An unOrthodox Christmas

A woman.

She raised a hand, pointing at him with an air of command, her mouth moving soundlessly. The windows in these old buildings still opened, so Grundle, blinking, forced the rusty frame out into the cold night, the air ruffling his hair. "Hello?" he called out.

"How do I get into this building?" she demanded. Her voice was sharp, impatient, like she had far more important things to do.

"You don't. The building is closed." He noticed movement, then, in the passenger seat. "Nobody's here."

"You're here."

"I'm just minding the transmitter overnight. WPIS 92.9, your rock'n'roll salvation." He swallowed. The air was cold, and something seemed, well, not quite right. "Look, I have to go intro the next batch of songs. Sorry; you're going to have to go someplace else."

"No," the woman snapped, "we're not. Come downstairs and let us in."

"What... hang on." Grundle wrenched the door shut and made a dive for the mic just as the music died whimpering, the plaintive wails bringing the song to its close. He smacked the button and went on the air. "That's a real killer, ain't it? Heart, with 'Crazy on You.' And now? Sit back and keep on taking a break from all that sappy Christmas music with some kick-ass rock. This is ZZ Top on 92.9, WPIS The Pistol." The guitar edged into the mix, and Grundle leapt back, shoved the window open and leaned out in time to see the woman.

Two floors below.

Pointing a fucking gun at him.

He had no idea what to say, but she didn't seem to mind. She had plenty to say. "Get your lazy fucking ass," she hissed, smiling, "down to this door and let us the fuck in. Now."

"What the hell is this?" Grundle had had a gun pointed at him twice, but both times it had been tweakers looking to mug him. He'd doubted they'd shoot. This woman seemed, all of a sudden, capable of plugging him and not even thinking about it.

"This is your lucky night," she told him evenly, "or it's the end of your life. Choose. One way or another, I'm getting into that building. And then I'm finding you. What I do after that?" She waved the pistol vaguely. "Choose," she commanded again.

Fuck. "I'll be right down." The window whined for the last time as he hauled it shut. He mashed the autoplay key, setting up Zep's "Kashmir" after ZZ Top, figuring that would buy him some time. He took a deep breath, threw on his hoodie, and then sauntered uncertainly toward the door. A lot of thoughts went marching through his head, mostly involving how much trouble he'd be in if his boss knew he'd let strangers in on Christmas Eve.

But then he remembered the gun, and the woman's icy tone, and realized he was already in trouble.

He raced down the stairs, and by the time he got to the door he could see two figures through the frosted glass. One was clearly the pointy-featured lady with the gun; a much larger shape stood quite close to her, like she was supporting it, and as Grundle hesitantly shoved the door open he could see that was exactly what was going on. "Jesus. What the fuck happened to him?"

The man was large, half a head taller and half a body wider than Grundle, and he stared at the DJ with eyes that looked like they mistrusted the whole world. His voice was all iron and rock. "I slipped on a banana peel. Got a bathroom?"

"Uh, yeah?" Grundle was not a student anymore, and even when he'd gone to Pitson-South Bay he'd never been in this building, so he had no idea what was on the ground floor. "Upstairs." He'd already whirled away and started for the stairs when he realized the man might not be able to climb, for he looked like he was in a bad way.

Slipped. Right. Uh-huh.

A dark reddish blotch peeked out across the front of his blue shirt from beneath a black sports jacket, and his jowled face had gone pale. The woman, her gun no longer evident, had one arm wrapped tight around the wounded man, the other hand clutching an orange box: looked like one of the more expensive first-aid kits you'd buy at a camping store. Two black sports bags swung from that shoulder. "Is there an elevator?" Her voice was the same whip-crack from outside, now much louder in the foyer.

"I don't have the elevator key. The whole building is closed," Grundle shrugged as he started up the stairs. He turned to look nervously down at the pair. "Is he, like, going to die?"

"He's fine. Come on, Frank," the woman urged, businesslike. "Up the stairs."

"Yeah. I'm good." Grundle could see now that the man had a large black gun in his dangling hand. Shit. "Just slow. I'll be okay."

"Go on ahead," she ordered, nodding up at Grundle like a Roman emperor passing judgement. "Make sure the bathroom's unlocked and there's nothing between here and there for Frank to trip over."

"There isn't." Grundle was confused, utterly turned around. This was probably the last thing he could ever have expected, doing the Christmas Eve shift at WPIS. "What's this about?"

