The Captain spoke freely - about the quality of the new shipment of goods from overseas, about developments in rival cartels and organizations, about the stirrings and rumblings in the men about the quality of your leadership. He drones on and on, his voice quickly becoming muffled background noise to your tired ears.
You supposed a good boss would have listened to every word of his report. But you heard none of it. You had neither the patience nor the energy.
Your fingers reach for the knife on your desk, closing around its handle as it had millions of times before, pulling it from the old leather scabbard it spent most of its time in. The familiar, worn leather of its grip and the battered steel of its guard and blade were a comfort, a reminder of days long gone. Simpler, easier days - days when your father had sat where you now did, running the family business as you ran around the very same room with a toy airplane or truck, blissfully unaware of the nature of the deals your father was making at this very desk.
His father - your grandfather - had carried the knife in some war. Apparently it was made for him by his father - your great grandfather. Regardless of its origin and history, it served mainly as a glorified letter opener these days. You weren’t even quite sure which war your grandfather had fought in or if it were just some story your father had told you to lend the knife some history. You supposed it didn’t really matter. All you knew was how important it was to your father, and to your family. It was a talisman. A family heirloom.
Your father was long gone, now, and the knife - as well as the desk, the sprawling mansion, and the entirety of the empire he and your grandfather had built on less-than-legal foundations - now belonged to you.
You’d have given anything to sit in your father’s lap as he worked in this very same chair, ruffling the hair of his son even as he pored over the books that detailed the money his organization was making from less-than-legitimate means. But you didn’t know any better. The little boy that you once were didn’t have to worry about rival gangs or threats to your leadership, or any of the myriad other worries and threats that came hand in hand with the wealth and power you would one day inherit.
Simpler days.
These days were so tiring, so exhausting. Every day was a struggle, it seemed - to stay on top, to keep at bay those that wanted some piece of your crown - or all of it. It was hard. It was draining.
Your Captain clears his throat, asks you out loud if you’re listening. He was never afraid to speak his mind. That was partially why he’d risen so high in the organization. He always told it like it was, sparing nothing, and a man in your position needed someone like that around. Someone to tell it to him straight.
He reminds you, one last time, about the threats to the organization - both external and internal. He tells you his men have caught rumblings of a possible coup, a plot to overthrow you and seize command of the organization. You give him a weary shake of your head.
You tell him you’re tired, and that you would handle it tomorrow. You wave your hand in the air dismissively. He sighs, a defeated, restless sound, before turning to leave your office.
He tells you, before he closes the door behind him, that he had to say his piece, that he couldn’t live with himself if something happened to you before he had a chance to warn you. You thank him for his honesty, and he leaves, shutting the door behind him.
Almost as soon as the door shuts, she appears from the doorway of the bedroom attached to your office.
She always knew when to arrive. She’d always had the best timing. It was almost magical, a gift of hers. She was always there right when you needed her, and not a moment sooner or later.
She is wearing a thin blue nightgown - near translucent in the dim light of the office. It does nothing to hide the dark peaks of her nipples or the small patch of hair at the juncture of her thighs. But despite the charms of her body it’s her eyes that draw you in - the same way they did every time you were in the same room as her.
She’d changed little since that day you took her from her previous life on the streets, when she’d climbed into the passenger seat of your car and you’d taken off together, not quite knowing where your relationship would go or whether she’d want a part in your life at all.
But she’d stayed. She’d thrived in the new life you’d given her. She’d even taken a role in the organization, acting in many ways as your executive, your representative and confidante.
If you were the king, she was your queen.
And through it all, she’d refused to let the newfound wealth and recognition that came with being involved with a man like you to affect the way she treated you. She loved you, declared it out loud when she woke up next to you and again before you went to sleep and a million other times in between. And you always said it back.
She comes close, and you make way for her to sit on your right thigh. Even without touching you, she can feel the tension in your brow, in your shoulders and neck. Her hands cup your cheeks, and her lips give you a soft peck on the lips that turns into a loving, caring kiss.
There’s no need for her to ask you what’s wrong, what’s troubling you. No need for troublesome, clumsy words when her actions could communicate more effectively than language ever could. She already knew. She knew the pressures and worries and troubles that plagued a man in your position, with your responsibilities. She was often right there alongside you, bearing them as you did. She wanted to share your pain, or if it were unable to be so, to at least aid you in your bearing of it.
She knew how to fix things, and she knew how to make you feel better. She did it when she was just a girl selling her body to you in the alley, and she did it now, as the lover of one of the most powerful men in the country.
The kiss returns, her lips finding yours even as her hands caress and massage the tired knots out of your neck and shoulders. You never tired of her - never tired of her kisses, her hands on your shoulders or that small, tight little body that she was pressing against you. Never would. Never could.
Her fingers make quick work of the buttons of your shirt. Her tongue finds yours and caresses it, not fiercely or roughly, the way you knew she could - gently, carefully, almost considerate in the way she worked it around yours in soft circles. When she breaks the kiss you find only acceptance, only love in her eyes. Even as she slips from your knee and drops to her own, her eyes bore into yours.
