Thor'sday Night - Paranormal Erotica

BOOK: Thor'sday Night - Paranormal Erotica
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Thor'sday Night

 

by

 

Maria Isabel Pita

 

Copyright © Maria Isabel Pita

Smashwords Edition

 

 

Chapter One

 

The Miami sky is often more interesting than the
flat ground beneath it. Massive clouds loom on every horizon like
the pale and powerful torsos of gods shoving against each
other.

On a Wednesday morning in November, Carmen
Palacios is gazing up at a shaft of light wielded like a sword by
the cumulus army, not paying much attention to the dull battle of
rush hour traffic around her.

She nearly hits a jaguar.

Shaken, she concentrates on her driving the rest
of the way to work.

She parks in her allotted space, and getting out
of the car allows herself one last wistful glance up at the
heavens.

Above the twelve-story building, the sky’s
delicate blue color darkens towards the zenith like a lake’s
deepening waters, where indigo islands float around a volcano made
of giant cotton balls. Its massive dimensions absorb her for a
timeless moment as a gust of wind whispers of the cool weather to
come.

Inside, her high-heels make an efficient ticking
sound on terracotta tiles. Mirrored elevator doors gleam between
the leaves of real trees, flashes of lighting in the quiet storm of
water rushing down into a fountain from the mezzanine.

Up on the ninth floor in a shadowy foyer,
Seaside Fuel’s obese receptionist, Louise, sits inside a circular
glass booth. The first time Carmen saw her, she thought of a
prehistoric toad preserved in ice. ‘Good morning, Carmen.’

‘Good morning, Louise.’ Her heels echo hollowly
against the black stone tiles.

The space Carmen occupies with the Vice
President is nearly as large as her apartment. The reception area
is traditionally furnished in burgundy leather and polished
mahogany, a décor that doesn’t quite match all the lush tropical
foliage. At the far end of the room, a window reflects a narrow
portion of sky. If you stand directly in front of it, it offers a
depressing view of undeveloped swampland.

Her polished desk forms an L-shaped barricade
just outside Mike Peterson’s office. Her boss is handsome,
intelligent and even-tempered. He is out of the office a great
deal, and he is married.

Dropping her purse on her desk, Carmen beelines
it for the coffeepot hidden away in an alcove, which also houses
the department’s files and office supplies, the copy and the fax
machines.

She starts a pot brewing, checks the faxes, and
copies the daily reports from the ships.

Returning to her desk, she is surprised to hear
Mike’s voice coming from his office. Then she hears another quiet
male voice, and realizes he is in a meeting that wasn’t on his
schedule.

Tossing her dark brown hair behind her, Carmen
walks in to his office, and places the morning’s faxes on his
desk.

‘Good morning, Mike,’ she says.

‘Good morning, Carmen.’ He doesn’t even glance
up at her, which alerts her to the fact that something is
wrong.

‘Good morning, Carmen,’ the man seated in front
of the desk echoes.

The subtle authority in his tone makes her pause
beside him on her way out as though he had commanded her to. He is
wearing a dark gray suit with a penetratingly black tie. ‘Would you
like a cup of coffee?’ she asks.

‘I would love one.’ His hair is a stunning
reddish-blonde and just short enough to conform to the business
dress code. The expression in his stone-gray eyes, however, clearly
defies it. ‘Thank you, Carmen.’

Back in the alcove, the coffeepot is gurgling
like a happy baby. She pours the visitor a cup, and curses herself
for forgetting to ask him if he took cream and sugar. She also
fills a cup for Mike, who always takes his black, then pauses
outside the open door of his office for a moment to eavesdrop.

‘…Is not accusing Seaside of anything,’ the
stranger is saying.

‘Then what exactly are you doing here?’

Mike’s angry voice gives her a strange
thrill.

She strolls back into the tense space. ‘I just
assumed you like it black,’ she tells the stranger, and notes that
he reaches for the cup she offers him with his left hand. If he’s
married, he isn’t wearing his ring.

‘You assumed correctly,’ he says, staring
soberly up into her eyes.

Turning away from him reluctantly, she sets
Mike’s cup down just in reach of his right hand.

‘Thank you, Carmen, hold my calls, please.’

She leans over in her chair, one of her legs
bent behind her as she reaches under her desk for the pen she
dropped.

Mike’s visitor emerges from his office, and
pauses to admire the view.

She sits up, turns back to her desk, and ignores
him.

‘Can I see you later, Carmen?’ Her breath
catches as though he pulled on her hair and forced her to face him.
‘You certainly don’t waste any time,’ she retorts, pleased.

He thrusts his hands into his pockets. ‘Life is
brief.’

‘Yes, it is,’ she agrees, ‘but what I want
isn’t.’

‘I respect that, Carmen, and I’d like to see you
later.’

‘And I,’ the spiral she unconsciously doodles on
a pink message pad rips through the paper, ‘don’t even know your
name.’

‘Jay Westgate.’

She writes her name and phone number on the
slashed paper, tears it off the pad, and hands it to him.

‘Thank you.’ His fingers caress hers as he
accepts it. ‘I’ll call you this evening. We’ll have dinner.’

