The Visitor

"I imagine he didn't tell you to expect me either," she went on, dragging her hand along the kitchen counter as she walked slowly towards him. "Or what I'd be need from you."

"It, uh, seems to have slipped his mind," Mark replied.

"Oh well. No matter. I don't imagine you'll find what I need from you to be a terribly inconvenience." She took another step towards him. "He didn't tell me you were so good-looking," she added. Instinctively, Mark leaned away from her, but her serene self-confidence coupled with his undeniably attraction towards her kept him from establishing a distance between them anymore substantial than that.

"And just what is it that you'll be need from me?" Mark asked, his voice catching momentarily in his throat.

"Probably exactly what it is you're wanting from me right now." By this point, she was standing less than two feet from him. She laughed, and placed her hand on his chest. She held it their, feeling the contours of his muscles, and the almost imperceptible pulse of his heart, which had definitely passed the point of racing. Keeping her hand where it was, she leaned forward and whispered into his ear. "It's okay to want it, you know. I want it too," she said, and biting ever so softly on his ear, wrapped her other arm his back.

His body responded to her pressure by pressing back into hers in its turn, and while her hands ran over his back and through her hair, he pulled her even closer to him, wrapping his arms around her, while leaning forward to slowly place a series of soft, gentle kisses along the gentle slope of her shoulder.

"Mmm, that's nice," she said, bending her head to give him access to the curve of her neck. Mark responded to the prompt, and began exploring her contours with his lips and tongue, slowly tracing a line with his kisses to the bottom of her ear, and then back down again, tracing the line of her jaw with his attentions. It had been long, so very long since he had last experienced the beauty of the female form. Who she was, and why she was here, were questions that rattled about in the back of his mind, but were quickly overpowered by the intensity of his desire for her, and were consequently forgotten in the celebration of his amorous passions. Mark had always been a gentle lover, and a slow one, a combination that arose naturally out of his twin desires to relish the passion of the moment, and to not accidently proceed any further than his partner wished. It was perhaps the well-meaning diffidence that give rise to the second of these desires, more than any other attribute or personality trait of his, that had made his performance in arts of love so lackluster for the duration of his life. It wasn't that he didn't have anything to give that made lovemaking such a rare phenomenon in his life. Rather, it was that he simply didn't know how to convince others that he did in fact have a great deal to give. It is all too often the case that it is not those who have heart, but those who clamor the loudest that they do have a heart, who win the fair lady, irrelevant of whether such purported heart even exists.

"I don't even know your name," he said, continuing his explorations by moving his attentions across the base of her neck to the other side of her body. She interrupted her soft moans with a laugh.

"No, I suppose you don't," she said. "You can call me Sarah."

"You're a very beautiful woman, Sarah," Mark said.

She smiled inwardly at this comment, at first ironically at the sheer banality of the vagueness of the statement, but then seriously as she realized the fullness of meaning with which Mark had imbued these words. She had heard comments like this about her all the time, to the point at which the words had lost all meaning, as they alone were never sufficient to ensure her of the ingenuousness of the speaker's comment. Her intuition told her that this was a good man standing in front of her, and her body's response to Mark's activities suggested to her that he was a good man in more than one way. Besides, her intuition had rarely served her wrong before. It really was a pity that he had such horrible things in store for him. She checked that line of thinking, reminding herself that it was to be for another day. There were much more important things to see to in the here and now, like Mark's hand, which had moved along her stomach and below her waistline, and had begun gently rubbing just outside of her increasingly wet pussy.

"Oh God, yes, that. Do that!" she said, by way of encouragement, shifting herself to allow him better access for his explorations. While Mark continued to fondle her, she leaned up and forward to catch his lips in a full kiss. When her tongue slipped between his lips, his cock gave a significant twitch, which Sarah couldn't help but notice.

"What do we have here?" she asked, curving her hand around the prominent bulge. The playful tone of her voice was promptly overtaken by a moan. Mark's finger had slipped between a pair of her own lips, and had begun exploring her most private regions. "Oh, you know, boring stuff," said Mark, continuing his amorous activities. The waves of pleasure washing over her were increasingly gather in strength, but weren't enough to distract her completely from her goal, and she willed herself to regain control.

"You've had your turn," she said. "Now it's mine." She attempted to drop to her knees and pull down his pants in a single smooth motion, but the gracefulness of the gesture was impeded by the stubborn interposition of Mark's belt. She fumbled at it for a few seconds. "This is worse than a bra strap," she said. Mark laughed, and with a deft motion of his hands, undid the buckle that up until now had refused to release his cock from the imprisoning cloth of his jeans. Sarah hooked two fingers around the waistline, and pulled. The very next instant her mouth was on his penis.

