Shipwrecked & Horny: A What Could Possibly Go Wrong Bad Boy Romance (Bad Boys After Dark Book 10) by Gabi Moore (43)

I wasn’t sure which boat belonged to the fisherman, but there was a moderately sized vessel docked just outside of the shack, in addition to a sailboat and a small dinghy. I decided to wait just outside of the boat, and wait until he came out. I estimated that the water was in the high fifties, so I knew I could count on being submerged for another thirty to forty minutes or so without losing too much range of motion.

Silent and meditative, I waited for the fisherman to exit his house.

My eyelids were heavy, but a flash of light in a thin trace of movement caught my attention.

My eyes turned to track the object, as I didn’t dare move my body to make a sound. A hand rolled cigarette floated on the surface of the water a few feet away from my position.

He’s here, I thought, sensing a deep relief within my body.

A voice began to sound off through the muffled fog.

“Ah, Officer,” the fisherman called out in Italian, “looks like an uncomfortable place to spend the night. You should have let me know you were here, I have a spare room!”

I could tell the fisherman was more than a little perturbed to see the cop. I had lost track of time, and the cold was starting to cause my muscles to ache. I could hear the sounds of his boots walking on the dock, and then onto the deck of the ship. A rope hung loosely from the railing of the ship in a low arc. I allowed my body to drift over to the space between the ship and the dock, so I might grab ahold of the rope, and be carted off to sea. As long as the ship turned out toward the sea, nobody on shore would have a chance to see the fisherman trolling me along the surface of the water. To my relief, the ship began a casual turn out toward the ocean, and I made every effort pull myself on board.

For all of my effort, my arms were tired, and a bewildered fisherman had to help pull me over the side of the deck.

“Jesus,” he exclaimed when he saw me.

Just having him there to help me out was a bit relieving. I needed to rest, and I was glad to be in a place where I could finally relax. I wanted to speak, but I couldn’t be bothered to talk at that moment. It was enough to simply be in the boat. The fisherman seemed to understand the context of the situation and went on the deck for a moment.

I sat huddled on the dock, holding my knees, and rubbing the sides of my body. When the fisherman came back, he had a fresh set of thermals, as well as a wool blanket.

I got dressed immediately and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders. Taking quick breaths through my nose, I stood up and worked to revitalize myself through some calisthenics.

The fisherman let me be for a moment and set about piloting the ship.

“I see you’ve still got that bag,” he called out. “I was hoping that you hadn’t gotten picked up when you visited my daughter. I know that the police stopped by. They have been camping outside of my home ever since this yesterday afternoon.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but my voice cracked and broke.

The fisherman shook his head as if to suggest I was an amateur and then walked over to offer me a flask of spirits. The alcohol cleared my throat with a cough and a brief sputter.

“Christ,” I swore, the whiskey having brought a croaking sort of life back to my throat.

“Medicine,” the fisherman nodded, standing in front of me now and looking into my eyes expectantly.

“She didn’t get picked up then,” I said, putting the pieces together as I sat there.

The words of the fisherman echoed into my mind as he addressed the officer, and I nodded to myself; it’s amazing how sluggish the mind can get when putting under stress for a long enough period of time. The clarity of my purpose came back to me and met the eyes of the fisherman.

“I need you to tell me what your daughter is into,” I said, zeroing my focus in on the man. “I’m not sure if she’s alright or not, and I’m not sure if you know what’s in the bag…”

I paused.

“Do you know where she is at?” he insisted. “I need to know if my daughter is okay.”

“I have to say, I’m not impressed with the people your daughter associates with. They’re armed, and they are involved in illicit trafficking. I killed one of them, but I think they have a vested interest in keeping your daughter alive. After all, I’ve got her bag.”

“I’m not sure I can share much information with you. I have deduced a few things about her activities, and I have had some conversations with her, but Piper is a very proud woman.”

“The more you can tell me, the better.”

He nodded in response.

“Well, all I can really tell you is that even though the people are into the things you say they are into, my daughter is not.”

He sniffed.

“I raised a good girl, and she has a good heart. She treats her body well, and I feel like she only got involved with them at first because she believed what they claimed to represent.”

“They look like thugs to me,” I said.

He shook his head and wrinkled his nose.

“They are thugs, but I believe they are entrenched in a type of idealism which enables their behavior. When Piper started working with them, she was doing small things, and she would tell me excitedly about how she was learning more about anarchism, and social reformation. Naturally, I was very excited for her, as the subject has interested myself in the past as well.”

He nodded and sniffed once more.

“Then I noticed that she was continuously speaking around one set of opinions — a set that was predominantly concerned with ‘Direct Action’. I didn’t try to raise an impressionable girl, but when you admire someone, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. We had one argument when I tried to tell her that the line between what is an acceptable form of Direct Action, and what is not acceptable can only be determined by the individual. However, I also told her that I believe that each individual has a moral compass that we must share with others on an intuitive level.”

“A conscience,” I offered, flatly, to indicate that I was following.

“Indeed. That is one way to put it. Unfortunately, when people get wrapped up in personal ideologies, and fail to see their connection with the rest of the world, their concept of empathy becomes withered, and eventually disintegrates; when this happens, in my perspective, they lose the only thing that made them human — and I no longer care for whatever ideas they claim to be so revolutionary.”

“Philosophy in response to fascism,” I said, linking the historical anecdotes from my previous conversation with the fisherman to the current topic.

He scratched the side of his head and turned away from our conversation.

“Fascism is a systemic representation of a specific behavior set,” he replied. “There is no fascism, there are only people and their choices. I used to think that there was no such thing as a bad man. I swore up and down that all men had the possibility for good, and that there was no such thing as a man who was beyond redemption.”

He turned around and yawned, looking tired, and worried.

“I don’t mean redemption in some kind of biblical sense,” he continued, “but I mean, truly — a reformation of character, demonstrable through action. Now, I have come to the realization that this is not the case, and it is by their own doing. I suspect this is the origin of the saying, ‘He who makes a beast of himself, rids himself the pain of being a man.’ The only difference, is I no longer share any sympathy for such beasts.”

“It’s hard to know where I stand on that continuum at times.”

He looked at me in a strange and penetrative way, as though I was slow to pick up on something important.

“I think not,” was all he said in response.

After our conversation, he began to pay more attention to the trajectory of the boat. We had been headed straight out into the Adriatic, but at the behest of the fisherman, we were now headed in a loop back toward the south.

“Doing much fishing today?” I asked, trying to get a bit of a hold on where we were headed.

“A long time ago, when my daughter was first growing up, I was involved in some activity that made me unsure as to whether or not things would be safe for my family. As it turns out, things weren’t safe for everyone, but there was one spot that has always been kind to us.”

“You think your daughter will head there?”

The man didn’t respond. He looked emotionally distant, and under a great deal more stress than he was letting on.

“It is a small island called Ottagono San Pietro or Bastion,” he said. “The island is abandoned, though it used to have military defense functionality during World War Two. I believe it is privately owned, but whoever owns it doesn’t care enough for it to take care of it. A man could live there and fish, if he had a sufficient supply of water. As it stands, there is only enough room on Bastion for a small grove of trees.”

“Will she know to go there?”

“If you’ve got her bag,” he said bitterly, “then I’m sure she’ll figure it out. Piper’s a smart woman; at the very least she will know not to go back to my home. I’d say this is our best bet. All we need to do is dock, and wait. I’d wager she’ll be out here before the morning is through.”

Time passed quickly through the beginning of the morning. I watched the sunrise from the eastern wall of Bastion. The waves looked beautiful beneath my feet, and I allowed myself to forget, if only for a moment exactly how difficult everything had been in recent memory.

When I’ve been in the middle of a stressful situation for a long time, it can be difficult for me to set things aside, and truly relax. I still found my mind drifting toward the words and philosophies of the fisherman. I still thought about the character and face of Piper, wondering if she was really as trustworthy as her father believed her to be.

Women were occasionally trustworthy, or so it seemed.

More often than not, women, like every other human being, tended to seek out things that were not necessarily good for them, perhaps more out of rebellion than anything else.

I was old enough at this point in my life to realize that rebellion for rebellion’s sake was not a good enough reason to do something. Perhaps, when a person was younger, and they were still in the process of establishing some form of identity, then rebellion might have its place. If Piper ended up forfeiting her own agency, for the sake of pursuing some hollow shell of a philosophy, I wasn’t sure I could respect her. I might help her, but I certainly wouldn’t make any effort to get to know her as a person.

If she ended up having some kind of integrity, I thought, focused on a thing that was larger than herself — then, maybe.

My mind drifted into the world of possibilities, but only for a moment.

A deep sigh banished the thoughts as soon as they had come. I blinked hard and stared out into Laguna Veneta.

Stay focused, Tyler, I told myself.

I knew that there was not really any room for error in the moments to follow. We may have been temporarily safe within the proximity of Bastion, but the long-term effects of the situation had yet to come to fruition. If anything, those moments were essentially the equivalent of the calm before the storm. There were far too many factors at work for me to prognosticate any sense of peace within the immediate future.

Then I saw her arrive.

She was in a simple sailboat that she had rented from a nearby marina. The way that she commanded the vessel was inspiring, to say the least. She looked fearless in the face of the slight breeze, and open water that sat beneath her and the ship.

I looked over toward the fisherman and saw him swell with pride at the sight of his daughter. It was clear to me, in that moment, that Piper did indeed stand for something that was independent of whatever situational conflict she managed to find herself in at that moment. I couldn’t imagine how a person who looked that commanding could be in a position of duress, but then I realized that it was likely the context of the conflict itself which had likely brought her to that level of composure.

She docked the sailboat easily next to the edge of Bastion, secured it through a lasso toward one of the posts that were jutting out from the edge of the small, man-made island, and then hopped onto the edge of the wall herself, pulling her body up onto the deteriorated cobblestone wall.

She offered me a curt nod, as though she fully expected my presence on the island, and then walked over to speak with her father.

I let them be for a moment, knowing that both of them were glad to see the other in good health and prepared to engage in whatever new plan was at work in her mind.

She would have to take the charge in this endeavor, because even though she was in the least vulnerable position out of each of us, she was also in the position of greatest authority. Only through careful navigation could we hope to get through this experience in one piece, though I suspected that we would pay some tax for our troubles. The cost had not been high enough, as things stood in the present moment. Sure there had been some casualties on both sides, as well as some emotional trauma, but we were all here, and for a moment, I felt like I had found a team once more.

Walking over to me, then, she initiated conversation.

“I see you still have the bag, and you’re still in good health.”

“Relatively,” I said, moving my body unconsciously to stretch out the minor injuries and strains that I had sustained over the last few days.

“Any plans to give me that bag back?” she asked, figuring that I had at least some say in the process.

I shook my head.

“Not really. Unless you’re planning to make a major shift in your social circle.”

She nodded and looked down at the ground.

The wind buffeted through the small trees that peppered the landscape on Bastion. The ground was surprisingly established for being a man-made island. The only part of the island that reminded me that the ground I was standing on had once been an artificial installment was the sheer octagonal siding and the diminutive size of the landform.

“I figured you might say that,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been having more than a few second thoughts about my social circle as well. Though, I’m not convinced you would provide any better company. Unfortunately, I’m not sure at this point how to dismantle the work that has been done.”

Of course, she was referring to the fact that if she betrayed the group she worked for, then there would only be greater problems for the three of us. On the other hand, if she went to the police, there was no damning evidence to support taking down that group she was involved with, as all of the evidence lead squarely to the two of us, and now the fisherman by association.

I paused for a moment to reflect what course of action might be most appropriate, when suddenly, a small sail caught the corner of my eye.

Another ship had apparently gone around the backside of Bastion and was now coming into view.

Ships in Laguna Veneta were frequent, but there had been no ships around, and now not only was one present, but it was headed straight for the island.

Something about the ship’s presence felt very wrong.

Just as I instinctively pulled Piper to the ground, a shot went off. One bullet, and then two more spat into the ground, kicking up dust and rocks as it buried its deadly force into Bastion.

“Head to the cover of the trees,” I commanded.

Piper’s father ran over toward us, to help get his daughter to safety, but didn’t manage to complete the journey.

“Dad!” Piper screamed, staring in horror at the fallen man.

Falling into the ground below, blood spilling our from the side of a hole in his neck, the man looked up helplessly at his daughter, seeking to view the only remaining love of his life for one more moment as an excessive flow of his own warmth seeped out from between his gnarled fingers.

Knowing that there was no time in the present moment to indulge in the grief of the tragedy, I literally yanked Piper from her position, and sprinted toward the cover of the trees — dragging her mourning, flailing body every step of the way.

When we got to the trees, she was still trying to crawl back out toward her father. I slammed her body back into the nearest tree trunk and stared her directly in the eyes.

“You need to focus right now,” I said. “Your father is dead, and there will be time to mourn, but now is not that time.”

My speech was truncated by the spray of another series of bullets. Each bullet pulled bark and wood from the nearby trees. The weapon used was clearly a high-powered rifle of some sort. Whoever was attacking, clearly had a very simple plan of execution — Eliminate Target, Recover Goods.

The obvious reality that there were no official police members on board the attacking ship went without question. Venice’s finest didn’t operate clandestine kill jobs via sailboat.

I knelt down to the ground and undid series of bags located within the pack. Finding the pistol, I unloaded the cartridge and checked to see how much ammunition was available. The officer I had stolen the weapon from made sure that the weapon was full. I wouldn’t need that many bullets if I could get a fair shot off, but it wasn’t going to be an easy confrontation.

Using what cover the trees provided, I launched into an attack, firing at the man in the boat, and making him dive into the water in order to take cover. One final blast through the pistol’s chamber sent a bullet to clip the man’s legs as he was retreating into the water. The leg twisted weirdly from the force, and I ran forward to finish him off.

Posting up on one of the octagonal lengths of Bastion, I looked to either side of the island, and then back down at the man. He had lost his rifle and was struggling to hold onto the edge of his wooden sailboat.

“Keep to the tree line, but look around the perimeter of the island,” I yelled, instructing Piper to make sure that there weren’t any other ships about.

The island was small, and within a few moments, she called out a signal that everything was clear.

I thought about shooting the man then and there and then decided to go through with it, knowing that his fate might be worse than death if Piper got around to seeing him. The man fell with my final shot, and his body floated limply in the water. Running over to the Fisherman’s body, I dragged him off toward the side of Bastion.

“Come over here and help me give your father a send-off,” I directed.

Piper was more than a bit rattled, but common sense was strong inside of her, and she was operating well on a minimal level of both survival and logic.

We both knew that if one found us here, it would be wise not to remain here for too long. Likely the assailant had some type of communication device, and would not be getting in touch with whoever had orchestrated the assault. However, I was confident that he would have reported a positive on the observation of the boats as soon as he arrived; any assassin would have done as much, particularly if the worked alone.

The two of us lifted the fisherman’s body into its final resting spot. He fell down into the water with a splash, and then slowly began to sink beneath the waves. I reasoned that our best option at this point would be to take the fishing boat, as it had a motor, and I believed there was more equipment available on board.

We boarded the vessel, and then pushed off from Bastion, headed back out into the Adriatic.

Neither of us spoke for a long while.

The silence was broken by an unearthly scream.

Turning around, I found Piper was kicking and beating the hell out of the side of the ship.

Her moment of shock had sustained her long enough to where we could find a secure place for her to break down. Now that we were in the middle of the sea, and out of immediate danger, I had to agree with her.

She couldn’t have picked a better spot.

After her outburst, she sat silently for a long while, staring off into the water and crying. The tears rolled down her eyes, and as though the environment itself was sympathetic to our cause, a light rain began to fall on from the overcast sky overhead.

I walked over to see how she was faring, but stopped only a few feet away from her, astonished.

Steam was literally rising off of her body in the rain, and she looked absolutely hellish. The amount of anger present in that woman was incredible, and I had nothing but understanding for where she was coming from. Personally, I hoped that she would stay there as long as possible.

“Hold onto that feeling,” I told her, ”but only long enough so that it will give you the strength necessary for you to do what needs to be done. Any longer, and it will start to eat at your heart like cancer.”

She turned to me quickly, as if to accuse me of speaking up about things that I knew nothing about, but I didn’t back down from her glare. There was no reason for her to be upset at me. She knew I had helped both of us out, and I knew that we had all shared in the responsibilities of the events that had come to pass. I was no more to blame than she, but in a sense, we were both irreparably tied to loss.

I wanted to say something more, to offer her some form of encouragement that would ease her mind, but then I stopped. Thinking that I could do anything at this point about her grief was nothing short of pride. The best thing for me to do was to safely navigate the ship toward a location where the two of us might know a moment of peace. At the moment, I didn’t know exactly where that was, but the unknown seemed like a safer bet than any of the places we had been previously.

I targeted our course for the center of the Adriatic and cut the engine so we proceeded forward at a drifting pace. We had nowhere to be, and I figured that I might as well pause for a moment to reflect.

She cried for a bit, staring out at the water, so I let her be. When she stopped, she came toward the ship’s navigation room, with a desperate and strange look in her eye.

“You as much a man as you seem?” she asked, leaning in toward me, and placing her hand on my cock.

Without pausing, she leaned in to kiss me. Her lips were chapped and puffy, but they felt good against my skin. Her eyes were red from crying and kept a careful eye on her, wondering just what she was all about.

“I need something to keep my mind busy,” she said, continuing to rub her palm against the front of my pants, “and I like it rough, do you understand?”

I nodded and pulled her top down so I could pinch her nipple. Then I wrapped my hand around her throat, while sticking my tongue down to meet her tongue. She opened her mouth for my fingers, and I slapped sharply on the face. She bit her tongue and nodded.

“That’s what I need right now,” she said, and she knelt down to unzip my pants.

My cock was already hard when she started to bob her head up and down on my penis. Her eyes were closed, and she was giving herself one hundred percent to the lust of the moment. I grabbed her by the back of the neck and shoved my cock down her throat.

“You’ll look at me when you suck my cock,” I demanded.

She nodded because my hand made her head nod. Then I gave her some more space, so she could have a bit of freedom to demonstrate her improvements. That didn’t last long because I found it was easier to hold her hand behind her back and shove my cock in between her lips. She kept coming toward me, with her mouth open, looking to kiss my body. I wanted her so badly, that I lifted her up off of the ground, and placed one of her legs over my shoulder. With her vagina right there for me, I began to clutch my body up against hers, while fucking the hell out of her.

She moaned incredibly loudly, and tears came down her eyes. I grabbed her by the roots of her hair, and she pleaded with me.

“Don’t stop,” she said. “Don’t you fucking stop.”

