Welcome To Michelle's Blog

If you are offended by spanking and explicit sexual situations, please go elsewhere. 18 and over, only please. If you're a fan of romantic spanking fiction, then this is the blog for you. I mainly write m/f spanking fiction involving loving couples. My men are all Alpha, my women are smart, sassy and very bad girls who learn that their errant ways can lead to some painful consequences. My work appears on the website Discipline and Desire. I also write fun erotica involving threesomes (also with lots of spanking!) and other spanky sexual adventures. If you want to buy my books, check out my website, www.michellecarlyle.com or go to disciplineanddesire.com.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Her Secret Life, Part Four

Hey Guys and Gals!

Michelle here. More or less. Very tired. Still. From the festival last weekend, a mini-heat-wave this week during which I got no sleep (no A/C). Add to that a trip to see my parents, I’m flat out.

I managed to MC the festival, but it was one of the hardest things I’ve done. Exhausting without my partner. Who does all kinds of stuff that I’ve never paid attention to. Over seventeen years we formed an unspoken agenda for running the show. She did all kinds of things I had no idea about. The second bad thing was that there was no stage manager. I was down two people. It was just me and the sound guys. All two of them. But we did it. Someone brought a huge stand-up picture of my co-mc (a local celebrity) and I stood her next to me on stage and did her voice (she’s English) and mine and pretended to talk to her. People loved it. I didn’t know what else to do, actually. Our banter is what carries the show.

During the festival, in addition to announcing the bands, doing the raffles, making all the announcements for everything that’s going on and people who have lost children, etc, there is this forty-five minute local fashion show that my partner and I must also carry. We get about three minutes of instructions and guidelines about who is wearing what and then we…try to be funny for forty-five minutes. Saying it’s hard is a gross understatement. Simply entertain four hundred people for close to an hour. And this comes at the END of the festival. When my brain is really gone. And this was the year that I realized that my partner carries that show and all I do is make snarky comments. So this year, I had to carry the show AND make snarky comments. I did it. I’m glad I did it. It worked. People loved it. But we had some huge glitches. Wrong songs to the wrong outfits, sound glitches, Michelle glitches. Thankfully, I only swore once during the show. Into the microphone. To hear “SHIT!” in your voice coming from the very back of the venue is embarrassing. People were kind, however. And we made over 8000 bucks for the kids of the town for education programs, which is the purpose of the festival. So that rocked.

But I'm really glad that’s OVER. And now I get to write. Yay!!!! I’ve challenged myself this month. I’m going to write as many spanking stories as I can. I’m going to set aside the novel for right now and bank some good stories. Hubby should be pretty happy about that one. There is a direct relationship between frequency of fucking in our marriage and how many days I spend writing spanking stories. Can you imagine?

Okay, peoples. I’m going to get back to the stories. I hope you have a fantastic weekend. Next week, we continue with Her Secret Life, found in Bad Girls 3. I think.

Hugs and love to you wonderful people,
Michelle


Gary thought for a moment. He sighed. “Look, I want this to go further, our relationship. But to do that I need to know all of who you are. Everything.”

She had nothing to say. She hadn’t counted on this at all. She’d never had a relationship work before. What was she supposed to do?

He studied her. It made her uneasy.

“Let’s drop it for now,” he said. “But I better set some ground rules, just so we’re clear.”

“Ground rules?”

“Well, you obviously broke one of them today, I just thought I ought to let you know what my parameters are. What I will and will not tolerate from you.”

“Oh. Uh, okay.”

“Good. Number one rule, don’t jump in front of moving trains, okay?”

She laughed. Then stopped herself. “I know it wasn’t funny. No problem. I just kinda freaked out.”

“I’ll say. So if you do that in the future, you bet I’ll turn you over my knee and whack on you.”

“Got that. You made that very clear.”

“Next rule, you need to be honest with me. I understand if you want to keep some things to yourself, but honey, I want to know all of you. Don’t worry; I’ll love you no matter what. I’m not that much of a stickler. I’m willing to accept some differences.”

“Okay.”

“And my last rule is, never lie to me. Not only does it erode the trust between us, I just can’t tolerate liars. I’ve got a bug about it, okay?”

