Chasing Sergei: Dark Romance

by Aubrey Collins

  She desperately wanted to drop the investigation. Every time she saw him hopping into or out of a vehicle or strolling down the street, she would turn red with shame and embarrassment. But she also felt desire, red-blooded desire. Her pussy lips would begin to tingle and sweat as she imagined Serge pushing his cock into her pussy then into her ass, going deeper and deeper into her fuck tunnel, while Nicholson shoved his thick, blood engorged, mushroom headed, purple veined, swollen cock in and out of her mouth. Those images stayed with her. Haunted her. Disturbed her. Made her tingle and tremble with lust.

  One time while in the car, she had caught herself, rubbing between her legs, mouth half open, breathing slowly, heavily, as it all came back to her. Both of those men, feasting on her fleshy body. It felt so good to have those curves that real men could handle, could love could lust after, worship, suck and lick and nibble. They could do it all to her. Tickling all her pleasure points, making her body electric with desire and satisfaction.

  She was going to submit the final report to Mackenzie that night. It would be over. She would be moving on. She had learned a valuable lesson. She was still a rookie agent. She needed to keep her emotions in check. Keep her ambitions in check. Before she ran straight off a cliff.

  “BREAKING NEWS! BREAKING NEWS!” The sound came out of the cruiser radio.

  “The three Russian diplomats who went missing 72 hours ago have been found in the Anacostia River. Their arms and legs were tied together. They appeared to have been killed before they were thrown into the water.”

  “WHAT??????” Grabowski shouted. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. A half an hour later, the next report came through.

  The USS War Eagle had launched 72 Tomahawk missiles into Syria. Several Russian planes have been destroyed. And more than 20 Russian military personnel have been killed.

  Grabowski’s jaw dropped. She turned towards Nicholson. His lips were wrapped around a bottle of whiskey. He was sucking it down like it was last bottle that he would ever get his hands on. But it definitely wasn’t. He tossed the empty bottle out the window. It banged against the concrete. He reached under the seat and pulled out another bottle. She had never seen him go back to back like that. There was also a distant look in his eyes that disturbed him.

  “Did you hear that?” She asked.

  Nicholson smirked, leaned his head back, and took another swig. “World War III? Is that what it is?”

  Grabowski stared deeply into her partner’s eyes. She feared that he was flashing back to his days in Afghanistan. She’d only heard him talk about war once before. He’d been extremely drunk, slurring and cursing the government for having lied. He’d lost brothers over there. More than a few.

  “I guess we’re going to show the Syrians not to be violent with each other, by dropping bombs on them. That usually works out well.”

  Grabowski stared at him before responding. She definitely wanted to know his thoughts on the situation. She had never served but knew and admired a lot of people who had. Nicholson had once talked to her about his problems with PTSD after finally being honorably discharged from the Army after four tours of duty in Afghanistan.

  “That bastard lied to everybody,” Nicholson said angrily. “He said that he was going to keep us out of foreign wars. No more money for war! That’s he said. Not even a hundred days in and he’s already bombing somebody.”

  Grabowski bit her lip, not sure how to respond. She wasn’t in a mood to argue but she didn’t entirely agree with Nicholson's sentiments. She was no fan of the President. But she wasn’t against the US military sending a strong message to Syria, and more importantly to Russia.

  “How many days until our new friend Sergei gets a bullet in the back of the head?” Nicholson asked.

  Grabowski’s eyes opened wide with fear. She swallowed hard. “We have to go save him. Hide him somewhere.”

  “What?”

  She reached out and grabbed his arm. “Until everything cools down!”

  They stared at each other in silence.

  “BRNNGGGGGGGG” Nicholson's phone began ringing loudly. He looked at the screen, smiled, and shook his head.

  “I guess we’ll have to figure out what to do with out Russian lover a little bit later.”

  “What’s wrong?” She asked instinctively.

  “Mackenzie wants us at HQ at 2300 hours.”

