Rendezvous With a Stranger (4 page)

      
On my way home from classes Thursday afternoon, I stop at the deli remembering that there’s nothing in the apartment decent to eat.
 
Between deciding on turkey breast or a Caesar chicken salad, I feel the warmth of someone at my back, standing close.

      
I jump at the recognition of him, mostly the aroma of his distinctive body.
 
Then gazing over the deli counter I see the reflection of him in a cooler window.
 
The sense of his aura hovering lordly over me is confirmed in the picture of the two of us.
 
His subtle strength takes hold of even the expression on my face.
 
Turning quiet and subdued, I feel restrained as though he’s securing my hands behind me with his belt.
 
There’s the fragrance of mint on his breath, traces of sweat—the day’s been warm again.
 
I’m almost afraid to turn around and look directly into his eyes.

      
He reads my mind and whispers, “don’t move, just buy your dinner and we’ll leave.”

      
Do I buy for him too? I wonder.

      
Deciding that this is not a date, I order for myself, pay the bill and take the sack from the girl behind the counter.
 
Reaching around me, the stranger takes the bag from my hand. Then with his hand firmly guiding me from behind, we walk out the back door into the alley.
 
I feel him next to me as we walk, but I don’t look up to note his face.
 
There’s something grim about his attitude, though I’m seduced by the strength he has to dominate my spirit.
 
All the desire I’ve submerged trying to hold this man from my thoughts comes back to me with a stinging spasm in my belly.
 
The demand for him presses on.
 
I can’t forget him and I can’t throw him off.
 

      
We wander for several minutes in the back alleys behind the neighborhood stores coming to a place surrounded on three sides by high brick walls.
 
Looking up, there’s just one window looking down into the secluded alcove, and that appears vacant.
 
Am I in more danger, or will this privacy suit me?
 
I wonder why I leave myself so vulnerable.

      
“Remove your clothes,” he whispers his order.

      
“Here?” The first word I’ve spoken since he took charge.

      
“Here, Ellen Laurey,” he states plainly.

      
Then, looking into his eyes, I see the danger of objecting.
 
He has tenacity that melts my wavering fears into trivialities.
 
I suspect I’ve asked for this by my nature—not having any clear picture of myself.
 
One second a woman of bold confidence, the next, a withering violet plucked from a garden, a trifle for this stranger’s next sexual whim.

      
I begin to take off my clothes.
 
The sweater is easy, pulled quickly over my head.
 
I do it without thinking, but then shrink back, looking toward the opening of the alley afraid someone might see.
 

      
“Don’t look back,” he orders and then he stares, waiting for me to continue.
 

      
There’s a bra and skirt, panties and panty hose, though my shoes come off next.
 
I fling them lightly aside, then reach under my skirt to remove my underwear.
  

      
He waits, expressionless, without a hint of his thoughts, without approval or disapproval, without lust or love, or affection in his eyes.
 
My bra and skirt remain and I choose the bra, letting the two orbs sway nakedly in the autumn air, the nipples tightening, a quivering sensation dropping low to my belly.
 

      
As I finally unzip my skirt and discard it to the pile of clothes at my feet, my utter nakedness alarms me.
 
So defenseless, I’ve given everything to the man with the cool navy eyes and the long ponytail.
 
He owns my next minutes.
 
I have no objections, no right to quarrel with him.
 
As he presses his hand to my pubis and feels between my legs, he knows I’m aroused.
 
I lean against his arm as he pumps his fingers into the liquid heat.
 
He takes my hands and holds them against my back so I can’t hang on to him for comfort.
 
It’s just his arm to balance against and the firm grip of his fist keeping me in place.

      
Fucking me with three fingers inserted in my vagina, my breasts jiggle from the movement.
 
The heavy flesh bangs back and forth on either side of his arm.
 
I close my eyes and do nothing but feel what I feel.
 
I can believe that I’m in the privacy of my house or the seclusion of his apartment.
 