They tell you, without words, all that you needed to know. That everything would be okay - that the problems with your men and the organization would resolve themselves in time. For now, it was time to relax, to take a moment of respite from the unrelenting grind. To let your armor down. To breathe.
She undoes your belt and zipper and before you know it your pants are down and off, your boxers going right along with them, your stiffened shaft springing free for only a moment before she wraps her warm palm around it, giving it its first strokes, delighting in the feel of your flesh in her hand. Her eyes - those soft, round, perfect pools - remain locked on yours all the while. She licks her lips. She closes her eyes, and a moment later, as she takes you between her lips, you close your own.
Your hands close tightly around the armrests of your chair as your head falls back, a long, weary sigh escaping your lips. Here, now, was the small respite you’d needed. You feel the troubles and burdens lift, if only temporarily, from your shoulders. She was all that existed now. She was all that mattered.
It’s her turn, now, to give you an escape. You know it will be short, that it will be a fleeting moment in time, doomed to end and send you unwillingly back to the harsh realities of your life.
But that doesn’t keep you from wishing you could stay here, in this moment, forever.
Her head bobs up and down and your cock slips in and out of that wonderful, wet, hot sheath of her mouth and throat. She knew by now how to pleasure you, had had many hours of practice in doing so - and yet you never grew tired of it, never grew tired of her. Some of your captains and lieutenants delighted in the wide array of women that their power and position could bring them, but you had little interest in joining in on their weekly hunts for new conquests. What more could you want, when you already had her?
You sigh as she buries you inside her mouth to the hilt - your tip slipping past the tight entrance to her throat at the back of her mouth. So warm and wet. She lingers there a moment, letting you savor the feel of her wrapped around your cock. She sighs around a mouthful of you, and the vibrations of her throat on your cock send wonderful spikes of pleasure up your spine.
Soon she is bobbing her head again, taking you in and out, in and out, in and out. Your hands wander - gripping the armrest or burying themselves in her hair or caressing the side of her face, guiding it up and down as you relish the way she is pleasuring you.
She releases your cock from her mouth, her hand quickling finding your saliva-slick shaft and pumping it up and down. Her eyes find yours again.
She opens her slick lips. She tells you she is yours.
You tell her you are hers.
She rises from her knees and lets the nightgown slip from her body. She is thin and lithe and angelic - almost like a fairy, or an elf, or some ethereal, mythical creature - anything more than simply human. She turns her back to you and bends slightly at the waist before reaching between your bodies.
She guides your tip to her entrance. Her slick lips part easily for you as you slide inside her for the millionth time. And each one, every first entrance into her body - it felt like the first.
She is slick and hot and wet. She takes only a moment to adjust herself to you as you stretch her out - but her body knows you well by now, is well familiar with the way you fit inside her. She straightens her naked, sweat-slick back until it is pressed against your chest.
And then she begins to bounce atop your lap.
Your mouth opens and you gasp at the feel of her, even if no sound actually leaves your lips. She does not have the same restraint, and from the very moment she begins to bounce up and down atop you she is already moaning, and sighing, and crying - a beautiful sound coming from beautiful lips, a soothing balm for your weary ears.
She is so small and wispy that you find it easy to wrap your hands around her tiny little waist, guiding her as she bounces up and down, taking you in and out of her body with practiced, familiar but no-less-pleasurable ease. You are content to leave your hands there for a few wonderful moments, delighting in the feel and sight of her, before they begin to wander - up her firm, flat stomach, to her small, round breasts and the stiff nipples atop them. Soon you slip your left hand around her body, finding the small bud amidst the slick flesh between her warm thighs. Your finger plays with her, makes her song rise in pitch by a note or two.
She rides you with a gradually quickening pace, but throughout it all she maintains enough composure to roll her hips, taking you in and out of her body at the angle that she knew you loved. She moves up and down but also forward and backward, ensuring each entry and exit produced as much delicious friction as possible between the wet, slick parts of your bodies.
After a few minutes she leans forward, reaching back with an arm that you quickly grasp by the wrist. She doesn’t break her rhythm, continuing to impale herself again and again on you. The sweat glistens on the curve of her spine. You watch as her shoulder blades and hips and butt move, every bone and muscle of her small body bent to a single goal - pleasuring you.
From this angle the front and tip of your cock rubbed against the front of her walls with each thrust into her slick little pussy, hitting that spot deep inside her that made her limbs weak. Her moans increase in volume as the minutes pass and she rides you faster and harder, her own body ignoring the fire in her thighs or the fatigue in her calves. For a few more minutes you let her enjoy it, let her wrench her own pleasure from your coupling. She finds plenty of it.
But you feel your own orgasm beckoning, and you knew as well as her that there was no stopping it now. You pull back on her wrist, wrenching her to a more upright position until you can reach forward, grasping her by the hips, pumping her small body up and down on your cock, guiding her up and slamming her down, each one tearing a new gasp or moan from her throat and a grunt or sigh from yours.
