Old School Ch. 05: Danville

Kass didn't have the luxury of calling someone and pushing off appointments. It made more sense, she convinced me, to come with her and spend a night or two in her apartment so she could tend to business and keep an eye on me. I could rent a car and be back in Cincinnati for my 3 p.m. Tuesday to meet with Sandrine Corder and the FBI about what went down Friday night.

"Since you're providing the lodging, can I order us a pizza or hot wings for the Super Bowl?" I said.

She nodded, and I used my Papa John's app to schedule delivery in one hour, just before the 6:30 kickoff. Kass had disappeared into the primary bedroom and stayed there for quite a while. When she returned, she was freshly showered — her hair still damp — and wearing her blue flannel pajamas.

"Can't believe how good that feels putting those clothes into the washing machine and washing three days of work and worry away," she said as she stretched out on her sofa, found the remote and flicked on the TV that took up a good portion of her living room wall. Then she tossed the remote to me. "Here. You find the game."

I flipped through the listings until I saw the Fox pregame show, now nearing its conclusion. Then, I found a throw blanket and draped it over Kass before I scrambled downstairs to wait on the pizza delivery. When I got back, Ry had found the spot on the sofa beside Kass that I hoped to have and, for once, refused to budge even when he saw me entering with a fresh pizza and a dozen wings. He and Kass just stared at me, Kass trying to suppress a laugh.

Kass and I ate like fieldhands. Ry looked pitifully at us, but I'm pretty strict about not allowing him human food. Afterward, I cajoled Ry off the sofa for his own evening repast of Science Diet lamb formula and a handful of treats, then took the place he vacated beside Kass, draping my legs beneath the blanket.

She had shifted herself on the sofa so that she was leaned against me, her head cushioned by a pillow on my chest. And by halftime, she was sound asleep. It wasn't easy not to yelp in excitement as the Chiefs overcame a late 10-point deficit to defeat the Eagles in the final seconds, but I managed. With Kass curled up against my left side and slumbering and Ry's head resting on my right thigh as he did the same, I was feeling doubly blessed. Until I had to pee.

I returned from the restroom to see Ry at the door ready to be taken outdoors to repeat what I had just done. When we returned, the TV was off, the living room was dark and light was streaming from Kass's bedroom.

"Les, I'm turning in," she called out.

The question shot through my mind: should I presume I am welcome to share her bed? Should Ry and I retreat into her guest bedroom? She had shared mine the previous night, though I was asleep — still aided by the pain meds — long before she turned in and she awoke at least an hour earlier than I had this morning.

Perhaps there would be a clue in where she had left my overnight bag, which she had carried up to her apartment. I opened the door to the dark guest bedroom, cold with its heating vents closed, flipped on the lights and saw no bags. It was then that Kass removed all doubt.

"You can sleep in there if you want," she called out to me, "but your bags are in here."

I sighed in relief and walked into her room. Kass was already tucked in under a thick duvet and plush, gray flannel sheets pulled almost to her neck. On the other side of the bed, the covers were turned down in expectation of another person joining her.

"Give me a second to get my PJs on," I said. I grabbed my bag, went into her bathroom and emerged about a minute later in a pair of silky nylon gym shorts, some thick socks and a ratty Cincinnati Bearcats t-shirt. For his part, Ry had staked out his spot on her sofa.

Kass watched me curiously, a mix of confusion and bemusement.

"You feeling OK?" she said. "You're acting as if we've never slept together."

"Well ... we haven't ... here," I said sheepishly, lamely. "And I guess I didn't want to presume too much."

"I don't understand," she said.

"Well ...," I said, pausing to summon my words carefully. "I guess there's a lot I have to atone for, or at least to talk to you about. And you deserve that. It's not enough to say that I'm sorry for what I did. I know that. And I know words won't get it done. I know I have to show you that I will never, ever be that guy again."

Kass nodded, her silence signaling that she's listening and that I should keep going.

"Until I had you in my life, I had no way to realize how what I did for a living had dehumanized me, separated me from basic human concerns and decency. Big Law can do that if you let it. It will take over your life. The work, the culture of the firm, the mindset that revenue and a focus on clients — without even realizing it, that starts to trample every other area of life. It was doing that to me."

