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From: neilanthony@austarnet.com.au (neil anthony)
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NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 30 May 2004 15:53:57 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: {ASSM} Preying Mantis 1: Seven Minutes ~ by Neil Anthony aka DrSpin (NEW, FM)
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Date: Sun, 30 May 2004 16:10:01 -0400
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Preying Mantis 1: Seven Minutes (MF)
by Neil Anthony (aka DrSpin)

---------------------------------------------------------
* This story is published here by kind permission of Ruthie's 
Club, where it appeared sensationally illustrated by Andrzej 
Wilkowski under an exclusivity period for six months. Ruthie's 
Club (http://www.ruthiesclub.com) carries about 120 more of my 
new stories. 

* The author welcomes comments and opinions from readers 
and is invariably motivated to respond. Write to:
neilanthony@austarnet.com.au

* DrSpin's Standard Disclaimer: 
I write and you read, if you care to. That's all there is 
to it. Any reader who is offended should not have been here 
in the first place.
---------------------------------------------------------

Anonymity is a killer's friend. Don't stand out in a crowd. 
Don't dress up, don't dress down. Never be on the edge of 
anything. Take a middle seat. Don't be first in line, or last. 
Mix with average people. They make excellent cover.

But nobody's perfect. Even a killer has to take a break when 
the work is done, and feed his desires.

The killer was overnighting in Brussels. The killing was done, 
and in the morning he had an early flight. He'd get there in 
plenty of time, melt into the airport crowd, take a seat in 
the middle of economy class, read the latest thriller by John 
Grisham, and get home safe to wait for the next killing job.

Nobody would be looking for him yet. It was safe enough in the 
three-star airport hotel, surrounded by tired and jaded 
business travellers. Not completely safe, but safe enough to 
wander into the bar, have a couple of quiet drinks, and check 
out the scene. More bored travellers, but a man could get 
lucky three times out of five.

There were four women in the bar, and one especially took his 
eye. She was sitting neatly on a bar stool, sipping at a 
woman's drink and reading a book. The killer had professional 
powers of observation and he knew that a woman who sat alone 
in a bar and read a book was probably looking for company. 
Don't be put off by the put off. It's a cover to preserve 
her dignity.

He let seven minutes pass before he moved in on her. A seven-
minute buffer was good for most things, and just right for 
seduction -- long enough not to be crude and desperate, short 
enough not to be uncertain and timid. She looked him over with 
cool measurement, said nothing, and returned to her book. He 
persisted gently, knowing it was expected of him, and she 
looked up again, smiled in apparent resignation, and closed 
her book.

She was as pretty as most smallish women are when they're in 
their mid-to-late-twenties, and in good shape. If she was of a 
mind for dalliance, and he suspected she was, then she'd do 
just fine. Small, darkly intense, intelligent, cool, amused, 
eyes and hands active, conservatively dressed, perhaps a 
little travel weary, perhaps a little strained, under a little 
stress. In bed she'd be a little firecracker. She made no 
effort to hide the wedding ring on her finger. He picked up 
her hand and looked at it pointedly, and in her smile twisted 
a smoky curl of malice.

The killer was well pleased. He had his own stress to deal 
with, and a night in twisted sheets with a woman was just what 
any doctor would order. In the morning, he would be back to 
safe havens. Tonight, he could forget all that.

Susan, she said. His room, she said. Just in case of a 
telephone call she wouldn't want to take. And again, the quirk 
of danger at the outer edge of her smile.

Once decided, she was wickedly bold. In the elevator, standing 
behind a middle-aged couple, her hand trailed slowly across 
the bulge at his groin. The little minx. Delicious. He'd 
scored very well with this one. He was going to drill her so 
hard she'd never forget it.

In his room, she was grabbing at him before he'd finished 
closing the door. He shoved her, hard, against the wall, 
covered her small body with his, groped with his hands under 
her skirt. Christ, she was hot. He slipped a finger into her 
greasy, oily cunt, then two. She groaned and pushed her pelvis 
greedily against his hand. He jammed three fingers inside her, 
and she groaned again. What a feral little slut. She couldn't 
get enough of it.

The killer fucked her with his hand and laughed softly. Some 
poor dope of a husband would be waiting back home, maybe at 
the airport to pick her up in his four-door sedan. Good trip, 
dear? Do anything interesting? The killer laughed again, under 
his breath.