She calls to you, managing to form words amidst the chorus of moans leaving her throat. She tells you how good you feel inside her, how close she is and how hard she will cum. It surprises you that she is so close so soon, but given the impending nature of your own orgasm you supposed you were in no place to say any different.
She tells you she is close. And then, a moment later, she tells you she is there.
It doesn’t take long before she is orgasming atop you - a writhing, moaning mess of sweat-slick flesh. She trembles. She shakes. She becomes a slave to the pleasure wracking her body. And soon enough, unable to resist the wet, slick heat of her body for a moment longer, you follow her, burying yourself as deep inside her body as you can before your cock pulses and you fill her with long, thick spurts of cum.
It takes you both an eternity to recover - or perhaps that’s what it felt like. Your bodies are glued together by sweat and cum, bound together by tired limbs and the rhythm of your heaving chests. She is first to move. She eases herself off you and returns to sit atop your knee. Soon you feel your combined juices drip from the sore, splayed lips of her opening and onto your thigh, even as she turns her head to yours and you kiss - deep, passionate, loving.
You remain frozen there for a moment as your lips part. Your eyes bore into each others’. You tell her you love her, and she tells you the same. For a moment you consider escaping - with her, again - this time somewhere far away, away from it all. Last year, for one of your rare vacations, you’d spent a week in Italy together at a seaside mansion. For a second you consider asking her if she wanted to-
A loud, crashing noise interrupts it all. It is followed by angry shouts, raised voices, and the unmistakable blast of gunshots.
Immediately you rise from the chair, dressing yourself as quickly as you can. You take her by the shoulders, staring into her eyes, telling her to get out of here, to save herself, to escape with you. She shakes her head, defiant.
She was no longer some whore, she says - she was yours now, your queen, and she would share your fate even if doing so meant her death.
You plead for her to leave. Another couple of shots, this time closer, the booms frighteningly loud, scarily close. More shouts, some in anger, some in fear, all in alarm. The telltale thump of bodies hitting the floor follows. Steps, hurried, moving closer to the door.
You beg. Tell her to go. Tears in her eyes, she relents. You are already stepping towards the door when you hear her scramble towards the bedroom.
The doors burst open - and your Lieutenant, your third-in-command, falls into the room to fall on the floor face first. He grips his left shoulder, where he has been shot. He grunts at you, tells you to flee while you still can.
But before you can reply, three more men enter the room.
The first is your Captain - and in his hand is a smoking pistol.
He raises it. He says something, but you don’t hear it. You don’t even hear the shots.
Before you can react, you are hit by an irresistible force - three times, all in the chest, each one a hard punch from a boxing glove made of solid steel. You lose all feeling in your legs, and suddenly you find yourself flat on your back.
You’d been around firearms your entire life, had fired more than your fair share of them, some in anger - but never in your life had you been shot. You’d always wondered what it would feel like. Absent-mindedly, you realize that at least now you knew.
The Captain speaks - begins to preach, by the tone of his voice. Something about how he’d warned you this would happen, about how he tried to tell you to flee, about how disappointed he was that you didn’t take the hint. You don’t actually hear his words, or understand what he is saying. It all feels so far away, his voice echoing, as though he is speaking from the middle of a large, cavernous room in a language you can no longer understand.
You feel tense heat blossoming around the three holes in your chest, but oddly, not much pain. You feel warm stickiness begin to pool beneath you. Your eyes wander, looking, searching…
There. In the bedroom door, crouched low in the shadows.
She is there. Her eyes, those beautiful, wonderful eyes - quickly fill with tears as she catches your gaze. Her face - those beautiful, wonderful features - are torn, shattered into a million pieces as she watches the man she loves die just a few feet away from her.
There is a flash of silver at her hands - and you realize that she has grabbed your grandfather’s knife from the desk. She slips it from its sheath, baring its steel in her quivering fist. Even as tears roll down her face, she grits her teeth, preparing herself to avenge you, and for the inevitable death that would follow. But then at least she would join you, even if this time the destination was altogether darker and less pleasant. You could escape again, from this life-
–No!
You shake your head, your lungs and mouth having long since lost the ability to make sounds, let alone form words. Your head moves weakly, side to side. From the reaction on her face you can see that she has seen it.
She couldn’t die. Not now. Not like this. She deserved the world. She didn’t deserve to die from a traitor’s bullet, bleeding out on a cold, hard floor.
You want to say more, want to tell her everything you’d ever wanted to say. You want to tell her this was not how you wanted your story to end - that you’d wanted it to end in that seaside mansion in Italy, when you were both old and gray, passing away in your sleep in each other’s arms.
But that would never be. You reach out your hand towards her - but your arm doesn’t move. You’d lost feeling in your legs since you hit the floor. You shiver, one of the last sensations you feel. It was getting cold. So cold, and so dark.
Your eyes find hers. She smiles, weakly, even as she watches you die. Her lips part and she mouths three words to you - and even without hearing them you knew what they were. You do your best to say them back, even as your world fades into a cold darkness from which you will never emerge.
With your last thoughts you tell her you love her.
Then you know nothing more.