Night Angels Ch. 4

She took another neat bite of salmon, and continued more quietly. “I’ve been so nice to her. I really am the one who takes care of her, you know. And I have been faithful. I have said no to some people. Even when there have been times that I have, you know, wanted to, to do it. And I feel like such a fool. I am trying to keep together a relationship that does not exist anymore!”

There was a small silence while I digested all this. I was not sure how to handle this situation. What could I say to this girl, my competitor, who seemed so open and passionate, who was so honest about her vulnerability?

“You know,” I ventured, dabbing at my lips with a napkin, “maybe that’s the problem.”

She looked puzzled.

“Maybe your problem is that, I don’t know, you’re being too nice. You’re trying too hard.” I had her attention now, and thought carefully before continuing. “I don’t know you, er – Lu Mi? “ (“Liu Mi”, she corrected me) “Liu Mi… and you don’t know me. But I have been around a few years longer. So take it from an old campaigner, who maybe has in some ways been where you have been. You can’tmake someone desire you. And the harder you try, the more they are going to feel crowded… “ Who was I talking about? Lucy? Ruth? Myself? “So, instead of asking how you can get her back, you should ask another question.” I paused meaningfully.

“So, what is the question?”

“What doyou desire? “

“Well, I wanther.” she said sadly.

“I knowthat. But you don’t want to… humiliate yourself any more. So, in this situation. Now, today. With Lucy… acting like she does not want you anymore, even though there’s no reason why she should have changed… what doyou want? What do you want right now? What would you do if you weren’t trying to hang on to this relationship? What or whom would you want foryou?”

She considered her plate. Was I making sense? But she seemed to be honestly considering the question. She looked up at me, intrigued.

“What would I want, if I could take something, have something, for me, right now?”

“Bingo. That’s the question.”

She paused long and thoughtfully. I could see her turning the it over in her mind, considering new thoughts. And then something settled. Something clicked. She took another small bite of salmon, and unless I was mistaken there was the slightest hint of a tiny, secret, smile on her lips.

“You’ve thought of something, haven’t you.”

She was not answering, but I could see that I was right.

“And you’re not telling, right? “ I asked.

She gave me a long, completely inscrutable stare. No, sir. She was keeping her secrets. But something had definitely happened in there.

Suddenly decisive, she put down her knife and fork. She stood up, and put out her hand. It was firm and warm. All her bedraggled sadness was gone. She once more had that sense of clarity and calm I had glimpsed when she first appeared. She thought for a moment, and then delivered a little speech:

“This was a good thing to do. I was right to see you. And you are right. You are, you are a good man. And a wise man. You’ve helped me see something I had not thought of. I have received… guidance. Thank you. Thank you. I will settle my part of the bill. Good bye.”

She leaned forward, and I received a chaste, daughterly peck on the cheek. And then she was gone.

I finished my lunch in silence, ignoring the stares from the table next door. I realised I felt humbled.

* * *

As I said, I am an intuitive man: I have a sense of how things will move. Or perhaps I fool myself, and only tell myself I could see the pattern afterward.

But, thinking back now, it does seem to me that I was not altogether surprised when late the next evening, just as I was retiring to bed, the doorbell rang. I paused in the hallway, whiskey glass in one hand, book in the other and listened to the echoes die away. Mystery comes knocking. “We’ve got company, Mr Thelonious,” I informed my cat, who was waiting impatiently at the foot of my bed. “Who on earth could be calling at this time of night? “

But of course I knew.

The bell rang again. I picked up the security phone.

“Visitor for Mr Gray”, said a female voice. It was her. I buzzed her in.

A minute or too later, there was a tapping at the door. My heart pounded. I realised I had wanted to see her, to speak with her all day. And here she was, on my doorstep, at midnight…

For a few moments after I let her in, neither one of us spoke or moved. I gazed at this lovely woman who had suddenly appeared in my apartment like a creature from a dream. She was even more beautiful than I remembered her from the restaurant. Her body was buried in the warm, soft overcoat she’d donned against the cold. She had put on a trifle more lipstick, I think. What I saw was her eyes, her deep, dark, jet-black eyes: eyes that looked into mine bravely, challengingly.

