Tall, Dark, and . . .

"Stephanie!" Ellen said for the third time, both of them laughing at her inability to say much of anything else. Then Stephanie moved off toward a section of the beach where her prey was setting up beach chairs for a family of four. As Ellen watched, Stephanie changed her walk to a sexy saunter and, looking back at the beach chairs, Ellen saw why. Stephanie already had the little bantam rooster's attention.

The more muscular—and blacker—hunk that Stephanie had picked out for Ellen was paddling back out in the surf on his surfboard now and Ellen figured that maybe that would be last she would see of him.

It didn't take long for the bantam rooster to go to Stephanie. He stood over her while she laid on her towel on her back. Ellen thought he was probably offering to get Stephanie a drink or something, but he didn't move from the spot. They were sharing a laugh at something, and Stephanie arched her back, shoving her chest out, and opened her legs. He was down on his knees beside her, and a few minutes later, he was on the towel as well, stretched out beside Stephanie.

Ellen looked around in embarrassment again. His hands were roving around on Stephanie's body and she was preening for him. About the time that Ellen was afraid that someone in authority would come over and tell them to take their business to somewhere private, they were both on their feet, the hunk was picking up Stephanie's towel, and they were headed for the underbrush at the far end of the beach, which quite apparently promised someplace more private.

The lazy warmth of the sun was affecting Ellen by now, and she was drifting off to sleep, her slitted eyes turned toward the sea, where the darker black hunk was surfing in toward the beach again now, crouched on the board in a sexy stance that made Ellen involuntarily moan quietly and move her hand to between her thighs.

The black beauty was moving up the sands of the beach toward her, the setting sun at his back. They were alone on the beach; all was quiet except for the beating of Ellen's heart. As he came closer, she could see that he was smiling a white-teethed sensuous smile at her. There was no question what he wanted. And strangely, Ellen had no question what she wanted either. And the look he gave her told her that there was no question of Ellen's willingness in his mind either—that he knew exactly what she wanted, what he could do. What he would do. Water from the sea was dripping off his perfectly sculpted torso. The water-leaden suit was pulled down at his waist to where it almost wasn't there. The black of his pubic hair curled out over the waistband in contrast to the straightness of his dreadlocks. He was black, black, black. Power built, overpowering, foreboding. The silky yellow material of his swimsuit was plastered to his thighs and crotch. Ellen could clearly see the line of his half-engorged cock through the material. She moaned in anticipation.

When he reached her, her legs parted and he knelt between them and hovered over her, his lips coming to hers. She felt his hands on her body, exploring her curves and crevices, and she gasped and moaned as he cupped her mound through her bikini bottom, squeezing and rubbing. Her top was hooked in front, between her breasts, and he moved his mouth there and unhooked her bra with his teeth, teased the two sides away, and drank of her breasts, one after the other. He had moved a hand under the waist of her bikini bottom and moved his index finger into her fold and found and began to rub her engorged clit in a lazy circular motion.

It was a dream and Ellen knew it was a dream, but she could feel every sensation of touch—possibly more so than if she had been awake. And because it was a dream, she did nothing to stave off anything the overpowering black man was doing to her. Ellen was shocked she was letting him to this to her—without asking or any preliminary seduction. But she wanted him. She wanted him inside her. Now. She reached down, underneath the waistline of his swimming trunks, and she shuddered in gloriously fearful anticipation at what she found there.

But he wasn't ready for that. He kissed and tongued his way down her belly. He paused long enough to unfasten her bikini bottoms at either hip and pull them away. He lifted her legs to his shoulders, and the index finger on her clit was replaced by his tongue. Ellen groaned. Since he had pulled away from her fondling, her hands had been dug into the sand on either side of the towel, but now they went to the back of his head and wound their way into the strands of his dreadlocks. The dreadlocks were spread across her belly and upper thighs, softly tickling her and rippling in rhythm to the working of his tongue on her clit. She sighed and started to move her hips in rhythm with his tonguing.

She couldn't tell the point at which the tonguing turned into sucking, which began in a gentle motion that was alternated with him pulling up and blowing on her clit. But soon he was sucking on her clit hard and working it with his teeth, and Ellen was thrashing about in his grip and crying out in passion and clawing at the roots of his dreadlocks. She was being lifted higher and higher and higher until she exploded into waves of fireworks.

