‘Okay. I love you, Carmen.’
‘I love you too.’ Clutching the towel against her heart, she drops onto the edge of the bed and presses flash. ‘Hello?’
‘Listen carefully.’
Her eyes close from the blow of desire paradoxically delivered by his soft voice.
‘This is what I want you to do.’
She had read about stuff like this and always thought it rather silly of the woman to be so turned on, but Carmen discovers now as she leaves her apartment that silly is the last thing she feels. She never realized what a natural part of her underwear had become – her cozy cotton armor against dirt and germs, a pure, virginal layer of processed plant fibers like a clean bandage over her mysterious feminine wound. Maybe its absence now is what’s making her feel so unusually vibrant and alive as she runs down the stairs of her building, and walks briskly towards the street and her car. She is aware of the breeze in a whole new stimulating way, and of the firm, cool vinyl inside her car, when her short skirt hikes up an indecent amount as she sits down. The extremely high-heeled boots she is wearing were gathering dust in the back of her closet. She bought them on impulse years ago and never wore them until tonight. She had everything she needed to comply with Jay’s instructions – a black garter-belt, black thigh-high stockings, black knee-high leather boots, a short black skirt (preferably also leather) and a black bra beneath a tight, low-cut shirt of her favorite color. She chose violet.
An incoming cold front has chased away most of the clouds and smog, and the night sky above her shines like black glass that has just been cleaned. The stars look brighter, closer to the earth, and seem a reflection of her own excitement as she allows this man to lead her into uncharted spaces of her sensuality.
When he told her to meet him at a restaurant in Coconut Grove she suppressed her anxiety, but it is not so easy to do once she reaches the dark back streets leading to Cocowalk’s luminous strip.
His directions were brief but exact. She has no problem finding her turn, and she spots the restaurant right away on her left while searching for a parking spot. Luckily, another car is just pulling out of one just a few yards away.
She shuts off her engine, switches off the headlights, slips her keys into a palm-sized black purse, checks her make-up in the mirror on her visor, then waits for a group of people to walk by before she self-consciously stretches her leg out of the car. As her boot glimmers beneath the streetlight, she thinks about the way oriental men bound the feet of little girls so their toes grew towards their heels and they could only take dainty, mincing steps for the rest of their lives. At least western men are a bit more subtle: they impale women’s sole’s on stiletto heels, balancing most of their weight on their toes so their hips have to work harder. But this is no time to be entertaining feminist thoughts, not when the eyes of all the men who catch sight of her widen in disbelief. They seem able to sense in her a combination of factors that blow their minds, like an advanced equation in physics they can’t just do in their heads.
The restaurant is as dark inside as she had hoped it would be.
She walks carefully down a short flight of stone steps into the bar, an atmospheric cellar of dark wood and torchlight. She has never been here before, yet the place feels viscerally familiar, the rock walls and firelight evoking castle dungeons and dangerous, forbidden passions…
Her silver Thor’s hammer earrings brush the sides of her neck as she searches the shadows for the cold flame of Jay’s hair. Despite the fact that it is only Tuesday night, the place is filled to capacity, yet at the same time it feels painfully empty because she doesn’t see him anywhere.
The circular bar is like a cavern, hung with crystal glasses and the colorful stalactites of liquor bottles worn perfectly smooth by the flow of alcohol through the centuries. They make her think of unholy pipe organs, expertly played by two men in romantic long-sleeved white shirts and black vests.
She spots two stools being vacated by a couple whose coaster is flashing in the man’s hand like a red-hot ember. She quickly claims one, keeping her legs tightly together.
One of the bartenders hones in on her at once. ‘What can I get for you, miss?’
‘A Bombay Sapphire martini, please.’
‘Straight up?’
‘Yes, with two olives, please.’
‘I’ll have the same.’ Jay takes the stool next to hers, and immediately slips his hand between her clenched thighs.
‘Stop it,’ she whispers.
He removes his hand, to pluck a nut from a small dish the bartender places in front of them. ‘How much, baby?’ he asks casually.
