Gothic Heat

by Portia Da Costa

  'Wine would be nice.' Rafe strode over to the settee she'd just cleared and flung himself down on it. Typical man, he appeared happy to let her wait on him, but, just as she reached to door, he called to her.

  'Are you hungry? Shall I order some pizza to go with that wine?' Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his mobile.

  'Er, yes, OK. Great.'

  'Any preferences?' He was already punching in a number.

  'Nothing with chilli. I don't like chilli. I don't like too much heat.'

  He quirked his brows. 'OK, I get that. Not too much heat.'

  'Right, I'll get the wine.' Still clutching her cardigan and magazines, she swept away from him and into the kitchen as he began to speak into his phone.

  Was this a relationship of sorts beginning? Or just a random conjunction of two people who'd had casual sex a couple of times, and who could maybe help each other?

  'Now why do I think that?' she muttered to herself, grabbing a bottle of white from the fridge and a corkscrew and a couple of glasses from the counter. She was the one who needed help, and then some. Why did she get the impression that Rafe needed something from her in return? He seemed totally self-contained, self-sufficient, a classic loner. Unless, of course, he had a wife or a girlfriend – and he simply wasn't letting on?

  Back in the sitting room, Rafe was lounging again, looking completely at home, his call finished. As if he owned the place, he'd stretched his long legs out in front of him as he flipped through a copy of Cosmopolitan.

  'Is this your type?' His eyes glittered as he flourished a nude centrefold at her. The man was lean, young, pretty. Exactly what she'd thought was her type.

  'I don't have a type.' She waved the bottle and the opener at him as a distraction and, dropping the magazine, he efficiently did the honours. 'So what are we drinking to?' She could feel his eyes on her as she sat down beside him, their thighs interestingly close on the small settee. Taking her glass, she clutched it tight as if her life depended on it.

  'I don't know. I don't even know what we're doing here.'

  Quite true. She'd picked him up last night just to quell the driving heat inside her, and the fact that something in his bearing reminded her of André, from her dream. Curiosity and the same heat had compelled her to find him again this afternoon. It was just impulse, coincidence, serendipity that had brought them together and, though their bodies seemed to know each other, they were strangers in every meaningful way.

  'Well, you need help, and I might be able to give it. Cheers!' He clinked his glass to hers, then drank, still eyeballing her over its rim.

  She eyeballed him back. Maybe he was her type now? He was quite beautiful in his own way, although not pretty, and certainly not young. He had a face that spoke of life, and not always an easy one, and that peppering of grey at his temples only reinforced that. He'd taken off his jacket now and the solid muscularity of his arms and chest in his close-fitting black T-shirt reminded her of his strength and his raw sexual confidence.

  That was what she was doing with him. Sex, and the fact he seemed inclined to help her with her 'problem'.

  'Have you changed your mind?' he asked softly, a slow glint in his eyes. Paula shuddered. Could he actually read her mind, maybe? 'Don't you want to find out what's happened to you? And find your friends?'

  The urge to trust battled with her natural caution while Rafe eyed her steadily. Still reading her? He took a long swallow of wine and the way his strong throat undulated was both erotic and strangely vulnerable.

  'Yeah, I know, you're asking "why"? What's in it for me? Why would I just help you, out of the blue?' His glass clumped softly as he set it down and, for a moment, he looked almost coquettish, flashing surprisingly long and luxuriant lashes at her.

  'Out of the goodness of your heart?'

  Leaning against the cushions, Rafe spread his arms across the back of the settee, claiming territory. His warm body was very close. He appeared relaxed but ready for anything.

  'No, not that really. I'm not sure there is much goodness in my heart. I'm probably worse for you than your inner demon is.'

  His eyes were dark, almost black, shining with heat.

  'So, what do you want, Rafe? What's your price?' Suddenly her skin began to prickle. Was it Isidora? Surreptitiously, she touched her hand to her belly but it still felt cool and normal through her skirt. There was no burning, invisible marker, just the quieter renewed gathering of desire.

  'Sex.' Rafe's matter-of-fact voice belied the foxy, tantalising curve of his mouth. Which made Paula's loins shiver. 'I like sex.' He reached out and laid his hand over hers where it rested, close to her mound. 'And I really like having it with you.'

