Angels Who Prefer To Walk

I’d love to start off my story with some exciting little mini-adventure, like James Bond in a car chase, because I know how shit people’s attention spans are ever since Tiktok turned reality into a series of SNL sketches that actually know how to end. You’ve gotta grab people’s attention. But the fact is, was a slow week when I went into heat. Not even anything good on Netflix.

I don’t want to go over all that crap, because you’ve probably heard all about it, but just so no one interrupts my story in thirty to ask how come I’m not humping a parking bollard:

1.     It doesn’t work that way.

2.     No, seriously, it doesn’t work that way.

3.     Don’t think you know how it works because some asshole friend told you a story about getting with a transgenic while she was in heat and fucked her brains out. You don’t. He got it from the internet and the internet made shit up.

I go into heat every four months. It’s not an exact science, so no, I can’t just mark it out on a calendar and go ice-fishing when the urge hits. The clock strikes twelve, I go into proestrus, which is heat sneaking up on me. If I’m reading a romance novel then, it’s suddenly the greatest work of man ever written.

After two days of proestrus, I’m in estrus, and that’s when I would hump a parking bollard if I weren’t in a city full of eligible bachelors. And I don’t mean to brag, but I’m five foot seven, a hundred and twenty pounds on the dot, and my 34Bs become 34Cs after proestrus has had its way with me. Judging from the way men lose IQ points when I smile and bat my eyelashes a little, I’m alright in the face. As for my body, let’s just say a tomboy phase was never in the cards for me. I’ve been asked to model everything from bikinis to jockstraps—yeah, no, I didn’t get it either.

Part of it’s the transgenic thing. You know how Michael Jordan was born to be a basketball player? Well, that was a polite suggestion compared to my genetics. I have the physique of an Olympic athlete, my body burns whatever it’s fed like a nuclear furnace, and add to that the animal DNA. Yeah, someone went Marie Kondo through my genome: kicking out the lame stuff like having a foot fetish and grafting on some choice traits from the animal kingdom. You wouldn’t think it to look at all five feet and seven inches of me, but I can manhandle a guy twice my size, outrun a Pinto, read a book from across a football field, and all without having had my coffee.

But I’m not a final draft. That phrase ‘good enough for government work’ even applies to government-engineered supersoldiers. Hence me going into heat three times a year, for a good week and a half if I’m lucky.

On the bright side, I don’t have period cramps. And those things sound like they suck.

Now, don’t skip to the end for a glossary, I’m not going to go all Tolkien with the worldbuilding. That’s all you need to know about me and mine for this to make sense. Well, that and Logan.

Yeah, let’s get to Logan, since I woke up from some typhoon-grade wet dreams thanks to the proestrus I did not know I was in the middle of, and decided I’d go bother Logan. I’ll spare you the description of Seattle traffic and give you the bullet points on him.

Logan is a billionaire. Yeah, like in half the romance novels ever published. It was inherited money, but he’d done a good job of putting the right people in the right positions so he didn’t have to worry about money, ever. As in, not before the heat death of the universe.

But he didn’t let any Gordon Gekko assholes have their way with his company either. It was a real rarity: his employees were well-taken care of, his company made good money, and he didn’t fuck up by trying to sell products with an internet attached, or AI, or that you needed to make an account for.

If he was worth a couple billion less, you’d think he was an alright guy. The sort of guy who goes to the bar in Cheers.

But he wasn’t a working-class stiff. Logan was an intellectual. Yeah, the money he’d been born into, but the college credits he chose. And like a lot of people with book learning, Logan decided that the system blew. I know, I know, not something you or I need to be told, but it’s rare for a billionaire to figure it out.

He also figured that he wouldn’t fix anything by playing the game: running for office, holding a fundraiser, investing in crypto. What Logan did was… well, it’s a long story. The short version is he paid people like me to help people. Or, if people sucked, to royally screw them.

I’m not sure what you’d call me. Private investigator? Yeah, sure, I’ve photographed plenty of cheating spouses. Vigilante? Maybe sorta. I don’t get my rocks off shooting punks on the subway, but hey, if someone has to go, they have to go. Freelance thief… okay, I’ll cop to that.

What can I say, I’m an independent girl. Logan pays me well, but if we’re ruining someone’s life for being a human trafficker or talking during a movie or whatever, I don’t see why the cops should get to confiscate whatever shiny things the dude has in his penthouse. Cops want ‘em, they can do the heavy lifting and catch these assholes.

I can sense you agree with me. If you don’t, stop reading right now, I don’t want you to enjoy this story. But, if you’re not on my side, at least you’re in good company. Logan did not hold that diamonds were a girl’s best friend either.

Okay, now mentally remove me from the scooter or whatever you thought I was busting ass across town on. I had reached Logan’s place, taken the elevator up, fist-bumped the doorman—I’m sure he thought I was some kind of small-business-ass call girl, because guys in this zip code were not in book clubs with girls that had as many holes in their socks as me.

And now there I was, in Logan’s penthouse… and, important note, as a connoisseur of the penthouse, Logan might not have had great taste in home decor, but he at least knew less is more. You’d be surprised how many supervillain lairs are absolutely stuffed with modern art.

Wait, scratch that, not the important note. It was a nice-looking place—you wouldn’t blame me for wanting to hang out there instead of with my roomies—but the important note is that I saved Logan’s life. The first time we met, he was doing his hero thing, he asked for my help, for God knows what reason I decided to be talked into it… next thing I know, I’m shoving him out of the way of a bullet.

Is he grateful? You tell me, gentle reader. You tell me.

