Works/Change of Plan

Though she was charitably described as a "wild spirit," she did not number eavesdropping among her sins. She felt that quite enough words came her way without needing to abduct someone else's. So it is worth noting that she would not have been straining forward in her seat if the conversation hadn't been one she always found especially irritating.

"... in a rut," the man was saying to his companion. "I'm thirty-five. That's too young to be feeling this way. And the rotten thing is, I can't complain. I mean, most men would kill to be with her, right? And getting it regularly. But it's always the same. I mean, it's just sex .... I can't believe I said that. You see what I mean? 'It's just sex.' God."

"Well, hell, Pete, whatta ya want, anyway? Am I supposed to be sad for you? Look at me, I'm cryin' here .... You know the last time I got laid?"

"I know! I know. It's ridiculous. And, worse yet, the sex is great. No complaints and I don't think she has any either. But ... I don't know, it's just there. Same thing every time. I feel like ... well, like I'm in a rut. Like I said."

Her first impulse was to grab him by the throat until he began to go cyanotic, then, once certain she had his attention, whisper sweetly in his ear, "Have you tried talking to her about it?" But her friends kept telling her that her little social corrections were unacceptable.

"Still haven't told me what you're after," Pete's unnamed companion said.

"Hell if I know. Just something different, I guess."

"Well, spice it up then. I mean, like you see in those magazines. Different position or tie her up or somethin'."

"You must be kidding."

She could almost hear Pete's seatmate shrug. "Can't say you're bored with it and not wanna do anything about it."

"I'm not going to have her walk out on me because she thinks I'm some kind of freak. Forget it."

"Okay, then quit gripin'." The two men fell silent; she sat back, and would have filed it away as Further Evidence of Human Folly, had Pete not tried to make peace as the plane crawled along the taxiways.

"Look, give me a call, we'll go have a drink or something."

"All right. You're here all week? Where you staying?"

"All week. By the third night I'll be clawing the walls." They laughed. "I'm at the Superior. Room 204."

She appeared to have reached the best part of her novel at exactly the wrong time. Absorbed in the book, head down, she didn't get up to collect her worldly goods until almost all the other passengers had departed. But when she did leave, she strode with purpose and vigor. Upon reaching the vast open space at the center of all airport terminals, she homed in on a telephone.

Fortunately her friends were accustomed to her last-minute cancellations.

Peter Kowalski entered the lobby of the Superior Hotel the next night like a man dragging a ball and chain. Amazing, he thought, how you could do absolutely nothing all day and feel more tired than if you'd been moving pianos.

He was brooding over why he'd been farmed out to this conference in the first place, wondering what that meant exactly, and didn't notice the slender woman in black with the severe bangs and the sunglasses until she had already closed in on him.

"At last!" she said, so breathy it was nearly a whisper. "Quickly! There is little time to lose." She took his arm in an iron grip and steered him toward the elevators.

"Um ... miss ..."

"Nyet! Do not stop!" She continued to pull him, gaining ground. He pulled back, trying to get some traction on the carpet.

"I don't know who you think I am, but -"

"Please! We must - what do you say - look casual. You see those two men in the far arch, da?" she said. "Do not turn your head! Fool! - Carefully." There were in fact two men, one leaning on either side of the far doorway. Each looked like they could bench-press automobiles.

"If they think you do not go to your room, they follow and break our necks. They must not suspect." They were at the elevators. Pete looked at the men again, from the corner of his eye.

"But - I'm not -"

"I understand. You keep to your story. Very good. In." She pushed him into the elevator before her, and the doors shut. They opened again to reveal the garage.

"Now where is - ah." A black four-door car with tinted windows skidded to an abrupt stop in front of them. She opened the rear door and whisked him in before his mouth could form another syllable. She dove in after him, practically atop him, and the car took off without signal while she was still slamming the door.

The front seat was separated from where they sat by an opaque plastic partition. Not being able to see the driver, nor out any windows, was nastily disorienting to Pete. On the other hand, given the way the car tires screeched, and the way he was thrown sideways on every curve, he reflected it was perhaps best to not have a view.

"At last," the woman sighed, reclining across his lap. "This is perhaps our last time alone together. I have missed you so, Grigori." She put her arms around his neck and pulled him to her for a deep kiss. As she teased his lips with her tongue, he pulled away and pried her arms from his neck.

"Stop the car, lady, and let me out. Right now. This is not funny."

