Hope (6 page)

“Because of me.”

“Yes.  You’re the only man I’ve ever met who wasn’t ruled by his lust, my curse didn’t seem to affect you.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Now I guess we sleep, then tomorrow you go back to Riverfield.  Bring me my suitcase and car and I’ll drive away.  Tom and Kyle are probably going to chase me, maybe others.  They may or may not eventually find me.”

“No.”

“What do you mean no?”

“What part didn’t you understand?  No.  How do we beat the curse?”

“We don’t, Clinton, it’s unbeatable.”

“Bullshit, I love you, I’m not giving up.”

“Please, Clinton!  You can still have your life in Riverfield.  Find somebody who deserves you and just love them.  That would make me happy.”

“I didn’t have a life in Riverfield before I met you, Mary.  I was waiting to die.  You’re the one I want to love, so how do we beat it?”

“This is going to sound… stupid.”

“Somehow I think not.”

“Well… I need to get pregnant.”

“That’s what you were trying to do?”

“No.  There’s a couple of catches.  I need to be impregnated by a man who loves me… and I’m infertile.  Sex in general seems to lower the chances of other men getting… enthralled.”

“This is all very… uh… difficult to deal with.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Hmmm… yeah, a lot to take in... I’m going to have a shower.”

“A shower?”

“I do all my best thinking in the shower.”

“Oh… ok.”

Clinton released me and we each helped the other to their feet.  He brushed a fiery lock of hair from my face and tucked it behind my ear, stroking my cheek before offering a half-smile and disappearing into the bathroom.  Shortly afterwards I heard the water spraying out of the showerhead and moved back to the bed to sit and do some thinking of my own.

The way I saw it I had two possible courses of action and the thought of choosing either one made my stomach clench up with fear and grief.  First, I could walk out the door while Clinton was in the shower and not look back.  The thought of finding love only to lose it straight away was unbearable though.  The other option was to stay with him.  The problem was even if he did love me that did nothing regarding my infertility.  Other men would fall under the influence of the curse and they would kill to get to me.  Tom and Kyle from this evening alone were proof enough of that.  I decided, again, that I would have to leave.

I stood, heard the shower turn off and second-guessed myself, taking several steps towards the door and pausing between each one.  I was still two or three steps from being able to reach the handle when the bathroom door opened and steam billowed out around a refreshed looking Clinton.

“That is a fantastic shower, you should try it.”

“I dunno…”

“Go on, look, you’ve got mud all over your feet, your arm’s been scratched by some of that broken glass from the rear windscreen.  It’ll make a world of difference.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

I entered the humid bathroom and closed the door behind me.  It was a simple room without a bunch of complimentary shampoos, just a tiny bar of half used soap sitting next to its crumpled wrapper on a little tray hanging on the hot water knob.  However, like the room in general, everything was clean and when I turned on the hot and cold I was rewarded with an impressively strong stream of water that looked like it would scour away even the thickest of dried on mud.

With a shrug of my shoulders my ruined shirt fell to the ground and my pants and underwear followed soon afterwards.  I held my hand in the jet of water and adjusted the temperature until I was satisfied and stepped in.  Clinton was right, it was fantastic, and the heat from the water seemed to soak right to my bones, driving out a fearful chill that had settled in me.  I leaned my head back towards the showerhead and the water ran through my hair, straightening out my light waves and plastering it to my back.

For some strange reason standing in that wonderful warmth I felt a brief surge of optimism, maybe we could make it.  The thought was barely out of my head when I heard the front door to our room open and close and the sound cut off my optimism so sharply it might as well have been a gunshot.  I brought my head forward, first to upright and further until I was looking sadly down at my feet, the mud slowly dissolving into the water and leaving brown streaks in the direction of the plug hole as it drained.

So, Clinton had gone through with the same decision I had hesitated too much to act upon.  Maybe he had been expecting me to be gone when he exited the shower himself.  I struggled against the feeling of abandonment and tried to keep my head together.  This latest development opened a whole new can of worms for me to deal with.  Was he just going back to Riverfield to get on with his life?  Was he reporting me as a crazy woman to the local authorities?  I had no way of knowing but the answer to these questions had serious and immediate implications for me.

