“Yes sir,” I grumbled around his penis.
Derek Tremblay was the editor-in-chief of the Sudbury Review, a medium-sized newspaper publisher in Sudbury, Ontario where I’d worked for the last three years. I was an acquisitions editor who doubled as a reporter when I first got the job, but after expertly sucking Mr. Tremblay’s cock I quickly moved up the Review’s ladder. He made me his executive editor after we started fucking. I take that as a compliment.
My name is Greg Butler, and I’m a journalist, which you probably already guessed. Well, truth is, these days I don’t go out and get the stories much anymore. I stay in my nice, cushy exec office and edit them. Believe me, it’s still hard work red penning those puppies, particularly when we get a new crop of journalists fresh in from college, but sometimes I miss going out there and getting into my work, too.
However, not a journalist at the Review wanted to cover the yearly Darmoor murder legend story. Though not an old legend, only ten years have passed since the event, it’s well known and just scandalous enough to make the little town it happened in … well … legendary.
So why doesn’t anyone want to cover it? Well, in the past we’d do a boring blanket story. Someone would go down to the archives and pull up all the old files on the murder that happened in the sleepy little suburb of Chestnut Lane, only a fifteen minute drive from my office in Sudbury. Not exactly thrilling reporting, combing through archives and sneezing your way through a decade of dust.
But to get to Hans, the center of this local melodrama, I’d have to go all the way out past Chestnut Lane, into a rural district that was bordered by an old growth forest. No one had gone to interview Hans in years, and he rarely allowed strangers in his home, or so I’d heard.
Hans Muller was a witch who had been accused of murdering his lover. He was cleared of the charges due to lack of evidence, but most of the Darmoor people still think he did it. Hans keeps to himself on a little piece of land at the Darmoor limits. And it looks like I’m going to be his houseguest this weekend.
“I can’t believe he agreed to it,” I said to myself as I drove through thick Ontario woods, down a rutted dirt road that led to Hans’ Victorian gingerbread home.
I parked outside a place done up in faded mint green with a porch out front that was framed in dingy white latticework. The turned porch posts were chipped and broken in places, and some of the spindles hanging from the rounded windows were missing, but the home still held its strange storybook charm. I couldn’t help but grin as I got out of the car and grabbed my canvas bag from the back of my Honda. Looking at it reminded me of fairy tales my gran would read to us as kids.
I knocked on the dark mahogany door and peered through one of the two windows in the top half of the entrance. Inside was gloomy and lacked light, but I could see someone drawing close through gray afternoon sunlight spilling in via what I assumed was the kitchen.
But no one opened up. I waited. Knocked again. Then I heard a soft yet deep voice say, “Enter.”
So I did.
Hans Muller took my breath away. I’d heard stories. That he was nothing like what you expected. I’d expected an unkempt hermit with bleary, wild eyes and a set of mismatched clothes. What stood before me in the poorly lit foyer was a blond man of medium height who looked like a New York model. Normally I liked my lovers a little less pretty, but there was something in Hans stare that drew me in and refused to let go.
His features were fine, soft. His full lips begged to be kissed. Straight, thick hair was slicked away from his face and just brushed the wide, ribbed straps on the white tank he wore. A simple pair of blue jeans hugged his slender hips. He wasn’t muscle bound, but he was fit. His wide eyes were so light blue they looked like circles of ice.
He looked me up and down, and his face remained unreadable as he did so. “Who are you, and why are you in my house?”
I frowned, scratched my somewhat shaggy eyebrow (damn, they’d need a trim before they poked me in the eye). “Greg Butler. I’m from the Sudbury Review.” I held up my bag. “I’m here to interview you this weekend.”
Now he smiled. The gesture took its time curling his lips, and the look reminded me of a cat carefully stalking a mouse. “Ah, Derek sent you, even though I refused. This shouldn’t surprise me.”
This time I scratched at the stubble peppering my face. “You know Derek?”
He turned away, revealing a firm ass that bunched nicely as he walked. “Yes, we’re … old friends, you could say. He was the first interview I ever allowed.” With one hand, he beckoned for me to follow him into the kitchen.