“Gotcha. No problem. I’m surprised you thought you had to tell me that one. I know you well enough. I mean, today surprised me, but... I suppose it’s understandable.

“You almost died today.”

“I agree, I should have stopped. I just didn’t want to lose you.”

“Is that what you were worried about?”

“Yes.”

“Honey, come here. Come here,” he said reaching out and embracing her. “I couldn’t leave you. Come on, I love you, baby. I want to go the long haul with you. You’re my girl. There’s nothing you could do—short of working in porn or something—that would turn me off to the point where I would leave you.”

Working in porn. She wrote erotica. How far did this tolerance of his go? She should tell him. Get it all over with.

Or maybe she should wait, get him really bonded to her and then drop the bomb.

Gary squeezed her and said, “I’m not leaving you, but honey, it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to put the wood to you if you screw up. That was crazy today, honey.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So don’t lie to me and don’t try to kill yourself and you won’t find yourself over my knee.”

He held her and petted her and then made love to her. She fell asleep in his arms, blissful.

At three in the morning, Heather woke up, paranoid. He was going to find out all her secrets and dump her, she knew it. She actually loved the guy. How was she supposed to reveal all her secrets to him? How did normal relationships work? She had no real idea how to approach this.

Then she realized that she had an erotica convention in the City that weekend. She’d forgotten all about it. She was even the guest speaker. What was she going to tell Gary?

Next morning, Gary woke her up with a lovely kiss. “Hey honey, we’re going to be late for work, get up.”

Heather wiped her eyes and stretched. “Oh, yeah, work.”

“Hey, this weekend, let’s go to the City and ride the cable cars,” he suggested.

“Uh… I have to work,” she lied quickly.

He looked surprised. “Really? When did this come up?”

Heather said, “I’d completely forgot, but we’re having some stupid seminar that I have to attend. All weekend.”

“Bummer. Oh, well, maybe the next weekend.”

“Sure, honey,” she said. She was overcome by a sense of guilt. Which was odd. Had she ever felt guilty before? She couldn’t remember.


That weekend, at the conference, Heather’s keynote speech went great. Everyone laughed at her jokes, she even got a standing ovation. Killer!

Later, she was at the book signing with all the other popular erotica writers. A huge line of fans stretched out in front of her table. It was so fun to talk to her readers and hear what they thought of her latest work.

She’d run out of books and leaned down to get some more. When she sat up again, she got ready to sign the next fan’s book. She was fumbling to get the book open—the binding was tight—and before she looked up at the person, she asked, “So in whose name would you like the inscription?”

“Gary T. Hammer.”

Heather froze. When she looked up, she found herself staring into the cool blue eyes of her lover.

©2010, Michelle Carlyle

Friday, August 20, 2010

Her Secret Life, Part Three

Hello Out There In Spanko Land!

How are you guys today? I’m a bit overwhelmed. Got relatives here from Montana and this weekend I MC a music and art festival. Since I’ve MC’d this festival for the past 17 years, I have the routine down. However, this year, I will not have my co-MC—whom I NEED—nor will I have my back-up MC, the guy who runs the music part of the festival and jumps up on stage when I’m busy with the other million things I do. While I tapped a good friend to help me with the stage stuff, she doesn’t have the experience. And on Sunday, the local thrift store, run by a children’s organization hosts a thrift store fashion show and I have to extemporize for forty-five minutes plus. Normally, my co-MC takes the lead and I make snarky comments. But this year, that whole forty-five minutes is on my shoulders and to put it mildly, I’m freaking out. This is the second time in one summer where I’m being thrown on stage in front a huge audience with almost no rehearsal. AND I just found out that 30 classmates from high school will be attending the festival. No pressure. None at all.

Sheesh. And with the relatives here with their two kids (four and seven) we’ve been slammed. I’m already exhausted. But oh, well, the show must go on.

And poor Hubby. Last night the family left to go to their hotel, I just finish cleaning the house and putting away the toys and he comes looking for sex. I just stared at him. “Are you out of your FUCKING mind? I haven’t done one thing for myself today, haven’t had a chance to sit once and now you want SEX????” He said, “Well, yeah, you need to do something nice for yourself.” “I’m doing it!” I replied. “Oh.” Very sweet sentiment, but Jesus, what bad timing. Men don’t seem to understand that when you’ve served people all day long and taken zero time for yourself, another request, no matter how nice it is, makes you want to SCREAM. And my head is full of four-year-olds and seven-year-olds and all the stuff I have to do at the festival. Which pretty much KILLS my sex drive. I assured him next week will be different. Next week, I write my spanking stories. And that’s pretty much guaranteed sex.

