Miranda and Major Hardman

"It's straightened out. I will agree to be your girlfriend when you ask me tomorrow."

"I hope I don't give you any reason to change your mind before then."

"We'll see."

"Good enough. I need to get a bit of shut-eye now, but I'll call you in the morning. Text me your address so I know where to pick you up."

"I will," she says. "But BD?"

"Yeah?"

"Oops, I meant, Big Dick. Can I call you that?"

"You can call me anything."

"In public?"

"Oh, well, I'm 'Richard' now. Very professional."

"Not 'sir' or 'lord' or 'your highness'?"

He laughs. "Not to you, darling."

"To me, you'll always be Big Dick."

"Miranda, I miss you so much."

"I miss you too, Big Dick, and you know what?"

"What?"

"I respect and admire you. I've waited years to tell you that."

"Thank you, Miranda. That means more than I can tell you."

"I also love you."

"Will you forgive me if I wait until tomorrow to tell you? I want to tell you in person."

"Oh, of course, sure. That would be lovely. I can delay my happiness for a day so that you can make a romantic gesture."

"I'll tell you now if you insist, but I intend to make the romantic gesture worthwhile if you can wait."

"No, no, have it your way."

"I usually do," he teases.

"With me, Big Dick, you always will," she promises.

"Only if you allow me," he laughs.

"So what are you doing now?" she changes the subject, hoping to keep him on the line. It's late in DC, she knows, and he said he needed sleep, but she doesn't want to let him go.

"Well, I'm technically still in the Corps," he explains, "but not active duty. I'm working on, I guess you could say, kind of a joint venture with the Lockheed Grumman Dynamics corporation. Are you familiar with private military corporations?"

"You mean the military industry?"

"No, they only make weapons. A PMC actually fights, often like an ordinary poilice force or military."

"But it's a private corporation?"

"That's right."

"No," she says, wide-eyed. "I haven't heard of anything like that. It sounds like a contradiction in terms."

"I thought so too at first, but now it seems perfectly natural to me."

"Private? Military? Corporations? I'm trying to understand."

"It sounds like you do understand."

"What do you do?"

"Everything you would expect a military to do. We just get paid more and operate more efficiently. Fewer political hurdles."

"Who pays you?"

"Whoever can afford us."

"Anybody?"

"Well, in our specific case, American corporations and their allies. The same people that our troops usually fight for."

"American corporations and their allies? Not the American people?"

"I suspect that's a slogan for recruiting troops and keeping the laborers relatively subdued."

"Like a religion?"

"Exactly like a religion. I'd call it the political religion of the United States."

"That sounds surprisingly cynical, BD. I mean Big Dick."

"Maybe so. Cynical but not disillusioned."

"Why not?"

"Well, I've never been naive about the way the US uses its military power. We're a community of violent men doing what communities of violent men have always done."

"What's that?"

"Take things from other communities. Including American laborers."

"So you're not an American laborer?"

"No, not any more. I'm unquestionably a part of the elite now. I'm capital and management. This joint venture, I'm officially the founder and CEO. I'm getting a lot of resources to do things that some very wealthy people can't do for themselves."

"What about keeping the homeland safe and all that?"

"Sure. I mean it's our land. We try to prevent other communities of violent men from taking things from us, and we try to take things from them. But since we're the most powerful community at the moment, we're on offense a lot more often than we're on defense."

"I guess that's true."

"It's what humans do. I fight to enrich and protect my people like any other honorable man. It's not good-versus-evil. It's us-versus-them."

She sees this is her moment. He's created this for her. This is her test.

"Richard, if you think it's right, I trust you. I support you one hundred percent. I'll support you even when I don't understand because I know you're a good man."

She waits a long time. When he speaks again, she hears his voice crack as if maybe he's even been crying.

"How about you, Miranda? What are you up to now?"

She tells him about her loss of faith, asks him how he lives with his view of the world.

He tells her that he sees his life as part of a community, beginning with his family.

"I always try to be sure I'm fighting for my children. And for you. I never... even when we weren't... I mean, for example, I know you love your brother, so if I am doing something that would benefit him and his children, then at least in that way I am fighting for you."

The circles expand outward from his closest friends, the men he serves with at a particular moment, and so on, eventually incorporating the United States, the western world....

"In a sense, it ultimately includes everyone who has ever lived, and from that view all wars are civil wars. Sometimes the conflict goes all the way back down until it's brother against brother."

They talk about justice, the time and place for loving an enemy, capitalism and the welfare state, Hobbes and Kant and Mill and Rawls, even Augustine.

She tells him about her research plans. She finally got accepted into an anthropology program, and she'll be studying 'warrior cultures.' He tells her about his mother, who'd studied something similar thirty years before.

But she hears him growing more and more tired, and finally he tells her it's really time to go, and she agrees.

"But it's so good to hear your voice, again, Big Dick."

