What a Way to Go! by Sean O'Shea - Chapter 02

1966 Genre: Vintage Sleaze / Sexpionage

BATMAN, I'm not!

My name is Valentine Flynn, I hold down a job that's very different from yours, and I like to hold down anything else I can.

You ever hear of Industrial Espionage? Neither did I until I discovered all the bread, broads and booze involved... then I found out pretty quick.

This time I thought I might be in a little deep, or was it not deep enough? For a while there I thought I'd never get everything worked out.

But then we got everything straight...

Chapter 2

I CAME TO on the sofa. My head was now face up in the baroness' lap. I opened my eyes and looked at her, trying to wet my parched lips. My tongue felt like a ruptured inner tube. "They say love is the road to heaven. Boy, did you detour me!"

"How are you feeling?" she laughed, playfully mussing my hair.

"Like the Ph.D. that I am."

"Is that good?"

"Depends on how you interpret that." I made a face and groaned. "Pinch-headed doctor. Oh, my head.

What kind of perfume is that? Essence of Ether No. 5?"

She laughed so heartily that her big bare breasts slapped and bobbled together above my nose. “I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable, Val. I was only joking. I've always wanted to do that just to see if it'd work."

Aware of the pounding in my head, I got up and gingerly turned to look at her. I glanced down and saw her big brown eyes blushing. "Okay, so now you had your big jolt of the evening. Would you mind explaining?"

She began to laugh all over again.

I climbed to my feet, feeling somewhat unsteady.

I was aware of my belt being too tight. I loosened it several notches and confronted her. "Okay, if this is the way you want your fun ... "

Still laughing, she extended her hands to me and cried, "Why must you big strong men be such poor sports?"

"You play sneaky games."

"I do not. I told you I was only joking. Must've been something I drank:

I squinted at her. "What was that? Lydia Pinkham on the rocks?"

She laughed. "Forgive me?" There was an ice cream tasting expression on her mouth.

I frowned, but I couldn't stay mad. Okay, so she had had her little joke. So now it was my turn.

When she saw the gleam in my eyes she began to edge over toward the corner of the sofa. "Honest, I was only kidding."

There was a wild look in her eyes. She began to breathe heavily as though in anticipation of what I was about to do.

Then I realized for the first time that I had inadequately sized up the baroness. With one quick motion I seized her by the hair and dragged her backward and down across the sofa. With my free hand, I caught her meaty rump and pulled her down to where the small of her back was pressing against the edge of the sofa cushions. I knelt and worked my body between her thighs, forcing her legs wide apart, bare feet flat on the carpet.

She cried out sharply and tried to slash me with her fingernails. While trying to fight me off with her hands, her horizontal thighs locked around my middle.

I laughed and caught her hands in my left. Holding her fast, I bent forward toward the globes of her breasts, touching my lips to their voluptuous cream-white perfection and the small upright puckered buds.

Suddenly, she began to laugh.

Nothing can dash a man's ego to its death on the rocks of frustration faster. I looked up at her as an awareness of anger began to pulse through my veins.

"What've you been doing? Drinking LSD cocktails with marijuana chasers?"

"You know what's so funny?"

I watched her continue to laugh, amazed at the way those wonderful breasts slapped together. "No, but if you are going to keep it up I'd like another whiff of that chloroform."

With that, she went into hysterics.

I scratched my head, watching her incredulously.

Finally, she managed to tell me between bursts of laughter, "W—where's the notebook? Must I initial the time card again, doctor? Or am I getting a discount?"

"House calls are extra," I said, with a straight face.

"This is costing you two hundred an hour."

She screamed. "You call that being fair?"

I grinned at the mixture of laughter and anger on her face. I released her and reached for my jacket which was on the floor beside the sofa. A moment later I presented her with the notebook and pen.

"Thanks for reminding me." I consulted my watch.

"It's eleven o'clock. Okay it."

She threw the notebook aside and reached for me, laughing and trying to get her arms around my neck.

"What's the matter, Val? You look a little pale. You should eat spinach to put some color in your cheeks,"

"Who the hell wants green cheeks?"

She laughed gaily and began to nibble at my hand.

With a tenderness that I thought was surprising, she began to kiss each of my fingers. Then she sighed and toyed with the ring I wore on my little finger. I watched her obliquely as she nestled in my arm, her cheek on my partly unbuttoned shirt and peered at the ring.

"How curious," she said, examining the gold heart with the cupid figure embossed upon it. "I've never seen a ring quite like it before. Why, it's a valentine, isn't it? And the cupid is shooting his little arrow.

