Deguello

(preface'; if you're looking for line after line of pure porn, this isn't the story for you. In this I aim for the latter part of the site's title, a sense of unbridled, shameless erotica, and certain readers might, hopefully find it amusing and entertaining, . It does get very heated as it grows to inevitable climax. It's quite a long read, but if you decide to run with it I hope you enjoy it, or at least parts of it. S')

DEGUELLO

Shadows And Reflection

Memories of other places, as distant as the times that framed them, flitted through his awareness. Those places had known as much quiet, as much of peaceful breezes and soothing, shadow dappling, sunlight. There had been moments of calm and reflection in those times and places.

However, there had not been such a sense of tranquillity as held sway here. No, instead, always, enshrined in the living of those recalled events there had lain risk. Immense risk that even skill and calmest ability could never fully remove.

He smiled, unseen by those easily heard chatting no more than fifty feet away. Despite this being only his second visit to this place, once he had stepped from the pathway and into the trees, he had come 'home', re-entered one of his most natural elements.

She was there, her appearance and posture offering a look of almost nonchalant elegance framed in his carefully established field of vision. His eyes absorbed the gleaming tan of exposed thigh where it escaped the insignificant shrouding of a short skirt. The skirt, worn to order, was plaid, a cliché ripe in provocation, and possessing an established element of an in-joke.

Taught legs worked the full benefit of high heels that should by rights have turned a walk through life into an experience akin to strolling a swaying tightrope. Despite how much he truly appreciated the visual rewards sponsored by stilettos, he would never understand how the hell a woman could walk in them.

So, she was playing the game according to the rules so recently laid down. In a way, he was impressed. She at least had the courage to pursue the game this far. Many, indeed most, would not possess such fortitude. On the other hand, some might say it was arrogance she demonstrated. Maybe, he mused, she just didn't know when to back of, to cut and run.

His eyes travelled higher, scanning the white top where thin fabric stroked its prophetic way over a taught belly, subtly flesh clad ribs and those delectable breasts. He loved proportion in all things, almost. There had been no real place in his personal history for proportion. The seeming contradiction was more a 'personal' mantra, a coda engraved on his past's hidden memorial.

In women's beauty, proportion was often the key. Whether they were tall, short, slim or stocky, it was often the way their bodies and features interplayed, worked with one another, that held the key to unlocking the vault of attractiveness. The way beauty and desirability was packaged in the media was predictably a joke.

Catwalk models were generally the pinnacle of that ever escalating joke . Nothing wrong with the height they had, but, 'for Gods sake', why the hell did they always seem to end up looking like anorexic giraffes, recruiting posters for 'Cult Bulimia'. Even worse, why did the world conspire with the lie that those anaemic looking straws looked good? In many cases, you could find more flesh on a xylophone. It must be like bedding a skeleton, and necrophilia, no matter how advanced, had never appealed to him.

No...., proportion was the key, that and a body that knew it was a woman's, knew it's own identity.

His life though, the way he had lived, experienced, was subject to different standards. There was no real place for proportion in the fabric of his existence. Therein lay, and always had lain, large portions of the extreme. But...payday had been payday, so it was a case of taking the rough with the smooth.

She had taken a deep breath. Those delectable breasts moved in a shimmer of temptation. They weren't huge, nor were they small. They were 'present'. They were so very worthy of note, and they were beautifully formed. They fit her well, as if tailored to the rest of her tight body.

Her hair travelled in a sweeping arc as she scanned about her. He knew she was looking for him, searching the sparse scattering of walkers and tourists. She had already seen him. Four times, he had walked by her. Twice, they had been close enough for him to have reached out and touched her.

She hadn't even realised her eyes had beheld the same man more than once. They had been tricked, confused, rather than deceived. Camouflage was indeed and art, so much more involved than mottled paints and scraggy, bushy, outcrops and ragged add-ons. Many think camouflage is about hiding something behind an obscuring screen. It isn't. Camouflage is about altering outlines, disrupting form. It is all about dissembling the real, and applying a visual leger de main.