  Paula laughed out loud. Suddenly she felt happier and sillier than she had for a month, entertained and turned on by this outrageous, blatantly horny stud of a man. There was nothing like the direct approach, and it was infinitely sexier than having him go around the houses, pretending to respect her and be in touch with his sensitive side, just to get her into bed.

  As Rafe spread his fingers, lacing them with hers and pressing their twined hands more firmly against her pubis, she smiled back at him, feeling shameless herself and just as horny.

  'So you'll help me if I pay you in meaningless sex?'

  He pressed more tightly, his long, flexible middle finger probing against the cleft of her sex, pushing the thin cloth of her skirt against her, dividing her labia.

  'Not meaningless.' Surging forwards, he leant over her and pressed her back against the cushions. 'Never meaningless. I might be a sex addict, but it's got to mean something. I'm getting too old for quick shags with my massage clients. Or casual pickups against a wall behind the Raven.' His tongue swept over his lips, wetting them in a way that made Paula's sex flutter. 'I want ... I need something more.'

  There was intent in his voice, a palpable hunger. They'd been together twice now in the space of less than 24 hours, and Paula wanted him again. But there was something deeper going on too, she sensed, something unconnected with her problems.

  'OK then. Meaningful sex.' She gasped as he pressed harder, rocking his fingertip against her clit. Her skirt was wet now, absorbing her swimming arousal, the cotton growing dark in a small but telling circle. Clutching at the old settee and bunching up the shabby throw covering it, she jerked her hips up to meet the caress of their twined hands. Her eyes were closed but she still seemed to see Rafe. His spicy herbal fragrance filled her head, making her dizzy as his mouth came down on hers and stifled her groans.

  They kissed for a long time, his finger still plaguing her. His skill and intuition were astonishing, but then he was a master with his hands, wasn't he? Massaging a clit required all the same deftness and nuances of pressure that a full body massage did, and it was obvious Rafe was long practised in his craft.

  Again and again, he brought her almost to the peak. And again and again, he kept her hovering there, her body pouring with sweat and aching with furious desire. Deep in her belly, a heavy knot was winding, winding, winding, inexorably.

  'Please ... please ...' she begged, appalled by the weird, almost mewing note in her own voice.

  Rafe's answer was another kiss, a deep probing onslaught. His tongue stabbed at hers in a sweet, dark thrust, quick and ruthless. And as he kissed, he lifted his hand and freed hers.

  'No!' she cried into his mouth, the word garbled by his probing tongue.

  An instant later, she felt cool air on her thighs and belly as he pulled up her skirt and tucked it in a bunch around her waist. Hooking a hand beneath her knee, he edged her forwards in her seat and nudged her legs further apart.

  His fingers and his palm felt cool against the burning warmth of her skin as he drew them slowly and almost at leisure down the outsides and up the insides of her thighs. For a moment, she almost sobbed with relief, thinking he was going straight to her sex, but then he swerved and draped his hand across her belly, as if feeling for the hidden mark of her nemesis.

 
'Is she here?' he murmured in her ear, his breath scented with the wine they'd shared. 'Is this a threesome?'

  Wound up by lust, Paula listened for the voice, the gloating, mocking, salacious voice, expecting any moment to hear its deep but silvery tones say, Oh yes ...oh yes ... But there was just silence save for the thudding of her heart, and her breathing and Rafe's, heavy and synchronised.

  'No, it's just me! Only me! It'll have to be enough,' she gasped. Reaching down, she pushed at his hand, directing it imperiously towards her cleft. Maybe she wasn't as domineering as the spirit that plagued her, but she was a woman and she'd take what she wanted.

  Rafe laughed, and spread his fingers, the middle one sliding silkily between her labia. When he found her clit, she shouted, 'Yes!' and jammed her hand down on his, reversing their previous configuration.

  He rubbed. He stroked. He teased. He flicked.

  She writhed. She whimpered. She wriggled. She came.

  Grabbing at him, she twisted, her hips rising up from the couch as her sex fluttered and pulsed. Her arousal, honeyed and viscous, oozed and slithered, coating the inner slopes of her buttocks and dripping down onto her rumpled skirt beneath her. The ripe fragrance of her pleasure rose up and blended with her sweat-scent and Rafe's apothecary cologne.

