Mistress of Night and Dawn (11 page)

The stranger bowed his head and kissed her and at the same moment she arched her back and pulled him towards her by the hips until he slid inside her and their bodies joined. They rocked together in perpetual motion, but it was still not enough for Aurelia. She hissed with the pain of his first entry, but with the sting came the wonderful and overwhelming sensation that he was inside her at last and filling not just her body but also her heart and her mind. And her soul.

How was it possible that two people who barely knew each other at all – had never even once made eye contact – could be so physically at home with each other? Mentally she knew that the whole thing was downright crazy. But her body sensed instinctively that she and the stranger were two pieces of one jigsaw puzzle and they fitted together as if they had never been apart, as if each of them could only be whole when connected to the other.

And then her mind went blank, as the stranger placed one hand on either side of her hips and unceremoniously flipped her over. He covered her body with his own. He was so much larger than she was. His thighs were thick and his shoulders broad and when he pressed his torso against her back and pulled back her hair and nestled his jaw against her shoulder, she felt cocooned in his presence, as if the earth had stopped moving on its axis and nothing existed besides this moment that contained them and their two bodies moving in unison.

Her cheek was wet. She flicked out her tongue and tasted salt.

‘Why are you crying?’ she asked him.

‘Because I want to see you. But it has to be this way,’ he replied.

‘Then feel me,’ Aurelia said to him, as she struggled to slip her hand beneath the combined weight of their bodies to guide him inside her again.

The stranger drew back onto his knees and raised Aurelia up with him so that she was resting on all fours. He threw his weight behind his first thrust as if he were trying to drill all the way through her.

Aurelia cried out in shock and then with joy as the violence of his motion satisfied her craving to be owned by him, filled by him, joined with him, part of him. She pushed herself up with her hands so that she could press back and feel him even deeper inside her, but in one swift motion he caught her wrists and pinned her arms behind her back. With his other hand he caught her before she fell and so Aurelia found herself balanced in his hands and on his cock. She allowed her body to surrender, knowing that she was entirely at the mercy of his movements, but also utterly safe with him. He would not allow her to fall, and neither would he thrust too hard. She could not imagine any movement that could possibly be unpleasant or too much for her. Even if he somehow managed to split her in two, it would not be deep or hard enough.

He took a length of her hair and twisted it around his wrist, pressing her forward into the cushions with one hand as he raised her head with the other so that her body stretched like an archer’s bow. His other hand slipped down to her neck and he encircled her throat. Aurelia pressed herself against him, allowing him to clasp her, basking in this expression of her vulnerability and her total surrender to him.
Take me
she wanted to cry out
. Own me, use me, I am yours
, she thought, but fearing that speaking would break the spell of their bodies in speechless and instinctive communion she kept silent, just allowing herself a murmur, a low groan of pleasure escaping between her lips.

When he lifted his hand from her throat she felt as though he had removed his hand from her heart. It was more than a caress when he touched her there like that. It was a gesture of giving and of taking, of safety and of violence, of belonging and of ownership, of surrender and of dominance.

Then his touch snaked lower, and Aurelia’s momentary grief was overtaken by new and immensely pleasurable sensations. He had wrapped his arm around her and pulled her back against him so that she could lean on his chest as he squeezed her breasts and then stroked her stomach and then his hand slid further south.

As he slipped his finger into her opening, they moaned together, he at the wonderful sensation of her fiery warmth and she at the sheer joy of feeling him inside her again. He moved upwards until he found her clitoris and he began to pleasure her in just the same way that she pleasured herself, brushing his finger around and around in perfect rhythm. He hugged Aurelia so tightly that she could feel his heart beating against her back, faster and faster in time with the motion of his other hand against her sex until suddenly she cried out and collapsed back against him, overwhelmed by the release of her orgasm.

