(DARK EROTICA) Veil Of Pleasure: (Taboo Erotica) (DARK EROTICA SERIES)

by Lucy Lixx

  “Good morning,” the dark waterfall of a man says suddenly and Sophie stops dead in her tracks.

  “Good morning to you sir,” she says, not really breathless because she hasn’t even started to work up a sweat.

  “Sir? You are definitely not from around these parts Miss…” he says, looking away. Sophie thinks that she might have embarrassed him by calling him sir, but he was obviously older than her so this seemed more than a little appropriate, regardless of his vocation.

  “London, England,” she says, walking up to him now just because she is really curious as to just how tall he really is.

  “Kingston, Jamaica,” he says, reaching out a hand to her as she suddenly places the accent. She and a couple of girlfriends had gone to Jamaica last summer, a girls retreat, and the one thing she walked away from that trip with was how thick and heavy the Jamaican accent was. It was instantly recognizable, whether you were in Kingston, London, or Cambridge Massachusetts.

  “I’m Sophie,” she says, smiling as her tiny hand is enveloped in his gigantic one.

  “Jamal,” comes the response, his voice deep and rounded, like a river of melted dark chocolate. Actually, Sophie thought as he shook her hand gently, he looked like a towering dark chocolate river, smooth skin and a perfectly matte complexion. She needed to get back to her run, and shake her head of the thoughts that crept into her head suddenly and without invitation. She could have no such thoughts, not of Jamal, or of anybody. She was just here for a year, and the last thing she needed was the complexity of a one-night-stand, especially since she was still a virgin…

  Jamal watched her as she disappeared around the track. He couldn’t take his eyes off her ass, thinking that it was just too perfect to belong to a white girl. Another place, another time, he thought, he might have stood a chance with the almost-too-sexy Sophie. Perhaps if they had met on the island and he was 20 years younger! He returns to his sweeping, and tries to shake the thoughts he knows he should not be having about her. When he doesn’t succeed he disappears into the storeroom near the track before she comes around again, parading her perfection in front of him almost as though she were daring him to reach out and touch it.

  For the next couple of days they see each other every day, at 4AM, exchanging lingering looks that both hopes the other doesn’t notice. Jamal knows what his attraction to Sophie is, even though she is still unsure about her own. A week later Sophie tries to find another place to run.

  Accustomed to this new found anticipation of watching her run each morning, Jamal waits and extra 15 or 20 minutes each day, just to make sure she isn’t coming. Resisting each other is futile though. With the unabated intrigue of 'the idea' of one another, neither can imagine staying away from each other. At least, until the burning curiosity is satisfied one way or another. Try as they might, both of them are once again like moths to a flame, meeting on the track at 4AM again.

  Neither can even explain to themselves what the visceral attraction is!

  Pondering her growing obsession, Sophie thinks it's probably the fact that he is a nonthreatening man who seems to be interested in nothing but casual greetings and the occasional lingering glance, but Sophie knows that there is more to it. At least she hopes that there is, although she will not admit it to herself. She doesn’t even know why, because not only has she never slept with a black man, she in fact has not slept with any man before. You wouldn’t think it by looking at her though, but Sophie is a virgin.

  Perhaps Jamal knows this, because he seems to ask her things that make her feel like he wants nothing but to protect her, for the duration of her stay at least. About two weeks into her daily runs, he asks her something in fact, that both takes her by surprise and sends her into a bit of a tailspin.

  “Would I be forward if I said that you came running at 4 every morning just to see me?” he asks her casually, almost joking, almost serious. She doesn’t know how to respond to this so she just laughs, loudly. Surely Jamal can’t be serious. He must be joking, making his usual early morning conversation although this morning it has a rather flirty slant. She cannot believe that he would go there though, because he has always acted more like a big brother. Now it seemed that he was going somewhere else with his thoughts and now his words.

  “You would be right…” she says, laughing. She hopes he sees that she is joking, just because Sophia really wants him to be joking.

  “I thought so,” Jamal continues, and he smirks. Sophie watches Jamal for a moment and then when it is clear that he is serious, she breaks the stare, and continues on her way. She cannot help the warmth filling her chest though.

  Sophie hadn’t really thought of what her type was until then. She has been so focused on her studies and on her pending career in the renewable energy industry that she had really up until that moment put the idea of being with a man, any man, on the back burner. She knew that she would get to it, eventually, but now was just not the time. And then she met Jamal.

  Jamal had entertained the possibility many times though, always attracted to the pale skin and great legs that all white women seemed to have. And Sophie had a perfect ass too, which really was a bonus because this is that one thing Jamal thought was lacking on real white women in the real world. He had always figured that asses had been photo-shopped into their pics on the magazines and billboards that he had seen.

  “Are you avoiding me,” he asks one day when she had not been on the track for two days.

