I don’t know why she insisted I come on this cruise with her,
since this is her beat not mine.
I feel a little like a pull toy being pulled behind her on a
string, tagging along because she wants me here, not because I’m needed.
She seems a bit distant when we climb the gang plank, and
then gets lost in the crowd, leaving me to twiddle my thumbs and other parts of
my anatomy on the poop deck.
I feel a bit guilty about all of this, about what I think
might happen, hoping we can find a dark cubby hole on this eloquent cruise boat
where we might cuddle and well… you know.
Only there are no dark corners on the newly minted boat,
taking its virgin journey from the dock up river down to Lady liberty and back.
Even the dance floor is bathed in bright lights, alternating
colors, sometimes purple, sometimes blue, sometimes intensely crimson.
The worst part is that we both know almost all of the people
taking this maiden voyage, and most of them know us, especially the public
officials who frown at seeing the two of us together, asking why it takes two
writers to cover such a short trip as this.
“What’s the matter, bright eyes?” she asks, suddenly
appearing again at my shoulder, her pen and pad in her hand, her gray pants
suit making her look incredibly official and incredibly sexy.
I can picture myself unbuttoning each button to her jacket
and blouse, getting down to the nitty gritty beneath, my mouth watering for a taste
of more than the free drinks the cruise is offering.
“I don’t know exactly why I’m here,” I tell her. “Frankly, I
feel a bit useless.”
“You’re here because I want you here,” she said with a twinkle
in those deep, brown eyes.
As always, something stirs in their depths, only I cannot
read what, a mystery that makes me ache even more to delve into her.
“Just stay close,” she says, leaning near my face, her lips
glistening, and I do everything in my power not to steal a kiss.
“As for being useful, I’m sure I’ll think of a way to use
you before we’re through,” she says, touching my arm, eye gaze full of promises
of what might transpire later.
My imagination goes nuts!
I can see it all in my head, drawing her open like a clam
shell, her blouse, her pants, laying her down on some flat surface where I
might probe that space between her legs where the real treasure lies.
I start looking around, searching for any secret place on
this elaborate tub where we might settle in long enough to turn fantasy into
reality.
Maybe she knows a place where we can go? Out of the prying gazes
of this crowd of over-inflated dignitaries, none of whom even remotely interest
me. I wouldn’t be here if not for her.
And then, out of the blue – charging across the dance floor
and through the array of lights, comes a greasy-haired official, who I dislike,
and assume she dislikes, too, a raging bull with gaze thick with the same lust for
her as I feel, and I hate him for it, and get very shaken when she smiles and
greets him like her long lost friend.
“So, what kind of hanky-panky are you two up to?” he asks,
looking her up and down the way a cattle buyer might a prize cow, and then with
distain at me as if he thinks I have no business feeding on the same range.
He’s joking, of course, but it makes my heart skip a few
beats, and I realize how obvious all this looks, me and her, here together, he thinking
maybe I’m here play thing, someone she only hangs out with when she can’t find
a real man.
When I look at her, her expression has gone cold again,
clammed up, wearing the professional expression that is a thick and inaccessible
as a new Berlin Wall, taking a world war for me to break through.
She also looks a little annoyed at him, and me, and tells us
both she has a job to do and storms off.
Befuddled by it all, I decide I need air and climb the
stairs to the upper deck, outside, with the boat moving south, the New York skyline
glittering in bright sunlight on one side, our neck of the woods on the other.
I go out to the bow – thinking of that scene from Titanic, where the two lovers
stood arms wide, to hold her like that, hoping desperately, this trip doesn’t
end up the way that one did.
The breeze from the movement and river clears my head a bit.
She’s not with me. But neither is anybody else.
Then, I see her moving around on the more populated part of
the deck, her broad sunglasses hiding a bit of her face, but adding to her mystery,
making her look like Mata Hari on some dark mission where she must seduce
someone to gain their secrets and save the world.
Each time she moves, it is like a dance step, graceful, yet determined,
a powerful being hidden in the guise of a reporter. She is not Clark Kent or
Superman, but some Greek Goddess in disguise, evoking a presence that even the
unsuspecting public senses but cannot define.
I find myself aching for her all the more, this goddess of
the harbor, who might if I am lucky settle for me.
