The Possibilities - Desire - A Collection of Short Stories (3 page)

“He’s a hell of a doc,” Scott said,
“I can personally testify to that.” 

Doctor Seasons glanced at Linda. “I
can smell that coffee by the way…any chance I can sneak a cup before I have to
continue my rounds?” Linda gave him a cute grin and left the room. 
Seasons sighed.  “I’m not as pretty as you Sergeant, I’ll bet you
breakfast that I don’t get mine in a ceramic mug.”

The police officer came in with his
clipboard, and filled out the report.  “Did you get a look at your
assailant sir?”

“No,” Scott said with a straight
face.  Some things were better taught outside in the fresh air than in the
confines of a courtroom where a high priced lawyer could manipulate justice and
affect the outcome or the penalty. Besides, Lawrence Willingham Forrest IV had
made this personal.

CATCH
AND RELEASE

He went straight to his studio from
the hospital.  Nettie wasn’t home so he left a voice mail postponing their
date til the next night, telling her a partial truth.  He said he had
spent the night in the emergency room and would explain when he saw her. Then
he took a cold shower and a couple of aspirin.  Wearing only a pair of
faded jeans, he sat down at his laptop computer with a steaming mug of coffee
that reminded him of Linda.  He booted up the computer and began the hunt
for Lawrence Willingham Forrest IV.  The man wasn’t hard to find at all.

Scott drove a perfectly restored
1976 Ford Bronco that purred like a kitten as he sat in the cool night air,
waiting for the Bentley to leave the guarded parking garage.  He had
started the Bronco to warm it up when he saw the lights go out in Forrest’s
penthouse apartment. It wasn’t far to the club, and Scott knew from his reading
that Forrest was a creature of habit.  The man made several stops before
he parked across the street from the alley where he had ambushed Scott. 
He stood inside for a moment, glancing around the club before entering it with
his customary cocky strut.  Scott crossed the street and rummaged in the
alley until he found what he was looking for.  Then he crossed the street
again, entered the Bronco, and settled back against his seat, waiting for the
cocky bastard to come back outside.

When Forrest came strutting out of
the club he was accompanied by a drunken blonde who was staggering alongside of
him.  He reached the car before a rich, deep voice stopped him in his
tracks.  “I don’t think you want to be here for this ma’am,” Scott said
from the shadows, “it’s not going to be pretty.” He slapped the palm of his
hand with the stub of two by four, hard. The blonde ran awkwardly in the high
heels, the classic New Yorker…she didn’t want to get involved.

“You can’t do this to me,” Forrest
said, pointing at the security cameras focused on the parking lot. 
Too
bad there isn’t one in the alley
, Scott thought,
and then this wouldn’t
be necessary.

“I’m not here to do anything
tonight,
"Scott told
him.  He smiled his most gentle smile and
rubbed the still sore back of his head.  “I’m here to let you know that
payback is coming.”  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a picture
of himself, wearing full combat regalia, and standing in the midst of a scene
of utter carnage.  “I spent twenty years of my life hunting down sadistic,
dishonorable men who think it's right to kill innocent women and children to
further their own political ends.  I found you in one afternoon…
one
afternoon…
and here we are.  I just wanted you to know that I’m among
the best on earth at payback.  One of these nights there won’t be any
security cameras, no witnesses, absolutely nothing to prove I was there. 
Just keep looking over your shoulder.  One night, I’ll be there.” 
Scott reached out and touched Forrest on the back of his head with a gentle
hand.  “And I’m going to make you pay.”

Lawrence Willingham Forrest IV ran
screaming for the entrance to the club.  Scott smiled to himself and
walked over to toss the stud back into the alley.  He was satisfied when
he started the Bronco and drove away and he whistled a few bars of
Don’t
Fear the Reaper
, an oldie from Blue Oyster Cult.  For a coward,
fear was the ultimate punishment.  He was through with Lawrence Willingham
Forrest IV.