"That's not to lay the blame on Gladney & Watson for what I did — or, equally bad, what I failed to do — that hurt you. The firm didn't tell me to mislead you, to outright lie to you. That's on me. I had come to rationalize all manner of things that, had I not lost myself in this business, I would have never done because it's not the way you and I were raised."

She lay on her right side and I on my left, facing each other. I had her full attention. She absorbed every word, and I was grateful.

"It took someone I care about more than myself, someone who has known me long before I was a lawyer, to hold a mirror to my behavior and show me how far I had strayed from the values common to us. That's been my self-revelation since that horrible, awful afternoon in October when I realized how much I hurt the person I love the most in this world. It has been the lowest point in my life. If I lose you, then I lose hope for the future."

She nodded, still silent. Her left hand emerged from beneath the sheets to brush a tear from my face.

"In all that pain and bleakness, I found blessings. I found that there were people who cared enough to speak truth to me. Their advice to me was not to try to mend things with you until I had corrected things within myself, until I had re-established my moral moorings and gotten back to the person I had been. And I've worked hard on that. Still am."

"Thank you, Les," she said. "I know it couldn't be easy. I've felt that agony, too. I felt myself turning bitter and friends who care for me took me aside, listened to me, let me cry and spoke some hard truths to me, too."

The issue, Kass said, boiled down to trust. She couldn't understand why I would profess love for her yet knowingly mislead her. Unable to resolve that, she said, she felt she had no choice but to end the relationship. And she was on the verge of doing that when one friend of hers shed a different perspective on what happened.

"She teaches law courses at Centre. She was this really big-deal lawyer at a firm even bigger than yours, working in their Washington office. She did cases at the Supreme Court," Kass said.

"She told me how her big-time law practice had gotten its hooks not only into her but into her husband who was a big-deal, big-money lawyer at another major firm in its New York office. She told me how they kept things from each other on a professional level, how it crept over into their personal lives, how it caused a lot of mistrust and how it led to their separation. She moved back here to Danville, where she grew up, to try to reset her moral compass, give her kids a place where they could have a childhood and be nearer her family."

Kass immediately recognized the glint of familiarity in my face. And though I had told Jerilyn Bates our conversation would remain between us, this was no time to try to be coy with Kass. Again.

"Jerilyn Bates," I said.

Kass's eyes widened. "You know her?"

"I certainly know of her. Anybody remotely plugged into the profession would," I said. "But I've also spoken to her. She called me right after Thanksgiving. She'd had dinner with you and she is one of those people who spoke truth to me. She told me to keep our conversation secret, and she might kill me if she ever learns that I told you, but I'm done hiding things from you."

Kass's eyes were wide now.

"She called you? About me?"

This was dangerous territory, but anything less than the whole truth would be lethal.

"She did. She'd met you at Lou and Emma's a day or two earlier. She had seen your anguish and recognized, from what you told her, warning signs of the same thing Big Law had done to her, to her marriage. She didn't have any advice other than to take control of what I do for a living before it utterly takes control of me and ruins my life — our lives."

"What else did she say?"

"That if I hurt you again, she would track me down and make me regret it."

"Really?"

"Maybe not in those exact words, but that's pretty much the sum of it."

Kass breathed deeply, exhaling in what seemed like a long sigh and then nodded.

"What was her advice?"

"Other than to be totally honest with you and genuinely change, she didn't really offer a plan. It was more a cautionary tale, something I had to figure out going forward."

"So who else did you talk to?"

"Mom," I said.

"What did she say?"

"Well, you know my mom well enough that she speaks her mind. It was right after I found out about Burnley's suicide just a few days ago and I called her. She was already three moves ahead of me, and she asked me whether I'd warned you about what might be coming. She cut right to it and pointed out that I had to start putting you ahead of all other concerns right that second. She said to call you the second she hung up. Then she hung up. Immediately. And I called you."

Kass smiled wistfully. Her eyes scanned mine for an awkward moment for any trace of guile before she broke the silence.

"Les Walker, you always were a mama's boy," she said. "Damn good thing I love your mama."

Kass ran a finger gently across my brow, down the bridge of my nose and to my lips and then my chin, her eyes following every dip and contour her finger crossed.