Only at that moment, my bubble bursts. She is surrounded by
admirers, including the official from below, powerful men all aching as much to
possess her as I ache, but with infinitely more to offer, and she seems aware
of this, laughing and smiling, touching their arms, looking into their eyes as
if promising them something sweeter later, and she seems particularly drawn to
the greasy-headed official from below.
He is close to her. He touches her arm. She presses her chest
against him, tender, pointed breasts my fingers tingle to touch.
And worse, those others around them, the petty dignitaries who
are with his party seem to encourage him with looks and laughter.
Something in my stomach turns, as if someone – that greasy
man – has eased a knife into me and twists it to make the pain worse.
It makes me angry. I abandon the bow of my imaginary Titanic,
marching towards the middle of the ship, painting this bastard with the same
brush as that rich bastard from the movie, telling myself, he isn’t good enough
for her regardless of how much money he had or power.
This startles him, giving me a surprised look as he asks
what my official capacity is, implying that maybe I am a stowaway and that the
captain ought to make me walk the plank, and if I don’t drown, then at least, she
– this amazing woman – will be rid of me.
“You can’t both be covering this event,” he snarls.
“I’m just along for the ride,” I say, daring him to have me
thrown off.
She looks amused, glancing at him and then at me, seeming to
enjoy our efforts to outdo each other, two raging bulls, the winner of which
gets to fuck her.
And for some odd reason, this excites me, and a scene
flashes through my brain of both of us, ole greasy-head and me, doing her at
the same time, pressing her between us like some exotic hor dourve, each of us probing
her delicate interior in search of the pearl we know we will find.
She, however, turns cold again, her puzzled gaze seeming to
pick up on a vibe in me she doesn’t like, and reverts to her professional self,
taking the arm of the greasy-haired official and marching off, leaving me
standing there, dry-mouthed, speechless.
When the boat docks, I see them getting off together, and
picture them going to her place, where he slowly undresses her, slowly explores
his hands, and mouth, and diving into her with his scuba gear to those deeper
places he knows her pearl lies.
I am crushed. I stand on the deck for so long, I don’t
realize dark has come and the ship mate tells me I have to leave.
I make my way down the gang plank resigned to my fate, when she
suddenly appears at the bottom.
“What the hell is taking you so long?” she asks.
“I … I thought you went off with him.”
“Him? Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t associate with a scumbag
like him except when I have to do my job.”
“And you came back for me?”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” she says. “But you’d better
hurry if you expect to make love to me. I don’t have all night.”
In my mind, we’re back on the bow of the Titanic.
“Get that silly look off your face,” she says. “We’re not
doing anything until you buy me dinner first.”
My cell phone chimes as I drive through traffic on a detour
due to the city digging up a street I usually take.
At a stop light, I respond.
“Where are you!” a shrill female voice on the other end demands.
“You were supposed to be here already.”
The woman only confirms the dread I felt when I got assigned
to make the deliver and the other delivery guys giggled, as if the knew
something I didn’t. and wouldn’t tell me.
“You’ll find out,” Jude said with that sly, uncomfortable smile
of his, and a devilish twinkle in his eyes.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I ask.
“She’s hot,” he said, although he hinting at something darker,
some aspect of this regular he wanted me to find out for myself.
Customers come in a wide variety, some far kind, some are
mean, some are generous, some of greedy, and some fit odd categories that
stretch beyond usual definitions. And from the way Jude acted, this is one of
them.
Hot?
Perhaps Jude senses something in me that I try to keep
hidden. It’s been a long time since I’ve had sex, and it scares me to think how
I will respond if she is as “hot” as Jude suggests. I would rather have someone
impatient for their pizza and rude about by not being there on time, then to find
myself tempted.
“I’m on my way, honest, Lady,” I tell her as the light
changes. “I promise your pizza won’t get cold.”
“It better not be!” she snarls then hangs up.
I try to put all of this out of my head, this odd feeling I’m
getting, and the odd humorous and knowing looks on the faces of the other
delivery people who watched me leave.
It’s my horniness that makes me read into their reaction,
perhaps they even sensing my need and feeding into it with these silly innuendos.
I may just be a delivery guy, but I take the job seriously,
like a professional, capable of separating my personal needs for what I get
paid to do.
I pull up to the curb and then carry the box to the glass
door, ringing the buzzer, and getting the response through the tiny grill speaker:
“who is it?”
“The pizza man,” I say.
“About freakin time,” she says, and the buzzer lets me into
the vestibule. “I’m on the top floor.”
