The Phantom (4 page)

“Where’s Sasha?” I heard Beth ask.

“Other stripper went that way.”

Thank God she was here! We could get out of here as soon as I composed myself and finished getting ready.

“What was that about?” Beth asked when she walked in.

“I thought it was you a few minutes ago and answered the door looking like this.” I motioned to my underwear.

Her eyes widened and she pushed her glasses back up her nose. “Yikes. Why didn’t Geoff get it?”

“Playing a game,” I said and got up again to search for a dress.

Beth rolled her eyes and I couldn’t help but laugh. “My thoughts exactly.”

“Almost ready to go?”

“As soon as I figure out what to wear,” I replied and walked back to the closet.

“Want some help?” she asked.

“Please!”

Beth moved to stand next to me and together we went through my hangers. Dress by dress, I passed on everything I owned. Then, Beth came to my rescue. “This one’s pretty,” she said as she held up a green dress with spaghetti straps.

I knew there was a reason she was my best friend. “Perfect!” I said before slipping off my bra and sliding the dress over my head, pulling it into place. A simple adjustment at the waist and I was finally ready to get the hell out of there.

I was barely out of the bedroom before beer guy started in again. “Aww,” he groaned. “The stripper put her clothes on. I thought it was supposed to go the other way!”

“She’s not a stripper, Joey.”

Finally, my boyfriend came to my rescue.

“Besides you don’t want to see her naked. The bitch is on her period or something.”

Or not. God, he could be such an ass when his friends were around!

Everyone but Beth and I laughed. I refused to let them see how they got to me as we hurried out the door.

***

I had been right. Beth looked absolutely amazing that night in her new black and white dress. The lines accentuated her hips without making her look fat. Her breasts were still tucked in to protect her modesty, but that didn’t hide their swell, and in her platform heels, she was almost as tall as I was.

“Why do you let him do that?” she asked and handed me a frozen strawberry margarita.

“Who do what?”

“Geoff! Why do you let him talk about you like that?”

“Oh, he doesn’t mean it,” I said.

“I don’t care! He’s your boyfriend. He’s supposed to respect you, not call you a bitch and tell people you’re on your period.”

I shrugged it off. “He was just trying to make his friends laugh. You know Geoff; he just likes to be the funny one.”

“So have him make fart noises with his armpit. They certainly seem like the type that would find that hilarious.”

I changed the subject by walking away. How could I tell Beth I was used to it and things like that were just part of being with Geoff? I’m sure I would have just sounded like a pushover. It was just a matter of picking battles. What was I supposed to do? Break up with him and be alone, just because we didn’t have the same sense of humor? I had done the alone thing. A little embarrassment was worth not having to deal with that kind of pain. Besides, I’m sure every woman is embarrassed by their boyfriend or husband now and then, just like the other night at the restaurant.

Beth followed after me, but at least she took my cue and started talking about something else. “I knew the exhibit was going to be Indian art, but I didn’t expect this,” she said as she pushed up her glasses.

That was certainly obvious. Beth blushed at love scenes in PG-13 movies. Now, her face matched the roses outside. Every painting and carving looked straight out of the
Kama Sutra
. It was amazing she was even still here. Then again, she knew how much I wanted to come, and she was the most supportive friend in the world. I don’t believe there is a place on Earth she wouldn’t follow if I asked.

I think she only glanced at one or two of the displays. Meanwhile, I couldn’t pick a favorite. It was either the painting of the woman being lowered by rope from the ceiling onto her lover’s penis, or the statue of the orgy where all the participants had formed themselves into the shape of a horse.

Then, I saw something even more incredible than half the exhibit combined. “Beth! Beth! Come here, you have to see this!”

“I’m fine,” she said, sipping her drink.

“No, really!” I grabbed her hand and pulled her to where I stood. “Look!”

Even she stared at the picture. An Indian woman in all her jewels was having sex with a man painted completely black. Every single other man in the art exhibit had the same skin tone as the women, maybe a few shades darker, but nothing close to what we stared at now.

