Dance Of Desire (9 page)

As she walked she couldn’t help but feel sorry for herself.

Her first apartment. Haunted.

Her steps slowed as she caught sight of the forbidding building. Then she straightened up and said aloud, “No. I’m not going back,”

She hurried past it, her steps intent and determined. As she walked deep into the dark of the night, she didn’t care less of any of the dangers of being out alone at such a late hour. She just kept on walking until she felt drained and sleepy. She didn’t even know where her feet were taking her anymore.

But in spite of her weariness, a renewed sense of conviction took over. She just about had it with whatever she was going through the moment she slept at her apartment. Whatever that shit was she wouldn’t allow it to happen again. Ever.

She
swore
to herself, with all her heart and soul—that she wouldn’t go back there that night, or ever. She’d find a way.

“God help me, I’ll find a way, somehow,” she breathed.

But as luck would have it, her feet just lead her back to her building. The very place she vowed to stay away from just moments before. It was almost as if she were being pulled back there. Over, and over again.

She snapped out of her reverie long enough to realize where she was.

“Dammit!” Cassie said as she turned on her heel to start running away from the dreaded place. She would have, if not for the man.

“Oof!” Cassie said as she ran directly into a tall, hard body.

“Hey!” the guy said in protest.

Cassie started to mumble a half-hearted apology when something behind the man caught her eye.

A taxi was parked at the curb.

HER APPREHENSION ABOUT going home had come to a head and all Cassie wanted was to be anywhere but her apartment. The taxi gave her a much-needed shot of hope at an escape.

Cassie broke her gaze long enough to take a closer look at the person—the taxi driver—she had run into. He had delicate features for a man—he looked almost feminine. And then his outfit did not match his face, as they were hardcore hip-hop complete with the bling, the baggy pants, and big shirt.

Cassie was horrified that she’d run into someone, and yet was in even more terror when she realized she was home. “I… are you on break, Mister? Because I’d really like to get out of here.”

The driver chuckled a bit. “Sure looks like it, Miss.” He twisted his torso for one last stretch and beckoned Cassie to come walk with him to the car. “Where ya headed?” the driver asked as he unlocked the cab and opened the door for her.

“Am open to suggestions. A-Anywhere, but h-here,” Cassie could not stop her voice from shaking.

“Alrighty then, little angel. Anywhere it is. Name’s Gabe by the way,” he said with a flourish as he shut the door and walked to the driver’s side.

Cassie looked around her. The name “Gabe’s Gypsy Jitney” was on the medallion. Something about the taxi made her feel at ease. The sweet smell of some sort of incense wafted in the air. She didn’t know why, or how, but she felt that the incense was clearing her mind of cobwebs. She was suddenly thinking more clearly.

As the cab pulled away from the curb, Cassie realized that she really had nowhere to go. She couldn’t really ask Gabe to drive around all night. She didn’t have enough money for that. She also didn’t want to go over to any of her friends. Too many questions that she’d rather not answer. She’d just been at Lauren’s and she didn’t know if she’d be welcome at Krystal’s. All of them would wonder about the bruises and why she was afraid to go home.

Tears welled up in her eyes.

I really have nowhere to go. I wonder how much it would be if I took this all the way to my parents.
She hastily wiped at the tears. No. She was not going to give up now. She just needed to sleep–asafe, dreamless, long sleep.

She caught the driver watching her in his rearview mirror. He smiled when he saw her looking. “Long day, Miss?”

She nodded. “Exhausted.” Cassie looked again in the mirror, her gaze meeting her driver’s bright eyes, and a flash of recognition came to her. She had seen him before. At the club!

The club! The club she and her friends had gone to the other night – she could hide out there for few hours. And, she thought to herself, he might be there. That nameless hunk she had danced and flirted with. The one she thought had…

Cassie drove the thought away from her mind. He didn’t. That’s it. Her friends said they had left her in her apartment and had locked her door. He did not come with them, so in case he had some kind of Spiderman ability and could climb walls, he had not come inside her apartment like a few flashbacks into another nightmare was telling her. She could not remember the whole of that dream though. Why couldn’t she remember the good ones?!

