by O. L. Casper
Stafford touches the beady tip of the erect clitoris and flicks it once, then massages it between his inner forefinger and thumb. The pleasure is coming in waves now. My once tense stomach muscles seem to have vanished in a liquid pool on the marble floor. Instinctively, I tense and loosen the muscles throughout the lower region. Kegel exercise, I think it’s called. I breathe heavily, moan, then sigh. As I sigh, he kisses me as he plays with me down below. Touching gently along the edges of my down under, Stafford kisses down my long neck, along the inner collar bone, to the supersternal notch.
Taking a break, he removes his pants, underwear and all. Like lightning, I grab his saluting penis. It’s a brusque cock, a penis with attitude. Ever so gently, I run my fingers from the base to the tip and it throbs at my touch. Nice work, lieutenant, I think as I go for the base again. I feel Stafford’s hand on my wrist, moving it away from the lieutenant, as he eases me down onto my back with the other. The ledge I lie on is cool and hard and smooth. I spread my legs for him, welcoming him. I’m looking at the ceiling now—not even at the ceiling really, but into space—as he rubs the large throbbing head around the vaginal arena, brushing my labia and erect clitoris into the octaves of euphoria. Then comes that sublime moment: he slides the tip of the head into my wet slit. He rolls it around the entrance, as though testing the playing field. Then he slips it in. I gasp. He lumbers forth. Sliding it way past the entrance and all the way home. I seem to feel his penis pressing my insides up. Could this really be happening? Is it that huge? I sigh as this happens, then contort my face. He backs up. Then thrusts again. I glance at him.
Stafford’s sitting with his hands on the place where my thighs meet my hips. Pulling himself forward. Helping himself to his newfound obsession. All the while he’s looking down at the insertion point. I can feel myself gushing all over him. It must be like a waterfall down there. He’s drowning in it. But his water viper likes to go for a swim. And he studies it and studies it. The endless fascination. What is it about a penis entering a vagina? I feel the pleasure rolling in, in waves—the beginning of a crescendo that will take hours to peak, if given the proper attention. I don’t wonder what the draw is for me. But what about for a man? How does it feel to them? This one’s quite talkative, I reason, so maybe I’ll find out. The pleasure comes in tall waves now, I’m floating, and I stop thinking of anything but that.
After an indeterminate amount of time Stafford withdraws and strokes his long shaft. As with the experience at the waterfalls, I feel nearly out-of-body as he straddles his shaft in the air above me. Suddenly I am pelted with hot splashes of silvery fluid. It covers me from my vagina, all across my stomach, to my breasts. Conscious thought resumes, I see Stafford standing, looming over me, with an inquisitive look on his face. I extend one hand, which he takes and pulls me up with. I assemble my clothes as he puts his on. Out the window I see the first sign of encroaching dawn, a violet glow rising up over the horizon. Several hours have passed during our session, though it seems like minutes. I marvel at the thought of fucking for over four hours straight, which is what has to have happened, however unbelievable it seems to me now.
Dressed, I instinctively head for the door, feeling his burning eyes on me as I leave. I look back once at the door as I am about to exit. He does not smile or look stern. A calm, even expression graces his features as he watches me go. Out of the room with the dawn light pouring in behind me, I wonder how he could have held it in that long.
Chapter 6
Sophia Durant’s Diary (continued)
August 1, Eleuthera Island, Bahamas
I didn’t get around to looking at all the collected data till about a week after the upstairs meeting with Stafford. I hadn’t seen him, and, though I tried hard to put him out of my mind—at least during work—my mind kept coming back to the curiosity about his secretive business affairs. Via the spyware I had put on Stafford’s phone, as soon as he linked his phone to his computer, I was able to have a look at all the contents therein. Every keystroke he entered, every website he trolled, every email he sent, and everything else he did online or on his hard disk was copied to my MacBook via the Minerva program. It was untraceable because the route it took was disguising itself as part of the Norton Anti-virus software and, as it “updated” itself when he shut down, it secretly transmitted all the desired information to Minerva. The wonders of modern technology.