Although not so much recently, Mark had had blowjobs before. This one, however, so far outstripped his past ones that he was tempted to dismiss all previous experience with fellatio as cheap imitation of the real thing. Fuck, she was good. He moved his hips almost imperceptibly in time with her sucking. And it wasn't just sucking that he felt on his dick. He had no idea that there even could be so many different kinds of sucking that could go into a blowjob, each better than the last.

The length of time since his last sexual experience coupled with the impressive skill Sarah displayed ensured that Mark wouldn't be able to last terribly long. Soon enough, he felt a familiar growing tightness in his balls. Sarah noticed the tightness as well, and began to slowly but insistently speed up her performance, driving Mark closer and closer to the edge of climax. "I'm about to come," he said, expecting her to hold off on her ministrations. Instead, she redoubled her effort, and with a series of body-shaking grunts he felt spurt after spurt of semen shoot out of his cock, only to be swallowed in Sarah's waiting mouth. After what felt like an eternity, his climax began to subside.

Sarah stood up and picked up a nearby towel, while Mark pulled his jeans back up and redid the recalcitrant buckle. "You liked?" was all she asked. "God, yes," said Mark, still out of breath from what had just happened. "But what about you?"

"Oh, I'll get plenty at some point, I'm sure. In the meantime, you might want to check your phone." At that moment, he heard the sound of his cell's ringtone from somewhere in his living room. Dashing over, he began to search for it and finally dug his phone out from where it had fallen from his pocket earlier into the cushions of his couch. He found it on the fourth ring cycle.

"Hello?"

"Hello. Is this Mark Weston speaking?"

"It is. How can I help you?"

"This is Officer Murphy, from the local police force. I'm afraid there's been a break-in at the archaeology department on campus."

Mark found his attention focusing on the TV set while his mind tried to transition from the residual effects of his orgasm in order to process the significance of what he was being told over the phone.

"I see. Was anything stolen?" The television set was very dusty. He should probably clean that soon.

"No, nothing, although whoever it was that broke in seemed to be looking for something very definite. The only places that seem to have been burgled were the laboratory and your office."

"Oh. Was anybody hurt?"

"Stephen Carmichael is in the hospital with electric burns from what appears to be an unusually high-voltage taser, weapons grade. No one else was in the building at the time. Do you have any idea what they might have been looking for?"

Mark thoughts flickered briefly towards the map. That couldn't be what this was all about, could it? No, it couldn't. Probably some students playing a prank. But that taser -- who would carry around a taser with that kind of juice in it? He desperately hoped it was students. He started to tell the voice on the other end of the line about the map.

"Yes, Officer, I do have an idea, I think -- " A dully pulsing tone and a too-calm voice informing that his call could no longer be completed interrupted him before he could say anything more. His cell phone screen informed that he was out of service range. Although he rarely had more than two bars at his apartment, he'd never experienced a disruption of service like this. It was probably nothing. It had to be nothing. He was just being paranoid.

The sound of something rattling in the knob of his front door told him he was not being paranoid. The click of his lock being undone told he'd better do something about this not-paranoid situation soon. As the door opened slowly he ran across the room and threw the full force of his body against it, slamming it shut in the face of whoever it was that was on the other side of the door.

"Shit, he's home!" he heard dimly through the door. He heard a loud crash to his left and, still bracing the door with all his strength, saw someone dressed head to foot in black, with a ski mask on to boot, pull a commando roll on his living room floor. Rising from the ground with unbelievable speed, the intruder pulled what appeared to be a gun from his pocket, pointing it directly at Mark.

"Where the fuck is it?" the burglar shouted.

"Where is what?" said Mark, momentarily shocked stupid.

"The map, you cunt-nugget! Where the fuck is the map?"

"The map, the map." He couldn't think, he couldn't talk, he couldn't make sense of any of what was happening to him right now.

A second individual clothed in all black appeared through the window alongside the first one.

"He's useless," the newcomer said. "Deal with him and help me search the house."

Panic and the instinct for self-preservation forced clarity into Mark's words. "The map! The table. Map is on the table. There. Briefcase. Table!"

The first burglar kept his gun pointed solidly at Mark, although given his mental condition the caution was likely an unnecessary one. The second burglar opened his briefcase with a look of expectation that quickly turned to anger.

"It's not here. It's not fucking here." Directing his attention to Mark, "Where the fuck is it?"

Mark was just as surprised as his interlocutor. He had definitely kept the map in the briefcase. Where was it?