I can pretend there’s nothing to fear in exposure, that I can’t possibly be naked in an alley with a man using me for kicks.

      
When he pulls me off of his arm, withdrawing his fingers from my cunt, he pushes me to the ground on my knees.
 
The hard asphalt and the surrounding brick remind me where I am.
 
Another shudder of fright wells within me, but that’s not the stranger’s concern.

      
“Take my cock,” he says.

      
I look up at his face, imploring him with mine.
 
But I yield, because that’s the only answer to this amazing moment.
 
I reach for the bulge of his blue jeans and draw the zipper down.
 
His cock is free at my mouth, and the remembrance of his unique aroma drifts into my nostrils.
 
I taste the hard flesh, the sinewy stalk he pushes between my lips.
 
He jams himself in hard while holding my hair.
 
I open wide, afraid I’ll choke, yet the whole thing slides easily into the surrendering me, joining me crudely to his most intimate home.
 
He fucks me soundly, though not like he would my cunt or ass.
 
Drawing away from my lips he expects my tongue to tease the head and that sensitive underside.
 
Then he has only one hand on my head to steady himself.
 
My hand takes the cock and jacks him off.
 
The more vigorously I rub, the more his moans speak of his mounting need.
 
I think he’ll cum on my face as he did before, the sour taste of cum to bathe my lips.
 
But withdrawing altogether, the stranger pulls me up on some aging metal box.
 
At thigh height, I’m readily accessible, free to open my legs so he can use my cunt to finish.
 
He’s swift, driving in.
 
The energy of his thrusting erection makes my hips squirm and my belly quake.
 
I tense as my muscles contract and my pussy squeezes his cock.
 
He demands his pleasure as much as I desire my own.
 
Almost within an instant, I go from servant to the served, rocking wildly against the metal beneath me while hanging on to him for satisfaction.
 

      
I cum.
 

      
Not in waves and currents, but with one thundering crash and then it’s over.
 
Utterly over, as he presses the last inch of himself within me and his climax rocks me hard.

      
I don’t care much about being naked in the alley anymore.
 
I don’t know if we were seen by someone looking down this lonesome backdoor street, or if someone saw us from the window above. The alley is vacant now, except for the two of us taking up this one tiny corner. Although it doesn’t feel empty at all, more like a canyon brimming with untold stories of sexual pleasure.
 

      
A fly buzzes my face and the stranger brushes it away.
 
I think he’ll smile at me as he stares down at my fucked smudged flesh.
 
Instead, his expression is serene.
 
I imagine mine is too.
 

      
I wait for clues from him to move.
 
Not thinking it wise to take the first step in restoring my clothes, I let the warmed metal at my back be a small comfort.
 
I’m humbled, such satisfaction rare.
 

      
Before he says a word, his cock is tucked inside his jeans, the zipper is up and he’s redone his ponytail with a quick swish of his hand.
 

      
“You want me to stay naked until you leave?” I guess.

      
“No,” he shakes his head.
 
“But I want you to kiss me.”

      
I think it intimate that our lips can meet now.
 
Our bodies have shared a great deal while our affections have shared little.
 
I remember the mint and the scent of him as he pulls me up enough to sit.
 
And when his face comes close to mine I tremble, nervous as a young girl in the hands of a far older man.
 
I think of him as a master, someone who knows me, who gives me gifts, while demanding his use of me.
 
I feel small in his presence, overwhelmed that he has this power, and I realize that I’ll do anything he asks.
 
He knows this too.
 
He owns me that completely.
 
Knowing all this about myself, I realize I have much to accept.

      
His lips linger long on mine. They’re full like the two I offer him as I bend my head back to meet his descending face. I taste a bit of salt with my tongue. My nostrils pick up a minty aroma. Soft against mine, his lips press firmly, but not without tenderness. I relinquish again.
 
As scared as I was to strip naked in this alley, that seems easy now compared to what I feel with his lips on mine.
 
Such intimacy takes us beyond these brief interludes in lust to something I can’t yet define.

