Paul's Lucky Night?

Paul hated everything about Halloween but tonight he couldn't believe his luck. He'd scored at the firm's Halloween bash. At least, that was the way it looked as he held the passenger door of his Merc open, allowing the raven haired woman to settle herself into the plush leather interior of the car. He smiled in anticipation as the door closed on his potential conquest with a satisfying "clunk" of expensive German engineering.

Paul was good looking, self-confident and popular but his philandering was the subject of office legend and he knew it. His female colleagues carefully avoided his advances, unwilling to trade a night of passion for the bitchy remarks and knowing glances that would surely follow. In any case, according to office rumour, a whole night was longer than the average duration of Paul's relationships with the opposite sex. He considered himself, therefore, fortunate in the extreme to be in the position of potentially bedding the beautiful, if somewhat strange, woman now sitting in the passenger seat of his pride and joy.

It hadn't always been like this; eight years ago, the car wasn't so luxurious and there had been a wife at home, waiting for him to arrive after softening up a potential client over an Italian meal. That was on Halloween too. He remembered the restaurant with its eclectic mixture of business diners and groups of bizarrely dressed party goers, outrageously dolled up for the evening's fun. He'd been drinking that night too. It was after the meal, driving home alone that he had seen them in the headlamp's beam, a mother and daughter, waiting for a bus at the side of the road. The daughter was an attractive woman and would have been aged twenty-one or twenty- two years old at the time, he couldn't remember exactly. He remembered the screams though and the sight of the young woman thrown in the air by the impact when he lost control on the bend and his car ploughed off the road. He remembered the trial too, the words of the judge as he was sent down; five years imprisonment, for causing death while driving under the influence of alcohol. Most of all he remembered the look on her mother's face in the gallery as he was taken down, the hatred, so deep it was palpable. Six months later he read in the paper that she'd committed suicide; she had no one left, husband gone, then her only daughter taken from her. That was when Jenny told him she wouldn't be there when he came out. He hadn't contested the divorce; there would have been no real point.

These thoughts jangled painfully in Paul's mind as he walked round to the driver's door. He shivered, and jerked himself together. He'd put all that behind him now, struggled to create a new life, moved to a new town. He was a high flyer, an executive with a board level job in his sights. And anyway tonight looked like being his lucky night, maybe it would break his Halloween taboo. He switched on the CD player and the cool sounds of his favourite Miles Davis CD washed over him as he pulled out of the parking lot and swung the car onto the road, heading towards his apartment.

It had all begun not more than thirty minutes earlier when he heard the words, "You must be Paul," uttered in a husky female voice, as he picked up a drink from the bar. Turning to discover the owner of the voice, he was taken aback by the sight of the pale skinned, slim woman standing at his elbow gazing at him through large dark eyes. Her appearance was extraordinary; how could he have failed to notice her on his way to the bar. By any standard she was an extremely attractive woman and the thin white cotton dress she wore was surely out of keeping with both the season and the occasion. Without exception, the other women wore the dark colours traditionally associated with Halloween. He glanced quickly around the room, everyone appeared to be engrossed in their own conversations and nobody seemed to have noticed the pale-skinned beauty who stood at his shoulder.

His mental double-take notwithstanding, Paul's reply was instant, "I am," he said, "and if I wasn't, for someone as lovely as you I'd pretend to be." If he expected her to smile at his repartee he was disappointed; her face registered no emotion.

She simply said, "Will you buy me a drink?" and, in response to his nod added, "red wine please, I'll wait over there," pointing to a corner of the room which was, by some miracle, unoccupied. She left him to order the drinks without further comment and moved away, waiting silently a few yards distant.

As the bartender dealt with his order, Paul looked over at the woman. She looked vaguely familiar to him but he could not place her and this worried him. He prided himself on his memory for names and faces; it was one of the skills that made him the good salesman that he was. Paul's appraisal was discrete but thorough. The woman was young; he guessed that she would be in her mid to late-twenties. She was slim, with long, slightly unkempt, jet-black hair which stood in marked contrast to her pale, almost translucent skin. Her almond-shaped eyes were large and so dark that in the dim lighting of the bar they might have been black, although Paul guessed that they would prove to be dark brown in brighter illumination. The curve of her breasts swelled the flimsy material of her dress in pleasing fullness. Paul considered himself a connoisseur of the female breast and what he saw excited him. The woman clearly wore no bra and her partly erect nipples were clearly profiled through the fabric of her dress. Paul's imagination went into overdrive, he could almost feel the soft white skin of her breasts under his fingertips as his lips mentally closed over a delicate pink nipple, feeling it engorge beneath his tongue as he sucked it into his mouth. He closed his eyes; he could hear her moans, imagine the arching of her body as his hand strayed down over her belly towards the moist cleft between her legs.