But still. I have no idea how mothers of children ever find the time or energy or desire to screw. Children are their own form of birth control. And so is being over-committed.

I can’t wait until next week.

Hope all you lovely people have a great weekend. Think of me on a stage somewhere, making an ass out of myself.

Hugs to you all,
Michelle

Gary walked over to her laundry hamper and opened it up. He withdrew her red baseball shirt and sent her a glare.

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Me, what?” she asked as innocently as she could.

“Don’t! Just don’t. Tell me, I want to hear you say it.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“It was you I chased, wasn’t it? You who threw herself in front of that train.”

“Uh…”

Gary’s face flushed red. It almost matched his hair. He walked right over to her. “I obviously need to make some things clear to you,” he said.

He sat next to her, grabbed her and pulled her across his lap. He couldn’t. She was a grown woman, wasn’t she? He wouldn’t be… spanking her, would he?

As if in answer to her mental question, she felt her sweats and panties being pulled to her knees. The air rushed over her exposed behind.

“Gary, what—“

Whack! Gary smacked her full force on the butt with his large open hand. The pain shocked her. She gasped, unable to breathe. He whacked her again, harder this time.

“Gary, stop! I’m sorry!”

“Not yet, you aren’t! But by the time I’m through with you, you sure as hell will be!”

He slapped her ass with gusto. Her buns were on fire. How could this be happening to her? This wasn’t right. People didn’t spank people when they were bad. Not adult people. She hadn’t even been spanked as a child; her parents didn’t believe in it. This was shocking. It was the first time she’d ever really had a consequence for one of her actions. Mind-blowing.

Not to mention extremely painful. But through the pain and tears, something else was clear. This man cared about her. Really, truly cared about her. Doubly shocking. A guy who cared about her this much? To actually be spanking her? Trying to get some sense into her?

She had to admit, jumping in front of the train was stupid. She’d been a split second away from death. She supposed his treatment was somewhat appropriate.

Even though the man was barbecuing her ass. She wasn’t sure she’d ever sit down comfortably again.

Soon, Heather had enough. She began to fight him. She tried to claw her way across the bed, but Gary’s arm was like an iron bar across her back. The more she struggled the harder he hit her. His hand felt like a flat piece of wood impacting her poor behind.

Gary finally stopped. Probably because he was worried that the neighbors would call the police due to all the cries of pain coming out of her. She continued bawling, absolutely torn by conflicting emotions. She was furious he’d dared to spank her, encouraged because it might mean that he really loved her, and moreover, worried that he’d find out all the other stuff about her. What would he do if he found out she’d lied about her career? About her pot smoking? Would he spank her again that hard? Or would he just leave her?

She suddenly realized that she didn’t want him to leave her. As much as the spanking upset her, this was a guy she realized that she actually cared about. She cared about what he thought of her. It had never been like this before.

He took her in his arms and kissed her. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s okay, the spanking’s over.” He kissed her on the temple, reached up and wiped away some tears.

“I’m sorry.”

“I wish you would have stopped,” Gary said. “You’re his friend, it was fine that you were there. I know you. I know you had nothing to do with his stupid blog.”

“He’d just told me. He’s no danger to society. He’s an idiot.”

“We got that. We still had to haul him in with the war on terror and all, but he’ll be released soon.”

“Good, good.”

“So why did you run?” he asked.

“I… uh. I… don’t know.”

He examined her, almost looking through her. Never date a cop. Now all his detective antennae were turned onto her. This was bad. She always counted on the fact that most men lived inside their own heads. This guy just jumped out of his own and into hers. He could easily find out everything. She could be in big trouble.

“What did Melvin tell you?” she asked.

“Nothing. Actually, not even your name. I found the keychain and then tricked him into telling me you were there. Plus there are only about twenty pictures of you with him all over his walls. That was kind of a big clue there.”

“Crap.”

“Honey, why did you run? The only thing I could figure was that you were stoned and paranoid.”

