What happens in Honolulu...

What happens in Honolulu...

1

It always happened the same way. Whenever I was in London, which could be up to half a dozen times a year, I would ring Valentina's workplace and speak to her secretary a week in advance and give her the dates I would be there and the hotel I would be staying at. I normally only stayed in town for a day or two before returning home.

Each evening my routine was pretty much the same. After giving my lecture and attending the mandatory dinner in my honour I would return to my room, shower, and shave, and retire to bed. I like to sleep in the pitch dark and so I pulled the blackout curtains tightly shut.

And then I would lie there in the dark in quiet but frenzied anticipation for her to come to me in the night. Sometimes I would hear the door open soon after I went to bed on the first night, but on most occasions she made me wait. Once when I stayed for three days she waited until the third night before she came to me. And she could come any time. I was woken from midnight to dawn and would try to sleep as I waited in the dark to make love to her.

It had started had in Honolulu 18 months previously when we were both attending the same medical conference. Back in the day drug companies were allowed to wine and dine us and pay for us to attend conferences with relative impunity. Nowadays if they give a ballpoint pen to a physician It can be considered a bribe. I had come from San Francisco although I trained in the UK and am British. Valentina was from London and is Italian.

The lectures, presentations, seminars, and break out meetings for the day had finished and although we were from different places we had been funded by the same drug company who took us out for dinner. It was the last evening and folk were letting their hair down in anticipation of their return to their normal working lives, whether it be to their patients or their laboratories, and for some to their spouses and children. I was single and had never married but nonetheless I was sorry that the interlude of the conference was finishing.

I had spoken to Valentina in passing a couple of evenings before but had been unable to say much because of the number of competing male admirers. She was tall, olive skinned, and dark haired, with a good figure. And she dressed well.

But it was on the last evening when I got to know her, both in the everyday and biblical sense of the word. Neither of us drink alcohol and by the late evening the atmosphere was raucous. We had ended up sitting at the same table, and after initially talking shop we inevitably started to talk about ourselves. I didn't have a partner to own up to having, but when Valentina talked about her marriage she intimated it was not a happy one and she had no children. I learnt she was originally from Palermo in Sicily but had gone to the UK when she was very young. Her two sisters had returned to Sicily and her parents were dead. Apart from her husband her relatives were all living in Italy.

And so, we talked and talked. It was obvious that she was an intelligent woman with a broad knowledge of music, art, history, and literature and had travelled extensively. And I found myself more than just liking her.

As sometimes happens I became aware of a strong mutual attraction growing between us and based on "what happens in Honolulu stays in Honolulu," as we agreed to meet at breakfast in the morning, I rather hopefully passed her a note. I can still remember what it said, "4712." I turned and walked to the lifts to return to my room and Valentina ran up to me and whispered in my ear.

"Lights off. In the dark. No talking."

An hour later she came to me. As she had requested the room was pitch black. I saw her briefly silhouetted in the door as she entered the room and heard the rustle of her clothes being removed before she drew back the sheets and lay next to me. She smelt of orange blossom. Her body was smooth and hard, and I could feel her small but firm breasts against my chest. I felt her momentarily press a finger to my lips before she kissed me. And took her in my arms and held her tight and kissed her back. That kiss was long, deep, and passionate and as it continued she took my hand and guided me to her moist sex and showed me how to rub her clitoris in small circles as she slowly moved her hand on my hard penis. She was unhurried and made sure that she kept me on the edge.

She took her first come within a few minutes. I sensed it approach as she stopped rubbing me but held my shaft hard and moved her head and lay back on the pillow. And although I couldn't see her, I could hear her breathing become more heavy. She started to stiffen, and I could sense her thigh muscles tightening until she started to buck, and simultaneously I heard a long drawn out moan of ecstasy and she lay still.

She started to rub me again and I knew she wanted more and so I placed my fingers inside her whilst keeping my thumb against her button and fingered her to several more climaxes, each of which she took with a long drawn out moan of pleasure.

Finally, I lay between her legs and slowly slid deep inside of her wet vagina and started to move in and out; slowly at first and then harder and faster. She reached down and fingered herself and her breathing became more rapid and as my own passion grew she spoke for the first time and whispered.

"I'm on the pill."

Her legs trembled and her thighs tightened around me, and she drove her pelvis upwards, and she wroth and bucked, and then as she groaned longer and louder than before, I came deep inside of her.

We lay in the dark and cuddled until our breathing had returned to normal and then Valentina turned, reached out, and switched on the table light by the side of the bed and smiled at me.

"Thank you."

"Nobody has taken the trouble to make love to me properly for a very long time."

A little later she sat astride me and as she rode me I could appreciate the curve of her hips and her pert upward pointing tits. When she orgasmed, she threw her head backwards as she ground herself on me, and for the second time I ejaculated inside her.

A short while later she dressed and then left but not before she had kissed me on the cheek and I had given her a book of matches with the name of our hotel printed on the front, and my home telephone number hastily written inside.

There is a famous Latin proverb attributed to Galen, a Greek physician and philosopher who was born In 129 AD in Pergamon in modern day Turkey.

Post coitum omne animal triste est, sive gallus et mulier.

After sex all animals are sad except the cock and the woman.

Sometimes Aristoteles is named as the author of this proverb but with no reference to the cock or the woman.

Post coitum omne animal triste est.

Whatever the truth of the origin of this proverb may be, I have often felt a sadness after sex, possibly from the loss of the closeness to another human being that I had briefly shared. And I know that some women feel the same. Indeed, I once had a girlfriend who would sob uncontrollably just following her orgasm.

That morning when Valentina left me I felt the most profound coital sadness I had ever experienced. It was as if a chance of great future happiness had been taken from me. I had to remind myself that this was really a "holiday romance" and should be treated as such.