He snapped out of his reverie and mentally chided himself. 'Visioning successes' was all well and good and an essential weapon in the salesman's armoury but he had hardly said two words to the woman. This particular vision was a long way from being realised and he needed to move quickly -- if the boys saw the striking woman standing there alone they would be over like wasps around a jam-jar and his best chance would be lost. He looked over at the group of laughing young men. It was odd that they hadn't already spotted the woman in white but they seemed engrossed in their conversation and she appeared somehow to have escaped their attention. Paul picked up the two large red wines he had ordered. He eyed the drinks with some concern, he was a beer-man usually and, since the accident, he had been careful to watch his alcohol consumption before driving. Ordering the same drink though was a point of contact with the woman, a shared experience which might encourage intimacy. His desire overcoming his caution he carried the drinks carefully across the room to where she stood, apparently lost in thought. Paul was acutely aware that he didn't even know her name. Well that could soon be rectified.

Paul proffered the glass and the woman took it, slender fingers curling around the bowl of warming fluid. Paul particularly noticed her nails, they were not dirty exactly but they were certainly not the well-manicured, carefully shaped and polished set of his typical female colleagues.

"Cheers!" Paul raised his glass to her. She looked at him with an expression he could not fathom. She did not raise her glass to his, as he had expected, but lifted it to her lips and drank deeply, draining almost half the glass in a single draft.

"So you really needed a drink then?" Paul said, taken aback as much by her refusal to acknowledge his toast as by the manner in which she consumed her wine.

"Yes, I needed a drink," she said and reinforced her statement with another deep draught which emptied her glass completely. "Get me another will you?" she said, passing the empty glass to him and, before he could speak, adding, "and then I want you to take me back to your place."

Paul had been about to refuse, his eagerness to become more intimate with the curves beneath that startling white dress, tempered by the potential pain of dealing with a monosyllabic and potentially drunken woman, but her brazen proposition (for surely that is what it was) immediately changed his mind. Mirroring her behaviour, with something of an effort he drained his own glass and with a rather husky, "It will be a pleasure", headed back to the bar to get the refills.

His mind reeling with a combination of hastily-consumed alcohol and the surprising turn of events, Paul ordered two more large reds. For himself he could have done without any further drink, the wine was not the only alcohol he had consumed that night and now he expected to have the woman in bed within the hour he wanted to perform at his best and he knew the drink would not help. While waiting for his order he looked across at her, turned slightly away from him now, her slender frame in stark contrast to the fullness of her breasts, their shape clearly profiled through the sheer fabric covering them.

He began to undress her mentally, his experienced eye taking in the fastening of her dress. There were buttons all the way down the front; excellent. He would unfasten enough of them to allow his hands to slip beneath the fabric giving access to her breasts, feeling their firmness beneath his fingers as he teased her nipples erect. He will have her squirming with pleasure by the time he slips the dress off her shoulders and allows it to slide to the floor. Then what? His mind turned over the possibilities. She would fumble to undo the buttons of his shirt as his hands roam over her body. He will step away from her, the better to admire her half-naked body as he pulls his own shirt over his head. He drops to his knees in front of her, drawing her pants down over her thighs allowing her to step out of them. She will kick off her shoes and stand with her legs spread apart as he inhales the musky scent of her. He will tease apart the lips of her pussy and begin to work on her, first with fingertips and then with his tongue. Freeing the tight little bud of her clitoris from its protective folds of skin he will suck and tease until she comes, right there standing in his living room. He will suck the juices from her as she screams and moans. In his mind's eye he pictures her, writhing with pleasure, crying out for more. He will move her to the sofa and lay her back on its ample cushions. She will open her legs wide allowing him to feast on the sight of her swollen pussy, wet with a combination of her juices and his saliva. He will rid himself quickly of the remainder of his clothes and, kneeling between her legs slide his shaft deep into the warmth of her pussy. She will cry out with pleasure.

