Gifted Grifter Ch. 09

"Julie," I said softly, taking off the sunglasses, "I have a secret that I've not shared with anyone else until now. I hope to God that I won't regret for the rest of my life what I'm about to do." She looked at me intently, having no idea where I was going with this but giving me 100% of her attention.

"Try these on," I said quietly, handing my mindreading sunglasses to her.

She took them, handling them carefully since they must have something to do with whatever secret I was going to share with her, and put them on.

She was looking down when she first put them on, so nothing happened. Then she looked up at me. I was close enough that even through the dark tint of the lenses I could see her eyes widen in surprise. I realized that I could have a conversation with her without having to say anything just by thinking.

"Yes, you are reading my mind right now," I thought.

"Oh my god," she said in amazement.

"I discovered them by accident when I was working at the Department of Defense. I quit my job and have used these to make a living playing poker—I know what everyone else has in their hand" I thought. "This is also how I knew that guy in that bar back in Vegas was a cop. When I looked at him, he was thinking about his hidden microphone. Oh, and it's also how I knew that you didn't have any diseases and it was safe to have sex with you, even without a condom."

"Ah," she said out loud. "It was really stupid for both of us to have unprotected sex given what I was doing in those days. I guess you had thought more about it than I realized."

"And the best part...," I said, knowing that speech was superfluous, "try asking me a question."

In retrospect, I realize by my asking the question I would have been thinking the answer, and so she knew before she asked that you could use a question to elicit specific information you wanted to know. Her mind was lightning fast, though, and without hestitation seized the opportunity, to some degree in spite of herself, to ask "How do you really feel about me?"

I had no choice but the think the answer: "I love you Julie. You're beautiful, you're hot, but more than that you're smart, sharp, and on the ball—as evidenced by the question you just asked." And unfortunately, you can't screen out your thoughts just because they're tacky. I was also thinking "I think you're a genuinely good and nice person—as the cliché goes, a (former) "hooker with a heart of gold." Maybe at one time I had only been interested in her body, but now I loved her to the very soul.

She looked down at the floor, taking the glasses off. "I'm sorry," she said, "that wasn't very fair."

I took the glasses back, but lifted her chin with my finger so I could look her in the eyes. Maybe she expected I would be mad at pulling those deep, secret thoughts out of me. She hadn't kept the glasses on long enough to learn that was the farthest thing from my mind. I smiled at her like a proud father, and said "That, my dear, was fucking BRILLIANT! Get a chance to ask a question and get the answer with absolute, guaranteed honesty—ask the most important question you can! What could be more important than to really know how I feel about you? And the most impressive part is... you came up with it," I snapped my fingers, "like that!"

She smiled, obviously pleased at my appreciation of her mental agility—and the fact that she had just learned, with certainty, that I loved her. "Do ME now," she instructed, "it's only fair." I quickly realized she meant ask her the same question with the glasses on. And I really, really wanted to know what her answer would be. I put on the glasses, looked her right in the eyes gently, and asked "Julie, how do you really feel about me?"

Her thoughts said "I love you;" "You're the only person who appreciates me for what I can do, not just what I can do for them;" "You're the only person who's ever been interested in my mind too, not just my body;" and my favorite, "I want to make you happy any way I can whenever I can." In retrospect, this was perhaps even more brilliant. She had asked me how I felt about her, not daring to hope I was in love with her, then learning that I was. This way, she could let me know that she loved me, too, without having the fumble around with awkward words to do it.

I took the glasses off. We locked gazes; I gulped involuntarily. The truth was out; there was no going back. I loved Julie, and she loved me. Yes, it was kind of a fucked-up love; there was an unbalanced, sugar daddy/sugar baby quality to the things we saw in each other. Some of that might be hard to avoid when one partner is 10 years older than the other. But my confidence made her feel strong, and her youthfulness and sexuality made me feel alive. It was the unlikely culmination of a courtship in reverse: most people like each other first, then fall in love, and then have sex. Our relationship started as a purely sexual one, and along the way we came to first like and then eventually love each other.

There was only one thing to do: we kissed. "I love you, Julie" I said, because hearing it with your own ears carries its own special significance even if you already know it as fact direct from the source. "I have an idea that would allow us to be together forever—or until you get sick of me, whichever comes first."