Maintaining my composure, I pushed her back down to the floor so I could get my hand firmly planted on the top of her head. My cock was wet with her saliva, and I pumped by dick in and out of her mouth as fast or slow as I saw fit.

Pulling her down on top of me next, I began to fuck her from behind, while she rode me in the referee position.

“Fuck… OH OH OH!” she moaned, as she twitched and convulsed on top of my cock.

The two of us took turns fucking each other. When I thrust into her, she couldn’t do anything but cry out in pleasure, and when she was busy fucking me, drove her into paralysis through repeatedly rubbing my fingers on her clit. She switched positions on me, giving me just the right opportunity to put her in a submission hold and spank her while I pumped my cock in and out of her body. I moved faster than any other time and gave everything that I had to fuck her.

Feeling the pressure of the moment, I decided to slow things down. I flipped her onto her back and pinned her body through a lifted leg. While pumping into her cunt once more, and holding a hand firmly on her neck, I watched her scream out for more.

“Is that all you got?” she cried. “Fucking be a man!”

Grabbing a hold of her hair, and shoving my fingers up against her clit, I began masturbating her furiously while fucking her so hard that her whole body shook with each thrust.

“You’re going to cum,” I instructed, “and you’re going to do it now.”

I dragged her across the floor and held her down by the legs while I slapped her ass and pumped two fingers into her. Executing another quick wrestling move, I wrapped my legs around her head and pinned her on top of my cock. My hand worked her clit until she sprayed all over the floor of the ship.

It was obvious that the ejaculation was exhausting for her, but I wanted to push her past her limit. We had both been pushed past our limits with everything that had happened lately, and I understood what she was after.

She wanted to numb the pain of her experience. She wanted to bury her own sadness underneath a spiked cocktail of pleasure and pain in sexuality. All of those taunts, and all of that begging for something rough.

You and I both know that this isn’t really rough, I thought to myself, while holding her head to the ground and pushing up with my hips into her mouth. What’s rough is what we’ve already been through.

She writhed with pleasure and agony while I shoved my cock as far down her throat as it could possibly go. While I was inside of her, I thought for a moment to pull out. I had lost myself, and was inside of her throat too long. When I started to pull out, her fingernails raked the back of my ass, as she shoved her head back onto my dick. The final thrust on her part was all I needed.

With a cry of my own, I grabbed a hold of her head with both legs and shoved myself into her. One wave of contracting muscles after another, caused a torrent of sperm to erupt from inside of me. Each stream shot directly down her throat. When she swallowed, I got caught in her musculature, and the suction elicited even an even stronger shot of cum.

By the time she was done, I had already been sucked dry, and my entire nervous system was shaking with the intensity of her attention.

I felt so calm, and I noticed a change in the way that she regarded me as well.

She didn’t stop sucking me off, but instead, she pulled more gently, and let her tongue wrap around the base of my cock. She gave my testicles some attention as well, though each movement of hers was at this point more like a thing of my body with her tongue, more than it was a reckless, manic shot into the darkness of human experience.

I actually crooned for her, losing track of my voice, as well as myself in response to her touch.

Without thinking, I leaned forward toward her asshole and began to lick her from her anus, all the way to her clit. The fervor was gone, but the careful attention to detail brought about by the post-orgasmic exhaustion was a more than welcome change of events.

My tongue found the remnants of her orgasm and tasted her juices. She was divine, and the combination of the way she tasted, and the way her tongue felt along the length of my shaft brought more blood back into my penis.

I was hopelessly aroused by her, and the tenderness that followed made me want to love her more; to love her in a different way.

Though both of our bodies were tired, we sucked on each other and allowed our bodies to press closely up against each other for the remainder of the next few hours. Orgasm, gave way to orgasm, gave way to unconsciousness, and eventually, I woke up to a dark sky — clouds blotting out the stars, and revealing only a luminous backdrop for a moon.

Taking the opportunity to get up and stretch, I left Piper on the floor, cuddled up in a ball next to me. My mind recalled the location of some blankets, and I grabbed every single one I could get. The weather was bearable, but I didn’t want to deal with bearable any longer. I didn’t want Piper to have to deal with bearable either. I wanted us to be able to get a good night’s sleep for once, and to me, that meant being fucking warm. I laid out more than a few wool blankets and made space in them for the two of us.

Lifting her up in her sleep, and setting her down again gently on the blanket, I put her to bed. Pulling several other layers of wool over our bodies, I laid down next to her, and stared at the place where the moon was peaking through the cloud cover.

Piper didn’t wake up, but she did roll over and cuddle up next to me. Her face was in my armpit while the two of us fell back asleep. I smiled, knowing that in that moment, I was experiencing something that would keep me warm for years to come.

That night instead of feeling the comfort of sleep, I found myself thrashing about through a nightmare. The situation was an abstract format of consequential behavior. Cause and effect. Fate. That sort of thing. Like one marble leading up toward other marbles on a playboard, I observed the consequences of my actions. In addition to the benefit of receiving a life review, I was also treated to brief reviews of conversations with Piper’s father.

His voice echoed through my mind throughout the course of the evening, and I found myself repeatedly heading toward the same points of conclusion. The essential message could be broken down as follows:

First, each time you have come into contact with a conflicted situation, you have pursued a solution which has been in line with your training.

Second, your training is valuable, but it is incomplete.

Three, make a decision to be the type of man who knows the value of life.

Four, complete your training.

Each point was reiterated in a different format at different parts of the dream, but the core message was there. When I woke up, the details of the dream seemed to fog over, and I was left with a single distilled sensation that my violence had not only been instrumental in increasing the suffering of others, but the very idea that I had killed while thinking I was solving problems was problematic.

What is the difference between me and them? I wondered, the relativism of the situation firmly entrenched in my psyche. They think that they are achieving some great good, or that their behaviors are justified, and I feel the same way. Yet, in spite of my efforts, no great good is ever achieved; only misery, loss, and sadness; only greater complications.

I turned over to see the woman who had chosen to come to me the night before. She had wanted me to own her. Rough sex was really just a desire to manifest the out of control feeling that we know from within the rest of life. We want to be able to experience that in the context of a safe space; I understood that. What I didn’t understand was how drastically my mind had shifted gears once we had orgasmed together.

I felt as though I had been possessed by a sort of sweetness. The desire to be tender toward her, and to really treasure the moment that we were able to share with one another became my sole focus. As I laid there and watched her sleep, I got the feeling that the two of us were going to be going through some difficult times ahead. In spite of the impending conflict, it felt right to have someone to face these troubles with; someone to take the edge off when things got too intense.

Seeing Piper handle the sailboat as she sailed up to Bastion was a remarkable thing for me. I was in awe, but it was because I had judged her. I thought she was nothing more than a punk girl, who thought it was cool to be involved with trafficking and dubious assholes like that guy who visited her apartment.

I shook my head while staring at her.

The guy could have been decent, once upon a time, but he didn’t seem that special to me. Seemed like a right piece of shit. What made matters worse, was that his face was somehow familiar. I knew I had seen someone with facial characteristics like that before. I couldn’t exactly place it, as he was wearing glasses, and I only caught a look at his cheekbones and his lips. Really, he could've been anybody.

I guess all that really matters is that soon enough that fucker is either going to be dead or we we’re going to flee the country, I thought.

There you go again, came a soft voice from inside of my head.

I paused in my reflections, in order to pay attention to what I was doing on a sub-conscious level. Then I realized what was going on.

Without even considering the ramifications of my dream, I had already been plotting to use violence to kill someone, and ‘solve’ another problem. The will to use violence against my enemies had become so entrenched in my personality that I didn’t even stop to question violent plans while they were in their conception phase.

How deep does this go? I thought, wondering what other activities went on in my mind. What other activities had become so rote that I pursued them, and formulated their execution without so much as the slightest consideration that I might be hurting myself.

Just make a commitment, I replied, trying to bring a solution to my own inner turmoil about the subject. Make a commitment that from here on out, you are not going to do any more killing; it’s not that hard, you just have to make a choice, and stick to it.

The words rang clearly in my mind, and I looked down at Piper.

She opened her eyes, blinked sleepily, and smiled at me. Closing her eyes then, she pulled the blankets up around her shoulder and went back to sleep. She looked so beautiful, and I nearly found myself wanting to cry, thinking that I had been instrumental in some way for the death of her father.

I nodded.

Never again, I swore. Tomorrow, we run.

When I woke up next to him, I was a bit shocked at first, but that feeling soon gave way to a slight sensation of peace and comfort.

He had fucked me well last night, and that was more than I could say about most men that I came across. Or rather, most men that came to me.

As a woman, I wasn’t exactly shy about my sexuality. I knew what sort of impact I could have on a man, and I wasn’t afraid to exercise that power in pursuit of a particular goal.

My brazen approach had gotten me in trouble a number of times, but last night was not one of those times. There was a roughness in this man, that I liked. I wanted to be handled every now and then, just because the rest of the world was too damn politically correct. What made things better was that after being rough with me, he had enough sensibility and care to show signs of tenderness in the wake of our passion.

I’m no expert, but in my book, that will keep me interested for a while.

I was still naked and caked with the smell of sex from the night before. When I snuggled up closer to him, I watched him gently open his eyes. He was still sleepy.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I started. “Your cock felt great last night, and I’m just trying to soak up whatever residual joy there might be in that body of yours.”

My words were dry, and my humor was full. There was enough mirth in my voice to give me a bit of calm, though my heart felt a deep sense of pain the moment my attention turned inward. I didn’t want to think about it, but I knew that fucking the pain away wasn’t a realistic option either. Eventually, the pain would creep into the sex, and then there would be no joy to be found anywhere.

Misery really is a destructive thing, if ignored. Fortunately, army boy here didn’t have any desire to play therapist. I was grateful for that. There was a sensitivity in his eyes, as though he knew what I was going through. More importantly, there was a pressure underneath his expression - here was a man with more things to think about than my emotional state.

Everybody loves support, but I’ve never been the type to appreciate uninvited involvement in the processing of my emotional distress.

Some guys can get up in your business like they are going to help you or something, and that honestly doesn’t always work. When I was younger, I may have fallen for something like that — these days, I know a human has to take care of themselves if they want to be of any use to another person; learned that one the hard way.

“So, how far have you taken your Dad’s ship before?” he stumbled over the word ‘dad’, like he thought for a moment it would be a bummer for him to say.

“You’re considerate,” I replied.

“Sorry, I know it’s a bit soon to be business as usu--”

“No,” I paused, stopping him in mid-sentence. “I meant it.”

I sat up and stretched, and then looked him in the eye. As things went, in my mind, I could have toppled him over then and there, and brought his dick into my mouth. The man was considerate, and capable. Honestly, there were few other prerequisites for me these days. Regardless, I opted to let him go with a pass.

“We’ve taken it around the inner sea, but nowhere far. I doubt it could get you in one piece to America. What did you have in mind?”

“Not sure, honestly,” he said. “I was just trying to figure out our options. There are a number of places we could go, but it would be difficult pretty much regardless of the destination. The primary concern I have is that I’m not sure how they tracked us to Bastion.”

I nodded, understanding his concern.

“I was thinking about that myself. They could have tracked me when I left the harbor.”

I bit my lip, thinking about the possibilities.

Just the thought that someone might have been there while I wasn’t looking, huddling behind some kind of crate or leaning up against some darkened corner. I had gotten more involved in this world of intrigue and disaster, but the idea that there were still so many people who had so much more investment and skills in the arts of deception — that made me shiver on the inside.

“I’m not sure I want skills like that…” I thought out loud.

“What’s that?” he asked, interested in what I was saying, and fully attentive.

I backed off, feeling undeserving of such attention. Some part inside of me was shying away from being aware of what had transpired between the two of us. Some childish, bullshit, infantile fantasy where I wasn’t good enough to be cared for — low self esteem will get you, and when it does, all you can do is remove yourself from the situation, and hope for the best.

“Look,” I said, trying to get a hold of myself. “My mind’s doing a lot right now, and I need a minute to clear my head before we get on this topic.”

He nodded, closing his eyes slightly. “Take your time, I’ll brainstorm a few of our options.”

With that, I headed out to the edge of the boat, wrapping my naked body in the worn blankets that we had slept under the night before. The wind was cool on my skin, but the blankets kept my core temperature where it needed to be.

Tears came down from my face, and were whipped dry by the short bursts of air that were brought up from the waves below. We had been moving at a slow pace throughout the evening - practically a crawl, and straight into the sea. Looking around, I couldn’t see any land. I wasn’t bothered though — there was no reason to be. We could turn any direction and it land within a day or so if we simply committed to a direction and moved that way. I thought for a moment, I’d be able to think of something. Rome.

I laughed to myself.

“We could always go to Rome,” I muttered.

There were reasons to go there, certainly, but at this point, every mental pathway I walked down ended up taking me right back to the exact place I didn’t want to be.

When I turned around to see what Tyler was doing, I saw that he was meticulously checking the cabin and the outside for something.

“What are you looking for?” I asked, after watching him for a moment. He didn’t reply at first, and instead continued in his work. Satisfied not to interrupt, and just watch him work, I sat and stared at him while he made a complete round of the boat. When he came up empty in his search, I looked at him expectantly.

“So, what did you find?”

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head bitterly, looking down at me.

I could tell he was frustrated, but there was something else happening in his eyes.

“Are you checking me out?” I asked, hardly believing what I was seeing.

He smiled in response.

“I like your outfit is all,” he said dismissively.

He could see my breasts between the covers of the sheets, and didn’t bother to hide the fact that his eyes were looking down at me, along the length of my entire body.

I snapped at him, trying to get his attention back to the task at hand. Not because I didn’t like being checked out, but because I was really curious about what he was doing on my dad’s ship.

“I was checking the ship for some kind of tracking device,” he said, his eyes scanning the surface of the ship now. “I’ve looked everywhere possible. Everywhere except for the hull underneath. I could dive in, but we’d have to stop the ship for a while, and that would take some time. Did you see anyone follow you while you left the dock?”

I shook my head.

“I thought about that too,” I said. “Hard to believe that someone could have been there and watched me without my knowledge. I don’t mean to be arrogant. It’s not that I don’t believe someone couldn’t sneak up on me. I’m not a spy or anything like that. I just didn’t expect that I’d ever be involved in something as devious as this.”

My fists clenched up at my sides, an unconscious expression of my anger. He noticed my fists curling around, and my nails digging into my side. Making a decision to let me be, he opted to relax instead of me. Another point of respect for the man. By my own will, and through a moment of lost patience, my fingers released their hold on my side.

There may be blood there, now, I thought to myself, my awareness coming back into my body. I took a deep breath and let my shoulders fall down, attempting to physically relax my body once more.

“They took something from you,” he said, “and that’s not something that you’re ever going to get back, but there was a lot more of that man that they will never be able to take from you. My suggestion would be to focus on that, and think about how you and I can find someplace safe to go.”

After he spoke, he moved closer to me and held my hand in his. He brought me close to his body, and we hugged one another. My body tensed in the reminder of the pleasures we had shared the night before. I allowed myself to relax and fall into him. I opened my blanket, and brought him close to my body so that he could touch my skin with his hands. He was warm against my cool skin, and I was grateful for his touch.

“All it takes to get a person locked inside of your head is for them to be there once when you really need them,” I said, kissing his shoulder with my lips.

The comment was more of a reflection of me than it was anything else. I knew well enough the effects of trauma on intimate relationships. Likely this was a temporary thing, but for what it was, I felt like it was good. He held me, by pressing his arms around me, and grinding his hips up against mine. He didn’t make any move to fuck me, though, at that point, I wouldn’t necessarily have turned him away; in fact, I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing that. Instead, he leaned in toward me and held his hands out on either side of my chin. Directing my face toward his, he asked me again to think carefully about the future.

“I’ll help you as much as I can,” he said, “and you don’t have to stay with me any longer than you like. I just think that for now, you might benefit from having me around. I think that I should hang out with you a while — at least until you are safe. Now think. Is there a place you could go? Is there anywhere you can go where they might not catch you?”

I shook my head. “I’ve been almost exclusively affiliated with Maurice for years now. It wasn’t always like this, but he showed me a world that was so much bigger than what I had imagined before. I let go of all of my previous relationships — well, almost all of them.”

My hand went instinctively toward the left side of my hair. I had still kept it, in spite of the wild love of the night before, was a hairpin gifted to me by Angela. The pin was of her own design and came complete with the best wishes that she could offer me. My fingers touched the small artifact, and I treasured it for a moment, as I treasured Angela. Of course, it was a little techie thing, but it was homemade, and that counted more than anything else. She had given me jewelry and a cell phone. Just hold onto these for me, she had said. This one is for good luck, and this one is for business.

I took a deep breath and let go of my memories.

“We don’t have many other choices,” I concluded. “I think our best bet would be to go to Rome. When my father first sent you to me, he told you that I had the ability to help you get out of the country.”

He nodded in acknowledgment and looked at me with intense eyes. I knew that I had his attention. I reached forward and placed my hand on his chest. The movement was impulsive and unabashedly instinctual. I let out another sigh and then resolved myself to the future that we had to face.

“I handled international business for Maurice through a third party contact,” I said. “This was a person who operated on a regular basis outside of the confines of the organization, though he did have regular contact with me. He and I got together once, though we never made anything of it. He was far too busy with his other mistresses to spend any quality time with me as a person. That was years ago. Beyond that time period, I’ve had a few incidental contact type situations with him, but mostly everything has been business related. The reason my dad knows about the experience at all is because I had to borrow a boat once to get to Rome overnight; not unlike what we’re doing now, except that those were very different, and less dire circumstances.”

“I’ll chart our course to Rome then,” he replied.

I laughed.

“You’ll chart our course,” I said, mocking him. “I didn’t know you were a sailor.”

“I’m not a sailor,” he replied. “I’m a SEAL.”

I raised my eyebrow at him and then patted him on the ass for fun.

“Well, that explains why last night was so good. You have a lot more stamina than the average Army Boy; I can tell you that much.”

“Glad you approve,” he grinned. “You weren’t so bad yourself.”

“Once we get there,” I started to say, offering to explain how we might go about the process of navigating the politics required to secure our forged documents — but I was cut off by his motion toward me.

He looked at me with a smile and his eyes, and I knew what he was looking for.

I smiled and licked my lips.

My hand reached forward toward his cock. I paused and then walked away from him slightly. I bent over the rail of the ship so that he could take a good look at my ass. He came over to approach me, and I was able to show him my shoulders and my lips.

My eyes were focused on seduction, and my lips unconsciously ached to have his cock inside of my mouth. When I started this whole seduction process only moments ago, I was thinking about how much I wanted him to want me. Now, with his hand on my breast, and my hand on his cock, all I think about was how much I wanted him.

