LOVE'S GHOST (a romance)

by Ellis, T. S.

  Russell walked out of the kitchen. He’d obviously just arrived from work — he was still wearing one of his immaculate suits, the cuff-linked shirt sleeves sticking out from the sleeves of his jacket.

  Russell walked up to me. I grabbed his tie and pulled him into me, planting my lips on his. At first, he was startled. So was I. It had been a while since I had taken the lead. It’s not that I don’t think women should, it’s just that I fear getting rejected, even from a man I’ve been with for seven years. Crazy, really, but I don’t take rejection well, so if there’s the slightest chance of it, no matter how slight, I take the detour.

  Russell wasn’t looking his best. His face looked drawn. He’d been working long hours and the strain was beginning to show. But he still looked gorgeous, with his blond hair and blue eyes. And he still had an amazing body.

  I unbuttoned his shirt and slid my hand across his pecs. They were firm and the skin smooth.

  “Somebody’s feeling hot this evening,” he said.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You can tell me to stop at any time.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  I ran my hands through his hair, from the nape of his neck to the top of his head. Then I carried on, sliding my fingers down his face. He smiled. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this spontaneous. My heartbeat raced as he leaned forward and kissed my neck. Maybe I should have been like this before. He seemed to like it.

  He undid a couple of buttons on my blouse and kissed the top of my breasts, venturing down to the point where the material of my bra started. He slid his tongue under the lacy fringe, flicking my nipple.

  I playfully pushed him away, but then grabbed him. I didn’t want him to think that I didn’t want this to carry on.

  “Let’s go to the bedroom,” I said. Then I worried that the bedroom wasn’t adventurous enough. Perhaps I should have continued my journey with his body in the hallway, let him take me there and then against the wall. But I wanted to go to the bedroom.

  He took my hand and led me to our bedroom. We fell on the bed. I continued taking off his shirt. The cufflinks snapped off and fell to the floor. My heart beat faster as I undid the belt. I wanted this to be like no other time we’d had sex. I pulled the belt away from his trousers and tossed it to the floor. But I didn’t take off his trousers. I wanted to keep some of his clothes on. It felt a little more spontaneous that way.

  I straddled him and leaned forward, planting my hands on his well-developed chest. I stared at his eyes and wondered what he was thinking. How was he taking this? His partner of all these years was using him as a sex toy. There was a smile on his lips. There was no doubt that he was enjoying it.

  I rocked gently, my buttocks massaging his crotch, feeling him getting bigger, straining beneath his trousers that were still zipped up. He leant forwards to touch me. But I shook my head and swayed backwards. Then I grabbed his wrists and pinned him to the bed.

  “I’m in charge,” I said. I didn’t know where the words came from. I hadn’t decided I was going to behave like this while driving home. It was very much a spur of the moment thing.

  I hadn’t done it before, taken charge like this. But there was a feeling of desperation that night, that I had to have him like this. I just needed to feel the power — the power that Russell had always had in our relationship. Tonight, I wanted the control. It didn’t come naturally. As turned on as I was, I still had to tell myself to continue to dominate my man.

  “You’re amazing,” he said. “I’ve never seen you like this.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I love it.”

  I was so full of passion that it was almost like being angry with him. My blood was pumping at such a rate with the excitement that I couldn’t stop. I didn’t even want him to touch me. I just wanted to take him.

  I got off him and took off his trousers. He wasn’t lying when he said he loved it. The evidence was plain to see. My breathing was heavier than it had ever been. I wanted this man. I wanted him inside me like I had never wanted it before. It was complete abandon. I wanted to remain on top, to control the rhythm, to control his pleasure, to be the one in charge.

  When I did free him from the constraints of his trunks, that’s just what I did. I dominated him. Faster or slower, I decided which it was. I moved up and down on him, increasing my pace, then slowing and watching the frustration spread across his features. This variation confused his body. He stiffened, then relaxed a little. Eventually, I didn’t slow down, and he felt a release. He groaned, and in that sound I felt he enjoyed more pleasure than he’d ever felt in his life. It might have been my imagination but I detected a note of pain, pain in the pleasure, pain in the teasing his body had received.

  I rolled off him and lay on my side, looking at him. He was drained. It had been brief but intense.

  “Now it’s your turn,” he said.

  “No. Tonight was about you. Let’s keep it that way.”

  I hadn’t orgasmed. But I didn’t want to, this evening. Not at all. The spell had been broken, the stars had stopped shooting. The excitement had depended on that control, and anything he did now would have just felt like an anti-climax. I smiled at the joke in my head. How could a climax feel like an anti-climax? It was a conflict I couldn’t resolve. But I didn’t want to. Bizarrely, I just didn’t want to.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” I said. I looked at him. He was a gorgeous-looking man, in his prime. His blue eyes and blond hair looked like they came from the same corner of the palette, looked like a perfect match. His cheekbones were even more sculpted than my own. He lay there and I watched him, took in his handsome features.

  It was a perfect evening. I’d shown my man that I could be different from the woman he thought he knew. And this would only be the start. I wanted many more evenings like this. I wanted my imagination to run riot. I wanted to make the most of him, to savour every night. Not to let weeks go by without us having sex.

