A Full Moon Phase

"Karl, you're not jealous are you?" she asked the handsome blond man with a pony tail. Her first lover and second in command with the troupe, they still enjoyed occasional trysts when she was horny and he was free, neither happened more than once a month and often less.

"I've seen him before and not as an actor," he said. "You remember that talentless blonde bimbo from a couple days ago? She called herself Maria?"

"I recall you found her talented in a certain way," she teased.

"Yes I did, Gretch, at least potentially, and it made me think the same thing for a moment when you rejected her, that you were jealous." They laughed. "But of course she was useless as a performer as you so wisely concluded. But the thing is her recent presence and his walking into our group reminded me of a gig I performed as a singer for a bunch of stinkingly corrupt oligarchs. It was a couple years ago, so the memory's not fresh, but it emerged when he came in and especially when you danced with him. Their presence couldn't be ignored at that ball, the most attractive couple by a considerable margin. And they ended the evening dancing in other, less attractive arms, although the woman wasn't bad. She looked like one of those gangster molls from Chicago, kind of blowsy and overdone. The man though was a rather stout pig."

"Are you sure?" asked Gretchen.

"Not completely. Like I said, it's been two years."

Gretchen panned across the faces of her troupe, catching a look of disappointment in the tall voluptuous woman who had performed the improvisation with Wolf. "Trix?"

"What can I say, Gretch? He's not only obviously talented, but he's delicious." The women and the gay man tittered.

Gretchen chuckled and addressed Karl, "We're not sure..."

Karl interrupted, "I could get to know Maria?"

"Gee, Karl, I'd hate to burden you."

"I'll survive."

The small blonde who had danced with Wolf spoke her concerns. "Are you sure? She's a man eater if there ever was one."

Gretchen glanced from the blonde girl to Karl and back, looking concerned. A soap opera didn't need to be added to the complexity and danger of their situation. Not knowing much about the young woman, being the newest of the troupe, she couldn't gauge her sexual predilections.

"Essie's not jealous," whispered Karl.

"Essie, hunh? You've fucked her," Gretchen whispered back. Everyone called her Esther. Karl confessed with a guilty smile and a shrug and a nod. "When?"

"Maria made me horny. And Essie...oh shit."

"What?"

"She's been rather attentive towards me. Of course the first woman I'd find to relieve my libido would be her."

Esther stood, fists hitched to hips, adorable in her anger. "Stop looking at me like that the both of you! Yes I love Karl, Goddamnit!" Breaking into tears, she ran up the stairs and through the café they hid beneath and outside into the cold without her coat.

"Fuck!" grumbled Gretchen. "Grab her coat, Karl. We can't have our troupe dying of exposure. Talk her down and bring her back. Fuck!"

After Karl rushed out, Gretchen stood in front of the rest of them. "Any more fucking confessions?"

"She's young, Gretch," said the gay man. "Besides, I'd feel the same if he bent my way."

Everyone chuckled, including Gretchen.

"She's got to be naïve thinking she can have him all to herself," said Beatrix, the tall woman everyone called Trixie or Trix. One might think the name came from her other profession, dominatrix, but only Gretchen and Karl and her johns knew what she did to make money.

Gretchen nodded. "Truly naïve," she thought.

*****************

The knock on the door surprised Maria. She lived a solitary life and liked it that way most of the time. "Just a minute," she growled, grabbing her black smoking jacket and covering her silk pajama clad body. Her one vice: she liked luxurious fabric against her body while sleeping or lounging in the morning. The vice affordable in her well paid profession.

"Karl," she smiled in surprise, opening the door to the handsome blond man. "Come in."

Karl felt the warmth of her well heated apartment. Though still small by Western standards, the apartment had a comfortable spaciousness with two separate bedrooms instead of a bed in the room he entered. She guided him to the sofa, removing his navy blue wool coat and hanging it on the coat tree, joining her leather trench coat while he sat.

"I'm sorry about the rejection," he told her.

"I must have been nervous," she replied, sitting beside the handsome man.

Karl shook his head. "Gretchen and I look for a very special kind of actor, very versatile, the complete package so to speak: acting, singing and dancing and able to think on her feet."

"And I thought the woman...Gretchen is it?...simply felt...uncomfortable with me."

"I'm sure many women feel uncomfortable with you," Karl smiled.

"Why's that?"

