As most of you know, I brought Elise North into A Demon’s Tale because she so intrigued me in her encounters with Mr. Sands, which I plan to revisit at a later date. We haven’t seen the last of him yet. But this little story, first published in Cosmo, gives a glimpse into PI, Elise North’s life before a certain demon turned it upside down.

As you know, from previous Medusa Consortium stories, in Magda Gardener’s world, nothing is ever simple where relationships and sex are concerned. And Elise is no exception. There are always complications. I hope you enjoy Elise’s pursuit of Mr. Sands, and I bet you can guess who has hired her for this little task.

In Pursuit of Mr. Sands

Five hot summer nights, I followed Mr. Sands in and out of clubs and bars in Soho. Sometimes it took him the better part of the night to pick up a woman, though he could have had his choice. Sometimes he found the one he wanted in the very first bar. There was no pattern, no rhyme or reason, no similarity that I could see in his choices. He never took them home. He never told them his name. He never fucked them. But he always made them come. Their response was unanimously a mix of ecstatic release and surprise, as though they hadn’t expected it.

He took them in alleys, in stairwells, even once on a crowded dance floor. It was always quick, always intense and it always felt a bit dangerous. He didn’t mind if the women bit or clawed or howled like wolves. They always came, but Mr. Sands never did. I wondered if he practiced some form of eastern discipline that enhanced male pleasure through refraining from ejaculation.

I’m a PI, and monitoring Mr. Sands’ nightly wanderings is my job. The woman who hired me to tail him isn’t his ex or a psycho lover. She claims she’s never met the man. But hey, everyone’s kink is different. If she gets off on my reports, then who am I to judge, as long as she pays me. And she pays me well. In fact she set me up in a posh flat with a view across the street right into Mr. Sands’ posh flat. Though it hasn’t helped much. He keeps his curtains drawn.

Every night Mr. Sands goes out at exactly ten, and every night I follow him. Every night I watch as women flirt and eyeball him longingly until he finally makes his choice. Some nights he wines and dines the lucky girl. Some nights, he simply takes her hand and leads her off to do the deed. Last night, his choice was a porcelain-skinned woman with ginger hair. He led her from the bar without so much as a word. She was breathless, wide-eyed, her full breasts bouncing in her scanty bronze sheath as she struggled to keep up with him in stilettos she was none to steady on. I could almost feel the sense of urgency that might have been hers, might have been his. The dress was tight enough that the lack of panties was evident, a bit too tight for a woman so well curved. But Mr. Sands didn’t seem interested in fashion or conventional beauty.

He pressed her up against a small loading dock in the ally, taking her mouth as though she were his favourite dish, slapping her hands away from his fly, though even I could see his bulge through my binoculars. There beneath the streetlight, he freed her breasts into his hands, thumbing and raking peach gumdrop nipples and heavily stippled areolae.

She sounded like a kitten mewing for its mother as he scrunched her dress until her Brazilian was as bare as her breasts. She gave a little yelp as he hoisted her up onto the loading dock and palmed her thighs wide apart forcing her back onto her elbows. One shoe dropped to the pavement with a muted thud as he cupped his hands behind her knees and pulled her closer to his face. Then he fingered her, studied her, caressed her as though he’d never seen a pussy before. All the while, she moaned and whimpered and squirmed against the hard concrete. “Please,” she begged. “Oh please.” But he ignored her keening.

When, at last, he spoke, his voice was velvet against bare skin, “You’ve been pretending. But you don’t need to for me.” Then he buried his face between her thighs, and she bucked and gyrated against him tugging and pulling at her breasts. Once again, he slapped her hands away and reached up to knead her almost as though he were raising his arms in an act of worship. He pinched and thumbed while never slacking in his efforts between her thighs. Her cries became guttural, like he’d awakened something feral in her, something that could now no longer be caged. He slid his hands down to cup her bum and drew her closer, as though he might crawl up inside her right next to that feral thing he’d awakened. She came with an animal howl that sent shivers up my spine and made the view from the binoculars shudder with the hammering of my pulse. At last he pulled away and wiped his face on the back of his arm. Then he mantled her close, covering her lips with kisses, she all but sobbing into his mouth.

Finally she spoke in little gasps of effort. “I’ve never had an orgasm before.”

“I know,” was all he said, as he bent to retrieve her shoe and gently slipped it onto her foot.

I stood in shock at her revelation, at his. The woman had never had an orgasm? Did he choose his women that way? But then how the hell would he know? I was so lost in my speculations that I had to scramble back into an alcove in front of a service entrance to keep from being seen as Mr. Sands escorted her back to the bar.

And just like that it was over. I knew the drill by now. The woman would return to her friends with a smile on her face, and Mr. Sands would go home.

