Moses&Curio- The Black Sheep of Tel Aviv

Moses and Curio and the Black Sheep of Tel Aviv



         

         On his birthday, Moses Holliday stood at the dining room window, half of a Winston and a cup of black coffee held between the fingers of one hand.  He pressed his weight against the cold windowpane with the palm of his free hand and pressed his forehead against it. 

The windows of his cabin were all bulletproof Plexiglas.  He himself tested their mettle with a 7mm rifle when he installed them himself at the cabin some ten years prior.  Those initial tester-panes held up well against the heavy slugs.

Sipping his coffee, he recalled with a chuckle his getting drunk and firing at them willy-nilly with a variety of rifles and shotguns until the pockmarked and spider-webbed plastic of that very window finally yielded to a drunken blast from his .45 at point blank range.  The slug imbedded itself in the far wall of his living and was still there somewhere, long since spackled over and painted.  Moses finished his cigarette, exhaling the smoke slowly downward against the glass.  The cold pane inhaled some of the smoke as it curled to the tiled floor.

Ahhh, the good ole’ days… He smirked.

The months of hectic and well-founded paranoia that sent him to Alabama to buy the Plexiglas and install it around the house seemed so very far off to him.  Standing at the window and taking in the sunrise off in the distance, Moses realized the measure of complacency he allowed himself was truly a blessing after his tenure as a hired killer.  The days of uncertainty back during those wild-west days of gangland wars and the frequent drug binges would never have allowed the excessive contentment that he enjoyed in his home now.

The dining room window overlooked his back yard and beyond it, Flechette Bayou.  In the stark November air stood the distant outlines of the many cypresses and water oaks clogging the path of the meandering water.  Back in the good ole days, he spent so much time staring out at the tree line in anticipation of one of his employer’s enemies attempting to assassinate him he had actually named each tree.  The names were long forgotten after the years of paranoia eased into the years of vigilant complacency. 

There was one huge old cypress that had an overabundance of Spanish moss draping from its branches and knees jutting up from the water around it.  He called it Graybeard.

He sipped his coffee and thought about Graybeard a while.  Nestled in a hollow formed by the mass of rotted-away cypress knees, he had a sealed bundle containing around thirty-one thousand dollars in hundreds.  Moses had several such bundles spread across four states.  Not all of them had that much money but most had around ten to fifteen in them.  He and one other person knew where his wealth was hidden.  The secret was safe with her.

Getting steady work as he was, it had been a long time since he needed to unearth an “oh shit bag,” as he liked to call them.  When he first met his lover, she was a secret to be kept from his employer, so he needed to cash in a few of them to get her set up properly with a false identity and the basics for her unknown existence.  He could not ask for an advance on salary without raising a flag. 

There were so many times, when he was still getting used to her being with him, that he wished he did not have such a cozy relationship with his employer, the mobster Bertrand “Grizzly” Fontenot.  The two were friends and as such, the occasional visit and inquiry into the sudden financial need would be a reasonable thing.

The money was not the actual issue.  Moses was a private figure who rarely asked for anything.  He had no life, as far as any of his employers knew.  Any reaching out to them for a loan or grant was a cause for jokes amongst the garrulous Cajuns he worked for, at the least.  It was a cause for unwarranted suspicions on their part at the worst.  As an enforcer who handled the frequent retirements of any personnel who aroused such suspicions, he was keen on keeping those at bay.

Those days were long ago as well.  Thinking about how paranoid he had been of his employers creeping through those distant cypress trees, rather than his employers’ dead enemies, Moses smiled to himself.  Somehow, it had all worked out just fine.  He was a man who by his nature lived by fastidious plans and caution.  The haphazard pairing of he and his lover was the source of constant worry for him before she was accepted by the bosses.  Their eventual acceptance of her as a team member could not have gone better given the sloppy introduction.

“I saw another one.” He said simply to himself and lit another cigarette.  As he had the last few birthdays with her, he smiled at the latest happy day with her.

At age forty-four, leaning against the window and watching the late autumn wind sway the moss on the trees on his birthday, Moses found himself wiping an unexpected tear from his gray eye as he smiled at the emotional reaction to his happy thoughts.  Draining his coffee, he sat the cup on the window ledge and jammed his fists in his pajama pockets.  The sun cleared the horizon and cut through the gaps in the naked trees.  Through the oddly blue-hued plastic windowpane, it shone directly on his face.  Moses blew his breath on the Plexiglas and drew a smiling sun in the fog with his finger.

His woman, Curio Phelonie, was now far from a secret to the bosses.  The couple was a team now.  Through thick and thin, they worked and played together, never allowing more than a cursory visit from others into their dark existence.

There were rough patches for them along the way when contracts had not gone smoothly.  Occasionally they would bicker over something tiny like any other couple.  The age difference between the two of them caused most of their tiffs.  Moses was forty-four years old that very day.  Curio was a ravishing and vibrant twenty-one.  The eras and backgrounds of the two would always bring some measure of friction, but the friction always yielded to the warmth that kept each of them cuddled together, enjoying the sultry friction intensely.

She was asleep in bed.  Their night was spent playing rummy and watching Johnny and Letterman as the hours ticked away until midnight.  When the clock struck the hour, she wished him a happy birthday and reminded him with a wink as she handed him a wrapped gift that the present was not the only box he got to unwrap. 

The wrapped present contained a commemorative Jim Bowie Knife with a depiction of the Battle of the Alamo painted on its enormous hilt.  The other box contained the thing he treasured most…all of her giving heart channeled through that snug chamber of lust he never ceased to enjoy and explore with almost a child’s verve.

Stroking his salt and pepper stubble, he watched as a pair of mallards came in over the house and flew toward the bayou.  His sharp eyes could see the green head and vibrant plumage of the drake clearly; the hen’s simple brown scheme was drab in comparison.  He thought about the notions he had of evolution.  Often he looked upon the males of the species.  Noting their manes, their antlers, their coats or feathers, the grunts and calls and dances the males used to attract the ladies, he would look at a Cadillac or a five-liter Mustang with the music blaring and smile at how little some things varied between the human race and the lesser animals of the world.

In the restroom, he would ponder this as he stared at his own face while marveling at his lack of normally sought-after qualities.  In their relationship, the reverse was true.  He was drab yet Curio was constantly seeking to attract him to her.  She was beautiful and endlessly doting on him.  Moses did not consider himself unworthy of her affections.  It was merely a curiosity to him.  Older than she, scarred, stringy, often boring and almost always uninterested in striding out into the world, which was new to her but just a minefield of potential incarceration and execution to him, he could scarcely have been a more different and random man for a young, vivacious bon vivant from New Orleans to bond with.  Yet for four years, she stayed with him without so much as a whimper about perhaps seeking out a life away from him and the peculiar employment.

He would mention this to her from time to time, usually when he would notice he was lounging around his house in a torn-up pair of old dungaree pants with a glass of whiskey and a book in his hand.  She would come over from her tiny cottage looking like she was fresh from trying out for Miss Louisiana.  Curio would just laugh and cuss him for poor-mouthing her man.  Then she would lounge with him until they thought up something to do with themselves or if not she would go home.

The job of a contract killer offered a lot of downtime.  For most of the first two years, he indulged her with trips across the U.S. and selected parts of the world she expressed a want to visit.  She had her cottage, which she nicknamed Le Nuit Blanche, a short drive away from Houma over in Thibodaux.  Her tiny red convertible Miata disappeared with her every once in a while as she took baby steps into the world at his urging. 

The only demand he made of her was for an over-abundance of caution when she left him to “be sociable,” i.e., go clubbing anonymously around the state, as she liked to do from time to time.  It was a very real possibility that she was wanted for murder in a number of places. 

