Rendezvous With a Stranger (17 page)

      
“Maybe they’ll carve out new ground in their relationship.”

      
“Maybe, not.” I imagine an untreatable wound between them.
 
I can’t see Robby filling Nicholas’s dominant shoes for her.
 
“So tell me,” I return to my original question, “what do you say now that I’ve left him?”

      
My hands move more eagerly along the denim of his jeans.
 
At the crotch I feel his warmth radiating into my hands.
 
They become spurred for more.
 
There’s a throbbing at the apex where his legs meet his torso, and I place a hand over it feeling the gentle pulse.
 
His body twitches excitedly.

      
“I’d say I’m very happy,” he replies staring into the sensuous expression I send his way.
 
“Happy for you and happy for us.”
 
He speaks tenderly with his hand running its way though my hair, and I can feel my eyes filling with tears.
 
Moving a finger against them gently, he captures a bit of the salty wetness on his skin as if to say that tears are unnecessary now.

      
“You know we still hardly know each other,” I say.

      
“Oh?” he shakes his head disagreeing.
 
“You knew everything you needed to know that first time I fucked you in the bar.”

      
“When I was petrified?” I wonder.

      
“Even when you were petrified,” he says.

      
“I was horny and you were very demanding.”

      
“But, you let it happen, didn’t you?”

      
“Perhaps I was a reckless fool?”

      
“Were you, now that you know who I am?”

      
“I know only that you’re a respectable Archeologist, not necessarily a respectable man.”

      
“Of my infamy in sexual matters, I plead guilty,” he replies. “Just plead guilty with me.”

      
“You do have wit,” I say.

      
“And a reasonable degree of charm,” he adds.

      
“Tell me why this subterfuge?
 
Why the anonymous courtship, the stalking, the secrets?
 
Is this the way you woo all your women into bed?”

      
He looks at me with his typically vacant face, his hand still combing through my hair tenderly.
 
“No, Ellen Laurey, just you,” he says simply.

      
I get the feeling I’ll never know and never understand how these last few months happened, what inspiration drove him to attain me this way.

      
“And what name are you going to call me?” I ask.
 
“You have so many for me.”

      
“I’ll call you whatever suits my need.
 
Don’t you think that’s best?”

      
I find that thought pleasant.
 
“What ever suits you, suits me,” I tell him.
 
“I’d kind of miss it if you didn’t call me Ellen Laurey anymore.”

      
He smirks playfully.
 
“She was a good poet, wasn’t she?” he comments.

      
“You knew her too?”
 
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, he still seems to know everything without me telling him.

      
“No, but I knew Ellen Laurey wasn’t your name, so I looked her up in the university library and discovered another piece of you inside her work.”

      
This information leaves me speechless for a while. I think that he’s waiting for me to speak again, but I’m at a loss for words. Yet, as I stare at him and feel his fondling hand, I realize that maybe it’s not important to say anything.
 
We seem to do well in silence, communicating a good deal with eyes and beating hearts and the feel of our hands touching each other freely.

      
“I wonder,” I decide to ask the one burning question, the one Robby and even Isaac could never get beyond.
 
“Why does it threaten men so much when a woman wants more from sex than sex?
 
More from a relationship than cock and cunts?”

      
“I don’t know about other men, Lynnie.
 
But it doesn’t threaten me,” he answers.

      
“And so, you won’t mind my probing?”

      
“I expect you to probe, just as I won’t stop probing you.”
 
He has a smug look on his face—the
“let’s go the basement and bind you to a fence”
dominant look that has me jittery and flushed.
 
Grabbing a handful of the hair he’s been so gently fondling, he holds it tightly until I can feel the pressure of it hurt.
 
When he releases his grip, there’s a flood of sexual response to join the rest he’s set blazing.

      
“And will you still capture me the way you have every other time?” I want to know.
 
“Or will this get boring because we’ve forgotten how you like to shock and hurt me?”

      
“Why would I do what’s the death to a relationship when I love it like this?” he asks me back.
 
“I’m not a fool.”

      
I feel assured and warmed.
 
“And I can ask you anything?”

      
“You can ask me anything,” he confirms.

      
“At any time?”

      
“Not during sex.”