  He turned on his side, too. “Are you okay?”

  I smiled gently. “Why do you ask that?”

  “Just because of this.” He gestured to indicate that he was referring to the sex. “You were like a different woman.”

  “Well, maybe I wanted to be a different woman.”

  “I’m not complaining.”

  “Good.”

  He stretched out his arm into a shape that looked like a cradle. I inched over to him and let that arm wrap me up.

  But the psychic’s words still ran around in my head — be tougher in love.

  3. Strangers on a train

  THE NIGHT BEFORE was great, but I still had to start the next day with the rest of the commuters at the railway station.

  I like railway stations and I like trains. But during the rush-hour I hate railway stations and I hate trains. And who came up with the name “rush-hour” anyway? It doesn’t last for an hour. Believe me, in a bid to avoid the cram-fest of rush-hour I’ve tried travelling to work at 6.30 a.m. and I’ve tried going in at 9.00 a.m. Rush-hour lasts at least two and a half hours.

  Walking down the stairs of Surbiton station is only the beginning of it. It has quite a long platform, stretching at least a hundred yards, maybe more. And naturally, during rush-hour (rush two-hour), people are lined up the entire length of it. Now your seasoned commuter is not stupid. He’s worked out where each train stops, the rough location of each and every door. And he will not stand more than a couple of yards away from that spot.

  You can spot the inexperienced commuter. He’s the one standing in-between the door spots. He thinks he’s clever, that he’s closer to the edge and, therefore, better placed to get a seat. He knows the others are probably closer to the doors, but he’s confident that he can sidle his way past them and jump on before they can elbow him out of the way.

  He’s wrong.

  No prisoners are taken during the rush-hour. Everybody knows there aren’t enough seats on the train for all the people queuing. So
normal niceties are left behind, as is anybody old and frail. Pregnant women and children are ignored. Rush-hour behaviour disproves all theories of evolution. We return to being animals.

  Myself, I’ve given up trying to get a seat. I usually linger behind the competition, the people jostling be one of the ten lucky winners of a seat. And it is only ten people who get a seat because the train is half full when it arrives.

  But for once, I felt good about myself this morning. I’d really enjoyed the previous evening. It was so nice to meet up with Emily. We’ve had some fun times together and Psychic Night had proved to be no exception. I don’t know what I’d do without her. She’s been so supportive, especially recently when I’ve needed it the most.

  The train pulled into the station and it was the fast one from Southampton. This is the one I invariably board. There is one thing that annoys me about this particular train. It’s the only rush-hour train that has a first class carriage. And there is hardly ever anybody in it. So while I’m squashed against ten other bodies all standing in the vestibule between carriages, a few yards away some corporate banker has his feet stretched out beneath two empty plush seats. How annoying is that?

  This morning turned out to be no different. I held back while the scrum ran its course, then leapt into the carriage. But I stumbled and had to use a particularly portly man in an ill-fitting suit as a buffer. It was like hitting a bouncy castle, and I bounced off him, nearly back onto the platform.

  I apologised profusely, but he didn't need the apology. The smile on his face said he enjoyed it. In fact, his lips curled, giving him a lascivious look that said he thought I did it on purpose. I had to get away from him. But we were so tightly packed in that it was hard to move.

  To the right was the standard class carriage. I craned my neck as much as I could to glimpse the situation. Not only were all the seats occupied, but the aisles were full of people, too.

  I hadn’t had a panic attack for a few days, but I could feel one coming on now. My body temperature was increasing and my breath shortening.

  To the left was the first class carriage. There were about seven people sitting down in the entire carriage. But I didn’t have a first class ticket, just my standard class season ticket.

  Then I had a thought.

  I rarely see a conductor during rush-hour. What would be the point? He wouldn’t be able to walk from one end of the train to the other checking tickets. There were too many people crowding the corridors. So why not take a chance?

  Besides, if I didn’t move now I would soon slump to the floor, breathless, and have to close my eyes, trying to force my lungs up and down until we reached Waterloo.

  “Excuse me,” I said. Not to anybody in particular, just to the mass of bodies clustered in front of me. There was a shuffling of feet, but the bodies hardly moved — there was nowhere to move. I lifted my bent arms and forged a pathway for myself. There were some awkward looks, a bit of mumbling, but I ignored them. My bouncy castle friend looked positively distraught at my leaving.

  It was wonderful walking through the doors to first class. It’s not like first class on a plane. The chairs can’t be converted into beds. I think you receive a complimentary coffee and then there’s the extra leg room. Oh, and I think you get free Wi-Fi. But that’s about it. What you really pay for in first class is to be treated like a human being and not a sardine.

  I didn’t want to be too close to the vestibule, in case a bunch of train vigilantes ratted on me. So I wandered down the aisle trying to look like I was born to travel first class. My clothes were appropriate. As a booker in a model agency, I have to look stylish. But not too stylish. I’d heard one model complain that her booker, accompanying her to a photo-shoot, was trying to upstage her.