"You know why," he replied and steered her head and brought her lips to his.

Maria growled with pleasure. For a man, Karl had soft lips. The pleasure surged and the kiss became hard, tongues desperately dueling. His hand slipped under her jacket and squeezed her proud breast, feeling the nipple tightening against his palm. He twisted it through the silk. Her hand reached down and found his penis rising and filling the small space of his wool slacks. With deft fingers, she unbuckled and unbuttoned and slipped her hand inside his underpants and held the hot cock.

The kiss ending, both of them panting, Maria bounced off him and rushed to her purse dangling from the hook by the door and found a rubber and had it open by the time she returned. She removed her pajama pants and he pulled his pants low enough to let his cock bounce free. She leaned down and kissed his glans before rolling on the condom and straddling him.

Relief and surprise came to Karl when his hand discovered her wetness and her heat. "They're lubricated, too," Maria's low voice whispered into his ear.

He couldn't believe the tightness surrounding his cock as she lowered slowly and rose and lowered a couple more centimeters. Their kiss resumed. He pushed aside her robe and she let it drop. He pulled up her top and the kiss paused while she tossed it aside. Briefly he examined lithe perfection before their lips resumed kissing. His hands took over the examination, stroking her breasts and kneading her ass.

All the way inside, Maria didn't linger at the completion of the insertion, but immediately began to bounce up and down, pressing pubic bones when she hit bottom, crushing her clit against his rough pubic hair. Both panting heavily forced them to separate lips. Eyes mostly stared into eyes, though Karl occasionally glanced at her perfect body. A skilled lover, her amazingly tight passage and her incredibly sexy body gave resistance to cumming a real challenge which proved too difficult.

"Oh fuck," he grimaced and lifted his body while hers slapped against it. Rising one more time, she pressed down and crushed bones and wriggled at the meeting, giving them more friction, adding to her pleasure but not bringing forth her climax.

"God," he moaned, relaxing after the last ejaculation squeezed out. "I've never cum so quick since I was a teenager."

Maria giggled and kissed his reddened cheek. "I have a way of doing that to men." Lifting up, she let his flagging penis slip out. Removing the condom, she strolled to the small kitchen and tossed it in the garbage. He watched her supple butt muscles play as she walked. She caught his stare and smiled. "Get naked and join me in my bedroom."

Stripping quickly, he entered her room. Her pale body and blonde hair lying on the black satin sheets created a sensuous contrast. Her fingers strummed her clit and twisted a nipple. He noted they did so with force. Her head rested towards the foot of the bed as she lay on her side, her long right leg lifted, the knee pointing at the high ceiling. Obviously she planned to restore his cock.

Without the fearful gentleness of most of the women he had encountered, her tight squeeze of fingers slicked by oil and lips holding tightly below his glans and pulling brought his cock to a recovery unprecedented since his teenage years. She seemed to be turning him into a late adolescent. Despite his aggressive mauling of her breasts and buttocks, his teeth scratching at her clit, she never wavered in her focus in bringing his cock to full erection.

Having achieved her goal, she pointed at the condom packet on the bedside table and got on hands and knees. "Put it on and fuck me hard," she commanded.

Second later his cock returned to the impossibly narrow channel. He began slowly, but she demanded, "Just shove it in and fuck me!" So he did.

The recent cum allowed him a relentless fuck that lasted fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of the best fuck of his life as her interior grasped his cock like a slick vise. She didn't need to tell him to squeeze her nipples aggressively. Pinching with all his might, he wondered if such force would cause injury, but her loud moans and unladylike grunts let him know she wanted his manipulations painful. Meanwhile she stroked her clit with equal aggression, only stopping when she came. "Keep fucking me," she yelled within her orgasm. Immediately upon abating, she stroked her clit and came again. The third time she squealed loudly, trembled and collapsed while he pounded his last thrusts and let his balls churn out semen safely held in the rubber.

Pulling out of her carefully, he leaned down over her inert body and whispered, "Maria?"

"Mmm," she murmured, apparently unconscious.

Gingerly Karl crawled off the bed and wandered to the bathroom, dropping the condom in the toilet and pissing over it and flushing. After washing his hands and staring at his handsome face in the mirror, he shrugged and thought, "Maybe I don't have to wait."