During the jobs, they took great pains to mask any possible physical evidence left behind.  No plan was foolproof, however.  Some slipup out on a town somewhere could lead to her being arrested for some trivial misdemeanor like a DWI or assault, which could lead to her prints being taken and stuck in a file somewhere.  Some detective could well be working a case in ten years where some unknown eyewitness recalled a man and a short, pretty young woman being in the vicinity of some random murder scene.  With one careless traffic stop, some overlooked detail could harbor a deadly serious repercussion.

But, she was young, pretty, and well-paid.  She would be damned if she hid that from the world.  She was now after all, “free, white and twenty-one,” as the saying went.  A grown woman.  No longer was she the jaded child that grew into the surly teenager whose only lessons from her mother and various caregivers had been that doing what was needed to survive might not always be pleasant or desired.  As she learned about her sex as she wandered the streets of New Orleans on the lam, it was also apparent that doing what was needed could be self-serving, but it happened only on the rarest of occasions. 

Curio had been a witness to how bad a random twist of fate could end.  All of her life, she was taught about bad breaks and things not happening according to expectation.  Growing up with a junkie mother taught her nothing was to be planned or expected and, also- realized more importantly as she worked with Moses- random tragedies and dejecting turns of events were as common as houseflies at a summer picnic.   

Armed with that realization, she abided by the rules of survival he insisted she follow.

Curio Phelonie was also in love with him and completely his at all times, on the job or not.  She was his greatest accomplishment, the attainment of unequivocal love which he gave back without forethought or regret.  No matter that it was misunderstood by most and could end up badly for one or both or them.  Their lives were gladly inseparable.

It helped that when she was alone, Curio was not nearly as unhinged as she could be with Moses nearby, supposedly providing protection.  She was capable of instinctively intense violence and possessed of a nearly irrational notion of their invincibility when they were partnered together.  Having the Fontenots in her corner gave her a sense of entitlement to a freedom of living that she channeled into a sexual hunger and a connection to him that he knew more and more with each passing day was unbreakable. 

It was comforting to know he had her with whom he could share his days, however numbered they may be.  Knowing the fickle nature of gunfire and bad breaks, he could scarcely chain her wild spirit to him completely.  She was trained, proficient and eager…excessively, he worried more and more often…when brought to bear on the job.

He heard the bed squeak slightly in the rear of the house.  She was waking up.  Even how she stirred awake had changed since he met her.  When they first met, she would jump awake at the slightest odd noise, ready for either fight or flight.  After a few months with him, she would loll into a smiling consciousness slowly as she accepted her man would fully protect her from the creepy-crawlies that frequently chased her and her mother as a child.  Now, as the job had notched her belt with the fates of many paychecks, she was a hybrid of the two.  She would wake easily enough but usually ease back into slumber as she realized life was still all good.

Even after her presence was accepted as more or less normal in his house after their first few weeks together, his ears could never escape the latent tendency of attuning to every infinitesimal speck of a sound inside his walls.  Years of solitude in the quiet house, a few years in the Vietnamese bush, and several months in prison caused it. 

It was a habit that he did not wish to be free of, actually.  The finely tuned ears had saved his life many times.  He fully expected to have to use them again professionally, at some point, so he tried to keep well-versed in the sounds around him.  Since it was her making the only noise in the house beyond the slight hum of the fridge and his own breathing, the practice was a lovely exercise in tuning into the audible presence of his beloved.

Moses closed his eyes and listened to her body move.  He could make out the sound of a pillow being shuffled around to a more perfect fit for her ear.  Her legs stretched against the grain of the soft-cotton fitted sheet; the toenails he eagerly painted and blew dry for her as needed drug across the fitted sheet slowly, making a muffled ripping sound.  He could make out her soft hips rise and shift over with a slight bounce on the mattress as she adjusted her position.  A knuckle popped as she stretched out her arm for him.  She sniffled and smacked her lips.

Probably scowling as she’s a-lickin’ the early mornin’ fur on her teeth… He chuckled and wiped his face with his hand.  But smiling.  She wakes up smiling here with me.

He picked up his cup and walked it over to the counter.  Leaving it quietly, he walked silently into the bedroom.  She was lying on her right side, an arm hugging his pillow to her face to hide from the sun.  He stood for a moment at the doorway and watched her.

She was wearing her dark hair short.  It had fallen away from her face, her ear revealed.  He took her in as if for the first time.  He had often heard the saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt.”  There was nothing about her that was unfamiliar to Moses.  Curio was completely a part of his life.  Even when she went out on her little jaunts, she always came home to tell him exuberantly about what she had been doing.

Moses marveled at her soft face.  The dark French eyes set next to pert nose.  Her soft cheeks and cute dimples.  The olive skin of her neck that he realized now had the slightest mottling in one place from his mouth.  Her brows were perfectly sculpted to open up her eyes and frame her face for whatever hair style her capricious nature felt like sampling for a month.  For that, he had a stylist named Kyle to thank.  She never told him why, but she swore Kyle was the source of all things good in her life.  Somehow, she had gotten him and a cosmetologist named Donna to leave New Orleans and open a boutique in Lafayette.  She even spotted Kyle some money to get the ball rolling for him.  For special occasions, she would spend a day at the Acadiane Femme Boutique getting pampered up and put together.

As gorgeous as he had ever seen her coming home after a day of the stylists’ professional devotions heaped on her, when Moses looked at her asleep, probably still intoxicated from the night before and with all of her make-up kissed away, he rarely thought she was more lovely than that morning.

She had no pictures of her mother and her explanation of what Duchess Leblanc looked like never completely gave him an idea of how she looked.  Not knowing who her father was, he often wondered who she resembled.  She thought she resembled her mother, but of course, she had no one else with whom to compare.

Whomever she resembled, she was appealing in so many subtle ways.  She was short and curvy.  Her breasts were large for her frame and she was obsessive about her choice of pricey custom-made bras.  Obsessive to the point of mania, in Moses’ opinion.  It was an expense she insisted was justified.  Seeing her bust exposed in the grey light as the sun trickled in through the drawn curtains, he could hardly argue with the bra’s results.

When she said she had her mama’s breasts and hips, she did so with pride.  It was one of the few positives she would ever attribute to Duchess Leblanc.  He admired the elongated curve of the muscle as it slid from her lower back and then sharply tucked itself into her upper thigh.  It was an arousing C while she lay on her side asleep.  When she decided to wear heels or pants she chose deliberately to flatter her ass, it was devastating.

She was still snoring slightly, clearly savoring a comfy spot a little longer.  Moses left her and walked back up the short hallway and back into the living room.  The fire in the hearth had halved the large pecan log he had placed in it before they retired to bed.  He grabbed up some thick kindling he kept in abundance in the box and laid them across the bed of coals he could see were still hot.  They were lighter pine and in no time, they caught up.  He took the poker and maneuvered the pecan halves over atop the flaming shards and flipped in a few split boughs of pin oak to make sure the pine had help lighting up the thick log halves.

Moses stood in front of the fire, letting the heat wash over him as the fire began to crackle.  Idly playing with the poker, he placed the wood perfectly so it would feed itself in stages as it fell in on itself.  Satisfied he would have it readied for her when she woke, he turned around and let it warm up his bare ass and back. 

Doing some stretches, he wondered how much longer it would be before the audible pops of his joints matched the fire’s snaps in veracity.  He flexed in the giant mirror that hung on the wall directly opposite from the dining room window from which he watched the sunrise.  It reflected the scene through the window in it normally.  Now it reflected him.

He was still very fit at forty-four.  There was no beer belly.  The abs were still in place, as they had always been since his days at a teenager working at slaughterhouses slinging the sledgehammer to the cattle and often having to tote sides of beef around the cold packing plant for one reason or another.  The Marines had added muscle and definition to that. 

The years of drinking and trucking after the war softened him, before he went to work for Grizzly during the turf war of the early 80’s.  Days and nights of drive-by shootings, narrow escapes, ambushes, and mob assassinations so brutal he rarely let his mind wander back into that era for long.  The actions in Vietnam were no less horrible and occasionally just as dishonorable, but he allowed those memories to percolate in his mind occasionally without trying to shut them out.