I moved back-and-forth along his legs with the weight of my hand, just so I could get a sense of where he stood in context to where I stood. I backed off, but only so that he could have access to my breasts. I want to see him work for it. I wanted to see him move into me like I was the only person that he cared about.

They say that sex and love are selfish and altruistic, and as I lay down there kneeling in front of him on the deck of the ship, I could tell that the issue was more complex than egotism in contrast to altruism. There were full ranges of emotion and desire that had to be taken into consideration. Some of the desires seemed to balk when you looked at him in any other light than the fact that they simply existed, and you ought to respect them.

I made the first contact with his cock while bent over in front of him. The first touch was no more than a lick, the second I brought them into my mouth, and third, I pushed my lips three-fourths of the way down the length of the shaft. He was so willing and peacefully receptive. Though I was taking him inside of me, it was clear that he was the passive one in that moment. I appreciated his flexibility in the matter.

I used my nails to scratch gently at the base of the shaft, holding onto the top of his shaft with my hand. I found that when I scratched gently at his testicles, he grew incredibly hard. I loved driving in wild like that. While I scratched him with my nails gently, I would break up scratching motion with the firm lick from my mouth. I wanted him to feel hot, wet, and secure. Then I want him to feel tense and full of agitated desire.

Giving a blowjob is not unlike casting a spell. I put my hands together in prayer position and worked up and down his huge cock. On my hands to send it on the shaft, my tongue moved in forward and when they rose up, my mouth came off of his head. I moved my hands to either side accentuating the motion with my wrists and my elbows so that I twisted his cock while I sucked it. He was totally and completely engorged. Even the most sensitive movements of my tongue on the tip of his dick brought a gasp of pleasure from his face.

He looks so beautiful. The tip of his cock, and about halfway down the shaft was red with blood flow. He was smooth, and he tasted wonderful. I want him to know how dedicated I was taken, so I gave him my head. I bounced on the length of his cock, rubbing it and twisting it with the hand well totally enjoying myself.

One of the most enjoyable things was playing around with a sense of pressure. I formed my fingers into an O-ring and pressed down on the head of his cock. All the while, I was scratching and petting pulling at his testicles. I was squatted in front of him, and he was leaning back on the central cabin of the boat. His back kept sliding down, because while I was sucking him off, he had very little control over his emotions. I wanted him to know what it felt like to give himself to me entirely, but this time, I wanted to be the one who is initiating.

I pushed down on his cock until the tip of his penis pressed up against the back of my throat. I wanted him to get a sense of exactly how far down he could go inside of me before I had to push and open to accommodate him.

The head of his cock was so tense. I pressed it on my lips, and then give him a break, only stroking him with my fingers, while my head traveled down lower between his legs to suck on his testicles. I focused on one testicle at a time and then moved forward again with a little bit of wrist action. I smiled while I sucked him off. I was like a woman with a toy, and all of the seriousness of the experience was gone.

"I'm just going to enjoy myself," I said smiling.

He reached forward and played with my tits, while I pressed on the head of his cock. I was giving him a pretty consistent hand job, interrupted only by periodically bringing his cock into my mouth. This whole time, I hadn't even flashed him my cunt.

That had to change.

Spreading my legs in front of him, guided his cock towards my vagina. He entered me, as I stared up at him. I looked so eager, and it's because I was. I spread my vulva for him, and he was able to see exactly how ready I was for his cock. I was wet, and we didn't need any lubrication to get going. He was fucking me on his knees, and I was on my hands and feet, pumping my body in towards him.

Sometimes, while making love, I feel the need to look my partner deep into the eyes, and connect with their soul. Other times I want nothing more than to objectify them, and pursue my own personal pleasure. I can't say that this time was anymore one than the other, as I shifted my focus freely between turning Tyler into a piece of meat for my satisfaction, and smiling up at him, appreciating the fact that the two of us were able to share this together.

"Oh," I moaned. "rub my clit while you fuck me? Yeah, you gonna fuck me like that, you gonna let me take your cock?"

I had given up on holding myself up with my hands and chose instead to lay back on the deck while Tyler fucked me. As he pushed his cock and me, my tits moved around in a circular motion. Felt like I was a battery, getting charged by his penis. The sexual charge was incredible, and I could feel it buzzing at the length of my spine. I licked my lips and held his hand when he reached out to grab my breast.

His cock was inside of me, but I wanted more.

I pulled his finger in towards my mouth and realized that I needed to have his cock inside of my mouth again. I pushed him off of me and got down in front of him as he stood up. I wanted to taste my juices on his cock. There is nothing more erotic than tasting my own cunt on the body of a man like Tyler. I felt like it was a mark. I felt like I had claimed him, and that the pleasure of taking my own taste into my mouth was a psychological reaffirmation of the fact that he was mine.

I wove my fingers together so that I could trap and press down on the length of his cock. With greater speed than ever before, I pulled and pressed down on his cock, following each stroke with an open mouth, and an eager heart. I smiled at him and gave him all of the fury of my affection.

Next, Tyler lay on the ground, smiling at me.

"You like it when I take charge?" I asked.

He only smiled in response.

I knew that he liked seeing me like this. Most men don't want to be dominant all the time; at least the well-developed ones don't want to be dominant all the time. A good man wants to know that his partner is his equal in every respect. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

I could've started fucking him again right there. Instead, I brought him close to my vagina and began rubbing the head of his cock on the inside of my slit. I press the head of his cock up against my clit, and then pushed him back down again. Each time he pressed into me, he almost entered me. The tension was delicious.

Eventually, it was more than I could handle myself, and that's when I decided to take him inside of me again. This time, on my hands and knees once more, my motion was up and down on the length of his cock. I had a free hand available to spread my cunt so that he could see what he was getting into. I pinched my tit, and grit my teeth well he reached his hand out to push my clit against his thumb.

"That a boy," I encouraged, my teeth clenched in pleasure.

I leaned up on them so that I can balance on his thigh. I became intensely fascinated with my labia, and how they would wrap around his shaft. I looked down at the way the two of us came together well he stroked my hair. I liked watching him disappear inside of me. There was a visual appeal to the fact that I knew I was taking part of such a powerful man, and bring them inside of my body again and again.

If I had been a whore, I would've been great at my job. Fortunately for a man like Tyler, I wasn't a whore - even though I had all of the skills of a woman who knows her way around the sexual field. Fortunately for me, I knew how to serve a man, while ultimately serving myself.

I grit my teeth and breathed in heavily while staring at the open sky above the sea. As the two of us fucked, I listened to the sound of the ocean pushing on the bottom of the boat. The two of us fell into a rhythmic pattern which matched the rhythm of the waves. All of a sudden, we didn't have to try as hard. Things felt Tantric, as the two of us felt like our sex was simply an expression of the larger ocean. It was an emotional component to this transcendent, sexual reality also. I felt expensive and totally relaxed. If anything, syncing up with the waves like that was more than just a way to save energy. It was also a way to feel connected to something larger than myself. It was a way to let go of some of the pain that I have been experiencing, while indulging in an ecstasy that overflowed my emotional reality.

I moaned, while staring into the sky.

If someone had been there, anyone at all, there's no doubt in my mind that they've been turned on. They probably would've wanted to join, or they had been fortunate enough to have a partner with them, they would've probably started to fuck in the same manner as we had. The way that we were getting together was an inspiration compared to the majority of the other heterosexual fucking that I have experienced during the course of my life. Once you go transcendental, it's hard I would imagine going back.

Naturally, there's a time and a place for everything, but in that particular moment, I felt absolutely divine.

I continued to push myself down on top of him, indulging in the feeling of being filled up on the inside. There were ripples of a building orgasm just stored up inside of my core. I slowed down, even more than before, and lost sync with the ocean. His cock popped out from the inside of me, and I seized the opportunity to take him into my mouth once more.

I'm so fucking addicted to you, I thought, holding my hair back so he could watch me go down on his cock.

His hand reached out to grab my breast once more, and I smiled at him while popping the head of his dick out from my mouth. I gave his sack bit of a massage, and then experimentally flicked the head of his cock with my tongue.

“You stay hard for a while," I said, staring at his cock more than his eyes.

To give him a little something to look at, I turned around and showed off my asshole and my pussy. I squatted down to fuck him once more, but this time, I turned the other direction. I knew that he liked my asshole, and I wanted him to be inside of me. This time, I thought we might do it with a little class, and have some more classic sex before building and the kinkier stuff. That didn't stop me from spreading my cheeks so that he could have a feast in his eyes while staring at my asshole.

When you are a woman you have to think that every part of your body is absolutely beautiful and desired. The truth is that to your man, that is absolutely the case.

I wasn't working him with my vagina for longer than a couple of minutes before he started pushing his thumb against my asshole. The tides had changed, in a figurative sense. I got off with him, squatting in front of him and feeling absolutely wild.

There's something about being touched in the ass that brings out my more feral side. It's like all of the rules have gone away, and I'm free to simply be myself.

I squatted in front of him, well massaging his cock up and down with both hands. I used my own pussy juice for lubrication. I was soaking wet, so that was easy enough. Next, I raised myself up over him and placed the head of his cock at the entrance to my asshole.

I was tight, but with a little bit of effort and some bouncing, I was able to slowly lower myself onto him. At first, only the head of his cock made it inside of me. As a matter of fact, he didn't go that much further right away. I wasn't in any rush. I spread my lips so that he could see the inside of my pussy while my asshole worked slowly down the length of his cock. Eventually, I was able to take his entire shaft.

While he was entirely inside of me, I took a gasp and appreciated the change in the scenery. Having something in my ass brings an entirely different change to the way that I see reality. Having Tyler's cock in my ass magnifies that sensation a hundred times.

I wanted to talk dirty to him, I wanted to do anything, but all I could do was lean back and thrust myself down onto him. I spread my labia wide so that he could see my pink sex while my asshole greedily devoured his cock.

"You know I can't get enough of you," I leaned in and whispered toward him.

My hips never stopped moving, and I had no desire to quit. Once I had inside of me like this, I wanted to work him until he came. I wanted him to explode inside of my asshole, and this time, I was determined to make that happen.

I pushed forward on to him, until I was able to sit on his thighs, and slowly raise and lower his cock in and out of my asshole. I moved to high and he popped out of me once more. I thought to bring him back inside of me, but I was out of breath and overwhelmed from between his two muscular thighs. I got a chance to take a look at his beautiful asshole for a moment, then he pushed his cock down into my mouth. In no way that I hesitate, eagerly, I began bobbing my head up and down below his cock. I was able to open my throat more naturally from this angle, and I freely took him inside of me and brought him back out again.

"I want to ride on top of you," he said.

I could see the hunger in his eyes, and so I turned around and lay down. He got on top of me, and I held my breast together for him well he shoved his dick between my cleavage. There was a burn on my chest, but it felt so good to have him next to me. I felt like he was fucking straight into my heart. The feeling was incredible because I wanted him to be as close to me as possible. I reached out my tongue, eager to get a taste of him, and then I think he realized that my mouth was a lot more fun than my tits.

Like I was performing cardio at the gym, I did sit-ups on his cock. I opened my mouth for him and smiled, feeling that he was about to burst. I opened my mouth wide and prayed that every single drop of sperm inside of his body would be deposited inside of me. One squared after another rushed into my mouth, and I felt the warmth of the fruit of his body inside of me.

I felt the taste of him bringing a life and energy to my brain. Getting a shot of Tyler's come was like drinking from the fountain of youth. After showing him that I had brought all of his come into my mouth, and swallowing so he knew that I had taken him completely, I smiled and gently sucked on the head of his cock until he collapsed to the side of me in exhaustion.

The two of us were covered in the sweat and dirt of our fuck session, and that’s when I got an idea.

“Fuck it,” I said, “we’re here, and we don’t have anywhere to be. Why not go for a swim?”

Even though he was in recovery, the mention of going into the water brought a bit of life back to him. I got up and brought the boat to a coast, and then the two of us dove into the water.

As the two of us swam together in the water, we found a bit of refreshment after our rigorous lovemaking.

“You really know how to fuck a girl,” I said, spraying water at him with a flourish of my hand.

The boat drifted slowly next to us, and I laughed while he dove under water to tackle me, and bring the warmth of his lips next to my sex. Horsing around like that made the rest of life seem a bit more bearable. There was really no major problem in those few moments. It didn’t really matter that we had just been through trauma. We had found the delight in one another’s company, and that was just enough to make things feel alright.

Tyler kissed, and then proceeded to spray water in my face from his own powerful arms. The two of us chased each other throughout the water. I, having grown up the daughter of a fisherman had the ability to swim better than most. However, I soon found out that I was nothing compared to the athletic prowess of a SEAL. It didn’t seem to matter that I had already drained his cock dry not a half hour before that.

“You know, most men don’t have the kind of stamina that comes so easily to you,” I said, slowing down our chase to give him a sincere compliment.

“It’s a mixed bag,” he said.

“Looks pretty damn positive from where I’m sitting.

“You would say that. You’re well fucked, and still alive.”

That last one hurt, just a bit.

It’s easy enough to share a rough time with someone, and exchange words that are meant to be playful. Unfortunately, when two people are damaged, even in the slightest — which is the case for most people — the words that are used in jest can be hurtful.

A person may not mean to say anything difficult for another person to manage, but the reality of the situation is that when we share ourselves, and we have difficulties that have yet to be processed, there are issues that come up that both people must deal with.

At that time, unbeknownst to me, I had already given Tyler my fair share of baggage to deal with; I don’t think I could have helped it anyway. Understanding that Tyler felt the weight of the lives he had taken made sense on a logical level, but that was the first time that I had been given the insight necessary to understand how he had been affected on an emotional level.

I thought about when I had accidentally shot that man who worked for Maurice.

Could I do it? I wondered, lost in an ethical reverie.

I thought about how they killed my dad, and a surge of rage welled up within me, I actually grew dizzy, and started to cry. Tyler noticed something was wrong, and came over to me to make sure that I didn’t drown. He grabbed me by the armpits and hauled me to the rope we had dangled out of the boat so I could relax on his broad shoulders while the pain of the moment overtook me.

“I miss him so much,” I cried, losing myself in the emotions.

The rage had been too much to handle, and setting the anger next to the feeling of disgust and sadness caused by nearly being responsible for the death of that man had pushed me into a place of despair. There was empathy, sure, but the empathy gave way to hopelessness.

“What do you do,” I asked, “when you know something is wrong, and you have to live with the fact that another person did that wrong thing to you?”

The words were blubbery, and sounded garbled coming out of my mouth, but I knew he understood. In spite of his comprehension, he didn’t respond.

How could he respond, I thought to myself, shaking my head. He’s a soldier, he’s made that choice long ago.

“I guess some people can do it, and some people can’t,” I muttered, letting go of him, and drifting back into the water.

He looked behind me, to make sure I wasn’t trying to off myself, and then climbed up the rope toward the deck of the ship. I admired his strong muscles as they helped navigate his body up the edge of the ship. He was naked, and his whole body seemed to glisten in the sunlight and salt-water; every perfectly sculpted muscle.

“Stop being such a baby,” I scolded myself, deciding to take a dive down deep into the water.

What happened next was astonishing, and uncomfortable.

Just as I went down, a whole school of fish swam by, dizzying my mind in a swirl of colors and emotions. The light from the high noon sun reflected off of their iridescent scales, and for a moment I was free. Feeling the beauty of the moment seemed to relieve the burden of pain from my mind.

These fish have suffered losses, the experience seemed to say, and yet they don’t seem to suffer too much. In spite of everything, they continue forward in life.

The feeling of transcendental elation lasted only a few moments, and then a sinking feeling of dread began to saturate in my body. I felt, somewhat immediately, that I needed to get out of the water, and that we needed to move. There was something behind us, and I felt danger. A vision passed through my head like blood in the water, and anxiety began to overwhelm me. With a firm resolution to get the fuck out of there, I began swimming toward the boat.

Tyler noticed the increase in the pace of my movements and looked over the edge of the small vessel in order to check up on me.

“Piper,” he called, “Are you alright?”

I didn’t respond. Instead of taking the time necessary to evaluate my situation, I continued to operate in a fight or flight mode. Steady, capable arms — arms that had been raised by a fisherman grabbed the rope which lead up the side of the ship’s hull. I planted my feet on the side of the ship and then began to walk myself up the edge of the boat. I hauled myself over the side of the ship and looked behind me.

“Move!” I commanded. “We have to move!”

Black shapes were on the horizon, in the direction which I intuitively believed to be Venice. I felt in my heart that they were coming after us and that if we had any chance of escaping, this time, we needed to vacate our current position and fast. Ideally, by means of another ship, but we didn’t exactly have that luxury.

“We need to get to Rome,” I concluded. “What’s the nearest port city?”

I looked at him, hoping he had been able to piece together more substantial information than I would have been able to guess.

“If we cut due west, we will be able to hit Ancona. Shouldn’t be any more than forty minutes, maybe less if we haul.”

I nodded, doing some quick calculations in my head.

“We’ll chart a course to San Benedetto del Tronto, but we’re going to head in along the coast.”

“All roads lead to Rome, I suppose,” he replied, evidencing his confusion as to why we wouldn’t simply head straight for Ancona. “Is something wrong?”

“You and I are going to jump when we get about a mile and a half outside of Civitanova Marche, unless you think it would be better to jump sooner. I think we’re being followed.”

My intuition ended up being uncomfortably accurate.

Over the next hour, I watched as the object in the distance began to steadily gain on us in speed. It went from a dark object at a great distance, to a series of fast approaching ships, which could have been scouted with binoculars had they been any closer.

There was a part of me that felt I was absolutely crazy, and that I was just being paranoid. I didn’t like the feeling that I was getting inside of me, and I didn’t like the too fresh memory of what they did to my dad. Without knowing how they tracked me to Bastion, I couldn’t afford to take that risk.

“We’re ditching the boat,” I said, “Get ready to dive.”

We had to ditch out early and ended up floating in on the tide into a quaint little beach town named Fontespina. The boat continued past the Civitanova Marche Pier, and headed forward, unmanned toward a town called Pedaso. There was an unpopulated strip of land there along Strada Statale Adriatica — the major thoroughfare which marked that section of the coast. I could only hope that the ship would crash into the shoals and that anybody with good sense would see the ship and stay the hell out of its way.

As Tyler and I bodysurfed the tides in toward Fontespina, I felt a slight bit of relief that my impulsiveness would at least accomplish one thing if nothing else — a small piece of history which tied myself to the tragedy of a time now past would sink into the Adriatic, where it belonged.

Tyler stole a tourist’s car that was parked alongside the boardwalk, and the two of us drove down the highway, through the mountains, toward Rome — a regular couple of troublemakers if ever there was one. I took deep breaths throughout that highway journey, attempting to find my center, but failing. It seemed like the anxiety in my chest was so tight that I might not be able to find a way out from underneath my worries.