      
This kiss seals the moment, like freezing the image of this alley so it’s indelibly imprinted into the framework of the universe, never to diminish or fade with time.
 
So potent, I can’t imagine bringing it to mind without this wealth of feeling arising too.

      
I believe this fixed picture is instilled in him as well, though what he feels in his heart is a secret to me.
 
I may be nothing more than spare change in his pocket, or I may be as priceless to him as this back alley moment is now to me.
 

      
“Put on your clothes,” he tells me when the kiss is finally gone.
 
He hands the pile to me and looks as though he’s about to leave.

      
“You know, I don’t know your name,” I say.
 
“I don’t know what to call you.”

      
“How do you think of me?” he asks.

      
“As a stranger,” I say.

      
“Then that’s good enough.”

      
“But it’s not a name.”

      
“And none is necessary, Ellen Laurey,” he retorts.
 
I wonder if he’s mocking me.
 
If he knows the truth about the poet’s name.
 
I’d never ask, and I suspect he wouldn’t tell me if he did.

      
“Will I see you again?” I ask.

      
“I’m sure you will,” he says.

      
“When?”
 
I have my bra and sweater covering my breasts.
 
Then my skirt quickly hides the rest of me.
 
It’s little more to restore my underwear and shoes.

      
“When I want you again,” he says.

      
I have a million questions I’d like to ask him, but then I realize that I don’t really want his answers, just him—just like this afternoon, again and again.

g

      
I’m at Isaac’s minutes later.
 
When the stranger and I parted, he went one direction, I went the other.
 
For a few minutes on the street before I entered the building, I turned to watch him vanish into a sidewalk of people just getting out of a theatre matinee.
 
Once they dispersed, he was gone, not even a glimpse of the ponytail wagging behind him.
 
Rushing upstairs, I find myself collapsed on the couch in front of the TV almost giggling.
 
Still much too horny to think about food or correcting papers, or anything else—even Smithereens—I pull off my nylons and panties, catching the scent of the stranger as I open my legs.
 
With my hand at my crotch I bring myself off for the second time in an hour, sure that before the night’s over I’ll be masturbating again.

      
Days after the sex in the alley I’m dozing in Isaac’s overstuffed chair with a mountain of half-graded test papers on my lap, I hear the phone ring.
 
I’m glad it wakes me even if my dream was about sex.
 
I have to get my work done.
 
When the phone keeps ringing, I finally think to answer it, it’s not just an alarm.

      
“Lynnie, you there?” Isaac was the first to call me
“Lynnie”
and it stuck.
 
And from his lips, it always sounds the sweetest.

      
“Of course I’m here,” I tell this author of my pet name.

      
“You sound so … so …”

      
“I was sleeping.”

      
“Aw, I’m sorry.
 
I thought you might be having sex in my bed, and I’d be terribly jealous of whoever’s with you.
 
How’s it going anyway?”

      
“Great, it’s great.
 
I’m great, Smithereens is great … healthy as a horse, full of spit right now.”
 
I just saw the black tail end of the feline darting around the corner of the room into the kitchen.

      
“What else?
 
Tell me about Robby, you guys going to be okay?”

      
I think a moment.
 
“I’m not sure.”

      
“Oh?” He sounds disappointed.

      
“I’ve met someone.”

      
“Ooo, who?”

      
“Um ….” I should never have said a word.
 
But I’m only half awake and not thinking clearly.
 
“Just a guy.”

      
“Who?”

      
“You don’t know him.”

      
“But he has a name.”

      
“Yeah, but I don’t know it.”

      
“What’s that?”

      
“I said I don’t know his name.”
 
All of a sudden this need to confess my passions to someone takes over.
 
Isaac’s in Greece, too far away to make trouble.

      
“But you’re in love,” he says.

      
“Not exactly.”

      
“You’ve had sex?”

      
I hedge a moment.
 
“Yes.”

      
“And you really don’t know his name?” He’s aghast.