All it had taken was a cheap reversible lightweight coat, two different hats, two pairs of sunglasses, a newspaper, and cheap drawstring pack. In different combinations, they allowed him to become anything up to a dozen people. Coat on hat A, coat on Hat B, either coat no hat, any of these with sunglasses-slightly-mirrored, any again with sunglasses' flat-black, coat off bag concealed within its folds, paper carried, paper bagged, paper and bag binned. On and on, so many options, so many versions, so many ways to merge innocuously with her memory's blind spots. Often the simplest tradecraft could be the most effective. After all,

camouflage, disguise, masks, they get used every day, by people in all walks of life, just so they can keep the 'real me' safe

The sole aspect of him she might recall vividly was his eyes. Normally it would have been a bad error to let her get such a sharp impression of them. Not today. Today it had been deliberate. He knew about the impact of his eyes. It had been remarked upon by plenty. Deeper green than any Irish patriot might pray for, shot through with steel grey belonging on a kensei's art. She would remember them. He had meant her to, like a disturbing shadow of disrupted clarity haunting the very edges of recall.

A breeze caught her hem and flicked the skirt high for a heartbeat. He glimpsed narrow scrap of white fabric nestling between the exposed higher reaches of tan. Her hand had flicked down at the hem. Instinctual self-preservation, even in one self-proclaimed as an exhibitionist. Despite her claims, the programmes kicked in.

He savoured the look of her. Tall, maybe five feet seven, she was slim but sweetly curved. Everything went in when it was meant to, and headed back out when, and where, a man would prefer it did so. Her legs were finely formed, long and lithe, but with a defined sculpt that murmured of strength.

He knew she had riding, dancing, or some form of personal exercise in her 'portfolio'. Legs like hers didn't happen by enacting the merits of planting potatoes in couches.

He would have guessed at riding as a start point for the help nature had in moulding those limbs. Her thighs had the look of a learned need to grip about them. The obvious, but still gentle swell of just apparent muscle fitted with experience of gripping a mount's flanks, and powering the butt's choreographed collusion with saddle and gait. Her calves, similarly subtle in musculature, were right for legs that had used stirrups as fulcrums to lever instructions into an animal far stronger than its rider.

She moved with grace, and an elegance that flowed naturally rather than being produced by design and artifice. He didn't doubt there were times she amplified it, but the basis, the root, that was just part of her.

He recalled one bunch of posts where her 'class' was discussed, ripped to fuck in fact, whichever way you looked at it. A few posters had really gone to town tearing at the image and messages they mistook for an entire being. Some had gushed vitriol at this supposed slut, slag, slapper, whore, whatever the hell they could toss into the mix bag of 'slings and arrows of outrageous insult'.

They were fucking idiots, those who attacked so needlessly. Idiots, because they judged a whole by a small percentage of its reality. Idiots, because they believed they were qualified to judge anybody at all, let alone on the basis of an internet exchange. But, then again, she had empowered them to become her 'judges elect'. Hell, she had elected them, pretty much set herself up as a target to be shot down. Maybe, why she had done so was the major question.

He could see what they didn't want to, or perhaps chose to ignore . He saw a woman who could make herself at home in sweats and a T', a sweet 'designer sluts' lingerie, daisy dukes, blue jeans, or a classic black evening gown replete with opera gloves and understated pearls. So many, so eager to judge, and usually so they might find the 'defendant' guilty as, they themselves, might well be charged.

Lacking Class? She would shine in that infamous dab of Chanel, and just that alone, if she so chose.

He smiled, again, savouring the feeling that fed the expression. Soon. Soon, this phase of the hunt would be concluded. Yet, the game? That would be far from over.

Her feet carried her closer to his 'hide', which in fact was no more than a fine scrim'net draped casually behind a low hanging branch already wreathed by shadows. Thus, he had created a small stand where anyone's vision would be denied access by the layered obscuration of trees, leaves, deep shade and the added net. Yet, his chosen spot would still look natural, would still seem no more than deeper shadow wrought as part of the gardener's art.

He pressed the send on his mobile. Perhaps he should refer to it as 'his cell', considering he stood in this tranquil little piece of San Antonio.

"Hello" She answered quickly.The o' extended in a breathed vowel, in that oh-so-southern way.

He loved the accents of the southern states. He adored some of the words that transformed and modified the language. The 'sashays of vocal nuance' was the way he viewed them. They were all part of the slow writhing bump and grind of language's lap-dance.