"I have missed you too," he says. "Goodnight, Firecracker. I'm going to fall asleep thinking about you, like I do every night."

"Good," she sings. "Think naughty thoughts."

"Oh, believe me, I will."

"Me too, Big Dick. Me too."

-- -- -- -- -- -- / -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

A little after 9 AM the next morning, he pulls up to her house in a huge SUV. She watches him from her window, peeking from behind the curtain.

Dennis had a sexy red Porsche, fun to ride around in, but BD would never fit in a little tiny car like that.

Through Dennis, who liked to call himself a metrosexual, Miranda has become familiar with men's fashion, and to her surprise she recognizes BD's suit as soon as he steps out of his car.

It's Neapolitan. Barchetta and pignata pockets, high wide lapels, no shoulder pads. Obviously bespoke -- they don't make suits or anything else in that size. It's tan, probably linen, with a bright white poplin shirt and an olive knit tie, probably silk.

He told her to dress up, but damn!

He's got money, she realizes. Where did he get that kind of money? No one's in the USMC for the money.

He removes a pair of aviator mirrorshades, putting them inside his shirt pocket, and checks the time on his watch.

His watch strap matches his tie. She'd like to think that's a coincidence. She doesn't need another metrosexual matching his ties to his pocket squares.

But it's a military color. He's probably wearing camo underwear, she thinks with a smile.

When he steps around the car she sees him carrying a bouquet of dark red carnations.

That's BD. Roses would be too easy. She can intuit his thought process: he wanted something that would have more meaning, show that he'd put a little bit of actual care into deciding what to bring her.

And it works. It's just another little soft touch.

She can tell he's wearing boots under his full break pants. Oxford-style cap toes, brown leather. Tough but classy. Like a fucking boss.

She sighs. He looks good. A little older, but still young. He still has his dark hypnotic eyes and his cheeky smirk.

And once again, she can't help being shocked by how big he is. She'd never gotten over that.

She'd only gone to watch him play basketball one time. He'd given her tickets for her and some friends, but they were right behind the other team's bench. It was Villanova, she remembered, ranked sixteenth in the country at that time, and almost every guy on the team was shockingly huge.

But then, even among those guys on the court, BD was big. He was, in fact, the biggest. There is just no place in the world where a seven-foot-tall man -- one with muscles, too, huge muscles -- does not look big.

As he walks up her sidewalk, she runs to check herself in the mirror:

She looks good, and she knows it. A bright red skirt, tight-but-not-too-tight to show off her waist and hips, short-but-not-too-short to show off her legs. Those were his favorite parts of her body, and she wants to let him know that she still has them. Just barely modest enough to suggest she would be a good wife.

She's much less confident about her breasts. He always insisted that he loved them, and he touched her like he meant it, but there's no need to wear anything that would remind him of any of that.

But what she has, thank god, are collarbones and shoulders, so she's got a white blouse, kind of full in the front, promising more than she can deliver, but backless with tiny little spaghetti-straps.

She'll be sure to walk in front of him as often as she can.

And, something that means a lot to a girl who's five-ten, she can wear heels and still look up to him, so she's broken out a pair she'd never been able to wear with little Dennis: ankle-strap stilettos, open-toed, and black to set off her bright red toenails.

Matching her skirt and her lipstick. A little minibag matching her shoes -- and, she thinks with a delightfully naughty thrill, her thong panties. Maybe she'll get to show him that before the evening is over.

-- -- -- -- -- -- / -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

With a deep breath and a pounding heart, she opens the door.

"Big Dick!" she cries. "Oh my god!"

"Miranda," he says.

She hears her name from his throat again! She should record it and play it for herself when she's sad.

He bends down, leaning sideways with the intention to kiss her cheek, so she lifts it to him. She can almost feel her breasts trying to get his attention.

His lips graze her cheek -- he smells as good as ever, that same manly, dangerous scent, and she wants to lift herself up with him just to bask in that scent.

"You are a sight for sore eyes," he says, handing her the carnations.

"These are beautiful," she sighs. "I should put them in a vase before we go. Would you like to come in for a moment?"

"I'd love to."

She skips away, high-heels clacking, feeling his gaze on her back.

"Just sit anywhere," she calls over her shoulder.

As if there were a lot of choices. She doesn't exactly have the biggest house in LA, and her living room barely has room for a sofa and a chair -- he would take both sides of her sofa.

When she's putting the flowers in a vase, she sees him still standing, his hands clasped behind his back, ever the military man. He fills the room.

"Why don't you sit down?" she asks. "I'll only be a moment."

"I'd rather stand," he states. "If I sat there, I wouldn't be able to look at you."

She feels his eyes drinking her in. She'd forgotten how good his attention feels. To have such a handsome, admired man focused exclusively on her! Looking at her as a beautiful woman.

She tries to tell him what impressive things Diego had said about him.

"Sounds like I owe him a favor," he said.

