Urban Prey (7 page)

“Go on,” he said.

“I’m there to keep an eye on them, maybe help them over a rough spot or two.”

“I’m sure,” he nodded. “You also help get them used to cuddling up with other naked women.”

“I like my job,” she nodded, still grinning. The light was just right now for him to see puffy nipples pressing outwards against her t-shirt.

“Are you a domme or a sub?” he asked.

“Either way,” she shrugged and leaned back on the couch. “I really prefer being the sub, but we don’t get many domme women coming in looking for subs. I take what I can get. And in case you’re wondering, sometimes, just to make it more convincing for the women I’m thrown in with…” She stood up and carefully pushed the coffee table out of the way, leaving an open area between the couch and the chair he was sitting in. “They take me out of the cell…” She knelt in front of him and put her hands behind her, throwing her shoulders back again and arching her body slightly. “And tie my hands, and force me to suck cock right in front of those women.” She held her pose, smiling slyly. “I always get a lot of sympathy after that,” she said. “Sometimes, they whip my ass a little to get me ‘motivated’.”

“I suppose that gets you even more sympathy,” Ron said. “Thanks for the demonstration. I’m going to have a look at the videos now. Care to watch them with me?”

“That wasn’t the question I was expecting.” Lisa seemed disappointed.

“Maybe I’ll ask it later,” Ron smiled. “You look really appealing that way, and your story was pretty good, but remember what
I
do. I’ve heard it before, or I’ve done it before.” He took the videocassette marked “1” and slid it into the old VCR under the television. Now, where did he put the remote?

“Here,” Lisa sighed. She picked the remote up off of the couch and handed it to him. “I don’t know what got into me. Sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Ron asked as he took the remote. “No, don’t answer that. That was only a rhetorical question.” He aimed the remote and pressed a button. “Just be quiet for a while. I’ve got to watch this.”

Lisa sat down in the middle of the couch and retrieved her coffee mug. She left the coffee table where it was. The television came on, and he pressed the button to start the VCR. The tape opened with the usual information: Date, time, name of subject, age of subject, and so on. He fast-forwarded through it. He already knew most of this, but it did surprise him a little that the date was almost a year ago. They didn’t usually wait that long.

It was a short video, no more than thirty or thirty-five minutes long. The camera was on Elizabeth Anne the whole time. It never moved while she answered questions from one of the company’s psychologists. From the sound of the unseen voice, this psychologist was a woman. The questions were standard stuff, and Elizabeth’s answers were also pretty standard. He listened for anything she said that might give him more of an insight into what she was thinking or looking for, but had no luck there. She did have a nice voice, a little low and purring, with no hint of the west Texas twang he’d been expecting. She must have worked hard on getting rid of it. She had no more accent than a television newscaster now.Throughout the interview, she seemed relaxed and confident. The only time she hesitated was when she was asked why she was planning on doing this. He could have sworn she actually blushed before she answered that one. That wasn’t all that unusual, though. He’d seen interviews where the women had hemmed and hawed from start to finish. Her eventual answer to the question wasn’t anything out of the ordinary either: It was a long-standing fantasy she’d had, she was getting older, if she didn’t do it now when would she ever get a chance to, and so on. He supposed that this all meant something to the company psychs, but it usually wasn’t much help out in the field. He did find it a little odd that Elizabeth Anne had been wearing an expensively tailored business suit to the interview.The tape ended. He hit the “rewind” button and sat back in the chair. His coffee had cooled, but it was still drinkable.

“That’s the woman you’re supposed to bring in?” Lisa asked. She’d been so quiet while the tape was running that he’d almost forgotten she was there.

“Yes, she is,” Ron said.

“When you do, could you put me in the cell with her? She’s gorgeous.”

“Down, girl,” he chuckled. “I don’t even know what she wants yet.”

“I could help you find out,” Lisa smiled slyly.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” The tape stopped rewinding. He hit the “play” button again, and then hit fast forward.

“Why are you doing that?” Lisa asked. She slid forward to sit on the edge of the couch, resting her elbows on her knees.

“First you listen to the interview,” Ron said. “Then you watch the interviewee.”

“Okay, but why are you fast-forwarding? You can’t hear anything now.”

“I don’t need to hear anything. I’m watching her body language now.”

