Ingrams & Assoc 4: Beneath the Surface Ch. 03

And now I was in love. There it was. I'd said it. God knows why. She'd taken pity on me, given me a night I'd never forget. And a morning. And an education. And if I was being honest with myself, which who knows if I was, I'd have admitted that even if the bad guys got me - but not her - it would have been worth it. The last few days had validated my whole life. I felt human. I felt happy. But I couldn't trust it. I loved her, so I had to get away from her. I was nothing but bad news. Why bring it on her?

I shifted uncomfortably in the seat and she glanced over at me and gave me the first smile of the trip. She leaned over and patted my hand said, "Don't be hard on yourself. I can tell what you are thinking. None of this is your fault. And I did it because I wanted to."

She glanced at me, the smile was sardonic and she returned her attention to the road.

"Wait, what?" I said, confused. "How did you know...?"

She laughed. "You looked at me, and looked at...intense. Then you looked at yourself in the mirror, shrunk down in the seat a bit, pulled your hat down, then stared moodily out the window. Then you looked back at me. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out your train of thought, given what I know of your background. You feel like you don't deserve me, right? That you are dangerous for me to be around? Am I close?"

Wow, was she good. I just looked away, out the window.

Megan crossed the road, pulled over and screeched the car to a halt, atop a small isthmus, jutting out over the ocean.

She open the door and got out and walked around the car and opened my door and grabbed my arm.

"Out, come on. Get out."

I unfolded my frame and stood, standing next to the open door.

She kicked me in the shin, and I bent down to rub it and as I did so, she grabbed my shirt and pulled me to her and kissed me, hard.

"Now you listen here, Thomas. I kiss the people I want to kiss. I make love to the people I want to make love to. You are not dangerous Thomas. Well, you are, but not to me. I'm only here at all because of you. You play wonderful music, you are kind, attentive, you listen. You have depth. You are like a dream man. And my god, for someone who's had exactly one lover, one time, you are the fastest learner I've ever seen. You turned me inside out last night Thomas. I have experience, and we'll talk about that another time, but my god, that was just great. Sex without feeling is just that, Thomas. But what you did... well, lets just say, I plan on getting more of that. A lot more, if you are interested. I'm not going anywhere Thomas, I'm not doing this out of pity or as a thank you. I'm interested. In YOU! And for someone with my history, that's nigh on impossible. So stop with your self pity and doubt. You. Did. Not. Start. This. You. Are. Not. Responsible."

She said the last, poking me in the chest.

We stood there and stared at each other for a moment. It occurred to me I should say something.

"Ok then."

"What, that's it? I bare my soul and you just say 'Ok then'?"

"Megan, I don't know what to say. You came into my life like a force of nature. I'm here in California, not knee deep in shit...I find myself, well, totally out of my depth. There are people chasing us who want to hurt us and I honestly don't know what to do. I don't know what to think. I don't even know what to feel. I do know that I have never felt the way I feel. Something is different. Something is exciting. But I am confused. And scared. And thrilled. And thank you for saying what you just said. It means a lot. Really

She smiled, then laughed, pulled my head down again, kissed me on the cheek and said, brightly, "Good answer. Non-committal, but keeps all the options open. You are way too fast a study. Come on, Santa Cruz awaits!"

And we were back in the car. This time we had music on, and we put the top down.

Santa Cruz was a disappointment, to be honest. It's a fairly dirty city. Megan had never been there before, and we ended up staying at some crappy roadside motel on the edge of town.

We had dinner at some Yelp recommended pizza place and everyone around us looked like a beach bum.

We slept together again that night, this time it was slow, quiet and with lots of long, deep kisses. I fell asleep with her arms around me, and it was nice. It was yet a new experience. For the very first time in my life, I spent an evening knowing I was going to go to bed with a woman. Without paying. Who wanted to be with me. This was a very validating thing. If getting laid by a hottie by surprise was incredible, knowing it was going to happen was pretty damned amazing also.

I was up first next day and I went to get breakfast from the McDonald's at the next corner, and I dragged her out of bed, complaining, and took her down to the beach, where I played some stuff on the violin for her, while she sat eating an Egg McMuffin and throwing bits of hash browns at me.

