Porphyria's Pursuit

Disclaimer: It's all mine except for the poem, which is by Robert Browning.

Althea stood slightly hidden in the ivy covered niche and watched him. She had just stepped out of the door behind her and was slowly finishing buttoning up her heavy wool frock coat to block out the wind. Her cap was already pulled down over her head, allowing only a few wisps of silky black hair to escape its confinement and her plum colored scarf had been wrapped around her nose and ears before putting on the coat and going out the door. It was a bitterly cold day and the wind swirled bits of snow across the pavement. She drew on the soft rabbit fur lined leather gloves as she continued to watch the man across the street.

She had had her eye on him for quite a while, following him through the clubs and salons had become a personal pleasure. Althea liked to watch people who interested her. To her knowledge, he had never noticed her silently pursuing him. Did he have any idea what she wanted? She didn't know.

From the street, anyone who might catch a glance of her at this moment would only see a slight figure mostly wrapped in black with a line of her face peeking out from under her hat, the pale skin glowing briefly before disappearing back underneath cloth. Her body blended in with the shadows well enough to pass most peoples notice, that's how Althea preferred it. Most, even looking at her in full daylight would probably not be able to tell her gender at all.

She didn't know why she had become so fascinated with him. Perhaps it was how his long blonde hair seemed to flow behind him when he danced, or the way he held his cigarette as he talked to someone about some book or another. His clothing was always impeccably put together, even when he was only wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Some people just had that certain something about them that allowed them the illusion of perfection; he was certainly one of them.

Maybe it was how the sweat dripped down his aristocratically slanted cheekbones after some physical activity, or even the way he would scream ecstatically as someone stood behind him, leaving long red marks on his beautifully rounded ass. Althea had often imagined how her own handprint would look decorating that most admirable canvas. But no, that wasn't it either.

Althea decided it was the way he came with the ability of being barely touched at all, to be brought with words softly caressing him. The crowd she ran with was not into gentleness. Usually someone like him did whatever anyone told him, which usually required a great deal of hands on action. In her world, he was a slave, but something made him distinctly other at the same time, some casual element that distinctly changed the circumstances. She had been stalking him for quite some time.

She had finally learned the secret. The way to make him try to scream his pleasure and become more satisfyingly helpless than in any other situation, to make him beg and plead for his master to allow him that final satisfying moment. Today she was going to make him her own, hers' to have as she pleased, to do with as she wanted. His slender form would forever grace her life, a beautiful doll to dance as she desired.

Althea began to casually move across the street and down the walk when he started his own saunter down and away from where she stood protected from the wind. She admired his lean form moving gracefully through the crowd. She had never wanted anything so permanent before. Usually those Althea found at her night haunts were enough to keep her pleased for the evening and left her un-desirous of anything further.

She realized with pleasure that he was making his way toward a particularly conducive place for what she had in mind. The grate he disappeared through led to one of the more exclusive clubs in London. Here would be a place for a perfect seduction, while at the same time ensuring that her claim was publicly staked.

He still hadn't noticed her following him.

She followed him in, briefly pausing in the foyer to admire a painting of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a particularly appropriate piece for the moment. Her eyes followed him across the room and through another door that she knew led to a private room.

The doorkeeper stood in his imposing place near a tall mahogany bar, casually keeping an eye on the different activities going on around him. If he had a name, no one knew it, they only knew that he had always been there as the doorkeeper. Some even believed that he had been there since the club had opened in the Victorian era; he had that timeless, ageless quality about him. There were not very many others here today, it was still too early, his gaze circled lazily around the room. Althea allowed herself to drift over to him.

Pausing next to him, still studying the door that the one she yearned for had disappeared through, she asked, "Is he alone today?" The doorkeeper didn't blink and answered immediately without qualm, "Yes." So easy and simple then, after so many months of observation, of course the doorkeeper had probably watched her watching him for as long as she had been about it. Not much passed his notice.

She slipped him some pound notes in gratitude and then made her way to the doorway. Pausing briefly with her still gloved hand on the doorknob, she took a deep breath and firmly pushed it open. She stepped through.