      
“I really don’t know his name.
 
And the first time we fucked it was in the back of Morey’s Tavern and the second time I was naked in an alley.”

      
“Good god!
 
Have you gone mad?”

      
“I don’t know, maybe.”
 
I’m sounding listless because I’m tired.

      
“Lynnie, does Robby know?”

      
“Of course, he doesn’t, and I’m certainly not going to tell him.
 
And right now, I haven’t a clue why I just told you.”

      
“You’re feeling guilty,” he says, making up my mind for me.
  

      
“No, not at all.
 
I guess I just needed to say it, so it feels real.
 
I don’t know what’s happening, but I feel perfectly safe with him.”
 
I say that first just because I’m trying to allay Isaac’s fears, but somewhere within me, as scared as I am of the stranger, I do feel safe.
 
“He’s not a wacko, trust me.”

      
“You’re sure?”

      
“Yes.”

      
“Positive?”

      
“Yes, yes, I’m positive.”
 
Isaac could always be annoying.
         

      
“But why?
 
Why are you doing this, I mean there could be other dangers … more than getting killed?”

      
“Because he does things …” my voice drifts.

      
“What things?”

      
“He knows me, knows that I need what other men have never given me.”

      
“Like alleys and stairwell’s?”

      
“I guess.
 
It’s not easy to explain, but don’t judge it.”

      
“I don’t.
 
I just worry that you don’t know his name, or who he is, or if he’s really sane.
 
And if you’ll end up dead next time you give him your crotch and do whatever …”

      
I stop myself from defending my actions.
 
It’s not necessary, and Isaac has every right to wonder what stupid things I might have done.

      
“I needed to tell someone,” I say.
 
“Someone that can’t stop me …”

      
“What if I tell Robby?”

      
I bristle.
 
“You’ll make a mess of my life,” I state succinctly, adding a heavy dose of conviction to my voice.
 
“I am all right.
 
And if I’m not, well, you know … someone knows.
 
And …”

      
“Lynnie.”

      
“Shuuush.”
 
I try soothing him with the sound of my voice.
 
“Besides, Isaac, I think Robby and I will be living together full time again soon.
 
I’m about to take my old job back.”

      
“You are?”

      
“Yes, and I just need this fling, that’s all it is.
 
The guy’s safe, I’m sure of it.
 
And I don’t want you to worry … so how’s Greece?”

      
Isaac is so accepting.
 
A lot of guys would have raised a decent ruckus, and be calling my friends and God knows what else, but I knew Isaac wouldn’t.
 
Perhaps that’s why I chose him to tell even if it was a completely unconscious act.
 
In telling him, my motives made sense.
 
But explaining the crudity without glossing over the facts only instills my desire for the stranger more.
 
I know there will be another time and it will be more disturbing than the others.
 
Even if my story about Robby and me is a fib, it actually makes sense.
 
Makes me wonder, when this “fling” finally ends, if I’ll confront the bastard, throw Chelsea out, and make a determined effort to put the marriage back together.
 
It sounds like a genuine idea.

      
Wide-awake after talking with Isaac, I’m doubly aroused.
 
All I can think of is sex and getting off.
 
But not getting off in fantasy, or to the picture of Shelley, or any other of Isaac’s babes on tape.
 
Being crude feels like more fun, though without the stranger, I’m not sure where to turn.

      
I stare at the phone for a while, like it’s beckoning me with a bony finger into a lurid and dissolute land.
 
I’m reminded of Robby, the months we spent apart a few years back, how our salvation was the phone calls …

      
I pick up the phone and dial.

      
When I hear him answer, his voice sounds far off, he’s either been asleep or having sex.
 
I’m so thrilled with that thought, I start right in to see if I can capture him before he realizes what has taken over.

      
“Hi, sweets, I was missing you …” I purr in that sex-charged voice I use for lovers.

      
“You were?” he still sounds drowsy, but anxious.

      
“Yeah, I wish you were here.
 
I just took off my clothes and am lying on Isaac’s couch.
 