How clever!"

"My coat of arms," I told her, studying her curious childish manner. I thought her to be a paradox of diverse characteristics. One moment she was the grand dame of royal blood, the next she was a seductress, the next a childish coquette, and the next a cold-blooded businesswoman. To be sure, the baroness was the most incredible piece of femininity I had ever encountered. Her counterpart was rarely to be found in real life.

But I had found her.

And now I had to keep my wits about me and not succumb to her charms. I could readily see that I was going to have the problem of keeping my mind on the business at hand. Somehow I knew that the baroness had only abandoned herself to desire because she wanted something from me. Just what she wanted, I did not know yet. Though I was chafing to find out what she was up to, and though I was still not able to figure out why she had chloroformed me, I decided to wait and see.

I concentrated on classifying her ravishingly beautiful figure on my mental file card. Age, 25. Height, 5' 5". Weight, 125. Bust, 38 C-cup. Waist, 24. Hips, 38. Case history to be continued at some more appropriate time. But now was the time for fun and games—I was determined to finish that little party she had started ...

And then it was 3:30 a.m. I gave her the notebook and pen.

"Seven hours, seven hundred dollars." She was smiling as she initialed the book.

“I'm afraid you made a slight error, baroness."

She blinked at me from the bed where she was sitting with her back against the headboard, knees drawn up, sheet clasped around her jutting breasts.

She waited for my explanation.

"House calls are two hundred dollars an hour. Remember?"

A strange smile contorted her face. "Thank you for reminding me, Val. We never did get around to discussing the business, did we?"

"Now if you will make a notation that you owe me twenty-five hundred dollars, I'll give you the next fifteen minutes free."

She scribbled on the pad, tossed it and the pen to me and smiled. "Your generosity is overwhelming.

All right. Where shall I begin?'' 'With the discussion of my fee, where else?"

"You mercenary—"

"Don't say it. Time is money, you know."

"I like you, know that?"

"Why?"

"You're such an adept man."

"Gee, that's sweet of you. I'd show you my muscles too, but I don't have them with me. The last time I was in New York I left them at the Berkley Health Club."

She laughed dryly. "So that explains that powerful physique."

"The fifteen minutes of free time is running out.

So what's the pitch already, baroness?"

For several moments she was silent, deep in thought.

When she looked up at me again there was a somber expression in her eyes. “I need your help, Val. Karl Werther, he's the general manager of Ogden-Stutt Industries. A shrewd man and clever, too. I think he's embezzling my business."

"Don't you know?"

She shrugged. “I can't be sure. But it's imperative that I get to the bottom of it."

"And naturally, you can't fire him because of the ironclad contract your dead husband gave him?"

When she nodded, there was an angry glimmer in the depths of her eyes. I got the impression that she knew more than she was telling me.

"What do you want me to do?"

"I'm flying back to Paris in the morning. I want you to come to my villa in two weeks. I'm calling a board meeting then and I will introduce you around. As . . . " she broke off smilingly, "as my efficiency expert."

"And, naturally, I will be your house guest?"

"Naturally—provided we reach a straight-fee basis for your compensation. I wouldn't want to get writer's cramp keeping our account straight."

"Fifty thousand dollars ought to do it. Plus expenses, of course. I'll need to visit all three of your plants—"

"Why, Dr. Flynn! So you have checked me out, after all."

I suddenly realized I had committed a faux pas.

The best way to cover it up was to remain silent.

However, she had already guessed. With that familiar glitter in her eyes, she contemplated me and said, "You did not send a wire after all. That phone call you made was to get information about me. How flattering."

With a grin on my face, I retreated to the door. "I'll see you in Paris, two weeks from today; provided„"

She cocked an eye at me and frowned. "Provided what?"

I smiled. "Not that I mistrust you, baroness. But it's customary for me to request all of my foreign clients to make a deposit—in escrow, of course—to my account in the Bank of Switzerland, the Geneva branch."

"It will be done."

I smiled and saluted her, but before I opened the door, I paused and said, "You may remit the twenty-five hundred for today to my office here in the hotel."

"As you say, Dr. Valentine Flynn."

The fresh breeze sweeping in from the ocean smacked me squarely in the face where I needed it most as I emerged from the baroness' swank lanai apartment and began to stroll toward the hotel. I glanced at my watch and by the light of the setting moon, noted the time. 3:45 a.m.

What a night.