"Grigori - what is wrong?"

"I'm not Grigori. That's what I am trying to tell you. I have no idea who you are. If you'd take off those sunglasses maybe you'd make fewer mistakes."

She pulled them down the bridge of her nose, peered up at him. "But - Oh, Grigori, what have they done to you?"

"Oh, for the love of - Lady, I'm not him. Get it? This is not a cover story. I have never seen you before in my life."

"And you have no documents?" She was stunned.

"What documents?"

"This is very bad," she said, sitting up and replacing her sunglasses. She tapped on the partition and it opened slightly. She chattered mutedly in a language Pete couldn't make out for a few moments, then sat back and the partition closed again.

"You see," she said, "they are expecting Grigori to deliver the documents. Either you are Grigori or you are not, but if there are no documents, we are all in trouble."

"Er - What sort of trouble?"

"It is not good to say -" She stopped as the car did, abruptly. "Come. We will have to make best of it, da?" She opened the door and pulled him across the seat to get out on her side.

"Where are we?"

"In a garage."

"I can see that."

"Into elevator, please. Top floor."

"This is crazy," he said, but he pushed the button.

The elevator was ancient. It rattled and creaked dangerously as it rose. Two, three floors it ascended. Then it stopped with a thump. And the lights in the elevator went out.

"Grigori! Is a trap!" He heard a noise he couldn't place, and then there was something in the air, something that smelled strange and stung his throat and eyes. He coughed a few times, and barely had a chance to lean against a wall from faint-headedness before passing out.

"So," he heard as he woke. He opened his eyes - and saw nothing. The room had no windows and no lights. But obviously someone else was there. "Awake at last," said a female voice - sibilant, low, and perhaps a little bit amused.

"I'm not who you think I am," he said. He couldn't move his arms or feet. They were tied to whatever he was sitting on.

"And who do I think you are?" she asked.

"I - I don't know. But I'm not him. I'd never seen that woman before. And I don't have any documents!"

"I know."

"This is all - You know?"

"I do. You told us the same under the drugs. And your hotel room has been searched. I have no idea how you got into this, but I am certain that you do not have the documents, and you do not know where they are."

"Well, thank God someone here is -"

"Of course I have to kill you anyway, you understand."

"What?" To his embarrassment, it came out as a falsetto squeak. "But - but - I'm not going to say anything! I don't even know what's going on!"

"I know. It seems a pity, really, but orders are orders."

"You can't! Please!"

He heard her sigh. "They would have my head - although ..."

"Although? Tell me!"

"Perhaps," she said slowly, "we can come to an arrangement." She switched on a lamp. He squeezed his eyes shut - even the dim light was an affront after the total darkness - then opened them and gaped.

She sat on the edge of a desk, legs dangling. She wore a mask which covered her entire head, but no other clothing save a chain dangling between her breasts, clamped at its ends to her nipples. She studied him, inscrutable through the eyeholes of the mask.

"You could make it worth my while to overlook you," she said, smiling slightly.

"I - er -" She walked over to whatever it was he was sitting on, tugged on something, and with a lurch the thing he was leaning against fell away, pulling his tied arms with it, and then he was lying flat on his back, limbs still secured. He turned his head, trying to see -

"It's an exercise machine," she said. She walked to the opposite end, made more adjustments, and he found his legs were being spread slightly apart. "It's a use they don't tell you about in the fitness store. What's your real name? You aren't Grigori. You used 'Peter' at the hotel."

"That's my name," he replied. He had only just had time to realize that he was also not wearing any clothing, and he didn't like where his brain was taking him.

"Peter ... that means 'rock.' Will you be a rock for me, Peter? A fundament for my firmament?" She brushed her hand over his cock, a quick and easy caress, and to his annoyance it reacted favorably.

"I don't understand."

"Yes, you do. A little game. I take a ride on this bit of fundament," she squeezed it gently, "and if I come, you go. If I don't, you have a nasty fall down an elevator shaft, and no one will know what you were doing in a condemned building so far from your hotel with no clothes on. What do you think?"

He considered it. "Um - I -"

"Think quickly. This place will not be safe much longer. If I have to get away, I'll kill you and have done."

He hesitated, then nodded.

"Excellent." She moved back up to his head, crouched down and kissed him. The taste of her mouth mingled with the leather of the mask. He felt his cock shift and stand all the way up.