"Looking for this, boys?"

Sarah's voice broke into the confusion of the scene. All three turned to look at the figure standing in the doorway to Mark's bedroom. Her knowing smirk belayed the intensity of the scene, and dangling in front of her was a briefcase the exact identical copy of the one lying in his living room. "Better come and get it."

The second burglar fired two shots at where she would have been standing, had she not neatly ducked and rolled along the wall just inside the living room, coming squarely to her feet and standing directly in front of the man who had just attempted to shoot her. He fired two more shots. The unknown woman engaged in a series of impossible contortions, and the two holes that had suddenly appeared in the wall of Mark's apartment testified that he had missed. She was now a yard away from him. Almost instantaneously there was a knife in his hand, but just as she had dodged his bullets so she dodged his new weapon as well. Cut and stab as he might at the advancing figure, he met nothing but air with every swipe, the woman's body seeming to disappear and reappear at random. Mark and the first bugler looked on with growing degrees of fear-induced dumbness as, after an especially vigorous swipe of the knife, Sarah slipped behind her attacker, rose, and did something impossibly fast with her hands. The man collapsed to the floor with his back to the ceiling. It took Mark a couple of moments to register that the man's face was also looking at the ceiling.

The first burglar turned to point his gun at Sarah, but there was more than a tremor evident in his hands as he tried to hold the weapon steady.

"Do you want to do this? Do you really want to do this? Think about if you really want to do this," she said.

The remaining man hesitated, clearly unnerved by what he had just witnessed take place in front of him. She took a step towards him.

"I mean, I'm glad to do this if you want to do this. But I don't think you want to do this. I really, really don't."

She took another step towards him and the man's confidence wavered accordingly.

"Fine. Let's do this." She took several aggressive steps towards him, but stopped at the sound of voice.

"Wait, wait, wait. Fuck," he said, "Just... fuck." He shoved Mark from where he was standing in front of the door, and quickly made his exit from the scene.

"My, that was invigorating," she said, her gaze following his retreating body through the window. "A good fight like that always gets the blood pumping, you know?"

Mark just stared at her blankly, a tendency of his he seemed to be indulging in quite a bit lately.

"Awww, the cat got your tongue," she said, jumping onto his couch while seeming to remain totally impervious to the dead and slightly mangled body on the floor beside her. "It was your first time, wasn't it? The first time's always tough," she added. Mark wasn't sure if she was being nice or condescending. Probably a little bit of both.

"Well, Miles always had interesting choices in his men. Honestly, I wouldn't have picked you. But he's never been wrong before, so he probably sees something you I frankly don't." She said the last with palpable air of distaste, looking up and down Mark's still trembling body as he hugged the wall from which he derived an odd sense of security.

"Oh, stop it. I'm on your side. Those guys were here to hurt you. I'm not. I'm here to hurt the guys who want to hurt you."

"Uh. Um. Thanks. Uh," was about all the Mark could manage.

"Miles told you all about the map, I gather. The Serangappi and what they're all about, yeah?"

"Um, yes, a little? He didn't say anything about guns or killing people."

"Stop standing over there like and sit down or do something natural. You look like a pervert, hiding in the corner like that."

"Oh. Um, right." He sidled to an armchair off to his left, and sat down with an impressive stiffness to his posture.

"You're still stressed out about all that that just happened? You gotta relax, boy. Take it easy. Enjoy the good things in life. Like the feel of tendons snapping in your hand."

Mark's squeal was nearly high enough to work as a dog whistle.

"I kid, I kid. Really, it's a gruesome way to die, you know," she said, nodding towards where the second burglar's body still lay on the floor. "Still, the bastard deserved it. These aren't good men we're up against Mark. I hope you understand. You'll need to understand that if you're going to be able to pull off everything we're hoping for from you."

With an admirable force of will, Mark started to pull himself together. "Hang on. Just who... who the fuck are you? You come into my apartment, you kill a guy, you give me a blow job - What are you doing in my apartment!"

"A thank you would be nice. But even that's not all I came here for. I also came to give you this." She proffered an envelope to him. He opened it, and found a boarding pass for a flight the next day to Phoenix. "You probably have a lot of questions. I can't say I blame you. But get on this plane, and things will start to make some sense to you." She opened his front door and began to leave. "But what about the other guy? And what about this guy on the floor?" he protested. She stopped and turned to him. "I wouldn't worry about the other guy. And we'll take care of your guest. Just be on that plane tomorrow. I'll see you in Phoenix." She turned and left his apartment.

The ensuing silence gave Mark plenty of time to think.