Black Lace Quickies 3 Page 5

  He took me home and stayed, shrugging off his jacket and hanging it up in the closet as if it belonged there. Letting the dog out and then coming to find me where I stood, arms folded, beside the darkened garden windows. Always that’s how it was. I can look back now and see that I was ever the one to pull away first. To run.

  Yet that night, when he rested his head on my shoulder, slipped the straps of the evening dress down and kissed the hollow just below my shoulder blade, I yielded without a thought.

  ‘I’ve looked at you all night. I’ve wanted you,’ he said.

  I nodded, unable to answer, and he kissed the pulse beating in my neck. He cupped the darkrose satin dress over my breasts and stroked the flesh through it. My nipples responded to that steel-ivory caress and rose to meet it, wanting more. I was his instrument and his art, craving his touch. Craving him.

  I turned and pulled his mouth to mine. I kissed him and stopped halfway though, confused. There was no demand in his response, no bid for power. Instead, I felt him relinquish control; all that he was and felt and knew into my keeping. He gave himself to me that night.

  Hard cock. Hard, tensed muscle in his legs. Soft hands. Soft skin on his thighs, his stomach, his ribcage: everywhere that I touched and licked and sucked. Naked and offered up for my taking.

  I made him suck my fingers and ran them – still wet – over the head of his cock. Stroked it. He licked the tangy drops of his own arousal from my skin before I slid my fingers into him, and then I caressed him from the inside while I teased his cock with my tongue and my lips. He cried out with pleasure and arched his hips upwards, fighting release.

  ‘I want your wet pussy,’ he said. ‘I want to fill you.’

  ‘You will, love,’ I said. ‘Be patient. You will.’

  I fucked his ass with my fingers and I sucked his sweet cock until he came, thick and hot on my tongue, and then I licked the sweat from every inch of him until he rose again for me. He had his wish then, filling me and stroking my breasts, my neck, my shoulders while I knelt over him, my hips moving with his rhythm. And I wondered through a haze of orgasm and joy why I had ever, ever thought I didn’t need him this way.

  That first night. Such magic. Every night was magic, every morning and afternoon and instant of time I was in his arms. It was the times in-between. When we worried about who was watching and what they thought. Disapproving glances. Curious, harpy stares from those who styled themselves colleagues and acquaintances or, worse yet, friends.

  I glowed when he touched me, but I cringed when others saw it, when I saw their lips curl in mockery or disdain. I didn’t understand envy; I was too ashamed of my own unruly weakness. We both were.

  Only the music tore away barriers. Listening to him play in the hot, navy-shadowed dusk, I closed my eyes and forgot the outside. I forgot reputations, and the now obsolete romantic attachments that still clung and brought twinges of guilt. I didn’t think about the wasted expectations and the gossip left in their wake.

  While he played, I was inside the music. The raw notes left me tired. Only his playing could pare me down like that, and strip away my pretences. His playing. And his fingertips on my skin.

  Until the last day. It should have rained that day. There should have been skies of steel with an icy wind or perhaps russet, falling leaves whispering of loss. Something poetic. Instead we had humid air, muggy with the aftertaste of smog. Traffic and lines at the airport. Tasteless coffee in green and brown plastic cups with white lids.

  He sat quiet, drinking his coffee and watching the planes inching by beyond the windows. Not sulking, merely accepting when he knew any more opposition was just a waste of time. He reached out, touched my shoulder, his eyes focused on the lace at my collar as if he contemplated an unfamiliar instrument.

  ‘I’ll miss you.’

  Simple. Stated without guile or motive. Just a fact.

  I looked up, trying to seem brave and matter of fact, trying to hold back treacherous emotions. ‘Yes. And so will I. But …’

  His fingers moved to cover my lips. ‘You don’t need to explain it any more, love. I already know.’ A sad smile. ‘I hope you’re right, I hope it gets better with distance.’

  The intercom pinged. We listened to them call my flight for the last time.

  ‘It will.’