Decisive actions like we were taking could only lead to long term problems if there were not some sort of escape plan. I held onto the hope that when we reached my contact in Rome, he would have enough sympathy for my situation to help me out. If he didn’t… well, I didn’t know what we might have to do.

We met Antonio at his office later that evening. I knew that he never went home early, so I thought it might be a good enough time to head in his direction. The thing about Antonio is that you have to let him know you aren’t trying to fuck him over, and you have to let him know that you appreciate what he’s doing for you.

“Just so you know, I think we’re both aware of exactly how dangerous this is,” was about the second thing he said to the two of us, right after “Jesus fuck!”

After his explicative about the fornication of Christ, he proceeded to pull a gun on the two of us.

Tyler had closed the distance between the two of them like a trained dog and had him on the floor with the gun dismantled into separate pieces. After that point, it took a minute to bring him back from the land of fear and silence, at which point he quickly regained both his composure, as well as his business acumen.

“So, we’re going to have to talk about payment,” was the third thing he said. “I know you and I go way back, and I’m sorry to hear about your dad, but I just can’t let something like this go for nothing. This is how I make my living, you understand.”

I nodded and held a restraining hand out toward Tyler’s chest.

That man was so eager to fuck shit up, it seemed as though he had reached his peak of stress operation some time ago, and was now ready to smash or steal anything necessary to get toward whatever his goal was. I also felt a strange sense of protective nature coming from him — which was natural, I think, given h is temperament. There was something magnetic and powerful about that emotional force though. I didn’t doubt that the combination of our stressful experiences and the killer fucking that we had been doing over the last week had something to do with the connection.

Antonio ended up settling for half of the contents of the backpack. He put up a bit of a fuss in the beginning, but I could tell it was a ruse from the outset.

“How the fuck did you get this?” he asked, only to cut himself off, “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. It’s probably better if I don’t know.”

He accepted the goods, without too much more hassle. He actually tried to get more, but we told him that was all we had, and that he could take it or leave it. He tried to argue for something else, but I told him I had nothing, and when he looked into my eyes, he knew that I was correct. I was totally fucked, and this was a final movement.

The passports themselves were not so big of a deal. We could have ripped off the place and gotten the raw materials. It was the passwords to Antonio’s encrypted file system that were the real trouble. Even Angela wouldn’t have been able to manage that kind of security in any reasonable amount of time. The man was a paranoid, who basically thought that he was about to be betrayed by every single person he ran across.

Once the passwords were entered, and the passports were printed, Tyler and I had shiny new identities that would serve well enough to get us wherever we needed to go. Antonio may have been a bit of an irredeemable scumbag, but he was good at what he did; an honest estimation would be that there was no one more suited for the job; which is, unfortunately, the exact reason why it turned out we were unable to trust him.

One thing my father always told me that I’ll have to try not to forget is that people don’t see the world as it is, but as they are. It was an old quote from a mystic, and though I don’t recall whom the original source was, my father was mystical enough in my mind to be able to successfully pull something like that off. In my mind, he was the one who said it, and the next series of events only served as a testament to the fact that I should have paid that man a bit more attention while he was still breathing, and on this earth.

That fucker — Antonio.

The one who thinks that everyone around him is trying to fuck him over. He gave me a fucking awful feeling, right before we left his place. That kind of Judas Iscariot level, impending doom, absence of connectivity. I felt cold around him, like a person who was being sentenced to death. Sure he smiled goodbye, but it rang hollow. I couldn’t tell if I was hollow, or it was just him, but the absence of ease stayed with me as we got back into the car and drove away.

We were only about two miles away when Tyler verified my suspicions.

“We’ve got a tail,” he said, grimly.

“That’s not possible,” I said in disbelief. “ How did they find us so quickly?”

“Don’t be naïve.”

His tone wasn’t accusatory or even upset in any way. He was admonishing me for being too trusting of a pre-existing social network.

Everything that happened came back to me, and I realized my folly in going to Antonio. We didn’t have much of a choice. If we wanted to feel the country we could either do it as illegal aliens, and continuously be under the gun of local law enforcement, or we could go semi-legit and forge the papers necessary to keep our heads above water.

Without Antonio, I had no idea how we would have managed to secure those documents. Initially, I didn’t understand why he would let them go, if he wasn’t planning on having us make it out of the area without being captured or killed. Then I realized that it all probably made perfect sense.

“Antonio was just protecting his own ass,” I muttered, feeling so frustrated that I actually punched the dashboard of the car. My knuckles hurt, and I was far too upset.

“God,” I said, feeling incredibly frustrated, “You’d think that I’d be able to score a break or something.”

“That’s just negative self-talk,” Tyler said, interrupting me.

“Who the fuck are you,” I asked indignantly, and focusing my rage on anyone — the nearest object that could feel the wrath and bitterness that was flowing inside of my body. “Some fucking daytime television host, here to tell me what is and isn’t…”

He slapped me.

It didn’t hurt because he didn’t put his whole weight into it, but it was hard enough to bring me back into the present moment. The sting on my cheek reminded me of the reason that I was here in the first place. I was hurt, and we were trying to get out of this together.

“I resent you for hitting me,” I told him, saying the first thing that came to my mind.

“When we were fucking you wanted me to choke you,” he said, “so I thought maybe a little slap to bring some sense into you might not be such an unwarranted thing. Do you know how to fire a gun?”

“What?” I asked, still stunned.

“The last time you fired a gun, you were aiming at me, and you shot your bosses friend. I just need to know if that was a fluke, or if I really can’t trust you with a gun.”

His voice was frustrated, but earnest.

He was picking up speed and turning corners more sharply than not.

“I can handle a gun. I was just scared.”

“Well, I need you to not be scared right now,” he said, speaking loudly so I could hear his voice over the roar of the engine.

I turned around quickly to take note of what he was already aware of.

Two motorcycles and a car were chasing after us; matching us in speed and agility through the hairpin turns of the southwest quarter. In addition to that, a black and white had picked up on the chase, effectively pushing us past all reasonable chance of escape.

“Maybe we should just pull over,” I said. “The police would probab--”

“Get the gun out of the glove compartment, and when I say, I want you to fire on the windshield of the car behind us.”

He was headed full speed in a wild area known as Riserva Statale Tenuta di Castelporziano. Our car spat up dust on the road and hugged every turn. Gunshots went off behind us, and I saw the police car flip over its hood and end up in a ditch. The motorcyclists were having the easiest time of the chase and came right up alongside our rear tail once.

Tyler slammed on the brakes and skidded into a turn. The way he handled a car was a rush, but things got all too real when I felt a huge object slam into our car and flip over the hood. The gunning sound of the closest motorcycle blasted through my chest as the rider was thrown from the vehicle and into a field of tall grass ten meters away.

The other motorcycle managed to swerve off the trail, while the car was approaching fast for a head on collision. With expert timing, Tyler pulled back and swung the car around to the side of the road and down into a ditch. Instead of fighting the decline, Tyler rode with it, and the car got to the bottom of the dirt siding of the road and was able to gain speed once more.

The ocean was nearing, and there was only one car and a motorbike in pursuit. We blasted out of the natural area and onto the main highway, launching up the berm of the side of the highway as we did. The launch caught the motorcyclist off guard, causing him to abandon his bike and fall into a slide on the hard asphalt.

The car, on the other hand, was not so easy to lose. They kept pace with us the entire way. Each time a new threat arrived, they managed to evade in just the right way; balancing pursuit with negotiation, and safety with aggression. When a speed trap was raised, there was little need for the police to respond in any way because no law enforcement professional was going to get in the way of this car and its prey - us.

“This time, they’re professionals,” Tyler said, gritting his teeth as he fishtailed around the side of a cliff.

The sea was approaching on our right-hand side, and we were wrapping quickly around the edges of the coastal highway. The two cars cruised down a major hill, and we accelerated all throughout the descent.

“Get ready,” he said, grabbing my shoulder. “When we head up the road on the other side of this hill, I want you to unload that clip at the windshield!”

Simultaneously, Tyler released the convertible top of the car, which immediately popped off from the vehicle and flew behind at the car following. Our car wasn’t exactly free from the direction change either, and Tyler had to do some quick sliding maneuvers to get the car under control. In spite of the difficulties, I managed to sit up and ready myself with the weapon aimed at the car behind us.

“NOW!” he yelled, as the car was accelerating up the hill in front of us.

I could feel the dip in the pit of my stomach as the g-force of the hill, however slight, had its effect on my body.

Not pausing to think, and trusting my aim, I let loose the entire clip of the pistol at the windshield of the car behind us. My attack was signaled by a series of brief, staccato bursts. The gun was much louder than I had initially anticipated. Moving forward at that moment, things start to become unclear.

I remember us accelerating up over the berm of the hill, and I remember Tyler leaning over behind me to grab the door of the car. All at once, when we reached the top of the hill, he swung the car far out in a fishtail that almost brought the car off the edge of the cliff.

“HOLD THIS!” he shouted, as he pushed the bag hard into my chest.

The force of the push, in combination with the location of the car and the open window, was a sequence of events that propelled me backward through the air, and right out of the safety of the car door.

Everything happened in slow motion from that point. The car, as well as Tyler’s face, was clear to me as I fell backward through the air. I felt an incredible sense of confusion and pain, wondering if he had betrayed me, and why.

That question, ‘Why?’ was the strongest thing in my mind as I fell from the top of an ocean cliff into the Tyrrhenian Sea. My moment of reflection and confusion passed, as the car recovered its speed, and screeched away along the outer edge of the cliff. I fell at such a fast rate that I didn’t even see the next car coming behind Tyler. I heard the next car, though. I heard them screech past, hot in pursuit of their prey. Then a wall of water hit me in the back, forcing all of the oxygen from my body.

Falling off of a cliff into the ocean is not an easy thing to do. I could have died easily. In fact, when my back hit the water, and I lost all of my breath, I thought I was going to die. My body sank into the ocean, and when I was down near the bottom, my eyes opened, and a spark of life came to me. The spark was the smallest, most subtle suggestion at first.

“Air?” it asked; almost politely like it was going to give me a moment to collect my bearings and realize that I wasn’t exactly finished. “Air please.”

I moved one limb at first, and the another, and then I realized that though I felt a sharp, stinging pain throughout my entire back — I could still move. My next state of awareness centered on the fact that my lungs ached, and were completely vacant. Looking up from below the surface of the water, the whole world seemed to be one expansive aquatic illusion.

“Air,” it said, more firmly.

The question was gone from the tone of the voice. My survival instinct was becoming more urgent. I felt the panic rise inside of me and began to swim upward from the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Coast. With an explosion of light and a long drink of beautiful, incredible oxygen, I realized that I was alone.

“Bag,” the voice said, and I looked instinctively to my left to see the bag was partially floating on the surface of the water, about four meters to the left.

I swam over to recover the bag and then made my way to a shallow cavern hidden beneath the cliffs above.

In spite of the fall, I still retained all of my ability to move. The rocks were not far away, and there was a bit of difficulty in dealing with the waves as they splashed into the small cavern. Looking up at the face of the cliff, I was terrified and surprised that I had been able to survive the fall. I count myself to be relatively brave, in terms of dealing with situations that others most typically prefer to avoid, but this cliff face was a bit too much to manage.

Had I been on the top of the cliff, I’m not sure I would have been able to jump, even if my life had been threatened. Quite literally, I had to be thrown off a cliff by a man who for some reason believed that whatever fate waited for me at the bottom was preferable to whatever fate he was looking forward to at the end of the car chase.

He must have been desperate, I thought.

I would have blamed him entirely, and pinned him as a sociopath, but sociopaths don’t offer you a bag full of everything needed to start a new life when they throw you off of a cliff — they just get the deed over with and move on to the next empathetically void course of behavior that they are compelled toward.

The rocks were hard on my ass, and I had a few scrapes from where the tide pushed me toward the rocks, and then pulled me back down into the water. The edges of the lower cliffs were mossy and slick, so it was a bit difficult for me to find a place to relax, but the alcove was deep enough to offer a small place to sit, and just high enough to where the tide didn’t splash inside.

Sitting on hard ground after being in the ocean was a pleasing sensation for me. Just the knowledge that the word was over, and that I was sad, if only for a moment — that was good enough.

I thought about my circumstance some more and began to feel an increasing sense of relief. In fact, I had been so bogged down by problems before, that I had not even noticed the increasing weight of the anxiety I had been carrying around. The way that things had been going, just getting laid, and finding solutions to immediate, urgent problems had been exciting pieces of joy. Now that I was here I took an inventory of whatever was going on outside of my current situation.

The two motorcyclists were gone, and Tyler had led the final car away from the edge of the cliff. Even if they found Tyler at the end, and he wasn’t able to get away, they wouldn’t have any idea where I had been abandoned. By the time they figured out to look, I’d be long gone. Their trail would have gone cold.

I didn’t need to visit Antonio any longer.

I opened the bag and found that everything had been quick, though effectively wrapped in plastic, and was mostly airtight. The passports were there, both mine and Tyler’s. Not taking him into consideration, I had all of the paperwork necessary to go basically wherever I wanted. I knew from working with Antonio before that his passports were basically as good as gold. He was the best in the industry. What made things even better was that I didn’t have to worry about whether or not my escape would be predicated on meeting up with anyone else that I knew from my time with Maurice.

Of course, there were the drugs.

I know. I haven’t explicitly mentioned them before now — but that’s what’s been in the bag if you haven’t pieced that together already. Without going into the details I can tell you that I’m not proud to have been involved, but I’m not too proud to find a quick distributor and get the fuck out of Italy. That was where things got a bit hairy.

My previous calculations would have been wrong then. I would have to go with someone I knew from Maurice’s syndicate.

Fuck, I can’t fucking escape — every little thing pulls me back.

I considered whether or not to just ditch the drugs altogether.

Yea, I could just beg, or be a stowaway. That might be a bit easier to do than risk another run-in with Maurice.

I paused my reflections for a moment, and allowed myself to feel a sense of relief — to really just sit in it, and breathe. Sure I was soaking wet, but I had everything I needed to go somewhere new. Somewhere far, far away.

India perhaps. I might be able to go to India and start a small business. At least the exchange rate would be favorable. I could probably leave out of Barcelona.

And so my thoughts went, weaving together theoretical scenarios about my many possible futures. All in all, I had been gifted a fresh start. I was sick to death of the area anyway.

“That's it for me,” I told myself, leaning back against the rocks, and listening to the rhythmic crash of the waves. “No way I’m going back to that life.”

I made solemn promises to myself so that I would be able to move forward and know that I would never stoop down to the level of working with someone like Maurice ever again. A lot of times, people who got caught up in bad business ended up staying there — not because they loved it, but because they had grown used to it, and didn’t have another way out.

Sure, there were other ways out; there were always options. Anyone who told themselves they didn’t have any options was either a fool or someone who had problems with being honest with themselves. The worst part about someone who isn’t honest with themselves is that usually they are the last person to be aware of that fact. Information has to practically reach out and smack a person in the face for them to realize what they are doing, and what needs to change. In spite of the fact that people have the capacity to be incredibly dense, the clues which lead up to that moment of transformation are plentiful, and subtle.

I was almost sure of my course of action until my hands inevitably found their way back toward Tyler’s passport picture. The name was fake, but the picture was real. He looked so handsome and strong. I thought about everything that he and I had gone through, and I actually began to cry. One tear lead into another, until the salt from my face was mixing in with the incoming tide of the sea. I thought about Tyler, and I thought about my dad. I thought about the life that I had worked so hard to build for myself in Venice, and I thought about how difficult it would be to start over from scratch.

All of the momentum from my glorious moment of bravado washed away, and I sat there feeling sorry for myself. In my mind’s eye, I amounted to little more than a half-drowned rat who had been thrown off from the top of a cliff, only to be forgotten and pushed away by whatever shitty little social constructs managed to designate themselves as a society.

A rat can fall from an airplane and hit the ground without dying. The terminal velocity of their bodies is too low to actually crush them. For entertainment’s sake, or perhaps for empathy, think about how it might feel to be a rat who has been thrown out of an airplane. You’d have a hell of a time finding anyone that you could trust again after that. Not to mention that it would hurt like nothing else you might ever experience in life.

So what if you stayed alive.

Being alive is only useful if you have someone you can share the time with, and if you have some place constructive to devote your energies. I had pissed away my previous opportunities to devote my energies in a more positive direction. The fruits of those decisions were demonstrated all around me.

As for having someone to spend my time with — the only person I had spent any time with recently who hadn’t fucked me over somehow, was Angela.

Excluding double entendre.

Angela, I thought to myself, feeling a sudden surge of inspiration.

I thrust Tyler’s passport back into the plastic bag and rooted around until I found the object I was looking for. Within another closed bag, was a small, pre-pay, cellphone — a gift from Angela, because she knew that I would be headed into some trouble, and I never have a phone on me.

“Next time you can be a fucking gentleman, and call me before you come over,” she had said when she handed me the phone; offering me a wink and a nod.

I opened up the phone and turned it on. For one terrible moment, I thought that the battery might have been fucked up somehow in the water, but the bag had done its work, and the phone was alive. It buzzed, and shook in the palm of my hand as the phone activated and connected to its network.

I watched as the phone connected, wondering what I was expecting to happen. I realized at that moment that more than anything else, I just wanted someone to talk to. I wanted a familiar voice to give a shit about who I was as a person, and take care of me, even if it was just to listen, and talk to me about what was happening in their lives.

Angela was that person for me — there was no question about it.

The phone found its service, and I dialed in the number Angela had set aside for emergency contact. She knew her way around the phone system, and as such, she knew exactly how vulnerable it was to have a phone hooked up to the regular phone system. She had managed to set up a private line, which she maintained was, “As secure as the president’s own emergency phone.”

Naturally, I didn’t believe her, but if this was the number she wanted me to call, that was fine with me.

The phone rang and rang again. I let out a long sigh, imagining that I would sit here on this rock face all day while Angela took her sweet time answering the phone. Then, my bitterness was promptly truncated.

"Piper?" a voice came through on the other end of the line."

How did you know it was me," I asked.

"I told you this was a private line," she replied. "That's pretty selfish of you, Piper. I blow your mind with three orgasms in a row after you come over to my house uninvited. Then you’re off to get yourself into all kinds of trouble which you expect me to help you out with, and then you don't even take it seriously when I tell you that the gift that I gave you the private line. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been up working on this shit on your behalf?“

"Gosh," I said, "I guess I should apologize.”

"Well, seems like you have a lot of time to apologize since I don't hear any police cars around you."