Then and only then did she feel the bulb of his cock rubbing against her clit, making her moan deeply again and then drag down and into her now-wet and slack channel. Deeper and deeper, stretching and punishing in glorious waves of pleasure. And then he started to stroke, and she gasped and groaned and moved her hips with him, experience explosive release again and again and again, feeling him tense and explode as well, bathing her insides, deep.

Ellen woke up. She looked out to sea, but she didn't see the black hunk now. It was almost with a sense of relief that she didn't see him. She had to fight this feeling—not just the feeling of desire and lust but the unsettling fear of/desire for the massive black man.

She was hot, the sun having gotten to her as she slept. She rose and moved down the beach to the sea. She entered the surf and when she was beyond the first series of breakers and in at the depth of her waist, she dove under the approaching waves and swam out to sea. She swam with little sense of how far out she was going—until she had gone farther than she should. She was tired at the effort of the swim—so tired that she wasn't able to fight the undertow that was now out here. She tried swimming straight back, but the undertow was pulling her away from the beach. Then she tried to swim almost parallel with the beach to get out the pull of the sea. But that wasn't working either.

She was almost out of breath when she felt powerful arms surround her shoulders. They were heavily muscled. And they were jet black.

"Don't fight me," a rich baritone voice murmured to her. "Just go limp and I can get us both back onto the beach."

Ellen did as she was bid. Feeling the dreadlocks on her cheek told her that this was the very hunk that Stephanie had pointed out to her and that she had melted to in her dream. His arms were strong and his body was hard. He held her there in a dogpaddle that pressed what Ellen knew was a half-engorged penis on her thigh. She wanted to turn and wrap her legs around his waist and pull him deep inside her again—but she realized she was being hysterical. They hadn't really made love. It had been just a dream. She began to tremble.

"Don't be afraid," he muttered. "The water's cold but we'll be on the beach soon." Then he moved her on her side and went into a crawl position himself and started to head back toward the beach in swift, strong strokes that cut through the undertow almost effortlessly. Ellen thought of the swift, strong strokes he had been thrusting inside her in her dream, and she almost cried at the loss.

But her fear overcame her. When they were back on the beach, she thanked him in a breathless voice and offered to pay him for his trouble. He refused any reward with a lopsided smile that was as melting as the one Ellen had remembered in her dream. Then, she had turned and moved quickly to her towel and bag on the beach and rushed toward the ship, not looking back to see the bemused look on his face.

From that stop, the Enchantment of the Seas was on its way back to Miami again. Riyad almost didn't let Ellen out of his suite again, except for meals, where even there, he was sitting right next to her, gripping her thigh and move adventuresome parts of her anatomy under the table. It was like he felt he needed to pack in a decade worth of sexual encounters in the two days' sail back to the states. He fucked her again and again and again, often returning to what seemed to be a favorite of his—fucking her in the bum.

Ellen was exhausted and beyond sexual satiation when what was supposed to be a restful voyage was concluded.

When the ship docked, and just before the women were back in their cabin and the Saudi men in their junior suite, Riyad had given Ellen his business card and told her to call him when they were back in Atlanta. He didn't ask her for her address or telephone number. It was clear that he expected her to want what he had so much that she would beg him for it.

She felt like throwing his card away and taking a shower. But then the admonition of the fortuneteller at the Dominican Republic stop came back to her. She would regret it if she fought against the inevitable. She put the card in her wallet. She still didn't plan on calling Riyad, but she wouldn't tempt fate—at least not yet. She couldn't give in and call him if she no longer had his number.

* * * *

"We need this client, and he asked specifically for you, Ellen. It's your chance to shine and go to the senior level."

"Thanks for the chance, Jason," Ellen answered.

They were sitting in the conference room of Ellen's ad agency, looking out through full-length plate-glass windows to the neighboring Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel. Ellen had been home from her momentous Caribbean cruise for a couple of weeks already and she was no less confused and flustered about the Saudi she'd been swept up by and the black Haitian hunk she had merely brushed by. She hadn't called Riyad yet—but there had been empty evenings in which she had been sorely tempted to. The longer she held off, though, the heavier the silly advice—advice she knew intellectually was silly but that she couldn't break away from—of the Samana fortuneteller weighed on her mind. Was she fighting the inevitable, her fate, as the fortuneteller admonished her that she was? She wasn't getting any younger. She had had in sex in the last two weeks—and coming after such a drenching experience of it, made her life without it that much harder to endure.