Returning to my room after a long day tending to an unquiet baby, I put in my earbuds, sat against the headboard of my bed and booted up the MacBook Pro. While I anxiously awaited digging into my lover/employer’s files, I turned on the TV and found something to watch in the film library. As I found myself in somewhat of an insular mood and it was raining quite heavily outside, I put on The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart. Watching the images of the streets of Los Angeles pretending to be the streets San Francisco, I felt a sense of the isolation of being on such a desolate island. The feeling had always been there on the periphery, but I had not really given it much thought till now. I loved the way Humphrey Bogart had all the smart answers on rapid-fire. Sam Spade’s adventurous search for the missing Maltese bird and the shadow of his dead partner made me wonder if there wasn’t a parallel to my life on the island, without Julie and searching for an almost mystical, idealized form of life that couldn’t possibly exist. The idea was romantic and depressing at the same time and I tried to shake it. The closer I got to Stafford, the more possibilities I saw for what could happen between us. But I couldn’t really get a good read on him. I didn’t know how he felt.
I used Minerva to open Stafford’s desktop as well as all the contents of his phone. For a moment I wondered why I hadn’t tried to do all this sooner. Then I remembered how hard I had been trying to put him out of my head. Also, and, for no good reason at all, I had wanted to try to preserve as pure an image of Stafford as possible in my mind. What I knew of his dealings didn’t help the image. They didn’t necessarily hurt it either, just added an element of uncertainty and distrust. I became increasingly uneasy as I prepared to open his desktop files and go through them. I made sure everything I was doing on my computer was heavily encrypted so nothing I did would have the slightest chance of even inadvertently getting out. I was extremely paranoid about security when it came to clandestine activity online.
Then I took a deep breath and dove in. Opening Stafford’s desktop, I found the usual shortcut icons—shortcuts for web browsers, Windows Media Player, Spotify, Skype, iTunes—and I found a folder marked “Images,” along with folders marked, “Desktop ’08,” “Personal,” “Taxes,” and “Hedge fund & derivatives.” The first folder I went to was “Images.” Inside were more folders with various dates spread over the last four years. Oddly, the images weren’t of Stafford or his family or even travel pictures. They were images of company logos, American and foreign. A lot of it was advertising too. I rapidly flipped through about four hundred images of ads and logos. I thought Stafford must’ve owned some of these companies or part of them and he must’ve been inspired by the advertising or logos of the others or perhaps they were companies he wished to acquire a piece of but had not yet managed to do so.
Next I opened “Personal.” There was nothing in it, waste of time,. “Taxes” similarly yielded an empty folder. One left on the desktop: “Hedge funds & derivatives.” Inside was one image file, which I opened. It was merely a circular, yellow happy face. “Desktop ’08” revealed similar contents to the newer desktop. The file folders were labeled exactly the same. I opened “Images” in “Desktop ’08.” It was completely cleared out. Likewise, “Taxes,” “Hedge funds & derivatives,” “Personal,” and “Images” were empty. Why did he even have a
“Desktop ’08” file if there was nothing in it? I looked for folders and files that might be hidden from view. One new folder came up in the “Images” file on the current desktop. It was called “Blog.” I opened “Blog” and found over 1,500 erotic and light pornographic images and a few pornographic clips downl
oaded off the internet. I watched one of the clips. A beautiful Asian woman, perfect figure—with what looked and moved like natural large breasts—was arched over backwards, on hands and feet, chest raised up toward the ceiling, as the male porn star came up underneath her and fucked her from below, thrusting almost straight up.
I closed Stafford’s computer out and went into his phone. As I did this, I found myself in the constant grip of a fear that Stafford would knock at the door. More than once I got up and went to the door, peeking out into the hall to make sure he wasn’t there. I wondered if I’d smoked too much AK-47 and Hindu Kush lately, causing a permanent paranoia. Or was I right to be paranoid?