“The Kwapisz Diamonds,” Logan announced portentously.

“Gesundheit,” I announced, not so portentously.

“They’re valued at fifteen million dollars, they’re insured by Lloyd’s of London… did you think no one would notice they’d gone missing?”

“I thought the cops would care more about E.K. Dakota distributing snuff films than what happened to all his paperweights, yeah.” I dropped into an accent chair and, for the moment, restrained myself from scuffing my Doc Martens on any of its tasteful off-whitey-ness. “You want to get all verklempt over how the sausage is made, you could’ve sent in your whole vision board of the guy to the cops, they could’ve handled it all aboveboard…”

“It was a dossier,” Logan stressed. “I don’t know if it’s a point in your favor or not, but ten thousand cops almost manage to have fingers as sticky as one little you.”

I nodded sagely. “But unlike Seattle’s Finest (at something-or-other), I give a shit about truth, justice, and the American Way.”

“I pay you to give a shit,” Logan reminded me.

“Cops are paid to give a shit.”

“Not enough.”

“You mean they’re not paid enough or they don’t give enough of a shit?”

This is what I like about Logan: he knows he’s supposed to be idealistic. He knows he’s not supposed to agree with my cynicism, because one of us has to have morals or scruples or whatever they’re called.

But he’s at least man enough to smile when he loses an argument.

“It’s a thorny issue,” he gritted out. “But corrupt or not, the police will figure something’s going on if jewels and expensive artwork keep going missing from the city’s elite right as they take a fall.”

“What are they going to do? Put a big Max-signal on the roof of police HQ?”

“Call the FBI. Start passing things up the chain.”

I sat up. I am not man enough to smile when Logan makes a good point. I pout. Cutely, but I still pout.

“Next time I’ll start a fire. Cover my tracks.”

“Max, no,” Logan moaned, though he was holding back laughter.

It was hard to grab for past the self-righteousness, but he had a certain sense of humor. And a nice smile.

Man, that was a lot of dialogue. Let’s put a pin in this scene for just one sec and let me describe Logan, because this is important to understand some of the behavior you’re about to witness from me.

Logan is gorgeous. I don’t mean like how a newborn baby is beautiful or some shit like that. I mean that if an underwear model got cast as the next James Bond, it would look like him. Not that he made a big Thing of dressing himself—no pink suits, no brocade jackets, no two thousand dollar sunglasses. Just then, he was wearing a hunting sweater, corduroy trousers, suede boat shoes. The elbow had worn thin on his sweater. He’d sewn a leather patch in to replace it. Which is Logan in a nutshell, because he could’ve easily bought twenty of those sweaters with the money between his couch cushions.

He was boyishly handsome, with an endearingly scruffy five o’clock shadow that always seemed to be there, whatever time of day I dropped in on him. I have no idea when he timed his shaves. Maybe before bed, so he slept through looking baby-faced and woke up with just enough beard to give that face an interesting texture—the kind you’d like to feel out.

Baby blue eyes that made him look perversely young, sandy hair that always looked like he’d just run a comb through it. The twist of his mouth and the set of his jaw were firm, hard, while his nose was a little crooked, like he’d had some childhood accident—something rambunctious, a soap-car derby or fight over lunch money.

There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him and the way he carried himself, the weights and running shoes and tennis rackets I’d come across on my scattered visits weren’t just for show. I couldn’t swear to it that he had six-pack abs or anything, but there was an electric charge between us that I knew was real.

It wasn’t ego; he knew I wanted him, he knew he could get me… I knew every guy wanted me, I knew I could have any guy. I’m sure that when he called me, my number wasn’t listed as ‘probably a screamer’ and I didn’t have him down as ‘walks around like he’s got ten inches.’

But if Sherlock Holmes were to venture a guess as to whether we had fucked and whether we wanted to fuck, I’m sure he’d need a mulligan or two.

Now, here’s the part where you maybe say hey, Max, the way you tell it, you’re one set of bimbo implants away from booking Baywatch. If you’re so hot and he’s so hot, why don’t you just tap that already?

Or, I don’t know, maybe you’re Mormon and you’re more wondering why he doesn’t pay my dad a dowry of two cows and knock me up or however it works for you guys. It’s all semantics for the real question, which is that if I want him, why am I not getting him?

You really have to know Logan to get the answer to that. If you’d met him or even seen a picture of him, you wouldn’t ask. The guy’s a hottie, but he has this Abraham Lincoln energy, like he was supposed to be a politician back when people gave a shit or a Roman senator who gave a speech about how bad slavery was.

I was under the impression, and you would be too, that if I made a pass at Logan, he’d have some Boy Scout answer ready about how we needed to keep things professional because of how important our work was and if we allowed our priorities to shift we would be doing a disservice to… I can’t make it sound good. He’d make it sound good.

You’ve seen a Spider-Man movie, Superman movie? They always have a speech about how they can’t just fuck the girl on the regular. Well, that wasn’t all Hollywood bullshit. Logan was exactly the kind of guy who really believed that sort of thing. I mean, you heard all that shit about the diamonds, right? Imagine what he’d say about a blowjob.

So it’s not like I’m easy or anything. It’s just that right then, I smelled pure, concentrated boy. And good. Like I’d stepped into a locker room only ever used by the Olympic swimming team. And it wasn’t simply that Logan smelled nice. He always smelled nice, even when he forgot to put on cologne or had been working too hard to shower for a while or he’d just gotten back from a tennis match and I could see sculpted legs under shorts that formed to his hips and thighs like the blister pack on a set of new batteries.

No. It was that he smelled like he’d been fucking.