Secret of Her Success

Published in Herotica 4 (Down There Press, 1996)

The gutter was a grotesque mixture of the repulsive and crude, a microcosm of this blighted neighborhood. Along this stretch of curbside was an assortment of cigarette butts in varying lengths and stages of decay. One of them was still smoldering. Shattered glass from bottles of cheap wine and hard liquor lay strewn in the pitted and stained concrete channel. Spent condoms, wrinkled and rotted from exposure, peeked out from beneath charred and tattered newspapers, junk-food wrappers and defiantly discarded parking tickets. In a clear section of gutter lay a used syringe clogged with blood, its spike askew, testimony to the lack of needle exchange in the city.

Lifting away from the dying cigarette was a pristine red leather pump, size eight, This shoe held a well-shaped foot clad in shiny new support hose surrounding an equally attractive leg. A red spandex miniskirt fell just an inch below the woman’s firm, round buttocks.

She was a striking woman, apparently in her early twenties, with long straight black hair worn with no styling. Her hips and butt molded the tight skirt into an excruciatingly attractive curve that tapered into a thin waist and almost perfectly flat stomach. Firm, high breasts strained maddeningly at a white, pucker-knit tube top that showed off her smooth pale torso. Her face was devoid of foundation, but she wore heavy eye makeup, blush and lipstick. She could have posed for any men’s magazine she wanted to—she was that kind of beautiful. Other women envied and hated her.

Her eyes were the most unusual thing about her—alive and sparkling with mischievous energy, greener than the glass of a Seven-Up bottle. But her most striking features were also her best-kept secrets.

She idled along this stretch of downtown sidewalk, illuminated by the multicolored neon of the shops and the yellowish orange of the sodium-vapor streetlamps. Her eyes scanned the approaching traffic warily, searching for the police cars she was trying to avoid and the customers she hoped to attract.

A dusty old Nova slowed for her; it was at least ten years old and wheezed blue smoke. The driver was not a day under fifty; even in this light she could see how disheveled he looked, as if he’d slept in his clothes. His eyes were wide and his mouth leered.

She tossed her head and looked away. A guy in a car like that wouldn’t be good for more than a twenty, and he didn’t look like he was worth taking for less than her usual fifty or sixty. Besides, a guy that creepy sometimes made her physically ill. There were plenty of fish in the sea on a Friday night; Tanya didn’t have to settle. There had been times when she was so desperate that anyone would do—but tonight she was able to hold out for what she wanted.

Tanya passed two other hookers walking in the opposite direction and smiled to herself at the change in their conversation. She was the new mystery woman on the stroll, and everyone was trying to figure her out. She didn’t mind if they talked about her. Everywhere she had ever gone, people had done that.

No one had seen her arrive; she’d just turned up in the Tarrington one day. She’d registered in that dismal lobby just before dawn several months ago, so her neighbors hadn’t seen her check in. Tanya hadn’t made a secret of her existence, but it took more than a week for the other residents to even notice that someone was living in 212. Nobody had even known her name for almost a month. She was polite when spoken to, but very close-mouthed. Mostly she didn’t stay in a conversation long enough for anyone to learn anything about her.

It was hard for people to figure out what she was all about. She had no obvious needle tracks on her arms, legs or neck, so people assumed she smoked the pipe or did pills or drank. Oddly, she never seemed loaded. She hadn’t asked anybody about getting drugs, which gave rise to the theory that she had her own connection. Most everyone in her hotel believed she had to be some kind of addict. After all, why would a girl that pretty be hooking on the street if not for a fix? And, like some addicts, you only saw her at night.

Ten minutes after she brushed off the Nova, Tanya’s patience paid off. A metallic blue BMW pulled up. The guy, apparently a professional of some sort in his early thirties, dressed for success, rolled down the passenger side window. She favored him with a wide-lipped smile as he signaled for her to come over.

“What can I do for you this evening, darling?” she asked in a light, almost musical voice.

“Are you dating?” he returned.

“Most certainly,” she replied in her cultured voice.

“How much?”

“Let me in and we’ll talk about it.”

He pulled up the lock and cracked the door for her. Tanya looked left and right out of habit to make sure no cops would witness this, then gracefully slid into the passenger seat and shut the door. Soon they were cruising down the street at fifteen miles an hour.

“I can’t believe a girl as pretty as you is working the streets.”

“I like being my own boss,” Tanya said, “and I’m not cheap.”

“How not cheap are you?”

“Well, we can do a quickie right here for a sixty, or you can get us a room and spend a hundred for half an hour.”

Staring at her luscious cleavage and firm young thighs, he licked his lips and, with a slight quaver to his voice, asked what they could do for that long.

“Anything you want to do, honey,” she smiled. “I’m open-minded.”

“All right,” he said. “Where do we go?”

In only a few minutes he had the car parked in one of the slots of a budget motel on the edge of the neighborhood.

“I’ll wait for you out here. Okay, baby?” she said as he got out. “I’d prefer not to disturb the management. They’d frown at the idea of me plying my trade in their rooms.”