Compounding the feeling of anxiety was the increasing sense of cabin fever I was getting being stuck on an island for so long with no recourse to any form of civilization more than Governor’s Harbour, which itself was so isolated that when I was there it often felt like some remote trading post on Antarctica. I decided I would smoke a bit less, drink an extra glass of wine each night, and perhaps take up meditation to clear up these anxiety problems.
To say I was mostly in the grip of paranoid feelings at this time would be to present a half-truth at best. I was still very much euphoric at the great changes taking place in my life. The irony that I felt so anxious and increasingly trapped at the moment of the greatest turn of luck and freedom from material concerns in my life doesn’t escape me. My newfound willingness to take on life in a new way came at a cost, and there was an emotional disturbance I had not been able to foresee. I now see, looking back, that my ability to live in this new, free way was unleashing some repressed memories, fears, and depression from the past. This venting, along with my secret fears about Stafford, contributed to my anxious state that was at once paranoid and euphoric.
Around this time a new idea was beginning to take shape in my mind. Now that I had achieved further freedom in the way I lived, I required a more solid direction in life in order to maintain these happy feelings surging from the wellsprings of my soul. What I really wanted I couldn’t have, or so I thought at the time. That was to be Savannah’s mother and Stafford’s one lover, if not his wife. This last, I wasn’t ready to admit consciously. Consciously, I believed I didn’t need anyone and wouldn’t permit any thoughts to the contrary. But secretly, deep down, I wanted Isabella’s life. I even began fantasizing, in states of semi-reverie, about how to get it. First, I daydreamed about being a sister wife alongside Isabella. Then I imagined Isabella and Mark getting a divorce that somehow I was the cause of. This was better than having to share him.
Stafford’s phone had five email accounts linked to it, and twenty-three bank accounts. This was what I was looking for. I should be able to figure something out from all these accounts, I thought. I half-imagined myself an FBI counterintelligence agent, looking through the phone of a suspected spy. Somehow it eased the tension, and made me feel less guilty.
The first thing I honed in on in his phone was an app entitled “Notes.” Inside, the most recent (in a series going so far back I would eventually have to scroll through it) was called simply “July 9.” I opened “July 9.”
Chapter 7
Mark Stafford’s Notes
July 9
Today’s meeting was a monumental failure and disaster. None of the promised Zippos had been delivered. The bubblegum sticks promised to be on order since March had not arrived. I called the manufacturer and was told no order was ever placed. I was incensed. Next up: tennis rackets. On the one hand, there were two truckloads of tennis rackets on schedule and paid up in Morocco as promised. The proper papers were received and they were ready to continue en route to the West African states where their imminent arrival was anxiously expected and the attendant pressure was making itself felt on those shores. Horror of horrors, the Borises ordered by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army were reported to me as stolen the same morning of the meeting with the British handlers. Red hornets to Africa: fine. The frogs to Pakistani generals were received a week ahead of schedule. Two good things to fifty bad. Anita Ekbergs to Russian soldiers: half shipment reported missing. In this instance of failure I don’t know whom to distrust. The crooked Swedes, the deliverers, the Russian soldiers, the American handlers, or all of the above? There was missing candy in all these transactions. All sides bitter and accusatory toward all others. On a positive note, the king cobras were being reassembled on arrival in West Africa.
Of all the things that bothered me, it was the Borises. I owed an associate a favor in the Guang Dong region. He had always done right by me and I by him, all the way back to our avalanche days. That was small time. Now he needed a fleet of Borises for his new funding operations. Something for the Party, he said. I had seen the Borises, all fresh and shiny and fully mechanized. Fully operational, when I had ventured out of Moscow on my last trip to Russia. They seemed to breathe and laugh with me as I moved along the lines of them with the old, ex-KGB general. The general laughed with me and I believed I had sincerely made a good impression on the man and we would do further business once these shipped south. Now I firmly believe the fuck stole the Borises and ate the money. “Eating money—they will eat your money,” I could hear Azuka, my old Nigerian business companion, saying years past as he introduced the expression to me. What was Azuka doing now? Probably running a prostitution gang (his passion) while moving avalanche from country to country (his livelihood since time immemorial). He was probably a multi-billionaire now in Naira, if not in dollars. Note to self: call Azuka and find out what he is up to these days. Is he still slumming it in Lagos or has he moved to Port Harcourt like he always claimed was his dream?
