This Stream of Dreams (Mirella, Rashid and Adam Book 2) (19 page)

Rashid pulled her down where they stood, onto her knees. Still with her back to him, he gently pushed her forward so that she rested on her elbows, and slowly he slid her silk skirt up over her bottom, leaving it in neat folds around her waist. He caressed the luscious rounds, more sensuously defined by the nylon stockings, whose tops were high up on her thighs, and the garter belt worn low on the hips. The white garters against her rounded firm flesh, and the provocative, submissive position he had placed her in, left her exposed, vulnerable, just the way he liked her best.

He toyed with her, teased her with gentle hands and ranging fingers, and could feel her giving in to him, slipping, falling under his spell. Her need for more, much more than caresses, was evident to him in the way she arched her back, gently rocked her pelvis teasingly toward him, moved her knees farther apart.

Rashid’s heartbeat accelerated. His erection now demanded. He slid his black lizard belt from the loops on his trousers, and teased Mirella’s flesh with it, slowly, lightly, stroking the leather across her yielding orbs and between the cheeks of her bottom down to the lips of her cunt. Her sigh of pleasure and excitement mixed with fear was the tribute he sought and received.

He smacked her hard, and kissed the place he marked with his hand, and his kisses continued, his tongue searched out reactions he wanted. The hugely well endowed Rashid teased Mirella with his cock, using it on the surface and at the entrance of her most intimate orifices like a gentle probing kiss. She whispered huskily, “Now, Rashid. Now.”

And for the first time, in all the sex and outrageous sexual antics they had shared together in the past, he obeyed her demand, wanting to please her on her terms. Swiftly, without any further thought or tenderness, he slipped his arms under hers and in front of her, his hands over her shoulders, mounted her and pulled her roughly back onto him while thrusting ruthlessly into her. He fucked her hard, again and again, with seemingly endless deep strokes, until he had wrung several huge shattering orgasms from Mirella. When he finally withdrew and had released her, she collapsed on the floor, face down in the deep white carpet, whimpering from the sheer force of ecstasy she achieved with Rashid.

He stood over her: she was a compelling sight, raven black hair spread wildly on the carpet, just a hint of the beautiful erotic face showing its finely etched profile, arms and legs reminiscent of alabaster, flung lasciviously apart. The sensuous silk of her dress was draped carelessly over the top half of her torso, the bottom half naked and exposed, raped and ravaged, still looking desirable — more than desirable, tantalizing, and his to do with as he wished.

While watching her, he slowly undressed until stark naked. Then he gathered her up in his arms. While he carried her across the room to the bedroom, she loosened her dress and
raised it over her head and dropped it to the floor. Then she kissed him. He stopped before they entered the bedroom and spoke to her for the first time since they arrived in his rooms.

“You do know that there is no running away from me a second time, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Mirella ran her fingers through his hair, trembled at the feel of his skin under her hand, their naked bodies touching. She lowered her mouth to his nipple, kissed it, opened her mouth wider and sucked.

Still with Mirella in his arms, he shifted her, wrapped her legs around him, and, smiling, knocked at the bedroom door. it opened at a touch from Humayun and he carried Mirella to bed.

It was midnight when Rashid’s long black Daimler pulled up to the waiting Boeing 747 revving its engines at Kennedy Airport, and four stewards rushed down the stairs with huge bouquets of flowers.

“Mr. Lala Mustapha welcomes you aboard his plane with this bouquet,” each said to Mirella as he presented her with the flowers.

She looked up at Rashid standing next to her and smiled. Her heart leaped. He was as ever a most beautiful, depraved, and sensual-looking man. Then she laughed openly, because her heart was full, because she was happy, because she knew what she would never dare to suggest to Rashid, that he was as enslaved by her as she was by him.

“You do spoil me terribly,” she said.

“I adore spoiling you. It’s the devil in me ruining you. I like a woman who can be ruined as well by a flower as by a jewel.” Then he began to laugh, as she touched the handcuff around her wrist. He slipped his arm through hers and together they hurried up the staircase into the airplane.

On the movable staircase landing, before they entered the plane, he reached beneath the flowers she carried and grabbed both her wrists in his hands. The pair of inch-wide diamond cuffs, securely clasped by a lock cleverly hidden under the large, hand-polished blue-white diamond, bit into her skin. His last words to her before they left New York were shouted above the roar of the engines.

