It could have been her up swept strawberry blonde hair, or the pale distance in her eyes. Alone, either could have served as a least common denominator in triggering painful remembrances of Evaleanna. The coupling of the two, however, was closer to the agony of being gut shot.

Wojo was in Arizona on a little matter of clean up. It seems the Witness Protection Program had come into possession of a worthless piece of trash which had once belonged to The Family, and when word was received they had deposited it in a rural Arizona, Wojo caught the next flight for Phoenix.

It was there, amidst the hustle and bustle of Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport, that his eyes first came to rest on la sosia Evaleanna.

“Thank you for choosing Hertz, Mr. Anderson.” La sosia greeted him with the same practiced joviality he had seen her greet everyone who preceded him in line. “What type of vehicle can I put you in today?”

“Something luxurious.” Wojo responded, stretching the word ‘luxurious’ to a nearly obscene length- and winking seductively when it became evident his elongation had not gone unnoticed.

“I do love a man who knows what he wants.” La sosia countered, the sing songy style with which she delivered her tired sales script having been instantly replaced with a soft, throaty coo. 

By the time her hand lingered just seconds too long in his outstretched palm whilst delivering the keys to a Jaguar XJ, Mr. Anderson had already scribbled his cell number on the back of one of his business cards, and tucked it delicately into a pocket just under Annika’s name plate, and over her- heart.

                                                                **********

Any similarity Annika may have borne to Evaleanna in the airport earlier in the day evaporated quickly as he plunged himself into her, atop the fully reclined, cordovan leather passenger’s seat of the Jag. 

Until that moment, Wojo had been able to fool himself into thinking that he could allow the color of her hair, and the distance in her eyes to be enough. That somehow they alone could transport him back to the only time in his life when he knew what it felt like, to love.

But as Annika bucked and moaned beneath him, any yearning he may have had to recapture that bliss quickly ignited, fueling the only emotion he was still capable of feeling in the arms of a woman. Rage.

As he drove Annika back to her car afterward, his rage had turned inward. How could he have allowed himself to be blindsided by such emotional bullshit? He knew very moment he spent in Phoenix added to the danger of being seen in the area, the possibility of his being identified in connection with the job he had been sent here to do. What the fuck was wrong with him?

By the time he pulled up alongside her car, he had to fight off the desire to knock Annika out of the car and into the parking lot like so much unclaimed baggage.

Hanging on to one last thread of civility, he was allowing her to say her good-byes, when he was forced to notice the once pale distance he had seen in her eyes, had since been replaced by the same pleading hunger that over the years had only served to deepen his disgust..

In that moment however, something clicked. What was to become his life’s work rose from within him like the Phoenix out of the flames.

He came to understand the depths of what could be accomplished- were that hunger to be harnessed- and nurtured under a careful regiment of highly controlled feedings..

This is the fourth installment of the Las Donnas Fatales series which can be read in its entirety by following the Las Donnas Fatales category header located in the drop down menu on the blogs home page.

I included both Misky’s Twiglet #152 ‘pale distance’ and the OLWG #40 single prompt, least common denominator.