She rolled her eyes a little at my insinuation that someday she might want to dump me for someone else, but if she had still been wearing the glasses she would have known that that was a deep and persistent fear that would surface again.

Rather than go there, I started to lay out the plan I had come up with while waiting in the airport.

"The stock market," I began, "millions of shares traded every day. Fortunes won and lost. Stocks losing or gaining half their value overnight based on good news or bad news. It's so volatile—and so easy to lose your shirt—that there are all sorts of rules preventing people from taking advantage of it. A corporate VP might know that his company's sales disappointed and the stock is going to lose three bucks a share in the next 24 hours, but he is prevented from being able to take advantage of that knowledge by selling his own shares. Conversely, someone buying or selling that stock doesn't know what the news will be—and if they do find out, it's usually insider trading and someone get arrested. But what if there was another way to bridge that gap?"

My deliciously intelligent Julie caught on right away. "So if you can read the minds of people that know what is going on inside a company, you can always make the right decision on whether to buy or sell that stock."

"Exactly," I said, beaming at the fact that she caught on so quick; "and that's where you come in. I don't have any way to get an up and coming corporate executive to stop and talk to me so I can pick his brains about what's going on in company..."

"But if little 'ol me was sitting at the bar, all by myself," she finished the thought for me in an exaggerated Southern drawl "he might be able to find the time."

"Right again," I smiled, "and all you would need to do is get him to talk to you for a little bit. That's where part two comes in: I'm not going to let you out of my sight. The rich assholes are used to getting whatever they want, and if I have anything to say about it, they're not going to get their paws on YOU. That's MY job." I held her hands in my hands as we sat, looked right into her eyes and said "Julie, I want you to be with me. Live with me, work with me, travel with me, be my business partner—be my life partner. I was afraid to ask you before because I was so sure you'd say no. I'm an old guy with no regular job; why would a beautiful, delicate creature like you want to spend her time with me?"

"Stop it," she said. "I don't think of you as and old guy, so why do you? I think of you as a NICE guy. As the only REALLY nice guy I've ever met. The only guy who cares about my thoughts or my feelings—everyone else just seems to want me for my body. I mean, I guess the attention can be kind of flattering at times, but I'm so sick of that being the only thing that gets noticed." She kissed me, and said in a sexy tone "Someone that sees me for all that I am—that's a man I WANT to share my body with."

"I must be the luckiest man alive," I said earnestly.

"Shut up and kiss me," she said, pulling me on top of her. We made out like teenagers in our parents' basement until eventually making love again.

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I got up early the next morning to attend a few sessions at the conference. Julie was still sleeping as I was getting ready to leave. I left her a quick note.

Good Morning honey
Gone to sessions
Call if you want
Otherwise back at 10:30

--I love you

She hadn't called, but she was waiting for me in the room at 10:30. She had popped out to the coffee shop for a latte and breakfast, which she was finishing while reading the paper—the financial section. She was reading stock prices.

When she heard me come in, she popped up and ran over to embrace and kiss me. "Good morning sweetheart," she said.

"Good morning, honey," I replied. "I love you."

"I love you, too," she replied and kissed me again. "Do you have time for a little fun?"

"Actually, there's a couple of sessions I should go to. I wanted to see you first, though, in part to give you this." I said, going over to my bag and pulling out the two $5,000 cashier's checks I had with Julie's name on them.

"Oh good, that's a start," she said.

"A start?" I said. That wasn't quite the reaction I was expecting.

"I've been doing some figuring," she said. She sat down by her paper, and I now saw that she had filled several sheets of hotel stationary with figures. I was looking at them upside-down, but they looked like power functions. "You should be able to find a stock almost every day that goes up or down by $2 a share. Now, brokers may let you buy on margin with as little as 10% down, but just to be safe I think we should be a bit more conservative—say 25%. We would need 5000 shares to make $10,000 a day; that means we would need enough cash to buy at least 1000 shares outright." She put down her pad and pencil, looked up at me (I was still standing) and said "So the way I figure it, we're going to need about $50,000 in seed money to get this ball rolling. If we can start out making $10,000 a day, we can be making $100,000 a day in just a few months."