“These cuffs were made without a key. I once gave you a slave collar of priceless pearls and allowed you to remove it. Not a second time, Mirella. When I bound you to me this time with these diamond chains, it was for now and for ever. Swear to me before we enter the plane, you will never ask to be released again. Swear to me you will never have them cut away.”

“You’re hurting me,” she shouted. But he did not release the pressure on her wrists. Tears came into her eyes from the pain, and then she shocked him with her answer.

“You have forgotten. It is not I, but you who offered to release me from the pearl collar. You who placed the key on a chain around my neck. You who was just as afraid of sharing your sexual excesses with me as I was. And maybe you even more than I. Now, please let go of my wrists — you are really hurting me — and move aside. You and I need no promises. Just like my
painfully
gorgeous bracelets, we are linked together for life.”

Then simultaneously they smiled, and as he pulled her by the wrists tight up against him they kissed passionately, crushing the flowers between them.

When Rashid yanked her into the airplane cabin they were laughing, and when he released her wrists, several drops of bright red blood fell onto his white jacket lapel.

“You bleed like a red rose,” he said, and kissed the tiny wound on her wrist so that he licked the last droplet of blood.

12

D
eena lost no time walking. Not far from Mirella’s front door she hailed a cab and got in.

“Do you know where Ralph Lauren’s shop is?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Terrific. Take me there, the fastest, the quickest way you know how.”

“You got it. Hey, you must be going to England?” said the puffy-faced driver, chomping on a dead cigar.

“How did you know that?” asked an astonished Deena. “I haven’t even told my mother yet.”

“ ’Cause that’s Ralph Lauren’s big number this season. The Country English look, or is it the English Country look? Well, whatever.”

“How amazing that you should know that.”

“
Women’s Wear Daily
. I read it every morning over coffee at the H and O Luncheonette. Ain’t I seen you there talking to Hymie? Well, maybe not.”

“Well, maybe yes,” she said, laughing, picking up his New York dialect.

“Thought so. Small world, isn’t it? That’s supposed to be a cliché, but believe you me it’s true. Here you got a case in point.”

“God help me, another cabbie philosopher. Brooklyn?” she asked, trying to pinpoint which borough he came from.

“Yonkers, kid, Yonkers.”

“Don’t ‘kid’ me. That’s Brooklyn I hear coming through.”

“Pretty smart, I moved to Yonkers from Brooklyn twenty years ago. You?”

“Riverside Drive, by way of a Bronx father and a Brooklyn mother.”

“So where’dja get the fancy accent?”

“Listen,” — she looked at the name on his license, prominently displayed in the taxi — “Abe Kimball, we have no time for the story of my life.”

“You should try Loehmann’s in the Bronx. Some bargains, if you can stand the crowds and the pressure. They’re a tough lot, those Loehmann customers, shuffling through the racks.”

“Thanks a lot, Abe, but no thanks. One of the greatest perks in being successful and financially comfortable is not having to go to Loehmann’s. My Loehmann’s days are over, thank God.”

“Bendel’s has got some great-looking cruise wear in the window. But your choice of Lauren, and especially if you’re going to England, has got to be better. That’s some shop he’s got. A lotta taste has Ralph Lauren. Come up like a mushroom he has, and good luck to him. A nice Jewish boy made good. I always like to see that and especially in the rag trade. You gotta give him credit, he’s class. A class-A act. Stole the whole idea from the English. You know, elegance, simplicity, country chic —”

Deena interrupted. “What is it with you, Abe? How do you
know so much-about fashion, and high fashion at that? You New York cabbies kill me, always a mine of information.”

“I’ve been running a couple of regular fares to and from Seventh Avenue for thirty-seven years. I’ve got a wife and four daughters who grew up knowing when polka dots were in and stripes were out, the skirts above the knee, the skirts below the knee, before the fashion magazines even knew. Some cabbies get stock market tips. With my luck, all I got was fashion tips — and wholesale. But believe me, with four daughters, wholesale can be as good as the stock market.”

Deena began to laugh. She sat back and her laughter fed on itself and she could not stop. Abe the cabbie watched her through his rearview mirror, and couldn’t help smiling: she was so pretty and happy and friendly.

“Laugh, kid.
Zai gezunt
. What do I care if you’re laughing at me? I’m funny, my life’s hilarious. So would yours be if you’d married off four daughters —”

“Four well-dressed daughters,” Deena corrected him and began to laugh again.

Abe Kimball got caught up in her laughter. “That’s right, kiddo. Four well-dressed daughters, and married them off after each of ’em had a college degree. NYU, City College, Columbia, and Hunter. In the meantime, remember, he who laughs last laughs longest. I see you’re single.”

