by Chris Orcutt
“Precisely, Dr. Stevens.” Malone gestured at the computer monitors. “As you can see, we have electrodes measuring all aspects of the subjects’ levels of sexual attraction—respiration, pulse, pupil dilation, and erogenous zone response. And, in what we call the ‘private’ room, there are infrared cameras monitoring skin temperature.”
“How romantic,” Svetlana said.
“My field of expertise is human sexuality, Miss Krüsh,” Malone said. “If it’s romance you seek, I suggest you visit the English department.”
Svetlana glared at Malone. “And what if the subjects in the private room are overcome by their desires?” She waved dismissively at the HDTV. “Are we also to be treated to X-rated cinema-vérité?”
I chuckled at her comment, but Malone frowned.
“No, Miss Krüsh,” he said. “If the subjects in the private room start getting out of hand, doors will open and they will be forced to leave. There were a couple of incidents—years ago, before I refined the experiment—but none recently.”
“I could use something to drink,” I said.
“Sally,” Malone said, “get Dr. Stevens a bottled water.”
“Actually,” I said, “is there a soda machine in the building?”
“Yes, on the second floor,” Malone said. “Sally, please show him.”
“Yes, Dr. Malone.”
I followed Sally out to the hallway. We passed an office with a queue of students out the door. They and the students inside were filling out forms on clipboards.
“New subjects?” I asked Sally.
“Potential new subjects,” she said. “They complete a questionnaire and have their picture taken, then we contact the top ten percent to serve as test subjects.”
“How does one make it into the top ten percent?” I asked.
“There are several factors.” She pushed her eyeglasses up her nose. “Physical attractiveness and open-mindedness are certainly important, but Geoff says there’s also an X-factor.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Have you been a test subject?”
“I applied,” she said, starting up a staircase. “But when Geoff saw that I’m majoring in psychology, he asked me to be his assistant instead.”
“Congratulations. You also became his girlfriend. How did that happen?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged holding on to the handrail and kept going up the stairs. “We just hit it off, I guess.”
The second floor hallway was empty and dim. The only light came from a Coke machine in a nook, and the front windows at the end of the hall. Pointing, Sally led the way toward the soda machine.
“There it is,” she said.
“I’m not really thirsty,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“For soda anyway.”
Upon reaching the Coke machine, she stopped and looked up at me. The red glow from the machine made her pale skin look like she was blushing all over. In the blouse and short skirt, she looked like my first girlfriend, with legs equally trim and smooth.
When Sally stared at me and creased her lips, I realized that mere flirting wasn’t going to get the job done. Mere flirting wasn’t going to steal her away from Dr. Malone. Any young woman willing to have rough sex in public won’t be seduced by words alone. Bold action was required. Stepping toward her, I backed her against the soda machine until the red plastic “COKE” shell buckled against her butt.
“Dakota!” she hissed. Her eyes darted around the hallway in a panic. “What are you doing?”
Pressing her palms flat against the plastic, she blinked up at me innocently a few times, like she was imitating the ingénue from a teen movie. I removed her eyeglasses and tucked them in my pocket. With her glasses out of the way, I could better appreciate her soft brown eyes and high cheekbones. The girl was eminently kissable.
“You look beautiful today, Sally,” I said. “Did you open my present yet?”
“The earrings? Yes, thank you, I love them. I wanted to wear them today, but I knew Geoff would ask me about them, so—”
Gently, I took hold of her head. With one hand on her jaw and the other clutching her hair at the nape of her neck, I tilted her head back and to the side. Her eyes fluttered shut. I started by kissing her tenderly—once. The second I planted my lips on hers, she wrapped her arms around me and smothered her body against mine.
Sally was only an average kisser, but her nubile body and her eagerness more than compensated for any failings of technique. Her breathing accelerated, grew wheezy and shallow. She murmured something out of the side of her mouth. Spurred on by her murmurs of arousal, I ran a hand down her back, over her skirt, and up the back of her leg to her panties, where I clutched her bijou butt. “Mm!” she yelped into my mouth. She stiffened, then relaxed. We kissed for another minute. Finally, she uncoupled her lips from mine and rasped against my shoulder.
“Dakota…we…we have to stop.”
“Why?” I kissed across her cheek. “There’s no one here.”
“Because I’m hot for you. I want you.” Her eyes flicked to a doorway across the hall. “See that room? It’s a lounge with a couch.”
Pretending I hadn’t heard her, I unbuttoned the top button of her blouse, pushed the leaves apart, and pinched her BDSM collar in my fingertips.
“Sally?”
“Yes?”
“What kind of man makes his girlfriend wear a collar and call him ‘master’?” I asked. “I’ll tell you—an insecure one.”
“I don’t think Geoff is insecure,” she muttered.
“Of course he is.” Still holding her butt, I squeezed it for emphasis as I talked. “And what are you doing wearing a collar, Sally? How long have you known this guy? Maybe two months? You’re a brilliant, beautiful Harvard girl, for God’s sake. You shouldn’t be a slave to any man.” I kissed her neck, then used my fingers to thread some loose tresses behind her ear. “If you were my woman, you wouldn’t be wearing a collar. You wouldn’t be subservient to me. You’d be—”
She gazed at me with eyes starving for praise. “You really think I’m beautiful, Dakota?”