‘How much what?’
He selects a smoked almond from the dish, and gently thrusts it between her full lips. ‘How much for a few hours?’
Her body reacts to the salty smoky flavor with a lightning flash of hunger. ‘It’s all night, or nothing.’ She smiles at the handsome bartender as he returns with their drinks. She picks up her glass and sips the cold gin’s pure intensity, a complexity of flavors perfectly blended. Her stomach is empty, so the alcohol’s warmth branches swiftly through her veins. ‘If you take me for the whole night,’ she holds Jay’s eyes over the frozen horizon of her glass, ‘you get a discount.’
He looks down at his drink, and stirs it with the olive-impaling toothpick. ‘How much of a discount?’
‘Six hundred for the whole night,’ she improvises.
He sucks off the olive, and chews it thoughtfully. ‘It’s tempting,’ he concedes.
She touches her glass to his. ‘All night, then?’
He takes a decisive sip. ‘No. I’ll give you two hundred for two hours. Take it or leave it.’
The gin is sharpening her appetite almost painfully. ‘If you can’t spend the whole night with me,’ she turns to face the bar, ‘you can’t have me at all.’
‘I was wondering when you’d insist. All right, but you’ll just have to take a credit card.’
She laughs.
‘So,’ copying her pose, he rests his elbows on the bar and stares down into his drink again, ‘what do I get for my money?’
She eats her olive. ‘Anything you want.’
He asks quietly, ‘You don’t charge extra for some things?’
The stab of excitement she feels is much stronger than her hunger pangs. ‘No.’
He looks at her. ‘You’re not afraid to let a complete stranger have absolute power over you?’
In the dark bar his eyes are eclipsed moons whose gravity she feels even more strongly because she can’t brace herself by trying to read his thoughts. ‘You’re not a stranger, Jay. I feel as if I’ve known you… I don’t know, for a long time.’
‘Where do you think you know me from, Carmen?’ he asks soberly.
‘I’m not sure…’
‘You were trying to tell me something the other night.’
‘Yes.’ She finishes her drink.
He pulls out his wallet. ‘You asked me if I believed in destiny.’ He tosses three five-dollar bills onto the bar. ‘Did you mean reincarnation?’
‘Maybe. Part of me believes – no, part of me is absolutely sure – that my soul has been around for a long time. Yet another part of me knows it’s stupid to pretend you can be absolutely sure about anything. Dogma takes away the mystery, and that’s all I’m really sure of, that life and consciousness are an incredible mystery.’
‘I’ll follow you,’ he says.
‘Follow me?’
‘There are phones in the back past the bathrooms.’ He glances at his watch. ‘You’ve been on the clock for five minutes now, and I intend to get my money’s worth.’
She laughs, and then whispers anxiously, ‘You’re not serious, are you?’
He pulls her off the stool, takes her by the shoulders, and turns her around. ‘I’m dead serious.’ He gives her a gentle shove.
She understands now why he didn’t want her to wear any panties as she starts walking in the direction he indicated. She tell
s herself he is only teasing because it helps her control the panic rising inside her. There is no way she can do this! She wants to please him, but he is going too far now. The mere thought of letting him fuck her in public makes her stomach clench around an intense anxiety – mingled with something else. She can’t believe it, but how warm her pussy feels is undeniable evidence that she is also turned on despite herself.
She reaches the corridor that opens onto the bathrooms and ends in a shadowy alcove of public phones. She is sorely tempted to push open the door of the ladies’ room and escape, yet she keeps walking. She prays that someone is on the phone, but all the little private booths are empty.
Jay says quietly, ‘The last one on the left.’