He pulled his hand out of her cunt and swung her away from the 
wall. He threw her roughly on the bed because that was his 
mood, and he knew she'd like it like that. Treat her like the 
slut she wanted to be. Everyman's dear little wifey, so nice, 
so sweet, so neat, and as hot as mustard.

She looked up at him with wide-open eyes, breathing jerkily. 
He laughed again, grabbed her by the jaw, and thrust his 
fingers into her mouth. She whimpered and sucked her own 
juices.

With his free hand he undid his belt, dropped his trousers, 
and fished out his hard cock. By God, she was going to get it 
good.

She grabbed for his cock but he pushed her hand away, pulled 
up her skirt and dragged down her panties to her knees. With 
his feet still on the floor, he leaned forward and rammed his 
cock into her wet cunt. All the way. Right up there. Fucking 
great. Fucking glorious.

She made little grunting noises as he fucked her. Little 
squeaky grunts. Reminded the killer of the guinea pigs he had 
when he was a boy. He laughed softly. Those randy little 
guinea pigs. They could never get enough of it.

Neither could this one, this Susan, this randy little guinea 
pig. He fucked her hard and she loved it. Not so nice, dear 
wifey. Not so sweet. Hot, wet, nasty, noisy sex, and she loved 
it.

Four days of watching, waiting, lurking, hiding, but it was 
all worth it. The tension fell away from his neck and 
shoulders as he fucked her and let it all go. Five spasms 
shook him as he let it all go inside her.

He slumped across her, and glanced at his watch. Seven 
minutes. By God. That was seven minutes of something, and in a 
while he'd do it again, because she couldn't get enough of it. 
He laughed silently. What a little slut. He'd sure got lucky. 
Just needed to get his breath back, and maybe get a drink. Get 
a good look at her body. Then do it all again. Soon.

He felt a sharp pain at the side his neck and raised his hand 
instinctively to slap at it. What? Trouble. Danger.

But then he could think no more, and he died.

Susan Allingham walked out of the automatic doors of the 
airport hotel and looked both ways. In the car park, 
headlights flashed briefly, and in seconds the black car 
cruised up to her. She opened the passenger door and climbed 
in. The driver was young and impudently good-looking, cheerful 
and brash. She knew the type. Junior embassy staff attached to 
special duties. Dogsbodies, really, eager and expendable.

"All done?" he asked cheekily.

She didn't answer.

The car was closed, air-conditioned. She reeked of sex. She 
could smell it, and knew he could, too. She looked at him 
once, purposefully, staring straight into his eyes. He started 
to say something, thought better of it, and got back to 
driving.

No commercial flights for Susan. The car took her to the air 
force base and straight to a grey 707. She boarded and took a 
seat. Two Air Force officers and a Navy captain were also 
passengers on the flight. They looked at her briefly, and knew 
better than to ask her who she was. If she was on this flight, 
and not in uniform, she was somebody they didn't 
want to know.

Susan settled down with her book, the latest John Grisham. 
Easy to read. You could skim the unrealistic bits.

The uniforms left her alone. She had a fine contempt for the 
uniforms. They thought they had the dirty jobs, and they 
didn't know squat.

The steward, a sergeant crisp in white, leaned down to her. "A 
drink, ma'am? Anything I can get you?"

"Nothing," she said dismissively.

His nose wrinkled. Sex. She could still smell it herself.

"My goodness, ma'am," he said, grinning. "What have we been up 
to?"

"I'll say this again, and this time you should listen," she 
said quietly. "Fuck off and leave me alone."

The steward backed away hastily.

In Washington, she caught a cab home from the base. She 
dropped her suitcase in the hallway with a rush of relief. She 
wasn't a big woman and the suitcase was heavy. The stress in 
her arms was like a long bruise.

Eddie poked his head around the door of the kitchen. "You're 
home," he said, grinning in that boyishly foolish way he had. 
"Good trip?"

Good trip? The report she would write tomorrow would say it 
was a good trip. One bad man dead. Mission accomplished.

"Not bad," she said. Eddie was cooking. There'd be dinner, and 
she was hungry.

"That's the fifth conference trip this year," Eddie said. 
"They must be pleased with you."

They were never pleased. Five trips, three men dead. One 
didn't show, and one had the survival instinct to run and get 
away. They expected five out of five. They were difficult to 
please.

"Interesting?" asked Eddie.

Textbook stuff, actually, straight out of the training manual. 
Allow yourself to be picked up at a bar, go with the guy to 
his room, fuck him out of his head, and then snuff him out 
with a syringe. Like putting down a miscreant animal nobody 
wanted.