Now he was a mere hit man for the Fontenots.  To the rest of the men still alive and still active in the organization, Moses was listed by his boss, Bertrand Fontenot, as missing in action.  The story Fontenot gave was that after most of the heavy lifting in the streets was done, Moses and the Fontenots got into a spat over pay.  It was leaked that Moses Holliday was dead.

When he was called, he killed.  It was as simple as that.  Operating alone, he depended on his wits, his training and his body all performing at an optimum.  For that, he maintained his toned body through a grueling set of calisthenics that left him lean and sinewy.  He did not want bulk, since the thicker a mass he carried, the bigger the target.  Crawling through holes in fences or walls, hiding behind obstacles or having to run for an extended distance was all made easier with less ass to haul.

Now he had Curio to think about.  When she opted to work with him, he turned his mind to both keeping her fit as best he could and also to finally put on some real muscle.  He was strong already, but he had no power.  Always concerned with her being wounded in some way and being unable to tote her far on his long, thin frame, he began to make subtle adjustments to his diet and took two months of steroid cycles without her knowing to bulk himself up across the shoulders and back.  He managed to hide the ‘Roid rage’ behind the drill sergeant persona he took on temporarily as he drilled the tactics of bringing death effectively into her.  She hated him for those two months, but it gave him time to sculpt himself in a manner he thought was needed to better prepare to work with her.

When the muscle finally swelled up, he was able to keep it by working out with her.  He flexed his scar-laced back and shoulders.  Everything was in place.  The thighs were still powerful.  The tattooed arms were rock solid.  Going for his best Ah-nold pose, he pushed his fists together in front of him and flexed his biceps in the mirror. 

“Not bad for forty-four, Mo.” He sighed and turned around to look at his back once again.  It was stinging just below the right shoulder.  He knew that feeling.  Craning his neck, he could see the tiny speck of blood.  Another piece of North Vietnamese artillery had dislodged from beneath his skin.  He could not see the tiny speck, but it happened plenty.     

“Happy birthday from Uncle Ho,” he scowled and licked his finger. Wiping the speck away, he sucked his finger clean. 

He flopped on the couch, watching the fire as it roared.  Closing his eyes, he wondered how many times, since the first time he made love to Curio on that couch, had they repeated it.  The worn leather felt soft, almost cottony beneath his bare skin.

Cupping his penis casually with one hand, he wondered how their meeting could have come to being.  Falling fast for each other.  The first utterances of, “I love you,” to each other were instinctive, if not understood.  Or even meant to be understood. 

He remembered that first morning together for them.  Strangers, fresh from Bourbon Street, far from each other’s natural terrain as they awoke in his home.  She with her street-savvy, beauty and spunk.  He with his incredulous trepidation over having her in his home.

Moses could still scarcely believe he shared the secret of his livelihood to her so flippantly that morning.  It was kept a secret from all but a scant few for nearly a decade.  Yet he looked into those dark, fierce eyes as she sat in front of the dining room window eating an omelet and he told her everything.

Not at first, but over the course of endless hours holding each other in bed that stemmed from their first interlude.  She told him of her terrible life and asked him endless questions that were always prefaced by, “I know this is fucked up to ask, too, but…?”  And Moses would kiss her on that gorgeous neck and he would answer her.

No matter how many dozens, hundreds, of times the two of them made love, Moses could always recall that first time they were together.  He remembered feeling incredibly old.  She was seventeen, after all, but already wild, a creature with the turgid bloodlines of the Big Easy coursing through her veins.  She had her likes, her dislikes and her expectations of a man already set as she stripped him down and then undressed herself from the man-clothes he gave her to sleep in after all of her own clothes were lost to the city unexpectedly.  She arrived at his home dressed to kill in a slinky number and awoke looking like a grunge misfit.  Naked and standing before him with that wry smile and biting her thick lips as she admired what she was about to receive, she was a goddess.

She still was a goddess to him.  He smiled as his hand moved to clasp his cock between the crook of his thumb and forefinger.  Moses could taste her lips as he recalled cupping her face in his hands as he kissed her.  She was propped on her knees on the bed.  Her breasts pressed against his chest.  His blood pounding as her hands caressed his head.  The heat of her sex palpable on his belly as they pressed together in the first embrace and discovered their bodies’ fit.

He felt the stirring in his loins and shook his prick lazily as it began to arouse. 

She had leaned back, staring soothingly into his eyes and offering her breasts to his mouth.  The nipples were pert and dark.  The two points of arousal he soon learned were the twin locks to the wealth of delectable wetness he never ceased to savor.  Her gasps as he loved on them with his tongue only stirred him that much further into hopeless dedication to her pleasure.  To hear her enjoy him enjoying her and later to give better than she received engaged them both in a tantric tête-à-tête between their awakened loins that sealed them into a bond that far surpassed anything their hearts thought prudent or possible.

His hand now found himself rigid enough to hold.  His hand gripped his cock and fondled it.  It was almost foreign to feel his own hand alone with it.  There were times when his hand finished himself off for her pleasure as she watched after their own playtime neared him toward his fulfillment.  To just lay back without her to join in was an oddity.  Feeling his touch and thinking of her made him that much more erect.  Not one to waste a good block of wood, his private masculine ritual from before they met came back naturally, in the massage of his fist.

Licking his lips, he could taste her wetness lingering on his tongue.  Whether it was lingering from his midnight birthday treat or long recalled from that first encounter, he could still call the nectar’s tint on his lips and be enamored with its pleasurable gifts it brought to them both.  He could recall it that first time as he moved his mouth from her nipples through kisses in increments down her trembling belly, past her cute little navel and settled for its feast between her lips.  She had just showered before they sat down to that first breakfast and then they adjourned straight to the bedroom thereafter.  He rubbed her thighs as she parted her legs, offering him herself without reservation.  Her fuzzy dark triangle sat starkly above the lips.  It was as groomed as the rest of her was, cropped down to a perfectly angled soft carpet that ended where her sensual paradise began. 

Moses bit his lip as he massaged himself.  Slow almost lethargic strokes of his thick prick imitated almost exactly the slow, deliberate way he both sucked at her clitoris while holding the hood back to expose it best.  His other hand was rubbing himself below her line of sight.  He was knelt on his knees as he sucked at her sweet pearl.  Bringing her into a ticklish agitation, their eyes met between the parting of her breasts.  They knew, in that first locking of the eyes as she enjoyed what he was doing for her, the two of them had so very much to offer each other.

He remembered her pinching her nipples, then licking her fingers to wet them and rub them as she began to pant from his efforts.  She grew moist beneath his chin as he flicked at her clit without respite.  He wanted to see her climax.  He wanted to give her as many as she would accept.  Her taste was pure sex.  The slick oil within her had helped them through the days and nights in between murders.  To Moses, it was intoxication bottled inside carnal bliss.  He dallied his tongue between her lips in split second jaunts away from suckling at her clit.  Her breathing stopped suddenly.  She tensed up completely and he poured all the power he had in his firm jaw into a focused oral adoration of her tiniest cluster of nerves.  Curio screamed and shook as her shuddering thighs locked around his neck. 

God, how he loved that memory!  His hand was really working his cock now.  He smiled as he remembered how he backed off from his effort and instead kissed and nipped at her thigh as he let her climax ebb.  Still tasting her on his lips, Moses tensed up as he momentarily felt his load building within him.

“Stand up!” She had ordered him as she looked at him with a devilish flush to her cheeks.  She slid toward him, angling her fuzzy pussy over to the edge of the bed.  He complied.  His hard dick bent back by the mattress as he dragged it while standing up.  It popped and quivered a few times as it cleared the edge of the mattress.  Seeing that, she giggled and took him in her hand.

“Dammit man!  You could strike matches on that, baby.” She said.

“Ain’t but one fire I aim to light in here.” Moses smiled as he pumped himself fervently and remembered how dumb it sounded saying it to her.  But her retort was a resounding.  “Shit, it’s lit, baby.  Throw some gas in it.”

