood back up. It was almost nothing to go on. That was when he saw it. Across the roof, a flash. He had his casing, after all. Noah guessed that the wind had caught it, but either way it was something. He smiled to himself. Things weren’t going well, he reasoned, but they could go a hell of a lot worse.
He looked it over briefly, but he knew that guns were not his area of expertise. It would take someone who knew a little more about this sort of things to get any useful information about any of this. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cellular.
The number wasn’t speed-dial, but he punched a few numbers and picked a name from the list that his phone offered. The man on the other end answered after four rings.
“Yes?”
“Dave, I need a favor.”
Noah picked up on it right away: Dave was not happy to see him. He spied his onetime colleague from across the room, though the lighting wasn’t especially good. It gave him plenty of time to prepare himself for the frustration that he knew was going to come, that he’d brought on himself.
He decided to stop at the bar, and when he walked over with two bottles of beer Dave’s eyes narrowed just so. He had an unusual way about him, and Noah knew that he was pleased, in his way. And angry, at the same time; he’d been looking forward to reading Noah the riot act, and now that wouldn’t be happening.