DEVASTATION

Nettie climbed the short staircase
leading to Scott’s studio.  It was a converted loft, the living area on a
mezzanine above the floor.  He let her in and she immediately smelled a
huge variety of woods.  It was amazing that so many of the smells were
distinct, and didn’t merge with the others.  Nettie could smell cedar,
pine, oak, sandalwood and a myriad of others.  In awe, she wandered through
examining the various works in progress.  She stopped before a small block
of sandalwood, weathered on the outside from long exposure to water and
weather, yet incredibly fragrant where Scott had broken the weather seal
to rough out the shape of a camel.  It was all driftwood, much of it rare,
collected from the four corners of the earth.

She turned to face him, his arms
wrapping her up as she stepped into them.  Tonight Nettie was wearing a
different style of ‘little black dress’, one that wrapped around her and
fastened with a single sash.  A single tug released the dress and a shrug
caused the flimsy garment to fall to the floor.  She was wearing nothing
else.

Scott carried her up the stairs to
his bed.  It was almost like a fairy tale.  Her expensive dress had
fallen into the wood shavings unheeded and lay there still.  Their eyes
locked in a visual embrace; he managed to carry her to the bed without
stumbling.  He laid her softly on the bed and began to remove his
clothing.

Nettie watched as he uncovered his
perfect body, which was marred only by a few scars and two small puckered
bullet wounds, which only enhanced his beauty in her eyes.  She welcomed
him in the time honored way, opening herself to the most beautiful and perfect
penetration of her life.  Their lips met and her wetness and warmth
enfolded him in ineffable sweetness.  His desire had not diminished in
their day away from her, but something in the back of his head began to gnaw at
him as she writhed wantonly beneath him.

Nettie began to whisper into his
ear, reliving their adventure on the dance floor, her voice getting louder as
she recalled vividly the things that had excited her the most.  Somehow
the things that had meant the most to him seemed to have skipped her notice
entirely.  She became wilder beneath him, urging him into her, begging him
for more. She became more verbal, pulling out all the stops.  Scott tried
to stop himself, to pull out of her, horrified at the filth spewing from her
mouth...but she had locked her heels behind him and wouldn’t let him go. 
When he had filled her, she let him go.  She was laughing at him, calling
him a wimp for not giving Forrest the whipping he had deserved.  Nettie
told him she had been inside when the punk had come crying into the club, and he
had told her the whole story.

Nettie was disappointed, Scott
wasn’t the animal she had expected to uncover when she had come here tonight,
but she had been warned.  If he’d been the man she thought he was, he
would have beaten Forrest to a pulp.

Scott felt dirty, and used.  He
stood and ordered her from his studio and she laughed at him.  He lifted
her bodily and carried her downstairs, lifting her dress from the floor. 
He took both to the door and dumped them outside.  Her laughter echoed
after him.

He went directly to the shower and
turned the water on as hot as he could stand it. He took his back scrub brush
and a bar of plain soap, and began scrubbing his skin red trying to wash the
slimy feel from his skin.  It didn’t help.

NEW
HORIZONS

A phone call reminded him that
Doctor Seasons wanted to do a follow up to make sure nothing had been missed
during his visit to the Emergency Room.  He was given the address of
Seasons private practice office in the huge hospital complex.  He found it
and registered with the receptionist, and then waited in the waiting room until
his name was called.  He was depressed, and he was deeply embarrassed at
being so completely fooled by Nettie.

“Scott Neville,” a familiar voice
called out.  Linda was standing in the doorway, smiling at him with a
fresh and friendly face.  In her hand was a ceramic mug of steaming
coffee.  “Just the way you like it,” she said, “but please wait until I’ve
taken your blood pressure before you drink any of it.”

Scott smiled at the wholesome
quality the woman exuded.  Perhaps there was hope for him yet.