Aurelia’s eyes slid closed and she breathed out a sigh of happiness as the stranger lifted her up and cradled her in his arms. He kissed her forehead gently and smoothed back the stray tendrils of hair that clung to her face. She felt his thigh muscles clench briefly and it occurred to her that the stranger had still not enjoyed the pleasure of his own release. But he did not seem to mind, and Aurelia drifted into a heavy slumber in his arms, enjoying the luxury of peaceful dreams free from the dark shadows that had plagued her thoughts ever since his lips had first touched hers at the funfair.

He held her tight until the night became dawn.

At the first sign of daybreak, the stranger pressed his lips against the smooth mound of Aurelia’s cunt and the mark of his visit that had appeared as she slept and would change her for ever, although it would be some time before she knew it. He kissed her mouth once more.

And then he left.

‘Aurelia! Aurelia!’ cried Siv. Her friend groaned, fluttered her eyelids for the briefest of moments and then fell back into sleep.

Siv took hold of Aurelia’s shoulders and shook her. Hard.

‘Aurelia!’ she shouted again. ‘Ginger took off with the funfair crowd. He’s not coming back. And I don’t want to hang around here all day. There’s a train in half an hour . . .’

Aurelia woke with a start.

‘Hello?’ she mumbled. She brought her fingers to her lips and felt the ghost of another mouth on her own. ‘Are you there?’ Aurelia asked in a daze.

‘Of course I’m here, you silly bint! Whatever has come over you? Let’s go. Now.’ Siv shook her again. ‘And for God’s sake put your clothes on before you catch your death of cold.’

Aurelia hastily crossed her arms over her breasts. She shook her head briefly to clear the cobwebs from her mind.

‘I had the strangest dream . . .’ she said. Her eyes darted around the room, taking stock of her surroundings. She could barely remember arriving in the strange stone church, never mind falling asleep here without so much as a cushion or a covering to keep her warm.

Her eyes landed upon her white blouse and skirt, which were folded neatly and tucked into the corner. She drew her brows together in a gesture of concentration, flipping through her memories like a Rolodex, but striving to grasp the memory of undressing was like snatching at a puff of smoke. The harder she tried to remember, the more the memory eluded her. She stood up and hastily slipped her clothes back on again, pausing when she noticed a darker speck of red on her previously pristine cape. Then she spied the open point of her cherry brooch, and her finger began to throb.

Had she raised her eyes, she might have noticed the alcove in which she had lain with the stranger and the single white rose that he had left there for her, its pale petals in stark contrast to the dark red and purple velvets and cushions that had supported their lovemaking, not that either of them had needed the comfort of fabric when locked in the embrace of the other.

But Aurelia didn’t notice. She quickly gathered up her things and hurried with Siv to the station, leaving the cold stone walls and her memories behind her.

A gentle wind was rising in the bay, dragging grey clouds along in its invisible wake, an initial taste of autumn, or fall as they preferred to call it here.

Aurelia had expected California to be an eternally sunny place and now realised how little she had prepared for this venture overseas. San Francisco’s climate, so far, had proven more European than tropical. She felt angry with herself for not having done any research once the subject had arisen in conversation with Siv and they had hastily decided on northern California. Whose idea had it been anyway? If she’d been seeking rain and dull, damp mornings, they could have travelled to London instead, or stayed home, surely?

Even though she had been born in the USA, Aurelia had been shipped back to her godparents in England following the death of her parents and this was the first time since then that she had been back there. Siv had visited New York and Florida for vacations, but neither of them had been to the West Coast and their prior knowledge had been distorted by the intake of too many films and TV shows.

They’d arrived a week ago at night and the city had already been in darkness. The cab drive to Oakland had seemed to take an eternity and, as the car had driven across the bridge, both the hills ahead and the peninsula behind had been enveloped in a foggy shroud through which barely a constellation of distant lights could be seen. This had proven particularly disorienting after the endless flight, and by the time they reached the sprawling cottage that would be their new home with its front lawn cut into a perfect handkerchief, they were in no mood to make conversation.

