The Girl in the Green Dress

"I am parked." I gestured around the street, my tires brushing the curb. I liked her makeup tonight.

"No, dumbass, not on the street. I mean fucking park your car for awhile." She jerked her head down the road. "There's a parking lot up that way. You can follow me," she sneered, starting back to her black land-yacht. "I know how much you like looking at my ass." She was still laughing at me as she pulled out and rolled past, ignoring my extended middle finger.

She led me along a glass-crunched row of old parking spaces, my car bouncing hard in the potholes; this was an abandoned mill. About half the rambling building had been turned into condos, but the rest languished in the weeds. We parked beneath a dead tree and she rolled her window down. "Come on in, dickhead. I'm not getting into that disgusting car of yours."

"To what do I owe the pleasure of your text?" I asked sourly, stepping up into her backseat as she swung her body over the center console and into the backseat. We'd talked in her rig, but rarely.

"Progress check," she snapped, producing a clipboard. I rolled my eyes. "Quit whining, stud. You want your hundred a week, you give me a fucking progress check." She glanced down the paper on the clipboard, her quick eyes roaming over the blanks. "Yeah, yeah... look, any progress on my drug mule? The one with Jennae at Shotgun's? The one in the green dress?"

I hoped I looked as credible as I hoped I sounded. "I told you. Dead ends." I took a deep breath. "I might have a lead, but it's Roderick, and he wants to know who he's selling out."

"Roderick... wait. Roderick Castle? Your old cellmate?" She snorted. "That dude called you? He's so strung out these days, I'm not sure I'd trust him to order me a cheeseburger at Wendy's."

"He still knows a lot of people in the game," I protested, "and he's not eager to get dead." I held my breath. I'd thought about this lie for awhile. "Who's the dealer, Julie? He won't tell me jack shit unless he knows."

She frowned, biting on her lower lip, her eyes narrowed. After a few minutes, her busy eyes flicking back and forth in an internal debate, she nodded. "Okay," she shrugged, tossing her checklist and pen up onto the passenger seat, "get me off, right now, and I'll tell you the name of the dealer."

I gaped at her. "Here?" We'd never slummed it in the backseat of a car. I arched an eyebrow. "You're going to get the seats all stained. In a PD rig..."

She laughed at that one. "Only if you make me, shithead, and I don't think you've got it in you tonight." She reached across and planted her fingers in my crotch, giving me a challenging squeeze. "Prove me wrong, babe." It came out as a soft snarl, a spark of arousal already kindling in her eyes.

I grunted, my hips hunching forward, pressing against her hand. I hadn't cum since Leah, and hell, I did like Julie's makeup tonight... "Get that fucking jacket unbuttoned before I slice it off," I muttered. She knew I carried a knife, and rewarded me with a slightly breathless laugh.

"Wait." She backed against the window on her side, working at the coat buttons, her eyes still wary. "Take your gun out and put it up on my seat."

"You first," I nodded, shrugging out of my own jacket.

"Shit." She pulled her coat apart, her badge gleaming at her belt. "What's the matter, Anthony? You don't trust me?"

"You. First." I was already hardening in my jeans, most inconveniently. At the back of my mind was the awareness that I had to get to the liquor distributor for that wholesale 1996, that Superiorita, and the place closed at six. The early sun had long since reached the horizon already. "And no," I added, watching as she pulled out her SIG, "I don't trust you."

"Fuck you," she chuckled, watching me as I freed my Glock. "There. Now then," she murmured, curling her legs up underneath her ass as we tossed the guns into the front seat, "show me your other 'gun,' asshole."

"That's not how this works, Julie." I was already sinking to the floor of the SUV, my knees crinkling the burger wrappers of a dozen stakeouts. "I'm getting you off, so sit back and shut the fuck up." I had no idea why I was so into this already, with this bitch. Except that her lips looked so fucking alluring in that makeup... "Get your pants off."

"You get my pants off," she snapped, and I could see in the dim light that her face was starting its march toward that full-body flush she got when she let herself get bothered.

I nodded, then lunged. She was almost ready for me, her hands coming up instinctively to shield her face, but I wasn't going there. My hands clamped hard onto her thighs, clawing up her legs to dig under her finely-knit sweater, and as she began slapping at my head I dragged hard on her pants. She'd kicked her legs out, not enough for me to get the tights off, but far enough for me to get them to just above her knees, and then as her hands rained down on my head I fucking dived between her clenched thighs.