  “No not at all,” she says, although she knows that she really had. Jamal was proving to be a distraction for her now, and she really couldn’t use any distractions so early in the year. She had also already received more than a little bit of attention from her fellow students, but there was just something about Jamal that had her fixated. She knew that it couldn’t happen though.

  She was nice, to him, to everybody. But he was twice her age, and she knew that there could really not come too much good from a liaison with him. She had planned on losing her virginity this year, but she hadn’t envisioned

  losing it to a Jamaican in his forties. Why not though, she asked herself.

  “You been busy?” Jamal continues.

  “Yes,” she says, not really a lie, but she knows that she could have still come running on the track because she just changed her route and not the time of her morning jogs.

  “Okay,” he says, not really believing her, returning to his sweeping. She really wants to ask him what his intentions were. The undeniable attraction growing between them made her wonder what his true angle was. But, unable to lie to herself, Sophie already knew that they'd reached a fork in the road. Her thirst for this statuesque, black- Zeus of a man made her long to choose the path of quenching her desires. But, Jamal didn't know that she was a virgin, and so she thought she'd probably not be the best person to satisfy his experience. She doesn’t divulge this though, and instead asks him something that she wishes she hadn’t as soon as the question escapes her lips.

  “Are you free tonight?” she asks him, and then immediately bites her lip.

  “I could be,” he says, holding his broom tighter, obviously also very nervous now.

  “Apartment 243, the Edgerton building…” she says, again before she can stop herself.

  “Okay…around seven?” he asks, seeming to want to conclude this conversation that he has really wanted to have with her since the first day he said hello to the pretty Brit.

  “Yes, seven!” she says emphatically, and then she runs right off the tracks and goes to process this conversation she really didn’t expect to have with the maintenance man…

  Chapter Two

  Sophie hadn’t thought about what the other students in her building might think of this nocturnal visit from Jamal, not until she was face to face with him at her door. Her neighbor across the hall, a guy named Jonah who she hasn’t had any real conversation with even though he lives so close to her, also happened to come home at just that time. Seeing the snide l
ook Jonah throws her way, she isn’t sure if Jonah knows who Jamal is though, because he really looks different in his jeans and vest. Maintenance workers really faded into the background in their grey coveralls.

  This was a very good thing, she thought!

  But her visitor was obviously much older than she was, and this was probably the reason for her nosey neighbor’s expression. Jonah had once suggested that he and Sophie ‘hang out,’ but he really had no appeal to her. Sophie owed nobody an explanation for what happened in the privacy of her apartment, so she stepped aside and let Jamal in, half nodding at Jonah, returning his stare with a look of defiance. As he stood in his own doorway with his mouth agape, she closes the door and turns into her tiny apartment, taking a deep breath and preparing herself to attend to her guest. She is suddenly nervous, thinking that perhaps she should have suggested that they meet in a more public place.

  “Hello,” Jamal says, and he comes down and kisses her on her cheek.

  “Hello,” she says, and then she looks across to where she has a bottle of red wine breathing on the table. Sophie wonders if Jamal even drinks wine. She hopes he does, because this is really all she could get without being asked to produce ID. The US, to her, was very strange. You could drive at 16, but had to wait to be 21 to buy alcohol, legally!

  “Here we are…” Jamal says, looking around the space. Sophie walks to the table and pours them both a glass, handing one to Jamal whose eyes are still on every corner of the tiny space. He really seems to be taking it all in, almost as though he has never been inside any of the student accommodation before.

  “Do you want a tour?” she asks him, noticing his curiosity. He nods, and three minutes later they are back in the living area, having seen the bedroom, bathroom, and now the kitchen, dining and living areas which are all essentially one space.

  “Can I sit?” he asks.

  “Yes, of course,” she says, taking her wine to the kitchen where she gets a salad out of the fridge. She really thinks that she might have got this wrong. Firstly, she didn’t confirm with Jamal this morning that they would be having dinner. Secondly, the menu wasn’t discussed at all, and while lighter men might have appreciated a salad, she isn’t sure if the ebony hulk in her apartment now will show this appreciation.

  She sets up on the tiny dining table, and then pours them both a second

  glass of red. She still hasn’t relaxed any more than when he arrived, but she does a good job of pretending that she is. Sophia watches him eat, taking huge chunks of the salad on his fork and stuffing it in his mouth. He chews loudly too, and she finds this cute. She really just nibbles on hers, while taking in this breathtakingly gorgeous beast of a man. She smiles inside, as she quietly observes him, smirking as she notices a piece of lettuce stuck between his teeth.

  When they are finished eating, having had a third glass of wine, Jamal seems to be more relaxed than Sophie. She is looking a little more tense now, knowing that with the meal out of the way, he is probably going to want more than she is ready to give up right then. She knows that she really wants him to be here, but she isn’t sure how to tell him that there would be limits to tonight’s proceedings.