"If talking to Jerilyn and your mom helps you rediscover your true north, I'm fine with that. It shows me you're serious. And I want to believe that. I want to know that. I want to be confident that the man I love will protect my heart as fiercely as I will protect his," she said, barely above a whisper, our faces, just inches apart.

"That you let me know that tonight and didn't play hide-and-go-seek with the truth is very important to me in restoring the trust that love requires," she said. "That's important, Les, because as much as I was hurting, every fiber of my being wanted to love you."

"And now?" I said.

"It still does. I still do."

Her lips met mine in that instant, a moment charged with fierce, reciprocal tenderness and unreserved emotional longing. Her arms pulled my chest tight against hers as mine pulled her waist against mine. Once again, I ran my fingers through the untamed auburn ringlets that I so cherished, my heart rejoicing in the fresh smell of the lavender shampoo she had used.

The time for words had passed. This was a moment for expressive, restorative lovemaking, and we abandoned ourselves to it. Her left leg had insinuated itself between my legs as my legs entangled with hers. I could feel her abdomen and hips press into my thigh, almost incidentally at first, and then with more intent and force as our tongues became more adventurous in their explorations.

I felt Kass pushing herself gradually atop my chest, rolling me incrementally onto my back as our breathing quickened. I could feel Kass's growing need as she began to push her mound into my hipbone and against my stiffening dick.

Her hand crept beneath my t-shirt as my right hand ranged from her waist to the firm globes of her bottom and back to the swell of her bosom, evoking a soft moan from her as my thumb swirled the flannel covering the hardening nubbin of her nipple. As our mouths parted momentarily, my lips ranged along her jawline to her ear, then down her neck to the top button of her pajamas.

That's when Kass seized control and pushed me fully into a supine position and straddled my waist. Her fingers began fumbling with the buttons to her pajama top which opened seconds later, exposing breasts with ruddy nipples crowning areolae already puffy, p0uting and craving attention. I pulled my t-shirt over my head, then quickly returned my hands to her breasts, slowly kneading them from the bottom until I corralled her prominent nipples in the fleshy webbing between my thumb and hand, and then swirling them gently, repeating the process in slow intervals.

Kass leaned forward again and we resumed our hungry kiss, her tender nipples dredging along against my bare chest as she mashed her moistening cleft, still confined by her pajama bottoms, against the fully hardened manhood trapped beneath my gym shorts. We gave in to the ancient rhythms, our wanton dry-humping pushing each other's arousal toward the point of no return.

"Allow me," I said, hooking my thumbs under the waistband of her pajama bottom and sliding it over her ass before she momentarily straightened her legs and pulled them off of her, pushing the covers past our knees in the process. She wore no panties, and I dipped my right hand downward into her reddish vee and the warm, silky wetness just beneath, making Kass gasp.

She pressed her slit onto my gym shorts and the flesh of my lower abdomen just above them, her wet folds making soft, kissing sounds as her blossoming womanhood yearned for contact. And more.

"You get me so wet ... so fast ...," she said, pressing her erect clit into me over and over as her breathing quickened. I responded with my mouth, servicing one nipple as it jiggled from her exertions while my fingers twirled the other. With my other hand, I cupped her ass, its muscles straining to drive her hips faster, as my fingers explored its crevice.

"Climax for me, baby. Let it all go," I said, recognizing that all nearly all her switches had been flipped, and the few remaining were about to be.

"Oh God, Les, right there ... yes ... yes ...," she said, her voice rising with every syllable until her she cried out as her orgasm seized her. "Yesssssssss ..."

Her face, neck and upper chest between her breasts flushed as she strained in ecstasy, her pussy jammed hard into my covered erection and a warm wetness now soaked into the smooth nylon of my shorts as she shuddered through her climax.

When the last tremors had passed, she leaned limply backward, displaying herself in all her glory, her skin seemingly aglow from her climactic exertion. Her womanhood — deep pink, glistening, hungry, perfect — faced me from between her thighs, splayed wide on either side of my chest.

"God, I've needed this," she said. "But I need more. Where is it?" she said, her hands grasping blindly behind me for my raging boner but finding it hidden behind the synthetic garment.

