Peter's Lament

His mind remained jumbled and confused; it was as though Peter struggled to swim after diving deeper into the water than he intended; his arms ripping the water to break free to the surface for glorious air Peter's quest for meaning. It took a moment, but the realization hit him. He was looking at Petra in each of these photos. Not only Petra, but her friend Jerome, and in one of the pictures, Jerome's wife. And the other couple that stayed with Peter and Petra at the Lake Anna house the whole weekend. Howard continued to display five other pictures, each with Petra altered in physical ways and in different settings.

The agent eyed Peter's astounded face, satisfied he garnered the right reaction.

"I take it this is your Petra," he said.

Peter remained transfixed, shooting an accusing look at the agents before him. He was angry. Confused.

"Her name, at least as far as we can tell, is Giangia Stanovich. The Caucasian daughter of a former Soviet army commander who broke rank and defected to the Afghani rebels during the 1980's. They later turned into the Taliban. She left the country shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed, studied abroad and fell back with her terrorist brethren."

"This is a joke," was all Peter could say.

"Afraid not, Mr. Seymour. The woman you knew as Petra is the most dangerous woman in the world," he said flatly. "So as you can see, we really need to know just how much she learned from you about your little stealth product."

*****

None of the story made sense. But how would the agents know? None of them were with Petra during those seven months, especially with her, touching her, kissing her the morning she disappeared.

The Petra he knew was beyond any of the few lovers crossing his path during his lifetime. She was just as connected to Peter. Within three weeks, Petra and Peter were living together at Lake Anna. And life melded so perfectly; no need for compromises, no arguments. A serendipitous timing of wants, needs...desires. Peter and Petra would wake every morning at six, making fervent love before showering, dressing and sharing a spare 15 minutes with mellow cups of coffee staring at the lake, and talking very little. Then they both parted, heading to work – he at VizoTech and she as a real estate researcher for Jerome's firm.

By the third month, half of Peter's closet and a newly-purchased chest of drawers were dedicated to Petra. They were in synchronicity.

Some days he would get out of work early, and Petra would take an extended lunch break. She'd often be home before he opened the door, perched on one of the wooden kitchen chairs wearing one of his dress shirts, draping over her like a wispy robe. She'd huskily tell him she was hungry for lunch, make him sit down as she snaked between his thighs, unzipping his pants and releasing his quickly hardening penis.

"I want your yogurt," she giggle, and then began licking the underside of his shaft. "Give your Pet some milk for lunch."

Petra was magical with oral sex. Tender, instinctively applying just the right amount of pressure, suction, squeezes and touches to coax his orgasm. He would lounge in the seat, smiling with half-lidded eyes, stroking her delicate brown hair as she kissed his organ. As he felt the twinges in his testicles, the trickling of sensations that mounted second after second, Petra would take his hands in hers, place them at the back of her head, urging him to force her mouth into his groin, to let go and fuck her mouth. The intimate offer alone sent him reeling in incredibly lustful geysers.

After he recovered, Petra would take a paper plate from a cabinet, a can of whip cream, sometimes chocolate sauce and even once French onion dip, slather the food to her swollen lips, coating the vulva and her inner folds, telling Peter it was his lunch time. He would spend a half hour, sometimes longer, tasting her insides, swallowing the food stuff and licking the lingering tastes away to consume her own tastier juices, until he was devouring her own seeping cum and riding her orgasm.

What the agents didn't know either was just how much trust the two constructed between themselves. By the third month of their relationship, Petra and Peter existed in a bubble where each other's needs were distinctly understood before a word was spoken. And tales of her most inner demons, the painful memories she harbored inside during her childhood and teenage years in the country of Georgia were shared as freely as her sex. But the test of her trust, the utmost test, came one night, still aglow from lovemaking, Petra lost in thought while stroking his weakened shaft lovingly.

"I want to say something, Peter."

"Yes?" he responded, looking down at the top of her sweat-dampened head. She did not return his gaze at that moment.

"I want you to know that I trust you so much. You have been wonderful and shown me that there are kindness in the world." Petra sometimes would lapse into a more struggled English, her accent thicker and her grammar sloppier, when she became more emotional. "There have been men in my life, you know, right? Men of my past, as you would say."