“Do you think it could be him?”

“The Phantom?” Beth asked. “I thought he was just a modern legend.”

“But what if he’s been around for hundreds of years?”

If it was true, my article just got a whole lot more interesting.

***

It was after midnight by the time I got home. Only one of Geoff’s buddies had left. The guy that called me a stripper had drank until he passed out on our couch. The other was so busy fighting Geoff on one of his games that neither of them even noticed when I came through the door. The smell of marijuana smoke hung in the air, and I had to wade through beer cans just to cross the room. Normally I would grumble and grab a trash bag to clean up. Tonight, I had more important things to do.

My laptop had never taken so long to turn on. The Phantom had been around for hundreds of years! I had to research it, find stories and evidence to prove it. Oh, the thought was so overwhelming!

I didn’t pay attention to whenever Geoff’s friends finally left. He may have given me a kiss when he went to bed, but if he did, I didn’t feel it. I was much too engrossed in everything I was discovering.

4,500 years... The Phantom may have been around 4,500 years ago! Even when I saw that painting in the museum, I never would have thought he would go back that far. Of course, he wasn’t called The Phantom back then. Back then, he was called “She-Bach”. Archeologists had uncovered the tomb of an Egyptian princess from the Old Kingdom, and among all the hieroglyphics was a story of how a shadow lover had visited her.

Other ancient civilizations were absolutely terrible about chronicling the lives of individual women, but there was still evidence of him. In Rome, they had painted sex scenes on the walls of their homes. There weren’t any men painted completely black like in India, but there was one that appeared over and over again with a skin tone much darker than the women he was shown pleasuring. They called him, “Umbra”.

There was more. At least six known pillow books from geishas in ancient Japan featured illustrations of a gray mist called “Ku-dai” having sex with women. One even showed a woman with her back arched so high she was practically in a handstand from the pleasure! The woman had written, “May my body always know the heaven the devil brought.”

Oh yeah, that was definitely my guy!

In Macedonia he had been called “Celtka”. In India, he was “Kete”.

The next time I looked at the clock, it was almost seven. I groaned and let my tired eyes close as my head fell into my hands. There was so much more I wanted to know! I was sure I was only scratching the surface! If I could, I swear I would have just started drinking cup after cup after cup of coffee to stay awake and discover more.

But I couldn’t. I was supposed to meet another woman with a story to tell for lunch and it would be too unprofessional to show up looking exhausted. If I went to bed now, there would be just enough time to catch a few hours sleep before I had to be at the restaurant. The only comfort I had at all when I shut off my computer was that I was still going to hear the tale of another encounter with my dream lover.

Chapter Eight

“The Phantom is a master of erotic torture.”

My brain must have still been half asleep. There was no way I heard the woman right. “What do you mean?” I asked.

A waiter passed our table with a steaming plate of enchiladas. Usually, that was one of my most favorite foods in the entire world, and this place had the best. I had looked forward to them ever since we agreed to meet here, but when she said those words, every thought of their deliciousness disappeared.

“Do they allow smoking in here?” she asked as she reached for her purse.

“No, they don’t.” I answered, annoyed at her for dodging my question. “What do you mean, ‘erotic torture’?”

The Hispanic woman sighed. She set her bag back on the stone floor and flipped her straight black hair over her shoulder. “Are you absolutely sure you want to hear this?”

“Do you want the money for your interview?” I shot back.

The woman hesitated, but finally she began to speak.

“I’ve always had these fantasies of being tied up. Sometimes I would dream I had a cowboy lover that would rope me and pull me to him. He would make me lay down in the field we were in and then put his head under my skirt and lick my pussy until I came. Other times, in the bath, I might lay back and imagine I was a mermaid tangled in some lonely fisherman’s net as I fingered myself under the water. The settings and the characters may have been different, but the one thing that was always the same and got me off was the idea that I could take pleasure without being able to return it. Those fantasies turned me on so much that I actually asked boyfriends to help me fulfill them, but it was useless. It never failed that as soon as they had me tied to the bed or handcuffed, it would become all about
their
pleasure. I just turned into a helpless woman for them to put their dick into and they would finish in under a minute. It was the exact opposite of everything I fantasized about and I just gave up on the real thing being better than the combination of my own fingers and daydreams.