Now she kept Riyad's card in her wallet in her purse, close by enough to be used at the first moment she gave in to the inevitable.

She was still immersed in these thoughts when Jason returned to the conference room with the client, so the reality of what had been a dream slapped her full in the face when she opened her eyes and saw him—the jet-black hunk who had saved her from the undertow in the Haiti surf.

"Ellen, this is Charles Winton. He owns the Winton chain of gas stations and wants to turn their markets into boutique gourmet restaurants. He says he wants to give our agency a chance to launch his ad campaign. And he asked specifically for you. I'll leave you two to get acquainted and for Charles to lay out his needs."

Ellen was almost speechless until Jason had left the conference room.

"You," she said in a low voice. She knew it was idiotic, but she couldn't come up with anything clever to say. It was all there, as the fortuneteller had said. Tall, dark, and handsome. And dealing with a precious commodity—oil. In this case, gas stations.

"Yes, me."

"You asked for me specifically."

"Yes. I felt we weren't finished—back there on the beach in Haiti. I looked for you—almost constantly—during the cruise back to Miami. But I couldn't locate you. I managed to worm your cabin number from the hospitality desk, but there was a couple in that cabin. Strangely, the woman in that cabin said she knew you and she gave me your address and told me you worked here. She also said she thought that you were fated to be with me. And, also strangely, it is fortuitous that we both are from Atlanta. And fortuitous also, of course, that I'm in the need of the services of an ad agency."

"Yes, fortuitous."

"You thought I was just one of the Haitian Royal Caribbean beach bums in Labadee, didn't you?"

Ellen couldn't look at him. She realized that she had seen him as just a stereotype. Someone for her to fear and avoid just because of his skin color.

"Almost inevitable that we would meet again, wouldn't you say?" Charles persisted in getting a response.

"Yes, of course." And of course it was. The fortuneteller had told her it would be inevitable and that she shouldn't fight it. She'd been wrong about who the fortuneteller meant, though. She thought it was Riyad. But it wasn't him. It was someone far darker than a Saudi—but, she hoped, someone much more suited for her.

"As I said, I felt something back on that beach. Didn't you?"

"Yes," she answered simply. If only you knew of my dream of you, she thought. That fortuneteller in Samana had known. Maybe she really was a witch. Ellen saw no reason to lie—or to fight it anymore. If this was where it was leading. It was just like in her dream. He was walking toward her, intuitively knowing—even better than she did—what she wanted. If he wanted it to . . ."

"I do want you to do my ad campaign . . . but I want so much more than that from you . . . if you can possibly feel the same."

Ellen blushed. She didn't answer. But she didn't say no, either. The velvet baritone of his voice. The beauty of him even in a business suit. The brief memory of that half-hard of him on her thigh was he brought her out of the surf.

He was close to her know. He lifted a strong hand and gently placed his fingers on her cheek. She felt desire course through her like a bolt of lightning.

"You aren't saying no."

"No." She blushed again. "No, I'm not saying no." It was pulled out of her as if sealing her fate—which perhaps it was doing. Don't fight the inevitable, she screamed internally. Overcome your fears.

"You're trembling. You are afraid of me, aren't you?"

How did he know? Ellen's thoughts raced back to that fortunetelling session in the dirty little cinder-block house on the dirt road in Samana. What had she just breezed by there? She hadn't taken it at all seriously. Now it seemed to be all important, the advice she was being given there.

"Yes . . . a bit," she whispered.

"We can work with that. We could make a bit of fear work for us. It could make it—the coupling . . ." he stopped here and looked directly into her eyes, searching for signs of flight ". . . much more intense." Not seeing any signs of withdrawal, he added. "Much more pleasurable . . . satisfying. I would be good to you. I will be good to you."

She was trembling, hardly able to keep herself in check. She already felt moistening between her thighs.

"I know I can please you," he added in a low, hoarse voice.

"Yes, I know you can too," she murmured, her thighs turning to jelly and almost collapsing so that he had to place a supporting hand on the small of her back—saving her just as he had done in the sea at Samana. Ellen moaned, already feeling him working deep inside her, her thoughts racing back to what he had done with her in her dream—knowing, intuitively, that he could—and would—do it to her in the flesh as well. It was fate; it was inevitable.