Glancing back into the bedroom, he heard her actually snoring. Practically on tip toes he wandered to the next room done up as an office and perused the desk and the bookshelves and carefully opened the file cabinet. Files contained accounting spread sheets highlighted with pink and green markers, dossiers similarly highlighted, and photographs, both portraits and clandestine images of sex. Only the subject of the file's face could be seen. The body of the sex partner though looked like Maria's in a couple shots. The male with either a male or female could have been Wolf's. It was a formidable body rippling with muscles but not bulging with them.

Finally in the middle under M he found what he searched for, a file on Gretchen packed with photos of the troupe, fliers for performances and a dossier on his director. "Shit, they know," he cursed to himself, looking at a photo of Gretchen having a smoke outside one of their venues, a tall, willowy man in his late thirties towering over her, leaning a little, smiling and smoking as well. Beside his image two letters thickly applied in marker identified their contact: CY. Constantine Yablonski. Connie. Nerves frayed, the loud ringing of the phone made his heart stutter. Carefully replacing the file and closing the cabinet drawer with shaky hands, hearing a squeal of metal on metal that amplified in his imagination ten fold, he tip toed out of the office just as the phone stopped ringing.

"Hello?" Calming himself with two deep breaths, he stood in the doorway of the bedroom naked meeting her smile with his as she talked into her phone. "Yes. No I'm fine. Yes I was, but I'm fine. Do you think that's wise? Of course. Maybe Katzekeller would be better. Unh-hunh? Alright. I'll take care of it. Yes. That's fine. See you then. Bye." Cradling the phone she continued to smile at Karl. "I must have dozed." She stretched seductively. "I had a late night and an early morning."

"Another late night tonight?' he asked.

"Yes unfortunately. Join me in the shower?"

This time sharing the shower, she did more than exchange back washing. Thoroughly cleaning his pecker until it went stiff while his hands sudsed her breasts and butt, she managed to squeeze out a last cum from him making his legs buckle and tapping out the last of his energy.

"Such a fine penis," she sighed, releasing it. "I so much wanted to get to know it better."

"Me too," he smiled and they laughed. "Could I perhaps join you at Katzekeller?"

"You're too handsome Karl," she smiled and kissed him quickly. "Too distracting. I must dress."

Climbing out of the tub, she toweled off, snapping an end at his taut little butt and giggling. "You must go, handsome. I presume you have my phone number the same as you have my address."

"I wanted to surprise you," he informed her, climbing out of the shower and taking the towel from her hand.

"And so you did. A most pleasant surprise."

Leaving him in the bathroom, she returned to her bedroom and dressed. By the time he readied to leave, she sat in front of her vanity finishing her make-up.

"You don't need that," he complimented her.

"That's sweet," she grinned. "Don't be a stranger."

He kissed her forehead and moseyed out. The door locked behind him.

"Idiot," she muttered. "At least he's a pretty good fuck." She dashed to her office and pulled out Gretchen's file. Grabbing the photo that upset him, she sprinkled it with powder and raised a fingerprint. Pulling a board from the desk she flipped it over. It had to be Karl's fingerprint. It didn't match any of the others. "Idiot." She called the Colonel back.

"Yes I was. You won't believe with whom though. We may have to play our hand heavy on this one. Heavy and swift."

Though he hadn't been explicit about his intentions, Gretchen knew Karl. If a pursuit, especially with such an attractive conquest, came to his mind and actually popped out of his mouth, nothing would stop its completion. Little Esther had sated him momentarily, but bringing Maria back into his sex obsessed mind had heated up his need and focused it at the source.

Unlike Karl, when Gretchen became attracted to a man, making her intensely horny, only that man could relieve her need. Karl had been the first to benefit. It struck her rarely, but struck her mightily to the point of complete distraction. Even more than Karl, her lust took her over and led her by her throbbing clit.

She fought it, knowing the stupidity of pursuing this man. How dangerous. How threatening it would be to her pursuit of ending the pseudo communist stranglehold of a reign she wanted above everything to destroy. And yet the danger of it, especially the danger exuding from the man like a black cloud aura, just made her want him with more desperation. In fact she never felt so desperate and horny. By the time resistance fragmented into a million pieces, she travelled to his apartment at the same time Maria did.

Fortunately sitting in her decrepit Russian made compact car near the entrance to Wolf's apartment building trying to reintegrate her defenses allowed her to see Maria park a couple spaces up, bounce out of the fancy new sports car and bound up the stoop and into the building. A shock of fear subdued her libido in her belly. She waited.