“Then, one night, there was this big thunderstorm. I guess the noise of it was why I never heard him come in. I thought I was only dreaming when I heard this deep, sexy laugh. Then a voice said, ‘Hello, Esmeralda.”’

“What happened then?” I asked when the woman paused.

“My eyes slowly opened,” she said when she found her voice again. “Lightning flashed outside and there at my window I saw the silhouette of a man. He started to come closer. I started to ask who he was and what he was doing in my bedroom, but he touched his finger to my lips to shush me before I could even speak. ‘I know what you want,’ he whispered.

“I was lying on my stomach when my sheets began to slip down. I tried to roll over, but when I did I discovered that my hands had been bound to my headboard by a band of silk. All I could do was lie there as a kiss was placed on the inside of my right ankle, then one on my left. It couldn’t have been more than half an inch at a time that kisses and little bites climbed up my legs going back and forth. His mouth got closer and closer to my butt and I remember suddenly being very, very aware that I was wearing a thong.

“When the kisses reached the top of my thighs, I was panting. I felt my pussy swell at the idea of where his tender lips would be next.”

“What happened then?”

Esmeralda’s hands tightened and twisted one of the restaurant’s red cloth napkins as she stared past me. God, she was reliving it all in her mind! “He bit one cheek of my ass, then the other, again, and again, and again...

“I pulled at the silk that bound me. All I wanted was to reach back, grab his head, and push his mouth down between my legs. Instead, I could only gasp at every nip of his teeth. I could only shiver at the gentle scratch of his nails when his hands slipped beneath my nightshirt, up my ribs, and to my breasts. My nipples stiffened in the pinch of his fingers and all I could do was feel my pussy moisten.

“It felt like hours before he finally stopped fondling me and grabbed the waistband of my thong. As he took it off, he actually had to stop and peel the crotch of my underwear away from where it stuck to my private places.

“It was more than anything I had ever felt before. My vibrator on its highest setting pressed right against my clit could never compete with how good he felt and he didn’t give me a break. The Phantom just kept licking and licking my slit until it opened under his tongue, and then he slipped it in.”

I was the one twisting the napkin now. Under the table, my legs were squeezing together in a vain attempt to contain the arousal between them. “What happened next?” I was barely able to get out the question.

“What do you think happened? I came until my entire body shook and I fought even harder to get my hands out of that silk. I had only one thought in my head between the waves of pleasure that pulsed through me. I wanted to touch him, too.

“Then, it stopped. For just a minute, it all stopped. I lay there panting with my little nightshirt wet with sweat. Finally, he had given me a chance to come down, but then I felt the mattress sink beneath my stomach and a strong, naked body crawl over my back. My legs opened completely on instinct. His cock began to slide into my pussy and I had to bite my pillow.

“He fucked me fast and hard. I swear the slapping of our bodies together was louder than the thunder outside. Somehow, he pushed me yet again to the edge. It was as if he was trying to kill me with orgasms and still I couldn’t touch him!”

“May I take your order?”

Of course the waiter had to choose that moment to show up.

I took a hundred dollar bill from my purse and handed it to Esmeralda. “Here, this should cover lunch and what I owe you for your story.”

“You’re not staying?”

“No,” I said, and quickly grabbed my things.

How could I stay after a story like that? Bondage had never been a turn on for me but now, my panties were wet at just the thought of what that must have been like. This woman actually got to live it! Believe me, right then, I needed air much more than I needed food.

Chapter Nine

All the thunder of the storm, and it was a breeze that woke me. Slowly, my eyes opened and there watching me sleep was the shadow of a man.

“Ssh...” A ghostly finger pressed to my lips before I could even gasp. “Don’t move.”