I go through the inner door, then up one flight, then the
next, as if climbing, feeling a bit like the Prince visiting Rapunzel in her tower,
getting more and more nervous with every step, thinking of Jude’s expression
and the laughter I saw in the eyes of the other workers.
I reach the woman’s door and knock, and the door flies open
to reveal her standing on the other side, so scantily dressed I almost see
through her, every curve of her only marginally hidden behind the thin veil of
her negligee.
“You certainly took your time,” she says.
I try to respond, try to explain about the road opening and
the detour, but I am speechless, my gaze focused completely on her, from that painful
wedge between her legs, to the pink tips of her breasts, to her slightly slanted
and perfectly kissable lips, to her eyes – like deep pools of brown in which I
am already drowning.
“Well?” she asks.
I thrust the box at her, its warmth against my fingers as if
I am already touching her.
Her eye brows rise like question marks.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks, although it is clear from
the humored look in her eyes she already knows and has already guessed just how
long it has been since I have stood before a goddess like this, seen firm
breasts like hers, felt the urgency I know I should not feel. I am in a deep fog.
I can look nowhere else but at her, and yet, the more I look the more befuddled
I get, and speechless.
The vague memory of my fellow workers laughing comes into that
fog.
I cough slightly and give her the price, doing my best not
to stare where I can’t help staring, trying to think of anything other than sumptuous
meal that she has laid out before me, not pizza but something infinitely more desirable,
as if she is the delivery girl bringing me the meal my imagination ordered up.
I need to concentrate on my job, I tell myself, although
planning the more terrible vengeance on my work mates when I get back to the
store.
“Yes, of course,” she says, her beautiful lips smirking. “Why
don’t you come inside. I suppose you’ll want a tip.”
What I want, what her eyes claim she is offering, make me
speechless again as I stubble across the threshold, pulled along like a play
toy at the end of string, or rather, drawn in by the rising thing between my legs,
a thing that makes itself all too evident, and which she clearly also notices
and her smirk turns into something nefarious.
The reasonable part of my brain has vanished. All that
remains is that small brain, driven by instinct, a devious inner being that betrays
all my best intentions.
I know I can no longer stop the inevitable and I step ahead,
one foot after the other, until I’m inside, she closing the door behind me,
admiring me.
“They sent a real looker this time,” she says. “You look
terribly cute in that little blue uniform. I’m sure you’d look even better if
you took it off.”
For some reason, this remark kick starts my main brain
again.
“I just need to get paid, lady,” I tell her, even though my whole
body quakes with desire to have her or perhaps for her to have me, my
reasonable brain telling me, “This is all wrong,” and telling me to flee while
I still can.
I’m going to roll Jude up in pizza dough and shove him in
the oven when I get back, if I get back, if I’m not baked in this woman’s oven
first, if I can remember the way back having left no bread crumb trail to
follow.
“I said take your clothes off!” she demands, no longer laughing,
her stare deadly serious. “Take them off and get on my couch.”
She points to the couch, and like a zombie I comply, clothing
abandoned behind me on the floor with each step, knowing I can’t stop it,
knowing that she intends to rape me, knowing that my inflated condition, the bulge
below my belt providing her with all the invitation she needs.
Then, I’m naked, on my back, as she strips off her gown and
climbs on top of me, easing her pussy down onto my throbbing cock, riding me like
she might a horse, up and down, until all I can do is grasp her breast and ride
it out, feeling my cock swell up deep inside her with every thrust, feeling my
need mingling with hers, up and down, again and again, my mouth finding the tip
of her breast. I am a child suckling. I am helpless to do anything but what she
demands, what her body insists on, and what my body aches to provide, up and
down, my cock feeling every inch of the soft interior, feeling her pussy
tighten around me, feeling her whole body quake with her need, she riding me,
she owning me, she pumping me until I cum, and then won’t stop, making me cum
again, making me to this until finally she cums, too.
Then, when she is done, she puts back on her gown, motioning
me to dress.
“You’re money is in the envelope on the table,” she says,
somewhat coldly. “You already had your tip.”
I dress. I grab the fee, and then stumble out into the hall,
hearing the door slam behind me, hearing my footsteps on stairs, my whole body
still vibrating, as if I am an echo, as if I have been emptied out.
I feel violated and yet incredibly pleased, and suspect,
even Jude doesn’t know what happened here, and I will never tell him, knowing
also I might never be asked to make the same delivery again.