"Oh, standard fare," she said. "You know."

Which he didn't. Dear Eddie thought he was married to a mid-
level clerk at the Department of Defense.

"You look tired," Eddie said. "We'll eat, then have an early 
night."

"Great," she said. "I'll take a quick shower."
 
They called her the Preying Mantis because of her talents. 
Entice, fuck, kill. Sex with a man about to die was special. 
It added a razor's edge, no matter who or what he was. She had 
loved all her victims ravenously well.  

Eddie waggled his eyebrows roguishly as she walked past him. 
"Miss me?"

Sex with dear Eddie would be deadly dull, but at least he 
didn't have to die for it.

* * *

Susan Allingham sat on one side of a long polished wooden 
table and three senior officers sat on the other, shuffling 
through folders. She had been summoned from the basement 
office she shared with two other operatives for a six-monthly 
performance appraisal.

"Quite satisfactory," one of the men pronounced eventually.

Quite? She bristled but kept a stony face.

"And what do you think?" another man asked her. "Could you 
have done better?"

"With respect, sir," she said, "you can't be any deader than 
dead."

She fumed internally. Fuck them. Fuck them all. Quite 
satisfactory? Then let them find someone else to do it.

The third officer, a man she didn't know, chuckled quietly. 
"They call you the Preying Mantis. Did you know that?"

"Yes, sir."

"I guess we all know why," he said.

She turned her head to face him. Smug bastard, smirking. He 
wanted to fuck her, of course. Show her a thing or two, like 
who was senior to whom. She was not beautiful, but she had 
that thing about her that made men want to fuck her. She'd 
always had it and she'd always known how to use it.

"It's all in the files," she said.

She wanted to say a lot more. She wanted to tell the arrogant 
prick that he could fuck her any time he liked. All he had to 
do was become an agency target. And then he could fuck her and 
pay the price. But she didn't say that. She wanted the 
evaluation finished and she wanted the salary increase that 
went with it.

But he wouldn't leave it alone. "No photographs," he said, 
closing the file, still smirking. "What a pity."

"You could come with me on my next assignment," she said in a 
flat voice. "Like, maybe, hide in a cupboard or something. The 
extra insurance would be comforting. That's if you know how to 
handle your weapon, of course. How often do you handle your 
weapon, sir?"

His face flushed with anger, but Susan was saved by the senior 
officer in the room. He coughed loudly. "Yes, quite 
satisfactory," he said. "You may go, Special Agent Allingham."

She closed the door a little harder than was polite or 
necessary.

* * *

It turned out that Susan did have company on her next 
assignment -- a driver and an observer -- but only because the 
job was close to home and the top brass was nervous about 
that. There was also an issue of sensitivity, she was told. 
The target was an American citizen, and no killer. Not a bad 
man at all. Merely an embarrassment.

She was driven to Richmond, Virginia to end the unfortunate 
life and times of Dr. John Kitson, a noted chemist who had led 
well-funded research into biological weaponry, once highly 
important but now no longer. Policy had shifted and changed, 
but Dr. Kitson could not seem to move with the times. He had 
expressed guilt and remorse and, of recent times, too often 
and too publicly. He was secretly writing a book, but not as 
secretly as he thought, and even the rough draft of the first 
chapter was enough to convince the top brass that the doctor 
simply had to go.

Susan accepted the assignment, as she had others. Not that she 
was given a choice, or expected one. You did your job, you did 
your duty, and at the end of the month the salary check went 
into the bank.

Dr. Kitson drank, usually to excess, which was why the book 
was coming along so slowly. Not long after the lunch hour, she 
walked into the bar he frequented. He was there.

Not a chance that he would hit on her, of course. Unless she 
stood up and shouted, he probably wouldn't even notice her. An 
unsubtle approach was required.

"Dr. Kitson?"

He looked up at her. He was, she knew, forty-six, and not in 
the best of health. Not an unattractive man, though, with his 
pale eyes and wispy hair.

"My name is Susan Alston." She handed him a card saying she 
was from a well-known national magazine. "We should talk about 
your book."

"My book?" His eyebrows were puzzled. "You know about my 
book?"

She sat beside him at the bar. "You've told fifty people about 
your book, doctor. Someone like me was bound to hear about it 
sooner or later."