      
“Okay, not during sex, but any other time?”

      
“Yes.
 
Whenever you want to bug or annoy me, or when you’re feeling vulnerable, or when the mood strikes, and your womanly nature won’t let you hold your tongue.
 
Yes. you can ask anything any time …” there’s a gentle tease in his eyes … “though I won’t guarantee how I’ll answer.
 
I might just spank your ass if you’re being impertinent.
 
But you can always ask, and eventually I’ll answer.”

      
I like his reply and decide that it’s enough for one night.
 

      
Turning my attention elsewhere, I let my hand massage the dick inside his pants, and with my tender gestures, it rises more boldly.
 
I’m sure it’s going to pop through his pants if I don’t unzip his jeans and set it free.
 
Taking it briskly, we maneuver his pants to half-mast.
 
It’ll make-do for a quick blowjob.
 
Rising on my knees, I hover over his thick thing and start to wind my tongue along the smooth and sour surface, letting the smell of my stranger drift into my consciousness. It sidesteps my mind and goes straight to a lively cunt beneath my skirt.
 
As I go down on him, he moves out on the seat of the chair enough so his hand can reach for my ass. Inch by inch he raises the material covering my pushed-out flesh.
 
He fondles me while I suck him off and churn needfully against his hand.
 
Perhaps I haven’t had my last orgasm for this long day.
 
As the clock on the wall chimes the midnight hour, he’s about to cum. Forgetting his massage, forgetting everything but using me for his pleasure, he falls back limp in his chair riding the last wave of orgasm while I lick cum from my lips and smile into the blue and drowsy eyes of a satisfied man.

      
Opening my windows for the first time since the fall took all the warmth from the air, I let spring billow in with a half-warm burst.
 
As I stand by the open window, the sun tickles my skin.
 
Gazing out on the campus quadrangle, I look for the stranger.
 
I love to see him walking jauntily across the square, his long hair swaying against his back.
 
That hair so familiar to my touch, I can feel it with my hands even when I just see it with my eyes.
 
He’s not there now, of course.
 
One of his classes has just ended.
 
The campus clock strikes eleven and I know he’s on his way to the office high in the Archeology building away from the bustling thoroughfare below.
 
He’ll probably smoke his pipe before his first conference, or that next staff meeting.
 
I’m planning a quiet evening.
 
It’s Friday and he’s always a little grumpy on Friday afternoons.
 
Sometimes he just takes out his mood swiftly, laying some dastardly implement on my naked ass.
 
I accept it, of course, because I wouldn’t think of not doing that.
 
When he punishes me it destroys everything testy that might have been building for days, and I know that by the time he’s finished having his way, we’re ready for the pasta or Mexican or Chinese I have ready for dinner.
 
He eats well after he’s sexually satisfied.
 
And I love the look on his contented face as he starts to open to my conversation.
 
I learned that he lied to me about asking him anything at anytime.
 
There are definitely times for keeping my mouth shut and times to speak.
 
But that’s okay too. Sometimes keeping my mouth shut pleases me too.
 
We still speak well in the silence between thoughts.

      
These reflections on our relationship stir me.
 
I can’t imagine feeling this way forever, but what’s so bizarre is that time and the changing facade of our affair do nothing to dampen my desire.
 
It abounds freely.

      
And now it’s spring, and I feel even more like unveiling myself to him.
 
He’s told me he’s going to have to take me into the woods and tie me over decaying things and abuse me savagely.
 
I can’t wait.

      
The phone rings in the middle of my amusing thoughts.
 
At first, it’s an annoyance, but then I hear his voice.

      
“I have to disappoint you,” he says.

      
“I hate disappointments,” I reply drearily.

      
“Well then, I’ll tell my department head he’s going to have to excuse me, I can’t disappoint my slutty girlfriend.”

      
“Ah, I see.
 
One of those meetings,” I respond.
 
“I suppose you won’t be home until ten.”

      
“Or eleven, they’re promising me a huge war and I don’t think I want to shut up this time.”

      
“Then you’ll be a bear when you get here,” I sigh, wondering what kind of antics he’ll use for my next moment of suffering.

      
“And won’t that suit you?” he says.
 
He jokes lightly, but I know what it’s likely to mean for me in pain and humiliation.
 
