“You like it like this don’t you, Ariana?” He breathed against the side of my face.
“Yes…”
He grabbed a fistful of my hair and flung it over one of my shoulders, exposing the side of my neck.
I shivered as he licked the perspiration off my hot skin. Then I let out a strangled cry as he bit me hard enough for a thrilling flash of pain to shoot down my spine straight down into my soaking pussy, where it immediately ignited into an almost unbearable pleasure.
I gasped. “That hurt!”
“Oh yeah, I can feel how much it hurt… Mm, I love how much it hurtyou…” He bit me again and this time kept his teeth pressed painfully into my skin as he thrust his erection harder and deeper into my body, sliding his cock almost all the way out before forcing me to suffer the experience of its full length opening me up again.
I was crammed uncomfortably against the cold metal box of the phone, I could feel his teeth leaving an agonizing imprint in my sensitive skin as he sucked on me like a vampire who hadn’t tasted blood in centuries and the strength with which he rammed his erection into my body made me gasp every time and yet it was all inexplicably, excruciatingly pleasurable.
I was discovering something very important about myself, something profoundly subtle and yet suddenly as obvious to me as South Florida was sunny—I was sexually submissive. It didn’t seem possible that I was only just now realizing this but up north I had never met men who dared to treat me this way—with a dominant confidence I found totally irresistible. All my dates and boyfriends up in Boston had been much more politically correct and, in retrospect, disappointingly boring.
I gasped again, this time when he pulled all the way out of me for good, leaving me feeling at once relieved and bereft.
I was too weak to resist as he turned me around. There was no need for him to tell me to sit down. My knees buckled and left me no choice.
“I’m going to come all over your face,” he warned. “Close your eyes and open your mouth for me… Oh, yes, that’s it… I’m going to jack off all over your beautiful face!”
I accepted the hot baptism of his cum over my features reluctantly but placidly, my eyelashes flickering as his pleasure rained down on my lips and cheeks.
When he was finished pumping himself dry he said matter-of-factly, “Do you have a tissue in your purse?”
“Yes,” I replied. I waited until he handed it to me and then wiped my face clean before opening my eyes.
He pulled me gently up into his arms. “You’re not leaving Miami,” he said firmly.
I sighed because I suspected he was right, but for the wrong reason. Even as I let him hold me in his muscular policeman’s arms it was a sculptor with stunningly talented fingers I was thinking about. I couldn’t resist Eric whenever I saw him and I couldn’t say no to John when we were together but I was beginning to realize that what I was truly enamored with, and growing dangerously fond of, was my newfound submissiveness—how much it turned me on to obey a man’s commands and to let him do whatever he wanted with me.
Chapter Five
Mami sat with me in the kitchen drinking a cup of hot chocolate, her idea of an appetizer, while I indulged in another glass of Chardonnay. Having savored my sweet secret long enough I finally announced, “John is coming over for dinner tomorrow night.”
She sipped her drink before remarking, her voice dripping with disapproval, “And that’s why you met someone else for drinks tonight? You’ve only been in Miami one day and you’re already seeing two men?”
I grinned smugly as I rose to put the empty bowl in the sink and begin preparing my meal. “I’m not really seeing Eric,” I pointed out, getting up and opening the refrigerator as I began contemplating dinner.
“Oh, weren’t you just with him?”
For an instant I lost my appetite for food, remembering the hot wordless way my body had communicated with Eric’s in that phone booth. “Yes, I was,” I admitted, assembling the ingredients I needed on the counter. “But it’s only lust. I don’t really care for him.”
“Lost? Who is lost?”
“Mami, you’re so cute! Lost in lust,” I muttered and sobered up somewhat. Eric, understandably, thought we were involved. He believed I planned on seeing—fucking—him again and so far the track record proved that when we were together I did indeed become lost in lust. Yet I couldn’t afford to be, not when I was falling in love with someone else. I could no longer use the excuse that I had had sex with Eric before my date with John. That had been true yesterday but not this evening and part of me was thoroughly ashamed of—as well as a bit frightened by—my uncharacteristically wanton behavior.
I hadn’t been lying when I told Eric in that dingy little break room that I had never done anything like that before. I could only conclude that the death of my most recent relationship, compounded by my great aunt’s burial, had affected me more deeply than I realized. Things were happening fast, and even though I was consciously behind the wheel I didn’t feel completely in control because my behavior kept slipping wickedly… my body kept crashing into Eric’s head-on even though John was the ideal destination chosen by my heart and soul…
“And why am I so cute?” My mother’s mockingly stern tone roused me from my reverie. “Who is lost?” she asked again.
“I think maybe I am,” I replied soberly.
Fortunately just then the phone rang and she literally leapt out of her chair and ran into her bedroom to answer it. Apparently she was expecting an important call. My suspicion was confirmed when she failed to return but I was too preoccupied with myself and how dangerously exciting my life had become since I arrived in Miami to wonder about hers.
