Even though her knees are a bit stiff, she manages to get up gracefully.
He picks up his jacket and tie. ‘We’ll have dinner tonight,’ he informs her, heading for the door.
She follows him. ‘What time?’
He steps outside, where it has stopped raining. ‘I’ll pick you up at eight.’ He glances back at her over his shoulder. ‘Don’t do any more laundry today.’
*
Fortunately Carmen has plenty of chores to occupy her body, although not even a hurricane could turn her thoughts away from Jay. She wants to take advantage of her half day off, so she decides to do her grocery shopping. She hopes not to have time over the weekend.
Outside, the intensely blue sky is hung with thick white clouds. Brief torrential downpours are common in Miami as the atmosphere seeks to relieve the mysterious tension caused by the separation of heaven and earth. This particular storm has cleared the air, and made way for a delicious ‘cold’ front. It is after one o’clock in the afternoon, yet it is at least five degrees cooler now than when she drove to work in the morning.
Carmen is delighted. The fresh breeze caressing her bare arms and legs makes her feel even more slender and lovely. The hot, humid air of summer is like having a sweating lover she doesn’t really want pressed against her. She has often thought how perfectly happy she would be up north, yet for some reason she is still down in hell.
She starts up the car remembering the way Will’s silver bracelet glimmered in the darkness.
She might have two very good reasons to stay in Miami now.
She takes a back road to her favorite supermarket, past a cemetery that consumes three whole blocks. The flat ground littered with colorful bouquets of plastic flowers is profoundly ugly. She always has to cheer herself up by remembering that beyond the atmosphere’s blue veil lies an immeasurable darkness burning with stars, because an eternity of fiery passions is much more to her taste than a saccharine heaven. Her body is destined for the earth, but ever since she was a little girl she has been sure that her soul is another matter entirely.
In the supermarket a young man stacking produce looks up as she stops to choose her tomatoes.
She reads surprise, pleasure, and distress (that he didn’t have time to think up a clever greeting) spark in his dark eyes.
‘How’s it going?’ She smiles at him, then concentrates on the very important task of choosing just the right tomatoes.
‘I didn’t expect to see you today,’ he answers in Spanish, almost sounding hurt by her violation of their Saturday morning ritual.
‘Well, here I am,’ she replies cheerfully, in English.
‘You didn’t work today?’
She deposits six firm red beauties in her cart. ‘I got off early.’ She keeps talking in English, the language she thinks in, and in honor of her U.S. citizenship, which means everything to her. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are in no sense abstract words to most Cuban-Americans. ‘So, I guess I won’t be seeing you on Saturday, eh?’
‘No.’ She selects two large baking potatoes.
‘Doing anything exciting?’ he calls after her.
She smiles over her shoulder at him as she moves on to the peppers. ‘I hope so.’
The old man at the seafood counter asks her respectfully, ‘Que deseas hoy, mi amor?’
‘Una libra de calamares, porfavor.’
She fills the cart with her usual favorites, and two new gourmet experiments; a can of lobster pâté and a tiny jar of red lumpfish caviar. Jay’s hair, a wall of fire in the back of her mind, and the expensive tastes reflected in his dark suits, no doubt inspired these selections.
Before checking out she pauses in the magazine section to flip through the latest issue of Cooking Light. None of the recipes she glances at inspire her to pay for it, however. She is putting it back when National Geographic catches her eye, blurring all the skinny half-naked women on the covers of other magazines together into snowy branches hung with colorful strips of cloth…
She recognizes the long brownish bones in the photograph from the news; a woman’s partially decayed skeleton surrounded by the golden teeth of buried treasures. She is lying on her back, her arms raised straight up over her head, and her legs are spread wide open. In most ancient burials the bodies are found in fetal positions evocative of a peaceful return to the earth’s womb. This ancient grave site is shockingly different.
Carmen grabs an issue and tosses it into her cart, where the picture lands on top of her fresh greens like a shovel-full of dirt.
