Rendezvous With A Stranger – ebook

Excerpt

At nine o’clock when the phone rings, I’m at the computer expounding to a friend through my keyboard.

“Hello,” I answer.  Holding the receiver between my cheek and my shoulders, my fingers continue to fly across the keys with my last thought.

“You have my crop?” I hear his voice, the low timbre of its earthy quality vibrates through me.  For an instant my body reacts to the sound, then I stop the feelings cold.

“Yes, and you should take it back,” I tell him forthrightly.  “You won’t be using it, at least not on me.” I don’t know how many times my inner voice practiced this line and it still comes out stilted.

“Are you wearing clothes?” he asks.

“I’m wearing my robe … but that’s not important,” I shoot back.

“Then put on your coat without your robe, your black heels will do, and I’ll meet you on the street.  Bring the crop.”

“I will not!” I say, about to slam the phone in his ear.

“Be sure to bring the crop,” he replies calmly.

“You’re not hearing me,” I’m sounding shrill.

“But you’re listening to me,” he replies as if nothing I’ve said, not one determined feeling makes any difference to him.

“You want the crop back, you can have it.  I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

“It’s cold, you’ll need your coat.”

“Thank you, but I’ll put on my clothes,” I say.  Even as I speak I can feel my words begin to fail, my resolve a hairsbreadth from crumbling altogether.

“Just your coat is all that’s necessary, ” he tells me.

“Naked underneath?” I ask. I’m relenting to the steadfast resonance of his simple words, turning meek.

“Where you’re going you won’t need clothes,” he explains.

“But I can’t,” I shake my head only to myself,  “no, I won’t go with you!”  Still, my voice falters.

“You have three minutes,” he says, and the phone clinks off, with the long monotonous sound of the dial-tone replacing his voice.

The dead silence of the room closes around me. He has me seduced just as he had before, with little effort.  I feel no panic, no intense fear, and none of the resolve I’d used for days to barricade me from this feeling of surrender.  It all comes back.  I sigh quietly, realizing that my desire for the stranger has never left.

When I see him, he’s on the street wearing an Army jacket, his shoulders looking broad.  His hands are in the pockets of his jeans and I can see the steam of his breath in the air.  The night is cold.

I must look strange to anyone on the street, with a riding crop in one hand and naked legs.  Even with a thick wool coat, it’s hardly enough protection from the dissonant elements of this autumn night.

“You’ll be warmed soon,” the stranger whispers, reading my mind once again.

I’m glued to his side, as though he’s protecting me, and not the dangerous man I fear. Suddenly darting down a street-side staircase, we’re at the basement door of an abandoned building.  The stairwell is littered with debris and beyond the padlocked door I can see a clutter of old furniture and castoff machines.  I suspect this was a small factory that’s been deserted for years.  Vines have crawled around the door so half of it’s covered with a delicate lace that looks like black in the night.

I guess it’s no surprise to me that the stranger has a key to the rusty lock, and when he tries it, the hasp gives way without a struggle.  Just like me.

I’m led inside, my guide pushing boxes and leftovers out of our way.  Led by the hand through this wreckage, we end up in an open space with a chain link fence that separates this half of the room from the basement on the other side.

He stops and I’m in front of him.  Fearful, I shudder.  Anxious, I gaze down not wanting to look into the vast caverns of his empty eyes.

“The crop,” he says.  I lift the implement for him to take, having almost forgotten that I’ve brought it with me.  Delivering it to him seems the last step in my surrender.  “Now, take off your coat.”

It’s hardly warmer in here than on the windy street.  With my coat my only cover against the drafts of air, I shiver before I think of undoing the buttons.  Staring up at him, I consider all the resolve I’ve lived with for three days and find none of it returning in face of his command.  As one at a time the buttons are slipped through their broad holes, I realize that I have no will of my own anymore.

My body quakes with chills as the cold air hits my naked skin.  Despite the fear of freezing, I shake the black wool from my shoulders.  When it drops to the cement, the stranger bends down and takes it in his hand to throw in a corner out of our way.

“You have a fear of being violated,” he begins to speak.  “You think I’ve stalked you.  You trembled when you read my note at the hotel, and panicked even more when you saw the crop lying on your bed.  I entered your borrowed apartment without you knowing how I got there.  No locks were broken, no window smashed.  Perhaps I crawled in through heating ducts, or have the ability to materialize where I choose, in whatever form I desire.”  He moves effortlessly before me as he delivers his soliloquy, speaking with the intensity of a viper hissing, staring at me with eyes that inspect me like I’m the target of an inquisition. “You resolved to end these rendezvous with me, that I was dangerous and you’d gone mad.  And with a modicum of natural spit and fire, you were sure that you’d conquer me, that you’d have a ready retort for my next command.”  He shakes his head as his amusement appears on his lips and takes over his vacant eyes.  “But look at you now… look at what you’ve become? Shivering there, naked in your red high heels.”  He gazes at them with an air of disapproval.  “Is this your act of rebellion,” he wonders, “putting on the red ones when I asked for black?”

I don’t answer him.

The stranger mocks my very soul.  He’s summed up three days in my life with such ease, I realize how obvious I am to him.  Even when he’s a mystery to me, and I still have no clue to his real life, I’ve become his open book.  With his deft hand he’s become the author of the pages.  With pen in hand, he has the ink to splash on my body if he chooses, or he may use a neat scrawl.  Another sentence has just begun.

I smell his aroma again.  It wipes out the stench of the basement.  He’s earthy but very vital, not dead the way these walls and empty spaces feel.  He’s close, so his breath is on me.  As I breathe, I warm, wondering if he’s turned on the building’s furnace.  There’s just his silence and mine, and the sound of him moving in to kiss my neck.  I stand stark still, as though he ordered me not to touch him.  I know he’d hate that.  I suppose in this way my instincts for him are as keen as his are for me.  The nibble at my neck is like a fly tickling me there.  I cock my head and smile as his face burrows into the cranny where my head and shoulders meet.

I hear myself gasp.  A flow of mirth and sweetness rouses me.  With one hand he caresses my skin gently, moving along my thigh, around behind me, to my ass, between my legs with a single finger darting along the smoothness.  His gentleness clouds my perception of the terror he holds in his other hand.

The crop that dangles there seems as tender as his hand when the leather glides along my body.

Now moving boldly around me, he taunts me with the tip of the crop.  As it finds a breast, he pushes it into the skin bending back the flexible leather end.  Then drawing it up fast, I see him come down with it rapidly, kissing my skin with an angry bite that leaves its mark.  My cunt tightens.  As another bite of his crop hits my other breast, the sensation turns to pain.  Three, four, a half dozen, I’m falling off my shoes, hardly able to remain immobile.

Then, as he begins to rap the ends at will on my thighs and breast and undulating stomach, I’m dancing for him—rising on tiptoe, squirming to take the next and avoid it at the same time.  Each strike makes my pussy spasm.  My cunt begins to juice.  And then, I cry for him to stop but he only smirks hearing my plea.

“You want me to end this, Ellen Laurey?” he mocks me sneering.

“Oh, but …”  I start, but there are no words behind my protest.