Prologue

 

 

The imprint of his hand upon my flesh, I feel the heat-so extraordinary my thigh is hot with desire. I press my ass back against his groin feeling his erection growing in size enough to impale my body. The bedsheets stick to my sticky thighs. Maybe it's the glue of romance and familiarity that keeps us this close, in this sweaty sexy, peculiar morning.

"I have my job," I'll be telling him in a scant half-hour. Now, the clock is methodically clicking away the hour, methodically minute by minute. I watch as the red digital numbers proceed, and with each one, I'm slowly pulled from Jordan-perhaps when five o'clock appears I'll have vanished altogether.

While I wait, my ass arouses him until his distinctive hardness pushes into the cleft between my cheeks, and its head prods its way for entry. I nuzzle where his warmth mingles into mine. Then, suddenly, his spear seems to erupt inside me, as though it's saying, "Here, I'm here claiming territory. Relent, sweet bitch." I have no other choice. And blatantly submissive at this moment, I'm the slut he seeks on the sidewalk, the everywoman/whore, a natural blonde-a sophisticated and enlightened sexual creature.

Jordan holds me tightly around my waist. His fingers pinch my left nipple until it hurts. "Yesssssssssssss!" I'm exclaiming. I wriggle toward him with the urgency I feel, knowing that it will be months between this lovemaking and our next. With the feeling centering in my labia, clit, and the tenderness about my hole, I'm lost in that forgotten nowhere of pre-orgasmic seeking. I can feel myself about to burst.

I'm thinking dangerous thoughts of being bound-his fixed arm around my waist encourages the feeling. Jordan moves his hand from one nipple to my demanding mound of passion. Drenched with my juices, his fingers smear the liquid through the silky sand-colored pubic hair and the valley between. Then he brings two fingers to my mouth, which I suck like I'd suck cock-while the redolence of my body spawns another wave of hunger. The pounding force continues. I know he'll come soon, and so will I.

"Yessssssssssss, Jordan, fuck me darling, now," my murmurs rise and fall like my swelling belly and my desire. Enjoying the pulse of his erection in my spasming channel, I milk the firm flesh, then draw the cum from him as he shoots and deposits his remains in me, where I collect them and they linger in the cavity, filtering into my system like October fog.

Jordan is muscle, as though he defined it. He struts away from me, his baldhead shining, hips swaggering. Even his muscles at rest tease me-I'm exhilarated, now wishing he were still in bed. That broad back, the small waist, the round firm ass-two cheeks that fit so tightly into blue jeans that my cunt liquefies every time I spot them moving away from me.

"I don't want you to go, Shelly," he says, turning around.

"I know, but it's my job."

"A job I hate."

He won't order me to change my plans. But he's afraid for me, darting into politically explosive territory as though I'm on a summer holiday. And there's something ominously foreboding about this particular trip. But regardless of his fears or mine, I'm going. I haven't told him how a secret destiny drives me to this, how I wake at night believing that I've dreamed past lives, incarnations that haunt my soul with pictures of darkness. Before I can sleep peacefully again, I'll need to roust the bogeymen from my timid soul with the shock of reality. The truth is simple-what drives me is nothing more than phantoms. But I've lectured my fears for weeks to make them go away, and they won't retreat.

The last dream was just a week ago-I was on the Orient Express traveling toward Bucharest in 1894. I knew the date from the wrinkled ticket in my gloved hand. I wore gold at my ears and neck, a diamond weighing heavily on my right hand, and furs-which mantled me in a blanket of soft separation. Haughtiness and convention kept my companions at bay, and mystery wrapped me like the long skirts that wrapped my quivering thighs like gauze. I had the distinct impression that I'd been penis fucked an hour before I boarded the train, by a faceless form of muscles, good hands and a scouringly large erection. It was the kind of screwing to give a woman peace before a dangerous journey. Mindless and uncontaminated by emotion.

As my alarm clock drilled me from sleep, the picture slipped away so fast, only the memory of my gloved hands, the train and furs remains-and the physical feeling of being ravished.

Did these dreams and visions start because I decided on this trip? Or did they appear first and create the journey so I'd see them through to the truth?

Jordan has never approved of my life-any modern woman would have shooed him away as though he were some antiquated barbarian-which he is. But after each excursion, I return to him as if he were home and I belong to him. His arms rest waiting for me.

Jordan pumps iron in sleeveless T-shirts, then dresses like a Wall Street banker to sift through research documents at the museum and indoctrinate his graduate students in the archeo-logy of the Western Hemisphere. And when he sees my taxi coming up the street, he holds the door wide open as though he never stopped while I was away.

I invite him to join me, but am reminded that it wouldn't be practical-he has to make a living.

I never want to leave but I'm always glad to go, always happy to say goodbye, at least until I'm beyond the sight of his eyes.

"It's just two months," I'm quick to remind him this morning.

I see him flinch as he moves back to me, limp cock swaying. Oh! I could take it in my mouth now. But instead, Jordan bends over me, peers soulfully with black eyes dancing like a lion's, "Don't fuck it up, Shel."