Frowning, she turns it over.
There is an ad on the back cover for a black sports car, and its headlights piercing a mystical fog evoke a dragon’s molten snout.
Carmen is lying on her couch covered by a purring quilt.
Her front door is open to the trees growing up from the courtyard, and through the dark net of the screen the space between every leaf and branch is suffused with an intense violet glow that almost looks dangerous, mysteriously active.
She sits up slowly, gently peeling off her warm, living mantle.
Her apartment is as cold as a tomb.
She forgot to set her air conditioner on energy-saver before leaving for the grocery store, and it was still roaring away when she got home even though the temperature outside had dropped into the sixties.
She turned it off right away, feeling guilty.
Dating an enforcement agent for D.E.R.M. is already making her feel self-conscious about her bad environmental habits. Life wouldn’t be possible without the atmosphere, yet a truly enjoyable life wouldn’t be possible in South Florida without air conditioning. It doesn’t seem fair that the skin around the earth should be at odds with the one over her bones.
Carmen rests her forehead against the screen door, relishing the quiet now that her Freon-eating monster is asleep in its niche in the wall.
The hypnotic percussion of water dripping from leaves rises up from the courtyard, the only sound in the world apart from the constant subliminal hum of distant traffic.
Just above the other half of her building the sky is a deep purple, except near the zenith, where it is still the softest violet imaginable, the end of the visible spectrum. And suddenly the sharp fingernail of the crescent moon tears through the twilight’s luminous veil.
‘Wow,’ she whispers. Her mind tells her that the splendor before her is just a random combination of particles and ions even as her awe feels no need whatsoever to answer to her brain.
The intense relief her emotional system is still digesting that she wasn’t raped is strangely exhausting. The rest of her vital energies are tied up in daydreams of Jay. She closes the front door and walks into her bedroom intending to shower, but her body decides she has time for a nap before getting ready for her date by simply falling back across the bed.
It feels so good to just lie there on her soft feather comforter with her eyes closed…
It doesn’t surprise her that a moment later she sits up on a deserted white beach beneath a breathtaking violet sky. It is high tide, and she senses that the choppy, dark blue water is freezing cold. She can’t be sure, yet she thinks she sees a ship on the horizon, but it is so far away it might only be the crescent moon rising. Then Jay and Will are kneeling on either side of her, naked, and they push her roughly back across the sand. She has no desire to resist them, her fear is of the tide surging inexorably closer, which makes her think of a hissing beast’s salivating jaws hungry for her body. Then her fear vanishes as Mike appears. He spreads her legs, kneels between them, and thrusts his magnificent erection deep inside her…
Meow! Green eyes stare urgently into hers.
‘Sage,’ she gasps, ‘get off me!’ She lifts the purring animal off her stomach. ‘I’m going to kill you! I was having the best dream!’
Someone is knocking on the front door.
Her bedroom is cold and dark, and her digital clock’s red numbers are flaming branches that brand the time into her brain: 8:09 p
.m.
‘My, God, it can’t be! What’s he going to think?’
She runs and opens the door even though all she’s wearing is a burgundy teddy from Victoria’s Secret.
Jay gives her a long, penetrating stare before stepping into the arctic night of her living room. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he whispers.
She quickly closes the door behind him. ‘I turned the air conditioner off this afternoon, Jay, I swear I did.’
‘What’s wrong with you?’ He grips both her arms and holds her eyes suspiciously. ‘Are you on drugs, Carmen?’
‘No!’ She tries to sound indignant, but all she really feels is disappointed that her intense dream was interrupted.
He lets go of her to switch off the air conditioner. ‘You’re going to catch your death sleeping in silk lingerie at this temperature,’ he remarks coldly.
His sarcasm helps wake her up. ‘I told you, I turned it off.’
‘I guess it has a life of its own.’