“Are you sure?” He asked her.

“I’m sure I want that big ass dick to fuck me.” Curio had moaned and pulled him to her. “And it sure looks like it won’t mind that at all.”

She guided him into her, cocking a leg around his thigh while he held her other leg under her knee.  It was tight for him.  As he parted her wet lips and drove him inside her that first time, he marveled at the almost pudding feel of her inside as he pushed through and deeply into her.  They locked eyes for an instant, but both of them could not help but stare at the joining at their thighs.  It contained their full attention.  Seeing the disappearance of him inside her and feeling it, she had told him later, feel like being enraptured by a finger of God Almighty.  And when he would withdraw and see his prick wet with the magnificent juice of her delight, he could not help but wish to drive himself inside her once again to feel and share it with her that much more. 

His orgasm was close.  Moses changed his position and tightened his grip to build it further.

         I worked her so damned good.  Deep and hard.  She enjoyed that it was big inside her.  Of course I tried to tell her everything grows big in Texas but when I did she just laughed at how easily she made me come and counters with, “yeah and it’s always boiling spicy-hot in Louisiana!” 

Good Lord, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted sex so much in my life before until I felt her around this dick.  Seeing her loving me, feeling her…it loaded up fast within me.  She was so sexy.  So sexy, I do love her!  I love her pussy!  I love every gorgeous square inch of that woman.  She was so sexy that morning…and she was mine.  She gave her all to me because she knew I was too scared to ask.  And I ain’t been scared to ask for a damned thing…ever.

The woman never missed a beat when she knew I was about to finish.  She sensed I was close and it brought her there as well to know she pleasured me so.  When I was about to come, I was a-gonna’ try to slip it in that I was snipped and I was clean.  It never came up because she started doing that snapping pussy thing she does and…”

The climax now was somehow synced with that first climax then. 

“Oh hell yeah!  I’m there, baby!  I’m there!”

“Hell yeah, Curio!  I…love…you…” Moses grunted aloud and released his pent-up load, “Baby!”

He pumped himself harder as he felt the spasms, forcing the full portion of gratification from within him.  Smiling as he thought of the look on her face as she felt him climax inside her, he sighed and let the muscles in his twitching cock go through their ebb.  For a minute, he grit his teeth and massaged his head.  It tickled him, but it was a far cry from what she could do both with her pussy and with her mouth as he felt the throes of sensitivity compressed into the tip.  When she would suck him off, nothing gave her more giddy satisfaction than watching him squirm as she washed over the head of his hyper-sensitive cock with her tongue as he came in her mouth.

“Big bad killer Tex, huh?  You ain’t so cocky now are you?” She would giggle maliciously as he closed his eyes and gnawed at his fist.  It was what she said to him as he held her to him and came inside her that first time.  He only laughed as they savored that first of so many post-climactic kisses.

“I’m snipped by the way.” He said when he finally rolled over from her and stretched out on the bed.  Almost out of instinct, her head found the nook of his arm and she coiled tightly around him. “You’re comfortable like this.  That’s a great fit, I think.”

“We damned sure found a good fit in a lotta’ ways,” she purred in his ear. “You’re one helluva fit for an older guy.”

Sighing, Moses sat up carefully and looked at the mess on him.  Remembering how he liked her snuggled up to him, with her head resting on his breast in that same nook of the arm, he checked to make sure no log would dare fall from the hearth as he stood up.  He went into the bathroom, peed and tidied himself up.  On a whim, he dumped a bit of talc into a palm and brushed himself lightly with it.  She loved the smell of baby powder.

Moses felt giddy.  He was suddenly tired but sleep was a foregone conclusion.  Three cups of coffee were loaded in him and the sun was streaming everywhere in the house.  He turned off the light in the bathroom and went in the bedroom to her.  Standing at the foot of the bed, again he marveled at her tiny brilliance.  It was amazing so much malice, death, debauchery and childhood trauma could be so well hidden in the physically perfect form of such a beautiful young woman.  There was some innocence in her face when she slept.  Mostly, there was just a soft beauty in her peace.  Growing up as she had, he often thought sleeping soundly without worry was probably the greatest bliss he could give her.

He moved forward, dragging the thick comforter up her naked body as he walked to her side.  The room was chilly and he could see a subtle shiver move up her back.

“Come back to bed.” She murmured. “I’m cold.”

“You forgot your fur coat, didn’t ya’?”  He picked up a soft mint he kept in a candy dish on the nightstand and chewed it.

“Mmm hmm.  I think it got up and went in the kitchen flickin’ a Zippo.”

“You want a cup of coffee, baby?”

“I want a cup of you.  You’re hotter than some damn lousy-ass Folger’s.  At least for now.”

He eased under the comforter and she rolled over to embrace him.  In no time, they had the comforter, the pillows and their bodies attuned.  She sidled up and found her snuggly spot under his strong arm.

“What are we going to do today?” She spoke with her eyes closed, not quite ready to let in the morning.

“What do you feel like?”

“I thought about going to Baton Rouge and shop a bit.”

“For what?” 

“Another birthday present for you.  I saw something in the paper a while back and I wanted to see if I could find it.”

“What would it be?”

“It wouldn’t be a surprise.  I thought about it dreaming last night.  I forgot about it until then.”

He kissed her on the shoulder.  “You’re sweet but I got everything I need.  The bad thing about us is we got money and not many bills.”

“That’s not supposed to be a bad thing.” She chuckled.

“It’s not until Christmas or a birthday.  I don’t need anything and God knows I got no idea what to get you half the time.  It’s damn frustrating.”

“You never disappoint though.  I always like what you’ve gave me.”

“I try.” He massaged her ear.  She was putty in his hands when he played with her ears.

“You get the packet yet?”

“I gotta’ ride over to get it.  It’s there, though.”

She moaned low and wrapped a slinky leg around his thigh. “Where’s there?”

His fingers found her lips and softly spread them to explore her. “There.”

“I said package, not packet.” She purred and rubbed his chest.

“It’s in Morgan City.”

“That’s not so bad.”

“Yeah.  I’ll shoot over there and pick it up after a while.”  They kissed softly, the exchange of lips and tongues rehearsed into a sultry choreography that brought the loins into applause.

“Did they manage to keep the connection open?”

“Don’t know and don’t care.  How they do things ain’t my call.  We done our part.” He pulled her into him and held her around her hips.  “It’s a dumb way to get stuff into the country anyway.  I’m surprised it worked as long as it did.”

“I thought it was brilliant.  And I sure as hell like the product.  It’d be a shame if they got cut off.  Those Davie-Angels are some kinda’ kickass.”

“I dare not disagree.  I’ve certainly gained the benefits of them enough times.”

She chuckled at that.  “You’d still reap the benefits if I was stone-cold sober.”

“And I have.  But since it’s my birthday,” his touch was bringing her breathing into a rhythm to match his caress between her thighs, “I think I get to do what I want, right?”

“Hell, when don’t you?”

“Touché.” He began kissing his way down her breast and her side.  She rolled over on her back and sighed. “But what I think I want is to wake you up without all that messiness I so typically leave around.  It might be my birthday, but I’m in a giving mood.”

“And you wanting to lick my pussy instead of leaving your messiness, as you called it, has nothing at all to do with you beating off in there, just now, right?”

He paused his kissing at her hipbone and looked at her, astonished.  “How did you know that?”

“Jesus, Moses.  Just because you don’t do it much because I’m always around and you don’t have to don’t mean I don’t know what a guy jackin’ off sounds like.”

“Your hearing has greatly improved grasshopper.” He chuckled and nibbled at her navel.  “I hope you know I was thinkin’ of you and me the first time we fucked when I did it.”

Curio smiled and stretched her arms over her head as his mouth began dragging its tongue down her highway to heaven.

“Baby,” she whispered as she parted her legs, “when you get there, you’ll know how fuckin’ horny that just made me to hear you say that!”