I was dumbfounded. "My dear," I said slowly, "you are amazing! I was a research scientist once—like a lot of academics, I guess I'm not so good with practical things. I would just shown up in New York with the money in my pocket. You're figured out how much money we SHOULD have to make this work. I'm glad one of us is on the ball here." I have to admit to feeling a little ashamed at having been intellectually shown up by a woman that, much as I loved her, had still been a prostitute when I met her. I knew and loved the fact that she was smart; but it was still humbling when she was smarter than me.

She popped up and hugged me, then looked at me with concern in her face. "You're not mad at me, are you?"

"MAD at you?" I replied. "Why would I be mad at you—you may have just saved our bacon on this whole scheme. I'm mad at myself for not being smart enough to figure out ahead of time what we would need to pull this off before I sprung it on you. Good thing you're smarter than me."

"I'm not smarter than you. Call girls need to have lots of applied knowledge," she said slyly, rubbing my crotch in case I didn't get her double entendre. "Its mostly businessmen that hire high-end hookers; they like to talk about their business because they want to impress us. Its best to just act impressed and nod a lot. But you can learn a lot of useful things if you're smart enough to follow what they're saying. Plus, I took a class in economics at OCCC last semester."

I kissed her. "You're awful smart," I said, "if you had gone to school as long as I did, you probably would be smarter than me."

"Too theoretical," she said, "I need something I can get my hands on." While she was saying it, she had slipped her hands into my pants and was stroking my penis. "Something like this," she breathed.

It felt real good. She undid by belt and slipped my pants to the floor, then sat down on the coffee table. She kissed my cock, then ran her tongue slowly up and down its underside. She stroked it gently while she liked my balls. Then finally she ran her tongue all the way up to my tip and then took me into her mouth.

She started gently caressing me, using that wonderful tongue on the underside of my flesh while it was in her mouth. But then she picked up the pace, moving my dick into and out of her mouth at the same rhythm that I used when fucking her. At the same time, she stroked the base of my dick that didn't fit in her mouth easily with one hand. She knew I had somewhere to go; she was sucking me in a way that would most rapidly produce orgasm—a quickie blowjob. As I got more excited, she used her other hand to gently stroke my scrotum too. Oh, man. I watched her blonde hair bob back and forth off my knob. Then she looked up at me with her big, blue, loving eyes, and I was done. I got extra hard and started ejaculating in her mouth. Like always, she took the whole load in her mouth and swallowed it, then cleaned off my penis with her tongue.

I helped her up and gave her yet another deep, semen-flavored kiss.

It was about time for me to leave. I put my pants back on, saying "Oh, man, that was amazing."

"I'm glad you liked it, daddy," she said in a sexy, little-girl voice. Cool-even as our relationship changed and grew deeper, we could still play sugar daddy and sugar baby.

"But the real reason I came up here," I said, "was to give you this." I reached into my pocket for the wad of bills I had there. "This should be about $1000. I want you to go shopping. Buy yourself whatever you want—shoes, clothes, I don't care, as long as its for YOU. I'll be very disappointed if you don't spend at least $500 of it."

"But, our seed money," she protested.

"I've got about 10 grand, and now so do you." I said. "That leaves us about 30 large short, so we're going to have to make some money another way before we go to New York anyway. So if we're going to make more, we don't need to save what we've got, do we? I want you to go shopping!"

"OK," she squealed, taking the money and practically bouncing with excitement. "It's been a long time since I've really gone shopping."

Good-she was excited and happy about the idea like I'd hoped. I said "I'll be done around four, but take as long as you want. We'll go to dinner whenever you get back." Another quick kiss, and I was off to the conference—and she to the shops.

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That night we ate dinner at a fancy restaurant in the west end. Julie was wearing a tight tan skirt, very high pumps, and a tight white top with a low, rounded neckline, showing lots of beautiful cleavage. Waiting for a taxi to take us back to the hotel, I pulled her aside and said "Julie, have I told you yet today how beautiful you are?"

"You have now," she smiled.

I gave her a kiss and whispered "I love you" in her ear.