  As she began to descend, her body glowing, the doorbell rang.

  'Mmm, pizza,' announced Rafe, straightening up. His hand was still buried between Paula's legs. 'Are you hungry?' He kissed the corner of her mouth, his fingertip still delicately rocking. To her amazement, desire stirred yet again.

  But just as it began to gather, Rafe withdrew his fingers and sprang to his feet. 'I'm starving!' Cheerful, he headed for the door, leaving Paula barely able to believe that he was oblivious to the dramatic bulge in his denims. He was mightily erect, his shaft clearly outlined beneath the strategically faded fabric.

  Paula began to tweak at her skirt in order to cover herself but, with his hand on the doorknob, Rafe paused and looked straight at her sex.

  'No! Leave it. I'll be back there in a minute, so why cover up something so beautiful?'

  'But –'

  He quelled her with a glance, his eyes near black.

  Then he opened the door, but thankfully only a narrow sliver, just enough to see out into the hall.

  The conversation with the delivery boy seemed to take an eternity, with much bantering and laughing and slight, but dangerous swinging and creaking of the door. She watched Rafe reach into his back pocket for his wallet and count off a bill. Her essence was on his fingers as he paid the boy. Could he still smell her? Could the boy smell her? Were they speaking to each other in some kind of secret, arcane male semaphore? Sharing the fruity details of her arousal, her writhing and moaning, her shamefully easy climaxes?

  But, at last, the transaction was over. Rafe closed the door and turned, the traditional square box balanced on the tips of his fingers.

  'Smells fantastic,' he said, sniffing not at the box but at the fingers of his free hand.

  'I'll get some plates and cutlery.' Paula made to get up, but Rafe shook his head, and somehow that froze her in place, her skirt still not covering her.

  'No need, we have the box. And our fingers.'

  Her belly shuddered. How deliriously decadent! The taste of herself and the fragrant pizza in one mouthful. Between her legs, her sex rippled, ready again.

  Rafe brought the box to her, then set it on the rug at her feet. Sinking down gracefully, he sat beside it, close to her knees and her rudely spread thighs. With the box flung open, he tore at the pizza, pulling off a slice and offering it to her.

  Luckily the base and toppings weren't exceptionally hot, and the moment she took her slice, she realised she was famished. With her life turned upside down by dreams and anxiety and the battle to feel normal, she'd been missing a lot of meals. Suddenly she couldn't remember when she'd last eaten anything substantial. Biting into the savoury crust, she almost moaned again, both from its delicious Mediterranean flavours and the perversity of eating it with her crotch bare and exposed to her lover.

  Rafe ate with equal relish, biting lustily at his slices almost like a lion devouring a carcass. He also seemed to be licking his fingers with far greater frequency than was necessary and, as he chewed his pizza, he stared almost constantly at her sex, his brown eyes warm with mischief and a gourmet appreciation that was nothing to do with Italy's national dish.

  'I can't eat any more,' said Paula eventually, after three slices. She was full in her belly, but elsewhere she was empty, hungry. Rafe's provocative gaze had banked up her inner fires again.

  'But I can,' he growled, kicking aside the box and wiping his mouth and fingers on the paper napkins that had come with it, and swivelling around until he was kneeling between her legs. 'And I'm still hungry.'

  His hands were gentle on her skin, skating lightly over her thighs, parting them wider, then diving between to slide underneath her, cupping her bottom. He began to lift, to pull gently, angling her towards his face.

  Paula's hands shot out, cradling the strong shape of his head as his mouth oh so slowly approached her sex. His short hair was unexpectedly silky, the scent of a sweet herbal shampoo clinging to it and blending with the sharp smell of woman rising like a wave from her body. He breathed in deeply as if he was inhaling it too.

  'Delicious. Far better than pizza,' he breathed, blowing lightly on her moist membranes and making her struggle again. His fingertips dug into her bottom, controlling her.

  'Much better,' he growled, diving to sup her honey.

  Later, exhausted, they fell into bed.