She was beautiful, utterly desirable. But what did she desire? I was pretty sure it was not me. Not in the way Lucy had wanted me. It was not lust I saw in her eyes. What was it?

I saw… determination. And yearning. And fear…

She’d come into the lion’s den, to claim her share of what she wanted. The warmth and love of body on body. The risk of touch: to be held again - to be held, or pushed away.

I reached out and touched her shoulder, then her cheek. Still no words. I took her hands – they were cold from the night air - and led her wordlessly deeper into the warmth of my home. In the lounge we paused. I picked up the glass of whiskey I had set down on the sideboard and offered it to her. Warmth for the body and courage for the heart. She took a careful sip, her eyes never leaving mine, and then passed the glass to me. I raised my glass to her and drank.

And then we began.

It was like carefully, carefully unwrapping the most delicate and precious of gifts.

All I could hear was her breathing, deep and slow, as I one by one unpicked the buttons of her coat. I slid it gently off her shoulders. Underneath it, her throat and arms were bare. She was wearing a simple, night-black satin slip with simple lines that clung to her body, accentuating the flatness of her tummy, the firmness of her ass, the softness and ripeness of her breasts.

Still in silence, I let my fingers dance over the slender shoulder straps and the warm hollow of her throat. My hand passed down over her collarbone - I barely, barely touched her skin – between her breasts, down to where the pearly black material hid her navel. I leaned over slowly, and let my lips graze her neck. She closed her eyes and sighed, letting her head fall back…

I felt for the tiny zip I knew must be nestled between her shoulder blades. When my fingers touched her back, a shiver ran through her body. The muscles of her shoulders were as hard as iron, stiff with tension. I found the little metal tongue and pulled. The garment parted underneath my hands. Her hair was a soft, warm rich cascade. It caressed the back of my hand. I let it run through my hands, feeling its weight and softness. She stood back, waiting, inviting me. Her lips were open.

I eased the straps off her shoulders and let go. For a moment, as it slid down, she crossed her arms, shielding her breasts from my gaze. I just let her take her time. And then she let her arms fall again, allowing the garment to slip completely away. I could see an artery pulsing powerfully in her throat. Her heart was pounding.

She could not look at me any more.

My heart was beating hard as well, and in my loins I felt the stirring of desire. She was so perfect, this lovely, half naked young woman who now stood like a vision in my living room with her long, shining hair hiding her face and half veiling her pretty young breasts. And she was so awkward! Her body was rigid, her shapely shoulders were on the verge of trembling.

I stooped down and with one smooth gesture scooped her up, my right arm cradling her back and my left curled underneath her knees. She was as light as a child. She let herself be carried unresisting to my bed. She lay stretched out on the soft, warm cover, her arms again crossed across her front. I sat down next to her and rummaged in the bedside table drawer.

“Roll over,” I told her. “On your tummy.” Aha! It was still there. I felt heavy, cool glass beneath my fingers. An old but still half-full bottle of scented massage oil. I let a spoonful of the fragrant liquid pool in my hands, warming it for a moment. “Close your eyes. Just close you eyes, my dear, and relax.”

For many long minutes I did not let her stir. I just let her lie there and let her skin absorb the scented oil. I worked her body long and hard, until I felt the knots leave the tight cords of muscle underneath her skin. Mr Thelonious watched approvingly from the foot of the bed, slitting his eyes in vicarious pleasure. Gradually her neck became more supple, her breathing deeper and more even. I ran my thumbs and the heels of my hands up and down along her spine and along the grooves of her shoulder blades, and she groaned with pleasure and release. She sighed softly as I kneaded the muscles of her arms, gently stretched them out to their full length, and caressed and tugged each of her fingers. She raised up her hips enough to allow me to pull off her panties, and then relaxed again as I dug the base joint of my thumbs deep into the muscles of her buttocks, finding the pressure points that would unlock the tension. Down her warm, muscled, soft strong thighs I went, down to the soles of her beautiful feet: not one of her toes was spared.