She fought me, panting already as I pried her legs apart to the strained popping of the seams of her overstretched bottoms. "Fuck!" she cried, "you're going to rip my pants!"

"Get them the fuck off, then." I growled it into the space at the top of her thighs as I pushed my face into her sweaty, muscled midsection, one hand on her thigh and the other moving under her sweater to grapple with her tits. She was growling, an animal seeking leverage to fight back, but my weight on her legs and my breath across her cunt were wearing her down. She stopped swinging at my head, instead shoving hard at her bottoms in an attempt to get them down, and within just a few of her mewling struggles she'd gained enough movement to finally give me access to her slit.

I plunged in, leading with my teeth, and Lindberg yelped loudly when I nipped at her labia. "Fuck you," she seethed from above me as my hand closed on her little tit, squeezing hard. She was torn between loathing for the way I was turning her on, and desire for the way I could take her, and I was determined that the desire win.

I didn't bother answering. I just put my teeth away and started with my lips, sucking hard at whatever part of her came close to my mouth. The position was awkward, constricted, and I had no ability to get as much access as I wanted. But she clamped her hand on my scalp anyway, which was always a good sign, even as she strained to get her pants down below her knees.

The moment came at last, just as I was getting used to trying to wedge my head into the narrow valley she was giving me. I'd just managed to get my tongue to the point where it was brushing her clit when suddenly, like water bursting through a dam, she got her pants down to her ankles. Her knees flew apart as if spring-loaded, and I wasted no time getting her juices all over my chin. "Holy fuck!" I heard from above me, panting, as she laid a second hand on my face.

She liked it like this: feral. Energetic. Unrelenting. She liked thinking I couldn't hold myself back, and tonight, she was correct in her thinking.

I plundered her, crazed, not even thinking about anything but the woman heaving herself against my face like the wanton whore she was. I kept up easily, her nipple hot and firm against my palm beneath the sweater, and when I finally turned my eyes to her face I saw something I wasn't used to seeing in Julie Lindberg, ever: desperation. Need. The red, gnashed-teeth face of a woman who needed nothing but me, right then, and as if in a trance I fastened my lips around her quivering little clit and sucked hard, pulling the milkshake through the straw, my ears ringing as she screeched above me.

"Oh my fucking god!" she moaned, eyes crazed as she glared down at me, and when I pulled my soaked face from her swollen snatch she sent her fingers scrabbling at my fly. "Get in me!" she commanded, her face and eyes wild, digging at my pants.

She'd let me fuck her two or three times, in the beginning, but then she'd decided I should be oral-only. I've got another snitch who gets to fill my pussy, she'd gloated to me, and since then I'd left her with my balls full and my dick twitchy. But not tonight, apparently.

My cock popped out like a switchblade, hard and springy as it had been in my thirties. Hell, in my twenties! I felt her hand grip me hard, pulling insistently until, her pussy still spasming from the orgasm my lips had given her, she settled my head at her slit and hunched forward on the upholstery.

She was tight, but so wet that it took me just two light pushes to get balls-deep on my knees on the floor of that damn police SUV, our groins meeting easily as her hands rode my shoulders. "Oh, fuck!" she wept, her breath a gust in my face, but I knew she didn't want me to waste time: I took hold of her thighs, laid my lips on her neck, and started thrusting into her with a force and speed I hadn't found in years.

We snarled. We moaned. We sucked dueling tongues into each others' mouths, and all the while my dick churned inside her, deep and hard, hips moving with blindly rapid fury. And she humped back too, her ankles still imprisoned by the pants, locking her legs against the front of the seat and swinging her sleek thighs against me again and again, our flesh slapping loudly in the SUV.

Nobody outside would have had any doubt about what was going on. The windows were opaque by then, the suspension creaking.

We fucked hard, fast, with no feeling but the lusty urgency to get off, Lindberg's orgasm still shuddering around my plunging dick. This wasn't going to last long, I thought as I started smashing the shit out of her. I took her with no intent except my own pleasure, my eyes telling her how little she mattered to me except as a place to pump my cock a few times, but at some point as she read the look on my face and the deepening force of my thrusts, she came to her senses. "Don't you dare cum in me, asshole," she managed, the sentence coming in what little bursts of air my cock allowed her. "Don't you fucking dare!"