“Yes, but why fast-forward?”

He hit the “pause” button. “It helps to spot movements. Humans’ eyes are drawn to movement, just like most predators, but we can miss it if it’s slow enough. Speed things up, and it’s easier to spot.”

“Predators?” Lisa frowned.

“What did you have for dinner last night?”

“No, I get that,” Lisa waved a hand. “It just sounded kind of odd.”

“Okay. Now just be quiet again and watch the tape with me.”

“All right. Can I get more coffee first?”

“Sure, if you’ll get me some too.”

“Deal.” Lisa took his mug along with hers into the kitchenette. “You know, you’re not what I was expecting,” she said as she poured the coffee.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting you at all,” he rejoined. “So we’re about even.”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” she said as she came back into the living room carrying the filled mugs. She handed his to him carefully. It was full to the brim.

“What did you mean, then?”

“You’re a lot more…controlled than I thought you’d be.” She sat down on the couch with care and sipped at her coffee. “Usually that little act I put on earlier gets a guy a lot more bothered. He starts thinking that maybe I’m not into just girls after all.”

“The thought had occurred to me,” Ron smiled. “But if you’re going to be working with me it’s best if you don’t try to distract me from the job to hand.”

“I like that,” Lisa smiled.

“You like what?”

“What you said: “Working
with
me”, instead of “working
for
me”. I think we’ll get along fine.”

“Good,” Ron nodded. “Now please be quiet again.” He started the tape back up.
Elizabeth Anne didn’t move a lot during the interview. She didn’t use her hands at all while she was talking. Occasionally she would shift positions in her chair, but that was about it. He got the impression of a very relaxed and confident woman. The tape ended and he hit the rewind again.

“You come
here
,” he muttered to himself.

“What?” Lisa asked, puzzled.

“She’s what I call a ‘you-come-here’ type,” he said. “She’s used to other people making an effort to get to know her, to get close to her. She’s not bothered if they don’t, either, because there’ll always be someone willing to take their place.”

“So, she’s a stuck-up bitch?” Lisa suggested.

“No,” Ron shook his head. “I don’t think so.” The tape stopped. “I’m going to watch again.

Be quiet. Watch her eyes this time.”

“All right.”

Lisa might be a little abrasive, but she stayed quiet when he asked her to. They watched the tape in silence until it came to the end again. He hit ‘rewind’ again.

“Well, what did you see?” he asked.

“She’s a gorgeous woman,” Lisa shrugged. “She’s got beautiful eyes and a great smile.”

“She also looked down for a moment before answering some of the questions.”

Lisa frowned. “Yeah, well, so what? Lots of people do that.”

“Yes, they do. Lots of them look up, too. It depends on what you’ve asked them.”

“I don’t get it.”

“If somebody looks up before they answer a question,” Ron told her, “they’re thinking about it. It’s as if they’re asking themselves what they think about the question before they answer.”

“You said she looked down a lot. What does that mean?”

“Down means they’re asking themselves how they feel about the question. That’s what Elizabeth Anne was doing. She looked down and to the right most times as well.”

“You’re going to tell me what that means?”

“I don’t know yet,” Ron admitted. “It all depends on whether she’s right-handed or left-handed. I can’t tell from this tape.”

“Now I’m lost,” Lisa leaned back on the couch, shaking her head. “How does that affect anything?”

“Say you’re right-handed. If you look up to the right, you’re asking yourself what you think of something familiar. If you look down to the right, you’re asking yourself how you feel about something familiar. If you look to the left, you’re doing the same thing, but it’s about something
un
familiar.”

“And it’s the opposite way with left-handed people?” Lisa asked.

“You catch on pretty quick,” Ron smiled. “That’s how it works.”

“Where did you learn all this?”

Ron shrugged. “You pick up things here and there.”