  Chapter 12

  Regional Director Mackenzie, stood up from his chair, and walked from behind his desk. Nicholson and Grabowski sat next to each other. Grabowski's eyes were filled with fear and fixed on her boss. Nicholson could hardly keep his eyes open. The Regional Director didn’t seem pleased or impressed by either one of them. Grabowski would have loved to reach out and smack the shit out of her partner. While she had gunned it on the freeway, he had continued to curse the new administration for launching the country into yet another war.

  They had already been in the office for five minutes. The Regional Director hadn’t yet said a word. Grabowski wasn’t sure what to make of that. But she feared the worst: he had found out about the threesome with Sergei. He would be taking their guns and badges. They would be done at the Bureau. She turned to her right and faced Nicholson. Mackenzie stood behind them, staring down imperiously. This was the most serious moment in both of their careers. Nicholson was mumbling and shaking his head from side to side. A stupid grin cut his red, boozed up face in half. She would have loved to punch him right in the mouth and knock that stupid grin off his face.

  “Nicholson, what the hell is wrong with you? You’ve always loved the bottle. But I’ve never seen you like this.”

  Mackenzie walked back behind his desk. He sat down calmly in his chair and crossed his fingers in front of his face. Grabowski shivered when she made eye contact with him. There was something so sinister in his eyes.

  He was glaring at her, boring into her skull. “Is this what you let your partner do all day?”

  She swallowed hard and began, “Sir, ever since the news of the bombing came on, he's been drinking harder than usual. A lot harder.”

  Nicholson's eyes popped wide open and his headshot up from his chest where it had been slumped. “Shut up, Grabowski.”

  Grabowski continued, “He’s not a fan of Middle East wars.”

  The veins in Nicholson's neck and forehead bulged. “Shut the fuck up, Grabowski. Mind your goddamn business.”

  Grabowski trembled. She wasn't sure whether or not she had made a mistake. Maybe it was none of her business. But she couldn't help noticing that after the news had come on the radio, Nicholson had started really drinking, taking swig after swig, each one longer than next, until he had drained the empty, which he would then toss out of the window as the zoomed down the freeway.

  “Maybe you should run for office one day, Nicholson. I’m sure you’ll be a hit with the public.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Nicholson said, his voice dripping with sarcasm and contempt for his boss. For what seemed like forever to Grabowski, both men locked eyes, lips trembling with rage, brows furrowed, eyes reddened. Nicholson tended to inspire that reaction from the higher ups. He never felt like he had to bow down to them. It was one of the few things that Grabowski admired about him.

  For the next 20 minutes, Mackenzie explained to them that the heat was about to get turned up on all Russians in DC connected to the Kremlin or Moscow. He wanted them all gone or in jail within the next ten days. Grabowski shook her head several times when she heard that directive. The whole world was teetering on the brink of war.

  Mackenzie smiled and stared at Nicholson. “For the record, Nicholson, I’m not a fan of these missiles strikes either. Not sure what it accomplishes. But our tiny hands President sure seems proud of himself.”

  Grabowski reached out and slapped Nicholson on the shoulder. He stopped laughing and stared deeply into her eyes. He nodded as if in appreciation of something. She hoped it was her honesty and willingness to explain to the chief what was going on. She didn’t want him to
be ashamed of the different feelings that he was processing. There were so many others were experiencing a similar traumatic, tangle of emotions.

  She nodded back in acknowledgment. It was getting easier and easier for them to communicate without saying a word. If they were in another place, a more intimate place, tucked away together, she would have embraced him, hugged him, kissed him…

  “So what information have you two gathered from our flamboyant Russian spy?” Mackenzie asked. “How hot is the recorded footage?”

  Mackenzie’s eyes were on fire with lust. His energy had changed so quickly. Grabowski wasn’t sure what had happened.

  Nicholson and Grabowski turned towards each other, shame faced. Grabowski cleared her throat and slowly raised her eyes. “Not as exciting as we thought,” she said.

