Red Eye Morning - April 20
Six years after we both graduated from college I ran into Allison Caroll in the mall. While we were only casually and occasionally acquainted in college, we found out that we had a lot in common now. Namely we are both obsessed with work and career. Allison is an accountant with aspirations for a career in corporate management. My name is Brad Marks, currently a young lawyer is a large and prestigious firm, but with aspirations to get involved in a tech start-up. Neither of us is looking for a long term relationship, both us have a powerful interest in sex, but neither have the time or inclination to play the boyfriend/girlfriend game. We worked out a mutual agreement to meet mostly for sex on occasion, no strings attached, both are free to spend time with others between meetings. It was nearly two years ago that we re-discovered each other, and more than a year since I last wrote an update. Despite our efforts our relationship has become more than simple fuck partners, but we still put work first and rarely see each other more than once a month. Occasionally both of us enjoy a brief tryst with another partner, mostly so we have nasty stories to tell each other when we get together. We have fallen into the pleasant habit of entertaining each other with juicy stories about our sex experiences with other partners. Sometimes the stories are real, sometimes fantasy, always titillating.
My phone rang just as I got into my car at the airport and headed for home, it was Allison.
"I need you," that was all she said, then silence. Not "I need you to come and fuck me," not "I need a cock so bad I've been fucking doorknobs." Just "I need you."
"I'll be there," was all I said.
I had been on an overnight flight from the west coast where I had been working with a client for almost two weeks. I had worked most of the night on the plane with not more than an hour of often interrupted sleep. Allison and I hadn't talked for almost a week.
We have this ritual that we have both come to expect and enjoy. When I go to her place I tell her I might be late so start without me. When I let myself into with my key I hear her vibrator running and I hear her moaning as she nears another climax, actually it is an electrical powered body massaging wand that she uses as a vibe. I sensed something was wrong this time and I didn't tell her to start without me.
I let myself in, she had a cup of coffee poured and waiting for me. The kiss and hug were tender, but not passionate. I braced myself for bad news.
"Do you remember last year when I told you about an audit we did on a failed start-up that turned out to be a scam?" she asked. The guy had looted the company and claimed it failed, trying to get away with the investor's money."
I assured her that I remembered, she gave the thief a blow job as an appetizer and he was so anxious to get into her shorts for the main course that he tried to woo her with the toys he had bought with the loot. She turned the crook in, he went to jail, the investor got some of his money back and she was a hero to her boss.
"Armstrong Investments is the name of the client, the principal there is Terry Armstrong, he now has a problem with an even bigger and more dangerous investment gone bad. There is some drug money involved and someone could get hurt. The crook from last year told our Terry what I did to get him to talk, Terry told my boss. My boss called me in to say they have been made aware that I used an inappropriate sexual relationship to uncover accounting fraud. He made it clear that the good name of the firm has been jeopardized. He said that now that he knows about it I can no longer work for the firm."
"He fired you for that?" I almost screamed. I was getting ready to lay out a legal strategy that would end up with her owning the firm.
"No, he didn't fire me," she said, "he asked me to quit and go to work for a small shop that is owned by an acquaintance of his. The investor will go to the small shop for the new project and it will be assigned to me."
"Forcing you to quit is the same as firing you, he wants deniability if things go wrong," I said immediately. "If this is a dangerous financial cover up, then what could go wrong is that you could get beat up, shot, raped or killed, and there would be no connection to him."
"The thing is," she began, then paused for much too long. "The thing is that I want to do this."
"Are you crazy," I did scream this time.
"Brad, I don't need a macho man hero to save my helpless ass right now," she said with a stern look, "I can take care of myself, what I need is for you to be on my side, I need you to help me with a plan to make this happen."
I looked at her in silence for about two seconds too long and she said, "and if you ever treat me like a helpless woman who can't handle a man again, I'm going to tie you up and spank your idiot ass."
We stared at each other to see which one would break out laughing first, I kept a serious look on my face and said, "promise?"
She broke out laughing and jumped on me, tickling me and knocking me to the floor where she did her best to get my pants off so she could smack my ass. I did my best to put up almost, but not quite enough fight to stop her, but of course she got my pants around my knees and gave me five good hard smacks with her hand before she starting kissing all over my butt and said, "it's just such a cute ass I couldn't help myself.
We spent the next hour rolling around on the floor and fucking in every nook and cranny of her living room, dining room and kitchen with Allison doing her best multiple personality disorder imitation to alternate between a dominatrix act and a damsel in distress attitude. Occasionally she would slip into the sexy Russian KGB agent role from a James Bond movie, presumably practicing for her new role as the accountant who brings down drug kingpins. To me her tortured Russian accent sounded more like Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle than Anya Amasova from The Spy Who Loved Me.
We had collapsed on the floor at the foot of a big chair that she had been bent over just minutes earlier. Usually we snuggle together and fall asleep at this point, Allison falls asleep quicker than I do after a good sexual workout. Today she had the auditing project on her mind and she wanted to put together a plan, but for an hour sex had taken priority over working.
"I don't want to go to work for some shady back alley accounting firm that only handles projects that the big firms don't want because they might get their hands dirty." She said. "I want to start and own a firm to handle the dirty jobs."
That was the start of A Caroll and Associates, Forensic Accountants, a boutique accounting firm specializing in investigative work, Brad Marks was the unnamed and unpaid associate. Over the next hour we settled on the name and wrote an overall statement of purpose as the lead paragraph of a full business plan. I agreed to handle the steps necessary for incorporation and other legal issues including a contract agreement to lock in the scope and price of the engagement with Armstrong Investments, as well as an agreement with the former boss to send investigative work to A Caroll and Associates. Allison contacted a graphic designer who work up a logo and incorporated it into a business card, stationery and envelopes, she would put up a bare bones web site the next week. We got to work on the project proposal that she intended to hand over to her soon to be former boss on Monday morning when she went in to officially resign.
It was well past noon when I reminded Allison that I had taken an overnight red eye flight, spent time in mind-racing terror on the drive from the airport as I worried about the bad news she had to give me, been put into my place for acting like an overly protective partner, been nearly fucked into unconsciousness, and spent hours planning a business strategy with her.
"I know just the place to take you," she promised, "I heard about a food truck that serves absolutely amazing New England Cajun food and I got an email earlier this morning to tell me where they are parked today."
"A food truck?" I asked. "That's what I get for all this legal advice and business development expertise." Do you know what my hourly rate is?"
"After lunch I was planning on bringing you back here, taking you in the shower and washing you all over, fucking you really well and then putting you to bed for a long nap."
"Lets go find the food truck before they move it." I said.
**********
The food truck was staffed by two Korean guys selling Cajun food with a New England twist; Cajun lobster rolls, scallop muffuletta, boudin balls made with clams, and a variety of other mind spinning amalgamations. As it turned out one of the Koreans had a degree from Cornell in food science, the other was the primary chef. I'm not a foodie, I don't cook nearly as much as I would like. I do appreciate well prepared food. I tend to think of fine cooking as a skill set on the same level as both fine art and performance art; painting and dancing at the same time. The Korean guys were food artists.