Drifter's Blues (Erotic Noir)

by Tallis, P. J.

  He watched, rapt, as Donna gorged herself on his cock, one moment allowing the head to bulge her cheek, the next deep-throating him so that his breath caught in his chest. She settled into a steady bobbing as she seemed to sense him getting restless and he put out a hand to clasp the back of her head.

  ‘Oh God, it’s happening,’ he whispered, warning her in case she didn’t like tasting come. But her head movements became more rapid, her eyes turning to meet his, a wicked look of power and control there. She was bringing him to a peak of excitement at which point he’d be utterly weak and at her mercy, and they both knew it.

  She lifted her head away and with the very tip of her tongue teased the eye-slit of his cock. It was the final provocation. With a drawn-out moan Kyle ejaculated, his come spurting in hot hard gushes, and quickly she closed her mouth over him again. He saw her throat convulse as she swallowed, though she wasn’t quick enough and some of it escaped her lips and ran down her chin. She smiled, his pulsing cock still in her mouth, his overflow seed glistening on her face, and he thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  Pinned to the bed by the force of his orgasm, he watched Donna wipe her face, then slide up him so she lay across him, the top of her head resting under his chin.

  After five minutes, or perhaps an hour – he’d lost track of time – he heard her voice against his chest: ‘Kyle?’

  He peered down, saw her face turned up to look at his.

  She said, ‘Will you do something for me?’

  And so it began.

  Four

  Donna steered the Mercedes through the humid streets, cursing the traffic and the promise she’d made to her friends to meet them for a late lunch downtown. They could’ve come to their place, or she to theirs. Instead, one of them had suggested a restaurant and she’d fallen in with the decision.

  In any case, she wasn’t going to be the most sparkling company at lunch, because her mind was elsewhere.

  It was Tuesday afternoon. Just under twenty-four hours had passed since she’d finally disentangled herself from Kyle Cantrell’s arms and sent him on his way home. She’d barely been able to walk for the rest of the day, both because of exhaustion and because she’d felt sore between her legs. Sore in a good, pleasurable, fucked way. Because Donna had been fucked, good and hard, and many times.

  The blow job she’d given Kyle had surprised her, because it was years since she’d allowed Blair to come in her mouth, and even back when she had it wasn’t something she ever especially enjoyed. With Blair there’d always been the sense that he was... depositing something of himself, that he was spraying in her mouth and face to mark his territory, somehow. Like when he stole a client whose business he didn’t really need from a competitor, just because he could. It was an aggressive, alpha-male tactic, and had no place in a relationship between two people, as far as she was concerned.

  But swallowing Kyle’s semen had seemed utterly natural, an integral part of the whole experience of arousing him, sucking his penis and bringing him to a sexual climax. She’d no more considered removing her mouth and making him spurt on his own belly than she had lifting herself off his cock while they were fucking in the pool and letting him shoot his come in the water.

  Donna had been turned on by the whole act of going down on him, of stoking his lust to the point at which he ejaculated at the urgings of her lips and tongue, and she’d wanted him to stimulate her immediately after his orgasm. First, though, she’d got down to business, and asked him if he’d... do that for her. He’d been startled by the change of subject, and she’d taken advantage of his surprised silence to explain what she wanted.

  Donna sat at a red light, the Merc idling, and reflected on her boldness. At the gall she’d had to ask something like that of a guy she barely knew, even if she had fucked him several times already.

  ‘Kyle,’ she’d said, ‘I need you to burglarize my house and steal one of my husband’s paintings.’

  He’d thought she was kidding at first, and had given her a puzzled laugh, but when he saw she was serious he fell silent.

  She hauled herself up so that her face was level with his, her breasts flattened against his chest.

  ‘It’s an Allevi,’ she said. ‘Do you know who that is?’