She blinked. She didn’t know what to say. Anything she said could and probably would be used against her. In his court of law. Why did she have to fall in love with an FBI agent? Why? Why?

“Honey, I won’t break up with you. Were you smoking pot or not at his house?”

She stared at him. “I’d rather not answer on the grounds that it might incriminate me.”

“Is it a once in awhile thing, or do you do this regularly?” he asked, appearing concerned.

“Uh… do we have to talk about this?”

“No, but I would hope that you’d just be open with me about yourself. I don’t like you hiding parts of yourself from me. You’re safe with me. I love you.”

“I… Not today, I just don’t want to talk about it now.”

“Why did you jump the train? Are you that afraid of me?”

“No,” she lied.

“I think there’s somethin’ else going on here. You don’t feel safe with me.”

“I feel totally safe with you.”

“But you’re not being honest with me.”

“Look, just because I don’t want to talk about something doesn’t mean I’m lying. I don’t want to talk about it because I don’t want to lie.”

Gary thought for a moment. He sighed. “Look, I want this to go further, our relationship. But to do that I need to know all of who you are. Everything.”

She had nothing to say. She hadn’t counted on this at all. She’d never had a relationship work before. What was she supposed to do?

©2010, Michelle Carlyle

Friday, August 13, 2010

Her Secret Life, Part Two

Hey Spankos!

Arrrrggggg. This is a true Friday the 13th for me. I feel like shit. Freakin’ panic attack in the middle of the night. Money worries will do that to you. We’re fine, we’ll be fine, but some stuff came up in the past week that has scared me. Apparently. Been awhile since I’ve laid awake like this. But something hit my buttons and now…I’m exhausted, my belly is buzzing and some part of me is screaming at me to “RUN!” No wonder I write a lot of romantic suspense. Heavy sigh. I think I’ll go back to bed.

So…this week (aside from the money weirdness) I’ve been working on polishing some upcoming releases: Hanky Spanky and two other titles. Yay! More books for sale! Wheeee! Which might help with those money worries.

Damn, I hate this economy. I hate that the rich keep getting richer and the rest of us suffer. I hate that money isn’t going into the schools or where we actually need it, it’s being spent in stupid ways that don’t help the majority. So many of my friends have lost their houses and jobs, it’s crazy. Yet the banks are doing great and so is Big Business. All these businesses are reporting record profits, but they won’t hire new people.

Okay, enough of this gloomy crap. Man. My brain is warped. I think I need to lose myself in one of my stories. Hey, look, there’s one right here. How convenient.

Hugs and love to all my readers,

Michelle

“Holy Moly! Melvin! It is Gary! He’s coming here to question you! I have to get out of here!” Heather cried, leaping to her feet. She grabbed her bag of pot, shoved it in her pocket and headed for the back door.

“Heather! Wait! I need a witness to the police brutality!” Melvin called after her.

Heather was already into the backyard. She raced through the overgrown yard, leapt up on the back fence and jumped over. Right as she landed, she heard a voice call out behind her. “Wait right there! FBI!” It was Gary. She couldn’t believe this. Heather ran for her life.

She leapt over lawn furniture, raced up to a table next to the fence, jumped up on it and vaulted over.

“I see you! Damn you, wait! FBI! I order you to stop!” he yelled after her.

Her heart pounding out of her chest, Heather ran across the next yard, leapt up on the fence and heaved herself over.

“FBI! Stop!”

How did this happen? Heather raced across one more yard, hopped the fence and landed in the street. Damn it!

She darted across the street, heading for an alley.

“Goddamn you!” came Gary’s cry from behind her.

She ran down the alley, turned the corner and saw the train tracks ahead of her. It was then she heard the train. She had to make it, she had to make it in front of the train. It was her only way out.

Even though she was nearly out of breath, somehow the terror of being caught by Gary propelled her faster.

“FBI! STOP!” he shouted. She checked over her shoulder; he was closing in on her. He was still a good fifty feet away, but he was getting closer by the minute.

The train’s deafening horn blared. The crossing gates were coming down up the block.

“Don’t try it! It’s not worth it! I only want to talk to you!” Gary cried out.

Heather’s entire focus was on the train and the tracks in front of her. It was going to be close.

