Epilogue #2
I can't not watch, okay? If you were stuck in this leather-stinking closet, you'd watch too. And by the way, who the fuck has a closet full of leather jackets in their office? That's just weird.
She shoves him backward, grinning like the cat who ate the canary, doing the whole silly catwalk strut where she dramatically places one foot directly in front of the other in her four-inch stripper heels.
Six-inch? A lot of inches. Props to her for rocking them, though, and for being able to do that walk in stiletto heels like that.
I fall on my ass in anything bigger than a wedge.
Anyway.
Back to the show.
She uses a single index finger to shove him backward until he hits the desk, and then she does the whole overly dramatic porn thing where she pets his chest in a way that's probably meant to be sensual or something as she drops to a squat in front of him, unzipping his slacks—and damn, girl, drop it like it’s hot in those heels? Okurrr.
The obvious happens, then. She makes a hell of a production of it, and she was clearly trained in the fine art of fellatio by pornography directors, let's just put it that way.
Not gonna go so far as to say I'm better at it than her, but all that drama is just unnecessary, I've found.
Every man I've ever gone down on has left singing my praises and begging for more. A little bit of plain old hawk-tuah and gobble-gobble does the trick just fine, I’ve found.
I don't go in for all that nose-nuzzling-the-shaft and deep throating till I gag nonsense, and I really, really don't do the tongue-out-come-on-my-face-daddy bullshit.
Fuck that. It's sticky, it smells weird, and the texture is…
no. Just no. Nope. I'll swallow all night long, and you'll thank me for it.
But facials like that? No way. Not this girl.
And my god, does she take a hell of a load; I mean, damn, Ionescu, lay off the horny goat weed.
Her face looks like a milk commercial gone very, very wrong by the time she's done taking it—my hiding place has a side-on view of the desk, which means I can see him, her, his penis, and her mouth taking it, the hinky whole business.
The real irony is that my book is still going in my ear, and at nearly the same moment as Ionescu blows his wad, so does the vampire professor.
Although his load goes on the plucky heroine's tits, which is something I don't mind allowing. I don’t love it, but if you really, really want to?
Fine. But it's weird. How is that better?
Does it, like, do something for you? Whether it's the face or the cleavage or wherever, why?
Why on me? I don't get it. It obviously feels fucking amazing for you when I take you down my throat, so why would you want to pull out of my hot, wet mouth at the last second and finish anywhere but down my throat?
Seems dumb to me, but then, I'm not a man.
And men are, as we all know, exceptionally stupid whenever their penises are involved.
Which is all the time. Hopefully you got that joke on your own. If you didn't, you're probably a dude.
God, I'm bored.
The, um, festivities progress apace; to his credit, Ionescu returns the favor.
They fuck on his desk.
And the floor.
And against the wall.
Jesus, the man has stamina. I’m impressed, despite everything.
Finally, after enough sex to make a—I check my watch…
forty-six-minute video—Ionescu escorts her out of his office by virtue of a hand on her taut ass.
Which I got an eyeful of from a few different angles.
I wait until I hear her heels on the Carrara marble stairs and his voice echoing off the ceiling of the three-story foyer before I burst out of my hiding place, rush to the desk, and yank at the bottom drawer on the left side.
Locked, which is not unexpected. I produce my lockpick set from my pocket and make quick work of the flimsy lock. Inside, the drawer is empty but for a truly ancient Ericsson cell phone, as in the kind that has a flip-down cover over the T9 keyboard.
Jesus, Ionescu. At least get a Razr.
I tap the drawer bottom—false. I find the latch and lift the false bottom, and there it is, thank the sweet baby Abraham.
Why Abraham? No clue. I'm just weird.
It’s an innocent-looking little thing, this drive. Silver and red, and about the size of my thumb…thus the name. No label, nothing to say that it has five hundred million dollars on it.
I snatch the drive, zip it safely into the waterproof, cut-proof, fire-proof pouch banded tightly around my midsection under my clothes.
And just to dispel any stupid myths or misconceptions, I'm not dressed in a Michelle Pfeiffer-esque pleather catsuit.
I'm not even wearing all black. I'm in black jeans, a dark maroon long-sleeve tech shirt—you know, that slippery, stretchy material they make workout shirts out of—and a dark gray zip-up hoodie.