She enters it obediently, and braces herself on the phone box as he moves in tightly against her. He caresses the hair away from the nape of her neck, draping it forward over her right shoulder, and his lips brush her skin as he lifts her skirt up around her hips. She moans softly, her tense fear of being discovered warring with her body’s languid response when she hears him unzip his pants. Then his fingernails rake lightly up the back of her thighs as his firm mouth presses down on the sensitive space between her shoulder blades. He bites gently, sending a shiver down her spine that intensifies the delicious shock of his full erection filling her cunt in one swift, hard thrust. He braces himself on her hips as she gasps in rhythm with his urgent penetrations, closing her eyes, willing herself not to cry out as she finds herself exquisitely torn between her desire that he come fast so they won’t be caught and never wanting him to stop. He groans with effort and pleasure, pumping his hips against hers and driving himself towards an orgasm with breathtaking power and speed. She has to bite her lip to stay quiet it feels so good to have his hard dick pulsing inside her while out in the open like this, to be in the throes of a totally intimate experience in public. But then she forgets where she is completely for a few violent seconds as he jams his load into her and all she is aware of is the luscious feeling of his hot spunk pouring into her cunt.
He pulls slowly out of her drenched pussy, and only relief that they weren’t caught consoles her for the loss of his still firm penis. That was only an appetizer, she is primed for a full course now, but it was still incredible, like nothing her emotional palate has ever tasted before. She feels weak in the knees as he smooths her skirt down before zipping up his pants, and when she turns to face him she sees his heart glowing and pulsing in the black space of his shirt like a sun about to nova.
‘I believe,’ he slips the flashing coaster out of his pocket, ‘our table is ready. After you.’
She feels his eyes on her legs all the way to the hostess’ station, and wonders if he can detect the glimmer of his sperm trickling down the insides of her thighs. Considering where she is, the sensation is humiliating, yet it is also so arousing all she is truly aware of is the freshly used space between her legs burning like the torches around them, at once passionately and contentedly.
The hostess smiles at them. ‘Westgate, party of two?’
‘That’s us,’ Jay says.
Feeling wickedly smug, Carmen returns the other young woman’s smile.
They are lead to a small booth where they have to sit across from each other.
Their waitress appears at once, her long blonde hair pulled up in a ponytail. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’ She is pretty enough for Carmen to resent the way Jay smiles up at her.
‘Not yet, thank you.’
The girl leaves.
‘I’ve never been here before, Jay. I love the atmosphere.’
‘I wish I could take you home to my dungeon, but this is the best I can do, for now. A condo on Brickell avenue has its limitations.’
‘I’ve never done anything like that before,’ she confesses.
‘You did very well.’
Glancing over his head at a flickering gas lamp, a wave of déjà vu washes over her. ‘Wow.’
He arches an eyebrow. ‘Wow?’
‘Déjà vu, big time. Firelight, shadows, and your face…’
‘Maybe I tortured you to death in a past life.’ He opens his menu. ‘Maybe I was an officer of the Inquisition and you were an accused witch, or something to that effect.’
‘No, you were a Viking,’ she says with conviction.
He studies the selection. ‘Because I have red hair and I gave you Thor’s hammer earrings?’
‘Of course not,’ her pride bristles, ‘I’m not an idiot. It’s more than that.’ She pauses to look at her own menu. ‘What do you recommend?’
‘It’s all good.’
She suppresses a pang of guilt at desiring the most expensive item on the menu, but it’s what she wants. ‘I’ll have surf and turf, the Filet Mignon and lobster with a loaded baked potato and a Caesar salad.’
‘A woman who knows what she wants.’ He closes his menu, and lays it on top of hers. ‘However, that poses a problem as to what wine to have with dinner. We’ll just have to order two bottles, a white and a red.’ He sits back, relaxing into the cushy seat. ‘How does that sound?’
‘Like heaven. What are you having?’
‘Strictly turf. I can’t stand seafood. I would have made a terrible Viking.’
‘Or maybe you hate seafood now because you ate so much of it once. Or because you drowned.’
He grins. ‘You mean somewhere at the bottom of the ocean fish are darting in and out of my skull’s empty eye sockets, and that’s why the sight, smell and taste of fish makes me ill?’
She can’t seem to think past his smile.
Their cute waitress returns. ‘Can I get you those drinks now?’