My body responds accordingly; I’ll have something to dream about all evening long.

      
“So, I suppose I’ll go to dinner with Jane.
 
She invited me to that new café by the boardwalk.”

      
“Marginal part of town,” he observes rightly.

      
“I’ll be careful. Jane and I will park side by side, and you know she carries mace inside her combat boots.”

      
“I’m never really worried about you,” he says, and I know he means that, but I’m still not sure why.
 
I’m hardly the tough cookie like my dykish friend Jane.

      
“I’ll see you when you get home, then,” I say, and he signs off with a little reminder of his tenderness, saying,
“Love you, Lynnie”
as he hangs up.

g

      
The food was great.
 
As I walk out the door, side by side with my hefty friend, the older sister type with the butch haircut and the great smile, we walk along the wharf ignoring the panhandlers and the hulking longshoremen that stare at the strange couple we make.
 
Jane’s into writing fiction for women like her, filled with sex and gory stuff that makes me squeamish.
 
These dour gothic alternative romances come straight from her nightmares.
 
I know her to be a sane and sound woman, but not in her fantasies.
 
We’ve talked about it and decided that she’s better off putting them on paper, than letting them brew in her subconscious.
 
“Don’t you think that the world’s safer with Steven King peddling his nightmares in books?” she often tells me, when I wince at all the blood.
 
I heartily agree and hope that the publishing world will publish the hell out of Jane’s gruesome novels.

      
The night is so much warmer than the day. Earlier a brisk wind cooled the air.
 
Now that the latest weather front has passed through, the atmosphere is still and warm for an April night.
 
There’s hardly a chill on my arms as we stroll slowly to her truck and my T-bird parked side by side.
 
She hugs me warmly, and I kiss her on the cheek, remembering the fragrance of a woman fondly.
 
Even this one brings that memory to mind with remarkable clarity even if she tries to hide her femininity underneath her jock clothes.

      
Jane speeds away, squealing her tires as though she’s reminding me of who she is.
 
Then I’m beyond her, thinking of Nicholas, wondering if by chance he got home early from his meeting.
 
As I put the car in gear, I feel a shuffle behind me in the rear seat, and realize that someone is breathing down my neck.

      
“Don’t move,” I hear the gravelly voice, unsure whether to trust my intuition and hope it’s my stranger or scream bloody murder.
 

      
I feel the heavy hand around my neck.
 
My neck’s so small, this man’s fingers easily enclose the circumference in their grasp. “Don’t look in the mirror.
 
And don’t turn around,” he whispers softly.
 
I’m still not sure of his voice.
 
Though I think I smell the stranger’s scent, I wonder if I’m just kidding myself this time.
 
His grasp grows tighter.
 
I want to struggle, but the more I resist his efforts the more I’ll feel the steel of his hand squeeze and send my heartbeat out of control.
 
My eyes are about to tear when he speaks next.

      
“Don’t panic, Ellen Laurey,” he whispers more and slowly my alarm subsides—though not the grip on my throat.
 
He holds me to the back of the seat with terrifying zeal even for my determined stranger.
 
I’m aware only that there’s something in one hand.
 
Then the smell and sensation of metal replace his hot fingers.
 
The collar around my neck surprises me, steel on the outside, lined with something soft as velvet within. The familiar smell of leather escapes me with this unbending piece.
 
It’s something new for Ellen Laurey and I wonder what it looks like around my neck.
 
But then, I’m too scared to defy him by glancing in the mirror.

      
I feel the sound of metal striking metal, a leash attached to hold me steady and the tight grasp of his fingers loosen as I sense him backing off.

      
“Drive,” he orders.

      
The car’s been running the whole time, idling on fear just like my churned up insides.
 
Putting the T-bird in gear, he adds, “Carefully.”

      
The stranger has me drive deeper into the bowery by the shoreline, then into the bowels of this riffraff neighborhood.
 
I suspect thugs around every corner but this night is quiet and the streets are vacant.
 
When he has me turn into a littered alley, I believe our destination is close, but then as we continue the circuitous journey, I wonder if he’s just trying to mix me up.
 
When he finally orders me to stop, I feel a blindfold go over my eyes, and I have still not seen my captor.
 