Gretchen saw the scowl on the blonde beauty's face before hiding low in her car so Maria wouldn't spot her when she emerged from the building a half hour later. She waited a couple minutes after Maria drove off burning rubber before exiting her car and entering Wolf's lair.

Opening the door to the petite powerhouse, Wolf sighed. "Gretchen, what are you doing here?"

"I..."

"Come in."

The sparseness and the tininess of the one room flat surprised Gretchen. No warmth there and not just because of the chilly air from very little heating.

"Sit," Wolf commanded, gesturing to a wooden chair at the small wooden table near the kitchen area. Wolf sat with her. "How much do you know?"

"About what?" she shivered.

"Have you talked to Karl?"

"No."

"He's a fool."

"Perhaps. We're friends and he's talented."

"Not as a spy."

"How much do you know?" Gretchen asked sternly.

Wolf laughed. "You're really something, do you know that?"

"What did he do?"

Wolf sighed. "Maria's quite good, but she has her weaknesses. Pride before the fall."

"We're not hiding anything between us, are we?" Gretchen realized. "No clever spy games here."

"You're in danger my cute little sprite. Maria let Karl into her chambers and let him peruse your file. Why she can't at least lock the fucking cabinet..."

"What does it say?"

"You're working with Yablonski. He's a rather unpleasant thorn in the party's side and seems to escape our rather capable grasp at every turn. He's your cousin, right?"

"Distant, but part of the family."

"A family of diplomats."

Gretchen nodded. "But he's a playwright and known in the West. Isn't that more what protects him?"

"It's all one thing Gretchen and you know it. Your family, his family, playing communist but..."

"But he's a playwright and a cousin. Why would his presence at our shows cause concern?"

"Why indeed. Let me show you some things." Using a key, he opened a door at the back of the apartment, switching on a light. She could see a large room filled with stuff: rifles and clothes and metallic objects: hi-fi receivers and cameras. He rolled out a large television on a cart with a new fangled video tape machine under it. He returned to the room and grabbed a cassette tape and a large mailing envelope. "See, a simple key and you're secure," he illustrated by locking the store room back up.

"So you do spend your money."

"What do you mean?" Wolf asked, plugging in the devices.

"I saw Maria arrive here and leave. She owns a very expensive vehicle. And you live in a Spartan one room apartment with no heat."

"I'm sorry. I like it cool. Let me turn it up, but it clangs something awful." He adjusted the metal radiator sitting under a small window. It hissed and clanged.

Popping in the cassette, he turned on the large color television. A black and white film appeared somewhere in the middle of a Courage Players performance. Gretchen spoke a monologue. The camera swept the audience catching people pressing recording devices. Wolf chuckled. The Gretchen sitting beside him looked embarrassed. "Pretty crappy rebels, hunh?" she said.

"'Turn'," said Wolf. "It's what you say to cue them, right? As in, this is the speech so turn on your fucking tape recorders, you fucking idiots?"

Gretchen smiled wryly and shrugged. "They're not exactly trained like you or Maria."

"A cipher of course. What is it, Shakespeare?"

"More relevant. Danton's Death by Buchner."

"As in revolution. Fine. Why tell me?"

"What difference does it make? We're done obviously. How did you find out?"

He plopped a black and white photo on the table and pointed at a nondescript man in his twenties.

Gretchen nodded and looked like she wanted to kill the SOB. "Double agent."

Wolf sighed. "You have ten representatives of various underground factions. You have to figure one of them is playing for the other side."

"Fucking Connie. Talk about pride before the fall. He figures everyone is devoted to him like he's the fucking messiah or something."

"Do you know the communications?"

"No. He couldn't chance that. We...had our own plans."

"How many do you trust to save?"

"Why?"

"Let's just say I like your little group of counter-revolutionaries."

"You don't have a phone."

Entering the store room again, he pulled out a large satellite phone. "Use this."

Unable to figure it out, Gretchen gave Wolf the number and he handed it to her when he heard it ring.. "Trix?" said Gretchen into the phone. "We're found out."

"I know," said Trix. "Karl fucking called me from his own fucking telephone a couple minutes ago. I better get my ass in gear. They're sure to trace it. Don't say anything. Are you home?"