* * * * *
I lay awake in bed until late that night feeling increasingly guilty, restless and nervous. And yet that wasn’t all I was feeling…
I like to keep my pussy smoothly shaved, and as I lay on my back comfortably propped up against two feather pillows my right hand just seemed to naturally find its way between my legs to finger the pleasantly tender folds of my labia. Thoughts were flowing through my mind in mysterious high tide. Ever since my plane flew over the ocean and landed in Miami I had been flooded with feelings and desires that threatened to drown my self-control. In fact, I had gone under twice already with that beautiful Viking…
I closed my eyes as my fingertips brushed my clit and a pleasure as subtle as butterfly wings brushed my nerve ends, suffusing my sex so that I scarcely noticed my thighs spreading open a little more against the soft mattress. I always sleep naked, even in the dead of winter up in Boston. I hate even the slight restriction of a cotton t-shirt becoming tangled around my torso as I toss and turn, buffeted by one vivid dream after another.
I caressed my clitoris with more energy, breathlessly amazed my real life had become almost as exciting as one of my dreams. Stroking myself with increasing fervor, I closed my eyes as the nerve ends between my legs glimpsed a climax glowing on their horizon…
There was danger in this wildly erotic dream I was living in south Florida… I was behaving recklessly by fucking one man while falling in love with another.
An orgasm crashed through me, a storm of pure sensation as I thought about John and Eric, both of them fucking me at the same time…
Afterward I felt relaxed and content for a few moments. I almost drifted off to sleep but I didn’t quite manage to escape into dreamland before thoughts started marching through my brain again as emotions warred with each other inside me.
Mami had been on the phone for a long time and when she’d finally emerged from the bedroom her little smile had told me more than I wanted to know. I was having a hard enough time dealing with my own burgeoning love life. By the time she rejoined me in the kitchen her hot chocolate was ice-cold and my dinner was almost ready. Our eyes met and held for a significant moment. I was relieved when I felt us both silently agree not to talk about her phone call yet. Sometimes my mother and I can communicate without words, so already I kn
ew she had been on the phone with a man and that it was serious between them. I also knew that was all she wanted me to know for the moment, which was fine with me.
But now, lying alone in the dark in my old bedroom, I couldn’t help wondering who the man was. A childishly selfish part of me resented him for usurping some of my mother’s love and attention. I excused my self-indulgence since I was sleeping in the bedroom where I grew up. Like a seashell, it echoed hauntingly in the dark with the ever-changing currents of all the feelings and perceptions that had flowed through me through the years as I developed into the woman I was. And apparently I was transforming into yet another woman, capable of doing things I never would have believed myself capable of only two days ago…
If only I hadn’t met Eric.
Yet wishing away two such intensely fulfilling sexual experiences struck me as a guilty anorexia of the soul—good girls have to keep their transgressions just a little more slender. We’re not allowed to enjoy really sinfully good things that are supposedly bad for us somehow. Of course I didn’t regret meeting Eric or how unbelievably good it had felt both times he fucked me. No matter what my Catholic upbringing said in the back of my head it was not in my nature to regret the delicious effort of sucking him down or the dangerous thrill of being roughly possessed in a public place…twice in two days by two different men.
* * * * *
John slowly and lovingly caressed the female form lying submissively motionless beneath his kneading hands. He had been working on her since midnight the night before. He was exhausted but he was also very pleased with how she was coming. He hadn’t been so inspired by a woman in a long time. Once again he picked up a detailing instrument and gently inserted it between her legs, smoothing the delicate lips of her sex. Her thighs were spread open just wide enough to expose the full lips of her labia. They had taken him hours to lovingly shape. She was his best work so far but he couldn’t let Ariana know about her, not yet. It might offend her, how intimate he was being with her in his imagination. She might resent the liberty he was taking by imagining what her most private parts looked like and by daring to shape them for his own selfish pleasure. Better to keep his secret for now.
Chapter Six
After what felt like an endless day, when John finally walked through the door that night—casually but elegantly dressed in black pants and a finely starched white button-down shirt—I knew it was a sight I wanted to experience for the rest of my life. It was Mami who actually let him in. I saw him step into the living room from the vantage point of the kitchen, from which I had quickly emerged when the doorbell rang but then I’d deliberately paused on the threshold to enjoy the full effect of his presence in my childhood home. From a distance I could better appreciate how tall and slender he was except for his shoulders, which were breathtakingly broad.
I had eyes only for him but a quick glance at Mami told me she was quite favorably impressed by our guest’s aura as well as by his physical appearance, because my intuitive mother never merely judges a book by its cover. I saw all the lines of her body subtly relax as she stepped aside to let him pass and I sensed she had let down her defenses. She was willing to believe this might actually be the right man for me at last.
“Good evening, ladies,” he said in the deep, quiet voice that turned the marrow in my bones into a wonderful drug soothing away all worries and concerns. He smiled down at my mother for a polite instant before looking over at me again, and the light in his eyes made the carpet beneath my high heels feel treacherous as sand beneath the surf-like pounding of my heart.