I took a deep breath and sat down in the corner of the shower, in a position similar to that which Clinton had assumed in the corner of the room when we first arrived.  The hot water beat down on me and I couldn’t bring myself to care about which of the two paths to take, I had no energy left for it.  The hope I had foolishly loosed upon myself had done its worst.  Speaking of the worst, if Clinton brought the police to the hotel and they took me back to Riverfield, the worst was that town-sized gangbang I mentioned earlier.  I’d been through it before, I would survive but I promised I’d never hope again.

I’m not sure how long I sat there but apparently the hot water supply to our room was not infinite and the sudden drop in temperature from the high-pressure shower system startled me from my depressing reverie and I frantically reached for the knobs to turn the freezing liquid off.  Shivering, I reached out for the towel and dried myself as best I could before stepping out on to the bathmat and drying my feet.

I looked back to the towel rail and spotted a white bathrobe, which I pulled on around myself.  It was surprisingly soft and comfortable but as I opened the bathroom door I was unable to appreciate it, hit by a sudden yearning to see Clinton one more time.  I was formulating a sure-to-fail plan to covertly visit Riverfield when I stopped in my tracks.  He was there, in the room.

I stood with my mouth open, not knowing what to say.  Clinton had scattered flower petals around the floor and bed and scented candles were lit on each bedside table, filling the room with a soft lavender smell.

“I… I thought you left.”

“I did.  To try to do something special for you.  Do you know what this is?”

Clinton held up a small bottle of something I was too far away to read the label of so I shook my head.

“Massage oil.  Have you had any causes of stress recently?”

I couldn’t help but smile.  “Yes, some.”

“Then why not relax and let one of our experienced masseuses knead away all your tension?”

My smile widened both with the offer and the ebbing feelings of abandonment.  He came back.  For me.  I nodded, too lost in my rapture to articulate what I was feeling and Clinton walked over and stood in front of me.  I looked into his handsome face as he reached down and slowly untied the belt for the bathrobe.  I felt the soft material loosen around me and let Clinton push the heavy garment off my body so I stood naked before him.

Clinton’s eyes slowly roamed down and then back up to meet my gaze before he took my hand, kissed it, and gently pulled me towards the bed.

“Please.” He gestured to the flower-petal-strewn surface.

I climbed on and crawled forward until I could flop down and have my feet on the bed before closing my eyes.  Inside my head I was squealing like a schoolgirl.  He was here!  He was really here!  Outwardly I believed the only betrayal of my mounting excitement was my firmly entrenched smile.  I felt the bed shift under me as Clinton climbed on, one knee on either side as he shuffled forward and put a small amount of his weight on my upper legs.

I heard the top to the bottle of massage oil being unscrewed and then heard the clink of the same bottle being placed on one of the bedside tables.  Clinton rubbed his hands together and then placed them on my lower back to either side of my spine.  He slowly pushed upwards and the heels of his hands slid firmly along my muscles eliciting a couple of cracks and pops from somewhere amongst my vertebrae.  I couldn’t help but groan in relief, it felt amazing.

Clinton’s hands reached the top of my back and then his fingers lightly trailed back downwards, closer to my sides than to my spine.  He paused for a moment, I wondered why before I heard the oil bottle clink down on the bedside table again, and then repeated the motion.  My back didn’t produce any sounds this time but the pressure on my muscles felt equally good.  I hoped he didn’t use any more massage oil, in my opinion he had now achieved the perfect balance of being able to slide easily while still having some friction generating heat on my skin.

I honestly would have been happy if he had just done that single motion until the end of time but when his hands travelled the same paths using his thumbs in circular motions instead of the heels I was in seventh heaven.  It felt like centuries of pain and tension were melting away.  Hell, maybe it
was
centuries of pain and tension.  I knew I’d had a massage before but was it before the industrial revolution?  I couldn’t remember at that moment, all that mattered was that Clinton and I were together.  The countless multitudes of men I had been with seemed to melt away with each knot in my back until not only were Clinton and I together but it felt like we were the only ones who even existed in the whole world.