“Absolutely. I love this skirt on you, by the way.”
“Geoff got it for me,” she said.
“Yeah? Did he get you those saddle shoes, too?”
She gave a start. “How’d you know that?”
“The saddle shoes go well with that skirt,” I said. “It’s a very sexy outfit—in a Catholic schoolgirl kind of way.”
Sally pouted, stared at the floor.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“Geoff says I’m cute, not sexy,” she said.
“Geoff is an idiot, Sally.”
She giggled. “I can’t believe I met you. Where did you come from?”
Wrapping my arms around her, I picked her up off the ground and kissed her again. When she spoke next, it was in a breathy, little girl voice—another ingénue affectation, but, because it was straight into my ear canal, an effective one.
“Dakota?” she said. “Could we go somewhere together? Maybe tomorrow? I’m so sick of classes and working, and Geoff never takes me anywhere.”
“Sure thing,” I said. “But I don’t want you staying with him tonight.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
“I’ll pick you up at your dorm in the morning. We’ll make an entire day of it. We can do anything you want.”
“Anything I want?”
With a twitch of her eyebrows, she wriggled her breasts against me. Instantly I was filled with an overwhelming urge to scoop her up, carry her to the lounge across the hall, and savagely dent the couch cushions with her. Taking a second to catch my breath, I put her down, yanked up her skirt, and spanked her once on her backside—hard. The spank resonated in the empty hallway.
“Ow!” She rubbed her bottom. “Dakota
!”
“Enough with the babe in the woods routine.” I put her glasses back on her. “I’m as attracted to your mind as I am your body, Sally.”
She nodded. “All right.”
“Now, I want you to take the rest of the day off and do something nice for yourself.” I opened my wallet and handed her a hundred dollars. “Go get your hair or nails done, or buy yourself a pretty outfit.”
“Okay, but…what do I tell Geoff?”
“I’ll take care of it. Just leave. I’ll tell him you’re sick.”
She hugged me. I held her head against my chest and stroked her hair.
“If he calls you later, just play sick,” I said. “Think about what you want to do tomorrow. I’ll pick you up in morning—eight o’clock. All right?”
She nodded against my chest. Then she mumbled something.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I said, ‘Kiss me again, Dakota?’ ”
I kissed her for a good thirty seconds, until we heard a door bang shut downstairs. When we pulled apart, I said, “Now I really am thirsty.”
“Me too.”
I bought us a couple of sodas and walked Sally downstairs to the back exit. She drank some of her soda and daintily wiped her lips with her fingertips.
“Hey, Dakota?” she said.
“Yeah?”
“That guy that was here earlier—do you think he was crazy, or was he telling the truth?”
I wanted Sally to reach her own conclusions about Dr. Malone, so I played dumb.
“The truth about what?”
“You know—about his daughter being abducted and Geoff having something to do with it.”
I shrugged. “What I think isn’t important. I don’t have to be around the guy. What do you think?”
She pinched up her lips like a kewpie doll’s.
“I’m not sure yet. But I am sure about one thing.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“How much I like you.”
She bounced up on her tiptoes, kissed me, and skipped down the steps to the sidewalk gate. Opening the gate, she blew me a kiss. I “caught” the kiss and pressed it to my heart.
The second she disappeared down the sidewalk, I closed my eyes and bowed my head in shame. I had no doubt that I would soon be successful in extricating Sally from Malone’s clutches.
But how was Sally going to react when she inevitably learned my wooing her was a sham? A sham fabricated for ulterior motives. Ulterior motives that involved her father.
This was going to be a problem.
21
Watching the Stars Carousel Around Him
Back in the observation booth, Svetlana was seated in front of a computer screen while Malone hovered over her shoulder explaining the data to her. The other technicians were gone, so the two of them were alone in the room.
When I shut the door, Svetlana whipped around with an irritated look that seemed to say, “Where have you been?”
“Sorry it took me so long,” I said. “Sally got sick. I had to see her out.”
“Sick?” Malone slowly stood.
“Yeah, I put her in a cab and sent her to the infirmary.”
Malone frowned. “Hmm…perhaps I should go see her.”
“Better not,” I said. “She was really burning up. I think it’s the flu.”
“Well, there’s not much use in my sticking around,” he said. “I can’t interview all of those applicants by myself.”
“Where are you parked?” I asked.
“A garage, a few blocks away, why?” Malone said.
“I think we’re in that same garage. We’ll walk with you.”
“Fine,” he said. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll meet you outside. I need to lock up and dismiss the applicants down the hall. Be right out.”
Outside, Svetlana was visibly agitated—a far cry from the calm and collected woman I’d met in the Au Bon Pain courtyard the other day. A car whisked by on the street, and then it was dead silent again.
“Svetlana, what’s wrong?” I asked.
“There is something about that man that disturbs me,” she said. “Just having him look at me, I feel violated.”
