An Arrangement of Sorts

**This is just a little bit of a romance to give readers something to look at while I work up the love scene in "The Witch's Want", finish up "The Sighs of the Priestess" and the next chapter of "A Red Leaf & Ten Orchids." It won't go long, and it's just a pleasant little thing that was inspired by a few things and a true story that was related to me about what happened in a bar.

I just gave it reasons to happen and went from there. O_o

-------------

She was on her back with one of her legs draped along the top of the headboard and her head hung back a little off the bed. Her thighs quivered a bit from the last of the tremors of her orgasm as they left her. That feeling was one of the reasons that she liked this position so much, that and the way that it reminded her a little bit of making love with a certain man. The only thing missing was him.

His weight on her, and the pleasing smell and heat of him, and, ...

Hell, she thought, with a chuckle, she'd better stop having the thoughts or she might as well stay on her back and start again. She finished the list, though. She remembered the feel of his lips and teeth on her throat when her head was over the edge of the bed all of those times that they'd fucked each other so senseless that neither of them could get up anymore. They almost couldn't stand up without helping each other then.

Walking had been right out.

They'd only crawl out of bed to pee and it had always been his job to answer the door for room service. She smiled, remembering how difficult it had been for him to do that, too.

Well, the food would have gone cold before she'd have ever been able to manage it.

A moment or two later, Julie got it together with a groan as she sat up and then stood to walk to her bath. She brought the glass dildo along with her as she climbed in and leaned back. It was always so nice to let the thing heat up in her bath and then slide it into herself when she did this while thinking of him. It was all about the small motions then.

This was getting hopeless, she thought as she laughed a little out loud. It was the desire to do that with her toy that had caused her to masturbate on the bed in the first place so that she'd be wet enough for the dildo in the bath in just the right way. And she'd really wanted that while she thought about meeting with that man today.

If she couldn't get a handle on what was going on in her boiler room soon, she knew that she'd stand a good chance of needing him far, far worse than she dared to allow. It would mess with her objectivity and then she might not come away with what this was all about to her today and that would never do.

She smiled a little wistfully as she thought about him and what had gone between them all this time. So much promise and so much love, she thought.

Such a bloody shame that they were so fucked up.

Long ago, she'd been one hell of a hot little number, full of the promise of the pure sexual power that she could almost transmit to a man. But her mother had taught her well and she held the flames of that fire in check, just barely, as she cast her young brooding eyes around, looking for the one.

She'd found him, too – an equally young male for herself and evenly matched in his drive and need for her, the perfect mate who was descended from old nobility long ago in the Old World, and lots of old money in the New World. They'd seen each other one hot and sultry day right out in the street and that had been it, what had been the start as she felt his hungry stare from behind her, far off, and after one long look over her shoulder back at him, she just knew and she reeled him in.

They just had something between them, she thought. She'd wondered over the years if they really had been made for each other, because it all defied any logic that they knew of since they'd admitted it to each other in many places as they discussed it over the years.

She did it right, though, as hard as it had been to keep herself from clawing him into her hot little place right then and there in the gutter. But part of the plan was to use the gifts that she'd been given to get out of that same gutter, wasn't it?

Oh, she'd done it right, she remembered, keeping their lust for each other in check just at the edge of coming to a boil at any moment, torturing him - and herself - exquisitely for two years as she maneuvered them into the young marriage that had doomed them both.

The first of the concrete battlements that had to be gotten around had been the military academy and its rules. If it hadn't been for that, she'd have had him enslaved to her cunt easily. When she'd realized that there was nothing that she could do to get him to marry her before he graduated, she'd done her damndest to get herself pregnant, but he was meticulous about using a condom because he'd had his dream of going to that academy since he was a boy and had aimed his life in that direction from the age of seven. A child between them would have finished his dream as surely as him having a wife by those very same rules.

She couldn't have cared less about his dream, but she'd never told him that. She'd wanted to be a movie star when she was seven and that wasn't going to happen anytime soon either.

She could have used another man for the pregnancy that she needed to do it, but her own heart had let her down then. As goal–oriented as she was, she just couldn't do it. From her own viewpoint back then, she'd have allowed the things that pregnancy would do to her perfection to be able to have the perfect babies with the perfect man, but she knew herself well enough to know that while any other man's child might buy her the shot at the next level, it was a bargain that she just wasn't prepared to allow herself to make. He wasn't the only one with ideals, and besides, it wouldn't have worked.

His fucking snobbish family would have demanded DNA testing, even if he wouldn't.

As soon as he graduated, she'd nailed him. There was no way that Julie was going to let the finest buck that she'd ever laid eyes on in her life just bound off into the woods. He wasn't some spoiled brat from a wealthy family; he had honor and as much as she could admire that, it was something that a fine little vixen such as herself could use and have absolutely no qualms about. She might have been a scheming skank from the wrong side of the tracks, but they did love each other desperately in a very real and physical sense.

Unfortunately, there was some connection between her brain, her heart and her genitalia and it messed up the execution of her plans in ways such as this. When he was against her, she was lost in her lust, but underneath that, Julie loved him beyond her ability to pay attention to what her brain was telling her. The logic didn't come on until a while afterward every time.

