She could barely make out the end of the alleyway, the cool night air causing steam to rise from a manhole located halfway down the alley drive. The lights from the street behind her created haloed images on the wet pavement giving the alleyway a Red Light District quality, a place where she normally wouldn’t be caught in the daytime let alone the night. But tonight, she felt strange. She pulled the paper from her pocket and double-checked the name scratched in black ink. It said The Rack. She squinted into the darkness and tried to read the letters on the doorway located in the dirty concrete wall at the end of the alley. She saw letters but couldn’t quite make them out. As she stepped deeper into the alleyway she became aware of a trembling in her thighs, her legs were like gelatin, as she stepped, she wondered if she would be able to keep her balance. A nervous energy coursed through her body.
She kept thinking back to this afternoon on the subway and the man who had handed her the paper. It was standing room only and he had settled in behind her. The first thing she noticed was the smell, it was like cologne only different, cleaner. It might have been soap or aftershave, whatever it was, the smell made her flush. As the subway rattled trough the dark tunnel, the lights in the passenger cabin flashed on and off she could feel the man moving with the rhythm of the train and the track, every time he moved forward she felt herself leaning back slightly not physically touching him, but mentally she could feel his form on hers. As she slowly rocked, she closed her eyes, god damn that smell she thought to herself breathing deeply, the intensity of his aroma making her a little dizzy.
The man was tall, she could feel his presence towering over her slight frame, but not in a frightening way, in a consuming, enveloping way. She imagined his hands on her shoulder, her neck. She imagined herself wrapping her hair in her hand and moving it to the side as his caressed the back of her neck and shoulders. She tried to snap herself out of her fantasy world but in her mind, those hands drew her back into a warm, dark place, a safe place, a place where everything felt right and wrong and a little dangerous.
She knew her stop was coming. She leaned slightly forward and slowly turned her head up to try and get a look at the man over her shoulder. As she did, the man lowered his gaze and leveled it squarely into hers. He didn’t really smile, although one corner of his mouth was slightly turned up in an expression that softened his otherwise masculine features. She nearly melted. He reached down and grabbed her hand placing a small slip of paper in it. She had trouble gripping it, her body limp, her skin damp with perspiration. She could feel heat rolling off the mans being, a kind of aura that wasn’t only almost visible, but that ebbed and flowed not with a rise and fall in his emotional intensity, but that rose and fell with the intensity of her feelings. He was like a current filling and at the same time robbing her body of every ounce of energy that she had.
He leaned in towards her neck, if he was an axe murderer she would have been done because she couldn’t move. He brushed her hair back with fingers that were gentle and firm at the same time, moving the hair from away from her ear. He leaned in as if he were going to kiss her, instead he whispered in her ear “I’ve been watching you,” his warm breath in her ear causing a hard shiver to run through her body.
The train came to a stop and the doors opened. The man gently returned her hair to its original position on her shoulder and walked off the train on to the loading platform, walking away without turning back. She finally took a breath; her body soaked, her energy gone, already unsure if what she thought happened, really just happened. It took all of her strength to raise her arm up from her side. She unfolded the piece of paper that he had handed to her, on it was an address and the words The Rack. She raised the piece of paper to her nose trying to get one last sense of his overwhelming aroma. She exited the train not sure if it was even her stop.
As she approached the door she could clearly see the writing on it, kind of a cursive scrawl indicating that she was in the right place. As she reached for the door handle she could see how badly she was shaking, she drew her hand back and wiped it on the front of her brown, suede miniskirt. She reached for the handle again, and before she could grab it, the door began to swing open. The air that rushed at her through the open door was warm and wet, fogging her glasses so that everything was quite blurry at first. Before the lenses cleared, someone grabbed her hand and pulled her through the doorway, through a curtain and down a dark hallway. As the fog on her glasses cleared she could see another door in front of her.
“Enter and have a seat with your back to the door, he’ll be right with you.” The voice was surreal, a mix between a small child’s voice and woman who has smoked too many cigarettes. But as she looked around she could see no one there. She pushed the door open and entered a small room, approximately ten foot square. There was a small black wooden stool in the center of the room. The room glowed a violent red from the red light bulb located in a stripped down light fixture in the center of the ceiling. There was nothing else. She sat down, the stool was too short for her to cross her legs in a ladylike fashion, instead she sat with her legs bent deeply, her knees resting on one another in a knock kneed sort of a way. Her miniskirt rode up and there was no real way for her cover the pink lycra panties that she was wearing beneath. She was having a hard time breathing, the air was almost hot, and the room was humid, a sheen of sweat already visible on the surface of her skin. She thought about getting back up and aborting the whole mission, adventure or not, this was a little creepy, but her memory of the man on the subway was too much, the promise of one more encounter was overwhelming, she had thought of almost nothing else all week.
The hinges to the door squeaked behind her, she stiffened and straightened slightly. She started to turn to look when the aroma found her. She stopped, closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, her senses started to vibrate at a much higher rate, and her heart began to beat wildly beneath her breasts. She no longer needed to see him. As he crossed the room she could feel the heat that he generated intensify as he got closer. The smell, his smell, was like a narcotic, making her mind go to places that she was sure that it had ever been before. He stopped just short of her back, she felt his hands slip around her waist, she took in a sharp breath, and her body shuddered. If he had stopped right there and left without a sound, she would have been more than satisfied, but he didn’t. With deftness and skill the man slipped his hands beneath her shirt sliding them around from her sides to her front stopping just short of her breasts. She stopped breathing all together, her body tensed in anticipation, but he didn’t touch them. Instead, he slid her shirt up and over her head in one swift motion catching not one hair or earring in the process. She began to breathe again, her bare chest and shoulders heaving with her erratic breaths. The man scooted closer and pressed himself into her bare back. It was then that she realized that he was completely nude, his semi erect penis laying next to her spine, starting at the midpoint of her back and extending to the top of her miniskirt. Her being was on fire, her senses overfull. She couldn’t think.
She pushed back into him the sweat from both of their bodies a wonderful lubricant allowing her to slip and slide with ease and to feel every ridge, every protrusion, every pulse of blood. He bent over her, her head slid to the side and came to rest near his hip. She reached back with her hands and grabbed on to his firm ass and squeezed as hard as she could. He took his hands and put them on the inside of her thighs just above her knees and began to slowly and firmly run them along the inside or her thighs. When he got to the pink lycra panties, he lingered briefly, too briefly, his fingers tracing an outline of what lay beneath, she was on fire. His hands continued up and over the suede mini skirt and on to her stomach, her body began to hitch and she squeezed harder unaware of the sounds that she was making and unaware of the fact the he was totally silent. His hands continued and finally came to rest cupping the underside of her breasts. Her body contracted with an intensity that she had never thought possible, the pulsing of her orgasm causing her to lose control over her muscles, her hands slipped from him and she slid from the stool on to the floor.
She couldn’t open her eyes. She couldn’t catch her breath. She wanted to turn and see him but didn’t have the strength. She heard his footsteps as he headed toward the door.
“Next time wear the denim shorts you bought at Macy’s,” he said in a dark, smooth voice, and he was gone. As she lay on the floor, the red glow made her feel vulnerable, She should have felt scared, but she didn’t. The only thing that she had the energy to think about was whether or not she had left the shorts, those shorts, at the gym or at her friend Stacy’s house. Either way, she knew she had to get them back, the sooner the better.