  * * *

  But even now, here in this house that still seems strange to me, I find that neither time nor distance has healed the wound. I was wrong. All I thought I knew turns out to be nothing.

  A space of silence while the CD changes. A click before the music picks up again, filling the emptiness. Mendelssohn. I lower my head onto my folded arms on the back of the sofa. I don’t want to see the rain. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to hear those chords, stirring the ache inside, the futile longing for kisses and knowing fingers. I am too strong to cry and too proud to pick up the phone. So I sit here with only the sounds of piano and rain.

  And then I hear the muted snick of the front door, opening and closing. I did not lock the door. This place, a little town in a distant country, doesn’t warrant locked doors. Amazing, I think, that such a place should still exist. I look up, expecting to see a neighbour, or maybe the vet’s girl with the week’s prescription. But instead my heart leaps and somersaults like a schoolboy on the first day of summer. Even though I cannot command a single other muscle to move.

  He stands in the doorway, raindrops caught in his hair and on his clothes. We look at each other, saying nothing. I, because I think he can be nothing more than a figment of my imagination. He should be a world away. It’s where I left him.

  He walks forwards, staring at me with such intensity I don’t know whether I want to run away and hide, or let myself be pulled into the storm promised by that icy green gaze. He sinks to the floor at my side, rests his cheek on my thigh, and closes his eyes. A penitent and a pilgrim come through fire and trial, overcome at the shrine for which he has so long searched.

  His hand rests on my velvet swathed knee, and I shiver as if the cloth did not exist. As if his musician’s fingers, fine boned and strong, touched my bare skin. A touch both electric and sensual, like cold white wine drunk too much and too fast.

  ‘You came all the way here. Why?’

  He looks up at me, apologetic and burning all at once and I regret the sharp edge to my tone, the tinge of resentment that I’ve been without him, without even the consolation of his words or his voice so long. No matter that it was my own fault, my own wish that the break be clean and final.

  ‘I tried, love. I’m sorry, I did. But I can’t forget how it feels.’ He sighs, shifts. ‘I need to talk to you; I need to fuck you. I can’t do this.’

  I look out at the watery world, trying to ignore the impulse to stroke the droplets from his damp hair, to curl my fingers in the darkened strands.

  ‘We broke the rules before. We broke them and didn’t care,’ he says, frowning when I turn to him.

  ‘And part of the reason I left was to stop …’

  ‘But it’s hurting us. You told me it was an addiction, like any other kind. So why should we care about what the right thing is now anyway? Why?’ His voice rises, quavers in frustration and pain. Throwing my own demand to know back at me.

  ‘Good question.’

  I know he’s still looking at me, stung by the indifference in my voice, but I avert my gaze. Find safety in watching water run in a haphazard trickle over some irregularity on the window frame. I’m still fighting the longing, fighting him. And I don’t even know why.

  ‘How can you be this cold?’

  I shake my head. The rain falls in staccato needles, and a harp has joined the notes of the piano still pouring from the stereo speakers. I think I will break apart from longing and guilt.

  I feel him move and I close my eyes. I know what will happen; it doesn’t matter how cold or cruel I try to be. Yes. Yes, love, this is an addiction.

  His hands turn my face to his, and my limbs betray me, taking me
to the edge of the sofa, my arms going around him. His lips are rain cold and sweet; his clothing damp and chilled. But heat rises within him like a song, growing in tempo and sound.

  He opens me. His hands search beneath my skirt, find the silken edges of my panties. He pulls them to my thighs, my knees. He slips them off one ankle and then another and, still kneeling, holds my feet together in his lap. Beneath his jacket and shirt his stomach is warm, vulnerable, and I rub my toes against that yielding, intimate space. He closes his eyes, cups my calves and massages them slowly.

  It hurts to be shut out, even for a moment, and I whisper to him to look at me. I’ve already shut myself out for far too long. He smiles, obeys and bends to kiss my knees, trailing kisses down to the ticklish skin at the arch between knee and calf. Licking tiny, wet caresses up the undersides of my thighs as he pulls me forwards. As he takes my skirt off with practised ease. Tosses the cloth aside and turns to my belly. Water drops from his hair and piccolo kisses falling on the curve under my navel, the curve of my waist, up to the edges of my ribs.