"Dammit!" I raged, my body needing urgently to release its pent-up sperm. "Where the fuck you want it, then?"

"I don't care! Just not in my cooch!" Disgusted, already feeling the early pangs of a monster load, I wrenched my dick out of her and pushed myself up and her down, curling my body between Lindberg and the headliner, grasping her hair so I could drag her face to my shuddering prick. "No! Jesus! I'm not drinking your cum!"

"Fine," I seethed, "I'll just launch all over your car. Or your sweater. Or your face." I stared down, my chest heaving, until Lindberg finally realized she had no options: she opened her mouth and wrapped her lips around the head of my cock just as I lost control, the spunk rushing out of me with a wave of pleasure that almost blacked me out and left me spent and shaky, spurt after spurt spraying hard into her mouth as my balls shook and my woman swallowed desperately. I closed my eyes, feeling for the first time the pleasure she must have gotten off me and her other men: the joy of power, of flat-out using someone.

She rolled out from under me, coughing and burping with her lungs heaving as my dick hung suspended over the seat, slimed with spit and pussy and semen. When my eyes found hers we both looked crazed. "Jesus!" she spluttered, dragging herself onto the seat with her pussy still drooling on the upholstery. "What the fuck was that?"

"You told me to put it in you!" I panted, finding my own seat where her ass had just been as I'd fucked her.

"Well, yeah, but I didn't want to drink it!" she wailed, belching once more. "Good god. It's been years since I swallowed."

I just sat there with my softening cock glistening in the fogged-up glow coming in from the streetlights at the other end of the parking lot, and checked my watch. "Damn. I've got to get going."

"Where?" She summoned whatever she could find of her dignity, pulling her pants up her legs, and I thought quickly.

"I told you, I'm meeting Roderick Castle," I lied, "and I told him I'd bring the name of that fucking dealer. Which you told me you'd give me. If I got you off."

"I was faking it," she claimed, but I just laughed. "Fine, asshole. The dealer is Leon Robbins."

"Birdie Robbins?" I arched my eyebrow. I'd known him from the jail, briefly. "Tall? Tattoos? The guy who deals down by the Pavilion?"

She leaned forward between the seats, examining her face in the rearview mirror, searching for my sperm on her mouth. "That's him," she sighed. She ran a hand through her ruined hair. "Shit. I have to go home and change."

"I don't care." I zipped up my pants, then shoved the door open into the chilly night air. The sex-funk of the SUV wafted out all around me. "I'm hightailing it, Julie. Hey, can you give me my gun?" She gave it to me, along with a withering glance, passing it barrel-first. Bitch. At least she didn't have her finger on the trigger. "Thanks, I guess."

"Yeah." She was still scrambling around between the seats, her pants not-quite pulled up, the smooth rind of the top of her ass directly under the dome light. This was my life, I reflected glumly: a world of half-clothed female asses. Who'd have thought I would ever get used to that, even treating it like no big deal? Like a matter of course? "You can leave now," she added pointedly, glancing around at me.

I got to the liquor wholesaler's just as they were closing, fortunately, but I worked all that night with the detective's girl-cum staining my shirt. That was not as exciting as it should have been, but Traci's radiant smile that night when I told her about Birdie Robbins was at least some sort of reward.

* * *

I caught the news report two mornings later as I did my coffee, sandwiched in between the top story and the weather: the police, it seemed, had discovered local man Leon Robbins down near the Memorial Pavilion with two broken legs, a collapsed lung, and a suspected head injury, the apparent victim of a hit and run at high speed. His condition was listed as critical. The police were asking the public to share any information that might help locate a suspect.

5: The decorations should be great this year ...

Sometime in there, early December became mid-December, the rain getting colder and colder each day it fell. Soon it would be slush, then in January we might have that little fling of snow we always seemed to get a few weeks before Valentine's. I walked into work a little bit late on the 16th, having spent the morning lounging with Leah in an idyllic, multi-orgasmic haze with my phone off. So I was in excellent spirits, my heart thumping as I pushed through the revolving door of Cheeks & Co.

To find Tori, hands on her hips, staring up at me. "Where are the decorations?" she demanded.

I gaped for a bit before I found my voice. "The Christmas decorations?"

"Yes, the Christmas decorations."