  I follow my mother’s advice. She tells me to have a French attitude to clothes rather than a British one. She says the French buy fewer clothes and make sure they’re of a high quality. The British, she says, tend to fill their basket with lots of clothes, sacrificing quality for quantity. My mother’s half English half French, so she doesn’t have any axe to grind.

  My mother gives good advice when it comes to clothes, or make-up. She’s not so good with relationship advice.

  I walked three-quarters of the way down the carriage before I sat down. I should have chosen a seat away from any of the other passengers, so as not to draw attention to myself. But the end of the carriage was getting closer, so I slumped into the nearest seat. Almost directly opposite me, on the other side of the aisle, was a man. I tried not to look at him.

  But curiosity got the better of me and I pretended to look out of the window on his side of the train. Yes, it’s going to be another fine day today, I thought. The blue skies would at least make the winter temperatures bearable. And… oh crap, how dare that man be so incredibly gorgeous.

  He was sitting at a table, leaning back in the seat, his feet stretched out as if he was in his own lounge at home.

  He had what can only be described as a serious face. It might have been the book he was reading. It was Ways Of Seeing by John Berger. I’d never heard of it, but this guy was reading it very intensely, as if it were the only object in the whole world.

  He had the darkest hair I’ve ever seen, swept sidewards like a small wave on the ocean, frozen in time. His skin had a Mediterranean sheen, a glossy tan that seemed so natural it must have come from his skin pigment. And he was dressed entirely in black. Black trousers, black sweater. But they were no ordinary clothes. They hung on him as naturally as his skin. They were definitely made by somebody who knew how to cut cloth. I’d plump for Armani. They had his effortless style. The austerity of his outfit was relieved somewhat by the black espadrilles on his feet, which, thankfully, he wore without socks.

  But it was his eyes that I couldn’t take my eyes off. Though they were partially hooded because he was reading the book, I caught enough of their pull. People talk about “intense eyes”. I couldn’t describe his eyes as intense. They were more relaxed than that, as if they knew that their glossy depth was enough to garner attention. They ran on half-power because anything more than that was pointless.

  I expected him to look up at any moment. I knew I should look away but I didn’t want to.

  Then I heard a voice behind me. “Tickets, please.”

  Shit, it was the conductor. Didn’t he know that it was too crowded to check tickets during the rush-hour?

  What should I do? I couldn’t get up and walk in the opposite direction. This was the last carriage on the train. And if I walked towards the conductor, he’d ask me to show him my ticket before he let me by. I had to brazen it out.

  “Tickets, please.” He was standing next to me, looking down, under the peak of his cap. I showed him my ticket, keeping the thumb over the corner that indicated it was for standard class. But he wasn’t having any of it. He snatched the ticket from me.

  “This is for standard class,” he said.

  “Yes.” I didn’t add anything else. He waited for an explanation, but I didn’t provide him with one. Instead, I just smiled gently. But to no effect.

  “Where did you get on?”

  “Surbiton.”

  He pulled a handheld console from his bag and started tapping in the details.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’m issuing you with a first class ticket.”

  “But I already have a ticket.”

  He scowled at me. “For standard class.”

  I didn’t mean to give him the puppy eyes, but I was distraught at the injustice of it all. “There’s no room in standard class. It’s like a cattle truck.”

  He wasn’t listening to me. He just carried on tapping in the details “If you want to take it up with the train company, you’ll have to get in touch with them.”

  “But it’s not fair. You need to put on more carriages. It’s outrageous really.”

  Another voice joined the conversation. It was laid-back, yet authoritative. “I’ll buy the
ticket.”

  It was the man. He was looking straight at me. I think he was wearing a smile, but I’m not sure. If the corners of his mouth were higher than the rest it was by a minuscule amount.

  I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t speak for a moment. Then I blurted out. “No, it’s fine. I’ll pay.”

  “No,” he said firmly.

  I think my jaw dropped, slammed open by the certainty in his voice.

  “If you pay,” he said, “you’ll have given up on your principles. I don’t want that. I’ll pay.”

  The conductor smirked and wandered over to the man, who handed him a twenty-pound note. The console whirred and a ticket was spat out of its mouth. The conductor turned back to continue on his parade and handed me the ticket as he went by.

  The stranger returned to his book. I watched his face for a while, waiting for a self-congratulatory smile, a self-satisfied grin, something. But there was nothing. His expression was the same vista of seriousness as it had been before. He didn’t look away from his book, even though I stared at him for ages.

  I was going to take out my magazine, but decided against it. If I displayed the cover of my rag, it would look inferior next to his intellectual tome. Normally I wouldn’t care, but I didn’t want him to have the upper hand. So I sat there, a little bored and more than a little annoyed.

  After about five minutes, he put the book down and pinched his eyes. Then he looked at me. Apparently, now was the time for him to engage with me.

  “You’re annoyed,” he said.

  I didn’t speak, just a couple of nods — quick nods, to emphasise my irritation.

  “Do you want to know how to get your own back?” He delivered the line without any inflection in his voice that would indicate humour.

  I wasn’t going to smile. No way was I going to smile. I didn’t say anything.

  “The way to get back at me, the way to seriously annoy me, would be to have dinner with me. I’d hate that.”