“Good evening,” Rosa echoed. “Oh my…” She glanced at me and it was only then that I noticed the extravagant bouquet of violet roses he was holding in his left hand. In his right hand was a slender brown bag obviously containing a bottle of wine.
“Hi!” I declared inanely, hurrying over to relieve him of his burdens, but Mami had already taken possession of the flowers.
“These are beautiful,” she exclaimed. “And such an unusual color.”
“It’s my favorite color,” I reminded her, pleased he was showing he remembered our conversation about all the different shades of violet visible in the desert.
“Is it your favorite color, really?” she asked innocently. My mother loves me dearly but she has never been able to remember details like my favorite color. “Well I’ll go put them in water for you,” she offered possessively.
“I know that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet but…” My date’s eyes glinted with mischief as he grinned at me.
“Oh, sorry! John, this is my mother, Rosa,” I introduced them and then added, “Thank you” and relieved him of the wine bottle.
“It’s a great pleasure to meet you, Rosa.”
“Ariana, aren’t you going to ask our guest to sit down and offer him a drink?”
“Yes, Mami.”
“Well then, what are you waiting for?” She also took the bottle from me. “I’ll put this on the table for dinner and be right back with these.” She walked away toward the kitchen still admiring the roses and her wistful smile clearly told me she wished they were for her from another man.
“Come here.” The second she disappeared into the kitchen John’s arms slipped around my waist and pulled me against him. I lifted my face up to his, breathlessly awaiting his kiss, but all he did was gaze down into my eyes with the softest of smiles on his lips.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I told him, and it was as if my arms had always been meant to rest around his neck.
“Then why aren’t you smiling?” he teased, pressing my body even more firmly against his.
“Because…because I’m afraid,” I confessed, trying earnestly to convey a world of thoughts, feelings and desires to him with my eyes.
“Afraid of what, Ariana?” he asked gently, the smile fading from his lips like the sun vanishing behind the cloud of my stormy emotions.
“Of the way I already feel about you,” I admitted bluntly, forcing myself to slip out of his arms and take an objective step away from him.
To my infinite relief he immediately pulled me toward him again. “You should be happy about the way we feel,” he said sternly. Then suddenly his tongue was dancing with mine in a way that made me forget everything else. I would have stood there clinging to him and kissing him until my mother returned if he had not shown more presence of mind and let go of me first.
* * * * *
“This wine is quite nice,” Rosa admitted reluctantly, turning the bottle toward her where it sat in the middle of the dining room table so she could study the label. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s a South African vineyard,” John informed her in his perpetually quiet, even voice.
“Hmm, a Cabernet-Shiraz blend… Very nice,” she concluded, paying the wine, and the person who had bought it, a great compliment indeed by approving a non-Italian vintage.
I personally couldn’t have cared less where the wine came from. Normally grape varieties interest me very much and I have my own affordable favorite wines I buy regularly but that night I cared only about the man sitting at the head of the table. Mami had done a beautiful job setting it while I prepared dinner and both the scene and the company were so perfect I felt as though I had entered an alternate universe where people, objects and events all come together as they do in movies and dreams to create truly fulfilling moments. I savored those moments even as I looked forward to more mysteriously delicious ones in the future.
My first dinner with John was definitely an occasion worthy of the family’s fine china and polished silverware, of the black wrought iron candelabra crowned with the slender columns of six violent candles and of the crystal stemware reflecting the natural, pulsing light.
“Ariana, this is the best filet mignon I’ve ever tasted,” John told me without looking up from his plate as he sliced himself yet another bite of meat.
His appetite, and his compliment, both pleased me immensely. I had been lookin
g for a man who was a true omnivore.
“Ariana is a wonderful cook,” my mother threw in proudly. “The first thing she did yesterday was grocery shop and fill my kitchen with more food than it’s seen in years!”
John’s wonderful smile deepened. “I don’t think my kitchen even remembers it ever was a kitchen.”
“He keeps books in his oven and toilet paper in his refrigerator,” I explained.
Rosa giggled, her cheeks attractively flushed from the wine. “Well you’ll fix that!” she declared without thinking.
The atmosphere at the table didn’t become awkward or embarrassing as a result of her tipsy slip. On the contrary, the moment turned into one of those magic bubbles I knew would forever float happily in my memory as proof that not all dreams evaporate when John fervently replied, “I hope so!” before taking another sip of his wine.
Mami and I glanced at each other, still not quite able to believe this man wasn’t an illusion. For a sticky sentimental instant our eyes and hearts melted together like candy with the sweet certainty that he truly was real and able to give us both what we wanted. I wanted my soul mate, she wanted me to move back to Miami and against all odds our desires were going to come together and prove there was a God.
Then abruptly I felt the parent inside Rosa force her true nature into becoming protectively skeptical for an awkward moment.
“I just realized, John,” she said in the unnaturally tight voice of her assumed persona, “that I don’t know what you do for a living.”
I wanted to know myself but I still felt like killing her for daring to grill him like that.
He calmly cleaned his plate before replying, even more quietly than he normally spoke, “I’m an artist.”
Faith in the Flesh Page 6