Part of her dimly realizes he is being rude because he thinks she doesn’t give a damn about going out with him. If she had been looking forward to their date she would have been making herself beautiful for him, not sleeping. ‘I’m sorry, Jay, it’s just that…’ But she can’t bring herself to tell him what happened to her in the Grove – not yet. ‘I don’t understand how I could have slept so long.’
‘You probably went into suspended animation.’
‘Very funny.’The roar of the tide is still in her head, not letting her think straight.
He asks in an undertone, ‘What were you dreaming about, Carmen?’
‘What?’ She suddenly feels guilty.
‘I asked you,’ he comes and stands close enough for her to feel the warmth of his body, ‘what you were dreaming.’
She stares at the dark space of his chest. ‘What does it matter?’ She glances up at his face to try and discern his expression.
Like the sky at sunset, his hair is visible in the dark room above his black shirt and pants. ‘I’d like to know what you were dreaming,’ he insists quietly.
‘I don’t remember,’ she lies desperately.
He suddenly grabs one of her wrists and pulls her across the living room into her bedroom. He quickly closes the door on Sage and the kittens, then pins her roughly back against it with his body. He yanks her arms behind her back and holds both her wrists with one hand while the other one rises to grip her throat. His voice is a dangerous undertone. ‘Was I in your dream, Carmen?’
‘Yes,’ she whispers, confused and yet thrilled by the fact that he seems to be able to read her mind.
He asks in what strikes her as a stage whisper, ‘Do you like this?’
‘Oh, yes…’
‘I thought you might. Now, are you going to tell me what you were dreaming, or do I have to force you to tell me?’
Her eyes close, as if she can’t face how pleasurable she finds the loss of her will. ‘I was on a beach.’
‘Look at me.’
Meeting his luminous gray irises feels like looking through a telescope at a pair of faraway moons; she can scarcely believe they’re real, and orbiting her body. ‘It was high tide,’ she goes on breathlessly. ‘The water looked really deep and cold, and there was a ship on the horizon, but it was so far away it might have been the crescent moon… Then you were there suddenly, kneeling beside me…’
‘Go on.’
‘And this policeman I know,’ she wants to look away, but his stare has her trapped in its intense gravity, ‘he was there too.’
‘Mm, interesting.’
‘I was scared,’ she adds quickly, ‘the tide was hissing like a beast, and I was scared.’
‘There’s more.’
She manages to look away into her dark bedroom. ‘Mike was there too.’
‘Mike Peterson? Your boss?’
‘Yes.’ She desperately wonders why she didn’t just make up a dream. ‘But then Sage jumped on top of me and I woke up.’
‘Were we all fucking you?’
‘No,’ she gasps.
He releases her abruptly and takes a few steps back. ‘Take that off.’
She hesitates, not because she doesn’t want to, but because the authority in his voice excites her so much she is afraid she won’t please him as she longs to. She reaches up with both hands and lifts the teddy’s thin straps off her shoulders. It slips down her arms, exposing her breasts, then across her hips and down her legs, pooling around her ankles.
‘You’re beautiful, Carmen.’ His voice is hard. ‘How often do you make use of that nice tall bed of yours?’
She holds her head high. ‘Hardly ever. I’m very particular.’
‘That’s good, but you’re not finished.’
Her panties are so damp she has to peel them away from her pussy before she can slip them down her legs, and step out of them.
‘Come here,’ he commands.
She walks towards him.
‘Put your arms behind your back.’
Another thrill like an electric shock goes through her, making her feel mysteriously weaker every time she obeys him without question.
He moves behind her, grips both her wrists, and bends her elbows up so they cross at the dead center of her back. ‘Like this,’ he says impatiently, ‘always like this. Understand?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice is barely audible.
‘The proper response is “yes, sir”.’
Fear suddenly blends with her intense excitement in such a way that it feels like the burn of ice on which all her thoughts slip helplessly. ‘Yes, sir,’ she whispers.
‘Arch your back.’