I frowned. Amy had agreed to budget an extra hundred for Tori to hang up a bunch of holiday shit, and dimly I remembered it was supposed to have gotten shipped around now. "Wait. It didn't arrive?"

"I don't even think it got ordered," she hissed, her almond-shaped eyes glaring. I'd always found her vaguely intimidating, despite the fact she was about five feet tall and I'd seen her mostly-naked. "I asked that wiggly little bitch Traci about it last week, and she said she'd ordered a bunch of crepe paper and shit, but now I'm starting to doubt she even bothered."

"Call her?" I glanced at the posted schedule. "She's working today. She should be here already."

"I did call her." It came out through clenched teeth. Tori detested lateness, which was a big part of why she didn't like me. "No answer."

I cocked my head. A no-call, no-show from Traci Golden was unheard-of. From anyone, in fact: we had a two-strikes policy. "No answer?"

"Did I stutter?" The girl needed to be put in her place, but not right now, for the house phone jangled at my elbow.

"That's probably her now," I shrugged, grabbing it as Tori tapped her foot. The girl smouldered, and not even in the sexual sense. "Cheeks & Company, how can I help you?"

"Well!" It was Amy's drawl, sounding amused. "You're pulling out all the stops for Christmas, huh?"

"For what, now?" Tori, arms crossed beneath her supple tits, cocked her head at me in the time-honored pose of people who are blatantly trying to figure out a conversation by only listening to one side. "How's that?"

Amy sounded pleased. "It looks like you guys are going to be really knocking it out of the park on holiday decorations this year. We can't wait to come in and see what you've got planned!"

"Uh, actually, I was just now talking to Tori Nguyen about that," I said slowly, giving my manager an encouraging thumbs-up. She didn't seem amused. "We haven't started decorating yet."

"Yeah, but once you do, the Directors and I can't wait to come in for dinner." She paused, probably looking at her calendar. "Say, next week sometime?"

"Well, like I said, we haven't started yet." A vague darkness was opening in some corner of my mind, the whispered hint of a threat. "We'll do our best, but... ah, I'm sorry, but where'd you hear it was going to be anything special?"

She laughed. "I didn't have to hear. The budget tells the story."

"What?"

"You guys left literally two cents in the party budget." She sounded pleased. "Like, you way outspent the location on the South Side."

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. "Two cents?" I asked weakly.

"There was almost ten thousand dollars in that account yesterday. We can't wait to see what y'all ordered."

Fuck! "Yeah, me neither." She snickered, thinking I was joking, but the darkness was swiftly coming out of its corner. Ten thousand dollars. And Traci had wheedled the card number out of me. And now she'd disappeared, along with the decorations she'd ordered.

Well. The decorations she said she'd ordered.

FUCK!

"It's going to be awesome," I sighed, "the best Christmas decorations ever. Balls to the wall." Tori was shaking her head, looking worried. My phone thrummed in my pocket. "Hey, let me call you back some other time. I just got in and we're already dealing with staffing bullshit."

"Bye, Tone!" At least she was happy when she hung up. The darkness spreading fully now, I reflected it was probably the last time I'd make her smile. I was thumbing my phone madly a few seconds later, trying to get into the party budget account to see when it had been zeroed out, when the damn phone vibrated in my hand. I stared at the caller's name, my hands trembling a little, the darkness almost all the way through my confused mind, then reminded myself I had to take this call.

No choice.

"Yeah?" I spoke into the phone curtly. "I'm busy."

Her familiar, mocking laugh came out of my phone. "Not busy doing what I told you to do, that's for damn fucking sure." Lindberg did not sound amused, laughter aside. "You find out who the girl in the green dress was? Outside Typhoon Shotgun's?" Her voice took on a sarcastic edge even more apparent than it usually was. "Did your buddy Roderick Castle come through for you?"

Shit. "Jesus, Julie, it's not like this little mission of yours is the only thing I'm working on right now."

"Oh. Well then you'll be relieved to know you can stop working on it. Because I know who the little slut is, and I think you do too, regardless of your mealy-mouthed little whining." I held my breath. "It's that bitch Traci Golden. I got that from another snitch who recognized the dress." She snickered. "Because he'd seen it on his floor; they've been fucking. Tell me, Tony, you bend that whore over yet? If so, I can put you in contact with my other rat; he's got crabs, so I bet she does too. Do I need to get tested, Tone?"