"What are you talking about? How did you know about the police cars?"

"Well, it's not like I'm psychic or anything, but I have been spying on you pretty hard-core since you left. Nobody rocks my world like that and then gets a free pass. I've basically diverted all efforts towards stalking you until you figured out what the fuck you're gonna do about your boss."

“Don’t call him that," I said, feeling more than a little bit unnerved by the fact that I used to call that man my boss. "If I had a chance, I'd kill that man."

"Well, I can provide you with that opportunity. At this very moment, I’m working on how to find him, though I'm sure you probably have a more than a few ideas in your head about what that might be. What I suppose you don't know, is how you can take him out, and get away with it."

"Angela," I said, feeling a bit startled. "I had no idea how dark you were."

"It's not so much an issue of darkness, as it is the efficiency of justice. I did a bit of digging, and I only have one question for you. Is your father still alive?"

"No," I replied, joking about the word. "How did you know?"

"Simple process of elimination, and putting my nose where it didn't belong. Are you comfortable enough getting close to your previous boss?"

"Close enough to kill him?"

"Yes," she said with simplicity in her voice. “You'll have to be close enough to kill him in order to do what you need to do."

"And what is it that I need to do?" I asked, willing to hear her thoughts on the matter.

"You need to elicit a confession. As for the details of how you're going to go about doing that, that's going to be up to you."

I paused in our conversation for a moment to think about the consequences of this course of action. On a certain level, it resonated with me, because not only did I want justice for my father's death, but I was certain that if Tyler was alive, and still in the area, he would know that that was where I would go.

He would know that I would know that I would be drawn to take revenge for my father. The pressures which were moving toward this manifestation of behavior were at the base of my psyche — I knew that much was certain. However, there is only so much time that I could spend fooling myself into thinking that I could just walk away from all of this and feel alright about my behavior. When it comes right down to it, I'm a fighter.

"Are you in?" she asked.

I nodded. "I'm in.”

“Good, just hold off for a bit and I'll text you the location. Your holiday in the Tyrrhenian Sea is over. Besides, I thought you told me that your dad never liked that place much anyways.”

“I can’t believe you remembered,” I laughed, “Yea. ‘If my soul is in Laguna Veneta, then Tyrrhenia must be hell’ was what he always used to say.”

“Good man. I’ve always been partial to this area anyways. And don’t go fooling yourself, thinking that I’ve been too busy to pay attention to you all of these years. I haven’t exactly been stalking you as hardcore as I have been lately, but I think you’ll agree that there have been some extenuating circumstances which have validated that course of behavior.”

I laughed again, not able to control myself. It felt wonderful to laugh, and I was pleased to be talking to a friend again. A warmth lit up my insides, and I prayed that it would stay there long enough to do what needed to be done.

“I’ve enjoyed spending time with you ever since we first met,” she continued, sensing that this banter was putting me at ease. “Sure, I’ve been preoccupied with some experiments, and sure you’ve made some bad decisions…”

“Hey!” I interjected, even though I knew she was right.

“What!?” she said, in mock amazement. “How many times did you let that fucker stick his cock inside of you, only to have him murder your fucking father?”

That one hit home hard.

I was silent for a moment, allowing the question to sink in a bit deeper. My father used to tell me that the things which make us give pause, or the things that we are most easily offended by are the things we need to pay the most attention to. Only by paying attention to that which we would prefer to shun away, do we experience anything that could be called growth.

“You OK?” Angela replied. “Did that one go too far?”

“No,” I sniffed, “It’s alright. I know what I have to do now, thanks.”

“Love you, hun,” she said, after a brief pause of her own. “Let’s go on a trip when this is all over. I’ll make you cum all over the sand on some private beach. Sound nice?”

I laughed once more.

“Yea, I’ll see you there,” I said, and then hung up the phone.

I have to admit that I felt a twinge of doubt when I threw her out of the car.

Things were happening really fast, and I had planned on dong something like that since the start if the chase got dicey. I knew that it was just a matter of time before the car behind us was firing on us with the same fervor as they had fired on the police.

We were no longer dealing with minor thugs, there was a problem that was getting larger — evidence obvious because Maurice was allocating more resources to securing what was he felt he needed.

I didn’t have time to think about what that might be. In any case, it would only be speculation at best. In the moment, I was barreling down the highway, inches from launching a car over the cliff into the coastal waters below. I fucking had to pray that she didn’t hit any rocks. I took a look at the coast during the dip and saw that there was no sand. The cliffs looked like prime jumping locations, and I figured a risky drop was worth a hundred missed bullets. I suppose when you’re choosing priorities for people, you don’t want to be too presumptive.

To tell you the truth, I didn’t choose that for her exclusively. I had my own reasons as well. I knew where this was headed, and I had made a promise to myself. I was going to honor the time-worn prohibition on murder. I had killed enough in my life, and I didn’t want to start again.

Not for anything.

As I regained control of the vehicle, a flash of fear passed through my vision. I saw Piper’s body hitting the rocks below the cliff. I thought about the terrible consequences of my behavior.

“Possible consequences,” I reminded myself.

It was also possible that I had taken the only course of action which ensured that she would not be caught within this fight; a fight that I was intentionally going to throw.

At least she’ll have a fighting chance, I thought, consoling myself.

I had to move on, and reassert a zen-like control over the way in which I drove the car. If I had any hope of transforming this into an opportunity for Piper, I had to drag out the chase as long as possible. Ideally, I would get in some more police trouble, and possibly bring these combatants down using the local police authorities. I set my jaw, and glad down the road, taking in a thousand different variables each moment. In order to make this work, I would need to give my all to the chase; only then could I be sure that I gave this my best shot.

The car was gaining on me, which was in a sense, desirable.

At least they fell for it, I thought, taking joy in what little success I could find.

My vehicle simply was not made for this type of experience. I had chosen well, it was a convertible sedan — a relatively new model. The tires were in fine condition, and there was enough fuel to make it as far as I needed to go. High-speed car chases don’t tend to run cross country.

The car was smaller than most cars, which gave it a bit of advantage in maneuverability, as well as initial acceleration. What it did not have, compared to the people who were chasing me, was potential for top speed. These people had resources, and likely this car was specially designated for jobs that required awareness and highly technical road maneuvering. These folks were equipped to manage what I was throwing at them, but I had to keep trying.

I chose the coastal route for two possibilities.

First, was the possibility that there might be a safe place to ditch Piper. I had actually thought I might be able to ditch her in the nature preserve, as there would likely be ample places for her to hide there, but the chase had been too dense, and that was no longer an option.

Second, the only other reason to choose both the nature preserve and the coast is that both places are predominantly sculpted in the face of a dominant force of nature.

You can’t really ask an ocean to move, in order for you to build a road through it. You can build a bridge, or you can build a cove. Either construct takes massive resources, which means the most likely possibility is a thin stretch of highway, full of hairpin turns. The same routine logic can be applied to forests, except that the reasoning is because of the innumerable amount of trees and hills which make straight shot construction cost prohibitive.

Because I did not have the advantage of a vehicle that was endowed with top speed, I needed to be able to diminish their ability to utilize that asset. Quick turns, and drifting hundred and eighty-degree fishtails characterized my driving approach. I had hoped that there would be less of an absence of police officers, but I had never explored this region of the coast. In fact, I had no memory of spending time in Italy at all.

Every new turn was a sign that I needed to be completely aware of the next tenth of a second. My consciousness was literally at the razors edge. I had to intuitively guess how much to compensate for in my drifting in order to maintain maximum speed, while still effectively taking the turn. Another hope in the back of my mind was that I might be able to drive so wild, and so on edge, that I drove the car behind me to make a mistake.

I was praying that they would make a mistake and that they might be the first car to launch off the side of the cliff, or run sideways into the mountain — bringing an avalanche of rocks down onto their hood. Anything might have been preferable to the persistent, and incredible matching of whatever luck was able to bring my way. No civilization in sight and these fuckers were still gaining on me.

Professionals… I thought, then I smiled and licked my lips. About time.

Taking another sudden turn that nearly threw me into a cobblestone sign advertising the brand of a local neighborhood, I veered back toward the civilized community. The types of houses that surrounded me were sleepy, suburban, coastal units. Places with small streets and big grass areas. The people in these parts obviously appreciated nature more than luxury, because the size of the homes was relatively small compared to the apparent size of the lots.

As I sped forward, I noticed that there were more houses, the more inland I moved. I felt a push on the left side of my rear bumper and had to turn hard to the right to avoid being throw in a spiral. The two of us skidded in a lock for a moment and then broke free once again. Things were getting more dangerous, though I still had one more reason to gain confidence — In spite of everything, they had not yet shot me.

I figured that had to indicate that they were going for a capture. If they were simply trying to eliminate the threat, then there were other ways that they could have accomplished that feat. They could have set up snipers in a road block at the end of strategic sections of road. They could have used explosives, or high-powered weaponry to decimate the vehicle or me. They could have done a lot of things, but the fact that they obviously had instructions to take me alive gave me the only other edge in the game that I felt I had left.

Now I had more reasons than ever to play my boldest cards.

The streets were growing more narrow and had begun to transfer back into unpaved roads in some of the neighboring sections. I was growing more and more uncomfortable, as signs of the area being densely populated began to surface. People were hiding, scared in the doorways of their houses, or diving out of the way as the two of us sped down the street. We had attracted the attention of at least one more member of the local law enforcement, but this was some form of strange rural sub-division, and they didn’t have the resources to manage a situation like this.

Sure, they would call in, and more equipped members of nearby municipalities would be en route. Unfortunately, the nearest area that had access to that level of transportation power were likely a solid fifteen minutes away, on the outskirts of South West Rome.

The engine was starting to lose power as the tires were not equipped to ride on the dirt roads. The persistent bumping from behind only made matters worse. I was hardly able to make any headway because I was constantly fending off attacks from behind. They knew what they were doing, and had placed me in a primarily reactive position instead of a position where I could claim a creative advantage. I saw a bridge over a low river coming up in the road and decided to make one more desperate motion toward a non-reactive position.

The ascent of the bridge was met with my pedal fully depressed to the floor. I hadn’t reached maximal acceleration yet, but I was getting there, and whatever I could put together would have to do. At the base of the wooden bridge, I modified my direction a few degrees to the left in a slight skid. I was hoping to make it seem like the dirt road had taken a toll on my ability to remain in control. I wanted to feign failure so they would be overconfident and push to make their final move.

The feint worked, and I heard them rushing in for another hit from behind. I had shown them my ass, and they were eager to fuck; far too eager for their own good. Instead of correcting, which would have been necessary to continue forward on the bridge, and would have slowed me down enough to where they most certainly would have made contact with my tail and pushed me into a roll — I drove straight off the apex of the bridge.

The materials for the bridge were wooden, and I wouldn’t have been able to manage this feat otherwise. The wood snapped and exploded around me, some of it actually came up and broke the windshield of my car. Wood and glass sprayed across my face, though I had the foresight to cover my eyes with the crook of my elbow right before impact. I was being reckless, I know, but I hoped that I might have enough acceleration to stick the landing on the other side of the creek, and move onto the country roads which permitted me to play to my strengths in the chase.

Had I made the same attempt while headed straight, I would have been in the same position my assailants were in at the moment, only with fewer pieces of wood breaking through their windshield. They had been unprepared for my maneuver, and given the momentum they had built before attempting to ram the back of me, they were forced to head straight over to the end of the bridge. While they were wildly skidding on the dirt, attempting to change directions, I was actively testing the tensile strength of the shocks in my little roadster.

I smiled, exhilarated, and feeling a renewed sense of hope. The speed had been enough to propel the vehicle forward over the water. While I had landed on the uneven ground near the edge of the river, I had enough momentum behind me to push the car past the final berm which led down to the shore of the waterway. I too bumped and skidded, though the angle of my trajectory was such that I needed far less correction in order to regain my speed on the road perpendicular to the bridge.

“FUCK YEA!” I screamed, pounding my hand down on the steering wheeling, and jamming my foot onto the floor.

That had worked out better than I expected.

I’d like to pause for a moment here in my reverie, and share with you an object of my most sincere hatred.

If there is one thing that I hope never to see here in the country of Italy — one thing besides the ghost of a dead dictator, or perhaps some kind of demon-spawned straight from the catacombs beneath the Vatican — it would be a goat.

Up until that particular moment, just one or two turns after my landing, I didn’t feel so strongly about goats, and then I did. I have a feeling that sensation is going to stick with me as long as I live, which at this point, I’m not sure is going to be too much farther in the future.

I’d like to introduce this scenic moment to you by playing a bit of an imaginative scene in your mind.

Imagine you are driving down a country road, being chased by bloodthirsty bandits, and you just imagined that you were able to make your escape last a bit longer than you would have otherwise hoped for — Your vehicle is not doing amazingly but is holding out well enough under the circumstances. What’s more, is that you have temporarily felt the soaring heights of elation, as you pulled some particularly clever move out of your ass, and now felt like you had a prayer at moving things in your favor.

Now imagine the eyes of a goat.

In fact, there’s very little reason for you to imagine just one set of eyes because the reality of the situation is that there are at least twenty of those soulless, unholy fuckers staring you down from the center of the road. Their bodies are spread out like a scatterplot diagram, and there is no way for you to maneuver between them. They literally stretch, unapologetically from the river to the prairie just to the north of the river. There is no way around them, and what’s worse is that you have very little time to decide what you want to do about the vehicle you’re in, and how you may or may not protect your body from the impending pain of a direct collision with two or three, three hundred pound animals. To paint this picture just a little more clearly — imagine they have horns, and imagine they are refusing to budge, or get spooked. They have literally frozen in time, right in front of your path.

Now, the reality of the situation is that the moment where they were frozen in time was not terribly long. They eventually did move, but only after I careened off the side of the road and knocked my forehead into the steering wheel.

Right about that point, I imagine the goats were scared shitless and ran away, but in that crucial moment, when I had to decide whether or not I wanted to hit the river, or hit the goats — they remained either frozen in terror or agents of my personal impending apocalypse.

I’m going to bet on the latter, though you’re free to come to your own conclusions.

I recall the pain of being caught outside of the vehicle. Initially, the only pain I felt was gracefully not present in my body. The pain itself had transferred into disturbed visual and aural phenomenon. My head felt injured, and there was blood on my hand when I reached up to touch my forehead. The sounds around me were muted, and strange hallucinatory distortions came into my brain. I thought, for a moment, that I heard someone telling me something, but when I listened closer, the sound ran away from my awareness. The sound was there, but the meaning was absent.

Lights flashed in my vision, and the actual details of the environment around me were lost. I remember the cold feeling of rushing water, and I remember my head going under. By impulse, I pulled myself up once more, though I was only able to bring myself up once before falling back down to the current. The water wasn’t particularly wide, but my strength was failing me. I was certain that I would drown, then and there, somewhere in the Italian countryside — the haunting cause of my undoing, and the final vision in my mind before unconsciousness:

The haunting, double slits of an animal whose place in society was to indulge human beings in their desire for Ricotta.

Right about then, everything went dark. My body began to grow cold, and I felt a strange sense of peace wash over me.

You did it, I thought. You saved the girl, and didn’t kill anyone — not even a goat.

Some small, non-visible part of myself was proud for a moment, and I allowed myself to think that there might be some hope for me in judgment. I may have been a trained murderer, but at least the cheese supply for the countryside just south of Rome could enjoy a total absence of interruption.

Death smirk.

Then something awful happened, something even more terrifying than the eyes of the goat.

I retched water and began to cough. I tried to look around, but all I found was darkness. I had a sack placed over my head, and my wrists were bound behind my back. The hum of the car was underneath my body, and my face bounced along the bristly fabric of the trunk.

I was alive, that much was evident, but I had no idea at what the cost. All because of a goddamned goat, here I was, being cast into the wilderness for the sins of the people.

It’s only appropriate, I thought, waiting for whatever the hell happened to be in store for me at the end of the trip.

God fucking damn it, this is ridiculous, was a phrase that I found myself repeating over and over that week.

I lost interest in all of my projects at the same time after Piper came over that week. Sure, I fucked the hell out of her, and whenever I start up a sexual relationship like that, my life gets a bit screwy. There is generally a great moment of personal victory — a type of ego boost if you will, knowing that the outside world has validated me in some way, and finds me to be attractive and interesting.

I know very well that this sort of behavior smacks of codependency, and that I shouldn’t validate myself based on the perceptions of others, regardless if they are long time friends or not. Knowing something, and being able to act on it are entirely different things.

In spite of the fact that I have the mind of a genius - or perhaps because of it — I don’t have quite as strongly developed an emotional level of maturity. Strictly speaking, I mean the ability to independently navigate my life, while still being within the context of a relationship and not actually being swallowed whole by the damn thing.

In this particular case, it was better that I was obsessed, because my attention to detail in the most extreme form ended up being a source of salvation for the object of my desire. In my own mind, I ended up avoiding the consequences of behaving like a stalker, because everything ended up being incredibly useful. In effect, I had the same form of confirmation bias as the NSA. I laughed as I reviewed the nearly endless files that may have been tangentially related to Piper’s former boss.

She owes me a fucking orgasm, I swore to myself, trying to make myself feel better about the fact that I had not slept properly in days.

If I had some kind of lab bitch to do this work for me, that would have been preferable, but unfortunately, no such person was around. I suppose that is the whole concept of slavery, and autonomy. I had to be my own lab bitch, for better or worse. The only perky sex treats I would get from my lab bitch were exclusively masturbatory, and unfortunately far too predictable to be of any interest at all. I tried to put all of that behind me, and simply analyze the data.

The most difficult part of the whole thing was the initial finding of Maurice. I literally had to go through the police database, as well as the private cellular database. Piper’s history ended up being the best link I had to the man, but they had been pretty discrete about their relationship, and their methods of communication were mostly clandestine and personal.

The trail went dead cold far too many times for that route to be productive, at which point I was basically trolling for silver fishes in an ocean of data and not getting much of anything that was worth any value. What ended up working out was the cell phone I had given to Piper.

Naturally, I had modified the phone so that tit could be easily used as a tracking device. I wanted it to ping back to me her location, as well as be a potential source for her to call me if need be. I knew that she was an independent type of person, but there was no way for me to know whether or not she was going to be in enough trouble to where she would reach out to me once more. I had to be open to that possibility.

As a precautionary measure, I also had a RFID tag placed in the hairpin I gave her. I was going to tell her about it in a week or so if it turned out that she didn’t need the help any longer. Keeping those things that close to your head can be s somewhat of a problem. I didn’t want her to get cancer, but I needed to have some way of tracking whether or not police signals were active in her area.

By ‘in her area’, I mean literally, about her specifically.