A NIGHT OF LOVE AND BANDAGES

THE
INSUFFERABLE PRICK

He was an arrogant bastard, she knew
that right away.  Bridie Halloran was no idiot, she was perfectly aware
that some of the people who came to this club were unsavory characters who
didn’t mind walking outside the lines when it came to the law, but this
insufferable prick was outrageously indifferent to the sale and use of cocaine
and marijuana.  He was sitting next to a guy who seemed to be supplying
the whole club, laughing, drinking, and flirting with the flocks of young women
gravitating to the dealer’s table.  The real problem Bridie had with him
was the instant chemical spark that passed between them when she had first come
in the door.

She would have slapped any other man
who had come on to her the way that this one had.  He had stood up as she
entered and maneuvered her into a shadowy alcove.  One muscled arm had
slid up the wall beside her and his handsome face inched closer to hers. 
He was wearing unbelievably expensive clothes. The silk tee shirt in pastel
blue carelessly tossed over the hand tailored slacks, silk socks, and highly
polished Italian loafers, not to mention the incredibly expensive Breitling
watch and the gold jewelry…his ensemble had to have cost most of what she made
in six months. The scent he was wearing was subtle and vastly expensive.

Bridie Halloran was not one of the
gold diggers that frequented the club, she was a fashion reporter for a popular
women’s magazine…she knew clothes, jewelry, shoes, and scents because it was
her livelihood. She saw male models, in various states of dress and undress on
a daily basis, and she shouldn’t have been affected by this street hood and his
flashy getup…but she was.  When his face was close to hers and she was
breathing in the delicate yet manly smell of his cologne, her nipples had
hardened and she felt dampness between her thighs.  Of their own volition
her thighs spread apart, just barely, as her gaze was locked on his dreamy, hot
amber eyes.

He was just over six feet tall, and
he had the lean muscled body of an athlete.  When he moved, it was
effortlessly and he seemed to almost glide. He was confident and smooth, and
his brilliant white smile dazzled her.  She even noticed that his hands,
while broad and strong, were manicured impeccably.  His longish wavy black
hair hung down over his eyes, and he tossed his head occasionally, to clear the
locks from his eyes.  On a woman, the gesture would have been fetching. 
On the insufferable prick, it was devastating.  Even while he was
obviously hitting on her, other women were approaching him, touching him, and
doing everything but stripping for him in the dark alcove.  Bridie had no
doubt that more than one of them had been willing to do just that to get his
attention.

“Wouldn’t you rather be someplace
quiet and romantic tonight?” he had asked her softly.  There was
absolutely no doubt that he was full of himself.

In spite of her body’s instant
attraction to this dazzling thug, Bridie responded fiercely.  “I’d rather
be anywhere that you
aren’t,
she said primly.  She extricated
herself from the warm half embrace he had managed to trap her with and started
to walk away in a huff.

“You need to leave,” he said in a
whisper as she walked off.  His comment took her quite by surprise, and
she kept track of him out of the corner of her eye as she went to the table her
friends from the magazine were gathered around.

“Who’s the hunk?” Bella asked under
her breath. Bella was Bridie’s close friend, a petite, slender woman of Italian
descent who also worked the fashion desk.  “I have no idea,” Bridie said
heatedly, “but he’s an insufferable prick!”

“A very
hot
insufferable
prick,” Bella said, her dancing eyes examining him microscopically. 
Bridie was livid…and her body was still on fire from the brief contact.

There was a commotion of some sort
and the prick and the dealer were yelling.  Quite suddenly the prick
reached for the dealer’s arm and Bridie caught a glimpse of something shiny and
huge just before the prick managed to shove the dealer out the door.  The
shockingly loud explosions of gunfire from the front of the club threw most of
the clientele into a panic and they swarmed the exits.  Bridie had enough
sense to sit right where she was until the mad rush was over.

When the doors cleared, and there
were no longer any explosions coming from the street, Bridie hurried to the
front door of the club.  She might only work on the fashion desk, but a
reporter was a reporter, and no responsible journalist would pass this story
up.  She fumbled in her purse for the small Nikon L26 she carried
everywhere for ‘just in case.’  Taking it out and turning it on, she
slowly moved onto the sidewalk outside.