"What?" she said in mock surprise, "He must be freed immediately!"

She grabbed my shorts by both legs and began pulling them downward. I raised my ass off the mattress to aid in the effort. In a clumsy collaboration, I kicked the shorts off my feet about 15 seconds later, leaving both of us blissfully naked.

Still facing me, Kass leaned forward and filled her hand with my stiff sheath and affected a leering grin. She guided her hand to its swollen head, a copious bead of precum streaking her fingers. Inexperienced as she was with excited penises on the precipice of orgasm, Kass looked at it, perhaps wondering if I'd blown my load.

"S'okay, baby," I said, tracing two fingers from her tummy to her belly button and down to her mound. "Just a little excitement."

She sniffed it, swirled it between her thumb and fingers, and smiled.

"Just like what I make down here," she said, her hand joining mine and smearing the residue on her clitoral hood. Then, she scooted backward until the livid head of my twitching cock was nuzzled against her glistening folds at the entrance to her vagina.

"Now let me make love to you," she said as she slowly slid me into her.

This was new. Sex previously had been standard missionary position, something I initiated. Now in control, on top and setting the tempo, Kass began pressing her filled pussy forcefully down onto my hardness as she surrendered to a new variation of carnal pleasure and her eyes took on an almost dazed look.

"Oh ... fuck ... me," she moaned as she sat upright, increasing the power and pace of her hips, now rocking to and fro with me deep inside. It's also the first time I'd heard the perpetually prim Kass talk dirty ... ever.

I grabbed her hips and helped her as she rode my oak-stiff, hair-trigger dick.

"That's it, honey, ride me. Let yourself cum all over me," I growled as I felt my own crisis begin to build.

Now she was bouncing up and down on me, exposing a length of my shaft before burying it fully up inside her again each time she slammed her ass back into me. "Unh ... unh ... unh," she grunted each time, her breathing quickly getting ragged.

Finally, she pressed herself back onto my chest and resumed a frantic back-and-forth motion. Her pussy jammed tightly against me, riding as far up my torso as it could go without losing its grip on me before rocking backward again until her ass was snug against my tightening scrotum as it marshalled a massive load to release.

"Cum with me, Les," she whimpered. "Fill my little pussy."

The words alone seemed to carry her over the crest. She cried out as her climax possessed her, and I jammed myself as deeply as I could inside as her hungry loins seemed to milk me. I growled as I expelled my first jet of semen.

"Oh Kass ...," I bellowed, holding her to me desperately. "God, I love you."

For the better part of a minute, as our shared orgasm depleted us, we fiercely clutched each other in our arms as our loins pressed together desperately together.

When it was over, we sank into a blissful, postcoital repose. Minutes passed before we could speak. The silence broke when Kass giggled.

"I don't know what to say," she said at last.

I just smiled and sought out her lips. "No words needed," I said between slow, languorous kisses. "I just want to love you, to hold you. Now ... and always."

▼ ▼ ▼

I was expecting a sterile, modernistic setting — bright, techy and ascetic with lots of chrome and glass. But the FBI's Cincinnati field office, in a five-story federal building built in the late Carter Administration, was grungy, rundown, musty smelling with tired-looking people working in cramped, dusty cubicles piled high with banker's boxes stuffed full of papers and bound reports.

"Mr. Walker. Good to see you. You seem to be recovering OK," Will Gustin said as he strode out of a glassed-in office and extended his hand to shake.

"Still a little sore, but considering the alternative ... ," I said with as much of a chuckle as I could muster.

Gustin explained that Sandy Corder had to make a quick trip back to her home in Woodbridge, Virginia — a short commute to her office at Quantico — to attend to some family matters she had put off for too long. It was an occupational hazard and, fortunately for her, she had a husband understanding enough to make FBI marriages work.

"So it's just us today," Gustin said.

"OK. Don't know how much help I can be, but ... here I am," I said.

"Well, first, let me give you back this," he said as we walked into a small conference room and he produced a box containing my briefcase, my overcoat and my iPhone.

"Thank you. Glad to get that back. Was it useful?"

"Not really. Just showed you missed a whole lot of calls that afternoon starting literally just a few seconds after you turned it off. There were eight from us, but there were seventeen from Kass Felson."