She giggled a little hysterically in spite of her exhaustion. She relayed her instructions to the driver.

“Do you know where that is, Gabe?”

He smiled, almost smugly. “Absolutely.”

Cassie sighed, breathing in more of the warm, lovely scent in the cab and dozed off. So after what seemed like only seconds, she was transported across town.

“We’re here, Miss,” called the driver gently voice.

“Oh. Really?” Cassie looked out of the cab, her eyes drowsy. She’d arrived, all right, and the disappointment hit her. “It’s closed.”

“Sign says ‘closed for maintenance, go to our sister club...” the driver trailed off when his eyes moved somewhere else to the right. “Wow. He’s a looker,” he cooed in admiration at a man just passing the club, under the light of a fading street lamp.

Intrigued, Cassie looked towards that direction, too.

It was Paulo! The guy from her dream! She had a flashback about a guy giving her a massage in a sunny beachfront and in her dream, he was Paulo. Or…

No. This was
the
guy! The hottie she’d danced with who had all those magic drinks. She couldn’t be mistaken even when she had been helplessly drunk that night. Why else would she dream about him if not after meeting him?

Not minding the muddling of her thoughts – she had been quite familiar with muddled thoughts the past few days anyway – Cassie hastily paid the driver and leaped out of the cab before the man “Paulo” could get away.

“Hey you!” she yelled, and the man stopped. There was no one else there except him. It was quite late already, and all the other customers to the club must have gone to the sister club. She clumsily rushed over to where he was and nearly fell at his feet if he had not caught her. She should have been embarrassed, but her relief at seeing him was much more intense than any other feeling she might have had.

He’ll make it better
, she thought.
He’ll tell me what really happened. He’ll take care of me. He’ll make the nightmares go away!
were the thoughts that rushed through her head somehow. Everything started that night. He was in her dreams. He must know something about all the weird things that had been happening to her!

“Hey, take it easy, lady!” Recognition dawned on him as he got a closer look at her face. “It’s
you
!”

He remembered her, and Cassie was pleased that he did. The look on his face certainly showed his delight at seeing her. But the light in his eyes was quickly extinguished as he did a quick scan of their surroundings.

His gaze was particularly penetrating when it passed over the shadows and the darker alleys. It was almost as if he feared they were being watched. It was late, and the clouds had obscured the moon. The nearest street light chose that moment to die, leaving them in darkness and making her move closer to him.

“What brings you here, Beautiful?” he asked in his tender, low voice.

“I, uh…” She looked back for her cab and saw nothing. Cassie looked up and down the street. Nothing. Where did it go? She did not even hear it leave.

“What are you looking for?” he asked, uneasy. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think he was just as alarmed as she was.

“There was a taxi cab…” she explained. “Gabe’s Gypsy Jitney. Right there. I rode it from across town… didn’t you see it?”

He let out a heavy sigh saying, “Always interfering.”

“What?” Cassie asked, confused.

He made a face. But he did not look angry. He just looked grudgingly annoyed. She was almost sure he was talking about Gabe the cab driver because she knew he knew him. She distinctly remembered the two men bumping shoulders and looking at each other like they knew each other but they belong in different companies so they shouldn’t be friendly or something like that.

“Sorry, Beautiful. Wasn’t paying attention. I saw nothing, and then I saw you.” He smirked, amused. “Well, I saw you nearly fall on me.”

“Yeah, it’s been that kind of night…” she thought. And she just faded. She was just so exhausted and her knees gave way underneath her.

“Whoa! Are you high?”