“Good thinking, doll. I’ll be right back.”

After a few minutes he returned, jingling the keys triumphantly. With a generous, knowing smile she smoothly left his car and strolled over to take his proffered arm. He escorted her discreetly up the stairs to the second-floor balcony.

“So how long you been dating?” he asked quietly as they searched for the room.

“Couple of years,” she replied.

“Why?”

“As I said, I like being my own boss. Nobody tells me what to do and I come and go as I please. I can pick and choose who I date, and I do quite well for myself.”

“Where are you from? I notice you have an accent—Eastern European, I’d say.”

“I don’t know. My people have been on the road so long, I really have no idea where. We really kept to ourselves. I’d probably still be with them, but a girl can’t stay at home forever, you know?”

“I guess,” he said, and let it go at that.

With trembling fingers, the guy opened the door and ushered Tanya into the motel room. Intoxicating fantasies played through his mind as he began taking off his clothes. Tanya sat on the edge of the bed, slowly peeled down her pantyhose and wriggled out of her tube top. Her high pert breasts popped forth, nipples already swollen.

She sat there waiting for him in her red spandex skirt. His libido in overdrive, his cock astir in his shorts, he sat next to her and buried his tongue in her mouth. She eagerly, passionately returned his kiss and ground her bosom into his furry chest. His hands flew to her breasts and the crotch of her panties.

He slid his fingers beneath the hem of her underwear and found her vagina moist and open. Tanya sighed loudly, feeling his finger snaking into her lubricated pussy, and she sucked eagerly at his mouth, writhing her crotch against his hand.

The trick stood and pulled off his shorts while Tanya wiggled out of her skirt and G-string and lay back on the bed. She drew her thighs wide open to part her labia for him. The pink wet lips glistened slightly, and she wiggled her hips sinuously. She was a little taken aback by herself: it wasn’t often that a client affected her like this.

Tanya wasn’t a hooker because she liked anonymous sex. The best tricks came and went, and the sooner the better. Like most whores, her motto was “get ’em in, get ’em off and get ’em out.” Of course, she occasionally had a John who was a good lover, but that created other problems for her.

As the trick pulled himself onto the bed he couldn’t resist a closer inspection of Tanya’s pussy. Her scent, wild and musky, sent a heady wave of desire through him, and before he knew what he was doing he found his lips poised over her cunt.

Tanya knew what was coming, but for some reason she didn’t mind; in fact, she was primed for it. Maybe it was just something about this guy, but she responded to his touch almost immediately. The feel of his breath on her mound made her want to thrust her crotch into his face.

Tanya groaned in delicious surprise at the sensation of his tongue sliding up her juicing vagina, and she gasped when it brushed her electrified clit. She felt a heat growing in her belly, and knew it was about to happen. Quickly she grabbed him from beneath his arms and pulled him up so they were face to face.

“Wow! You work out or something?” His face registered surprise as well, as passion.

“Let’s do something else,” she said, hoping it wasn’t too late, that he hadn’t aroused her too much. She scissored her legs together and tried to think about bank vaults, about blank brick walls—anything to distract herself.

“Hey, baby, c’mon,” the trick said, insinuating a hand between her clenched thighs. “We’re just getting warmed up here!”

Suddenly he froze. His fingers had encountered something unexpected. But he had seen her pussy—had tasted it. Maybe she was some kind of transsexual or hermaphrodite? He wasn’t really sure, but he knew the hard cock he now felt in his hand was definitely attached to this beautiful … woman?

Now he knew one of her secrets, and he tried to pull back.

Knowing she had been discovered and that he wasn’t into it at all, Tanya grabbed his arms and held fast. The trick felt her inhuman strength as he tried to struggle from her grasp, and became horrified. No woman—not even a man—should be this strong. And while he was trying to comprehend his powerless-ness, he suddenly felt the stubble of heavy whiskers grate against his face. Where had they come from?

Tanya’s trick fought to get away, struggling to free himself, preparing to shriek out in fright. Then she opened her lips wide, showing him her full smile for the first time, and he almost fainted. He tried to make sense of her other secret—her inch-long incisors—as she sank them into his shoulder.

He kicked and flailed, but she held fast, sucking greedily at the blood that pumped into her waiting mouth. Dizzy and weak, he noticed that the five o’clock shadow that had rasped against him had disappeared. As he felt his consciousness beginning to ebb, he reached back down to her crotch and recoiled in shock: he knew he’d felt a penis there just a moment ago, but there was only smoothness now.

Tanya stood unsteadily over the trick’s lifeless body and collected herself. She shimmied back into her pantyhose, tugged her top back on and tiptoed out the door. She was in luck; there was nobody outside on the balcony, She headed for the stairs.

There were times when Tanya almost regretted being the way she was, even though she couldn’t help it. She’d hated leaving her clan five years ago, but they couldn’t abide her sex-changing ways.

There were definite advantages to being a shapechanger. The other transsexuals out here relied on all kinds of hormones, silicone and surgery to become women, but all Tanya needed was fresh blood.

By the time she reached the street, she was ready for another trick.