It was very romantic, so she said.

We did end up with a crowd of early morning walkers around us, listening to my impromptu concert, until someone pulled out a phone to take video and suddenly Megan hustled us out of there.

We spent the day on the boardwalk, where there were roller coaster rides and amusements. Megan screamed appropriately on the old wooden rollercoaster, and clutched at me on some of the more modern rides. It was nice.

We spent one more night in Santa Cruz, sharing a room, but were both too tired from the day, the sun and the wine at dinner to do more than sleep. And that was nice too. Especially because, as we laid down, with my feet sticking off the bottom of the bed, Megan said, sleepily, "It's so nice to go to sleep with someone I want to. Someone I want to wake up with." And then she drifted off, leaving me to ponder the meaning in the words.

The next day we headed to San Francisco, where we stayed at a small apartment in the middle of the city.

San Francisco was great. A terrific city I'd always wanted to visit, and now, here I was. And I barely got to see any of it.

We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, I saw a tiny bit of Fisherman's Wharf, we had dinner at the House of NanKing - which was awesome by the way - and that's about it.

And I was over the moon about it. Why? Because we spent the rest of the time in bed. Well, not just bed. The couch, the kitchen, the deck, if it had a flat space, we had sex there. Made love there. Made each other an animal. We did it all.

And my education expanded. I learned how to 'edge' Megan. That's where you bring woman to almost her climax, then back off; then do it again. Well, actually she did it to me first. When you have almost come three times, and been dropped back, you are ready to give up anything to finally get there.

I joked that it was the ultimate spy tool; that she'd been taught by Mata Hari, and while she joined in the laugh, it didn't quite reach her eyes.

I learned how to use my fingers to get Megan off in about two minutes flat - two fingers in her pussy, a thumb on her clit, and a finger up her ass.

I learned how to play the erogenous zones - of which there are several - and how to use temperature to get her excited and ready.

And I learned how to have anal sex. There's an art to that, I found out. You don't just stick it in. No woman - or man, I imagine - likes that. You have to take you time, open her up a bit by using fingers and lube. Impatience is what destroys anal sex for most people. Too much impatience to getting you cock into her ass. Take it slowly, get her in the mood, worship the asshole first, get her interested. I learned about mouth to ass, rimming they call it - when it's 'ok', although frankly, for me, it never really would be - and how you never go directly from the ass to the pussy without risking some fairly nasty infections.

I also learned about dirty talk. Now, that's a thing. I laughed the first time she talked about it, all clinical like.

But, used correctly, dirty language can spice up a moment. With the right person, at the right moment, a "Take it, hard. You know you want it" can increase desire. But I did learn it required the right person - you had to read the signs correctly. Calling someone a dirty bitch, when they secretly believe they are one, heightens the moment. Saying it to someone who doesn't believe that ain't good.

We spent almost a week in San Francisco, in basic seclusion, exploring each other. And it was truly a fantastic time. Well, both great and awful. I was falling more and more under her spell and when this was over, it was not going to end well for me. I knew that. I knew I would fall -and hard. But I also realized that no matter how hard the end would be, the here and now was the greatest time of my life and I was going to enjoy it.

We didn't speak of weighty matters - she called back to headquarters, wherever that was, and was reassured that no one had made the YouTube connection yet, although how they knew that I don't really know.

Besides the sex, we talked about our lives as kids - I told her about my life with my parents, what very little I remembered of it, and then the life of being shuttled around foster homes and orphanages. How I learned to play the violin of my two semesters at college; all of it. She was an amazing listener. I could really see how she would have made a great therapist. She had empathy. She asked good questions. She made me feel so comfortable.

She talked to me, too. She told me about growing up in Ohio; of her school friends; of failing to make the cheerleader squad; and being thwarted by the head cheerleader, so she stole her boyfriend to get back at her only to discover that the boyfriend had never had sex with her cheerleader enemy. Further to find, after an ass kicking confrontation in the gym late in the prom night, just her and her nemesis, that the head cheerleader liked girls. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. After the ass kicking was over, they'd had a necking session the like of which she'd never had to date, and that night, she learned how to eat pussy, and how it felt to have someone who was truly interested in it do it to her.