  This time I cannot help burying my hands in his hair. Arching under him and crying out as he makes love to me with these simple, soft kisses. Art without effort. But no, this isn’t lovemaking; this is far beyond the simple, carnal weakness I was so afraid of once. This is worship and sacred song. It’s as close to magic as I’ll ever know.

  His kisses are falling lower now, notes spiralling into a powerful melody. His tongue parts the folds of my sex, dancing over my clit, searching out the entrance to my pussy. Moving within me like a song of flame.

  I lift his head and bring his lips to mine to kiss the fragrant, glistening moisture from his mouth. Tasting myself on him; taking myself back from him because all this while he’s kept me safe while I ran. He runs his fingers up into my hair and down the back of my neck left bare by the short strands. He grasps the collar of my linen shirt and I hear the fabric tear, feel the touch of air as he eases the ruined garment down my arms. He kisses my shoulder as if to apologise for his impatient passion.

  And I don’t know how or why I should deserve this. Deserve him.

  I lie naked on the sofa, watching him undress, and I think that he belongs here; his figure before the old-fashioned window, framed by bookcases and hand-carved chairs, that of a hero in a Regency romance. Body hard with muscle, hair long and tangled, the edges just brushing his chin. Serious and sensitive and melodramatic. All that I’ve ever wanted.

  My fingers search between my legs to answer the need fuelled by the fantasy, by the longing. He is naked now too, but he stands still to watch, his full cock quivering as he takes in the sight of my spread legs, my fingers moving over the folds of my sex like a maestro’s over ivory keys. He strokes himself, watching me, his gaze moving from my body to my face that I can feel is flushed with heat. In his eyes, I am Beauty.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ he says as he comes to my side. He kneels and cups one breast in his hand.

  The tip of his tongue brushes the nipple and the flesh between my legs thrums in answer. Another gentle lick and I’m melting in moans and sighs again. I tap my fingers faster against my swollen clit, fluttering movements driving the crescendo while his tongue plays accompaniment on my nipples, my belly, my parted lips.

  He straddles my body, hand still moving along his cock, lips red from my kisses. Like a priestking in some archaic ritual, waiting to offer his seed and his power to the priestess beneath him. Male and beautiful. He rubs the shaft of his cock along my sex and I’m ready to explode with sensation. Yet it’s the thought of what he does – the way he does it, intense and deliberate – more than the action itself that puts me over the edge.

  And while I’m still coming, still crying out with the satisfaction of orgasm, I feel him enter me. Feel the muscle of his cock sliding into my pussy, awakening even more feeling, taking away all pretence to decency. I forget the man and can think only of the delicious hardness driving into me.

  But then he leans forwards and says my name, voice rough with arousal, and I remember the man. I remember why I have wanted him. All the days and nights of longing, the memories of forbidden trysting. All that I know now. The turmoil of emotion and thought joins the song, intensifying it, and helplessly I’m caught up in it while our bodies move.

  The rain has become a torrent, beating itself wildly at the glass. Free and not free; trapped by bonds that cannot be seen. By duty. Obligation to fall. And so it falls with relentless passion.

  We whisper to each other in short, breathless fragments. Things we should never say: desperate, filthy, loving. We leave bruises and bite marks. Something tangible to last, to prolong what is over too soon in a final burst of motion and inordinate cries. And then I clutch him to my sweat-soaked body, my breasts crushed by his weight, my legs folded tight about his. I press my face into his shoulder, breathing his scent. I’m surrounded by him; filled by him, inside and out. Safe.

  The piano wafts sad and sweet over the subdued patter of rain. The music is always free and untethered by fear. The music will always win out over that which threatens to mute its voice. I promise myself that I won’t run any more.

  ‘How long do you have?’ I ask, pianissimo.