The mechanics of the process are a bit complicated, so let’s just say that the hairpin was my failsafe, and the phone was my primary hardware installation. Like a fucking tool, she hadn’t contacted me until she was in trouble, which meant that her phone hadn’t been turned on the whole time.

This is why I was swimming around in the dark as long as I had been.

Sure, I knew roughly of her location, but there is only so much you can do with a RFID chip of that size, in terms of programming capacity. Also, when I gifted her the piece, I had been in somewhat of a hurry. You can’t really make complex spy equipment like that on the fly. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the ones that are the most practical — even if they lack in diverse functionality.

I picked up a series of long-standing pings around the RFID about twelve minutes before Piper finally turned on her fucking phone and called me. She’s lucky, that I was around, and not going out for a walk or taking a nap. When you’re stalking someone, apparently, you don’t have time to rest for a minute, otherwise, you might miss out on your crucial opportunity, and then where would you be?

Nowhere. Fucking nowhere, and with nothing to do but acknowledge that you had wasted all of your time and resources only to be jerking off when you needed to be present the most.

I followed the brief flurry of police exchanges and pieced together the chase as thoroughly as possible. It was a bit exciting, but my job was far from over. Even while Piper was talking to me, I was only giving her part of my attention. I had to use the remainder of my attention to focus on where her boyfriend was headed.

You got to hand it to a man who can throw a woman out of a moving car, off of the edge of a cliff in order to save her life. That takes some serious audacity.

Wouldn’t mind sucking that one off, I thought, indulging in the lewd train of thought just long enough to where I could focus back on the task at hand.

As far as I was aware, the chase was over. My project, on the other hand, had seamlessly transferred over into the tracking of a new secondary target — Tyler.

Police activity here in Venice had been up in arms searching for Maurice, and everything I had been made aware of indicated that they had looked far and wide, but had not, in fact, managed to pick up on anything. They had gone through Piper’s apartment, and I spent a solid two days in an anxiety ridden panic, thinking my entire operation would have been compromised in the event that they had found some evidence which linked Piper to myself. I opted not to sleep, and instead, decided to stay up doing surveillance on the local police dept. At all hours of the night. It was pretty ridiculous, but fortunately, nothing turned up yet.

In a stroke of peripheral luck, I managed to track down the cell numbers of a few possible leads that were in the immediate area consistently during the Rome police chase. These numbers crossed reference with at least one consistent number that was currently located in Corsica. I would have bet anything that this was where Maurice was spending his time, but I wanted to know for sure. After running the content retrieval systems, I was able to capture a few glimpses into the transcripts between the phone numbers around the police chase, and the number in Corsica. The only relevant information I was able to pull was that the number in Corsica, “wanted the soldier alive,” and to know “Where is the girl?”

Apart from those direct comments, the conversation was stilted in mercenary code or unfruitful in general. Tracing the coordinates on the number in Corsica was the easy part. I had the location down from the onset — the real challenge was discovering whether or not it was Maurice. In order to get that up and going, I had to do a bit of backtracking, which ended up taking more time than I would have preferred.

I went into Maurice’s private file on a database where — let’s just say I should have stayed away from.

I managed to find some recorded voice clips from a court case that he had attended when he was a younger, and supposedly less careful man. Locating voice recognition software was a pain in the ass — Not exactly something you can just pirate from the Internet. However, when I got everything up and running, and fed the sample from the phone through with the sample from the court recording, the software came back with an 87% likelihood of identification.

I guess a few years, and a few more cigarettes could have accounted for the difference.

When I felt confident enough in the fact that I had a lock on where Maurice was, I forwarded the information to Piper via text.

“Corsica,” she replied, calling me back to verify.

“Yep,” I said, not really having anything more to share with her on the subject.

My brain was officially fried, and I felt like if I didn’t succumb to a nap sooner than later, I was going to fall asleep right on my basement floor. I had done that before during another manically obsessive episode of surveillance, and I have to say that though my equipment is top notch, the fuck room upstairs is so much more preferable.

“Damn, Corsica,” she said. “I knew that he had accounts which lead over there, but I had no idea tha--”

“Listen, hun. Everything you need to know is in the text, and to be honest, there isn’t much more that I can do to help you at this point. I’ve been up for about fifty-two hours straight, and if I don’t get to sleep soon, I won’t be able to differentiate between alien contact, and your next phone call — ya dig?”

She laughed at me.

I was grateful.

Sometimes, it's hard to tell people that you love them, but you need to fuck off for a while. The truth of the matter is that love goes a long way, but when you don’t have sleep, your body and mind will probably give out before your compassion.

“So, I’ll just try and capture some intel?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Do it like we talked about, and everything is going to be ok. I’m going to set the system up on auto-pilot over here, and get unconscious. I’ll probably be gone for ten hours or so. I’ll catch you when this is all over.”

Knowing that I truly had done everything within my power to help her out, I finally allowed myself to stumble up the stairs and head to my crash room.

God I hope she knows what she’s doing, I thought, second-guessing whether or not I had done the right thing in providing her with the information necessary to put her life in more danger.

I knew that what she was going to do was incredibly dangerous. I also knew that if she didn’t take the risks necessary to bring this to a conclusion, she would probably be haunted by that information for the rest of her life. For most people, I wouldn’t have gone out on a limb and made that sort of impact on them. I would have simply opted to stay neutral, and allow them to determine the course of their own fate.

When you involve yourself in the destiny of another person, there is a strange amount of interdependent responsibility present, due to your participation. All of the sudden, your words seem like they have more power and influence than usual. The question of, “What if I'm wrong?” rings out clearly in your head.

I had to do my best to sigh and let my shoulders fall down. At this point, the only thing keeping me awake was the tension in my body from being overworked and anxiety ridden. I needed to close this anxiety out and accept the fact that I did what I could because I loved her. The recognition that my actions had indeed been out of love brought my heart to ease. It was as though the knowledge that I had acted out of compassion had set my conscience right, and as a result, given me permission to let some of that tension and anxiety dissipate.

I didn’t bother to change my clothes or even cover myself completely with the blankets. I was literally delirious with fatigue. After feeling my muscles and bones melt into the floor below me, I closed my eyes and let out a deep breath of resignation.

Your court now, girl, I thought, and then I was dead to the world.

At a certain point, you have to stop fooling around and move forward in the direction that seems unpleasant.

Most of the time, we have opportunities to take action, and we can opt for divertive approaches to our behavior. We see an obstacle, and we can head in a different direction. Evasive maneuvers like this are often a sign of attempting to protect ourselves. Well, I had come to the conclusion that with my dad gone, and with Tyler gone — with my home gone, and all of my security threatened, there wasn’t much left to protect.

I felt like there was no more need for any evasive maneuvers. I would head straight into the heart of the problem, and see if anything could be salvaged. I would bring myself and an antibody, or a martyr for the sake of diffusing a situation that had gotten far too out of control.

Laughing to myself, I packed up the bag and made sure that everything was watertight once more. There was a bitterness in my tone, and tears in my eyes. As strange as it might seem, I actually felt a great deal of freedom in the resignation toward my fate.

I had no great responsibilities outside of myself, and I was free to make anything of my life that I wanted. If this was the start of the last decisions I would make, then so be it.

At least you had a good run, I told myself, zipping up the bag, and looking down into the water at the base of the stone inlet.

The tide had risen, and though much of my exposed skin had dried off significantly, my ass was still wet due to the spray of the water below. I timed the tides so that I would dive into the water as soon as the wave third crest had passed. Once in the water, I began to swim north. If I was to head to Corsica, I would need a boat.

I didn’t have a very specific idea of where I was, as I hadn’t spent much time in this area before. However, I was vaguely aware of the geography and knew that there were a few coastal towns located just outside of Rome. After making gym way up the lonesome coast, I ended up arriving at Ostia.

There wasn’t much to say about the town. It was small and actually reminded me of a Lido, except within the context of the rural coast. Lido was more dense with its population, and therefore, even though the Lido was full of poor fishermen in certain areas of the coast, there were quite a few of them. Here in Ostia, there were significantly fewer fishermen, in terms of density, but in terms of socio-economic strata, they appeared to be one in the same. As such, I felt at ease, like I was coming home.

My shoulders lowered, and I walked a bit more confidently amongst the coastal shacks that reminded me so much of my father’s place. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for at the time, but I knew it wasn’t going to be something obvious.

In order to legitimately pay for a boat, I would have to transfer some of the drug materials I had into cold hard cash. One doesn’t exactly make a deal like that in broad daylight, without any kind of prior acquaintance. Alternatively, I could work for someone, sleep with someone, or steal a boat. Of all of the options, stealing a boat sounded like the best decision. I was in a hurry and didn’t really have time to stick around and clean someone’s garage for a couple of days. Even then, there was no guarantee that whomever I worked for would trust me enough to let me take a boat out to Corsica and then potentially return it at some later date.

I could have taken the ferry, had the hour not been so late, but the last ferry to leave the area was already gone. If I wanted to stick around until tomorrow and sweet talk my way on board as a stowaway — I guess that was an option as well. I just wanted to get going and take care of this tonight.

I had resolved to steal a boat and had picked a certain number of possibilities during my stroll along the docks. I stuck to the areas where there appeared to be multiple boats that belonged to the same owner. I didn’t want to be a financial burden to someone, but I also didn’t want the person to be too well off. If people were too well off, they generally didn’t hesitate to call the police. Whereas, someone who was a bit downtrodden might have more of a lag time between when the boat was stolen, and when the call was made.

My dad, for example, once had his boat stolen. It was a smaller boat, and it turned out that it was an old friend of his who had borrowed it in the evening time. The next day the man returned the boat and gave my dad a bit of a cut from whatever he had borrowed the boat for. A classic example of taking action first, and asking for forgiveness at a later date. Had my dad been more of a tight ass he might have given the cops a call, and his friend might have gotten in trouble. Not to mention, I don’t think my dad had to work as hard for the next two months, due to that little mishap.

Sometimes, when we relax a bit on what is considered ‘our personal property’, things end up working out for us in the end. I could only hope that the person who I borrowed the ship from would feel the same about my little evening adventure. I found my mark eventually, and instead of walking around like a blatant fool just outside of the dock area, I made sure that I dove straight for the goal, and jumped onboard the ship as soon as I walked by during my second pass.

My body hit the floor of the boat with a thunk, and the ship sank with my weight.

It was a small ding — a sailboat named “Veloce”. The ship was old, and couldn’t have been more than a hobby boat for someone. The paint was chipped, and it sat low on the dock, well beneath the shadow of another, more highly functional fishing vessel. Neither of them indicated that the owner was particularly well off, except for the fact that he managed to have two ships to his name.

I say “He,” because there were pin-ups plastered on the inside cupboards of the ships. Either I was dealing with a middle aged lesbian who caught fish for a living [not impossible, and probably would have been a delight to speak with], or I was dealing with someone who was I would guess in their mid-forties, looking a bit gruffer and sea-worthy than your average Roman Metro male.

The sales themselves were stained tan and showed signs of age. The name was barely legible, along the side of the boat, worn from both sun and weather. In spite of the condition of the ship’s appearance, the ropes were new, and I could tell that the person who owned the boat did what they could to maintain its functionality.

This will do fine, I told myself, holding onto the central mast, and beginning to undo the ropes.

“Don’t suppose you were going to ask before you took that out for at ride?” a gruff man spoke from overhead to my right.

I looked up, shocked, and immediately my pupils dilated in fear.

I relaxed when I saw that the man was unarmed, and had simply been staring at me from the edge of the fishing boat. I calmed myself and looked up at the man.

His expression was a bit less than pleased, but he didn’t look particularly angry — just disappointed, and a bit peeved. As though he had expected more out of the world a while ago, and had been consistently proven that those expectations were not realistic.

“I’ll give ya a minute to explain yourself before I call the cops,” he said, “though to be honest, if you’d have chosen a different ship to steal, your body might have been found in the water tomorrow morning. Not everybody is as sympathetic to little girls, playing pirate as myself.”

“Well, I’m very grateful not to be found in the ocean upon the morning time,” I returned, not a small bit of sarcasm present in my voice.

“What are you needing the boat for, and why shouldn’t I call the police on you right now?”

I thought about my response for a moment, not sure if I should be honest with him, or if I should withhold information for the sake of personal privacy. Then I came to the realization that as the sum of my life moved forward, I was becoming more and more present within my experiences. There was no anticipatory possible future any longer. I had conceded to move forward with a plan that very well could have me killed. By that time tomorrow, if I managed to make my way to Corsica, I could be shot, killed or worse.

No - I decided.

Now was not a time for secrets.

Now was a time for drastic honesty, and the decision to move forward in a direction regardless of what might come about as a result.

“Nosa Geraldine is my father, and a man killed him less than a week ago.”

The man grew visibly silenced and obviously felt a lack of comfort as a result of my disclosure. I continued regardless of his apparent discomfort.

You asked, I thought to myself, and then moved forward with my proclamation.

“I intend to sail out to Corsica, and then confront my father’s killer. I intend to entrap him, and possibly kill him myself. I’m not certain how I will do this, but I’m prepared to move forward, and take this line of thought until the end of the line — whatever that may be.”

The man was silent for several long moments. He looked at me at first, and then his eyes moved to the side, as though he was more than a bit disconcerted by this information.

“Nosa and I used to sail together,” the man finally said, his voice cracking as he spoke, “when I lived in Lido. I only moved here eight years or so ago. I’m sorry to hear about his death, but I’m glad to see you. Piper, is it?”

I nodded. Now it was my turn to be shocked.

“I don’t recognize you,” I said, “but I wasn’t exactly very fond of spending time with my father during that period of time.”

“You were a young woman yet, and you had to go through that time period as all young women do. There is no shame in what you have done, and much pride in what you are doing now.”

I watched him in the evening light as he bit his lip.

“You know, I can’t go with you, though it would seem as though fate brought you here to my boat tonight. I have a family here and if you’re planning on dying in order to fulfill your karma, I can’t stop you. However, I can let you borrow the boat.”

“What if I can’t return it?” I asked, understanding in all seriousness that this might indeed be an option.

“There is a town, close to here, on the island of Corsica. The town is called Porto - Vecchio. You can sail over tonight, and dock there in the early dawn. There is a fair enough wind out this evening, and I trust that a daughter of Nosa can manage the ocean current at night. I will fetch my boat tomorrow during my morning fishing run. They have people who will take a ride across the bay for less than a day’s wages, so that is no major loss to me.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” I said, thinking that I would have to be sure to take care of this man if I ever had the opportunity.

“If you are free by the morning, then perhaps I will find this boat here when I wake up, and there will not be any reason for me to worry.”

At this last statement, he smiled, and I realized that he was not talking about his boat. This stranger was actually offering some care and concern for me as a person. I felt, in that moment, the sense of love that the world gives you when you least expect it. Here was a man, doing god knows what in his boat in the early evening, and I just happened to be in the right position to enjoy his presence.

“Love is a strange thing when you’re not expecting it,” I said, more to myself than to anyone else.

The man heard, however, and he smiled at me, and then walked away toward the dock, along the deck of his fishing vessel. He shouted the coordinates of the town toward me, as well as our current point of departure. I realized that with a fair approximation, I could leave now, and probably float there by dawn. With my level of sailing experience and a bit of luck, I could probably count on arriving there by early morning. I affirmed that I understood his directions with a nod, and then set about the ship to make my preparations for departure.

“Godspeed, Daughter of Nosa,” I heard him say, and then I saw the curl of the ropes which had tied the ship to the dock fly toward my feet.

The cords landed with a soft thud, and I watched as the man pushed the small ship away from the dock. With expertise, I grabbed the nearest oar and began to push away from the other ship, heading out into the waters toward Corsica. The sun was setting, and I would not have much time to get situated. Knowing time was of the essence, I launched the sails, and caught a brisk evening wind away from the coast. The night would be short, but I was more than prepared for whatever might come in the morning.

I smiled to myself, feeling a grim sort of satisfaction.

There was no need for sleep. I was more than capable of taking a rest in the deep waters, but my mind was spinning, and my adrenals were flowing. There would be no sleep this night, and perhaps none to follow in the next. As a matter of fact, there might not be any sleep ever again — and I was alright with that possibility.

Such is the mindset of one who has decided to engage their future — whatever the result might be.

The night passed without incident, and I arrived in Porto - Vecchio just before dawn. The fishermen were just getting their boats out of the small harbor for the day, and though I got more than a few curious glances, nobody bothered me. By in large, fishermen around these parts appeared to be much more accommodating and respectful of personal privacy than not.

They reminded me of my dad.

He used to pry into my business, but in retrospect, that was only because he cared so deeply about what direction my life was moving. In the end, his intuitions proved to be correct.

I let out a long sigh, reminiscing about things that I could no longer change.

The fact of the matter was that though he did put his nose into my business on a regular basis, he did his bet to leave the rest of the community to their own devices. The attitude wasn’t an issue of ‘strangers be damned,” or anything so callous as that. More than anything, it was simply the respect that other people had a right to decide whether or not they were going about their business in a way that was good for them. Reminded me of the old Wiccan rede, practiced by the older folks of the country.

“An it ‘arm none, do as ye will,” was the saying.

I didn’t know if my actions would result in harming none, but then again, I wasn’t sure my dad would be so opposed to that type of action either. Everything had to be weighed when considering the ethical responsibilities that an individual had to live up to. At the very least, it seemed like these fishermen were leaving those karmic determinations up to myself, which was a bit of a weight off my shoulders, to say the least.

Wrapping the cord around a free post on the dock, I stepped off and made my way through the dim morning light to the town. If the boat was discovered by some antsy official, they would likely assume the ship was stolen, and would contact the registered owner. He would end up being fined, but other than that, nothing would come of it. He had known that no doubt before lending the vessel to me.

In all likelihood, he was friends with one or more of the people who policed such matters. I had been told more than once by my father that fines and the sort like that were often levied against more irresponsible civilian types; joyriders who were careless about where their boats were docked. Fishermen brought all of the major financial weight into towns like this, and as such were treated with a bit of respect, within some circles.

According to the Intel from Angela, I thought to myself, taking a look at the town and getting my bearings, I’ll need to head west to Sotta.

I had committed the address and general whereabouts to heart. There was no more need for me to use a great deal of my brain space, so that which was available had dedicated itself to this singular task. There were no places in the future where I had to be, and no details that I needed to remember except these.

Now I know how a trained assassin must feel, I thought, but then immediately scoffed at the notion.

For a moment, I felt more self-conscious than not. I knew how to fire a gun, and I knew how to seduce a man, but there was no way that I could be sure that these talents, if you could call them that, would be enough to achieve the sort of results I was looking for.