She put her arms around my shoulders and looked up into my eyes, saying "Are you really going to be going back with me tomorrow? I keep expecting you to tell me you've changed your mind."

"Damn right I'm going home with you tomorrow...and the next day...and the day after that. You're stuck with me now," I said. "But I know what you mean—before I flew down here, I kept waiting for you to call me and tell me that you weren't going to be coming down to meet me."

"I love you," she said.

"I love you, too."

Back in our room, Julie was downright giddy about showing me all of her purchases that day. She modeled every one for me as I sat in the couch in the living room section of the suite. She ducked into the front foyer to change in between every item; I suppose she knew that if she changed clothes in front of me, we'd be having sex long before she'd finished showing me her purchases.

A pair of sexy black heels. Nice. "Mmmm, I like those," I said. She smiled and winked, then went for the next item.

A pair of three-quarter length pants. I guess they had their uses. The rode low on her hips; they might pair nicely with one of her midriff-revealing tops. I nodded.

A couple of light summer tops, low-cut with spaghetti straps. Basic, not bad. "Looks comfortable," I said. She knew I wouldn't get too excited about those.

A white flowered short-sleeve top, designed in a wrap-around fashion, that ended slightly above her belly button and let her midriff show. "I like it," I said, staring at the flat, toned stomach muscles they revealed. I never got tired of looking at them.

A very expensive brand-name purse. If that's what you want, honey, I thought. I nodded.

A green halter top, very tight and also wrap-around, with what looked like two levels of ties in the back, which ended at mid-belly and let even more of her torso show. Yummy. "Now we're talking," I said. "Can I get a close look at that one?"

"Not yet," she said, "there's more."

A black string bikini with gold metal accents and a gold hoop holding the cups together. I'm liking this. I didn't say anything, but my raised eyebrows signaled my appreciation. "I'm gonna wear this sunbathing tomorrow," she said.

"I made one more stop," she said, holding up a bag from a lingerie store. "Be right back." Now we're talking!

She came back out wearing the black heels again and a hot little pink two-piece negligee. It was mostly sheer, enough so that you could vaguely see what was underneath but obscuring enough that you would want to remove it to get at the goodies. The top had short sleeves and a square neckline that revealed most of the upper torso. It was gathered and tight at the bust, but flowing and loose from top down. Best of all, the only thing that held it closed in the front were two tiny string ties, one right above the breasts and one slightly below. It was designed to tend to tent open at the bottom, so that her navel and belly would peek out. The bottoms matched, although they were slightly more opaque, and had ties on either side at the hip to provide an alternate means for removing them.

She didn't walk so much as glide out from the back. She exaggerated the motion of her legs as she walked in order to appear more sexy. She stopped across the room from me, and nonchalantly untied the bottom string of her top. The then did a spin so that the top would flow out away from her and, with only one string tied, allow me a clear view of the sides of her breasts. She then proceeded to keep walking my direction.

I wasn't sure how she wanted to do this, so I just waited to take my cues from her.

She came up to me and stood in front of me, then bent at the waist so that her face was right up against mine. But rather than kiss me, she slowly pulled herself back to standing in such a way that I could look up the opening in the front her lingerie. Then she flipped her hair and strode around to the back of the sofa. She bent over me from behind, tossing her hair in my face. The she lifted her torso, so the loose folds of her top enveloped my head like a curtain. I looked up to look at her lovely breasts again, dangling down just inches from my tongue. But when I went to kiss them she lifted them out of my reach.

I then reached for the tie with my hands, but she intercepted my hands with hers and gently held them down so I couldn't reach.

"Is there something you want?" she breathed. I answered by transfixing my gaze on the last remaining tie of her bodice.

"If you want it, you're gonna have to earn it," she teased, dangling the ends of the tie in my face. I realized she wanted me to catch the end in my teeth; I missed at least five times before I finally caught one. When I did, I pulled my head to the side, which successfully untied the string—but the ends remained entwined, so the top remained maddenly closed. She giggled and continued to dangle the string tantalizingly in my face. Finally I lunged up and clenched one whole side of the top in my mouth; when I pulled with my neck it finally freed the laces from each other and her breasts hung free.