“Geez,” Lisa muttered. “Now I feel a little creepy, wondering about how you’ve got
me
pegged.”
Ron laughed. “Good!” He ejected the tape from the VCR and put in the one marked ‘2’. “Now please be quiet again. Feel free to stew in your own juices as long as you do it silently.”
The second tape had been made the day after the first one. Maybe they’d given Elizabeth Anne a little time to prepare herself for it. This ought to have her sexual fantasies, as told by herself. The first five minutes of the tape were taken up by the usual pleasantries of ‘good morning’, ‘how are you’ and the like as the psychiatrist eased her into the more difficult parts. Once again, Elizabeth Anne came across as poised and confident, but she was more guarded than she had been on the other tape. She was wearing a different business suit. He wondered about that. Did she think the interview was some sort of business deal, or did she dress that way most of the time? Maybe she just liked to dress that way. Mentally, he shrugged. Right now the answer to that question was unimportant. On the tape, the psych had just asked Elizabeth Anne about the earliest fantasy she could remember.

“Oh my,” she looked down and to her left briefly before answering. “I got into that sort of thing late, you know. I think I’d just graduated from high school, and one of my aunts gave me a couple of romance novels as a present.” She laughed once. “She was always reading those things. I guess she thought I might like them too. I would read anything in those days. That night, I started reading one of them in bed.” She paused. “I know I read both of them, but today the only one I remember was the one with the young noblewoman captured by a pirate. Once he’d taken her aboard his ship, I remember thinking that it might get really interesting. Then for the next twenty or thirty chapters, there was a lot of talking, some sword fights, and not much else.” She sighed. “I kept on reading it, though. The only time I’d ever seen the ocean was during a class trip to Galveston once, so sailing the seas sounded kind of romantic to me. And I kept hoping that the pirate would do something besides moon over his beautiful captive whenever he wasn’t taking a merchant ship or running away from a warship. Instead, he let her go and made sure she returned to her home safely. He didn’t even try to ransom her! I remember thinking that he wasn’t very good at being a pirate.”

“What would you rather have read?” the psych asked.

“Well, she was beautiful, and he was supposed to be a daring buccaneer. I was hoping that he’d try to seduce her at least. Instead, all he did was kiss her once. She slapped him for that, and afterwards he let her live in his cabin while he slept someplace else. I think the author intended that to show that he’d fallen in love with her, but it seemed kind of wimpy to me.
She
kept expecting him to try something, and she always seemed a little disappointed when he didn’t.”
“How did the story end?”

“Oh,” Elizabeth Anne waved a hand…her left hand, Ron noticed, “In the end, she finds out that the navy set a trap for him, so she steals a little sailing boat to go and find him and warn him. Then a storm comes up and her boat is damaged and she’s left adrift out in the middle of nowhere. She even had sharks circling her boat. I’ve seen buzzards do that, but I don’t think that sharks do. Anyway, the same storm let the pirate escape from the trap, and his ship just happens to come across her while she’s about to die of thirst. He saves her, they kiss again, he swears to give up piracy for her, and they sail off into the sunset. All the story needed at that point was to finish with: ‘and they all lived happily ever after’.”

“So you were disappointed?”

“Very,” Elizabeth Anne nodded vigorously. “But at the same time, I was intrigued. I read the second book, thinking that it might be better. It wasn’t. It was practically unreadable, and I gave up about a third of the way through.”

“What did you do then?”

Elizabeth Anne smiled. “I started thinking what the pirate should have done differently, but there were so many of those things that after a while I gave up on him and started writing little stories of my own. I kept them hidden from everybody.”

“What were your stories like?”

“I never finished any of them. I’d always get to a point, and then shy away from going any further.”
“Why do you think you did that?”

A shrug and a rueful glance down and to the left, Ron noted.

“I didn’t really know that much. I grew up on a ranch, so I knew all about sex, at least as far as horses and cattle…and the cats…but aside from some kissing and a little petting I didn’t have any real personal experience. I really started to feel as if I’d been missing something then.”

“What did you do about that?”

Ron leaned forward to hear her answer.

“Nothing. I was going to be going away to college soon, and the last thing I wanted was to start something in my little hometown that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to finish. So I went out riding a lot, just to get some privacy and think. There was a lot of open space for that. I’d imagine some rugged outlaw, or a fierce warrior captured me. He’d tie my hands behind me and maybe put a rope around my neck and lead me back to his camp behind his horse. Just thinking about that always got me very excited. There was just the two of us, usually. Once he got me to his camp, he’d strip me naked. I fantasized a lot at first about being staked out on the ground, stark naked, unable to move or fight him off.” She shivered and stopped talking.