And of course that came with its own set of complications, like the curse of the academy for one, and the iron will of his family for another. Even her mother hadn't foreseen that.

There was no negotiation possible there. She had him locked up tight fair and square, but they wouldn't bend. He'd broken some cardinal rule when he'd married her against their wishes, and since he wasn't the blue-eyed first-born son, they'd had no trouble telling him that the only thing to be done was to ditch his young wife or else.

Of course, her hooks were deep in him by that point and he had the same cast-iron will. He made his choice and stood by her. There were probably a lot of girls like her who would have just accepted his devotion and love as the real prize and gone on from there, but that old money had been one of the main reasons behind all of this, as her mother had reminded her endlessly.

So she'd listened to her mother and pulled the ejection handles. She knew full well what she'd done to him and the sight of a man like that with tears in his eyes, ...

A man like that should never have to beg with his heart in his hands, but he'd done just that. She'd done the only thing that she could think of in self-defense to protect her own heart then. It was all that she had left, or she'd have given in and, ... well then they'd have lived happily ever after, wouldn't they?

Hell no, she shook her head as she remembered with a tear, that would have been perfect, wouldn't it? That would have solved everything and that just couldn't be allowed, could it? That would mean being the wife of a bright young Army officer with a perfect future ahead of them both.

It felt like she was killing herself, but she did it so that she might do what she could to find Bachelor Number Two and begin again while she still had time and youth on her side. She didn't want to, but she had to run to keep from caving in. She'd fought for control of her facial muscles and she didn't really mean to do it but she felt - and knew exactly how she'd looked at that instant.

She'd smirked and walked out.

It was one of the reasons that she'd hated herself ever since, because unlike her mother's kind, she'd actually loved Chris so much that it hurt – and that was before all of this.

She remembered how often she'd had to wipe tears from her eyes as she'd driven to a motel in another town and cried for three days.

After that, she'd fucked any man who'd looked to her like his heart could stand her physical abuse of it and not die as she tried to make their balls implode. As if their semen could wash away any traces of his. As if the act of it might buy her some absolution for the guilt that she felt in ruining what they might have had. As if just any man's seed could actually do that for her soul.

As if.

Later on, she'd had no trouble hunting one man after another and squeezing them for every dime that she could get, but she couldn't make herself forget the man that she'd damned herself with. Julie wasn't stupid and she had tons of money herself for all of it, but there was always the little pain in her heart for what had happened and the little ache in her cunt for that one man. She must have bedded over two hundred men in her travels and her search for one who might be close enough to be the replacement that she sought, but, ...

There was no other man, no matter how she'd tried, who could make her feel the way that he could when she was in his arms.

Julie sighed as she got out of her bath to sit on the edge of the tub and reach for her razor. Chris had always liked it when she'd left him a little bit of a landing strip.

He didn't know it, but to her, it was a way to tell herself that she really was still his woman all this time later, and that was another reason that she'd always left it there, because she never could tell when she'd run into him again somewhere and somehow.

It was amazing and stupid, the way that their bodies betrayed them. They could be somewhere, living their lives and not even having a thought about the other one, but all the while, it seemed like their bodies were drawing them together and they'd run into each other in places far from where their sad story had begun. And it was such a sad tale about a man with a terminally-broken heart that had cost him his family's love and money and the woman who, despite fucking him over six ways from Sunday, still had his love though she'd completed his damnation by never allowing him the chance to begin again.

She couldn't.

She didn't even need the money that she was going to make a play for later today. She just couldn't let him go. She didn't even wish him anything other than the best life that he could have for himself, but she was in this cursed life with him and even though she didn't really mean it, she knew that she was going to go on screwing him over forever whenever they weren't screwing each other into the floor.

She still had the body that was just made for sin and she still had his ring.

They hadn't lived together in years, but she was still his wife.

------------------

He looked up and saw her as she walked in. Julie seemed to be holding her own in her fight against time rather well. She still had the figure that had grabbed his attention from maybe two hundred yards out the first time that he'd ever laid eyes on her on a hot and almost deserted noonday street. It seemed like a million years ago now.

He wondered where the money for the personal trainer was coming from. Then he threw the thought away immediately afterward. What did it matter? It was someone else's money, and the results spoke for themselves.

She was dressed in a mildly tight floral print skirt and a pastel pink cashmere sweater, wearing just the right sort of bracelets to go with everything, and her shoes had just a hint of 'fuck me' to them as well. He noticed them as his eyes ran down from her pretty face to her shoes and then back up to her long black hair styled in that 1940's look that she knew could drive him a little wild when she wore it like that.

He knew what it was all about. She was dressed just right, just the way that he liked, just the right way to tell him that she was interested in what he had to say. Well, he mused, maybe it was more to get him to listen to what she wanted.

She didn't notice him at first, as she checked herself out in one of the mirrors in passing. A quick sideways glance that told her that everything was just right, and that every set of male eyes was nailed to her softly swinging hips. He almost smiled then. Julie still knew how to work it to perfection and make it seem as though it was the furthest thing from her mind.