Clinton’s hands seemed to merge with my body, I was soon unable to even tell which parts of his hands or fingers he was using to chase away the last ghosts of my stress.  I was floating on a cloud of bliss and relaxation and I wasn’t even sure when the voice started speaking.  What was it saying?  I cleared away the fog and concentrated.

“Mary?  Wake up…” It whispered.

“Wasn’t asleep.”

“Ok.  Wake up anyway.”

I opened my eyes, had I been asleep?  I would deny it to my death but secretly I wasn’t sure.  I looked back over my shoulder and puffed out some air to blow my hair off my face only to see Clinton still half-sitting on me with a cheeky smirk on his face.

“You always dribble that much when you’re awake?”

I looked back at the sheet and saw a sizable wet patch.

“Yes.”

Clinton raised his weight off me and then back down as I turned from my front to my back and did a big stretch.  Whenever that last massage had been, it was nowhere near as good as the one Clinton had just given me.  Leaning forwards he softly pressed his lips against mine and I tilted my head to the side, almost as lost in the tenderness of his kiss as I had been in the midst of his massage.  The kiss ended and I opened my eyes, Clinton’s face was a fraction of an inch away and he rested his forehead against mine and we held each other’s gaze for a while.

“I don’t think it’s the fires of hell, Mary.”

“Huh?”

“In your eyes.  It’s too beautiful.  I love you, we’re going to beat this, you and I.”

“I love you, Clinton.”

With that he slowly moved down my body, planting kisses along my neck and upper chest before pausing at my breasts to suck at each of my nipples in turn while cupping both full fleshy mounds in each of his hands.  I ran my fingers through his hair, gently pulled his head against me and gasped each time his mouth sparked an electric jolt of pleasure from my sensitive pink tips.  Clinton’s head rose slightly and I was able to see his tongue snake out and circle around my right nipple, tracing a path on my areola.

Clinton slowly moved downwards again and I, almost reluctantly, released my gentle hold on him to allow his progress but I pulled at his shirt until it came off over his head.  He continued to kiss my body as he went, the underside of my left breast and my navel received his tender treatment before he lightly licked around and briefly dipped his tongue into my belly button.  It was wonderfully, torturously, ticklish and I squirmed in pleasure.  Next was my lower navel, a line of kisses began near my right hip bone and went across to the left side.

He was tantalisingly close to my sex now and the anticipation was almost as arousing as his kisses on my body.  Clinton had moved low enough on the bed so that, though he was still straddling my legs, his knees were lower than mine so I was able to pull my legs up and outwards until he was between them.

I expected to feel his tongue and lips on my dampening folds but Clinton extended my erotic torture by sitting back and lifting my right leg up in his hands until it was pointing straight up.    He gently held my leg in this position with his left hand while the fingers of his right hand lightly stroked my inner thigh.  His hand seemed to get closer to my womanhood with each stroke but never quite made it, I felt my hips beginning to buck and sway slightly with yearning for his touch but Clinton still had other plans.

The trail of kisses began again at my ankle and made their way up my leg towards my knee.  When he reached, and passed, my knee his left hand slid up my calf and came to rest just above the joint on my thigh.  My lower leg flopped down, gently squeezing his left hand as his right ceased its stroking of my inner thigh and reached around to squeeze my ass, making room for his kisses on my inner thigh.  My leg quivered in his grip and I felt a tiny trickle of my juices seep from my eager sex, his affectionate fondling and kissing was driving me absolutely wild.

At last, at long last, I sensed Clinton’s hot breath on my labia and felt my body wriggle down towards him, acting on a will of its own, but he kept me waiting for just a moment longer before his tongue made contact with my outer lips.  With slow and deliberate movements his slick muscle licked up one side and down the other before shifting to the middle and probing my moist honey pot.  I couldn’t help but gasp again and clamp my thighs against his ears to hold him in place.

Over and over his tongue explored me as deep as it could go, extracting my slippery natural lubricant and spreading it all over.  His hands were grasping my ass cheeks firmly, pulling my sex towards him as if it was the most incredible thing he had ever tasted.  Clinton shifted his attention to my clit, his tongue circling my most sensitive spot before flicking back and forth across it, sending vibrations of glorious ecstasy from between my legs to somewhere deep in my belly, growing into a concentrated ball of pleasure that held the promise of explosive release in the near future.