So Strange and Wild Ch. 02: The High Priestess

"Shirt, too," she said softly, watching it jump and weave. "Get naked."

I pulled the henley over my head. Tossed it on the tiles. That left me nude save for my socks and wristwatch, and I shivered under Lucia's gaze. Coursing with a lust I had rarely known.

"Oh, Anthony," she sighed. "Look what we've done to you."

Before I could ask who she meant, Lucia's slipped a hand between her thighs, and in the next moment she was daubing my cock with dripping fingers. Coating me with her own arousal. She did this twice more with loving ceremony, as if anointing me--or warding off evil. Then she stroked me once with a trailing flourish. Her touches were glancing, darting, designed to tease. They sent tingles to the base of my skull.

"Here," Lucia said, flashing a square of gold foil. "Condom." She slipped the rubber free and rolled it onto me with practiced hands. Gave me a playful squeeze at the base. Then she hopped up on the sink's countertop and spread her legs. "Take me," she said calmly.

In the dark, her eyes were no longer blue. They were black and bottomless--twin portals into the void. Stepping closer, I gripped the tops of her arms and let my dick lay across her belly, so she could feel my searing heat and hardness, even through the latex. My thighs eased her legs a little wider; my balls hung close to her heat. And as I pulled back my hips, letting my cockhead trail down to her entrance, I realized that both of us were trembling.

"Tell me you want this," I muttered.

She let out a filthy chuckle. "Oh, I want it," she replied, with an exaggerated pout. "I want it so bad, Anthony. I want you to stick it in me and make me scream." She stretched the words to breaking point, feigning a younger woman's vocal fry, then collapsed into genuine giggles. "Is that what you need to function?" she asked, batting her eyelids. "Devotion? Praise?"

"What do you need?"

She shook her head ruefully. "Sometimes a woman shouldn't have to answer." Sneaking a hand between our joined legs, she took hold of my cock. Guided the tip to her pussy. "And sometimes? We don't want to be asked." Folding her legs around my waist, she drew me into her, till my head nudged her entrance, squeezed tight ... and slid home. We let out matching grunts of pleasure, and I marveled at her warmth and wetness. Her loving grasp. With a wicked smile, she finished, "Maybe fuck me however you want?"

The words sang in my ears like a siren's call. She was using both arms to balance, so I ran my hands down her sides and lifted her ass clear off the countertop. This new angle let me thrust with more of my length, driving a delicious moan from somewhere deep in Lucia's chest. I withdrew slowly, savoring her grip on my cock. Then flowed into her a second time, and a third, until she picked up the rhythm and began fucking me back.

"See?" she panted. "I knew you had it in you."

Satisfaction arced through me. Approval. I dug my fingers into the twin orbs of her ass and slammed her down on my cock; only her tightly pressed thighs stopped me from burying myself to the hilt. My head flared proudly inside her, and I ground into her upper wall, over and over, until the bathroom was filled with lurid squelches--the inimitable sound of hard, unburdened coupling.

Lucia was no longer trying to talk. Her head lolled to one side, showing that movie star's mole, and she let out a long, gasping tremolo, loosely timed to my thrusts. Then clapped a hand to her mouth to mute herself.

"More?" I asked.

She kept her eyes closed and her palm in place, but a smile dawned on her profile--and she granted me a tiny nod.

Laying her back on the countertop, I threw her legs up and over my shoulders. She obligingly squirmed into an awkward, question-mark shape against the mirror. Now I could lean fully into her, my hips tight to her upraised thighs, till my dick nosed into her cervix. There was barely a need to thrust: I could just roll my hips and churn inside her, and soon the room was noisy with the constant slosh of cock in cunt.

Yet Lucia didn't give in easily. I felt her pussy flex around me, rippling down my length, and for a moment I wondered if she were reshaping me, somehow--remaking my cock in the image of her womanhood. Or perhaps we were just made for each other.

"Come for me, Anthony," she managed to say. "Let go."

No such luck. Sheathed in the condom, I felt ... invincible. Laughing aloud, I pawed at her dress. Tugged it down one shoulder and away from her heaving chest. Beneath was a striped satin bra in white and cream, full to bursting. I yanked down the nearer cup, and out surged a perfect teardrop breast, trembling under my strokes. To my surprise, her almond-colored nipple was pierced: I spied a neat, golden barbell, shaped like the crescent moon.