Julie looked right past him for a moment, and then he saw her eyes sweep to come back to him and stay there. Her face showed just the right amount of mild and friendly interest at meeting someone just slightly more than an acquaintance, but he knew better. He could almost see the faint glow of her missile indicator lights coming to him through her contact lenses. She was scanning. She was always scanning.

He stood up as she neared him and smiled.

"Chris," she smiled, bringing an artificial sigh into his name, "I almost didn't recognize you. You've changed some." She leaned a little sideways for a better look at the man sitting alone twenty-five feet behind him while giving no indication of it at all as she looked at who she'd come to meet. She was pretending to give a shit about how he looked these days, he thought. "What happened to your hair?"

Chris Moreth held the pleasant little smile, though he could almost see how her acquisition system worked from this close up. He shrugged as he picked a bit of lint from the sleeve of his blazer, "Nothing much, " he smiled as he sat down again after she did, "I just wanted to keep it a bit shorter, that's all."

"Shorter?" Julie grinned, "I didn't think you could have it any shorter. I'll bet your five o'clock shadow passes your hair by noon. I kind of like it though," she said, looking a bit thoughtful as her eyes flicked toward the man in the background again for an instant, "You've really got a Jason Statham look going on now."

He smiled as he counted off the seconds in his mind. He knew that Julie had a bit of a thing for the British actor and though he actually wasn't going for any 'look' but his own, he knew Julie well enough to know that the resemblance would now bother her to no end. It took her five seconds, but by the look in her eyes for a moment, he wondered if Statham's DVDs were now bound for the shitcan at Julie's place.

What he didn't know was that Julie always cried whenever she watched them. She only liked the actor because he looked like Chris to her and she tortured herself with how Chris had always been a wonderful man, but somehow, she just couldn't help the way that she fucked him over every time. She knew what she must have done to him, but she just couldn't help it.

Her next statement almost made him laugh, but he held it to a faint glimmer of polite interest.

"I've been thinking about us lately," she said quietly as she reached out to toy with his ring as though it interested her.

Moreth knew that it was one of the things about their past that she loathed. It was a West Point class ring and it meant a lot to him, both for what it stood for and for what it had cost him. Four years at the academy, and then another seven in his career as an intelligence officer in some pretty far-assed postings. They'd met during his third year, and he supposed that the rule that a cadet must not be married or in a legal position requiring the support of a child had pretty much been the only thing that had kept her claws out of him back then.

God knows without that, a young man who tended to follow his dick around could get into enough trouble as it was. The only thing that had enabled him to stay the course was the constant reminder that he'd told himself as a freaking mantra that he'd been nominated as a candidate to the academy by a United States senator and he wouldn't throw that away no matter how much his balls ached for something steady to pump into. His own heart had been a lot harder to convince because it seemed to be under the impression that it needed hers to be as close as possible in order to feel comfort.

But he had to give her credit. She'd figured out that he came from some money, and she'd done her best to bring him down and it had worked, too. He'd been deeply in love. He just wondered now who the hell he'd actually been in love with. Looking back on it, he wondered how he could have been such an idiot. It didn't matter much, he supposed. He could be as stupidly in love as he wanted to be, but old money knows how to protect itself, and after going against the disapproval of his family, he'd been pretty much cut off in terms of any inheritance, not that anyone had exactly died yet.

But once it became clear to Julie just what the score was, she was gone so fast it almost defied belief.

Years after she'd left him, they'd find each other in some of the damndest places, running into each other literally. That led to some awkward conversations, and before either one of them knew it, they were bopping like bunnies at best.

At worst, their antagonism was a lot closer to the surface, and there had been times when one of them had slammed the other against a wall for what amounted to a pretty hateful fuck.

Mostly, it had been Moreth who had been up against the wall.

In the years since, Moreth had just gone on. He knew that it was a personal flaw in his character, but somehow, he'd just never been able to put his heart out there again. It had gotten pretty stupid to his way of thinking, actually. There had been women that he'd had relationships with, and could even tell himself that he loved, and it was the God's own truth, but when it came time to lay it on the line, Moreth just didn't have it in him anymore.

He didn't really have anything to lose anymore, he just couldn't do it, and afterward, he'd kicked himself every time. He supposed that he was the stereotypical asshole that women complained to their friends about, the one who wouldn't commit. So after a while, he recognized that the fault lay inside of him and he chose to stop messing up the lives of others, for the most part. He didn't really understand just how it had happened to him, but he figured that he was damaged in some way and there was just no sense in causing pain to others just because he was fucked up somehow.

And true to form for him, he blamed no one but himself for it.

He smiled as he thought about the dynamic that lay between the two of them, since it showed him that for all of her venom, Julie couldn't get him out of her veins any more than he'd been able to get her out of his back then. The only difference was, no matter how it had gone between them, or how angry he'd gotten at himself to find himself in those positions with her, he'd never once told her that he hated her, no matter what she'd done to him.