I took advantage of the fact that the town was still sleepy, and pulled my one remaining thieves card out of my pocket — I hot wired a Vespa. Those fuckers are a dime a dozen in these parts, and no self-respecting Italian youth should get through their teenage years without picking up on a skill like that. With an obnoxious roar, and a few loud, barking dogs, I was off down the highway toward Sotta.

I gripped tightly to the vibrating handlebars of the scooter.

Almost there.

I knew that the whine from the scooter was the last thing that I needed to bring with me into the upcoming situation. I opted to pull to the side and park about five miles outside of Sotto. If Angela’s information was correct, I shouldn’t have more than an eight-mile walk to where I was headed. I was a bit begrudging when I dropped the scooter, knowing that a bit more time on the thing would decrease my fatigue level considerably, but then I decided against it. A walk would do me well, and I saw no reason to turn down an opportunity to clear my mind.

God knows I needed it.

After checking the coordinates on my phone, I found that if I cut through the forest, I could shave about three miles from the trip, two if I used the posted trails, and departed them at the last minute. I opted to take a stroll through the woods, though I grew increasingly wearier when I knew myself to be approaching the location of the hideout.

Maurice probably has scouts in this area.

I opted to take cover in the trees and thick shrubs which spotted the undergrowth.

I hadn’t seen anyone yet, but that didn’t mean anything. I was hardly a forest ranger and was a bit out of my element. Nevertheless, I approached the coordinates given to me by Angela in the stealthiest way possible.

Just before the entrance, I felt my heart racing with anticipation of the events to follow. I realized that in that moment I had practically no lucid means of moving forward. I began to panic and thought to myself about the pain and problematic nature of my place in this scenario. I had no weapon and no means of providing myself any service.

What were you thinking, I began to berate myself, having very little recourse other than sheer panic.

I came to the conclusion that there were some things that I would have to be ok with, in a very literal sense of the word — death, for example. I might indeed die here, and though I had known that in an abstract sort of way on my way over here, I was now starting to come to the realization that this might be an actual reality that I would have to contend with. There might actually be a sense of finality to these moments.

Just the thought brought a vivid color set to the plants around me, as well as tears to my eyes.

Don’t be such a baby.

Regardless of the emotional content of the moment, I knew what I needed to do.

Move forward, I commanded myself.

I would have to step forward into the known, and get caught. With no weapons and no spy training, it would be incredibly difficult for me to get anywhere through means of subterfuge. I would have to play things off the cuff and blatant if I wanted to get anywhere with all of this.

Maybe I should have just said fuck it, and kept the scooter.

The thought didn’t last long, as I realized how much I had actually enjoyed the trip through the forest.

If you are gong to die, then I don’t see why you should feel poor about spending some of your last moments in the forests of Corsica. Sounds like a fantasy that most would prefer.

With my head held high, I strode boldly into the opening of the clearing.

I was met by rifles, which was to be expected, but at least now something was happening.

Here we go, I thought, raising my hands up in the air in surrender.

“Guys, Guys,” I started to say, in order to placate them, but there was no way that they could be so easily silenced.

I knew I had to rethink my strategy, and the solution to me came rather quickly. As quick as anything else that I had thought of just yet.

“Maurice has been looking for a shipment,” I said, simply, “and I’m here to drop it off.”

Dropping the name of the boss was a casual and bold attempt at getting on the good side of any set of guards. I had seen it done in the movies a thousand times. What was unique about this scenario was that I actually knew what Maurice’s number one priority was and was prepared to deliver.

They both approached me with raised weapons, so I obviously hadn’t succeeded that well in disarming their suspicions, but I was relieved to know that they didn’t shoot me on sight.

“How did you find this location?” the one to my left asked.

He had reached about two feet away from me and was posted up with a rifle pointing directly at my chest. I felt a bit unnerved, given the fact that my journey could end right here, and no one except this other guard would be around to hear the sounds of my death, but I couldn’t let that bother me right now. I had to keep a confident demeanor, otherwise, I would be shut down by my own fear without even getting a chance to confront the man I came here to see.

“Name’s Piper, in the event that you haven’t heard of me,” I replied, trying to disarm them with a smile. “Actually Maurice's personal assistant, so why don’t you do yourself a favor and put your gun to the side?”

I was bold enough to reach forward and brush the muzzle of the weapon to the side, all the while retaining eye contact. My touch was gentle, and there was nothing intrinsically aggressive about my behavior. I was in the position to offer everything I had, and at the moment, confidence was the only item available in my arsenal.

The other guard was not so easily persuaded and put on a tough act in front of the guard who I had attempted to charm.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, pushing me back away from the two of them, and using the tip of his rifle to drive the point home, “and I’d be willing to wager that we could just as soon kill you and Maurice wouldn’t bat an eye.”

The gun prodded into my right breast, and into my rib cage. The man wasn’t gentle, and I was knocked backward slightly and forced to hold my hands up in the air once again. I thought about whether or not I’d be able to bluff my way through here, and came to the conclusion that if these people didn’t trust me already, there was likely no chance that I could bluff my way anywhere except a hole in the ground.

“I have business with Maurice,” I said confidently, lowering my hands to brush off the place where the man’s weapon had pressed into my chest.

“Either you’re going to let me through, or you’re going to kill me,” I explained, letting the two of them know that I understood full well where I stood, and that the knowledge didn’t phase me whatsoever. “You’re free to kill me, but I have proved myself to have a certain skill set for Maurice which cannot have been easily replaced — if you know what I mean. Now are you going to run along and fetch him for me, or are you going to let me through?”

This had put them on their heels when a person knows exactly how little their life is worth at any given moment, it seems as though their ability to raise a solid argument is dramatically increased. I sensed that my time was now if I wanted to push the envelope any farther, and so I didn’t hesitate a moment longer before pushing my final point.

“God knows if Maurice wanted to kill me he’d have no trouble managing it without your help,” I said with disdain, even allowing my lip to curl slightly when I spoke to the two of them.

I made sure to level my gaze at the two of them, staring straight past their weapons, and into their eyes. They were wearing sunglasses, and I had to take a chance at knowing where they were focused, but an intuitive sense of direction gave me all the affirmation that I needed. The two of them paused for a moment longer, and I knew that I had them on edge.

“As I mentioned,” I said, letting the words fall from my lips with as much inconvenienced disdain as I could muster, “I have his shipment here with me.”

I raised one hand up and tapped my backpack so that the pair could see that I was referring to the bag that I was carrying.

“You two should fuck off with the guns, and let me through,” I said, picking my eye as though bored with the entire exchange.

They paused for a moment. Then, after a glimpse with one another, each of them nodded, and then lowered their weapons to their sides.

I nodded, somewhat imperiously, falling so naturally into a character that I wondered if I didn’t have more than a little dominatrix hidden inside of me, just waiting to get out. I smiled at my own inner thoughts and let that smile come out as a continuation of my character.

Just then, I looked at both of them again, pausing for a moment to check with myself, before making a move that I felt was more than a bit risky.

Fuck it, I thought to myself; this whole plan was risky.

There was no use in pretending that some parts of this experience were less dangerous than others. I decided then, that I might as well have some fun with the whole thing. Closing the distance between myself, and the nearest guard, I stepped forward from my neutral position.

“I have to say,” I began, “Maurice must be proud to have men as vigilant and eager to serve as yourselves.”

I was careful not to spend too much time with one guard, and made my move slowly from one to the other, so both of them would know that my compliments were generous enough to be able to handle them both.

I allowed myself a bit of laughter, as I realized just how much pretense had been in the actions of the two guards. They were like two boys who had been given guns and had been told to guard the outside entrance to a tree fort. Though the building was a standard concrete supply bunker, in my mind at that time, it might have well been a shoddily constructed fort with a sign on the door that said, “NO GIRLZ ALLOWED!”

I made sure that the two of them knew that I wasn’t laughing at them, as much as at the whole situation.

“You two gave me a bit of a fright there,” I said, allowing my fingers to brush off of the chest of the second guard, and fall down to my side once more.

I stood there with my hip cocked out to one side and made myself as physically keep and interested to the two of them as possible. Being the cute little boys that they were, the first one began to stammer, and stutter in order to regain the power that my vagina had absorbed from the two of them.

“We’ll have to search you before you can go inside,” he said, desperately seeking to regain protocol and consequentially some semblance of authority from the paradigm of our previous roles.

I wasn’t about to cast aside the power that I had found here without a fight, but I also knew that to be too arrogant in this sort of situation could only end with a total abandonment of personal empowerment. I knew I had to be calculated in my next move, even tricky. I also knew that time was of the essence. When dealing with matters on an instinctual level, one needs to rely increasingly on instincts.

My feminine power took over, and I knew without hesitation what actions would take this encounter to the next possible conclusion.

“Ah,” I said, smiling, and turning to the one who had spoken. “I see what’s going on here. Looks like you boys haven’t exactly been getting your due lately, huh?”

I reached out and grabbed one by the shoulder, showing him some of my sensitive side with a slight touch. After he was aware of how sensitive I could be, I pushed him away, opting to make a try for the dominant sexual role once more. I figured if the three of us were going to get it on, that the probability of these two soldiers overtaking my body was a pretty firm possibility. Only a woman who knew how to handle herself would dare to get caught in a situation like that.

I’m not saying I didn’t know how to fuck. I knew I could handle the two of them — at least I was pretty certain at the time. What I was talking about was the sheer appearance of capacity.

While one had been pushed back by my hand, I shoved my bag into the other one’s hands. Placing the bag exactly where I didn’t want the bag to go was my way of tempting fate. As it turned out the best way to hide a thing is to hide it in plain sight. After passing off the bag to the man, and taking off my shirt, I watched with delight as the bag was dropped carelessly to the ground. The man was walking over to me with his gun in his hands still, eager to reach out and touch my breasts.

I dropped my pants next and bent over away from the approaching man to untie my shoes. As expected, I didn’t get more than two laces undone before the weapons were on the ground and the hands of both guards were pulling at my frame.

Good boys, I thought, getting ready for a wild ride.

Fully naked and ready to go, I let the sunlight come down and warm my breasts and neck.

They were pulling at me, but that didn’t mean that I had to acknowledge them completely. Soon enough, I wouldn’t have a choice, but for now, I wanted to find some kind of zen if at all possible.

They were built in two very different ways, though each of them was attractive in their own right. One was thinner, and had long hair. The other was a prototypical strong man. The one who was thinner had his pants off first. I was impressed with the length of his cock. While I sucked him off, the other parted my labia, and began to stick his tongue inside of me.

His hand was on my ass, prying my cheeks apart so he could have full access to the goods. While my breasts hung down beneath my body, I focused entirely on the thin man’s cock. He had such a nice cock that it wasn’t too difficult for me to enjoy the task.

Soon enough, the man behind me had shifted from fucking me with his tongue to fucking me with his cock. I felt the pressure of him enter me, as well as the weight from his body press down on my hips. He grabbed me with both hands, and bore down on my frame with his body. The other man seemed to be content to let me pull on his cock with my hands and my lips.

From behind, the stockier guard was playing a game with my cunt. He would pull his dick all the way out from inside of me, and then push it in hard. Then, he would work his hands in a rhythm, and shove himself as far and fast inside of me as possible. He was inside of my vagina, and I could feel his testicles push up toward the entrance to my body at the apex of each thrust. He was an eager fucker, and the movement shoved me into the other guard at an increased pace.

I lost a bit of control, and was pushed forward onto the first guard. He took me down on top of him, and spun me around. Before I knew it, I was on top of him, fucking him steadily while the stockier guard played around with my tits. He seemed to enjoy sucking on them, and watching them bounce together in his hand while I fucked his friend.

The man I was fucking apparently enjoyed my mouth, because he pushed me off and stood up so I could suck him off once more. The other man got underneath me, and began fucking me hard from below. I couldn’t fit more than the tip of the man’s cock inside of my mouth, because all of my attention was being directed toward the man sticking his cock into me from below. My tits ended up slapping the man below me in the face, but I think he enjoyed the process more than anything else.

The two of them got off on fucking me, and soon, they decided that they needed to fuck both my ass and my cunt at the same time. I had never been double penetrated in that way before, but they say there is a first for everything, and it’s totally true.

What surprised me most about the experience was that the whole situation was much less about a reciprocal type of piston fucking, as much as it was a heavy ass fuck with an occupied vagina. They went after me in that way for a while.

The thin man wasn’t getting his rocks off nearly as much as the one fucking my ass, so he pulled out and rolled me on my side. Without missing a moment, the stockier guard kept fucking my ass while the other man got me to suck on his cock once more. He seemed to appreciate the attention that he got from my mouth much more, and I didn’t mind sharing that with him.

The two guards wanted to high five one another while they came on me, so the stockier guy got up and shoved his cock in my mouth. After you wash it off with some saliva, it’s not such a big deal.

I’m going to murder your boss, I thought to myself while he shoved his cock inside of my mouth, and grabbed ahold of the back of my head with his fist.

I switched between the two while they breathed heavy, their thick cocks pointing in my direction. They were both getting close. I could feel the change taking place sooner than not. They were swelling, and looking up at the sky. They had nearly completely forgotten the fact that they were guards, and at that point were nothing more than horny men. I held up my mouth open for them, and watched as the two of them squirted their loads all over my chest.

Allowing myself the moment to indulge, I brought both cocks inside of my mouth, one at a time, and made sure that I had drained every last bit of cum that they had to offer. I smiled, knowing that I had just covered my tits with their prowess as soldiers. Dripping with the cum of the two guards, I stood up to shake myself off and stretch.

“Damn boys,” I cursed. “You did a fine job.”

They laughed together, though I could see that they were a bit tired. Ideally, I would have taken more from them than just their sperm, but sometimes, you have to be happy with what you get. The positive thing about that whole exchange was that though there was some marginal amount of pleasure to be derived, I ended up being able to pick up my bag, and walk by my own volition inside of the compound.

Two down, I said to myself, wondering how much more I would have to fuck before the day was through.

Looking back, I saw that both guards were giving each other congratulatory pats on the back, while still trying to look officious. They were clothed once more and were standing with a bit more ease in their stance than when I had first approached.

I reached into my bag on the way into the bunker and turned on the cell phone. I did this under the cover of the doorway since I noticed that there were cameras on the outside of the bunker which were posted directly toward where all of the action had taken place not moments before. I didn’t dare set my hand inside the bag for longer than necessary and only did so with the active pretense of putting my clothes inside of the bag.

The cell phone was quickly placed on auto-dial. The only number that was present in the phone — Angela.

I pulled out what remained of the shipment, and swung the pack over my shoulder once more. Stark naked, I made my way inside of the building. I could only hope that I got what I needed from Maurice before any problems came about.

Just then, while the bag was placed over my shoulder, it occurred to me that the phone was hidden beneath layers of my discarded clothes, within the zipped container of the canvas bag.

Here goes nothing, I thought, and walked in to see Maurice standing there expectantly.

“Fucking my security, I see,” Maurice’s voice rang out over the continuous ringing in my ears. “I can see whatever shame was within you is now soundly gone.”

The voice was loud, but at least it wasn’t directed toward me. I had been trained to manage so many things at the hands of captors. However, there was something a bit relieving about knowing that there was a slight break in the pain and process of interrogation.

Maurice, as it turned out, was a cruel man. He had me bound up to an anchor point on the ceiling. My arms and back had been whipped, and he had been slowly deteriorating my sanity by calculated aggressions against my senses. I had been blindfolded, gagged, and exposed to all kinds of variations in temperature. I had been drowned and brought back to life again. He wanted information about how the SEAL team knew about his initial operation. Just because he wanted information, didn’t mean that I was going to give it to him.

“Time for you to hand it over,” he said, once more speaking to the newcomer in the environment.

“Hand what over, you cunt?” the voice replied; it was a familiar voice, someone that I hoped that I would never hear in a place like this; that was the voice that belonged to Piper.

For the first time in my capture, tears fell from my eyes. I could feel them soaking immediately into the black folded cloth which prevented me from seeing her face. I knew I had to keep my calm because to speak out might compromise her safety as well, though she was coming off a bit aggressive for someone in her position.

Didn’t she know what this man was capable of? I thought, desperately.

Maurice walked over toward her, his shoes tapping down on the concrete like an aristocratic tiger who is about to pounce on his prey.

“The cocaine in your hand,” he said, in a matter of fact tone. “My cocaine. The cocaine which you miserably failed to secure, and then attempted to steal from me… THAT … is what I would like you to hand over!”

He slapped her hard. I heard the sound echo off of the walls, and wished that I could have bitten my lip. My teeth sank into the fabric of my gag instead, threatening to bite straight through the material.

“I figure you had already picked up most of it from Antonia,” Piper replied, showing bravery in her response.

Girl has some sass in her still. I felt a slight glow of pride.

“Ah yes,” Maurice replied, “Antonio did willingly offer everything that he had in order to make sure that you were apprehended. I thought when your friend here, pulled that little stunt of his that we would miss out on an opportunity to see you, and retrieve the remainder of my shipment, but I’m glad to see that you came through alright.”

“You’re still a sick fuck,” she said, evidently staring at me, though I could only feel her gaze on my body. “You could have just fucking killed him.”

“Why would I kill him?” Maurice said. “Killing things takes all of the fun and value away from them. At the moment, he’s worth much more to me alive. Now I get to see you pine for him. Now I get to watch your pathetic attempts to rescue the helpless American Soldier.”

“Didn’t know he was here,” she replied, and there was a profound lack of interest in her tone.

My heart sank for a bit, and I wasn’t sure if she was putting him on, or if she actually didn’t give a shit about anything that we had gone through. My mind was weak, and I had been through so much, I thought maybe she was resentful for what had happened.

“Frankly, I could give a fuck about him,” she said. “That asshole is the reason my dad is dead. He threw me off of a fucking cliff for God’s sake.”

Maurice laughed at this.

“Oh you think that’s funny?” she replied, turning her ire on him now.

“Just because I think you have poor taste in entertainment doesn’t mean that I want to rescue your little toy.”

“Oh, he’s much more than a toy. I assure you.”

“Your boy Tyler here is a critical key,” Maurice went on. “He is the single remaining bit of information necessary to mobilize my greatest political achievement yet. All I need is for him to loosen his tongue, but unfortunately, that’s not something he’s willing to do for me yet. Pity.”

“If he’s so critical, then why didn’t you need him before? When you shared your plans with me before, they didn’t have anything to do with the international military.”

“I don’t want anything to do with the international military. Now, what I am interested in is the process by which the international military, specifically the American Government, managed to find out about my deal with the Afghani's. That whole deal was a setup because I had suspected that we had been infiltrated from the inside. Your boyfriend here was just about to tell me who the source was.”