"Tell you later," the woman barked. Frank was climbing well enough, but he was clearly in pain. "Which way's the bathroom?"

"Left at the top of the stairs. Second door down."

"Okay. And where will you be?"

Grundle gulped. "End of the hall. Where the ON AIR light is, over the door."

"Cool. I'll come find you once I deal with him." She glanced up at Grundle's eyes. "And get rid of this fucking Zeppelin. Put on some actual rock. AC/DC, maybe? Van Halen? Something less trippy."

"Uh. We don't really take requests on Christmas Eve."

"Want me to pull out my gun again?"

"You got it. 'You Shook Me All Night Long,' coming right up."

"Good. One more thing." She shrugged off the smaller of the two bags. "Take this with you. Don't let it out of your sight. And don't open it. I know what's in there, and if anything's missing, I'll kill you. You believe that?"

"Um. Yes?"

"Good answer. Now shoo."

Grundle hesitated at the top of the stairs, mesmerized, the sight of the blood taking his breath away... but that wasn't the only thing. Here, under the bright indoor lights of the stairwell, he could finally get a look at the woman, and she was breathtaking. Just his type: dark, mysterious, fresh, smart. Her face said all of that, but when she looked up and caught him staring, it said a bit more. With its mouth.

"'Shoo' means get the fuck out of the way. Now."

"Uh. Yeah." He made it back to the booth in time to catch on to whatever part of "Kashmir" was wailing out over the air, decide where to end it, and move the fader down with a hand that barely trembled, he was amazed to see. He cleared his throat, knowing the whole floor of the building would be receiving the signal. Even the bathroom to the left of the stairs. "So that's Zep, obviously, with the first half of their magnum opus, but we're going to fast-forward into the '80s now by special request. Here's a classic piece of hair-rock on 92.9 with a bullet!" The crushing opening chord for "You Shook Me" soon snarled out of the speakers, and for the first time since he'd shoved the window open on those stuck hinges, Grundle collapsed into the deep, tilty comfort of the chair at the tech station.

What the fuck was going on here? Was he going to get fired? Hell, jailed? He was fairly sure a mysterious armed pair with blood all over them probably signaled that something illegal was going on, and he was pondering what to do about it. The woman didn't really seem to be on the verge of killing him, but you never really could tell.

For a moment, he flirted with the idea of calling 911.

No. He should just flee, past the bathroom and out to his car and down the road.

He was starting to come around to that decision, but apparently his mind wasn't working fast enough: the woman shouldered the door open at 1:34 of the song, leaning in with a smile. "Thanks for letting us in," she winked, peering around the room with eyes that missed nothing. The other bag still swung from her shoulder. "Mind if I chill in here with you?"

"What?" Grundle blinked, taken so far aback that he might as well have landed in 1956.

"I gave Frank something to calm him down. He's always grouchy after he gets stabbed, even if it's minor." She peered curiously around, dropping the bag. "Is this actual radio? Not satellite or streaming or whatever?"

Grundle swallowed, backing his chair up involuntarily as she perched herself on the counter in the corner. "WPIS has always been radio. Since the thirties, I think?"

"WPIS?" She smiled. "Like, double-u piss?"

"This campus was Pitson Institute of Science until the seventies. The license still lists these call letters, so?" He shrugged. "Hang on a sec." He leaned into the mic, his hands automatically mashing the right buttons. It was time to play "It's My Life." "Let's continue to let our holiday hair down with Bon Jovi on 92.9, The Pistol!" The songs changed smoothly, and he glanced sideways at her. "What's this all about?"

"Do you really want to know?" She stared at him until he realized he actually didn't, but she told him anyway. "We do collections for a... well, a group of people. Sort of a Family. Tonight we collected over forty grand from a guy who just didn't really want to give it up." She kept staring, measuring. Calculating. "You play your cards right and keep your mouth shut, some of that is yours."

"What the fuck?" Grundle felt woozy all of a sudden. "No way. I'm not getting involved in whatever it is you're doing."

"Honey," she purred, "you're already involved in whatever it is we're doing. This is how it works in this life, man: you don't ask for trouble, but when it comes? You deal with it." She stared at him glacially. "Frank's dealing with trouble right now, in the bathroom, sleeping it off while the doc gets here. You? You're dealing with trouble right fucking here." She smiled. "Nobody asks for this kind of shit, cutie. I get that. What's your name, anyway?"