“Well, finding those photos and blood in his apartment didn’t help,” I said.
“No, it did not.”
“Did you get a chance to ask him who funds his research grant?”
She stared at the bus stop shelter across the street and shook her head.
“I find my ability to think escapes me in his presence,” she said. “I fear if I were to play him in chess now, I would lose.”
On our way to the parking garage, Svetlana and I walked behind Dr. Malone as he dissertated on sexual attraction, including his discovery of what he had humbly termed the “Malone Magnification Effect.”
“When a subject realizes that another subject finds him or her sexually attractive,” Malone explained, “it causes his or her interest in the other subject to increase, which magnifies that subject’s interest in the other, and so on in an endless loop, culminating in some kind of sexual expression, like intercourse.”
As we entered the garage and started up the ramp between the parked cars, I attempted to translate Dr. Malone’s principle into layperson’s terms.
“I get it,” I said. “Basically what you’re saying is, we get turned on because the other person is turned on by us.”
“Not quite,” Malone said. “What happens is each subject’s interest in the other is magnified. I’m sure Miss Krüsh understands the principle.” He smiled at Svetlana over his shoulder. “And has no doubt experienced it herself. Numerous times.”
“Miss Krüsh has no interest whatsoever in your principle,” she said.
When Malone turned around again, she stared daggers into his back. After a long uncomfortable silence, during which the only sound was the echo of our footsteps in the garage, I finally posed the question I’d been waiting to ask him.
“Dr. Malone,” I said, “I understand your research isn’t funded by the university—that you have an independent research grant. Who, may I ask, is your benefactor? I’m curious because I’m having trouble getting a grant for my sabbatical project. Maybe your benefactor would be willing to sponsor me?”
“I sincerely doubt it,” he said. “My sponsor insists on remaining anonymous. All I can say is, he’s a very wealthy man who wishes me to be successful in my research.”
“Come on,” I said. “Surely you can tell me more than that. Just give me a hint about his identity.”
We reached the top of the garage ramp, turned and continued up to the next level.
“This much I will tell you,” Malone said. “I’ve found foreign philanthropists to be the most sympathetic to my work. Now, I’d appreciate it if you—”
Ahead, Stinky was sitting on the trunk of a red BMW. He was bookended by two wiry young men, maybe 25, wearing hip-length black leather jackets and sunglasses. With their arms crossed, the young men looked like a couple of extras from a low-budget Mob movie—the lean and cocky bodyguards to a pudgy boss. The three of them stood as we approached the car. Malone stopped in his tracks.
“I told you, sir,” Malone said to Stinky, “I don’t know anything about your daughter.”
“Shut up. I know you took her,” Stinky said. “Ursula Teller—sound familiar?”
Svetlana blinked at me. I knew we were thinking the same thing: one of the sets of photos, and one of the test tubes of blood, had been labeled with the initials “U.T.”
Easing around Svetlana, I carefully removed my collapsible striking baton, looped my wrist through the strap and concealed it, still collapsed, in my hand behind my hip. When Stinky and the two bookends started toward us, I positioned myself in front of Svetlana and Dr. Malone. Stinky and the bookends stopped.
; “This here’s the guy I told you about,” Stinky said.
“Tough guy, huh?” said the left one.
“No, not really,” I said. “I prefer sex to fighting. Ask your girlfriend.”
“Smartass, too,” said the other one.
“Actually, I consider myself a wit,” I said. “You know—in the tradition of Voltaire? Listen to me—of course you don’t know, you’re a moron. So, how about it, Stinky…take that shower yet?” I sniffed the air. “No? Tell me you at least put on deodorant.”
“Like I said before, buddy,” Stinky said, “this doesn’t involve you. Dr. Malone knows where my daughter is, and he’s going to tell me.”
“Listen,” I said, “there’s no need for anybody to get hurt here. I’m sure Dr. Malone will be happy to sit down and discuss this with you. So, why don’t you take these two clowns”—I waved my free hand—“back to Rent-a-Schmuck, and the four of us will—”
“That’s it!” The guy on the left dropped into a karate stance. “You’re done, buddy!”
He let out a loud shout and pumped a series of karate punches in front of his chest, alternating his punches left-right-left, and advancing until his fists were only a foot from my torso. It was an impressive display, and against a novice fighter it might have been intimidating. I, however, am not a novice fighter. Since he was off balance during his little demonstration, and since balance is the cornerstone of all martial arts, I concluded he didn’t know what the hell he was doing.
Bending my knees slightly, I anchored my feet in a solid stance. The moment Karate Guy shouted and started to pump his fists again, I put an end to it. Deftly pivoting on the balls of my feet and swiveling my hips, I pasted him in the jaw with a gorgeous left hook.
In the annals of punches, mine had to be one of the best ever thrown. It was such a beautiful punch, connecting so sublimely with his jaw from out of his blind spot, and delivered so efficiently with all my weight and shoulder strength behind it, that I wanted to ask the garage attendant later if I could view the security tape, maybe get a copy for my archives. Karate Guy’s legs crumpled beneath him. He plopped on his butt on the cement, dumbly watching the stars carousel around him.