Sashay,... a word he loved simply for its sound. Possibly it was more Tennessee or Louisiana, or even Alabama, rather than Texas, He wasn't sure.

But, love it, he did, wherever it called home.

Maybe it was Tejas.... 'Tayhasss'...His mind played with the old Hispanic/Indian name. The softened reference triggered musing on the words of others. 'she got legs, she know how to use'em'..he hummed almost inaudibly and grinned.

Hell, that stuff fit this state, from what small measure of it he had seen. It just felt right. He grinned at this small, almost private, in-joke.

"You're doing well, I am surprised." He told her over the cell.

"Why," it sounded as a gentled 'wha'aah'. He knew it would be impossible to write the way these accents sounded. It was more than phonetics that formed them, it was almost as if some sentient essence of 'the sultry', an essence made substantial to meld form and whispered breath into an erotic charge, suffused their sound with a sensual caress.

"You have reduced control, not a thing you are truly happy with." He stated.

"But daahlin," she almost whispered," you forgettin'bout mah submissive side." Again, the accent sculpted the words into sweetest ear candy, a song of soft purred seduction.

"No, but I am more understanding of its truth than many." He told her.

"Well, a'hh do not know whutt you mean." She insisted, playing with her own inflections. Even her shadowing of doubt could not keep hinted smiles from her voice.

"Yes you do. Now, time to decide 'lil lady J'. Commit, or cut and run. The path to your left rises about thirty yards, then levels out after the steps. It takes a short dogleg to the left where it levels out, before cutting right and the steps start again. Go to that level area, there's a corner. Stand with your back to the log-rail. Don't move, just lean, rest a while, and don't make a sound. Just sit, breathe, and admire the view ahead, but only ahead. The path now to your right locates the exit. Your choice."

"But , maybe I (ahhh)." she began.

He pressed end-call and she received only silence as his eloquent reply. The indecision was plain as the stark white as her halter style T'.

He could sense her working overtime at seeming calm, fuelling the engines that ran the machinery of being 'controlled'. Yet he guessed she was almost trembling with flight-or-flee urges. Removing her sunglasses, she briefly clamped her teeth on the earpiece. That two-second span of purest hesitation betrayed her artful mask of nonchalance.

Excitement versus fear, risk versus safety, it was all in there; milling about her veins like a rocket fuel firing her needs and wants and urges.

"Time to decide, lil'lady." He whispered to himself in a 'silent' voice more often used when a sub-audible mike' was attached to his throat, and others would hear him through a reciprocal mastoid attachment.

His grin broadened as she suddenly cut left and headed, as if hearing his inaudible dare, in a determined strutting march, up the stone steps. The skirt's light fabric flicked in bewitching tribute to all banners that had unfurled a challenge as they danced in wind blessed freedom. As he moved away along a pre-planned pathway memories of making this happen played in his head.

A new toy. The internet. A semi-bored mooch round a site hosting stories, forums, chat and such. Then a casual click brings up a picture. A picture far superior to most of those posted by amateurs on the net. Superior to some so-called pro's. He read some of the posts, even made a few. Then the hunt had started planning itself. The way she wrote about her sexual adventures, her derring-do libidinous exploits, had made the hunt self-determining.

Simply, he came to San Antonio. There had been a question of whether she might be away, on holiday, working. No matter, he had always wanted to see the Alamo. If the hunt had to be cancelled, he could step-off and 'go tourist'. He was self-financing, worked at will. There was plenty of the old-west he could enjoy before sampling the new-west's sweet, contemporary, treats. He even had an ex-colleague he could call on. They guy lived and worked in the San Antonio catchments.

All he had needed was the laptop and sat-phone. There had never been a hunt or operation where he had been as lightly equipped. Tabbing about with Eighty kilos, plus, of assorted kit had a way of seriously fucking up a walking tour of anywhere. Added value lay in the fact he got to land sitting in the plane, instead of lobbing-out halfway through its damn journey.

Mind you, the old ways did short-circuit all the tedious fucking passport and baggage controls that screwed with modern travel. SanAn' International had been no exception. Just his luck to encounter an asshole with a taste for fucking with Brits. Maybe it had been the old diplomatic stamps in his passport, or maybe it had been the steel-in-green glance, that decided the pompous ass of an Immigration man to get his act, and fat ass, in gear.

