We Are Both In The Dirt Ch 01

*********Please note that while this story has erotic elements, sex is not the focus of the story. It is, however, one of the sexiest stories I've ever written and I hope you think the same. Thank you for reading!***************

There is a knock on the door. Isn't that always how it starts? A knock on the door. Or how it ends depending on the state of one's life.

She peeks through the peephole, opens the door. No one is there.

"Sorry," he steps into view from her left. He has a gun in his left hand and a bag in his right. "Sorry to do this to you on such short notice."

She hesitates for a moment, then steps aside to allow him entry. He drops the bag on the floor and trains the gun on her chest. She inhales.

"I always like to call before I pop in." He shuts the door with his foot and drops all the blinds on her windows, shoves one open while muttering something about wanting a breeze. "You expecting anyone?"

"No."

"Don't be lying, did your lip just twitch a bit?"

"Fuck you," she says. She steps back, bumps into the back of her black suede love seat. His eyes dart to her hands.

"Where is he?"

"Who?"

"That's the thing, Mira, you know exactly who I'm talking about. What did you do? What? While my back was turned you decided to slide that rock into your pocket."

"I have no rock to hide. Not anymore." Mira calms, or, she stops pretending to be shaken. She can tell by the look in Mint's eye that he means her no harm. When he'd first entered, however, she hadn't been so sure.

"Take your eyes off my shit," Mint says when he catches her looking at the worn leather bag at his feet. He has a smirk on his lips and he makes a show of raking his eyes from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, pausing at all the juicy parts.

"Fuck you Mint," Mira says after a charged moment of silence passes between them. She thinks of the bag in her own closet. A big leather designer bag she'd picked up at an outlet mall between Toledo and Reno. "How did you find me?"

He is relaxing more and more as time slinks by. He even drops his gun for the slightest of moments before he aims it at her chest again, his blue eyes steady and clear, "I never lost you."

"What?" A chill slices down her spine and at the same time, heat forms in the pit of her stomach. She focuses on Mint's hands. She knows them well. His palms her like sandpaper. No matter how much he moisturized them, his hands had always remained rough mitts that seemed to paw at anything he touched; weapons, money, flesh.

"You heard me," he says. "Now, where is he? You guys are never far apart from one another."

"Used to be that way, not anymore." What had she been thinking, anyway? Opening the door for him. She'd looked through the peephole, saw no one standing there. He skirted thresholds, well, had always skirted any threshold she was on the other side of.

"You and Montana Jones. Called it quits?"

"We ended our partnership. If that's what you mean."

"It's not." Mint picks up his bag, hefts it in his hand. He surprises her by tossing it in her direction. "Count it," he says, his gun on her again. She stares him in the eyes as she drops to her haunches and unzips the bag. She runs her nails along the surface of the bills, appreciates how unforgiving the stacks feel beneath her french tips. She snaps a rubber band.

"Quit fucking with it, and count it," Mint says. She hears the click as he cocks the hammer, another click as he uncocks it. Everything remains a tic with him. Almost everything, at least.

"One," she says theatrically, "two, three, four, by Joseph, Mint Mallard. You've got over seventy thousand dollars here. So she didn't spend a cent?" Mira hikes up the hem of her skirt and removes her pistol from its thigh holster and sits it within arms reach, on the coffee table between them. Mint slides his gun into his jeans, nice and slow. Mira watches every movement, takes a step back.

"Elaborate on what you meant by 'we ended our partnership'."

"He took off. Left the money here and everything."

"Left the money. How much money is there, by the way?"

She casts him a cryptic look. "A lot," she mouths. She forces the smile away from her lips.

Mint closes the space between them, presses her up against the living room wall and raises her dress. He unbuckles his belt, takes the gun into his hand and presses the barrel into the soft spot beneath her jaw. She closes her eyes, moans into his kiss, nearly goes limp. If she falls she knows Mint will catch her. He's always caught her.

"Montana gone?" He says against her lips. He pulls away, trails the barrel down her chest so that it pulls her shirt down, revealing her bra, her breasts.

"Gone," she says.

"How do you know for sure, especially if he left the money?"

"We had this fight."

"A fight?"

"A big one," Mira feels the heat cool between them as the look in his eyes shifts. He steps away. "We were arguing about, about Mya."

"What about her?"

"She called Montana a few weeks ago. Said something that got him on edge. To this day I don't know what it was."

"I do," Mint says. He sits on the love seat, his posture slack, the game between them done as reality has demanded such.

"You do? What?" Mira sits beside him.

"Mya knew about us. What we did, what we planned."

"What?" Mira springs from the couch, her back against the wall, the same one that she been rubbing up against a moment ago with memories of Mint making her insides go molten.

"How did she find out?"

"She found the letter."

"The letter." Mira says. "The letter. No, the, letter. The one that...Mint, what the hell? How did you fuck up this bad?"

"I'm sorry Mira. I just couldn't throw it away. I kept it in the barrel of my sawed off shotgun. Who knew she'd look there?"

"She looked there because she suspected you of something. That bitch was always crazy jealous. Where is she now?" Mira asks. She is shaking as she speaks, barely able to contain herself. Montana knows.

"Dead," Mint says. He isn't shaking like her, but Mira knows him well enough to know when he is shaken.

"Well, that's a start," Mira says.