I heard him walk over toward me, and my body tightened up involuntarily. The man came close to my face and whispered into my ear. I could smell his breath and his sweat to a point where I swear I could identify him out of a line by scent alone.

“Any news on whether or not you’d like to share that information?”

Had I been able to spit at him, or anything else like that, I might have done so. Instead, I simply shook my head from side to side, and then stared straight forward once more, as if to block him out. I heard him pull something out from his pocket, and then I heard a gunshot.

Searing pain shot through my thigh. The bullet had not hit my bone and instead had simply passed through the muscle on the outside of my thigh. I could feel the bullet’s passage like a torch, cutting through my leg.

“You really are a cold bitch aren’t you?” I heard him ask through the pain.

Apparently she had kept her nerve.

“If you don’t care about him, then I can’t help but wonder if you’re really here to take revenge on me for killing your father.”

“Like I said, I blame that fucker, not you,” she replied.

I heard her walking forward toward him.

“Give me the gun, and I’ll shoot him myself,” she said, her tone dead even and void of any sort of compassion.

She was so cold that I thought she might actually do it.

That might be a relief, I thought to myself, feeling the ache in my thigh going strong, though it simply was one more signal within my nervous system. One more signal amongst the many others that were sounding off all over my body. Each signal relatively fresh, and all at the hand of Maurice and his men.

“I like to see a little fire in you,” he replied, “But as I mentioned before, this ‘fucker’, as you put it, owes me an apology, as well as some information. Until he is willing to help me out, then I don’t think you’ll have the pleasure of finishing him off.”

“Whatever, Maurice. Play your games, if that’s what gets you off. I came here to drop off what I had and make amends with you. I’m not in any position to bother with your methodology.”

“No shit. No, you’re not in much of a position to do anything at all. As for your desire to make amends — I’m afraid that you might just be too late to do that.”

“Fuck off, too late,” she replied. “I’m here, you sent me on a fucking errand. I fulfilled your errand after you made my life hell, and now you’re going to tell me that I can’t work for you any longer?”

There was a pause, as a pregnant silence filled the air.

“I owe you nothing,” Maurice said. “In fact, I would say that you owe me since I was forced to utilize my personal resources in order to track you down. How about I take that out of your hide?”

“You know you don’t have to bother asking me, Maurice,” she said in that sultry tone. “Remember the last time, in the alleyway? What makes you think I would come all this way, fuck your dispirit guards, and not save my best for you?”

“From what I saw,” he replied bitterly, “You already gave them everything that you have to offer.”

“That’s because you suffer from a lack of imagination and a lack of faith. I can give you power, prestige, and will; all things that you desire, and nothing that I have given any of your men. Not to mention the fact that I continue to give you my loyalty.”

“That’s yet to be proven,” he replied.

“Well how’s this for loyalty?” she asked, her question punctuated by the sound of a zipper being undone.

“You really are a filthy little whore aren’t you?”

I could hear her already beginning to suck his cock. The wet sounds of her lips on his skin answered his question well enough, but to affirm his statement more completely, she vocalized agreement through humming. When she was done with her resounding, “Mmmm Hmm….” she popped his cock out of her mouth and replied.

“You have no idea. I have a little something in mind for you. Let’s make this something between you, me and fuck head over there.”

He laughed, maniacally in return, and then I heard someone walk over toward me. Piper ripped my blindfold off, and then slapped me viciously. Still stunned, I watched her bare ass walk back toward Maurice, who stood there, waiting proudly with his cock erect.

“You three, give us some space,” Maurice announced to the guards who stood near them. “We have all of the audience we need,”

This time, when he grinned, I could see it with my own eyes.

“You want to fuck my throat?” she asked him. “You want to fuck my throat while that fuck head over there watches?”

She laughed, and pulled her hand along her tits once more. “You think he’ll get hard, wishing he was you?”

“I don’t fucking care if he gets hard,” he replied. “Open up.”

I watched while he grabbed the back of her head and shoved his cock forward down her throat. Her lips were open, and she was angled so I could watch her drool and lick at the base of his cock. He cleared her hair away from her face so I could see how much of his cock was shoved down her throat. I watched as she gagged, and spat on the floor.

He wiped saliva from the head of his cock on her eyes, and it mixed with the moisture on her face. With eager lips, she reached forward at the base of his cock and began to suck on his balls. This lasted for a minute, before he grabbed her by the head once more, and then pushed himself inside of her once more.

Shaking his cock over her face, he came on her forehead. Then, with his cock still hard, he pushed himself inside of her mouth once more. She pulled on him, and managed to fit not only his entire shaft down her throat, but both of his balls in her mouth. The dull sounds of sloppy sex filled my ears. I was both hard, and burning with a sad form of desire.

To see her shoving her shoving him greedily inside of her mouth was intense, but to have her watch me while she did it was a whole other level pain. She was so eager for him, and he was so hard for her.

“You’ve always given me more throat to fuck than any of the other girls,” Maurice said, rubbing the head of his cock on her face.

She sucked him off again, and pulled at the head of his cock with her lips, spitting and smiling at me as she did. It was clear to me that he was enjoying this little power play as well, though his enjoyment would only last for another minute or two.

In ecstasy, he managed to cum a second time, shooting his entire load on her open mouth. She panted in front of him, fucking his cock with her hands until he had to forcibly push himself away from her from the sensitivity of it all. Watching that whole exchange was probably the worst part of the torture.

“God, Piper,” Maurice said, wiping the sweat from his brow while Piper wiped the cum from her lips. “You sure know how to work a man. That might have been the best head I’ve gotten out of you yet.”

“More where that came from,” she replied, laughing and grinning, her eyes staring at him, as though she were completely entranced by him.

More than all of the torture that I had faced from this man, the torture of seeing her wipe his cum from her lips, and then smile like that afterward — that was by far the worst of it. I’d take getting shot in the thigh again any day of the week.

And then it happened…

The resolution to everything I had just witnessed came so suddenly that I almost missed it in my reverie of pity. While Maurice was exhausted and Piper was holding his cock, she leaned in to kiss him on the lips, grabbed his weapon, and in one swift motion, placed it to his chest and pulled the trigger.

Maurice fell to the floor, and without saying goodbye, she unloaded the remainder of the clip into his body. I watched, speechless as she killed him without warning or mercy. The final shot rang out in my ears, only to be followed by a loud, commanding voice.

“Drop your weapons and put your hands up!” the voice said.

… And then it was over.

The police came just after I delivered the final killing blow to Maurice.

Standing there, I felt like I was an angel of final deliverance. Judgement day was at hand, and I my hand had been the vehicle of delivery. There are few words to describe how that feels, and so I will simply reserve two for you, and allow the mind to fill in the blanks surrounding them.

The first word is Terror.

Not terror in the sense that most people consider. When most people consider terror, what they are thinking about is having a man stalk you, torture your friends, and kill your father; these sorts of things are the standard for terror. The sort of terror I felt was the knowledge that within our skin, we are all incredibly fragile beings, where only a single decision is strong enough to terminate that line of continuity.

The second word is Fear.

You might think that the two words are the same, or even similar, but I can assure you that they head towards very different pools of the mind. While terror describes the awareness of our intense fragility, Fear is an anticipatory force which redefines identity.

Now, I knew what it was like to kill someone. For sure, I had been given enough practice. I had fired warning shots off at Maurice’s man, and I had been there to assault the windshield of that car that had been tailing us. The first one was a case of nerves, and the second was more of a tactical maneuver, in which I had been conned into playing my part.

Fear, in the case I describe here, is the knowledge that I, in full awareness, had chosen to ignore the edict, “thou shalt not kill,” and that given that decision, was now aware of every step along the way which would be necessary should I ever decide to do so again. Fear was the knowledge that the difference between Maurice and myself was not so vast, no matter how much I might like it to be.

With Maurice dead, I dropped the handgun to the ground. I heard it clang on the concrete floor, and my eyes glazed over with definitive silence. I watched while Maurice’s blood seeped out of his body onto the concrete below my feet. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the officer’s setting Tyler free.

I felt them push me into the nearest wall and hold me there. As I was still naked, there was nothing for them to search. I held no weapon. I was as nude as nature made me. I didn’t get a chance to see Tyler on the way out of the bunker, and to be honest, I’m glad that didn’t happen. I was ashamed, though I couldn’t be clear exactly why. I didn’t want to be bothered with the details of that shame until I had more time to think, and so for the ride in the police car, and on the ferry back to Rome, I sat — deaf and mute to the world.

“What city are we in?” I asked, my mouth wet from the shittiest tasting espresso I had experienced in a long time.

“You’re back in Venice,” the man at the other side of the table replied. “Are you in shock?”

I shook my head, slowly, but with a definitive assertion of body language.

“Definitely not,” I replied. “Long trip.”

“With a lot to think about,” he said, not missing a beat.

I said nothing.

“Alright Piper,” the man continued, “We’re going to be asking you a few questions. Anything you say can be held against you, and or used to prosecute any parties concerned. Do you consent to answer these questions?”

I nodded and took another drink of coffee.

“I do.”

“Good. I’d like to start off with the subject of Maurice Benoit's death.”

They asked me about how I killed Maurice, and I told them that I shot him.

“Twelve times,” the man replied, tapping a set of papers on the table. “Usually, we don’t see numbers like that in homicides. It tends to indicate that there is an unrestricted amount of passion present within the assailant.”

“Never been accused of being bland, though. Never quite been accused of being an assailant either.”

The conversation went on and the man tried to extract more information from me about my relationship to Maurice, but I had nothing more to say about the matter. The fact was I had shot him, and they all knew that. As far as I was aware, they could interpret that information any way they liked.

“We also have information that your father was recently killed,” he continued. “Do you consider this to be a related attack?”

“You know what they say about assumptions, commissioner.”

“Very well.”

He paused to write down some notes on a pad of paper on the desk, and then raised his head up to continue.

“You were at the scene of the crime naked, and evidence indicates that bodily fluids besides the blood of the victim were also present,” the man said. “Did you have a long-standing relationship with Maurice?”

“We have fucked before, if that’s what you are asking.”

“Were those relations consensual?”

“I’m not sure that’s relevant.”

“Well,” he said, quickly. “It is relevant if we are trying to build a motive for why we have a corpse on our hands.”

“You’re free to build whatever you like,” I said, truly not caring whether not I was free or hung at the end of this interview.

“A lot of drugs were located on the scene, and some of them were within a bag which had your fingerprints.”

“I used the drugs to gain access to the compound. I used to work for Maurice, and then saw the error of my ways.”

Now it was the interrogators turn to pause.

He blinked, as though he had not expected such a forthright answer, and then shuffled the papers in front of him, in order to move onto the next question.

“And last question for the day,” the man continued. “The phone you used to dial 911 was routed through a ghost proxy. Do you know what that means?”

I shook my head and stared straight at the man.

“Well, let me explain,” he continued. “A ghost proxy is a method by which one number can be utilized to store data from a phone conversation, while remaining undisclosed. That number can then forward that information in real time — in this case, to 911 emergency services.”

“I found a phone in the bag, and I used it to call the police,” I replied easily. “Not sure why that is a relevant question. I have no idea how to set-up a ghost proxy.”

“Very well, Piper. We’ll be taking a closer look into the matter. That will be all.”

Without spending much time in police custody, I was released and freed of all charges. The police marked my case down as one of self-defense and pardoned my involvement with the drugs and with Maurice due to my being instrumental in bringing him to justice.

Frank too, was pardoned, though apparently, his pardon came from an international intervention, coupled with the condemning evidence collected through Angela’s Ghost Proxy.

In truth, she was the single most critical factor within the entire experience, and yet she was the most unresolved.

The police had apparently been working tirelessly in order to track down the source of the Ghost Proxy, but there was very little to be accomplished in that area. She had done her job well enough to stay free. With that much heat on her, I didn’t want to risk going to see her, though I wanted to more than anything else in the world.

I spent the next several weeks sitting alone in my home, packing things away, and sleeping. I was in a very deep depression, and I knew I needed a change in my life. As it turned out, my dad had a bit of money set aside for me. I was also given the proceeds for punitive damages from Maurice’s estate as compensation for sexual assault. The terms weren’t exactly accurate, but I wasn’t going to bother them over details.

“Thank you,” was my only response.

When Tyler finally showed up, I was just getting ready to evacuate the town. I had cash, and no more problems leaving the country, so I was ready to get lost. I had even considered the possibilities of stopping by Angela’s place on my way out, just to take a chance on seeing her one last time before I left.

I was afraid, for a moment that Tyler was going to berate me. Call me a whore, or do some other unmerited shaming. I had told myself time and time again, “We do what we have to do,” but I think my feelings stemmed from the fact that I was unhappy about giving myself to Maurice, more than anything else. I was actually more fine with killing him than I would have thought.

“You were brave,” was all he said, after a long and uncomfortable pause.

“You think so?”

He nodded, solemnly.

“Yep, I think that much is apparent, you did great work, and as a result of your efforts, this place is better off,” he said, gesturing to all of Venice with a simple gesture of his arm.

He walked toward me then, and we kissed. The contact was simple, and even somewhat clumsy, but it was sincere.

I was in my underwear before long, staring at him with my arms stretched out to my sides.

“I want you to bend over for me,” he said, pulling my thong to the side.

He reached forward and pushed his hand against my labia. He and I had been through too much for me to be purely passive in all of this, so I got down and lowered his pants. He was already hard by the time my lips hit his cock.

“Always impressed with how big you are,” I managed to say. I had to strain my head backward so that I could look at the tip of his cock while my knee was beneath his legs. He tapped the head of his cock on my tongue, and I held the base of his shaft with my hand. He tasted good, and I enjoyed myself while letting my hand fall down the smooth muscles of his thighs.

There was less struggle in this fuck compared to the others. He and I no longer had anything to prove to one another, or to anyone else. I was free to enjoy him, just for the sake of enjoying him. My lips parted easily for him, and my hands turned gently on the surface of his cock. I smiled, and let my tongue do the subtle work that made him squirm in his body.

“Mmm.. I missed that,” he groaned.

He stood there for me, and let me take him at my own pace, which I felt was incredibly peaceful of him, considering the last time he saw me give head, I was brutally throat fucked by my previous boss.

“I want you,” he said, lifting me up and bending me over.

I could feel his hands pinching my ass gently, while his cock parted the lips of my pussy. He eased himself into my vagina, and then began to fuck me slowly. Feeling the fullness of him inside of me was a beautiful thing. We enjoyed a soft pace for a while, and then he picked up pace a bit more.

I loved how massive his hands felt on my body while he held me. Whether he was pulling my hair, holding my shoulders, or putting his hands on my hips, he felt so strong compared to me. The feeling was liberating.

“I think what I love about this,” I moaned in between thrusts, “Is how much power you give me.”

In response, he removed his hands completely, and let me push myself backward onto his cock. I enjoyed myself for a time, letting his cock be something independent for me to work my body against. This little game of ours held out for another couple of minutes before he lost himself and pinned me down not the couch.

“Oh God, yes!” I cried out.

It was obvious to me that I didn’t just love that he gave me power, but that he took power away from me as well. His cock was pumping inside of me, threatening to pull me out from the inside over and over. The couch creaked, and I could hear the wet sounds of his cock fucking he hell out of my cunt. I moaned and pleaded for him to keep going, and he slowed down in response, teasing me all the while.

When I would get out of line, squirming because of the pleasure, he would thrust deep and hard into me, and put me back in my right place. I could feel his body weight bearing down over me. His hands held me down on the couch by pinning my back shoulders. I gave up completely, and used my hands to either grab a hold of the couch, or spread my ass cheeks so he could have easier access to my body.

“I love you,” he grunted, diving down deep into my cunt.

“Fuckin’ cum on me then,” I replied, feeling a bit visceral.

He pulled out and shot his load all over the small of my back, then he leaned forward and licked his cum up off from the surface of my skin. His tongue moved slowly on my skin, and I swear I came just then — only knowing what he was doing to me. He kept the jizz in his mouth, and then came up to kiss me. The two of us spent a fair amount of time just exchanging the load between our mouths, swallowing each other’s saliva and cum until there was nothing to exchange besides our own kisses.

All in all, it was likely our most sensitive fuck until that moment.

“Do you want to get out of here?” he asked when we were done. “I’ve got a bit of time before I head home, and I’d really like to go somewhere nice with you.”

“I was just about to leave,” I told him as we laid together on the floor of my living room. “This place will be empty tomorrow, and I might as well go with you.”

There was a pause in the conversation, and then my heart spoke what needed to be said.

“Mind if I bring a friend?” I said with a grin.

His response was laughter and a nod. We didn’t need much more than a will in order to figure out how to make that happen. Perhaps a visit to Rome was in order. No explanations or articulated plans were necessary.

We had been through this once before.

The shores of Crete are not so different from Lido, but they are far enough away that it feels like you are in another world; that was the point, more than anything else.

I sat on the sand, staring out at all of the beautiful men and women. It seemed like the people on this particular beach had nothing better to do than show me their tan asses through variously undersized bathing outfits. Naturally, I didn’t have any objections. This was infinitely better than whatever was happening back in Lido, that much was for sure.

We had to torch the lab, and by we, I mean, I burnt that fucking building to the ground, and everything in it, only after wiping every server that I had access to -- must have been some kind of problem with the pilot on the stove. Couldn’t be helped, I'm sure.

*Bites lip*

Fortunately, the accident took place when the neighbors were out, so looks like everyone wins. I mentioned to Piper that I’d make her cum on the beach. I had no idea how literal that whole prophecy would become, but I had learned at this point not to question fate. Could be nothing more than a problem of confirmation bias, but it truly seemed like everything happened for a reason.

Right about then, Piper tackled me.

“Again?” I asked, pretending to be worn out.

She only smiled in response, and kissed me.

“This is a private beach,” Tyler said, “and there are combinations that I feel we need to put to the test.”

His cock was out once more, and hanging in front of my face.

“Erm… Science?” I replied, not knowing what else to say.

Piper laughed, and the three of us fell in together in a heap on the sand.

“To Science!”

Needless to say, the three of us wasted little time in getting busy with one another again. Our entire trip had really been one giant fuck fest, from beginning to end. I had no idea how things would end up between the three of us, but I did know one thing for certain — it had been enjoyable and by all accounts, that level of enjoyment did not seem like it was going away any time soon.

We had a rough time, Piper, perhaps more than all three of us, but in the end, at least we had each other. When exhaustion sets in, and the afterglow of the orgasmic overload has subsided, I found that nothing is quite as satisfying as the warmth of the sun, and the company of good friends. The simple pleasures of life are not to be overlooked in face of some of the more decadent pursuits.

Really, it’s the love you find amid the pleasures that make this life worth anything at all.