He felt slightly less pissed-off with the guy, when he recalled the number of times he had been fucked about by Immigration at Heathrow, at home.

It had been a strange experience dealing with an immigration guy who seemed dedicated to keeping anyone out, then encountering a volunteer force of 'greeters' in denim waistcoats and auras of pure hospitality, who offered such open welcomes they were almost scary.

A few clothes, wash-kit, and the laptop were his only essential burden. Once checked in at the Mansion his main need was sleep. His body-clock was running on decaying caffeine and floundering desperation. The hotel was fine, more than comfortable, politely staffed, and it retained some Spanish colonial influences he liked. It had been a choice of two similar names. Both were'of the river', either a 'mansion or a palace'. Oh, what grandeur might simple names bestow so freely.

He had chosen the mansion. How the hell anyone could call a monstrous block of concrete a palace was beyond his simple ken. So, the less pretentious mansion won his patronage. A shower, then a steak, prepared and served with divine Texan culinary overkill began the recovery from travel's eternal bloody toll. He had seen less meat feed a squad. Jet-lag and post –perandial dip had sent him, semi-conscious, to his bed.

An arranged call realigned his existence with the shifted, false, reality called time. Part of him wanted to run on in Brit-time, and demand more sleep. He shut it down, knowing he needed to grab adjustment's wide spanned horns and take up its pace.

With good coffee on tap, he had sat on his porch and read while watching the often-pleasant distractions availing themselves of the pool area. As he sat and watched, read and sipped, he was idly checking the net for 'company'. She appeared, online, just as established pattern had suggested. His first private message had obviously been, at least, a slight shock.

'hello from San Antonio'..he had typed.

'you mean to SanAntone'. She had tapped back, colloquially.

'NO, from is what I meant.'

'You in mah neck'o the woods dahlin'. She had asked. Out of habit, he read her words as though spoken in that accent.

'Indeed I am'. He typed confirmation, imagining the shock that must surely be current.

'what on earth are you doin here, sugar.(shhuggahhh). Business?' she asked.

'No pleasure, in fact, you'

'Me, what evah do you mean'. She asked, the way 'mean' transposed as mee'yann , making him feel that Tara must have shifted to the east and that sweet Scarlett had been relocated. The accents were different, of course, but they shared heady, conspiring, flavours. Flavours he found so full of allure.

'I have come for you, dahhlin', he had smiled in words. 'in the parlance of the shootists. Honey, I am callin you out'. He had written.

No words appeared on the screen for several minutes. He had left her to her thoughts. Fresh coffee arrived, the old removed, and a beautiful latina maid brightened his day with a smile. Maybe she wasn't latina, he had pondered. After all, plenty of Apache blood would be around, Even Hopi, Pueblo, Navajo, Comanche even, could well be scattered over the whole south-west. Or, maybe it was more of the Mexican influence. Her cheekbones were almost 'asiatically' formed. That might mean she carried more of a Mayan, Aztec or even Toltec trace. Whatever gene pool she hailed from, the maid proved its water's were blessed.

He had wondered if 'lady j' herself carried 'first-people' in her line. She had defined cheekbones, and a certain exotic shading in her look. There were many tribes that had stemmed from, or 'gone to Texas'.

Perhaps she shared history with the Kiowa, or maybe Sam Houston's tribe, the Cherokee. Adopted as an honorary tribal member, the first president of Texas, Houston, wooed the Cherokee, before their dread trail of tears took them from Tennessee and Ken'tukee to Oklahoma and, via hell, the Nations. Oh yes, Houston, called by the Cherokee 'The Raven', had wooed them alright, but his successor, Lamar, well he up an screwed 'em.

Maybe she was the product of a more distant mix. Her blood-line might have originated way back when Coranado's guys first met the Wichita. Hells bells, the possibilities were almost endless.

There had even been 'Black Seminole' came to Texas. The product of runaway slaves and Floridian Seminole, these came as Indian Scouts and fighters with the 'Buffalo Soldiers', the Ninth and Tenth regiments of Cavalry, during the Indian Wars.

Add to all that the almost endless flow of European and Slavonic settlers who may well have carved that legendary logo onto their gateposts. It made up one hell of genetic lake, never mind pool, all from one widely shared message.