Calmness stole into her body. She was breathing evenly. She was almost asleep, in a trance of forgetful pleasure.

I put the bottle down for the last time and took off my bathrobe. Naked I lay down beside her. She was still far away, lost in her dream. I touched her hair. She looked up at me. We touched lips. She turned over. She touched my shoulder, my chest. She stretched out her body for my eyes, wordlessly asking me to gaze at her beauty, to love her sweet body, to hold her in the darkness while the rain fell outside.

And yes, I wanted to. I drank in the sight of her – her soft sensuous mouth, the curve of her neck, her ripe breasts, her flat tummy, the ruff of fur above her sex – and felt the sweet hardness pulse into my cock. I took one of her breasts into my mouth. It was so infinitely, wonderfully soft. I tongued her nipple, and felt how it grew tight and firm.

Gently, we let our bodies learn to know each other, finding out what we liked, what we wanted.

She wanted to be held. She wanted to be kissed. She wanted her lips, her eyes, her ears to be kissed and nibbled. She liked the roughness of my chin against her nipples – but just a little, not too much. She wanted my hands to slide up between her thighs and tease, just gently tease, the outer lips of her pussy. I scratched and tickled them with my nails. They were dry at first, but with time they became softer, warmer, wetter, till they were slippery and hot. I squeezed her lips together, rubbing one against the other in their own juices. I slid my fingers ever so slightly in between them and she squirmed with pleasure. I felt for her little clit, almost completely hidden in the folds of her skin, and she gave a quick gasp – ooh, that was almost too intense. I probed again and tried, and I found how to do it in a way that she liked, cradling it in the folds of skin, pressing down from above. Ah,that was it. She threw her head back, her eyes tightly closed, biting her lips, concentrating on the tiny spark of pleasure guttering into life deep in her cunt. She reached down and dug her hands between her thighs, sliding a quick finger into her pussy, fanning the spark into a flame.

I wanted her to suck my cock. She bent down her head to do it, but I saw that her heart was not in it. I was not sure she’d ever done it before. I guided her hand, showed her how to stroke me up and down. She touched me gingerly at first, and then suddenly far too roughly. I let out an “oof!” and caught her hand by the wrist. She apologised. She clearly did not have much experience of penises, I thought. Rough boys at school, perhaps. Or dildos: hard purple plastic vibrating things. I released her hand and showed her how to tease me, the firm touch and the gentle. This was not a piece of bakelite; it was part of me. She stroked me for a while, then smiled. She rolled over and got herself some more of the massage lotion, and gestured to me to lie back. She leaned over me, her face dreamy and soft in the half light. The warm, soft forest of her hair tickled my chest and throat. She let me take her breast into my mouth again. Then she tickled and stroked the soft skin of my balls, and squeezed my shaft in her fist, running her hand up from base to tip, a noose of pleasure. Warm fire ran up my legs, ran from the base of my spine, ran up and down my cock, ever hotter and more intense…

Then it was her turn again, and I kissed and sucked the flower of her cunt, drawing the juices out, playing with her petals, inviting them to swell and thicken and release their perfume. She moaned and opened her legs wide, pushing her sex insistently into my face. My mouth, my chin, my nose was buried in her, and her fingers kneaded urgently at the flesh around her clit. Her heels were digging into the muscles of my back. Her fragrance drenched my awareness. I wanted more and more of her. I thrust my tongue in as far as I could and felt the answering tremors thrill through her body.

I wanted to finger-fuck her then, but she drew me up then, fastened her knees around my hips, and reached down to guide me into her. She was breathing hard. Her eyes were shining. She kissed me hungrily. I was in an agony of desire – all my deepest urges told me to drive my cock as deeply into her as it would go, but I did not know whether she would be ready. For a moment I hesitated, but she pulled me on insistently.