“Yeah, touché, Abe. I sure am. Who knows, it might have been different if my father had been a Brooklyn-Yonkers fashion freak cabbie, who read
Women’s Wear Daily
, instead of a rare-book dealer.”

They pulled up in front of the Ralph Lauren shop, and Abe turned around to look over his shoulder and speak to Deena, as she fished through her bag for her wallet.

“Just look at the cut of those clothes, the fabric, handkerchief linen. I ask you, who but Lauren would cut white handkerchief linen on the bias in this day and age? Only a genius with a vision and a lot of chutzpah. But remember what I always told my girls, you buy linen, you buy a license for wrinkles and to stand on your feet and iron all day. Look at that jacket, a miracle of tailoring on khaki poplin, did you ever hear of such a thing?”

Deena slid across the seat of the taxi to open the door. “Stop! Stop, Abe! I can’t stand it, you’re terrific but I’ve got to
go. You’ve missed your vocation. You should do a column for
Women’s Wear Daily
, not read it.”

She paid him through the window, and was hurrying toward the entrance when she heard him shout out to her, “Miss, oh, miss!” At the sound of his voice, she stopped where she stood and turned.

“You might get something with top stitching,” he called after her. “The way he uses top stitching is a kind of poetry.” Then, before she could say anything, he shot off into the traffic, waving away potential passengers.

Deena pushed the door open and put aside her laughter because buying clothes in New York is no laughing matter. It’s a very serious business. You don’t achieve that sleek, immaculate, New York look, so discreetly up-to-date, without mastering the art of buying. And for that you have to be serious.

Deena, arms full of boxes and shopping bags, was doing a balancing act while she struggled to open the door of her Central Park West duplex apartment. Once in, she dumped her shopping unceremoniously onto one of the khaki sofas covered in handwoven cloth. Balancing herself on one foot she kicked a shoe up into the air, and sighed with relief as it plummeted to the floor. She shifted her weight and did it again with the other shoe, then collapsed into a chair facing the huge picture window overlooking the park. Deena massaged her feet and moaned with the joy of easing out the aches and pains. Where had that Abe the taxi driver been in her hour of need? She had had to walk all the way home because it was rush hour and she couldn’t find a taxi.

She removed her hat, placed it on a table, delighted with it. It had served her well, had even been admired by the Princess Eirene earlier in the day. She made herself a cup of tea and was looking forward to having it, quietly, while she relived Mirella’s lunch party.

She looked at her watch. She would have just enough time before Brindley arrived to do that, and to enjoy the best part of shopping: opening your purchases in the quiet of your own home, without your favorite saleslady telling you you look “drop dead” — meaning drop-dead chic.

She was approaching a large dress box, when the telephone began to ring.

“Oh, you’re there. I am free now. If it isn’t inconvenient, I would like to come round at once.”

“Brindley, where are you?”

“At a call box on the corner of your street.”

“Oh, of course. Come right up.”

He said no good-bye, simply hanging up. It occurred to Deena that he sounded awfully remote, not at all like the man who had asked her to go away with him only hours before. Suddenly it seemed to her that all that shopping possibly had been premature. She rushed about picking up her purchases and all but flew up the stairs to her bedroom where she stuffed them helter-skelter into her closet. She was brushing her hair and reparing her makeup when the doorman buzzed to announce that Mr. Ribblesdale was on his way up. Then Brindley was knocking on her door.

Deena was surprised at herself. She was not nervous, nor was she anxious, but simply joyful that he was there and about to enter her life. She opened the door.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” she answered.

He stepped into her living room and, smiling at her, presented her with a box of Godiva chocolates.

“Didn’t know what else to bring you. Flowers didn’t seem right because we will be gone by morning.” He opened the lid of the box and two airplane tickets lay across the tissue protecting the confections. She picked up the tickets, looked at them. Then she placed the box and the pair of tickets on a table nearby. He took her in his arms and they kissed passionately.

He removed his jacket and lay it on a chair, loosened his tie and asked, “Where’s the bedroom?”

Together they walked up the staircase that curved against the two-story glass wall of window with a spectacular view over Central Park and the Upper East Side of Manhattan, undressing themselves and dropping their clothes as they went.

There was something so special and wonderful about Brindley and the way she felt with him, Deena thought. Something she had never experienced with any of the other men before him. Deena had always been aware of coming from a certain background and culture that held her back from finding the kind of love she wanted. Suddenly, walking naked
up those last few stairs with Brindley, she knew that was over, and, although he had never said so, it had been the same for him.