Edyta, the old woman who ran a small ballet school from the building where they would be boarding, had met them at the door. She was long and lean like a grasshopper, her dance training still evident in her bearing.

Ginger had helped arrange their accommodation through his connections as a parting gift to Siv. He claimed to have no idea of Edyta’s age and Siv and Aurelia didn’t dare ask, but suspected that she was probably in her seventies, though she might have been older and particularly well kept.

Siv and Ginger had sworn to keep in touch with each other, although Aurelia sensed the relationship would now come to an inevitable end as a result of their move to America.

A cream silk robe with a floral pattern was wrapped tightly around Edyta’s body and her feet were tucked into bright-red slippers. She wore a little gloss on her lips and her grey hair was cut into a short bob, coloured with a faint lilac tint and tucked neatly behind her ears. Her earlobes were long and hung even lower due to the weight of a pair of heavy ruby stud earrings.

She showed them straight to their bedrooms, all white walls and sparsely furnished in frugal but elegant clean lines, and pointed out the shower and the kettle and other necessities before allowing them to crash into bed and sleep off the stresses of the journey.

On the following day they had an opportunity to explore the cottage and learn what their duties would be. Aurelia, even though she was relying on her windfall to cover her board, had volunteered to assist with some of the paperwork one afternoon per week for the sake of gaining work experience and Siv, who was working for her room and suppers, would be tutoring dance lessons every weekday afternoon and helping with keeping the cottage clean. They were given a whole week off to settle in before beginning their chores.

That initial week had proven a blur and Aurelia had journeyed through it in a daze. She knew it was not only jetlag or the unsettling feeling a new environment often causes. As she adapted to the new house, the new city, the new country, juggled the accents, the curious customs, the layout of the local streets and nearby convenience stores, together with the strange state of being that a separation from home seemed to cause, she was conscious of the fact she was only partly here. Half of her mind, and maybe even all of her body – in a challenge to the laws of physical reality – was still back in Bristol, naked on the stone cold floor in the early hours of a bleak, coastal morning.

Her fugue on awakening and the strange stupor that had initially overtaken her mind when Siv had found her and she had hurriedly dressed and they had rushed to Temple Meads train station had gradually lifted over the days following the party in Bristol. Ginger had decided to stay on as his next job was in Wales.

Then Aurelia began to remember. At first, her memories were not like memories at all but rather brief flashes of feeling and of emotion so acute and so real that it seemed as if she had been transported straight back to the stone church, as if moments from that night had somehow been frozen in time and she was replaying them at random and sometimes totally inappropriate intervals. There would be occasions when she was walking down the street with brown paper bags full of shopping and her mind totally distracted thinking of the most banal of activities and suddenly she would feel the stranger’s hot breath on her cheek and taste his mouth on hers and feel the pressure of his fingertips caressing her clitoris and she would be almost overcome by great crashing waves of desire so strong that she needed to pause in her step, lower her bags of groceries to the pavement and stand still and breathe until it passed and she was able to continue.

But gradually the events of that night had arranged themselves in an orderly fashion in her mind, although she still had no idea who he was or what it all meant and this time she had not shared her experience with Siv. It felt too private. And altogether too confusing and crazy to explain to another, even her best friend.

There were moments when Aurelia wondered if she had lost her mind entirely. But no matter how much she struggled to apply a modicum of logic and rational thinking to her emotions, Aurelia could not argue away the fact that every thought of him was accompanied by the twin sensations of arousal and safety. Whatever had happened that night, she knew that she had been safe – protected, even – in the stranger’s arms.

Other things had got in the way, though, and she had been forced to put all of her questions, thoughts and desires on hold as they had rushed to organise their trip to America. It had been like a film in fast forward: the packing, the last-minute details, the emotional farewells and then the mini cab to Gatwick and the plane to San Francisco. As if the rest of her life had conspired to prevent her thinking about the night and the stranger and her deflowering until now.