"Of course," Peter said, stroking her cheek. "I have a past, too. I would never judge you."

"I know that. But many of those men wanted something from me I would never give, one part of me I wanted to hold sacred because I could not trust them fully. Do you understand what I am saying?"

"I think so," Peter said after a moment. Petra finally looked up into his eyes, her cheek still against his chest.

"I will give that part of me to you because I trust you, and I love you, Peter."

He was stunned. At that moment, neither had ever used the word love to describe exactly what had been building between them for those few months. But the words coming from her mouth the first time set him on a high he had never experienced in his life. Before, love to Peter was a confusing, messy union rife with double speak, and worse, those compromises that ate away at his soul. With Petra, the relationship was pure and free of complications. But to know that it equated to love for her almost made him weep.

"I love you too, Petra," he said quietly.

"I want to put your cock in my asshole, Peter. It is the one part of me a virgin, and with you, it would be a gift, my gift to you for being you," she said. "I know I don't make sense, but...."

"No, Petra. This is such an unbelievable offer. But I'm scared; I mean I don't want to hurt you." The screen door to the porch jittered against a sudden gust of wind off the lake, and even through the door, Peter felt a cooling chill casting upon the naked couple. He held her closer, enclosing her nimble breast in his palm, feeling her nipples stiffen at his touch.

"I know you won't hurt me Peter. I trust you won't hurt me."

And that was all that was said. Petra disengaged, and swerved to the bathroom, emerging moments later with a discolored plastic container of Vaseline, its label mostly peeled off into hairy wisps of faded blue and cream. Petra handed him the bottle and positioned herself so her pussy approached his mouth. Peter let out a gasp, his hips involuntarily jerking upwards, as Petra engulfed him and began her gentle, passionate kisses against his stiffening shaft and ballooning head. He kissed her lips once, twice, letting his tongue enter her slit. She moaned softly. He knew what she wanted – to feel the pleasure of her mouth to relax her while he administered the lubricant.

Peter opened the bottle and scooped the opaque cream on his middle and index fingers. Gently, with his other hand, he parted her cheeks, exposing her wrinkled hole. Never before had he seen that part of her. Actually, he'd never seen that part of any of his past lovers. None had ever wanted to engage in such an intensely intimate act before. Of course, his ex-wife admitted during the disintegration of their marriage that her year-long affair involved having anal sex with her lover. He always remembered that, how that detail emerged during the course of dispositions prior to their divorce trial. It wounded Peter deeply, but he'd never admit it, never give her that satisfaction.

With Petra, those wounds would be healed twice-fold.

Her hole wrinkled to the center and was darker than the creaminess of the rest of her body. Her hole expanded slightly, Petra flexing her sphincter to offer his lubricated fingers for his exploration. Peter was gentle, perhaps overly so. But he worried so much about hurting her, rupturing that trust that had become the communion between them. His middle finger worked inside of her, massaging around the rim of the hole and then trailing the Vaseline inward. Petra moaned against his cock, her hips pushing slightly against his finger. The first finger was soon followed by the second, and for what seemed like hours, Peter played and massaged with her hole. Petra gave no indication of pain, but instead seemed to ignite in a more animalistic passion than he had ever witnessed before. Petra's mouth would disengage from his penis, and she cry out, demanding that he fuck her with his fingers. By then, her body was moving too erratically for him to maintain his tongue's contact with her pussy.

"Deeper, baby. Go deeper inside me," she yelled, arching around to watch him work and to hold her own cheeks apart. Soon Peter found his two fingers buried in her backside to the knuckles, the Vaseline painting every inch of her canal. Petra moved off his body and laid on her back, opening her arms to offer herself to him. Peter rose, straddling her body in the missionary position.

"Thank you." It was all he said.

Petra smiled devilishly, reaching down between him so her fingers graced the flesh of his cock. She maneuvered the head against her sphincter and began pushing forward. His head pressed in, squeezing past her ring with ease. At that point, Peter began to push as well. The whole time, Peter studied her mesmerizing hazel eyes, watching for signs of pain. Her eyebrows creased, the thin lines nearly joining at the center of her brow, her mouth open and gasping. But everything about it screamed pleasure -- intense, nearly metamorphic pleasure.