The baroness was one in a million and I was glad that I had never met another woman like her until then. It was a refreshing change, if not a somewhat exhausting one, and I was already beginning to look forward to my next meeting with her in Paris.

Just as I turned the corner of the lanai and entered the exotic gardens which led toward the pool and patio areas at the rear of the hotel, I saw a pale figure running toward me.

I stopped dead.

Not because I was startled, but rather because the person running toward me was a girl.

I stared at her through disbelieving eyes.

Not because she was running toward me and calling out in a low voice, "Oh, mister. Mister, help me, please."

But because she was stark naked.

My breath caught in my throat at the sight of her.

While the baroness's figure had been voluptuous and full-blown, the naked girl coming toward me had a figure that was strikingly slender and nymph-like. She was petite and blindingly fair-skinned. In the moonlight she looked like a goddess with her long blonde hair trailing in the breeze after her as she raced toward me.

In the several seconds' time in which I stared at her, I was aware of my breath catching in my throat and my heartbeat quickening. Although I had been fully satiated when I had left the baroness a few moments before, suddenly I felt as though I had not been with her at all. At the sight of this beauty beckoning to me, the desire within myself had once again begun to quicken.

She ran up to me and fell against my chest, panting for breath. "Oh, mister," she sobbed, hardly able to speak for want of breath. "Mister, you just gotta come with me. Hurry."

Before I could stop her, or was able to gather my wits and ask what was the matter, she turned tail and began to run away, taking a short-cut across the lawn.

With my gaze fixed· on the bobbling of her saucy buttocks, I took off after her, running at an easy trot.

No use getting myself all out of breath and weak and exhausted from exertion since I had no idea—except for some wishful thinking—of what was ahead.

When she went around the side of the building I lost sight of her. I increased my speed and came to an abrupt halt at the corner. The girl was nowhere in sight. Except for the lush palms and shrubbery on either side of the building where I was standing, nothing was in sight.

At that precise moment there was a sound like the padding of bare feet running toward me. I whirled around.

But I was too late.

A split-second before two solid weights cracked down on my skull I glimpsed the naked girl I had been running after and another girl. They were both wielding cloth-covered cudgels.

As I sank to the pavement in a thickening, spinning daze, I got one last look at the nude girl before I blacked out. She had the demure look of a nineteen-year-old girl and there was an apologetic expression on her rosebud of a mouth. It was as though she regretted having lured me into the ambush.

I had no idea of how long I had been unconscious.

But when I came around gradually, scarcely able to open my eyes, I was aware of feeling rough concrete under my bare bottom and something steel-like and painful around my ankles and wrists.

When I heard the sound of high heels approaching, I forced my eyes open and looked around me. It was quite dark, though the moon was still out. Then, as my mind became unfogged, I realized that I was chained, hand and foot, in a sitting position, facing a huge fireplug. It was impossible to arise or to move my face away from the cold iron.

The woman who had walked over to me was wearing dark glasses. She paused to look down at me and then she raised the long object she'd been carrying.

For a fleeting moment I thought she was going to crack me on the noggin with it; but then I felt my blood congeal in horror as I realized what she was up to.

In a sultry whisper she said, "Do not fear, Dr. Flynn. Your death will be swift."

I could not reply. I watched in a kind of terrorized fascination as she placed the steel object she'd been carrying in a gloved hand over the sexagonal turnscrew at the top of the fireplug. With the way I was chained into position, my face almost flush against the open end of the fireplug, I knew that if I didn't drown first when she turned the water on, I'd die from the tremendous pressure.

"Hey!" It was all I could manage to cry out before she turned the screw and sent the gusher into my face.

"This ought to cool you off permanently, Dr. Flynn!" the girl shouted as she continued pulling the long-handled wrench around and around, opening the pressure all the way.

Suddenly, I was hurled back, my face full into the terrifying gusher. The force of the water shooting at me was so powerful that I could feel the manacles at my hands and feet beginning to slice into my flesh.

But worse than that, worst of all, was the utter feeling of hopelessness as I was not able to turn my face far enough to one side or another in order to breath. Thousands of pounds of water pressure were being driven into my eyes, my ears, up my nostrils and into my mouth.

The pain was excruciating.

The agony unbearable.

And then a silly thing entered my mind.

I thought about what my time was worth and I wondered how many dollars worth of life I had left —computing by seconds, of course.

Dr. Valentine Flynn, I said to myself, you had it, pal. You always knew that someday you'd chase one fat fanny too many.

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