And then it was happening. The tip, and then the head of my cock was nuzzling into her. It was sliding through her juices. I found the beginning of that tight, hot curved channel. And then I was inside. Our bodies fit together sweet and tight: tongue and groove and cock and cunt. Her arms were very strong around my back, her thighs locked hard around me. She did not speak, but her eyes and face and body spoke in a language without words, a language of yearning and longing and desire, sayinglove me, hold me, fuck me, be with me…

And slowly we started the dance, the long, slow-burning dance. I carefully supported myself on knees and elbows, not wanting to crush her, but her body was lithe and strong and her passion was fierce and inescapable. She knew exactly what she wanted, and she wanted all of it. What she wanted was to taste and relish every tiny inch, every millimetre of that sweet, sweet road, every thrust of my cock, every squeeze of her pelvic muscles. Every one.

She was the mistress of small movements. Of slow, slow thrusts, and even slower releases. We would go as slow as we could go before slow became still, and then we would speed up again. We floated in that warm, golden current, letting it pull us into the faster stream, and then the faster stream still, till we were on the verge of that place where drawing back would be impossible and we would be swept away, swept over the lip of the pulsing hot waterfall that thundered just there, just there… and then her eyes would open wide, staring a warning at me, stop now!

And we would freeze and the torrent would ebb, and we would just drift in that golden pool of lazy lust, with rain falling somewhere, and a cat watching us with slitted, approving eyes…

Then she would fix me with her dark, calm gaze – not sombre now, not fearful, just revelling in the bliss of skin on hot skin. She would give her sweet, secret, sexy smile, and lift her head, and ask for a kiss. We’d let our lips and tongues tangle. And then she would close her eyes, and tilt back her head, and push herself hard onto me. Giving me the timing, and feeling for my timing in return: the hard, slow, deep, solid thrust and the lingering, sweet, tenderly teasing withdrawal, and then again a slower, deeper thrust… And round we would go again.

And then, after an eternity of slow pleasure, of building and falling, of rising and breaking, we werethere. Her eyes were open again, but not to saystop; it was to say,come, now, honey, go there with me, come with me, let’sdo it now honey, let’s go there now darling, let’sfeel it now, let me feel it now,do it now,come my sweet, come, come,come. She threw her head back and cried out loud and surrendered all control. And I too was beyond control, calling the flood down on us with long, hard, sweet, solid thrusts, hearing her gasp and scream and shout, feeling the current powerful, deep and inexorable, taking us at last, together at last, over the lip of the fall, together, to be pounded, together , to atoms, together, in the deep, hot, slick pit of delight.

I was pierced with sweetness and with the taste of her mouth. I fell through her body, in the timeless night. She held me and held me as the darkness came. I heard her cries, and I heard a voice answering her, and it was mine.

For long we lay together on the golden beach, our limbs tangled, our eyes closed.

And then it was quiet. I felt cold. She moved beneath me, her eyes closed, and made a soft, inarticulate sound. I looked around. My bedroom reassembled itself around me. The rain was still falling. The light was on. The cat had jumped off the edge of the bed, and was regarding us from the safer distance of the windowsill. “You kids got quite wild there for a while”, he said wordlessly, and nonchalantly licked his paw.

I moved out of her and leaned over her, my weight on my elbow. Her eyes opened. Her face was still. She smiled. She reached out to me, touched my face. Her lips moved. Her voice was soft, wondering, barely audible. She said, “you.” She ran her hand down my side. She touched my penis, now shrinking, spent, asleep. She’d been so nervous of it just a while before. She said, gently, “pipi…” and then she touched my mouth again. We kissed, a little shy, back in the world again. She looked around. For a moment I thought she was going to start getting her things together, go back to her flat, mission accomplished. But she was only looking for the light-switch.

She slept all night with her head on my shoulder, her left arm flung over my chest. I lay awake for a long time, listening to her breathe. Once she spoke in her sleep, spoke in the voice of a child. It was a language I did not understand. But I could hear it was a question, a request.You mustn’t go away now, will you stay with me? I grumbled reassuringly deep in my throat, and she sighed and settled back into deeper sleep. I lay in the dark for a long time, watching the moon ride through the clouds. I wondered what tomorrow would bring…

To be continued…