  ‘A few days,’ he mumbles into the hollow of my neck. He lifts his regal, tousled head. ‘Unless you let it be more.’

  His tone is quiet, asking for nothing, but his eyes plead. I look away; I still can’t give an answer. I know now that I’ll do anything for him, but old habits and old fears are hard to let go of.

  ‘Love …’

  I shake my head, pulling his back down to my shoulder where I cannot see that gaze of longing. I’m giving in; it’s only a matter of time. The music is weaving its spell and soon I will have no defences left. But not yet. He sighs and sinks into my arms, but he knows it too. The sounds of the piano and the rain run together, lull us to sleep. When we wake, he will make love to me again, and I will say yes.

  A. D. R. Forte’s short stories have appeared in numerous Wicked Words collections.

  Rush Hour Cal Jago

  I SCANNED THE platform and took a step backwards, turning my head away from the sudden rush of air as the train roared into the station. The tube slowed to a standstill, a set of doors stopping directly in front of me. The carriage was almost empty. I picked up my briefcase and moved to the edge of the platform, pausing as a familiar sensation fluttered in my chest. The doors whooshed open and I strode along beside the train, passing two more sets of doors before I found the right one. Commuters were crammed into the tight space, squashed against the glass, tucked into the curves of the doorways, pressed up against one another. The perfect carriage. The perfect playground.

  As the alarm sounded, signalling the imminent closure of the doors, I placed an impossibly high-heeled shoe on to the train, forcing my way into the heaving crowd. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in almost ten years of commuting, it’s that there’s always room for one more – when that one more is me, obviously.

  My last-minute entry meant that, as the train lurched into action, I was totally unprepared. The sudden movement flung me off-balance and straight into a fellow commuter. Not very dignified, but, as I looked up and saw my buffer, I realised that my being propelled into a stranger was something of a blessing. He was just right.

  He was in his thirties, fair-haired with beautiful cheekbones. I smiled at him as I straightened myself up. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  He smiled back and looked a little embarrassed, the way people do on public transport when someone forces them into communication. ‘No problem.’

  I continued holding his gaze until his eyes flicked to my left and then down towards the floor. Except he wasn’t looking at the floor.

  ‘If I will insist on wearing silly shoes …’ I continued lightly, shuffling a pointed toe in his direction.

  He looked up and I noticed his face redden slightly.

  A shy one. How sweet. How absolutely perfect.

  I smiled again and th
en turned around so that my back was towards him, quickly scanning the area immediately surrounding me. A man who looked far too hot in far too many layers of clothing was fanning himself with a copy of The Times to my left. Beside me, on my right, a studenty-looking girl was staring into space tapping her fingers in time with whatever was playing on her iPod. Directly in front of me, with barely an inch of space between us, a middle-aged man was engrossed in a Sudoku puzzle, a phenomenon that had frankly passed me by. There are much more exciting things to do on train journeys than number-crunch. Believe me, I know. And, just for your information, before I’d crashed into him, my man had been reading a book – a John Grisham novel. Not very original, but strangely reassuring. Safe men read courtroom dramas, don’t they? Psychos don’t, I was sure.

  As we raced into a tunnel, I very slowly and deliberately bent down, placing my briefcase on the floor. I moved from my waist, keeping my legs and knees absolutely straight – terrible for the back, I know, but, sometimes, needs must – and, as I busied myself with pointlessly positioning and repositioning my bag, I slung my weight onto my left hip.

  Bingo. The weight shift had done it. My arse had swung slightly to the left and edged back a little, so, as I forced myself to lean lower still and made a show of hunting for something in my bag, I felt my buttocks brush against Grisham.

  He cleared his throat and I felt him move. Whether he was trying to escape the physical contact or increase it, I couldn’t tell, as I quickly straightened up. I stood in front of him, much closer than was necessary, even in spite of the fullness of the carriage. My behind was still touching him but the contact was barely perceptible. I felt his breath, hot and heavy, on the back of my neck. This looked promising.