Only two hours before he had been hanging upside down over a vat of acid bath which had glowed green and smelled of rotten eggs. His ankles had been securely fastened with chains and inch by inch his head moved toward the steaming miasma.
I’m getting too old for this shit, James thought. Now, as usual, he was dressed to kill: black suit, designer shirt, polished shoes, and chic blue tie. He sat at a bar in a small, but very expensive hotel in Monte Carlo. He picked up his stemmed glass and took a sip of a shaken martini and made a face. Perhaps it was time to switch drinks; these were beginning to taste like tree bark. But then he sighed, after all, what was life without tradition? And this drink was one of the oldest.
His trick knee was beginning to act up as he sat surreptitiously inspecting the gloomy interior of the room. The throb under the patella keeping pace with each heartbeat. He knew that he would be much happier luxuriating in a hot bath sprinkled liberally with Epsom salts. But damn it, he couldn’t do it alone. Again his gaze scanned the barroom…
Why the hell didn’t these criminal masterminds just put a bullet in my brain, James thought. If he had a dime for every shark tank, table saw, lava pit, or acid bath he had ever had to escape from in his long career, he could have retired years before. Instead, like tonight, when Dr. Strangeglove had confessed his nefarious plans about blowing up the U.S. of A and left the room even before his maniacal laughter had died, James knew that it would only be a matter of seconds before he was free from the chains and on his way to rid the world of yet another evil genius.
Now here he sat. Tradition demanded that he drink his martini in an exotic bar with a beautiful woman draped over him like a living ornamental trophy. He had the drink, the expensive suit, a room with the perfect ambiance…but no woman. What the hell? He needed a woman and pronto. No woman meant no coitus. No coitus meant no happy dreamland. And he was in desperate need of happy dreamland. Instead the muted elevator music played only to him and the impatient barman who rubbed his cleaning rag over an imaginary spot on the granite surface.
Ah! But what was that, tucked away into the darkest corner? Two of the longest, most shapely legs, he had ever seen. His eyes traveled from the delicately crossed, slim ankles, along miles of smooth, firm flesh, and ended at a hemline which just barely covered that most secret and intimate regions. The tiny figure-hugging, black dress created a fierce desire to unwrap the voluptuous body barely confined beneath its thin, sheer fabric.
But what do we have here? Not one, but two, women chatting quietly and sipping their vodka tonics. Because, of course, it had to be vodka tonics. There was a blond, whose face was fresh even beneath a layer of makeup which was meant to mask, not enhance, her beauty. And the brunette in the black dress, whose hair fell to her waist, almost touching those impossibly long legs. Her back was to him but yet there was something so familiar…
She is the one, he thought.
He rose in one fluid motion, the twinge in his back made him hesitate for just a second. He tilted the last drops of alcohol down his throat, brushed at some invisible lint, and strolled across the room.
“Pardon me ladies.” His low, baritone voice interrupted their conversation. “Can I buy you a drink?” There was a stir in his trousers and a lot less room in them then there had been just a few moments before.
The blond looked up at him, a half smile played across her scarlet, painted lips. Languidly the brunette turned, swinging her hair across her shoulders. Black eyes looked up at him from under impossibly long, thick lashes and a smile lit up her face. “Daddy! What are you doing here?”
Image Credits
“Dry martini picture with a twist” by Michael Nielsen. flickr.com. Some rights reserved.
“How long is my leg?” by Lovro67. flickr.com. Some rights reserved.
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