"Why? He only told the truth. But I felt really proud when he said all that. You've accomplished so much already, it's hard to believe you're only three years older than I am. Do you think this looks good?"

She holds the vase up for him to see, but as he looks at it, she feels his eyes lingering on her body rather than the vase. Then he looks in her eyes.

"Yes," he says, mischief in his eyes, "that looks very good."

She puts the flowers down.

"I was asking about the flowers, sir."

"I was not altogether excluding them from my answer, ma'am."

His cheeky smirk delights her.

He'd be able to get away with anything, with any woman. How did she have him here in her living room?

Then someone pounds violently on her door, breaking the spell.

"Open up, bitch! I know you're in there!"

"Oh, god, that's him." Miranda looks at Richard. "I'm so sorry."

The pounding continues.

"May I?" Richard asks, indicating the door.

"Please."

Now something Miranda's always kind of liked is the idea of men fighting over her. It's never happened, but she can get pretty worked up imagining it.

So as Big Dick steps toward her door, her heart flutters with a little more than worry.

"Be careful," she warns him. "He has a gun. He might have a gun."

He nods and opens the door.

"Hello. Would you like to come inside?"

There's a pause. Miranda almost laughs imagining Dennis's face.

"Who are you?" she hears him squeak.

"Your ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend. Come on in."

"I, um, is Miranda here?"

"Richard!" she calls, with an innocent voice. "Who is it?"

"A little boy is here to see you," he says.

"Well, fuck that!" Dennis snaps. "Samuel Colt made all men equal."

Something happens too fast for Miranda to see, but the sound of the gunshot almost knocks her back.

So much louder than in the movies. Unbelievably loud. The only thing she can compare it to: it's as loud as Richard is big.

The movements confuse her, happening too fast for her to understand, and for a horrible moment she thinks Richard has been shot, and in that moment she screams.

But then she sees that Dennis is underneath him, and she realizes she's hearing Dennis scream in pain, and she thinks that maybe somehow Dennis got shot...

Or something... it doesn't make sense.

Finally she realizes that Richard is wrenching Dennis's arm up in some way it isn't supposed to go.

Dennis is begging, "Please! I'm sorry!"

And then, with huge relief, she finally sees the gun on the ground. Somehow Richard got it away from him.

She runs over to get it, but she doesn't want to touch it, so she just kicks it a little further away from them.

Finally she sees a hole in her floor, with bits of dust floating up out of it, which (she suspects) means no one got shot.

Richard has essentially released Dennis, but he's sitting on top of him now, so the fun isn't over.

"You came here with a fucking gun?" Richard snarls. "Who the fuck did you plan to shoot?"

"I'm sorry, mister," Dennis whimpers.

"You are?" Richard slaps his head. "You're sorry?"

"Yes."

She sees that Dennis is actually crying now.

"Not as sorry as you will be." Richard slaps him again.

"Why?"

"First of all, asshole, God made all men equal, and secondly --" he changed his tone dramatically, "Miranda, dear, when you're finished with the flowers, would you mind calling the police?"

-- -- -- -- -- -- / -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

To say the police are impressed would be an understatement. After they cuff Dennis, put him in a car, take everyone's statements, figure out the path of the bullet, and get most of the neighbors back in their houses (while Miranda has a bit of a cry in Big Dick's arms), they have a long, fawning conversation with Richard about various ways of dealing with an armed assailant.

Apparently one of the things he has been doing is training security forces around the world in hand-to-hand combat skills. They run through various hypothetical situations. What if bystanders were here or there? They go over the psychology of it, how a bullet would ricochet, the limits of human anatomy and reaction times.

She'd forgotten how people react to him. They all but ask for his autograph, tell stories disguised as questions to try to impress him.

Meanwhile she serves coffee, and when they leave, the cops who had been in the corps salute Major Hardman, and then it's bro hugs all around, everyone giving him their card, jokes about not forgetting that the suspect intended to shoot his pretty girlfriend, and when he finally closes the door he turns to her and says:

"We're too late for breakfast, but how about lunch?"

"Lunch?"

She leaps into his arms, her legs around his waist.

-- -- -- -- -- -- / -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

It's just not fair to compare him to other men, she reflects, later on, laying in his arms afterwards, listening to him sleep.

There's just something about him. Does something to her that no one else can.

She was about halfway to an orgasm before he'd gotten her shirt off.

When he pressed her nipples under his thumbs and sighed that he'd missed her beautiful tits, she was three-quarters of the way.

He'd barely kissed her clitorus when it hit her.

She pulled him up by his hair, begging for his cock.

And when he gave it to her, she had at least one more.

The whole time he fucked her was just one long orgasm. The neighbors probably heard, but she couldn't have controlled her cries if she'd wanted to.

And when he came, looking in her eyes, telling her he loved her, she knew that she'd found her new lord and savior, and she would dedicate her life to serving him.

Which, she thinks as she reaches for his dick, begins now.