  “What do you mean? This dossier we have on this guy says that he’s some kind of sex addict. I’ve set a screening in our conference for tomorrow morning.”

  Grabowski had a dazed look in her eyes. Her palms began to sweat. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She uncrossed her legs, then quickly crossed them again. She squirmed in her seat. She was terrified of where this was going. But she was also turned on by the images of that evening flashing in her brain.

  “Please send me the zip file by 10 PM tomorrow evening,” the Regional Director said. “I can't wait to see what you’ve recorded.”

  15 minutes later, Nicholson and Grabowski sat in their cruiser, deathly silent. They had until 10 PM the next evening to get the footage to Mackenzie. They would have to edit out the almost 8 hours they had spent together. Grabowski held her head in her hands. She could feel the hot tears, dripping down her cheeks. She had had a feeling, a very bad feeling, that that incredible night would come back to haunt her.

  Nicholson, very much sober, rubbed her thigh, reassuringly. “It's okay. We'll figure something out. I think I have an idea.”

  She raised her head, wiped the tears from her eyes, and sniffled a few times.

  “Really?”

  He nodded, his eyes full of confidence.

  She reached out and hugged him, wrapping her arms around his neck, letting the tears fall down her cheek onto his face. She pulled back, held his cheeks in her hands, stared at him lovingly, fiercely loyal, and then kissed him on the mouth, pushing her tongue, deep inside it.

  Chapter 13

  A little past midnight, Nicholson sat in a neighborhood playground, sipping from a bottle of Jamison.

  For the last few months, he had been considering going back to the meetings. AA. He wondered how many of those faces he would recognize. How many of those jagged edge voices had he heard before?

  Watching those missiles shoot off the aircraft carrier had brought back terrible memories. He hated hearing about war. Hated thinking about war. He had lost so many brothers on the battlefield.

  He looked around at the playground. He used to bring his kids here. Those days felt so long ago. That was a completely different life. Those were the days when he had a family to support, a future to believe in. All of that was over now.

  Almost everything had slipped away from him. And things were only going to get difficult, much more difficult over the next few weeks. He would find it difficult to sleep. The country was beating the drums of war. He would toss and turn in the bed. Spring up in the middle of the night, sweating, panting,

  That’s how it usually happened when the memories came back, when the PTSD reached up from the ground and clutched at his ankles, dragging him back into that hell that he thought he had escaped. Nope. He was still trapped there, still a prisoner of his Service. Thank you for your Service! Good luck with the rest of your life! Good luck dealing with the demons, ghosts, goblins.

  September 11, 2001. He was sitting in a classroom at the John Jay Criminal Justice School in New York when the first plane hit the tower. Suddenly being in a classroom didn’t seem to make any sense to him. The country had been attacked. They were under threat. He burned with patriotism. Burned with rage. Like a lot of Americans, he was hungry for war. Afghanistan? Hell yeah! He looked forward to catching that bastard Bin Laden with his own two hands.

  He signed up for the Army. They sent him to Fort Benning in Georgia. And from there he was sent to Kandahar, second largest city in Afghanistan. It was the most chaotic and depressing place that he had ever been. But he didn’t stay there for long. He was soon transferred to Mosul in Iraq. Iraq? That didn’t make any sense to him. They didn’t have anything to do with 9/11. Why were we going back there? Weapons of mass destruction? Yes, that was the lie! We had to get those weapons. Our allies in the region are in danger! Innocents are being slaughtered!

  When the drums of war are beating, very little can be done to quiet their deafening sound. Rational discussion about whether or not the war is a good idea is considered treason. Everyone in the establishment becomes bloodthirsty. The oil stocks begin to shoot up. The stocks of the weapons manufacturers shoot up. A racket. The whole thing.

  Before enlisting he would have never believed just how cynical and sadistic people in power could be, especially when they had control of incredibly destructive weapons.