Quite so, his tongue soon discovered.



Later, they sat on his leather sofa.  Curio was sipping fresh coffee while Moses rubbed her shoulders as she lay back against him.

“That was pretty intense.” She slurped her coffee.  “I think we mighta’ stumbled on to something.”

“Thank you.  Glad you enjoyed it.  I certainly always do.” He kissed her hair.  “Me beating off thinkin’ about you is hardly somethin’ to stumble on.  I’m pretty sure at some point everybody does it.”

“I wasn’t talking about that but you’re right about that, too.”  She laid her head to the side.  He massaged the side of her neck.  “I was talking about the job we did.  It was exciting.  I ain’t been in that kinda’ shit before.”

“It was also as dumb as any of them we’ve done before.  You ever get in a car chase like that again, I’ll shoot out your tires myself.”

“It all worked out.”

“Only because he couldn’t drive worth a shit on three tires.  You really shoulda’ stayed with me.  He wasn’t a-goin’ nowheres fast.  Silly ass girl.  You’ll be the death of me one day doin’ shit like that.  You gonna’ give me a heart attack doin’ that kinda’ shit one day.”

“I thought I did something right, Mr. Cautious.” She rolled her head over for him to rub the other side. “I got the product back and I got Zavi.  Win-win.”

“Having a shootout in the middle of Mobile, Alabama ain’t doin’ something right, Miss Curio.”  He sighed. “It’s a damned good way to either get shot or get caught.  I told you about doing stuff like that, baby.  That sumbitch could run his ass all the way to Haifa and it wouldna’ made two shits to me.  Losing you woulda’ though.  It ain’t worth the risk.”

“Fun though, I gotta’ tell ya’.  That shit was fun.  I swear I needed a damned diaper from all the juice I had goin’.”

“Again.  Not smart.  You can have all that juice safe at home.  You want to, I’ll shoot at you out in the back yard a few times while you run up naked to the house and test whether that works like you think it does.”  He laughed.

“It ain’t the same.  I think something’s wrong with me.” She downed her coffee and sat the cup aside.

“Says the woman who climaxes when she gets shot at and kills people.  Freud would hardly disagree.” His hands slid down her shirt to find her breasts.

“It’s weird.  Don’t get me wrong, you make me horny as hell.  But that’s because I love you and you’re the Big Lord Almighty Thunderdick to me and all that.  But when we’re working, it’s just different.  I swear I’m sittin’ here now and it’s all I can do not to play with myself thinkin’ about some of the jobs.  I do that a lot when we aren’t together.”

“You probably do when we are together.” He chuckled and massaged her nipples in earnest as he nipped at her neck.  His mind began to wander as she ground her thighs together slightly.

         “Not really.  I just think about it a lot lately.  I kinda’ didn’t think about it much when we had that dry spell after that snow job but now that we’ve been workin’ I’m always thinkin’ about it.  It ain’t right...mmm that feels so gooood…”

         “You thinkin’ about it now?” His voice now hushed into a whisper.  The hands slowed, delving into a deliberate cadence, aiming to stimulate rather than a nonchalant rubbing of her soft flesh.  “You thinkin’ about shootin’ that douchebag with them curlie-ques on his head in his shmeckel?”

One hand slid down her belly and into her crotch.  A finger danced its way home as she parted her legs slightly.  Her breathing picked up and a nearly inaudible moan seeped from her lips.

         “Yeah, kinda’.” She whispered. “He was beggin’ me…I love it when they beg me.”

Her hands reached back and stroked his hair as he sucked softly at her neck.  “I remember when I shot out that other tire and he started flippin’ over and over in that car.  That shit was fuckin’ cool as hell.” A hand separated from his scalp and cupped over his hand on her breast.  She squeezed it fiercely.

         “That feels good, baby.” She replied as his finger found his wetness and slowly stirred her own elixir over her clit. “I thought that bastard got killed in the crash.”

         “But you was hopin’ he wasn’t, wasn’t you?” He purred sensually into her ear as sucked it.

         “Damn right I wasn’t.  He shot at me.  He learned to shoot better in the next life!”

         “You wanted to do him though, didn’t you?”

         “I wanted him to know I did it.  I wanted him to see me.” Her hand now held firm to his scalp.  The other danced across her belly softly sampling the sheen of sweat that coated her skin, glistening in the light of the fire.

         “You didn’t know him.  Why would you care?”

         “Because I could.  Because I always can when I got my hardass Texas man behind me.” She cooed as his touch found a new inflection. “And I can do annnythiiing with him behind me.”

         “He’s behind you now.” The slow finger slipped into her in earnest.  She gasped as he took his time with his ministration to her lips.  He clenched her hard nipples between his fingers as he hugged her breast to her heart.  His mouth worked down her shoulders.

         “I like him behind me.” She was panting delicately.  Her toes were clenched as she tried to stave off the inevitable.  Even recounting the event brought her coital nerves into a state of greedy palpitation.  She thought him sly for using her increasingly fetishistic approach to a job he did so casually to stir her up.  Thinking about the job, though…she was game for his brand of sly.

Moses had tried the trick when she was still a novice to the job.  Talking about the new stimulation she felt during the job then seemed perverse and unnatural.  He reminded her that everything they did on the job was perverse and unnatural.  Her talking about getting off on killing was probably the least affecting part of it all to him.  He was long past feeling anything but the satisfaction of knowing the job was done and they both were alive to collect the bounty from it.  At the least, he reminded her when she confessed about her arousal countless times after a job was complete, she should be happy to still feel some exhilaration, even if it was centered within her pussy.  Now that the arousal of the peculiar employment was commonplace and accepted, he relished the revenues it paid to them both when they coupled.

         “Did you like him seeing you walking up to him, sexy?”

         “I did, baby.” She was panting.  His delicate finger was circling her pearl rapidly. “You couldn’t see me from that angle, but I was kinda’ like rubbing myself through my pants with that gun in my hand.  It was all dusty from where he scrubbed out and flipped that ride.  I couldn’t see him all that good.” She tensed as he stirred her further. “And I’m sure he couldn’t see me with all the glass on his face.” She moaned and caught herself before she yelped as he tickled her perfectly.

         “I bet you looked hot to him.  I’ve told you before, I couldn’t ask to be shot be a prettier bitch if I had to be.  You know how to wear leather pants, my love.”

         He felt her getting wetter on his finger as he whispered to her.  Had they not been sitting on the couch after they made love and showered together afterward, he would have sworn she was dripping his semen back out of her.

         “You still think I’m pretty?”

         “You are the sexiest woman I’ve ever known.  And you swallow.”

         She smiled at his whimsy. “Mmm, I like that.  You know I like that.” Her hand now overlapped his as he worked her into a slick frenzy between her lips.

         “I like that you like that.  You like what I’m doing?”

         “Yesss.” She hissed as her breath began to rise, her orgasm loaded into the breech.  Each thrust of his finger drew her hammer back.

         “Did you start to get off rubbing yourself then?” 

“I was twitching down there bad.  I was so hot.  Something about being in the leather pants gets me sweaty.  And knowing I had him in the palm of my hand was too fuckin’ much to hold back.  I watched him trying to crawl out of that car and he saw me standing there.  I heard you…” He switched to a deeper, faster rhythm with his finger as he felt her swelling up to come, “…shit that feels perfect…running up behind me on the road.”

         “He say anything?”  Moses felt her muscles tighten inside and drove his finger deeper.  His erection stirred beneath her, uncomfortably bent against her back.  She sensed she was laying on it at a bad angle and slid forward.  He leaned forward as well, not breaking the cycle of his fingering her until the ending was assured.  The job needed finishing.

         “So you shot him.”

         “God yes!  I popped him right in the face! Oh shit…” She shuddered as he circled her g-spot voraciously.  Her womb spasmed in palpable clutches against his fingertip.  He kept the rhythm perfectly, steadily touching the spot of delicious pressure he knew so well within her.