Even though I’m sure that it’s the stranger I know so well, I haven’t laid my eyes on him to confirm that fact.
 
I remain petrified by thoughts that suggest I’ve been duped by a master with even greater talents for drama than Nicholas Riley.

      
Pulled from the car, I stumble at the stranger’s side, as we make our way through the alley.
 
His hand is at my ass, not my back, guiding me with fingers that shove me forward and probe me privately every time we make a turn.
 
At some moment, we pass through a doorway going into the interior of a building.
 
I imagine a deserted factory similar to the abandoned basement.
 
Moving deeper into what feels like a vast empty space, he jerks my leash, and though the collar is smooth at its edges, it feels as though it will cut right through my skin.
 
I feel so bound and alone in the darkness. Deeper, and the air is stale.
 
Something rancid catches my attention and I wince instinctively.
 
I’m afraid to move forward, suddenly finding the vast walls have closed in on me and I’m walking through some narrow corridor that grazes my arm.
 

      
There are stairs, steep ones that make me hold tight to the stranger’s side.
 
I can hardly grasp this scene.
 
Panic strikes fiercely.
 
I wonder if it’s the stranger that loves me or a man of evil intentions that won’t let me live beyond this night.
 
I wish that just once more he’d call me Ellen Laurey.
 
Then, I think I’d know for sure.

      
After a flight of stairs leading downward, we’re on a trek upward that goes on so long that my thighs ache and I think we’re heading toward heaven.
 
With such an ascent, I wonder if I can be in any danger attaining such holy heights.
 
At the end of the endless stairway, I hear the stranger open a metal door and we step from the dank and musty vacancy of the building the into a cool bath of fresh air.
 
I’m bewildered by the smell of trees and the feel of something soft at my feet.
 
The air is much more brisk and clarified than just plain city air—it’s lovely.
 
For a moment I think I’ve stepped into a garden, or, reminded of the acres of trees that surround the A-frame, I’ve just entered the fragrance of a forest.

      
My panic subsides even more feeling myself in this unknown dream of paradise.
 
And still, I know I’ve only gone through a fraction of my trial.
 
Swiftly, the stranger removes my clothes and I’m naked.
 
There’s a mouth at my pussy, sucking me there.
 
A womanly mouth and womanly hands have my dormant body blossoming with one sexual desire leaping on another.
 
I churn against the woman’s fondling, wishing I could feel her hair with my hands.
 
That becomes impossible, as other hands grab for pieces of my flesh, and I feel a thick leather corset go around my waist.
 
Cinched tightly, I can hardly breath. There’s no sign, or feel or smell of the stranger anymore.
 
All the attention I receive now comes from other strangers with hands I’ve never known.
 
There are three, perhaps, four or five, it’s so hard to tell.
 
I hear them speak to me in hushed whispers, telling me that I’m their slave and theirs to abuse.

      
“I hope you’ll survive this night,” one purrs in my ear, the tone harsh.
 
“I’ll be rough on you and you won’t like it at all.”
 
The woman behind this voice slaps my cunt hard enough to sting and I gasp aloud.
 
“Lay her against the rack and bind her,” she speaks fiercely as she shoves me sightlessly toward another pair of hands that take on my binding.
  

      
I feel myself lowered to a cross bar and post that are barely adequate to rest my back and limbs.
 
These rapists don’t seem to care that I’m teetering on the edge of falling.
 
I’m sure they know I’ll stay put once they have my waist and wrists and ankles bound fast to the wood beneath me.
 
When I feel hands playing with my labia, the last sensation I expected is a bright and painful throbbing burst of agony, as though something’s pierced the flesh.
 
Perhaps it’s just tightly fixed scissor clamps.
 
Whatever the source I’m crying in pain.
 
In time the stinging agony subsides and all I feel is a tugging sensation remaining as my labia are jerked wide apart so someone’s vile finger can play with my slit, stinging the sensitive surface.
 
The pain moves from my cunt to my breasts.
 
Heavy clamps slip over the tips of my nipples and I shriek when they are tightened down.
 
I’m surprised no one silences my cries.
 
These are passionate wails that would seem to reach beyond the immediate vicinity of my torture and rage into the night.