I followed him, as I always did, then took the lift to my flat. Inside I stripped to tank and panties, wilted from the relentless heat. It was one of the few summer days each year when it hadn’t cooled down much at night. I poured myself a glass of cab. Usually unwinding from a night of tailing Mr. Sands meant a little hands-on. I had a vibrator, but there was something about our nightly rendezvous that gave me the urge to touch myself. Maybe the total lack of penetrative sex in those steamy encounters made me empathetic. My last task every working day was to open my curtains and make sure Mr. Sands was at home. He always was. Though his curtains were perpetually drawn, I could make out the cinnamon glow of lamplight inside. Occasionally I could see the shadow of movement back and forth beyond the drawn drapes. That was my cue for some ‘me time,’ as I fantasized about what he did after he came home late at night unsatisfied.

With wine glass in hand and my mind on the night’s intriguing discoveries, the curtain was completely open before I turned to find that Mr. Sands, for once, had followed suit. He stood looking right at me, wearing only grey track bottoms slung low around his hips, his chest glistening from the heat. I froze gaping, as he sipped a whiskey and brazenly looked me up and down. I’d been compromised. My client had warned me to make sure he never saw me. But I was confident, maybe a little arrogant. I was good at my job. I should have shut the curtains and left. But I just stood there like a rabbit in the headlights, my nipples stiffening beneath my tank top as surely as if he’d stroked them as he had the redhead’s. The quirk of his lips, the trailing of his gaze over my body sent shockwaves of heat core deep. The clench between my thighs, the subtle shifting of my hips wouldn’t have been noticeable by anyone. Hell, I could make myself come on a crowded bus and no one was the wiser. But he knew. I was certain he knew.

I raised my glass for a much-needed drink and miscalculated, dribbling red wine across white cotton and a distended nipple. His gaze was not subtle as he nodded to my breasts. I knew exactly what he wanted. Slowly, I lifted the glass and drizzled the cab across my breasts – all of it, gasping at the shock of it, biting my lip, closing my eyes just long enough to savor the sensation. When I opened them, he slid a hand inside the front of his track bottoms. It wasn’t difficult to tell he was hard, nor that he was substantial. I took in the shape of him as brazenly as he had me, giving my own little nod. But he only shook his head and raised an eyebrow making it clear that it was tit for tat.

Caught in his gaze, I could scarcely breathe, I could scarcely believe the risk I was taking. He knew where I was. He knew what I’d done. And yet I lifted my wet shirt  off over my head, the AC tightening my nipples still further. As he watched, I slid a hand into my panties mirroring his movements. I fingered my way down between my thighs, gasping at the slick swell of me, my tide pool scent filling the room as I began to stroke.

His own stroking had exposed the base of his cock in its nest of dark curls, and my mouth watered. I nodded again, wanting to see that tool he’d kept hidden all these nights, desperate to see him lose that cast iron control.

He gulped the rest of his whiskey and set the glass aside. Then he slid the other hand beneath his waistband to scoop and cup his sac, and I moaned my approval as his efforts revealed just a little more. And then it was a stand-off, neither of us blinking, neither of us flinching, we rubbed and stroked and flaunted ourselves, each in an effort to will the other into that final reveal. He shifted and pumped and moved in such a way that I could make out almost every detail of his heavy package from beneath the tease of fabric. The lust in his eyes was laced with something slightly wicked. Strange I’d never realized fear could be such a turn-on. I wanted to run and hide even as I wanted him to fuck me with his eyes.

I pulled my fingers from my panties and raised them to my mouth, giving him a hungry stare as I tasted my own slickness, then I sucked. He bit his lip and his body jerked. For a horrible moment I thought he’d come without me. But he took a deep breath and nodded. It was time. I slid a thumb into the edge of my panties and, with the other hand, counted down. Three…two…one. We both dropped our drawers. After that things got serious. He stepped closer to the window, as close as he could get to me. One hand cupped, the other stroked and tugged the heavy length of him as though it were seriously in need of taming.

Without looking away, I reached behind me and pulled the Queen Anne chair close. Then I plopped down splaying my legs over the arms so that he could see my efforts, fingers darting and circling, dipping and scissoring, butt raised high to give him a better view. The look on his face was utter concentration. I imagine mine was the same. As his orgasm burst in heavy spurts against the windowpane, I convulsed my own release, nearly upsetting the chair.

Afterwards we just stared at each other, still cupping ourselves, too stunned to think, too spent to move. But at last, he bent, pulled up his track bottoms and tucked his cock. He studied me for a long moment, the hunger in his eyes making me squirm in that place between arousal and fear. Then he waved a finger at me as though I’d been a naughty girl. Finally, he blew me a kiss and drew the curtains. The next morning, to my relief, and my disappointment, Mr. Sands was gone. But I’ll track him down. He has secrets I want. It is my job, after all. And I’m good at what I do.