Despite this I eagerly looked forward to seeing Valentina at breakfast but when I got to the restaurant I was told that she had already gone. I was extremely disappointed but as I glumly sat drinking a cup of black coffee the maitre'de handed an envelope to me.

The envelope was unaddressed but inside was a note.

"Dear Robert,

I have left early this morning because I did not want to see you. This is not because I regret what happened last night. Far from it. Last night was something I will always remember. I did not want to say goodbye to you this morning because for me at least it meant more than casual sex. If you are in London look me up at my work through my secretary Denise and say who you are and where you are staying, and I will find you. Don't try to find me at home. My husband is a very jealous man. This is my office number.

Please look me up. Love Valentina"

As it happened I was in London a month later and left a message with Denise. I did not know what to expect but I left a message with the hotel reception to say that Mary would need a key to my room if she came to the hotel.

Just after midnight on the second night the door opened and closed, and in the darkness, I smelt orange blossom and heard the rusting of Valentina removing her clothes before she wordlessly got into bed and lay with me. And then we made slow passionate love. It was even better than before, and this time Valentina was able to stay with me. In the morning she told me her husband was away on business in France and wouldn't return until the evening, and after breakfast we were able to walk in Hyde Park, go to the zoo, and then have lunch together.

After lunch we went back to bed and made love with the sun streaming through the window. I remember lying between he thighs and looking up at her as lay wide eyed and open mouthed as she writhed under the caress of my tongue.

And in the late afternoon she left me.

I returned to London on eight separate occasions following that and on every occasion except one Valentina came to me in the night. Only once did I not see her and on that visit Denise told me she was not in London. Sometimes she stayed for breakfast and on a couple of occasions spent the day with me but more often than not our time together had been fleeting and far too short.

She only managed to see me at all because her husband was rarely at home and when he was she told him she was with one girlfriend or another. She told me that she believed her husband didn't really care and had any number of lovers of his own. Sadly, It turned out that only one of these beliefs was true

2

I had come to love Valentina and believed she loved me, but I had not yet contemplated asking her to leave her husband for me. And then on my last visit to London everything changed.

I had gone to bed in my room at The Dorchester and slept. I was woken by the sound of my hotel door opening and when I looked at my clock the red display showed 4.10 am. This time there was no smell of orange blossom, and something seemed amiss. I reached over and switched on the light and saw a dark haired, plump, Asian looking girl standing nervously in the middle of the room.

"Who are you," I said?

"I'm Sampaguita."

"Doctor Valentina sent me to say she can't come."

And then she started to cry.

"He found out and he's hurt her, and she told me to find you."

"He is a very bad man. You must come now!"

And she showed me the book of matches from Honolulu.

She told me that there had been a fight between Valentina and her husband who had accused her of seeing another man. And then he had beaten her and when she had fallen over he had continued to kick her. But Valentina had still had the presence of mind to send her maid to find me.

I hurriedly dressed but couldn't think what to do, so in desperation and with little hope, I rang the police to tell them of a domestic disturbance at the address that Valentina's maid had given me. The call handler asked me to wait, and I was surprised when I was informed to wait at the hotel reception and that a police car would collect us from there.

And so, twenty five minutes later I sat and watched as the police knocked on the door of a very expensive Chelsea home. They went inside and 10 minutes later reappeared escorting Valentina as they did. She came to the car and when she saw me she started to cry and sat beside me and threw her arms around me. And in the half-light I could see that one of her eyes was black and the other side of her face was bruised and swollen. When I took her in my arm she winced and so, as the tears ran down her face, I held her gently and I told her I loved her, and I would never let her go.

We were taken to The Chelsea and Hammersmith Hospital and after a brain scan and multiple x-rays of her head and ribs Valentina was reassured that there was no permanent damage but was admitted to the hospital overnight for observation.

It was only then that I started to understand. Up until then I had not had time to ask myself why the police had responded to a domestic incident with such speed and why there was a guard at her hospital room door. It was apparent that Valentina's husband was a very nasty customer who was already on the police's radar. He was suspected of being a major drug dealer, but nothing had ever been proved.

Two days later we flew back to The States together. We flew first class, and she held my hand tight in hers all the way home. Valentina had already decided that she wasn't going to press charges for assault. She had after all been guilty of adultery, although it had been with only one person, whilst he had committed the same sin with dozens of women during their short loveless marriage. Following their marriage, and by the time she realised what kind of man he was, it was too late, and she was scared to leave him. But not now. Now she was scared to stay.

3

Two years passed. Valentina divorced and promptly gave her settlement to charity. She told me it was dirty money, and we didn't need it. The British Police had still been unable to convict her ex-husband. Life was good and we were married and very much in love. Mary was working for the USMLE examinations to be able to work as a physician in the United States.

We went to Honolulu for our honeymoon and stayed in room 4712 and this time we made love with the lights on, although I insisted on Valentina wearing her orange blossom perfume.

As erotic as that first night was I prefer to watch Valentina when we make love. I love to watch her beautiful face flush and her eyes widen as her need and her passion grow. I also love her groans of ecstasy as she writhes beneath me.

I loved her then and I love her now

4

Ten years have passed, and our love is unabated. It is a constant in an everchanging world.

Then yesterday we learned of the jailing of a British drug dealing kingpin and Valentina remarked how ironic it was that a girl from Palermo in Sicily should avoid marrying a Mafioso but instead marry a thug from the east end of London. She added it was lucky really, because if her husband had been a Sicilian then Sampaguita would have come to me that evening armed with a stiletto and not a book of matches.

And she smiled.

Then I asked what would have happened, if what had happened in Honolulu had stayed in Honolulu.

And we both smiled.