We stopped after that story because my dick was going to explode. That story kept me going for at least three hours. I also learned that even the "beautiful people" had insecurities. Megan has great looks, an intact family and a stable childhood. But she worried that people only liked her for her looks. She worried that people who had less resources than her family assumed she didn't work hard. This was a real revelation for me. I had so much self-pity - much of it earned, in my opinion - that I never even considered that those with the things I didn't have could have self-doubt also.

One other thing we did was start watching a TV series together. I was a big follower of broadcast TV shows that I could get streamed - some current favorites included Elementary and Person of Interest. Since I have all my data in the cloud (and a Netflix subscription), I could watch anything anywhere I had a wifi connection, so I insisted we sit and watch something together, and she liked Person of Interest. It only took her a few episodes and she was hooked. We spent more than a few hours in bed, recovering from sexual, watching the adventures of Mr. Finch, Root, Mr. Reece and The Machine on my iPad.

The night before we left San Francisco, we had dinner at a small French restaurant called Café Claude. It was terrific - I'd never had French food before and had this hot ham sandwich with an egg on top called Croque Madame.

"Champagne?" asked Megan, bright as a button. She had mentioned the restaurant was one of her favorite places to eat in the entire United States, and declared she simply could not visit the city and not eat there. So here we were. Staring at menus in French.

I was in a down mood. "Seriously? We are being hunted and you want to drink Champagne?"

Megan looked mock hurt. "Well, we are in wine country. Or we will be tomorrow. Is my little ickle baby feeling a bit down? Does ickle baby need some cheering up? Is the big bad bogie man scaring my little man? Fine, I'll order a strawberry margarita instead."

I was not impressed.

"Megan, this is serious. I mean, don't get me wrong, this week is great, but I can't just exist on sex and nothing else."

"That's why we are at a restaurant. I'm pretty sure..." she looked around, exaggeratedly. "Yes, I'm quite sure...they serve food here. Look, at that table. See? Food!"

I sighed.

"Look, I've been patient. I haven't asked too many questions. But I am a little nervous. How about cluing me in? Just a little?"

" 'Clue you in'? What, have you been watching too many Rockford Files?" she asked, heavy with the sarcasm.

"Megan..."

"Ok, ok," she waved me off. "Fine. What do you want to know? I may not know and if I do, I may not be able to tell you. But you deserve to know some things. You've...earned, that right."

She smiled livaciously at me as she said "earned" and my pants twitched. Damn devil woman.

"Let start with, what are you mixed up with?"

"Bad people," she responded, instantly.

"Yes, got that," I replied, slightly impatiently. "Tell me something I don't know."

"Ok," she said, considering, "I work for a private agency. Not a public one. There, you didn't know that."

"Great," I said, exasperatedly, "that makes it all crystal clear."

She smirked for a second and then said, "Sarcasm. You've come so long, Padawan."

"Megannnn."

"Ok, ok, keep your hair on. I work for an agency that... helps people. People who often don't know they want to be helped. I can't go into specific details, but imagine I'm an undercover...therapist. I go in, I see what is going on relationship wise, where the dysfunction is and I...try and patch things up. Fix them, as much as they can be fixed."

"You're not serious."

"Sure I am," she replied, brightly.

"You mean to say, I'm being hunted by the mob and I'm being protected by...a trick cyclist??" I was astounded and shocked.

Megan didn't like the psychiatrist jab, her face frowned and she said, "If I'm a psychiatrist, I'm the best damn psychiatrist you've ever seen." Megan made air marks with her fingers on the word "psychiatrist'.

"I'm doing a good enough job with you.'

Her eyes snapped at me the moment the last sentence was spoken, suddenly aware of what she'd said.

"Thomas... I didn't mean..."

I was hurt. I was devastated. But if there was one thing I'd learned, it was to control myself. Megan could see all my moods, so I just clenched my fists under the table and did my best to hold a stony face.

"Whatever," I said, not meaning that at all, "So exactly how are you involved with the mob?"