Thomas. His name was Thomas, and he was about to become hers. Under the coat her blood began to boil at this near culmination of her long chase.

His back was to her again. She admired the way his neck peeked through his long braided hair. She closed and locked the door behind her, leaning casually against the wall, watching him sit in the simple wooden chair in front a warmly dancing fire in an otherwise fairly bare room.

"I've been waiting for you." His smooth voice broke the silence, he still hadn't turned around. She was pleased. She hadn't been expecting that, but in the end it pleased her more than having been hunting unsuspecting prey, obviously he had been aware of her presence.

He spoke again, "Althea...," almost purring, as if testing her name on his tongue, throwing it into the open. Goosebumps broke out across her skin under all the layers as he spoke.

She continued to lean against the doorframe, but began to recite softly, pitching her low voice so that it would shiver across his skin, muffled as it was by her scarf and tantalize him as much as the sound of her name from his mouth had teased her.

"The rain set early in tonight,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
and did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break."

His still frame became even stiller at her soft words. She moved a couple of stealthy steps closer across the room, making herself loom slightly nearer than before but still not within enough distance to touch him. She continued with the words, making them rise and fall in time with the music of the poem.

"When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me."

This time he shuddered and slightly arched his back, seemingly enraptured at her words. This was it, what had captured her interest, language was his greatest aphrodisiac, all one had to do was seduce him with the spoken word; everything else was irrelevant when a lover spoke with direct purpose to him and him alone. Her Thomas was a whore for words.

He understood what she was softly commanding at the same time. He stood up from the chair, his long hands rising to loosen his bound hair, obediently, letting the pale gold cascade down his back to fall elegantly on the deep Arabian rug underneath his chair, the same rug that muffled her own steps.

He slipped down to the floor on his knees and called to her again, "Althea..."

She moved to stand directly behind him this time, still not touching him.

"When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me--she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me forever."

She couldn't see his reaction to this from where she stood over him, but without turning around one of his hands reached over his shoulder and without any fumbling he found her hip buried in her large coat, his other hand undoing the top most buttons on his shirt only enough to let it drape over one muscled shoulder. He slightly turned his face even further away from her, offering the curve of his skull and neck up to her inspection.

His hand tugged as much as possible at that awkward angle and she willingly went down to her knees behind him, finally reaching up to tug the scarf down and her hat off so that she could bury her face behind his ear and breath in his musky scent through the heavy layer of his straight hair. One of her arms encircled his waist and she continued to recite with her mouth pressed right behind his ear. Now not only could he hear her, but he could feel the vibrations of her words. He pressed back against her and moaned even as his body went pliant with submission to any of her whims.

"But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could tonight's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshiped me: surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do."

He went limp against her completely, letting out a breathy moan, spreading his knees slightly to give his erection more room to grow. She wrapped both arms around his chest as she continued with her face still pressed against his ear.

"That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,"

Wrapping his hair in one of her fists, she began to wind it around his throat, making it tighter and tighter as she spoke, loving his little gasps and the thrust of his hips as he tried in vain to brush his hard flesh against something more substantial than air.

"And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain."

She felt him come as she tightened the golden noose of his own hair in a final circle. Felt him jerk and begin sliding bonelessly back, his knees sliding out from under him, the only thing keeping him up straight was the one arm she still had wrapped around his chest.

"And I untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propped her head up as before
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,"

She un-wrapped his hair and shifted so that he was cradled in her arms against her chest. He was able to look at her face for the first time, her gloves gently tracing his jaw as she leaned down to taste his luscious looking mouth. This time she finished by whispering into his mouth, while he seemingly tried to eat her words. Watching his blue eyes as they rolled into the back of his head in completion, she finished.

"And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!"

And there she sat, seeing the stain that had blossomed on the front of his trousers, cradling her new lover in the cocoon that her words had created in contentment. He whispered her name once more and she promised, "Yes, my love, forever...."

Fin.

Author's note:

The poem is Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning. Written in 1836, it wasnt actually titled until the 1860's. It is believed to be inspired by John Wilson's "Extracts from Gosschen's Diary" which recounts a murder similar to that in the poem. The narrator of the poem is often seen as being insane.

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