  When Kyle said he didn’t, Donna explained. Mario Ludovico Allevi was a local Georgia painter, an Italian expatriate who’d come to Augusta in the late 1960s and had produced a substantial body of oils and watercolors before his death in 1995. Blair had purchased one of his oils, a small two by three foot picture of a fishing village somewhere near Naples, at auction nine years earlier. He’d paid around eight hundred thousand dollars for it, which seemed a lot, except that this was before Allevi had come into posthumous vogue. A recent expert valuation of the painting had put its worth at around seven million.

  Kyle sat up in bed when she said that, as though electrified.

  ‘Seven million?’

  ‘Uh-huh. That’s what it could get at a legitimate auction.’ She reached across for the cigarettes and lit one, then sat cross-legged on the bed, blowing smoke away from him. ‘On the black market, probably more.’

  Kyle took a few moments to think about what she’d said. She smoked and studied him. Frowning, he said, ‘But why steal it? It’s yours already, isn’t it?’

  ‘No. It’s Blair’s.’ She exhaled more deeply than usual. ‘Kyle, you’re a single guy. You can’t be expected to grasp what goes on in a marriage, especially one like ours, with a housewife married to a rich and powerful man. The wealth, the pretty things… all of it belongs to the man, really, and he knows it. Blair could take it away at any time. It’s all on loan to me. We don’t talk about it, but it’s true.’

  ‘So why not divorce him?’

  ‘He’d screw me in the settlement. Blair’s a shrewd guy. Shrewd and ruthless. That’s why he’s so successful at what he does. He’d hire some shit-hot shark of a lawyer who’d run rings around my own counsel. I’d get a little money, sure. But not nearly enough to make up for all the crap I’ve had to put up with from him over the years.’

  ‘Then why not take the painting yourself and run with it?’

  ‘Because he’d know it was me, and track me down.’ Donna put out her cigarette, decided against another. She slid down so that her head was resting against Kyle’s chest and he put his arm round her shoulders. ‘This way’s perfect. A burglar breaks in and takes the painting. It disappears. I’ve looked into this. I know somebody who knows somebody who can spirit it away, turn it into untraceable money. Money that would be enough to set me up for life. To set us up, Kyle.’ She looked up at him, touched her fingers to his cheek. ‘So I carry on in the marriage for a while, then get a divorce. Blair gives me a pittance and thinks he’s got one over on me, but meanwhile you and I have the money from the painting, carefully invested somewhere else.’

  Kyle had fallen silent after that, his brow furrowed, and Donna had gone over the plan again, emphasizing the benefits. Sure, it was risky, but what in life wasn’t if it was worth pursuing?

  ‘Unless you don’t want to,’ she said.

  Kyle looked down at her quizzically.

  ‘Don’t want to be with me,’ she said. ‘I haven’t asked. I guess I just assumed… hoped…’ She trailed off.

  His hand slid down her shoulder and around under her arm, the fingers touching the side of her bare breast. She felt his lips against her hair. He breathed, ‘Jeez. Of course I do.’

  Donna took his hand and placed it over her breast, enjoying the roughness of his palm on her nipple. He massaged it gently. Down his body, she saw his penis stir, flopping sideways as it thickened and then rising slowly to full erectness.

  ‘My God,’ she murmured. ‘Again?’

  He took longer to reach his orgasm this time, staying hard throughout, pistoning into her, and Donna came twice, sobbing and biting at his shoulder the second time, clawing her nails into his back. He raised his head to look at her as he climaxed, his
sweat-tangled hair hanging down almost into her face, and from the look in his eyes she knew she had him.

  Kyle was hooked.

  *

  Donna couldn’t very well send the gardener and the house staff away on the Thursday as well, so she had to wait till next Monday to get together with Kyle again. It wasn’t such a bad thing, she considered. It gave both of them a chance to recharge their batteries.

  She still wasn’t comfortable about doing it up at the house. Not because she had any qualms about betraying Blair – far from it – but precisely because the house felt like Blair’s, while the chalet was more like her and Kyle’s space. So they used the bed in the chalet, Kyle erect and rampant as a bull, riding her hard so that she had to grab fistfuls of the sheets to hold herself steady.