Jay opens his menu again, and quickly scans the wine list. He orders two bottles, along with their salads and entrées. Then he relaxes again, and pins her beneath his usual direct stare. ‘Why are you so sure I was a Viking, Carmen?’
She senses the moment has come to tell him everything. ‘I have a recurring dream, Jay.’ She gazes over his head at the live flame. ‘But I should start with the day we met, with the night you didn’t call. At least I thought you weren’t going to call, and I was so disappointed that I drove… here, to the Grove, by myself… and I was almost raped. That’s how I met Will, the police officer I told you about.’ Staring down at the wooden table’s polished and nicked surface, she tells him everything, including the way his message on the answering machine (mysteriously played by her kitten) effectively saved her from being raped a second time in one night. Only then does she dare to look him in the eye again. ‘But I haven’t…’ she stops herself, disturbed by the fact that she was about to lie to him again in the midst of coming clean. ‘I wanted to tell him I couldn’t see him again, but he saved my life.’ Her eyes plead with him to understand. ‘I feel I owe him something. I can’t just tell him to get lost.’ She doesn’t mention that she also likes him as a person.
‘Jesus,’ he whispers, ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘I don’t believe this, Carmen. Why the hell didn’t you tell me? I never would have… Jesus.’ His eyes close as if he can’t face what he sees.
She knows what he means, of course. She suffered the same doubts about her reactions to his behavior, so she doesn’t know how to reassure him of the fact that she didn’t submit to his sexual violence out of some perverse need to relive those terrible moments when she was nearly raped. She is not psychologically trapped in the role of victim. It isn’t her mind, or even her emotions as much as her soul that have responded so eagerly to sexual domination. ‘Jay, I’m not suffering from posttraumatic stress, or anything. So please, whatever you’re thinking, don’t.’
Her grammar, or her logic, or both, resurrect a faint smile on his face as it falls dramatically into his hands. ‘Jesus!’ He breathes, and the third time seems to be the charm because he finally looks at her again.
She reaches across the table and grasps one of his hands in both of hers. ‘I don’t know why,’ she holds onto him fer
vently, ‘but I want to tell you everything, Jay. I mean, everything that I’ve been thinking and feeling.’
‘Don’t forget dreaming.’ His hand shifts in hers, and returns the pressure. ‘Tell me, baby, I’m listening.’
‘This dream I have is like a memory, and it seems to be developing. It used to be just the same scene over and over again, but now I’m remembering more, and it’s all so real, Jay. All these faces and places and experiences just flow into each other when I’m awake and trying to remember them, but while I’m dreaming, I’m there, really there. I mean, I see everything in incredible detail. My imagination is good, but it’s not that good.’
Their hands slip apart as a male server arrives with their Caesar salads.
‘I ordered two bottles of wine,’ Jay reminds him.
‘They’re coming right up, sir.’
‘Go on, Carmen.’ He drapes a napkin across his lap, and holds her eyes as he picks up his fork.
She follows his example. ‘Just a minute, I’m starving.’
He smiles, and they eat in silence for a few minutes.
‘There isn’t much more to say,’ she admits finally, ‘about the dream. There’s just this Viking theme that keeps cropping up in my life lately, at the art gallery, in your gift…’
‘And in that rich burial they just discovered, including a fascinating skeleton of a woman with her wrists tied above her head and her legs spread wide open.’
‘You know about that?’
‘I read the article on the plane flight back from Washington. Which means,’ he wipes his mouth, ‘I wasn’t subconsciously influenced by it when I bought you those earrings.’
‘I don’t believe in coincidence, Jay. Everything is a form of energy, and I don’t believe science has even begun to grasp all its mysterious frequencies and how they interact with each other. I’ve always believed thoughts and feelings are a form of energy.’
‘They may be the most powerful kind,’ he agrees.
The wine arrives.
Carmen impatiently watches their waitress awkwardly handle the bottles and struggle with the corks, like a virgin forced to deal with two cocks at once. She is eager to continue the conversation, which is just getting interesting.
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