"Your drinks Sir!" Paul found himself snatched back to reality by the impatient voice of the bartender. He paid for the drinks in a hurry, unsure how long his reverie had taken him away from the land of the living. He mentally shook himself. His, "keep the change," mollified the barman somewhat and the object of his fantasy remained where she stood, waiting for him to return. The painfully large erection resulting from his mental rehearsal of what he fervently hoped would soon become reality was thankfully disguised by the semi darkness of the room. Or was it? Paul received the distinct impression that the brief downward glance and the faint smile that hovered on the lips of the woman as she took the glass from his hand indicated that she was well aware of his arousal. Again she raised the glass to her lips in silence and downed the liquid rapidly, taking no apparent pleasure in its consumption. Paul, this time, did not follow suit, making small talk and enjoying the warmth and richness of the Merlot. Even so, he finished his wine with unwonted haste and in response to her "Let's go!" uttered before he had even had a change to put his empty glass down, followed her from the room.

Remarkably she had no coat despite the chill of the late October evening. "Perhaps it's the wine that keeps her warm," was Paul's immediate thought but he kept this to himself as he ushered her into his car and they began the short journey back to his flat.

Within 10 minutes of starting the journey Paul decided to concentrate on the road ahead, he had given up trying to make conversation with the woman in the passenger seat who steadfastly refused to respond to his small-talk. He no longer cared how or why she appeared so willing. All he wanted now was to get her home and realise his earlier fantasy. He drove fast, cocooned in the soft leather, with the soothing sounds of jazz flooding the car.

"This is what you want, isn't it Paul?" The woman broke the silence. He stared at her. She had undone the top buttons of her dress and, as he watched, fascinated, spread the material apart to reveal the smooth curve of her breasts and the deep shadow of her cleavage, illuminated in the glow of the instrument panel. The car lurched as Paul, distracted by the unexpected sight of her partly exposed breasts, dragged his attention back to his driving. She inserted sinuous fingers through the opening in her dress, caressing herself.

"What the hell are you doing?" was his shocked reaction, "can't you wait until we get home?" There was no reply from his passenger, but she reached across and ran her hand over his crotch and, deftly unzipping his fly, freed his straining cock. Paul almost fainted. The slender fingers that curled round his exposed member were ice cold. Paul gasped as she gripped his erection, sliding her hand along his cock.

"Yes," her voice was low, "yes, you want me," she seemed to be talking to herself, rather than to Paul. She withdrew her hand sending a frisson of desire through him as she deliberately brushed the sensitive tip of his shaft. Paul fought to concentrate on the task of guiding the car as it powered down the winding road, his mind reeling.

"It's time," she said, her voice had a harder edge to it now. Sitting back in her seat, the dress fell away from her shoulders and down her arms, the perfect whiteness of her skin glowing in the near darkness. She slowly parted her legs, her dress riding up over her thighs. Paul turned, irresistibly drawn to watch as she pulled her dress higher, even in the dimly lit interior of the car he could see she was naked beneath it. A slim finger tracing a line down through the dark triangle of pubic hair brought a low moan from the woman's lips and she spread her legs wider, her hand moving in slow rhythm between her legs.

Paul tore his gaze away, desperate to control the car. Too late, he was only yards from a sharp right-hander. He hit the brakes hard but the car hardly slowed on a road now slick with the dusting of autumnal frost. The car started to slide. Paul instinctively put out his arm, as if by doing so he could protect his passenger from the inevitable impact. His arm met air and then he saw her, bright as day, standing pale in the high intensity beam of the halogen lamps as the car hurtled towards her. The flood of recollection sent Paul rigid. He let go the wheel and covered his face. But this time there was no sickening impact... no screams...nothing.

The car must have hit the tree at almost 70 miles per hour, or so Sargent Hammond reckoned, and he should know, he'd seen enough RTAs in his time in the force. Hammond sat in the back of the patrol car and wrapped his hands around the warming mug of tea.

"Twenty years in road traffic John, and I've seen some sights but nothing like this." He shivered and took a welcome pull at the tea. His colleague too looked pale and leant on the patrol car door for support.

"I know," he said. "I don't get this one, always been two people in the car when there's a dick hanging out." He paused for a moment. "There's another thing too, you can't usually tell what the bloke was thinking before they hit can you, but this one, Christ. He must have been terrified."

Hammond looked up from the steaming mug and eyed his pale-faced colleague before turning to look at the mangled wreck that was once a car.

"Aye," he said. "Poor bastard, looks like he's seen a ghost."