  After the first time Donna suggested they take a shower together. Not because it was time to get dressed – she anticipated a lot more sweatiness before they were through for the day – but because she enjoyed the slow, sensual intimacy of the cleansing ritual with a lover. She soaped the sculpted hardness of his chest, marveled at the ridged bars of his belly. Standing close to him, she ran her hands down the muscles of his thighs, bringing them up and inwards to massage suds into his pubic hair, then his cock and balls. His penis immediately began nodding erect and she smiled, removing her hands and attending to his back, the firm flatness of his butt, tantalizing him with just the tips of her nipples brushing his chest.

  She’d seen him briefly on his own on Thursday when he’d arrived to clean the pool. Although he couldn’t be openly affectionate with her, he certainly looked at her in different way, an amused knowingness in his eyes which she returned.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he’d said, and she felt a thrill of achievement.

  Now, the gentle cascade from the shower head soaking their bodies into glistening slickness, they washed and caressed one another, and made plans.

  Kyle’s first question was, naturally enough, about security.

  ‘Yeah, it’s tight,’ Donna said. ‘Motion detectors all round the house, trips and triggers for the alarm system everywhere. Once it’s set off, an armed response unit from the security company arrives in two minutes. I’ve seen it in action, once when a hobo wandered in. Blair keeps the painting in his study, which has its own alarm system.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about alarms, or avoiding them,’ Kyle admitted, his hands smoothing soap into her breasts. She felt his cock nudging hard against her pubis.

  ‘That’s no problem,’ she said. ‘I’ll disable them.’

  ‘But won’t it be obvious to your husband that it’s an inside job?’

  ‘Not if I give you the codes to re-enable them,’ she said, finding it momentarily difficult to focus on talking as Kyle’s hand swept down her belly and began to soap her mound. ‘You break in, grab the painting, then reset the alarms and get out of there, fast. Two minutes. You’ll need to be quick, but you can do it.’

  She studied his eyes for doubt, for signs that he was having second thoughts. There was apprehension there, for sure, but more than that there was lust.

  Kyle lowered his mouth to her neck and she turned her head to allow him access, catching her breath as his lips and teeth nibbled at her. She rose on her tiptoes and by feel alone she positioned herself so that the head of his cock was snug between her parted legs. Slowly she lowered herself, impaling herself on his penis, sinking down until her vagina had engulfed almost the full length of his shaft.

  ‘I thought,’ she began, breaking off to gasp. She tried again. ‘I thought we’d do it next week Saturday. Twelve days from now. Blair’s going to be… out of town… ah, God… in Atlanta. And I’m visiting with a friend – oh, yeah, that’s good, oh, baby. It’s the perfect – ah, Jesus, baby, that’s right, fuck me – the perfect opportunity. Oh God… oh, fuck…’

  They clung to one another, almost losing their balance on the slippery floor. At the last minute their frantic bucking became too much and Donna slipped off Kyle, his cock springing free between them just as he came. She felt the hot ropy spurts of his semen against her belly, some of them flicking against the undersides of her breasts, and she smiled, pressing her open mouth up against his as his guttural cries broke forth.

  ‘Saturday’s fine,’ he gasped, as he pushed her back against the wall of the shower and slid his still-erect penis back into her.

  *

  The early Monday evening streets still simmered with the day’s heat. Kyle was downtown, striding the sidewalk in his jeans and T-shirt, too wired to do anything but keep on the move.

  From the streetcorners hookers wolf-whistled and called to him. He ignored them, as he did the muttered offers of the drug dealers who approached him with unseasonably heavy overcoats held open to display their wares. Everywhere around him the city teemed with restless life and Kyle threw himself into its center, because to be alone right now would be to sink into a swamp of brooding, and he didn’t need that.

  Everywhere he went, whatever he did, Donna was right there with him. The smile on her lips that lit up her eyes, the sinuous curl of her arms twining round his neck and her legs round his thighs, the unbearable firm thrusting globes of her breasts against his chest: all were as vivid to him as if he was still in the chalet with her. His cock, still aching from the day’s activities, could feel the warm tight slippery sheath of her vagina round it. And the smells of her… they lingered ineradicably in his nostrils, her faint perfume and the pheromonal smell of her pores, the light aroma of her shampoo and the musky sex-odor of her pussy.