"Grundle."

"Okay. I'm Alex. Pleased to meet you." She eyed him closely. "You ever broken the law before, Grundle?"

"All the time," he scoffed, "but no felonies." He thought a moment, then amended himself. "Well. Nothing violent."

"Good. So you're not doing anything violent tonight, either. You're just aiding and abetting. But that's not going to matter, honey, and do you know why?" She didn't wait for an answer, her short legs swinging. "Because nobody's ever going to find out we were here. And you're going to keep your mouth shut. Know why?"

"Uh. Your gun?" Grundle managed.

"No, buddy. Now that I'm getting to know you, I don't want to shoot you. It's because once I open that bag over there and start pulling out money to give you, you're going to forget that we were ever here. See how that works?" She winked. "I'll even pay you a little extra. For cleanup."

"What the fuck?"

"There'll be some blood on the floor of the bathroom; I just put some butterflies on until the doc gets here. But also?" She nodded at the second bag. "There'll be some clothes to toss out. Usually we do it ourselves, and we will this time too, if we have to, but if you'd rather do it for something extra?" She yawned. "Let's just say that the sooner we separate ourselves from these bloody rags, the better."

Grundle pondered, despite himself. "How much extra?"

She giggled. "What do you have in mind? Cash or services?"

His mind reeled. "What are you talking about?"

"Never mind," she laughed, hopping down off the counter. "It's just that grabbing money from people sometimes makes me a little excited." She stood there a moment, grinning, then pulled out her gun and laid it on the counter. A few other oddments emerged out of her pockets, most of them shiny and edged, before she shrugged her jacket off. "It's pretty thrilling," she went on, starting to undo her shirt buttons.

Grundle gaped. "What the hell are you doing?" he demanded.

"I told you. We're ditching our clothes." He stared as her shirt parted to show a lacy white bra over a pale, toned body, the kind of body that spent several careful hours in the gym each week. She left the shirt open as she bent to unzip the smaller bag, pulling a series of quart Ziplocs out. "Better turn around, if you care about my modesty," she winked, splitting each bag efficiently open. Out spilled underwear and another bra from one, a t-shirt from another, a pair of leggings. She pulled a pair of soft Chelsea boots from the bottom of the bag.

"Um." Grundle sat there in the chair on the most surreal overnight shift of his life, watching a dangerous woman undress while Bon Jovi played in the background as though it was the most normal thing in the world. He needed to cue up the next track, to get his mind together to announce the segue, but it was beyond him; blindly, Grundle's hands flitted from switch to switch, getting Whitesnake set up, his eyes glued to Alex' swiftly emerging body. "Uh. You're beautiful," he blurted, somehow remembering to make sure the mic wasn't hot.

"It's so nice to be noticed," the woman winked, standing there in nothing but that lacy bra and a pair of panties that didn't match. "You seem intrigued. If I let you watch me strip, do I still have to pay you to stay quiet? Because Alex is about to get nekkid!" she crowed, thin lips curving up into a smirk.

Grundle had a wife, probably now laying out the kids' presents by the tree before she crashed. He'd be showing up at home around 6:20 or so, thence to gird himself for a morning of Christmas excitement before sleeping it off as best he could. His wife was doing it all this Christmas. She was a saint. But she didn't look anything at all like the knifelike woman standing before him in her underwear, thumbs hooked over the waistband of a pair of panties that, all of a sudden, fell down her sleek legs as she just kept on smirking. "Whoah." The sigh came out of him as though forced, as if he no longer had any control over himself.

"Yeah, I know, right?" She snickered, striking a pose before her arms curved around back to unfasten the bra. "I'm telling you. Doing collections? Getting away successfully?" She hunched her hips forward. "Gives you that little thrill down below. I'm probably all wet; can you check and see, Grundle?" Her eyes had gone flinty and reckless by now, challenging him as the bra whispered down her arms to the pile on the floor. "You want to check and see, don't you?"

Grundle gazed at her, blatant with his pervy stare, not even remotely thinking of being sly about it. The woman was perfection. Sleek was the word that came to mind, a fresh young succubus here to sling her body around and get whatever she wanted. And Grundle knew right away that he'd do it: he'd give her anything she asked for. Now he found himself nodding, stupid, his brain already a fog of lust. "Um. Yeah?"