  Jamal gets up from the table and helps her with the plates, and then he looks around for another bottle of wine, needing more courage than he has suddenly. He is also not sure what to do now, and so he really feels like he needs another bottle. He drank wine only one other time in his life, and it was the cheap boxed kind. So now, even though he has not yet acquired the taste for this crimson liquid, he knows that it is probably the only alcohol that Sophie has in her house. He also won’t put her out in any way by asking for a beer.

  After washing up, and watching Sophie open up the bottle, they walk over to the couch. Sophie sits first, and Jamal follows after he pours the wine. He looks at her, she looks at him, and the moment just hangs suspended, for what seems like forever. Then without warning, Jamal puts his mouth on hers and she kisses him back almost immediately. They kiss for the longest time, their lips moving over each other softly. They smolder in the soft heat, with no urgency in getting acquainted with each other’s mouths. Sophie feels the warmth spread in her chest almost as quickly.

  Her glass drops to the floor suddenly and shatters, bringing her out of the moment. She looks at the floor, crimson splashes amid the broken glass that look like diamonds in the dimly lit space. Embarrassed she tries to push Jamal away, so that she can clean the mess she just made, but he resists.

  He pulls her closer to him, and starts to send his tongue into her mouth. She tries to relax, but the butterflies in her stomach seem to be dancing in her mouth, and she suddenly feels like he is filling her mouth too quickly with himself. She tries to kiss him back, but can’t. So Sophie just lets him move his tongue in and around her mouth so gently that she starts to shiver. She is really shaking now, and so she places her hands on his chest and braces herself up against him as he seems to work her onto her back.

  “Give me a minute,” he says suddenly, and he reaches for the side table to place his glass down. Then he returns to her, his mouth on hers immediately, and his tongue snaking into her mouth again. His hands start moving up her legs, and she cannot breathe now. Her dress is too short, and his fingers make their way up her thighs too high so that she puts her hand on his and stops his fingers just before they reach under her dress.

  “Wait,” Sophia says, pulling her mouth from his, and then looking at him directly in his eyes.

  Jamal keeps his hand on her thighs and looks at her. He exhales hard out of his mouth and she knows that he is probably more than a little frustrated. He wants to get up off her to allow her to breathe, but he has a problem between his legs that he is suddenly very embarrassed for her to see. She doesn’t want to see it too, having felt it against her belly but still not sure about just what she is going to be faced with when he eventually does come up.

  He brings his mouth back on hers, and tries to move his hand higher up her dress. Sophie presses harder against his hand so that he knows that she doesn’t want him to touch her too far up her leg. Many questions flash across his face, in his deep dark eyes, but he doesn’t ask her any of them. He does wonder though if she is just a tease, and if she just invited him here to frustrate him. Somehow he knows that this is not the case, but Jamal really wants to have his hands on her, all over her, and the thought that this might not happen frustrates him.

  Sophie adjusts herself underneath him, and moves herself up on the sofa.

  He lets her move, and then he is sitting up next to her. It is too late for him to make the necessary adjustments in his pants that will hide his erection, so he doesn’t even try. He looks over to where his wine is on the side table, and then as he gets up to pick it up, steps in the broken glass, crushing it under his sneakers.

  “Sorry,” he says, and he lifts his foot.

  “It’s okay, it was my fault…” she says, and then she gets up and goes to get a mop and a bucket from the kitchen.

  “No, don’t use that,” he mumbles, and he goes to the kitchen to get some terry towel off the counter. Jamal returns to the broken glass and picks it up carefully off the floor. “Your couch is ruined,” he says, looking to where some of the red has splashed on the base of the grey seat.

  “It’s not my couch…” she says, and the both laugh, lessening the awkwardness of what just happened. Sophie is still feeling a little flushed, and Jamal really wants to explore more of her as he makes quick work of the broken glass.

  After cleaning up all the glass from the floor and wiping the wine that hasn’t already soaked into the floor from it, he picks up his glass and takes a sip. Then he hands this glass to Sophie, filling it up again before she takes a huge sip. She looks flushed now, and he smiles. He wipes the sweat beads that have formed on his brow and he stands in front of her, the bottle in hand. As she takes another sip from the glass he brings the bottle to his mouth and takes a huge gulp.

  “Are y
ou okay?” he asks her now, taking another huge sip from the bottle.

  “I am…I’m sorry…” she says. She really feels the need to apologize for this one thing that never happened. She is obviously not ready for it, but she really wants to have his hands on her again. How though will she let him know that there is a limit to what he thinks is going to happen? She thinks though that it would be more than a little unfair to allow this to go on any further.

  “Don’t be, it’s okay…” he says, although it really doesn’t look like it is okay. Sophie thinks that it is best for Jamal to leave now, but she cannot bring herself to ask him to. She takes a huge sip from the glass in her hand, and finishes the contents before holding it up for a refill.

  Jamal obliges, looking a little confused. He isn’t sure if she is trying to drink herself in the mood, or if she is just using the wine as a crutch. They finish this bottle in relative silence and then Jamal walks over to the window. Then he looks out onto the street below, and tries to think his erection down.