I could see her searching my face, looking for a reaction.

"Thomas, please, don't take that the wrong way. That wasn't meant the way it sounded," she pleaded.

"Please, just answer me, Megan."

There was silence for a second as Megan looked at me, trying to decide what to do. The drinks arrived and she sat quiet while they were served.

"Ok, well, we were hired because the son of a prominent banker - very prominent - got involved with some girl, she got him in trouble, broke it off and the son went looking for her. He didn't find her and is heart broken. He's the heir apparent to a large private merchant bank, and we were hired to, well, for want of a better way to put it, mend his broken heart. In doing so, we tracked down the girl, to find out why she dumped him, perhaps get him some closure. What we found led to organized crime - she was a honey trap and was supposed to get him hooked on drugs, so they could blackmail his dad. We contacted the fed, they got involved and since we were already in with this group - we posed as good time girls to infiltrate and find the girl - we kinda got roped into helping out and passing information along. To make a long story short, things went bad, April and I got details of how this group launders money - it was in the brief case we needed your help to find. Then things got even worse. They suspected I was a mole - which I kind of was. April got me out in the nick of time and we came to you for help. You know the rest. There are obviously details in there I can't give you, but you have the gist of it."

I considered this for a few moments. Megan took another sip of her margarita, and wrinkled her face, in obvious displeasure. I did wonder what she expected in a French restaurant.

"And me? How do I fit in?"

Megan's eyes dropped to the table. "They think you are who we work for. They haven't zeroed in on to what we really are. They just know that we took something valuable, and don't think we are federal agents cause they weren't busted. They think we are some type of crook, probably small time, looking for some leverage."

"Well, isn't that just dandy," I said, reverting to my self-pitying ways

Megan just looked at me.

"So all that sex? All that? That's 'therapy' to you?" I mimicked her use of the fingers in the air on the word 'therapy'.

"Thomas..."

"No, fine. It's fine. It's what I expect. I hope I'm a good little lab rat for you. I hope I scurried down the right corridor in the maze. Your technique is flawless."

Megan bit her lip.

"Thomas, yes, I will admit, I used some of the techniques I use in therapy with you. I won't be a liar and deny it. But the reality is, you needed it. You still do. You are a damaged man Thomas. But you are a good man -a dammed good man - despite that. As I've said before, I'm only alive because of you. Because of that, I owe you. The agency owes you. I owe you all the more because you didn't have to do it. But you did. You took life to protect April and me, and I'll never repay that as long as I live.

"But I'm not going to sit here and watch a soul in pain and suffering when I can do something about it. Sure, the way I do it is sometimes underhand and unorthodox, but please understand, this is what I do. And I'm not going to apologize for trying to make your life better.

"And lastly, fuck you. Yeah in the course of therapeutic projects, I may end up sleeping with someone. If that makes me a whore, so be it. But I'm the best damn whore imaginable. I didn't hear you complaining about my experience or what you've learned. And you are a better man because of it.

"I don't scream about what I do, or how I do it. Maybe I'm more ethically challenged than you are. Whatever. I go out into the world and I try and do good. Sometimes I get more than I bargain for, like now, but I'm not crying about it or hiding under the bed.

"I took you into my bed because, Thomas, I wanted to. That's the bottom line. No one is paying me, and I'm not doing it as a charity case. I actually like you, a lot. You need to know that people care about you, and I do. So I showed you. And we enjoyed it. And it made you happy, and me happy too. So fucking sue me. I'm not sure exactly how pissed off and bitter you need to be about it, honestly."

She was out of breath at the end of her rant, staring at me defiantly.

We just stared at each other for a few seconds, then she said, "So now you know. You get to judge. So... are we going to eat, then you going to pay the bill and take me back to the apartment and fuck me till I cry Uncle, or what?"

So that's what we did. I still didn't know exactly how I felt about it. A little betrayed. Some loss of trust. The loss of my stupid schoolboy fantasies. But she still wanted to bed me and I wasn't about to look that gift horse in the mouth, at all. And, despite what I knew, I still may have loved her. Intellectually, I probably knew I shouldn't. But my emotions were not as disciplined. So be it.