         “Shoot him some more, baby.  Shoot him in his face again…” His finger waggled as she jumped and clawed at his neck.  Her cries of ecstasy could not be held back.  Knowing he relished them, she unleashed.

“Fuck!  I’m there!  I’m there!  Oh shit!” She bit down on his free hand as it massaged her breasts, crying out as he kept rubbing. “Bang, you’re dead, Ishmael!”

He spoke soothingly as his free hand released her breast and cradled under her thigh.  His cock was twitching beneath her, stirred into its own frenzied need for sustenance.  In a fluid motion, he lifted her small body up and brought her to it.  She jammed a hand on the couch and maneuvered him with her.  Her orgasm not yet subsiding, she felt the full size of him within her.  “Shoot him again.  Shoot that goddamned Appleton bastard, too.  Fuck him.”

         “I’m shootin’ them, baby!  Shit!” Frantically, she rode him, crying out in gratification.  “Oh shit!” She called out repeatedly as she came again as she sat down hard on him and felt his size within her.

         “Bring it to me.  I want to taste you.”  Moses grabbed her by the thighs and roughly pulled her up by the hips to his mouth.  Her mouth fell reflexively to his cock as he pulled her tight to his face.  She was sloppy-wet, the taste of her pure sexual juice was luscious.  Moses indulged in that sweet taste, lapping like an animal as Curio squirmed from his tongue’s caress.

         Curio drew him into her mouth, her lips preening the taste of her sex on him as she still recalled the terrified faces of the slain in her mind.  His cock was large, “Standard Texas-sized,” as he liked to wryly shrug and say when she admired it.  Over time she had learned to take in the entirety of him in her mouth or inside her pussy, but somehow he seemed slightly larger than normal.  She doubled her efforts, seeking to double the ecstasy he was doling out to her non-stop with his mouth.

         She knew exactly how and where to expend her tongue’s efforts.  Hardened as he was, horny simply because she was with him and she was his ultimate delight, her mouth had scarcely begun to ply its sexy trade on his hard dick before she felt the jumping of his muscular penis between her sexy lips.

         Moses paused as he felt his explosion mounting.  His grip around her waist tightened.  His face pressed into her inner thigh as he sucked hard at her soft flesh.  She responded in kind as she realized his signal was a go.

         Digging his fingers into her ass, his face pressed hard into her thigh, the release when he came was beyond gratifying.  It was a new first.  Somehow, he realized it had aroused him as much as her to talk about her arousal from the job in such a blatant fashion. 

Curio had to stifle a laugh as she realized, like always as she accepted his ejaculation into her mouth, it was only then in those most intimate of moments together that anyone had such complete domination over a wily and deadly predator such as Moses Holliday.  She was the only one he allowed to dominate him so.  As he spurted and moaned, she worked her mouth over his head, driving him into the wild twitching and grunting she found intoxicating.  The power she could wield over marked men with a gun in her hand or her own man’s cock in her mouth was its own narcotic.

She could see the same supremacy in the men and women she had killed with him.  Her body was possessing of his very existence in that moment.  He could scarcely have escaped the clutch of her divine mouth as she sucked at his electric cock if he wanted to.  Just as those at the end of her gun’s muzzle could not do, either.

         And she did both in the name of love.  His love.  The only love she had truly ever known and cherished.  To know he was beyond bliss and completely satiated within her as her own orgasm ebbed was far more than ecstasy.  It was a coupling in the truest sense of the word.  Both of them shared the risk of death, the spoils of war and a deep connection not understood by any who knew of them.  Hot lead and cold cash fueled their erotically carnivorous habits; their most dangerous addiction was each other and they indulged in the sexual narcotic as they lay with each other after the fix. 

         “Dammit, girl.  I’ma old man.  You gonna’ break me doin’ that one day.” When she finally turned around and curled up on top of him, he kissed her breasts before she laid down on his chest.

         “You gotta’ better way to die than that?”

         “No.  I cain’t says I do.  I figure if I had to go, that would be pretty high up on the totem pole.  It beats a sharp stick in the eye, that’s for damn sure.”

         “I thought that gross hairy Jew dude had you, you know.  I did get scared when I saw that.”

         “We still tryin’ to get you off some more here?” He laughed.

         “Maybe.  But let that one calm down a bit.  It’s been a long time since I came that damn hard.  That was quite something.”

         “If I knew all I had to do was whisper, ‘shoot him’ all the time while I fucked you, I’da done it a long time ago.”

         “I’m not sure that would work after a while.  That stripper who got her head busted open probably wouldn’t do it for me.  Nor would that raping ass motherfucker you cooked up in Alexandria.”

         “Notice that neither of those were people you actually shot.”

         “You’re right.  I didn’t feel it when I shot that guy with the rifle either, though.”

“That was because it was a spur of the moment thing.  After all,” he kissed her.  She had saved his life with her quick action. “who woulda’ thought a Hay-sidic sheep farmer would have an AK-74?  Oh yeah, a sheep farmer who was importing narcotics would.  I figured he did when I went for him and he still damned near got a drop on me.  I am gettin’ old, after all.”

“You ain’t old.  You’re seasoned.  You’re a mellowed whiskey.”

“I’m vinegar.” He chuckled. “Thank you for saving my ass.  I’m gettin’ lax having you for such a good backup.”

“Well, I wasn’t about to bury you before I gave you your birthday present.  You’re still pretty kickass for an old man.  You looked like Carl Lewis haulin’ your ass to get behind that truck when he came at you with that fuckin’ machine gun.”

“I didn’t figure on that old sumbitch a-bein’ so light of foot himself.  Another lesson learned, baby doll.  Just because the beard is gray don’t mean the gobbler cain’t run down a hen.  He liked to got ole Tex.” Moses chuckled.  One of the bullets the Jew fired at him came close enough for him to hear it whiz by.

“Fuck him he did!  He was pissin’ his pants.  That old man couldn’t get to you, baby.”

“Not that day anyway.  And it was the only day he got to try so there it is.  He did piss on hisself, didn’t he!” Moses held her close to him. “You’d be amazed how often that happens in a gunfight.  You done it yourself as I recall.”

“That wasn’t piss.” She winked at him. “You know what that was.”

“Mmm hmm.  Billy Jean Badass herself.  I won’t argue that with you.  Only you know for sure.  I ain’t doin’ a smell test.”

She punched him in the belly. “You ain’t testin’ nothin’ I got wet in my panties no more if you make another crack like that.”

He zipped his lips with his fingers, smiling.  Just as she slackened, he brought the fingers up to pinch his nose.

“Oh hell no!” Her eyes got big.

“Just kidding.  You know better than that.”  They bantered a few minutes about the veracity of his insinuation.  After a few slaps began to actually sting his bare chest, they made up.

         

She stood at the chest of drawers in the spare bedroom later.  It was the only place she kept her clothes in his house.  “Why don’t you use an AK?  That thing made some seriously bigass holes.  I thought everything was bigger in Texas.”

         “I’ve been shot at enough with one and buying them means supporting some foreign countries who can be some outright assholes from time to time.  I’ll stick with Cletus.”

Moses slipped his feet into his tennis shoes and stood up at the dining room table.  Gathering up his keys, he finished up a can of Coors and tossed the empty can in the trash.  “You ready?”

         “Right behind you.  Get the truck warmed up for me.  It’s cold as hell out there.”

         “I’m on it.”  He picked up his .45 from the table and jammed it into his pants.  Buttoning his coat over it, he stepped outside.  Immediately, he shivered.  The thermometer hanging from the doorway read twenty-nine.

         “I hate winter.” He muttered and trudged off toward the carport. 

Dozens of blackbirds bounced around in the yard.  Their screeching was incessantly annoying.  Firing a shot into the air for kicks, he watched as the birds exploded into the air and waited for her.  A few seconds later, Curio came slinking through the door, her Luger in her hand, wearing only her panties and a bra.