Gerry, the British handler of these operations, explained to me, on the beach amidst the fog, the even foggier operations that had gone on across Europe, in parts of Asia and along West Africa as I wished I’d had a cup of coffee on hand to clarify my thinking on all the issues brought to my attention. Certain things he said in particular stand out in my memory among the plethora of strings of foolish nonsense the scoundrel unleashed on that cool morning.
“Gee, Mark, I say, must we go into it all again…it’s painful to think about all this, so horribly gone wrong as it all has.”
I wanted to kick him in the cojones right then.
“I’ll get on the dog and bone to London straight away and sort out this mess. No I won’t. I’ll fly back and sort it in person. Tell ’em the Tina Turner’s unhappy in the Bahamas. Tell ’em he might be coming himself to sort this mess if it doesn’t get put right within days—within hours.”
His cockney accent made my skin crawl, but not more than the pathetic excuses.
“Got his knickers in a twist. Tell the handlers the Tina Turner Black Magic himself is coming to London in three days. Three days, that is, after my prompt arrival at Heathrow. I’ll be up the apples and pears, on the dog and bone, ’ave the ’andlers at me flat within half-an-hour of the call. E’er’thin’ sorted. Ever’ last thin’.”
I’ve tried to show his speaking, but it doesn’t quite feel right the way I’ve presented it so I’ll leave it out in future. And I’ll leave out the cockney euphemisms. Some of the actual meanings I’m unsure of, but I know Tina Turner means earner or someone with a lot of cash. Dog and bone means phone. Apples and pears, stairs. Gerry’s speaking became more stilted and faster and more jumbled the more he waxed eloquent, the more he saw my patience running out. He probably half-thought he’d die right then and there, thought ole Black Magic would kill him.
I found the new nanny—Sophia Durant, I think her name is—driving away from Spanish Wells as I came back from the meeting place. At first I thought she may have followed me, but later, when I caught up to her, I found out she had been shopping in Spanish Wells. She’s quite an extraordinary young woman. A bit quiet, but interesting to talk to if you can get past the social barriers she throws up. Just listening to her talk, she’s obviously extremely intelligent. Sophia has more than one degree, I believe. She knows a lot about several
subjects, including computers and technology in general. And the woman is astonishingly attractive. When I talk to her I have to keep looking away to maintain my train of thought. I get carried away thinking about the things I want to do to her. She’s put a definite spell on me. I’ve got to be sure and pay her closer attention in the future. Perhaps she can help out with more than simply looking after Savannah. She does seem to get on exceptionally well with the baby and seems to have genuine affection for her. Note: remember to have her look at your cloud sharing problems between systems.
As for Sophia’s character, I’ll test her in our coming exchanges and see just how well she may be suited to other positions (no pun) in the business that is me. Also be careful not to allow her to get too close. Make sure to keep some distance between you and her, between meetings and in conversations and so on. (Remember what happened in those relationships with the other help before that did not go so well.) To consider: Sophia may be able to help you increase the activity of the hedge fund and expand your work with derivatives if this truly is an area of interest for her. She probably knows more than you do about it already.
Seeing Anse Lazio this time is even more incredible than the last, the vistas are beyond beautiful and so is the snorkeling. Idea: perhaps you can take Durant down there with you some time. It would be interesting, especially along the coral reefs, and she might really like it. Something to inflame the passions, even if only a little. Swimming in the anse morning and evening really does a lot to take the pressure off business. Off the struggles with people and the fear of the exposure of vital company information. Sometimes all this international trading gets tiresome, especially with the great care that needs to be taken to the details of communication and transport. I just need someone who’s a little more understanding than Isabella to help bear the burdens of the business. If she knew any of the actual details of what goes on at the company I think she’d blow a gasket, possibly have a heart attack. Derivatives trading can be tough indeed, like trading in futures. I’ll trade in my future with her for someone who can be a real partner any day of the week.