"Fuck me ..." Lucia said, eking out the words, "like you fucked ... Beth Abel." Her eyes were open again, watching me, while her crown butted lightly against the mirrored glass. "Fuck me ... like you didn't ... fuck your wife."

She couldn't have known what those words would do. But my lungs seized. My heart stopped.

Loss repeats itself, endlessly. It never stops reminding us that the person we loved is gone. For nearly half a year, I'd been trying and failing to drag myself out of the past. To cross over to this barren present, in which the memory of Iris was something less than a knife.

I realized, in stages, that I'd withdrawn my cock; that I was kneeling, naked, on the tiles of a restaurant bathroom; and that I was hopelessly unable to breathe. Panic had ripped the air from my chest. Yet Lucia was crouched next to me, with her fingers and nose pressed into my hair. "Shush," she was saying, her breath hot against my scalp. "Shush now, Anthony. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. Hey--look at me?"

Her blue eyes cornered my helpless brown. At last, I felt the grief recede. I drew a ragged breath, and my heart resumed its normal patter. Then Lucia kissed me, at length, with surpassing tenderness.

"Nearly there," she muttered, tugging at my lip with her teeth. "Come on." With her nails curling into my arm, she steered me to my feet. Her other hand found my balls and crept upward, checking on the state of my cock. She found me bullet-hard and slick, still straining at the latex--and when her fingers reached the tip, she honored my erection with a simple squeeze and a shy, admiring smile.

For the first time, we felt like equals.

"Turn around," I heard myself say. "Face the mirror."

I'd never seen her grin so wide. Spinning on her heels, Lucia presented her tush like a gift--and even whisked up her skirt like she was tearing back the the wrapping. When she bent at the hips to lean on the sink, I saw her calves faintly tremble; my previous work had left her weak in the knees, and she had to spread her legs wide to stay upright.

I stepped in close and hiked up her dress, gathering the spare fabric in one fist. In response, Lucia bent her legs in sequence, mooning me with a slow, sensual sway that bathed her flesh in golden light. Like she was swimming out of the shadows.

When I entered her again, the angle was nearly perfect. My dick slid to her core in one smooth stroke, and she captured the rush in two short syllables.

"Oh, fuck," she conceded.

Nearly perfect, I thought, listening to my cock. There was something more, beyond this.

Crouching slightly, I closed Lucia's legs with my own, scooting them together until her thighs were touching. She slumped back into my crotch, unsteady--and for a dangerous moment, I was carrying most of her weight. To make the position work, I had to guide her torso downward, to the sink, tugging away her hands so they no longer braced her upper half. She accepted it all without complaint, and when I took her left wrist and clamped it to her side, her fingers wriggled with growing excitement. She was fully at my mercy now: heels together, knees bent, and meanwhile hanging halfway off the sink.

My next thrust felt like scaling the face of heaven. Lucia took me to the base, and my balls clapped the back of her thighs. As I swept in and out of her, I felt a sudden clarity: I was made to do this, and so was she. Only the thinnest scrap of latex kept us from melting into a single, happy creature, consumed by the purest act of life.

I pounded her like that, over the sink. I lost myself in Lucia's sopping pussy, in the relentless slap of my balls and stomach against her rear; her neat, round rump shook with every pump of my hips, and Lucia was reduced to a sequence of low, unladylike grunts. It took all her effort to flick the hair from her face and fix me with a smirk.

"You're still ... holding back," she said, panting. Then she began bucking her butt into each hard thrust, producing rapid, fervent thuds--beneath which, I could make out the rhythmic clicking of her piercing hitting the sink. I redoubled my efforts, grabbing her right hip to guide myself home. I fucked her as if we might cease to exist if I stopped. As if the world itself rested on my thrusts.

Meanwhile, she kept goading me onward: "Look at me, Anthony. My face. The shape ... of my body. Fuck me ... hard. I can ... take it."

With the mirror in play, there were two Lucias: one real and heaving, the other a murky double--her wraith. It smiled like her and bared its teeth. And when she threw back her head, it matched her at the mirror, touching its mane to hers and rapping its skull on the glass.

"Now look at you," she gasped. "Fucking ... just ... look."

The universe had shrunk to this noisy room and Lucia's long, bright tunnel, down which I hoped to escape. If I had other needs--inner peace, perhaps, or a remedy for loss--they were hidden in her folds, her heat.