         “What the fuck, man?”  She eased back as she saw him laughing at her.

         “Just letting those damned birds know this is private property.”

         She fired a shot into the air as well. “Fuckers.”  She muttered more about him than the birds and disappeared behind the slamming door.  Moses chuckled all the way to the Bronco.

         He waited several minutes at the door in the idling truck before she reappeared.  She was bundled up like a coonass Inuit.

         “Good God, I hate the cold.” Her lips quivered as she jumped in the truck.

         “That maketh the two of us, mademoiselle.  Let’s go get paid.”  They drove away toward Morgan City.

         “So you think they can keep that Tel Aviv connection thingee open, right?” She asked again, checking her face in her compact.

         “You seem mighty interested in those tabs.” He glanced around as he pulled onto Hwy 605, heading southeast. 

         “Hell yeah, I’m interested.  Those things can get mighty addictive!  Them’s some badass motherfuckers.  Me likey them.” She put away her wares and turned the heater vents toward her. “This thing takes forever to get warm, I swear.  You don’t like rollin’ with me?”

         “Of course I do.  But connections come and go.  Grizzly’s probably got a whole slough of ‘em.  If one gets blown, he’ll switch off to somebody else.  If that somebody else fucks him over like Zavi did, we’ll end up seeing them, too.  You have no idea how many people he’s been through since I’ve known him.”

         “Why do you reckon Zavi and him had a falling out?”

         “Piss-poor bookkeeping, per usual.  No one keeps the books like Griz wants ‘em to these days.”

         “I still can’t believe they were using those sheep to import the tabs.  That’s fucked up.  It’s mean, too.  Poor sheep.”

         “You shot a man in the face and it’s ‘poor sheep.’  You fascinate me sometimes, Curio.”

         “You know what I mean.  That asshole is mean for doing that to them.  And he’s a real asshole for suckering those people back in Israel and all those Christian types over here like he was doing.  He got what he deserved.”

         “Never underestimate the duplicity of the pious, baby.  Those who believe too much are apt to believe anything if it’s sold properly.  Give me a healthy dose of skepticism anytime a man suggests he has the only answer to a question nobody alive can possibly know the answer to.”

         “So says the preacher’s son.”  She smiled and blew her breath on the window to fog it.

         “So says the preacher’s son.  The blasphemous, murderin’ ass black sheep son of a bitch of a preacher man.”  He lit a Winston and cracked his window.  Curio drew a heart in the fog and wrote “C.P. LUVS M.H.”  in the condensation.

         “You think it’ll get out in the paper about the scam they were running?”

         “In all likelihood it will.  We left three shot-up deadass Jewish men, a dozen imported halal sheep with their guts stuffed full of some badass Israeli happy tabs.  And a burning house that functioned as a half-assed synagogue.  Yeaaaah, somebody is likely to send a newspaperman over there at least, I kinda’ reckon.”

         “I still think it’s mean they used the sheep like that.”

         “Meanie ole dope dealers.” He made a frowny-face. “Somebody really oughta’ shoot them for that.”

         “How many folks you reckon are gonna’ read the paper and realize they been supporting a dope gang by buying those sheep?”

         “I dunno.  They sold quite a few of them to folks.  Especially close to Christmas, I bet.  Think about it.  What better way to be reverently commemorating the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ with a nativity scene than to have actual sheep from the Holy Land whose bloodlines go back to the time of his birth?  If the sales ad is correct, that is.”  He thumbed an ash out of the window.

“Personally, I figure there’s been so much burning and pillaging in that place by the Muslims and the Crusaders since then it’s highly unlikely that any livestock of any kind had its progeny last until now.  But who knows?  Maybe they are the real deal.  Kinda’ makes it that much more of a blasphemy when the sheep aren’t even really kosher and all they’re doing is using that business as a front to bring it those lil’ white smileys you love so much.  It’s playing with people’s faith in a right bad way.  When folks find out they’ve been duped, all them Christmases they had them holy sheep will just be tainted by the memory of that shit we ended the other day.”

         “I do love me some smileys.  I hope they find a way to keep those things coming in.  You just don’t know how much bunk shit we used to waste money on in New Orleans back when I was out clubbin’.  Those things are proof of God, I swear it.  Maybe there’s a little Jesus in those.  I damned sure feel all heavenie when I take them.”

         “Bunk shit and Grizzly don’t wash.  He may be a cheatin’, killin’, lowdown criminal bastard, but his product specs are Gospel.  He may step on the quality of coke or whatever else he sells, but not the psychedelics.  He insists trippers get to take the visit to Bye-bye-Mind-land when they buy from him.”

         “I don’t know what I like more sometimes.  Gettin’ fucked while I’m rollin’ or gettin’ fucked thinkin’ about the job.  After that fun we had on the couch, I’d have to do some serious thinking about that.  That was some kinda’ good today.  I think you may have created a monster.”

         “The monster is when you take those Davies.  You’re hard to peel loose when you peak out on those.  That’s for damned sure.”

         “I can’t help it I love me some Moses so much.  Add a nice dose of some kickass hug-drug and it’s all I can do not to try to gobble your damned soul up.  I love that feeling!  It’s way beyond love.  You can feel that way for anybody rollin’, but add the fact that I love your salty old ass and you make me horny as fuck and it’s just too crazy to comprehend how truly happy it makes me feel.”

         “I guess we can add it all together in a heap and see if your pussy doesn’t just explode into pieces.”  He flipped the Winston out of the window and rolled it up.  “We’ll take some of them disco biscuits on Valentine’s Day.  Load you up with a few shots of Smirnoff.  Light some candles.”

“I like that already!”

“We’ll get naked when we start feelin’ groovy.  Then we’ll make slow love until we peak out and then we’ll start talkin’ about jobs again and see if you shoot out a fire like a rocket engine from your coochie and blast off into orbit.” He bit his lip and held her hand. “I bet you make it at least ten miles up.”

“Ten miles?  Shit, I think I’ll make it to Saturn.”

“I’m down with lickin’ your launch pad at the very least.”

“Bring a bib, homeboy.  That’s some bullshit Major Tom ain’t never thought possible.  Shit,” Curio wiped her brow. “I might just die after that.  I’m serious.”

“Maybe I should save it for my fiftieth then.  I don’t figure I’ll be doin’ much at fifty.  Be kinda’ fun for an old man to way his hot under-thirty girlfriend to blast off into orbit by making her come to high heaven on X.”

“Thirty.  I can’t think ahead to thirty.  That seems so far off.  Can you imagine me at thirty?  God, I bet my tits will sag by then.” Curio mused.

“One thing about this day and age, we can fix sagging tits.  Bigger, stronger, able to leap tall buildings kinda’ tits are finally available to those of us who’ve lived long enough for science to march on toward something worth being scientific about.”

“Yeah, good pills and good tits.  I remember when we used to have those dollar drives to by research rats when I was in school.  For good pills and nice titties, shooting up a rat for a dollar was totally worth it.”

“How times have changed.” Moses thought idly of his youthful days compared to hers.  Birthdays for him were a blast.  For her, it usually meant an “IOU, baby, sorry.”

“Mama and Daddy would have had a stroke if they lived to see how it all turned out nowadays.  Daddy would have lit San Francisco on fire if he woulda’ known how crazy them hippies made the culture now.  He was so damned happy I went into the Marines and didn’t turn into,” Moses added his father’s sternness to his voice, “one of them Godless longhairs.  The irony of the fact that most hippies don’t wanna’ even hurt a tree yet I ended up turning out to be a shaved-head hitman working for Grizzly Fontenot hasn’t been lost on me.  Believe you, me.”

“If we weren’t what we were now, do you think your mama would’ve liked me?” She asked.  It was rare he spoke of his family.  His parents and only sister perished in a tornado while he was on his second tour in Vietnam in 1971.

         “You?  No.  I doubt that.  Mama would have been happy that I was happy but I don’t rightly think she woulda’ liked you.  Daddy definitely would not have liked you and so she would not have liked you even if she did, if you catch my drift.  There weren’t no Curio’s in Odessa back when I was at the datin’ age.”