On Mirella’s wedding night, the first and only night Brindley and she had ever been together, each of them had worked out fears and inhibitions. That night had given them the courage to go forward and change their lives. Although they had not known it then, they both knew it now. There was little doubt they had been influenced by the love affair of Adam and Mirella and their marriage, and that they wanted an emotional bond such as Adam and Mirella had, such as Rashid and Mirella had.

In the bedroom Deena felt really wicked. She stood back a few steps so that Brindley could take a good long look at her. With her legs wide apart, she ran her hands over her breasts, squeezing them, pulling on her nipples. She arched her back and then slid her hands over her beautiful mound covered in golden pubic hair. Brindley was entranced by the lascivious beauty she was showing him, and to him it seemed that the pussy offered was begging to be opened and probed.

Deena rubbed herself roughly up against Brindley like a cat in heat. Feeling and seeing the full, throbbing penis of her lover, she let out a little gasp of joy. She dropped to her knees and on her way down she briefly rubbed her face around his cock.

Brindley stroked his fingers through her hair again and again. She hungered for his penis throbbing against her lips, but she held back. Hungrily, greedily, she rose and placed her arms around his neck, and they both kissed with open mouths to the deepest part of their being. Deena was swallowed up by that mouth that had made love to her so many times in so many ways on the one night they had together. Their tongues played with each other all the time she felt him pressing, pressing up against her cunt.

Deena moved away from his lips, kissing him now on his chest and running her tongue down and down, then around the inside of his navel, filling it with her saliva. Her lips left a wet trail down to the patch of dark brown hair between his legs. She sighed, her heart filled with lust for this tall, slender, quiet Englishman who came alive and wildly passionate in her hands. She rubbed her lips across the patch of short curly hair, and then her face, back and forth, and inhaled his raunchy
male scent. She could hold back no longer. All she wanted was to love him, give him pleasure. She opened her mouth and licked.

She kissed the base of his penis, and taking his rampant hardness in both her hands, caressed it and lipped and tongued the underpart. He was wonderful, and she adored him. Physically, they were perfect together, and it felt natural and right. She took him fully in her mouth and began sucking, making love to that part of him she longed to be hers for all of their lives.

Together they made sexual love. Sometimes he delighted her with sweet and tender sex, at other times he used his cock ruthlessly to wring powerful and copious orgasms from Deena. And with each sexual act, each orgasm, the couple confirmed to each other what they already knew when he appeared at her door — that for them sex would always be new and fresh, and sometimes bizarre and extreme, sometimes just simple and loving. All sexual and emotional barriers were down for them as a couple, and what they had together they could never hope to find in different mates, nor would they ever seek it.

Deena lay exhausted and replete on top of Brindley, his arms locked around her, flesh against flesh, only their lust blanketing them against the world. Deena opened her eyes, and Brindley read their message of love. With gentle hands he caressingly pushed back the strands of luscious golden silk hair falling about her face. Then he held her face in his hands and touched her lowered eyelids with his lips. Choked with emotion, she managed to tell him, “I love you, Brinn. Oh, God, how I love you! It’s heaven when you abandon yourself and take me with you. It’s a miracle of emotion I have never known before, this allowing our natures, whether sweet or base, to flow from us in an act of love.”

Deena’s eyes shone with tears of emotion, her voice merely a whisper with a tremor in it. So touched by her words, her love, and her ability to express her feelings toward him, he caught up at the corner of her eye with the tip of his little finger the tear that fell on it and carried it to his lips, where he took it on the tip of his tongue.

“I love you, too, Deena. I adored your humor and the way you made me laugh from the first moment we met. It’s easy to abandon myself with you. You’re beautiful and clever,
openhearted and courageous, sensuous and vital. The thrill of knowing there are no limits for us sexually, of going always that little bit further together, makes you an aphrodisiac for me. Each orgasm becomes a voyage of discovery. I want to live and love, and laugh and cry, the rest of my life with you. Tell me it’s the same for you.”

“It’s the same for me,” she whispered.

He kissed her now, not once but several times, hugging her and rocking her gently in his arms. And he asked, “Then you’ll marry me?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.”

It was after they had made love once more and were lying on their sides facing each other that Brindley said, “I’ve made a reservation for us at Le Cirque for nine o’clock. The best French food and the finest champagne in celebration. Good idea?”