  Kyle had smoked a little reefer in his time but had never done harder drugs. But he thought he could guess now what crack addiction was like. His craving for Donna was all-consuming, more powerful than the drive to eat or drink or even piss. And once he’d indulged himself in the fiery glory of her body, once they’d ridden each other to an awesome peak of excitement and pleasure, he experienced only a fleeting comedown before his craving reared its head again, even more intense than it had been before.

  Three days, he thought. Three whole days before I even see her again. And even then, we probably won’t get a chance to do it. The thought made him despair, gave him the urge to fling himself onto the road in front of a truck. Maybe he could hang around the Thurgood property tomorrow or the next day to see if he could catch a glimpse of her? Surely she’d go out some time?

  Yeah, dude, he thought. Why don’t you just get a long-lens camera and take snapshots of her. Why don’t you break into her room and steal her panties to sniff. A criminal record as a stalker. That’ll look real swell on your resume.

  Still, he knew the next few days were going to be torture. The four days – four days, Jesus – after that until next Monday were going to be even harder.

  He forced his thoughts away from Donna and her body as he stalked the streets, not just because his exhausted cock was already heaving itself up painfully into a standing position in his jeans, but because there was something else he needed to think about, even if he didn’t want to.

  He’d agreed to commit a crime. To break into another man’s house and steal something of enormous value.

  Kyle wasn’t given to self-delusion, but right now he wished he had the ability to convince himself that what he’d agreed to do was somehow not wrong. That a rich, arrogant bastard like Blair Thurgood deserved to lose some of his fortune. That he, Kyle, was somehow performing a noble, revolutionary service to society.

  But he couldn’t. He was going to cross a line, in the full knowledge that what he was performing was a felony and that if caught he would go to jail for a very long time. And he was doing it for one of the most ancient reasons of all: because a woman had asked him to, and because he loved her enough to risk everything for her.

  There. He’d said it to himself, even if he hadn’t to Donna yet. He was in love with her. Yes, he was pussywhipped; there was no point in pretending that wasn’t part of it. But it wasn’t just the promise of more sex, or the threat of its removal,
that motivated him. Just talking to Donna, even when they were fully clothed, delighted him. He loved the quirky mobility of her mouth, her funny yet seductive eyes. The modulation of her voice. The gentle way she touched his cheek, almost chastely at times.

  He’d break in, and steal the painting, and get the fuck out again before the security guys arrived with their Armalites and their Kevlar vests. And if the nagging voice of his conscience turned to a screaming storm in his ear… well, he’d tune it out. He’d suck it up. And after that, maybe a year later, a year of waiting in the shadows as a kind of exile, he’d meet up with Donna somewhere, maybe on an island, almost certainly in another country, and they’d live off the money from the painting and spend all day, all night, naked in one another’s arms, shutting out the world.

  Was it all bullshit? Part of Kyle knew it might be, but he was surprised to find he didn’t care. Because he wanted it to be true, and if there was the remotest possibility that it might be, he was willing to hold on to that.

  After Kyle had been walking for an hour and the thoughts and the turmoil were still churning in his mind, more tumultuous than ever, he decided there was only one way to shut it all down even temporarily.

  He went into the nearest bar and proceeded to get mortally, but enjoyably, shitfaced.

  Five

  Donna was in the living room leafing through a catalog, listlessly choosing drapes for one of the rooms in what she increasingly viewed as Blair’s home, not hers, when her husband came downstairs. It was Saturday afternoon and he was spending a rare weekend day at home.

  She glanced up. Blair was in a pair of swimming trunks and nothing else, a towel draped over his arm. He’d gotten paunchier even in the last couple of weeks, it seemed to Donna, and his belly overhung the elastic waistband of his trunks like an English muffin in its cup.