"Yeah, you want to check and see," she gloated. If he'd been looking up at her face, or her neck, or her chest, or really anywhere but the intoxicating slit between her thighs, sitting there like a waiting doorway, he'd have seen a pink tinge come over her skin, a fiendish glint in her eye. "Good." She sauntered forward in a catwalk strut, hips boldly forward as she crossed the little sound booth toward his chair. David Coverdale's vocals crooned out over the speakers, wondering whether this was love, and Grundle didn't even ask that question to himself as Alex stood before him with her legs at shoulder width, her nipples as sharp as her features. "Go on," she urged, and now her voice had gone that husky way that womens' voices sometimes do. "Check. And see."

Her legs branched from her compact body in a mass of muscle and tendon, and in between waited a carefully plucked and slightly asymmetrical slit, already pink like her neck. Grundle's eyes widened, his brain on red alert, as he leaned in toward it and, for the first time in a long, long time, inhaled the scent of a new woman's vagina. "Oh my god," he whispered.

"Yeah." Her voice mocked his lack of control, but there was a ragged edge of breathiness in her tone, too. He wasn't the only one turned on. "Smell that pussy. Hey. Look up here." She waited until his eyes rose up her naked body, past dark little nipples as sharp as the rest of her. Her eyes had gone wide. "Go on. Taste it."

Grundle's mind screeched at him, warning him this was a bad idea, red flags raised and waving mightily, but he was a man alone in the middle of the night and she was a naked woman asking for his mouth, and as the song crescendoed into its guitar solo he hunched forward on the chair, his breath making slow contact with her flesh, hands rising automatically to her thighs.

Grundle hadn't touched anyone but Mrs Grundle in over ten years. He'd almost forgotten what it could feel like.

She was warm and smooth and tight all at once, his fingertips settling onto her thighs as his head kept on craning forward, magnetized by the special little slit that awaited him. He glanced up one more time, making sure this was what she had in mind, but by that time she was crimson and big-eyed and his hands were stroking the long muscles at the sides of her legs, towards her ass, and he ditched his doubts and stuck his tongue hesitantly out.

"Oh, fuck yeah," she whispered way up above him as he made contact with her. The first impression he got was heat, intense waves of warmth funneling out of her body and into his face, but then his tongue reported to a quite unexpecting brain the hot tang of pussy on his taste buds, and he plunged into her eagerly. She staggered back a half-step with the force of his face against her mound, pulling him back by hands he hadn't even felt slipping into his hair. "Yes!"

Grundle's knees found the scuffed floor without any conscious effort, his own hands now fully up and round her back, palming two beautiful little asscheeks against the pressure of his head on her. He was lost, drowning in her smell and taste, and he could tell by the grip of her fingers in her hair that she was already more than halfway there. He felt her muscles bunch beneath his hands, her butt surging forward, smashing her body against him as her leg snaked up off the ground and draped over his shoulder. Her slit opened at once, pink hot flesh spreading over his tongue, Alex giving herself to him.

The song changed to Van Halen's "Jump." Thank god for the autoplay key.

He heard it, though, the power chords leaking through his awareness, but above them was a curious series of yipping squeals, the breathless ecstasy of a woman grinding her vag against a man's face. As Mrs Grundle could attest, he'd never been an experienced or energetic oral practitioner; he was not, in the parlance, a cunning linguist. But the shocking passion of this encounter, of this night, seemed to spur him on.

He dug deeply, his nose nuzzling that wet eager bulb at the top of her slit, even as his tongue trawled as deeply as it could into the depths of her. She tasted like lust, like abandon, like sheer naughty need as he slopped his lips and tongue over her snatch with mindess enthusiasm. Very quickly he figured out that her yelps got louder whenever he tipped his head sideways and ran his tongue up to the top, so he glued himself to her mound just like that, mouth and hands straining against the bursting ripeness he felt and tasted in her body as her fires burned higher and higher.

So he arched his neck, digging harder. Deeper. Faster.

Alex lost it well before Grundle's neck grew tired, her orgasm shooting up from between her legs and wrapping itself in a pink mist across her brain, squeezing it in a vise of forgetful pleasure that came out as a high, wavering moan and a smear of thick fluid across Grundle's chin. Her whole body tightened like a cage around him, legs taut, foot digging into his back before everything in her world turned to jelly and custard, her chest arching over his head as her ass fell into his disbelieving hands.