She ran flat out for the tracks, the train was right there. Using every bit of her strength, she launched herself over the tracks. The conductor blared the horn.

She saw the train out of her peripheral vision; it looked like it was going to hit her.

She landed on the other side of the tracks just as the blast of the wind from the train hit her. She kept running, barely believing that she’d made it. She finally came to stop and checked behind her. The train was a long one, she’d made it.

Unable to believe what she’d just done, she turned away from the train and kept running. She had to get back home. She’d pick up her motorcycle later. Good thing there’d been no parking in front of Melvin’s. She’d parked down the block. Hopefully, Gary wouldn’t see the cycle. It least it was a stock Honda and a very popular model.

Heather didn’t stop panicking until she reached the safety of her own home. She rushed inside, hid her pot in her stash place and headed for the shower. She had to ditch her clothes and get the sweat off. No clues. Gary was due in two hours. Of course, if they arrested Melvin, maybe Gary would be delayed.


Three hours later, when she heard the knock at her door followed by the sound of it opening, she was ready. She had her fake work out on her desk, had prepared dinner and was casually dressed in sweats and t-shirt. She even took off her make up in an effort to appear like she’d been home all day.

When Gary’s face appeared at her office door, she didn’t bat an eye. She leapt out of her chair and ran to him. He grinned and brought her in for a lovely kiss.

“So how’s my favorite girl today?” he asked, his blue eyes twinkling down at her. She ran her hand through his flame red hair. “Better now that you’re here.”

He kissed her again. “So you been home all day?”

“Oh, yeah. Got a huge part of a manual done.”

“Good girl. So what’s cookin’? It smells great.”

“Pot roast,” she said.

“Mmm, sounds great. Tomorrow, I’m takin’ you out.”

“Ooo, where?”

“It’s a surprise. Actually, I have a couple surprises for you tonight.”

“Really? What kind of surprises?”

He smiled down at her. “You’ll just have to wait. Hey, I’m gonna throw on some sweats, too. You wanna come watch?”

“Food first, then sex. If I watch you, I won’t be able to keep my hands off you.”

“We could have sex before and after,” he said, reaching for her.

“I’m too hungry. Go get changed, then we can eat. You’re a bit late.”

“Yeah, had some problems at work.”

“Poor thing. Go change and meet me in the kitchen. You can tell me all about it.”

Heather was in the kitchen, congratulating herself for running. This was so cool. Gary would never know that it had been her at Melvin’s. Whew, dodged that bullet!

“Honey?” Gary called out.

“Yeah?”

“Could you come here a minute?”

“Sure. Just a sec.” Heather put down her wineglass and went to her bedroom. Gary had changed into sweats and black t-shirt. He looked so hot!

“What is it?” she asked, walking up to him.

“Hey, look what I found,” he said, handing her a small plastic object.

She looked at it. It was her Godzilla key ring. She’d spent a full hour searching for it that afternoon.

“God, I’ve been looking all over for this, where did you find it?” she asked.

The look in his eye changed. It darkened.

“What? Where did you find it?” she asked.

“At 4545 Willow Avenue,” he said as his mouth grew tight.

Heather felt like someone clubbed her over the head. She got dizzy. She had to sit. She collapsed on the bed. It was over. Over and done with.

©2010, Michelle Carlyle

Friday, August 6, 2010

Her Secret Life, Part One

Hey Spanky Friends!

How’s it hangin’? I’m doing great. I’m just totally, utterly, one-hundred-percent SICK of entertaining. Since it’s one of my favorite pastimes, I’m surprised. After my guests left last Sunday, I was a lot happier than I should have been. I couldn’t figure out why I was bummed and then realized I’d spent two solid weekends of cooking, cleaning and serving. I love sharing my house and hanging out with my friends, but I’m done for awhile. Thank God, we’re not entertaining this weekend. This is a picnic-at-the-beach weekend. Yay! Date with the Hubby!

Okay, so that fucktastic marathon my hubby and I were having DIED. We haven’t had sex in a week. We both had sex dreams last night and promised ourselves we’d summon the energy to continue our fun tonight. Problem was we wore ourselves out with entertaining and were too wiped this week to have sex. Which is the number one reason we need to stop entertaining so much. Lesson learned.