“What’s your daddy’s kick?  He one of those no pussy with the lights on-types or something?”

“He was old school.  You are way too free-spirited and smartass for him to tolerate for long.  He would have been civil at dinner but I guarantee he woulda’ had a sermon to go get done immediately afterwards.”

         “You think so?”          

         “I know so.  He was a stern old bastard.  Mama barely got in a word edgewise when me and him talked.  My sister barely spoke a word from the age of five until she died, I reckon.  He just had a way about him.  You knew your place and your place was two steps behind with your eyes a-starin’ down at his boot heels.”

         “I knew a priest that was like that.  I hated that speak when spoken to bullshit.”

         “He ran a tight ship.  Some habits from then are hard to break even now.  And what habits I didn’t learn from him, the Corps took the place of.”

         “I would have told him fuck you if I saw him act that toward your mom and your sister.”

         “You wouldna’ had that opportunity.” He laughed. “He acted that way enough when no one was around so’s they went on automatic when company came over.  They would have pulled you off to the side with the women and me and him would have spoken about ten words apiece to each other until he disappeared into that parlor of his.  Then I woulda’ said hello to Mama and went off to split some wood or something.  ‘Course, that woulda’ been in about sixty-five or so.  Times were different.  A woman like you would not have existed then.”

         “Seeing all those serious fucking beehives, you better believe I wouldn’t have existed back then.  Those were some fucked up do’s.”

         “I’ve seen the trends now.  Ain’t no worse than they were then.”

         “Old fart.”

         “Present.”

         “So would you have taken me to a soc-hop and made out with me at the Lover’s Lane?”

         “You?  Hell no.  You and me woulda’ headed out to the hayloft and had quickies in between milkin’ time.”

         “You would fuck me in the damned barn like a mule?  I don’t know if that’s kinky or disturbing.”

         He looked at her inquisitively.  “Baby, I’m from west Texas and I was the son of a preacher in the Sixties.  You’d woulda’ the town whore for even unbuttoning the top button on those nice titties of yours in public.  Trust me, dirty as you might think it to think of shooting people while you get finger-fucked, that’s all relative to the times.  The first time I ever saw an actual woman’s naked bush was in a Honolulu whorehouse when I was on the way to Vietnam.  I saw some tits exactly one time before that.  And that was in a Playboy picture a buddy of mine had managed to get from some damned place about a year before that.”

         “Wow.”

         “Odessa was a small town.  Everyone knew everyone and everyone’s business.  My daddy and men like him didn’t cotton to loose women in their midst.  They run ‘em off and not so discreetly if they heard of some girl spreadin’ her legs without being married.  He liked to have had a coronary when it found out that Mary Ann Dropper was dropping her drawers with a man over in El Paso a few times a month.  She ended up moving out west to the Haight because she sure as hell wasn’t welcome no more in Odessa.  So having said that, a girl like you, nah.  You wouldn’t have existed out that way very long.  Certainly not long enough for me to even have met you.”

         “Well ain’t you glad you lived forty-four years to have met a girl like you?”

         “Not just a girl like you, Curio.  You.” He smiled at her and winked. “Only you, baby.  I love you.” His genteel sincerity spurred an unusual burst of passion from her.

         Curio suddenly lurched toward him.  “Pull over!  Right there!  Now!”  She pointed at a concrete driveway sitting next to a brick mailbox.  Split-second instinct took over and he jumped on the brakes as he cut the wheel hard.  He was about to pull out his pistol, thinking she saw a danger he did not, when she pulled the gun out from his waist and flipped it on the dash.  She kicked off her shoes as her hands went for her pants’ zipper.

         “Take it out!” She ordered, frantically trying to kick away her tight pants. “Fuck!” 

She jerked them down finally but fumbled as they tangled at her ankles.  He only stared at her, then started looking around.  They were parked at the end of a long driveway that led to a house he could not see.  Judging by the poured concrete, someone with wealth lived at the end of that path.

         “I don’t…” he was about to protest when her hand pressed to his mouth.

         “No talking!  I want it out!  Hurry!  Before someone comes besides me.”

         “I’m being raped.” He laughed behind her hand and watched as she unzipped her coat.

“You’re damned right.”  Her breathing grew labored.  Exasperated, horny as hell, she freed her feet and threw the coat into the backseat.  She was wearing her diving knife on her thigh.  She pulled it from the scabbard pointed at his crotch. 

         “Take out that dick, Moses Holliday.  Or I’m using this blade to go get it myself.”

         “Yes ma’am.” He smiled and pulled out his shirttail.  Unzipping his fly, he bit his lip as she cut away the straps of her panties over her hips and held them up for him to see.

         “Those are some of my favorite damned panties.” She shook her head and dropped the fabric.  The knife landed on the dash next to the gun and a hand fell to his lap.  Propped up on her knees, she pulled off her sweater.

         “Should I cut the bra away?” He asked as he managed to get his cock free.  It was quickly cold in the cab of the Bronco as the heater ceased to blow.  Her radiant sexuality exuded steaminess that obscured the window next to him and the windshield almost immediately.

         “Don’t you dare cut this bra!  I’ll cut you!”  She unfastened it and her breasts fell into his awaiting mouth.  She rubbed herself and his dick as he sucked eagerly at her nipples.

         “Hard for me, baby.”  She whimpered.  “Get hard for me.  God, I want you so bad right now!” 

         He was getting hard.  The nervousness of the public situation brought the pounding heartbeat within him.  A car zoomed by, punctuating the danger of their situation.  When he was nearly firm, she saddled him.  She cried out almost as soon as a rhythm was established.

         “Love…you…Love…it…” Curio held onto the headrest with both arms, smashing her breasts to his face.  His hand gripped her ass and the steering wheel, steadying himself.  When he had the proper angle, the full measure of his devotion attained, and the room to maneuver, he bucked his hips with her.  Her eyes closed with passion, she leaned down and kissed him.

         “I love you so damned much, baby!”

         He said nothing.  He only absorbed her body and soul silently.  The sight of her happy meant the world to him inside the steamy cab of her venerable Bronco.  For the first time ever in such a public exposure, the cagey hitman allowed her to have her way, come what may.  His ideals about fate were put to the paranoia test in giving her pleasure and Moses Holliday, a blissful forty-four years old, let that fate ride him willingly.

She held him by the back of the head, staring into his eyes, loving him, loving him inside her.  She knew Moses was sincere as he declared his love for her so casually.  It was accepted, but somehow the simplicity of his acceptance of her as his never got old to her ears.  Exultant as she held him to her naked body, she cried out in a mad passion. 

The feeling between them mutual, it was built on needs neither knew existed before they met and could no longer imagine living without.  Her shuddering cries in the cab’s cold air were punctuated by the raw, hot steam of her breath.  He could feel her fervently grinding against his cock as if she wished it to latch to her like a tether of bliss from which she could never break away nor wish to do so. 

His strong arms locked around her small back as he released within her.  The look of adoration he gave her before turning his cheek to her bare breast and moaning, “I love you, too,” was all Curio needed to bridge the gap from tremendous to tremulous.  Sitting down on him a final time, feeling every bit of him exploding inside her, even though he was rigidly pressed against her sensitive sex, she could have sworn in that instant, his seed touched her heart and warmed it that much more.  In that moment, she truly could have died staring at his swooning eyes and known only the pleasure of being completely joined to her sordid soul mate.

As the stone-cold sober Curio Phelonie screamed her happiness aloud, in the front seat of his steamy old Bronco, on the side of a lonely road, on the their way to pick up the payment for a triple murder, she realized the ease of the uttered affirmation of his undying devotion to her and her alone was by far the most potent aphrodisiac she had as yet known.  There was no drug or murder on Earth that could match the simple notion of being loved and having it spoken aloud so simply and sincerely as her man did on his birthday.