She stood up. "Your firmament seems ready to go." She frowned. "But I'm not. Hmm. I don't want to untie you and it's hard for you to use your mouth on me there. I suppose I'll have to do it myself."

The exercise bench was low enough for her to stand astride it. She stood facing him, just above his crotch, and reached down between her legs to tickle her clitoris with her hand. "Shame you can't help me with this, I think you'd like it." She exhaled. "Of course they say - mmm -" she rubbed her fingers back and forth, rocking a little on her feet "- that if you want something done right -" she tweaked her clit between thumb and index finger "- you have to do it yourself." She laughed throatily.

A drop of moisture fell from her cunt and landed stickily on Peter's stomach. He was so nervous he couldn't speak, could barely breathe. His penis was so hard it almost hurt.

"I think you like this," she said.

She stepped to one side of the bench, fondling herself absently as she stooped and reached under it. "Oh, look what I have here. Don't move, now." She rapidly unrolled a condom onto him. "You look surprised." She straddled him again. "Pregnancy is fatal in my business. Ready?"

And then she lowered herself slowly onto him, sighing a little as her weight came to rest.

"On this rock," she said with a laugh, "I build my church. All right, show me how badly you want to get out of here alive."

He squeezed his eyes shut, heart hammering, and lifted his crotch from the bench. He clutched the bars his hands were tied to, braced himself against them as he shifted his back and thrust into her again. She brought her torso down, lying against him, and grabbed the crossbars herself, her hands warm by his, her chain cold on his chest. She ground her hips down onto his as he arched again.

"Mmm - yes - come on, show me!"

He pumped again, desperate, angry - and gradually realizing that he had never been this excited before in his life. She pressed her lips hard against his, and pushed her tongue into his mouth while he worked frantically.

"Is that good?" she said, breaking off for air. "Come on! More!" She gasped a little as he pushed again, roughly. She bore down even more with her hips, pressing her clit into him as he shook and rocked the entire bench. "You're doing well ... oh, you're doing very well ..."

Oh, God, he thought, what if I come too soon?

But the condom, or perhaps the mortal fear, kept him from getting too near, rescued him from himself. Kept him going like an engine, or a perverse new kind of exercise equipment.

He knew she was getting close when she no longer had the breath to tease him, when she began to concentrate on her own panting and rocking. He knew she was getting close ... he heard her moan ... and that sound pushed him nearly to the edge. Just as he couldn't stand it anymore, she came, shouting ... clenched around him and he released, explosive, shuddering against the bench beneath him.

He was grateful for its support.

He breathed deeply. He felt like he was still climaxing. Or maybe that was her. She lay against him, gasping for air.

"Mmmm." She sat up finally, slowly. "I think we may have bent the frame." She pulled herself up and off, carefully. "And me, maybe."

"Now let me go," he said, hoarse.

"You didn't even enjoy that one little bit?" she asked.

"You know better," he said.

"I do." She moved around to the top of his head, crouched where it was hard for him to see her. "So it was worth the trouble."

"Given the alternative -"

"No, I meant my trouble." She was preparing something he couldn't see.

"Your trouble? What -" But she had pressed something over his nose and mouth. A cloth, soaked in something that smelled sweet. And he never finished the sentence.

Peter Kowalski woke up in his room at the Superior Hotel with a splitting headache. He stared at the ceiling for a while, reading omens in the acoustic tile, and then decided to stir himself and maybe find out what day it was. He wouldn't have said he was pleased. But he was whistling as he got into the shower.

She opened the trunk of the car and dropped the leather mask into a cardboard box, on top of a cheap black wig, cut in bangs. Onto that, she tossed a short length of chain, somewhat rudely.

"Those clamps really hurt after a while," she said to her companion, who just grinned. "I'm sorry about the exercise bench."

"Like I said," he replied, "it was broken anyway. I'll probably just leave it there and tell my brother to throw it out if he ever cleans up. He keeps talking about tearing out those upstairs walls and expanding the garage part."

"I owe you one for this," she said. "As usual."

"Don't worry about it. Not every day you get to drive laps around a garage like a maniac. And participate in a kidnapping as well. Even if we did only take him three blocks away. You're the one who's out all the cash for this, anyway."

"Oh, don't worry about that," she said, smiling. "I got my money's worth. Can I drop you somewhere on my way back to the airport?"

Copyright © November 2009. Do not distribute or reproduce.