"No, no, no, no," I shake my head, smiling sappily. "What's there to fuck up?" Oh, he does look ferocious when he stares this way. "Two months, sweetheart. Then maybe I'll quit the foreign correspondence and go back to domestic documentaries."

His wild beauty stuns me. All the power locked in him. We're both runners, but he runs much faster than I do. He's the natural athlete, while I simply try to keep up. I'm willowy with powerful thighs, with as tight a waist as Jordan's; though the similarities stop there. My body finishes in womanly form with sensuous breasts he dives into with face and nose to love, and two pert pink nipples for him to suck

"Anything happens to you, Shelly, I'll never let you out of my sight again. Never."

He's serious. And sober. And it makes me quiver down to the very threads that make me human. He grabs my wet cunt with his hand and shakes it.

"I've survived before, darling, and you're making far too much of it." I bolt from his grasp, hopping from the bed. Gathering my clothes-shorts, T-shirt and jogging shoes-I kiss him on the mouth with a wide, deep, open-throated kiss.

I'm leaving for London in two hours.

My apartment is down the street. I'm already packed, but want to shower and get into my traveling clothes-no furs, just something comfortable. I have thirty minutes. This is a good way for Jordan and me to say farewell. He's a terror at the airport. I'd rather go by myself-especially since this feeling of impending doom will not stop hovering about me.

Chapter One

 

 

I'm aware of what I feel as I approach the train, and am having flashbacks of that other life inside my dreams. I wonder what it means as I embark on what should be an innocuous mission.

My compartment is small, drenched in the art of another time: gaslight fixtures, pearl handles, and inlaid woods etching patterns in the paneling that lines the walls with warmth. I've dressed in red, elegantly. My producer insisted we remain in keeping with the mood-I believe the tour company suggested this strongly. We're supposed to blend in with the wealthy crowd of travelers. I'm sure I don't blend at all in my brightly colored suit. I stand out from the other, drabber looking passengers. But this is a designer suit and I look damn good in it. Its deep neckline plunges almost to my navel, and the black lace beneath is nearly transparent. My blonde hair falls to my shoulders in a sensuous smooth cascade. I wear pale make-up, red lipstick, and dark mascara to highlight my sapphire eyes. These high heels will be killing me if I wear them all day, but they add to the effect of haughtiness. I smile to myself thinking that all I need is fur; but I do well to affect the mood without it. My dreams must have been proud of me as I boarded the train feeling as though I were stepping into that other world of the Orient Express.

I find some peace in the close confines of my antique compartment.

I'm glad to be leaving Paris. Sometimes big cities scare me when I travel alone (alone with my crew)-which seems pretty silly since it's been my job for nearly seven years to comb the globe looking for interesting things to say about the places I land. Paris always unnerves me-I think because I want to stay forever in its decadence. It jars my cunt and reminds me of Andre.

I look forward to the sound of that first cachug as the train strains to leave the station, heading east. Until then, I will be thinking of my Frenchman, and the first time my body was bound for sex.

His face was reassuring and his animated eyes thrilled that I'd consent. I climbed atop a high four-poster bed in a tiny Parisian Inn, and lay belly down as he tied my wrists and ankles with silk scarves-two blue, one green, the fourth one gold. There was a pattern of birds in flight on the pale blue one, as though these tiny creatures were battling the wind on a sunny summer day.

With each extremity circled in silk and tightly fettered to a mahogany post, I slipped further down in lust. My heart reverberated like a marching band as he fixed my left hand, with sensation moving to my belly as he gave my right a hearty tug and secured that, too. By the time he had my ankles ready, my pussy was beginning to throb, pressing itself into the tousled sheets beneath me. It was ready for cock, but that's not what it received.

Andre shocked me with a slap to my ass. The sting was sweet, but not the ones thereafter, when he kept spanking my cheeks until I was moaning for him to stop. My pleas only encouraged him to change his aim. Targeting the other cheek, I got the blistering ritual on that flesh until my whole behind was warmed and my cunt fondling itself with the mattress.

Thrashing frantically, I went nowhere. No escape, I only had the sensation; and there was little else to do but submit. In time, there was no pain or sting, just the happy hope that Andre would get me off with this alone. In that hour, tied between those posts, I learned about the miracle of restraint. I discovered that contentment finds a place to breed in me when I'm tightly bound.

Andre disappeared from my life as swiftly as a summer rainstorm. I sometimes think he was with me only for this simple exposition of sexual desire. Being tied with scarves, or rope, or the heavenly feel of leather became a compulsion after Andre vanished. Though after Andre, Jordan was the first man who didn't look me in the eye suspiciously when I suggested my desires. I'm sure he was as pleased as I was, and perhaps relieved to find a lover who volunteered to be submissive during sex. Being naturally dominant by nature, Jordan needed a woman to yield to him in bed. And this was easy for me. Though yielding otherwise has never been simple-or even necessary. Now, though, with my dreams and my appetite for submission clawing at my insides, I begin to wonder if my life isn't leading to complete abdication-even if that makes no sense knowing how much I love my work and my independence.