"Look, Anthony," she said again, raising her eyes to heaven. I followed her gaze, dumbly curious, and found my face in the mirror. Lips parted. Eyes hooded. I saw myself the way Iris had wanted: naked and golden, writhing under the lights. Reborn.

"You can come now," Lucia offered.

And she was right. It was the simplest thing on earth to send myself forth; to spurt and spasm and shudder out my soul; to wash myself clean in her cunt. I came watching my reflection gasp and twitch in the mirror, and as I came--into the condom, thwarted--I felt Lucia clamp down in sympathy, as if her walls were wringing me dry. I realized she was coming, too: I had broken through to some secret vault and plundered her stores of pleasure.

Far away, I heard Iris's voice. She was naming all the birds.

Soon my thrusts grew feeble, and my thighs started to ache. I waited till Lucia grew silent before pulling free of her pussy. Then I slumped to the bathroom tiles, my hands behind me, and burst into laughter.

Lucia was laughing too. Once she'd secured the straps of her bra and dress in the mirror, she turned and knelt between my legs. Rolling off the condom, she bared my dripping shaft. Next, she began swiping her tongue over my cock. Bathing it. Easing me into softness.

The sensations were almost too much to bear, but she was relentless, patient--and gentle. Her mouth worked its magic, and a kind of numbness overcame me, till I could forget my manhood and its persistent need.

For a brief, wonderful minute, she was kissing me better.

When she was finished, Lucia glanced at her smart watch and swore. "This was nice," she said breezily. "We should do it again sometime." And she shot me a lascivious wink.

"Why did you ... we ...?" I began, not knowing how to phrase the question. Trailing off. I wanted to know her reasons for doing any of this. Why had she brought me here, to this room? Held a flame to my frozen grief?

She gave me a simple peck on the cheek, leaving it tacky with gloss. "I was curious," she said. "I just wanted to know what would happen." She was caressing my jaw with one hand, and I saw her wince as her palm grated on days-old stubble.

"I should shave," I admitted.

Lucia shook her head absently; with her other hand, she was fixing my hair, teasing it back into place. Up close, her eyes were blue again. Wide as the ocean.

"No," said. "You should let it grow. And get out of here--travel. Take a year, if you need it. Come back home with fresh eyes."

I nodded half-heartedly, indulging her, but the very motion seemed to seal something, as if we had entered into a pact.

Visconti stood and began adjusting her own reflected appearance: resettling her dress on her shoulders, fussing at it creases; I just sat there, useless, while she clucked over the tangled nest I'd made of her hair. Eventually, I gathered up my scattered clothes and shoes and put them back on. I had no sense of the passage of time, yet I didn't check my phone. I wanted to delay our return to the mortal world.

"You should go first," said Visconti, reading my thoughts in the mirror. She had taken out a brush to tame her hair. Also on the counter was a makeup bag, concealer, and her iPad with all its heady secrets.

She went with me as far as the door, so she could lock it again after I left. But as I reached for the handle, she touched my arm: "One thing's been bugging me. You said you were separated. 'Taking a break,' you said. So why was Iris at your condo that night? That drive north is, what, two hours?"

I shrugged limply. "She was collecting some of her stuff, she said. She had her own key." In my head, I heard those whistled notes again--four steps up; and a fifth, descending.

Visconti considered this for a long time, her eyes searching my face. At last, she nodded. "Good luck, Mr. Rocchi. I've got your number if anything comes up."

Outside, the world was as I'd left it. The restaurant was eerily the same. There were no customers now, and the single server was busy behind the bar, clinking the well liquor back in place. He didn't turn to face me, which felt deliberate; and I didn't say goodbye.

I pushed open the door--setting a faded "STAFF WANTED" sign flapping in the breeze--and went out into the heat. It smacked me like a hammer, like a wet rag forced down my throat. Squinting in the glare, I patted my pockets: keys, wallet, both phones. Something didn't feel right, though, so I slid out the devices to check.

Here was my cell: clean and new, generic. And here was the other, which the police had lately returned: a chipped black brick, bristling with spiderweb cracks. Sandwiched between them, somehow, was a scrap of satin fabric, striped in cream and white. I'd discovered Lucia's final trick--the last scrap of silk up her sleeve: she had snuck me her panties when my back was turned, and I could smell them now, their waft.

Vanilla, and that hint of cinnamon.