He is standing so close she can’t turn her head to look at him, and she doesn’t want to. She feels deliciously drugged by his warm and powerful aura. She obeys him, thrusting her breasts out.
He captures her right nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and squeezes it.
She cries out in pain.
‘Don’t move, Carmen.’
She makes helpless sounds beneath the excruciating sensation even as she holds perfectly still for him. He crushes her nipple between his fingertips remorselessly, rubbing it and pulling on it until it burns like a solid flame. Then he abruptly reaches down with the same hand, and grips her between the legs.
This time her cry is one of amazement; his hard palm suddenly cradling her cunt feels so good her excitement literally flows into his hand.
‘It hurt when I squeezed your nipple, didn’t it, Carmen?’
‘Yes,’ she agrees fervently.
‘Yes?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But you liked it. You felt it between your legs, didn’t you? You’re nice and wet.’
It feels like a terrible loss when he slips his hand out from between her thighs.
‘Sit on the edge of the bed, baby, then lie back and spread your legs.’
The thought of safe sex crosses her mind like a shooting star, and promptly vanishes. She wants this man in her life. From the moment their eyes met she has wanted him inside her, so she obeys him now without a word.
He comes to stand before her, and unzips his pants.
Apparently, he has no intention of taking off his own clothes, and she can’t understand why that turns her on so much, and why it makes her want him even more.
‘Would you like me to fuck you, Carmen?’
She stares breathlessly up at the dark ceiling as she feels his cool helmet just barely touching her pussy’s soaking warm lips.
All she can do is moan her assent as all her thoughts fuse into a longing so profound there are no words to express it.
‘Would you like me to fuck you, Carmen?’ he asks again, parting the slick lips of her labia with his dry, almost detached helmet.
‘Yes,’ she whispers.
‘Say it, and let me hear you.’
Her heart racing, it is the hungry mouth of her cunt that answers and not her normal modest self. ‘I want you to fuck me!’
He penetrates her
slowly, letting her feel how wet and warm and welcoming her body is. She takes a slow, anxious breath as his erection slides into her, and lets it out in a sigh of contentment at how beautifully he fills her, giving her pelvis a wonderful feeling of fullness without strain. She spreads her legs as far as she can to take his whole penis into her vagina. ‘Oh, yes…’
He leans forward, grips her narrow waist with both his hands, and begins driving into her, sustaining a powerful, pounding rhythm while ramming his entire dick in and out of her.
No man has ever used her like this before, with such undisguised selfishness, and at first she is too stunned to know how she feels. But then she discovers that her back is arching like a bridge over the almost frighteningly deep pleasure her body takes in his unrestrained force. She spreads her arms wide, clutching the comforter to brace herself, as if he is nailing her down on the cross of what begins to feel like an almost mystical ecstasy, because his relentlessly violent strokes shouldn’t feel so good – she shouldn’t want them never to end. It doesn’t make any sense, and yet it’s true, she doesn’t want him to stop, not even when, physically, she starts reaching the point where she can’t take much more…
He whips out of her.
She lifts her head, and sees the ghost of his climax rising over her womb as he pumps himself, coming silently and intensely.
Moaning languidly, she caresses his creamy sperm into her skin like a lotion that will help keep her beautiful forever.
Chapter Three
Unbelievably, it is almost cold outside, which makes the warm arm Jay drapes around her feel even better.
During the short trip up Ponce de Leon in his small black sports car, she recommends several nearby restaurants. He chooses Bankhok-Bankhok, because, he says, they can sit closer together there than anywhere else.
They slip off their shoes and follow the hostess onto a raised platform, where traditional knee-high tables and cushions are arranged over the spiraling designs of a plush red and gold carpet.
They sit cross-legged next to each other beside a window that reflects them like dark water.
‘Good evening.’ A smiling Oriental girl in a form-fitting silver dress kneels beside their table, and hands them both two large red menus.
Thor'sday Night - Paranormal Erotica Page 4