Centimeter at a time, Peter entered her, and for once he was thankful for being average sized. With each deeper intrusion, the two waited; Peter could feel Petra flexing her inner muscles, accommodating this new object.

"You feel so big, Peter. You're filling me up so deliciously," Petra mewed in a thicker accent than usual. "Do you want this ass, honey? Do you want my cherry ass?"

"Oh God yes. I want to be inside you."

"Yes. Take it, Peter. Take it all. I want to feel your cock up my ass."

Then she'd begin to rock her pelvis again, little waves that inched him deeper into her anal canal. Before long, Peter was buried inside of his lover, and she began to kiss him. That progressed to pure lovemaking – not like before, with power and urgency, but relaxed, intimate, growing this new-found love to realms deeper by every stretch of the imagination.

Petra told him to lift himself up from her chest, allowing his cock even deeper into her. With each penetration, Petra expelled a noisy breath, like she was tiring from an intense jog.

"Pee...Pee...ter. My. God," she gasped. Peter hesitated, holding his hips in mid-thrust. "I'm sorry, Petra. Am I hurting you?"

"No," she shouted, clawing his shoulders. "Keep going, Peter. Keep going. It...feels....so.....goooood......Don't. Stop. Don't. Don't. Yea. Yea."

Those breaths rose in a crescendo that reached to the top of her voice, the sensations between the two rising and rising and rising until....

What Peter felt at first reminded him of the tickling blast from a toy water gun. He was surprised, confused. He looked down between them and witnessed geyser after geyser of clear liquid spraying from her vagina and onto his belly. After the first one, Petra's voice let go, her screams filling the bedroom and the house. Her pleasure filled the silence and stilled darkness of Lake Anna. Her legs began to convulse, suddenly wrapping around his waist and clutching Peter further into her, then shaking down until her heels began to pound in the back of his thighs. All the while Petra screamed out her orgasm, not uttering a single intelligible word, but only the primordial voice of someone lost to the basest of all pleasures.

Peter couldn't withhold against her orgasmic assault. He came hard, his body jerking with each jet of cum, filling her ass with him. They collapsed and Peter fell into the deepest sleep of his life.

****

So there was no way the FBI could be right about Petra. No way those pictures and the agent's story added up to anything more than a case of mistaken identity. That was not the Petra he knew, the one he discovered that night.

Peter's thoughts became as hazy as the smoke. The butt of his third cigarette became hot. He stubbed it out, this time on the pitted table face. Agent Howard and his goon squad had left him alone for the past ten minutes, leaving Peter to his sexual daydreams. Those memories were the only way he could stay connected to Petra, a psychic fiber to keep her real.

For the first time, Peter felt a sort of desperate sadness begin to percolate within his heart. He couldn't easily discount the FBI's version of events. The girl in the photos was remarkably like Petra, even the way the girl sat on the jeep or held that coat to her chest. The mannerisms all so familiar and bittersweet. His mind wandered back to the dock, to those last few images captured and framed in his mind. Her beautiful, lithe body climbing into the boat. The way her legs gracefully arched over the side, landing in the belly of his Bayliner. The way her bikini framed her curves, at once demure but incredibly erotic.

The door nearly swung its full extent before Peter noticed anyone approaching. Agent Howard came in alone this time, shut the door and sat before him. There was a different look to him this time, a more personal expression the spoke of failing hope.

"Right now, Peter, your CEO, Malcomb Vizor and the other top executives are cloistered in the company's conference room with top brass from the FBI," Howard began. "They're hearing the basic outline of what you told me so far: That your former lover may have seduced you to gain access to sensitive information concerning new U.S. military capabilities."

The agent, his shirt much more wrinkled than Peter remembered from earlier, let that statement sink into the stale atmosphere in the interrogation room. Peter didn't respond.

"The problem that we need to ascertain is just how much she actually got from you," he said. "Worst case scenario, Mr. Seymour, is that Petra extracted chemical formulas and other secretive information for your stealth paint."