  Paula was drained by pleasure, by the stress of the last days, and by the broken nights and troubled days fighting something she didn't understand and couldn't eradicate. Most of all, though, she was weary with relief. She wasn't alone any more, isolated by her struggle. She finally had an ally who seemed to believe her.

  After coaxing her to orgasm with his tongue, Rafe had hauled her onto the rug, stripped off her clothes and his own and taken her there, fucking her fiercely and with a strange desperation. She'd castigated him as he'd ploughed her, laughing and telling him off for taking his 'payment' before he'd actually delivered any goods. Rafe had just laughed back at her, and thrust deeply, again and again.

  He'd extracted payment again in the shower, more gently, loving her with lush precision beneath the tumbling water, and now they were in bed, not fucking but lying quietly together, both silent and absorbed in their separate thoughts.

  A great drawn-in breath made her turn to him.

  'Something wrong?' She wondered if he was afraid he'd made a mistake.

  'No, just dying for a cigarette. Post-coital and all that.' He turned to her with a wry smile on his lips that suddenly made him look younger.

  'Well, have one then.'

  'I never smoke in other people's houses.' He pulled himself up against the headboard, adjusting the pillows behind him as he looked down on her. 'It's a filthy habit. I'm packing it in. It pollutes the body.'

  And yeah, it would be a shame to pollute a body like yours, she thought, admiring him. He wasn't a youngster, but he was well set up, well muscled, a prime specimen. There was a fine gleam on his lightly tanned skin, and even a crisp energy to the smattering of wiry dark hair on his chest. She wondered what exercise he did, because it was obvious he did something. Perhaps he was a runner? Or maybe he lifted weights? Or boxed? Up close, it looked as if at one time he might have broken his nose.

  'And it'll kill you too,' she remarked idly, glad he'd chosen not to smoke, remembering the agonies of temptation when she'd given up.

  Rafe's harsh bark of laughter made her jump. What had she said to bring such a sudden expression of bitterness? Had he lost someone to lung cancer, was that it?

  'If it gets a chance,' he muttered, half under his breath as he gazed into nothingness, clearly not seeing anything of the room and its haphazard furnishings.

  'What is it? What's wrong?' She
sat up and put her hand tentatively on his arm. How stupid was it to be scared of touching him after what they'd just shared? Yet she was. In the blink of an eye he'd become distant and angry. Was it at her, or at some persistent inner thorn of pain and anguish?

  'It's nothing.' His voice was terse, the muscles in his face taut as a mask.

  Then he smiled as he turned to her and gently touched her cheek. The gesture was sexless, but the contact of his warm fingers faintly stirred her. She could still feel the echo of them roving across her body. 'Nothing compared to your problems, love.' He gave a little shrug. 'Problems I haven't done anything to help you with yet. Despite being very handsomely paid.' Leaning across, he kissed her mouth, soft and slow.

  Passion coiled yet again but for once Paula suppressed it. Now was the time to do something, make some progress in her quest, hopeless as it seemed. She couldn't let herself get sidetracked by sex again, no matter how sensational it was with Rafe. After savouring a few moments of the kiss, she pushed on his chest.

  His eyes were very bright, yet narrowed. 'To business then,' he said quietly, then slid his arm behind her, to tip her forwards, while he rearranged the pillows again. Setting her back down again, he slid her body so that she was lying, comfortably propped up. Then, to her surprise, he took both her hands in one of his, lifted her arms, then drew the sheet up over her, and tucked it under her armpits. It was a strangely tender action, almost paternal, and the way he shrugged seemed to suggest that he didn't quite understand it himself. Offering no explanation, he just patted her hand and scooted himself into position beside her.

  'What can I do for you?' he asked, folding his legs beneath him in a semi-lotus position. Reaching for her hand again, he cradled it lightly in both of his. 'How can I help you?' He cocked his head on one side. 'Do you want me to try to contact this "Isidora" of yours and see what she wants? Or do you just want to remember what happened to you first?'

  Paula slid her free hand to her belly, a habit which was becoming obsessive. She couldn't feel the mark, the heat, so could the evil bitch even be contacted? It was a relief, and at the same time frustrating. And as for memories of what had happened? Now it came to it, she was afraid. There might be a nasty shock in store.