So today we start with a new/old story called Her Secret Life, found in Bad Girls 3. This story came from a vanilla novel I wrote a long time ago. The male lead is based on a character I wrote about ten books for and never published. A hardassed FBI agent with a crazy girlfriend. This was before I was purposefully writing spanking fiction. When all my novels ended up with a spanking for the heroine. Which is why they were never published. Thank God, I found Discipline and Desire and a whole audience of people who actually loved the spanking scenes.

Actually nearly ALL of my spanking stories come from my vanilla novels. As I’m writing, spanking ideas will come up and I normally have two story lines going with the same characters. The main story goes into the novel and the side stories go to the spanking fiction. Gerry and Rob are exceptions (the prankster woman) and a few others, but mostly my story ideas and characters come from my novels. Sometimes I split the characters and develop two different people. Like sort of the same person with different aspects of their personalities highlighted. For instance, I work with two Zane Blacks (I need to do something about the names…), Zane Black-The Spanker/Rocker and Zane Black, the special ops guy. Both look the same, talk the same, have the same heart and moral character, but they have very different occupations, backgrounds and…predilections, if you know what I mean. I wonder what will happen when I finally sell a vanilla novel. I’ll have to own those characters or change some names or something. Anyway, no worries for right now.

Okie-dokie. I hope you all have a spiffy weekend.

Hugsnlove,
Michelle



As Heather sat there, smoking a big bomber of a joint with her connection, she finally took in her surroundings. Her friend was a paranoid nutcase. She’d known him since high school, but Melvin had been slipping further and further out into the outer fringes of society. He had newspaper clippings all over the walls of his living room, some with huge red circles around the headlines. The books covering his coffee table ranged from manuals on how to build a trebuchet to getting off the power grid to military manifestos written by South American dictators.

“So when are you building the bunker?” she finally asked the large, pasty-faced man sitting in the recliner next to her.

His large brown eyes practically popped out of his head. “How did you know about the bunker?” he demanded, sitting upright in his chair.

“Dude, dude, calm. I was kidding. I’m just a bit worried about you, man. You… this isn’t good, all this reading of yours,” she said, gesturing towards the coffee table.

“But Heather, the world is coming to an end, soon,” he replied earnestly. “And the government is behind it.”

“Honey, have you thought about therapy?”

“Therapy placates the masses and makes you all comfortable with this commercialized hell the planet has become. I don’t want anything to dull my senses,” he said, taking a huge hit off the joint.

“Nice irony, there,” she replied, taking the joint from him.

“Marijuana sharpens my mind. I can think more clearly, see through all the distractions the government is bombarding me with. The iPod? Do you really think they’re playing all music? Subliminal programming, they all come with subliminal programming that makes us want to buy more stuff. And TV now? They’re sending two programs during most prime time viewing, they send the show or whatever, the Simpsons then in images we can’t even perceive, they are sending us messages to go out and spend ourselves into oblivion.”

“I can see those images. They’re called commercials.”

“You always were a naysayer, Heather. You gotta open up your eyes and your mind, girl. They’re subverting us.”

“Oh, I feel subverted. This stuff is strong. Here, you finish it. I gotta be straight soon. Seeing my new boyfriend later.”

“Are you still lying to him?”

“Of course. He’d bust me. Maybe not, but he could. He doesn’t know about this whole other life of mine. He thinks I go to some cubicle in the city to work, he has no idea I’m one of the most successful erotica writers in the country.”

“I think he started dating you to get to me.”

“He doesn’t even know you. Or know that I know you.”

“I think you’ve lost your mind with this one, Heather. The biker, I understood. The shoe salesman, I understood.”

“He was hot.”

“I even understood when you went out with the hacker.”

“He was cute in a sort of wild-coffee-addict-never-sees-the-light-of-day way.”

“But what I cannot fathom is this new flirtation with the dark side,” Melvin said.

“He’s cute as hell and an awesome lay. What more could I need?”

“Someone who didn’t have the power to arrest you,” he responded acidly.

“He wouldn’t,” Heather scoffed. “Besides, he’ll never find out about me. Or you. Or anything I don’t want him to. We’ve been going out for three months and he still doesn’t know anything about me. And I’m gonna keep it that way.”