"Impossible," Peter finally breathed out. "My entire system is encrypted, using a variable system that is accessible only by central computer. I am the only one with the password series. Even if I work from home, I am the only one who can access it. For the company's sake, there is a hard copy of that formula in their bank somewhere, but other than that, I am the sole proprietor."

Agent Howard leaned forward, his hands clasping together in prayer. For a moment, Peter instinctively flinched back, but couldn't pinpoint why he did so.

"We know that, Mr. Seymour. Your CEO has told us so much," Howard said. "Our agents want to comb your system, looking for indications of an outside break-in. Or at least signs of software tampering. The only way we can get in is with your codes."

Peter felt a chill, glancing around the room for some sort of air conditioning vent. The room was plain and solid, the nearest vent seemingly dead of any air.

"No way."

"Peter, please be reasonable. The board of directors of VizoTech has already given the bureau consent. Your CEO is asking you to give us the code," he said. "I could get a federal judge to compel you to give us your passwords, but that would eat away too much time, Mr. Seymour. The sooner we can investigate a crime soon the better chance we'll have in capturing Petra and her companions. Please, Mr. Seymour, time is critical here."

Peter hesitated. "Even if what you say about Petra is real, why do you think I'd help you find and capture her."

This time the agent leaned even closer, attempting to shrink the space between them. This time, Peter felt, the agent tossed off his professional interrogator air and instead donned an actual understanding to Peter's plight. The engineer became disarmed.

"So you can ask her yourself, Peter. Ask her why she left you, why she disappeared," he said. "So you can hear the truth from her."

****

Just a week before Petra disappeared, she and Peter were lounging on plastic-strapped yard chairs near the mouth of his plywood floating dock. The morning began overcast, and just near lunch time, the sky became even more of a battleship grey. The two were silent; Peter reading and Petra drawn and lost among the gentle ripples on the face of Lake Anna.

"You ever wonder what secrets are beneath there?" Petra broke the silence they had been sharing for the past hour. For the first time since they met and began their relationship, Petra awoke that morning in a pensive mood, rising straight from waking and taking a shower without the couple's usual sexual forays. They ate a quiet breakfast and then headed to the dock. Within the first ten minutes though, Petra pulled him down onto the damp wooden planks, exposing his cock and riding him to a quick mutual orgasm. That had been two hours before and nothing was said since.

Peter looked up from his book. Petra remained transfixed to the lake, gazing within and beyond its dark and murky surface. The weather obscured Lake Anna, the clouds deepening its dark tones until the surface seemed vaguely olive and its depths the shade of tar and night.

"The surface is for everyone to see, for all to play on, you know?" she continued after a moment. "But no one knows what it hides beneath, what secrets lie buried. There's where the lake's true dark nature is, you know?"

Peter remained speechless, not so much out of some respect to her epiphany, but more out of amazement. This was just a week before Petra disappeared, and that day Peter realized there was just as much depth to his lover as Lake Anna. He was stunned.

Petra looked up finally. "Let's go inside. I want to show you something."

The something turned out to be six inches and pink. Peter had never seen the dildo before in his house and had no idea where Petra had found one, especially in such a conservative area of Virginia. A series of vinyl straps trailed limply from the dildo's stub and partial fake testicles. For a moment, Peter felt somewhat awkward and hurt. The pink jellied dildo was slightly bigger than his own cock; her presentation of the sex toy felt like an indictment on his inadequacy.

Petra just smiled and stroked his simmering boner through his shorts. She reassured him in her minx seductive tones.

"No Peter. I love your cock best," she said. "I used to use this before you came into my life. But now I want to use it on you."

Peter continued to stare at his lover, his mind failing to register exactly what she meant. He glanced at the pink cock again then back to her face. His bedroom – their bedroom – was cast in grey shadows, the beechwood furniture losing its normally golden luster to the gloom. Peter felt cold.

"I'm not sure, Petra. I've never had anything inside me before. And I'm not gay."

She pouted, jutting her luscious bottom lip out before lifting the dildo closer to her mouth and letting that lip luxuriously trail the opaque underside of the fake shaft. The demonstration was completely alluring.

"Peter, pleasuring your anus doesn't make you gay."