  He had believed in the military. He had believed in the moral purity of the United States. We were different from all other nations. Exceptional! We would never do the barbaric things that our enemies do. We would never harm civilians. We would never strong arm our way into a country under the pretext of bringing Democracy and then proceed to shamelessly loot that country. But the horrors he’d seen…the civilian deaths, the suffering, the agony. The refugees. The widows. The children. The theft, profiteering, and racketeering.

  It all disgusted him. It made him question everything he'd ever believed. And when his best friend TJ, a lanky redneck from Tennessee, got killed by an IED at a checkpoint, Nicholson couldn't take anymore. He felt like he was ready to go on a killing rampage. Iraqi civilians. Or maybe one of his own brothers in arms. Maybe one of his superiors. He didn't know who. He felt attacked on all sides.

  The Iraqis hated the American soldiers. And he couldn't blame them. He wondered how he would have felt, if a group of Iraqi soldiers started walking around his neighborhood, armed to the teeth, menacing, prepared and empowered to kick down your door at any moment, rush in guns drawn, threatening to blow your head off, if you don’t get your hands in the air. And then they haul your mother brother cousin uncle father grandfather sister off to a prison, maybe a black site. And no one would ever hear from them again.

  Of course, those people hated them.

  Nicholson took one last swig from the bottle, then tossed it into the air.

  It smashed against the concrete. He smiled. Happy that he could destroy something. Thrilled with himself. This is what his life had come to. His wounds were wide open. And they burned like hell.

  After sitting in the park for several hours, hardly moving, with no desire to drink anymore, Nicholson decided to walk the three blocks back to his house. On the way, a light drizzle began to fall. The intensity of the rain quickly grew. Within moments, the sky broke. Thunder boomed. Lightening flashed.

  When he got home he was completely soaked. He stripped out of his clothes in the living room and stumbled up to his bedroom wearing nothing but his underwear and wet socks. There was no one in the house to ask him where he had been. No one to look at him angrily. No one to sigh with disappointment when they smelled the whiskey on his breath, saw the bloodshot, glazed look in his eyes.

  Maybe that was for the best. He remembered the last time that he had come home drunk on a stormy night. Sixteen months ago. When he was still full of hopes and dreams. When he still believed that his family had a great future ahead of them. He remembered driving home from the Bureau after a particularly hard day.

  It was a 35 minute drive from the field office in DC to his suburban home in Alexandria, Virginia. By the time he got off the George Washington Memorial Parkway, he had finished nearly all of the bottle. As he pulled into the driveway
he nearly knocked over the mailbox and then he came to a skidding stop before slamming into the closed garage door. He cut off the engine. His chest heaved. He looked in the mirror. Then quickly looked away in disgust.

  The stress at the Bureau had been gnawing at him. He kept having run-ins with his superiors. He felt like they were talking down to him, showing everybody that this former soldier wasn't going to be treated differently than anyone else.

  He took that as both a challenge and an insult. He enjoyed challenges, lived for them. But he felt very differently about insults. He didn’t know how to handle them. He hated feeling like he was being mocked or ridiculed. But there was very little he could except bite his tongue, swallow his pride, laugh off the jokes and taunts. He had no choice, which meant that throughout the day the stress built up, hour by hour, the tension making him grit his teeth, clench his fist, veins bulge in his neck and forehead, heart beat faster in his chest.

  When it was finally time to leave work, a rush of adrenaline would surge through him. So much adrenaline that he didn’t bother to wait until he got home before he started drinking. Actually, he didn’t even wait until he out of the Bureau parking lot. The minute he got behind the wheel, he twisted the cap on the Jameson and began whetting his palette, sipping away the pain, forgetting all about the job, the Bureau. Leaving it all behind him.

  While this drinking routine might have helped him deal with the increasing stress of the job, it didn’t do much for his marriage or family. Cindy didn’t like it. She had seen more than a handful of drunks in her family. And she had no interest in being married to one. She wanted him to stop drinking. And she wanted him to go talk to PTSD counselor. Maybe it was more than the stress at work that was getting to him. Maybe he still hadn’t recovered from the horrors of war.