He has this really wicked video of some old girlfriend with little tits masturbating in front of a mirror.”

      
“You’re watching that?” he asks.
 

      
“Hummm …” My hand’s between my legs.
 
I’m not sure what makes me happier … the feel of my spasming clit or the mounting arousal I hear in Robby’s voice.
 

      
“You say she’s masturbating,” his voice lowers.

      
“And dancing …”

      
“Dancing …” the timbre lower still, I imagine by now he’s stroking himself.

      
“You remember how I used to dance for you … in that see-through blouse and the lace g-string … how I’d brighten my nipples with rouge and ride on those slippery dildos …”
 
I hum between phrases, the natural lilt of my voice riding the pleasure I feel now.
 
I’m mellow, so very mellow and so very pleased as Robby’s breathing becomes more pronounced.

      
“I remember, Lynnie, you had that black catsuit, the one that looks like nothing but a shadow against your skin … and everything else ….”
 
He’s thinking of how my nipples showed right though and the pubic hair and glistening pussy … about my undulating hips as they swayed before his languid sex-starved eyes … and how when I’d bend over, my ass just inches from his face ... the slit in catsuit’s crotch would part and he could see me from my puckering anus to my pink wide-open labia … and how he’d tickle the clit and watch it contract and expand before his eyes.

      
“Is she there.
 
Chelsea?” I moan softly as though I’m asking him to screw me.

      
“Hummm …”

      
“Tell me.”

      
“I’m just thinking of you, hon, just you.”

      
“I know she’s there …”
 
I hear the shuffling behind him “ … that’s why you’re moving from the bedroom into the den.”
 
I hear all the clicks of the doors and sense him walking through the house.
 
I know for sure the bitch is in my bed, wrapped in my sheets.
 
Where once the thought would cut me like a knife blade, now all that matters is that I have him while she lays oblivious to his arousal.
 
This one is mine.

      
“Ah, Lynnie, you were talking about dancing …”
 
I hear him getting settled in the creaky leather chair.

      
“Yes, I love dancing.” I return to reveries of old.
 
“I love flaunting my tits for you, moving them in front of your face so you have to reach to kiss them ...”

      
He gasps as I smile.

      
“You know, I think tonight I’ll dress up and go out on the street,” I start again … a fantasy I’ve told him a hundred times, it’s all in my devious mind and he’s been lured right into the pleasure palace in my head.

      
“You on the streets, yes,” his groan’s so sweet … “and you’re wearing that tiny skirt that I bought you on the trip to New York.”

      
“That’s the one, darling, and this new blouse, one that shows a daring cleavage, the kind you like to dive inside with your lips.”

      
There’s no reply, just the sound of his heavy breathing.

“I’ll meet someone while I’m out.”

      
“Because you’re being nasty,” he thinks to answer.

      
“Ooo, yes, he wants to fuck me right in the bar where we meet, and I don’t even know his name. You want to be there don’t you?”

      
“Damn, I’d like to see you fucked.”
 
I can hardly hear him speak, his voice is so under his breath, as if in another part of the house the lights have gone on and he hears Chelsea stirring.

      
“He has a ponytail, and beard, a tough guy in jeans … I’ll dance lewdly for this rough dude until his eyes can’t stand the tease any longer … and he finally takes me by the hand and leads me to the restroom … or better yet, an empty stairwell.”
 
The thought’s so fresh I can see my stranger in front of my face. “Think of him fucking me, Robby, fucking me … bending me over and putting his dick in my snatch.
 
Think of him crude, Robby.
 
He’s taking me hard so I can’t stop him … and you, you’re watching and getting hard … just like you’re hard right now.”

      
His breath is deeper still, a groan escapes now and then.
 
Saying so little, I know he’s about to come.

      
“He’s playing with my tits, his hands inside my blouse, messing with my clothes and skin. … then he tears away the blouse and I’m half naked in the back of the bar … in the stairwell … his cock in my cunt.”