Some jobs were easier than others. Not quite sober, not quite 
well, not quite lucid, Dr. Kitson took the bait without a 
second thought, and before an hour had passed they'd relocated 
to his home office. He talked about his previous work, about 
the bad things that were still out there, and he waved sheafs 
of paper in front of her eyes. He didn't talk about 
his wife and two children, who'd left him sixteen months ago. 
He was often incoherent. Susan came to the view that he was 
not quite sane.

"Why such remorse?" she asked him. "You were only doing your 
job."

"That's what I kept telling myself," he said. "And for a long 
time, too long, it worked."

Susan's eye twitched. She, too, was only doing her job, and 
she kept telling herself that was all she was doing, and no 
more. Would she wake one morning and no longer be able to say 
that to her reflection in the bathroom mirror? Would she, John 
Kitson-like, crash, burn, and slink off to write guilty books?

"You can't go on like this," she said. "There will have to be 
an end to it."

He looked at her bleakly. "Perhaps," he said with infinite 
sadness.

A man saddened by obsession mostly looks for sympathy, and she 
could supply that or at least an approximation of it. Words of 
encouragement, and then soft hands, and before long Dr. Kitson 
found himself, to his immense surprise, in the embrace of an 
attractive young woman. 
 
Susan moved unhurriedly and confidently to her goal. She had 
him in her clutches, and what would follow was inevitable. The 
condemned man would not be eating a hearty breakfast, but he'd 
get some measure of compensation for a disappointing life 
before he bade it farewell.

Swiftly she undressed him, taking charge. She dropped to her 
knees to take his limp cock in her mouth, bringing him to 
hardness. As she applied her lips and tongue, she felt the 
fierce fires begin to bank and build within her. It always 
happened. Sex, and more than sex. The condemned man and his 
hearty breakfast. The condemned man, the man who would shortly 
die at her hands. She was the Preying Mantis, and she could 
not deny that the kick was about more than mere sex. Life and 
death, and she was the executioner. The power of it thrilled 
her every fibre.

Moving towards what had to be done, she pushed him in the 
middle of his chest until he tumbled backwards on the bed. She 
clambered over him, thrust her panties aside, and lowered 
herself on his cock.

Sitting on him with her back straight, taking him all in, she 
looked down at her victim and smiled. She felt a closer bond 
with him now than with any man, and would until he died. Then 
she would feel nothing for him at all. She smiled at him, 
loving him truthfully. He looked bewildered, poor dear. Soon 
there would be nothing to worry about.

She fucked him slowly, because he was at heart a gentle man. 
She took her time, making it nice for him. For her, too. Nice. 
Easy. Not to worry, darling. There will be an end to it, and 
soon.

He came desperately, his face scrunched up and contorted, and 
she cooed and clucked and comforted him. She knew all about 
the pain inside him. She could feel it. She sat on him, back 
straight, and watched his muscles relax, watched him fall into 
calm, watch him slip away into semi-consciousness. Then, 
smoothly and slowly, not wanting to disturb him, she 
reached around to the small of her back and extracted from the 
taped package the tiny syringe, and she slid the needle easily 
into a vein on the side of his neck.

He died without knowing.

* * *

Eddie was unemployed again. Poor Eddie. He could never seem to 
hang on to a job. But he was an excellent housekeeper and an 
imaginative and innovative cook, and Susan was making a lot 
more money now. Things were okay, really.

"Can any of this be saved for another time?" she asked, 
pointing to his efforts in the kitchen.

"Oh, sure," Eddie said. "You want to eat out tonight?"

She did. She was on a high and also flat, and at the same time 
-- a curious state of mind she couldn't explain but had become 
accustomed to. She was back from a day of work in Richmond, 
Virginia. Nice that the job was close to home, for a change.

She took Eddie to a Vietnamese restaurant, knowing he'd like 
it. Poor Eddie. Nothing much ever seemed to go right for him.

He was the nicest person, possibly, in the whole world. 
Wouldn't hurt a fly. He was that most rare of beasts, an 
innocent man. She could relax around Eddie, drop her guard, 
imagine herself to be just another woman. 

Okay, the sex was mediocre. No zip, no zing, no charge, no 
thrill. But she could curl up against him at night and feel 
safe, because he thought he was safe, and didn't know 
otherwise.

Poor, dear Eddie.

ENDS

[Author's Note: Special Agent Allingham, the Preying Mantis, 
will return in further stories. She is too interesting and 
complex a character for the author to ignore.]

* edited by Ruthie, Nat and Selena (ain't I lucky?).

* Neil Anthony/DrSpin can be contacted at 
neilanthony@austarnet.com.au

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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