J. Gonzalez - They

“Hopefully not for long,” Officer Ruiz answered.

Tracy Harris lived in a gated community of luxury town-homes. She punched in the code in the security gate, and Officer Ruiz drove through the complex according to her directions. He parked in the guest parking area near her town home and Officer Ruiz opened the trunk. He escorted them to Tracy’s town-home and stood at sentry duty as she unlocked the front door. “I can check the place out if you want.”

Tracy nodded her approval, and Officer Ruiz searched it quickly. He emerged from upstairs a moment later. “You’re fine.” He nodded at Vince. “You have detective Staley’s card?”

“Yeah.”

“Does he know where to reach you?”

“His partner has my phone number,” Tracy said.

“Good. Anything happens, you know how to reach us.”

When Officer Ruiz was gone, Tracy went to Vince. He held her for a moment. “I can’t believe what happened.”

“Neither can I.”

They moved to the sofa. Vince stretched out, suddenly feeling the weariness in his bones. Tracy couldn’t seem to stop touching him, as if she realized she’d almost lost him and that keeping in contact with him physically would keep him there with her forever. It was something Vince could understand and he welcomed it. “Did they question you?” he asked.

They compared notes as they sat on the sofa. Tracy had been questioned as strenuously as Vince had. No, she couldn’t tell them why somebody would want them dead. “I thought he was shooting at both of us,” Tracy said, holding his hand. “But the more I think about it, the more it seems that—”

“ I was the target.”

Tracy nodded. She looked fearful again. “Why would someone want to kill you, baby?”

“I don’t know.” And now, for the first time since the horrifying event, Vince almost did break down. He felt himself beginning to collapse emotionally and Tracy sensed it. She took him in her arms and kissed him, holding him, offering soothing words of comfort to him. Vince clung to her, wanting to lose himself in her.

He found her lips and kissed her, tenderly, softly. She kissed him back, her green eyes deep and reflective. He looked into those eyes and he could feel himself getting lost in their depths, and then she kissed him again and this time he did get lost.

He didn’t know how long they sat on the couch in each other’s arms; it might have been minutes, it might have been hours. Tracy broke the kiss, a look of yearning on her face. She rose to her feet, pulling him up. Then she led him to the stairs.

Once in her bedroom she pushed him playfully onto the queen-sized waterbed. “Wait there for a minute.” She disappeared in the bathroom.

She emerged in black lingerie that was so tantalizing that he practically got hard right there. The brassiere pushed her breasts up provocatively. Her panties were black and slinky, the stockings clung to her legs like they’d been dipped in ink. “Well? What do you think?”

“I’m… speechless,” Vince said. Tracy smiled at him and he felt his heart thudding in his chest. The sexual tension between them had been building over the past week or so, and it was now finally leading to this.

He went into it with as equal a passion as she, kissing her tenderly, hungrily. His skin tingled as her fingernails traced down his chest to his belly, exploding in feathery sensations as she ran kisses down his belly. He leaned back, his mind reeling as she fumbled with the buckle of his slacks. And it was at that moment when panic set in and he thought this moment would be doomed to failure.

As she took him in her mouth, his penis withered like a shriveled stalk until she finally stopped and looked at him with those remarkable green eyes. The minute they’d started with foreplay he began thinking that, one, this was the first time he had made love to another woman since Laura’s death and, two, for all he knew, whoever had tried to kill him could be setting them in their sights now. Tracy seemed to read his thoughts. “You need to relax,” she said, moving over him and pushing him back down on the bed gently. She straddled him, running her hands softly along his chest. “Just relax,” she whispered. “Everything is all right. It’s over now. We’re safe. I’ll take care of you.” She whispered this over and over until he closed his eyes, listening to the sound of her voice, feeling her fingernails tracing across his chest lightly, creating a tingly feeling.

She got out of bed and headed to the bathroom again. When she came back she was holding a red candle. She placed it on the bureau and lit it. Then she joined him back in bed. “Turn over on your stomach.”

He complied, and with the cinnamon scent of the candle perfuming the room, she gave him a long, slow massage. Her expert hands kneaded the tension out of his muscles. When she’d worked over his entire body, she told him to flip over on his back. He complied. She massaged him from head to toe, avoiding the genitals, telling him to just lay back and relax, drift in the pleasures of the flesh, empty your mind.

He closed his eyes, the candle creating a waft of scent that was both pleasurable and relaxing. In no time he found himself floating in ecstasy. He felt so good that he barely noticed when she started on the blowjob again.

He stayed hard. And when he’d maintained his erection for three minutes she stopped working him with her mouth and mounted him. He felt himself slipping into her warmth effortlessly. She moaned, moving over him, and he lay back, enamored by the scents, the sensations, the sounds. He stayed hard and as her passion grew wild he began to meet it. When his orgasm came it was with sweet release, plunging him into further depths of pleasure.

They lay in each other’s arms as it ebbed. Vince cupped Tracy’s face in his hands and kissed her deeply. “You are so beautiful,” he said.

“No, you’re beautiful,” she said, grinning.

Vince could feel his heart racing in his ribcage. “That was so intense,” he said. “I think my chest is going to explode.”

“Gave you a run for your money, eh?”

“You can say that again,” Vince said, sitting up against the headboard. Sweat dotted his chest.

“There’s more where that came from,” she said. She kissed him. “But for now, how about a break? Let’s talk. Tell me more about the trip.”

They started talking about what happened to them at the airport. Tracy seemed to be dealing with it better. They both wondered aloud why somebody would want to have him killed, and Vince voiced his own opinions. “I didn’t tell the police because I thought it was crazy,” he said. “But… I keep thinking that… suppose the same people that killed my mother also want me dead?”

“Why would you think that?” Tracy asked. She was holding his hand as they lay in bed. “What makes you think your mother was even… well, targeted for murder?”

“I don’t know.” Vince shook his head, trying to think of the right way to approach this. “Reverend Powell wants me to come back in a few weeks to help him get to the bottom of this. What this is, I don’t know. We had a long talk after the wake was over. And he didn’t have much more to tell me than Lillian did. But he gave me his impressions on what he first thought about my mother and when he originally met us.”

“And that was?”

“He thought that Mom was running from something,” Vince said, reflecting on that long night of conversation that had kept him up late last night. “Mom never actually came right out and said this, but whenever anybody brought up a question as to what she did before she became a Christian, or what our past lives were like, she evaded the subject entirely. Didn’t even attempt to answer it, much less lie about it. Just evaded it. Changed the subject. And the way she did it was, I suppose, not so subtle. Reverend Powell said he got the strong impression that whatever life we led before mom joined the church was shameful to her. But something so shameful that it pales in comparison to what most people would consider shameful.”