High? No!
“Exhausted. Just exhausted,” she gasped. “I can’t sleep, haven’t slept, mustn’t. Won’t…” She was becoming more confused and delirious, her speech was starting to slur. She wanted to cry. She felt like her brain was giving up on her. “Where’s my cab? Did I even pay him? Or was he a she? I’m so tired, I can’t remember. So sleepy…”

“Come with me,” she heard him say determinedly. “My car’s close. So is my house.”

He slipped his strong arm around her and she leaned hard against him, feeling really good to be with him. He smelled
wonderful
, except she thought she smelled female cologne on him, too. She closed her eyes after he had guided her inside a car that was parked beside the road.

She realized that he smelled of both male
and
female perfumes. A jolt of memory of how they’d danced in the club that night came to her, so vivid she could almost taste the liquor she’d been drinking then and her overwhelming hunger for
him
. They had both rubbed hard against each other like crazed cats in heat.

Fueled by the combined scents that seem to cling to him, Cassie’s own insecurities reared its ugly head. Jealousy ate at her at the thought of her “Paulo” dancing with another. Her blood boiled at the possibility that some clingy girl rubbed against his hard body. Maybe it was even some eager boy grinding his ass on Paulo’s crotch! Though she had no idea if the man swung both ways, but she wouldn’t be surprised if he did.

She sneaked a glance at him as he drove.

Who wouldn’t want him?
she thought. And then her thoughts took a more pitiful turn.
Who have you been with since I last saw you? Who was with you tonight? Who had rubbed herself at you so well that she'd left her perfume all over your shirt?

Her pangs of jealousy were so intense, so foreign to her that she didn’t quite know how to feel. Why was she so territorial? She barely knew him and yet she didn’t want others touching him…

They soon arrived at his place. Cassie was still able to appreciate the charm of the weatherworn row house. It was dwarfed between much taller, more substantial brownstones. Oddly enough though, her vivid daydream of her time with him at the club was still so fertile she could smell “club” in the air of his place. So she tried to calm her imagination.

She was so caught up in checking out his place that she missed him discreetly shuffle a few papers on a nearby table, covering what seemed to be an unusual map. Had she had been more sober or alert, she’d have noticed that the map had his apartment right smack dab in the center of it, not to mention the other markings that it contained.

“Can I get you something to eat, Cassie?”

Her stomach growled, answering for her! She needed more than a couple of veggie pizza slices. She’d not eaten anything else all day.

“Yes, please, Paulo.”

He froze, a perplexed expression on his gorgeous face.

“What?” She paused, too, not certain why he was on alert. In fact, he looked alarmed.

What the hell did I just say?
She didn’t recall. Just “yes.” And “please.” With a questioning expression on her own face, she watched him take a slow deep breath before he said anything further.

“You called me Paulo. My name’s not Paulo – or not what I use. It’s Saul. But the nearest to me… a very long time ago, they called me by the Roman name Paul.”

“What? I thought…”
You were so busy being in heat and rubbing up against him you didn’t really get his name! Paulo – that was your dream guy’s name, idiot!

Saul was still staring at her. “Odd. Paulo with an ‘o’ is another variation for Paul, Beautiful. In present time, today, Paulo is Italian. I must look Italian to you. Or Portuguese. I’ve heard it before. To some, I look Greek. Or biracial, sometimes black and white, sometimes other combinations. But, no one has ever called me—”

“I-I won’t again.”

He gazed at her a long while, so long she became uncomfortable. “It’s okay,” he said eventually, with a gentle smile on his face. “You can call me that. Or Paulo. Or Hank. Or Joe. I’ll answer to anything you want to call me. I’ll always answer to
you
, Cassie.”

She felt her cunt wet itself at the sound of his warm voice saying that, to her. At the moment, she felt very close to him. It was almost intimate, but not exactly that. It felt more than that; like they had been together as lovers for a very long time, able to communicate just by the look of the eyes, by the smiles on their faces, and by the beating of their hearts. A time before now… a long time ago.

But that’s… absurd.

She blushed and turned away, finding food upon the table for her and gratefully giving herself to it before she further embarrassed herself.

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