And black Nike Air Jordans, if you must know.
You see, any sufficiently dark shade blends equally well into shadows as black, and if you're dressed in some silly-bitch catsuit, you can't exactly blend in with people on the way home after the job. Nondescript is the name of the game, in my profession.
I hear the door close with a thunderous noise that shakes the house, and then footfalls on the stairs.
Hurry your ass up, Archer, I tell myself.
I return the drawer to its original state, and then re-lock it with the lockpick set.
And yes, that's a thing; they just don't show cat burglars re-locking things in the movies.
Which is stupid. If you leave the safe wide open, your mark is gonna know they got robbed and call the police immediately.
If you take a few extra seconds to close things up and relock them, you buy yourself at least a little bit of time, if not a lot.
Who comes home from the theater and immediately goes to check the safe?
No one. But if you come home and see it standing open? Duh, call the po-po.
So yes, I re-lock the drawer and then hurry to the glass French doors leading to the balcony. Fortunately, this door isn't locked, and I let myself outside, shut the door, and dart to the side just as Ionescu re-enters his office.
I peek around the edge of the frame through the glass—fuck!
I left the closet open.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Rookie mistake.
Panicking now, I hold my breath as Ionescu sits behind his computers and wakes them up—the fucker is playing Diablo IV. Spreadsheets? Invoices? Emails? Nope. Killing demons with—I squint and assess—a pretty high-level barbarian, it looks like.
And then he sees the partly-open closet door, abandons his game mid-battle, and tugs open the door, flicks on a light.
And oh…my…god.
The leather?
Not a jacket to be seen.
Gimp suits. Whips. Gags. Flogs. Cuffs…All sorts of bondage stuff.
Fuck me.
My skin crawls and my gut rises into my gorge. Thank god he didn't want to play with Miss Beach Ball Boobs.
How do you decide when you want to be whipped and when you want to just have your beef jerkied? And also, why keep that stuff in the office?
I dunno.
But that's not my concern, is it?
Getting off this balcony is.
I peer over—it's a long drop to a flagstone patio. No drainpipe, no trellis, just the balcony and a hell of a drop.
Fuck it, we ball.
I swing my leg over the railing and sit on it for a second, looking over my shoulder as Ionescu rifles his drawers—bottom left first.
His bellow of rage shakes the foundations.
Ionescu picks up a computer screen and hurls it across the room to smash onto the floor, cursing in several languages. And then he goes back to the drawer, and this time he takes the relic—I mean, phone. Dials a number.
Waits.
Morbid curiosity holds me in place, stupidly.
"It is me. We have a very big problem. Someone has stolen the drive." A pause. "If I knew who, you idiot, I would not be calling you, would I? Of course I have cameras in my office. No, not connected to the system."
Um?
Fuck?
What cameras? I killed all the cameras.
"If you must know, they are…strategically located. And encrypted.”
Oh, ew. He records his trysts.
And me robbing him, apparently.
“Yes, I'm pulling up the footage now."
Shit, fuck, damn. I'm screwed.
Remember back at the start when I said I was fucked?
See?
Fucked.
"It is a young woman. About five-ten, blonde hair.
Magnificent ass." Thanks, Ionescu. "She was hiding in the closet.
She must have been here when I came back unexpectedly.
Which means she must have seen—never mind.
She went out the…balcony." He gets up and drifts this way. "Yes, I have a good angle on her face."
His eyes meet mine for a split second, because I'm a crazy, arrogant, stupid bitch sometimes, and then I drop.
Hit the ground and roll, find my feet and sprint across the expansive grounds of Ionescue’s sprawling estate in the Swiss Alps—my right ankle screams the whole way, but I refuse to limp or slow down; to do so is death.
I hear a sound that curdles my blood—the savage barking of dogs.
Fuck, fuck, fuck me.
Ever seen someone get torn apart by dogs? I have. It's the single most brutal thing you can witness.
I run faster.
Bam-bam-bam. You know what that sound is. No, not my pulse. That’s more bambambambam.
It's the sound of my improbably large boobies whacking me in the face.
Run harder, Archer.
My lungs burn and my ankle throbs with fire, but I keep sprinting. The dogs are barking, but they haven't gotten my scent yet—and they'll have a hard time doing so, I hope.