“A relationship made in heaven. The guy doesn’t even know you. And this doesn’t say anything to you? Trust in a relationship? Mutual respect? How can you say he loves you when he doesn’t even know you?”

“Oh, he knows all the important parts.”

Melvin snorted. “I’ll bet.”

“No, not those parts. Its not like I change personalities around him. He knows I like cartoons and I collect weird action figures. He knows I ride a motorcycle and I like to hike. He’s met my parents.”

“That’s not saying much, they haven’t known anything about you since you were twelve.”

“I couldn’t tell them I was dealing. Or that’s how I worked my way through college. Or that I write erotica. They think I’m a computer programmer.”

“What does he think you do?”

“He thinks I’m a technical writer.”

Melvin burst out laughing. “You don’t know the first thing about technology.”

“I can use my computer.”

“Only because I keep updating everything for you.”

“Yeah, well.”

“I don’t know. So what kind of cop is he again?”

“FBI, baby.”

“Damn, girl. When you travel on the dark side, you go all the way.”

“Don’t I know it. If he weren’t so cute, I would have dumped him by now. And he’s so nice. It’s actually frightening what a goody two shoes the man is. I hope he never finds out about me.”

“What if it gets serious?”

“Serious. Who, me?” Heather asked.

“Yeah. You.”

“Never occurred to me.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“Hell yeah.”

“And he loves you.”

“He says so. He acts like it. I’ve met his parents and everything.”

“So? Doesn’t this say anything to you? What if he wants to marry you?”

“Marry me? Me?” She laughed. “No man has ever dared to tread that path with me. I think he’ll come to his senses eventually and leave me. That’s what they all do. Well, either that or I leave them. Marriage, ha. I’ve never even been proposed to yet.

“What about Mike? And Jack? And Daniel?” Melvin corrected.

Heather waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, those didn’t count.”

“Why not? They were marriage proposals.”

“They didn’t count because I didn’t love them.”

“So what if this guy asks you to marry him?”

This stumped Heather. “I don’t know. Never gave it any serious thought. I just figured he’d dump me. I don’t know.”

“How old are you now?”

“Don’t ask,” Heather said.

“You have to be my age, like, thirty-three.”

“I don’t want to think about it. It makes me think that I have to be serious about my life and I don’t like being serious. So, no, I’m not gonna think about it. Besides, I like him too much. That’s always a sure sign they’re gonna dump me.”

“I hope you’re right. FBI. Just gives me the willies thinkin’ about it. Oh, have I told you about my new blog?”

“No, what one is this about?”

“About assassinating the president.”

The words reverberated through her head.

She stared over at her pasty-faced friend. “Are you nuts?”

“I want those bastards to wake up and realize that there are some of us who just won’t take their crap anymore.”

“Melvin, when did you start this blog?”

“About three days ago. Man, did it take off. Thousands of people commented on it. I’m finally getting the attention I’ve been needing. Now that I’ve got a platform, I’m gonna be tackling all the big subjects. How Russia is still controlling the planet, how antiperspirant causes brain damage—“

“I was wondering why you smelled so funky—“

“How those black helicopters are starting to follow major corridors of traffic, a sure sign the government is planning to implement martial law. Then I’m gonna launch into how our money is poisoned with a secret toxin that makes us want to eat junk food. You know the biggest threat we’re facing on our planet?”

“Trans fatty acids?” Heather guessed.

“No, Chinese fast food joints. Think about it. They start in, they’ve got tons more people than the US does. If they start shoving their food down our throats, we’ll be slaves to them and their ideals. It will all go down hill from there.”

“You’re making me hungry. Man, some Kung Pao Chicken would be really good about now.”

“You are hopeless.”

Heather laughed. “Melvin, you gotta get out more, man. You spend too much time cooped up in…” A man outside the house caught Heather’s attention.

“What?” Melvin asked.

“That guy getting out of that car across the street. He looks just like Gary.”

“Where?” Melvin asked. He turned around to look.

Heather pointed. “See that guy with that other suit? I swear, he looks just like…”

It suddenly slammed her. Melvin’s blog.

“Holy Moly! Melvin! It is Gary! He’s coming here to question you! I have to get out of here!” she cried, leaping to her feet. She grabbed her bag of pot, shoved it in her pocket and headed for the back door.

©2010, Michelle Carlyle