Her boss’ peremptory voice rises out of the
speakerphone, ‘Carmen, can I see you in here, please?’

The moment she walks into his office, Mike
demands with quiet intensity, ‘What did he say to you?’

‘Um, nothing.’ Having expected a letter or a
memo to type, she is caught off guard. ‘Why?’

He flicks the point in and out of a pen. ‘Did he
by any chance ask you out?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact he did. Is that
against company policy or something?’ She sincerely hopes not.

‘No,’ he tosses the pen onto his desk, ‘it
isn’t.’ His black suit gleams like an oil spill over his white
shirt and makes his light-blond hair shine like silver. ‘I’m sorry,
Carmen,’ he looks her straight in the eye for an instant, ‘I know
it’s none of my business.’

She remains tactfully silent, waiting for him to
volunteer more information.

‘I just don’t like the thought of him…’ He looks
up at her again, and frowns. ‘No, I guess he wouldn’t need any
other reason.’ She crosses her arms to cover up the fact that his
steady regard made her blush slightly. ‘Sir, would you mind telling
me what’s going on, please?’

He picks up his coffee cup. ‘Mr Westgate works
for D.E.R.M.’

‘The Department of Environmental Resources and
Monitoring?’

‘Correct. He heads the Enforcement Division, and
he suspects Seaside of certain,’ he pauses to sip his coffee and to
lift the end of his tie curiously, as though he has never seen it
before, ‘violations.’

The word makes her pulse quicken and her
dark-lashed, honey-brown eyes widen. ‘What kind of violations?’

He sets his cup down. ‘Completely imaginary
ones.’ He pulls a stack of folders towards him purposefully.

‘Wait a minute, you think he only asked me out
to ask me about Seaside?’ She is too upset to worry about
grammar.

‘Unless the man’s gay, Carmen,’ he replies a
little impatiently, ‘it can’t be the only reason, and it’s probably
not even the case at all. Forget I said anything, and get Captain
Richards in here ASAP.’

*

The day goes on forever. Her workload is light,
as usual. She spends most of her time surfing the net, or reading
actual books full of fact and fiction in equal measure. At least a
distracting number of people from all departments walk past her
desk today. However, smiling faces enter the Vice President’s
office and grim ones emerge, from which entertaining banter is no
longer forthcoming.

Having skipped lunch, another significant
deviation from his routine, Mike strides out of his office shortly
after three o’clock, black leather briefcase in hand. ‘Go home,’ he
commands. ‘Thanks!’ She is delighted to be spared rush hour traffic
as well as the five o’clock crush at the gym.

When Carmen walks into her apartment pleasantly
relaxed after her workout, the carpet comes to life around her
ankles.

‘Hello, my babies!’ She crouches down to greet
her cat, Sage, and her three kittens, Buffy, Speckly and Runty. ‘I
have a hot date tonight, Sage, wait till you see him.’ She picks up
her purring, snow-white familiar. ‘He’s got red hair,’ she carries
her into the bedroom, ‘and I’ve never seen eyes like his, I mean,
the way they look at me. He’s not your usual Miami fare at all, not
at all. He seems so intensely honest.’ She puts Sage down on the
bed, and steps carefully around kittens as she peels off her gym
clothes.

She showers and dries her hair. By now it is
after six o’clock, and the phone still hasn’t rung.

Stubbornly optimistic, she puts on a little
make-up then studies her naked body in the full-length mirror on
the back of her closet door. Her legs are long and beautifully
shaped, and the gentle hourglass curve of her waist and hips is a
sexy, inviting compliment to her well-exercised slenderness. Her
breasts are very generous handfuls, and instead of sagging with age
will only grow fuller, which is a consolation. She smiles at
herself, then slips into a sleeveless, thigh-length white dress, in
which she looks both innocent and sexy, and white high-heeled
sandals, after which she joins Sage on the black leather couch.

She turns on the television, even though she
knows there isn’t much to watch at this hour.

They are playing Rap videos on all the music
channels, so she settles for CNN’s Headline News.

With the volume turned down low, world events
flow across the large screen as unreal as reflections in a stagnant
pool. Kittens crawl over her sandals, and then try climbing her
legs.

She scoops them up onto her lap, and they
promptly decorate her dress with gold and black hairs as their
mother watches approvingly.

When Carmen looks up again, an ancient skeleton
lying in a bed of black earth consumes the TV screen. Red and gold
artifacts glimmer around the bones, those of a young woman who
apparently formed part of a Viking warrior’s possessions.

Her stomach rumbles hungrily as the station
abruptly cuts to a car commercial.

Two hours, and countless murders, robberies and
small wars later, she gently lifts sleeping kittens off her lap to
turn off the television.

She is starving, but too full of restless
disappointment to stay home and cook. It is nine o’clock. Jay
Westgate obviously changed his mind about taking her out to
dinner.

She throws some credit cards along with a tube
of lipstick into a small white purse, snatches up her keys, and
slams the front door behind her.

She heads east towards Miracle Mile, crosses the
invisible border between Coral Gables and Miami, and decides to
drive into Coconut Grove. She has never had dinner by herself in
public, but Jay Westgate has so thoroughly humiliated her already,
she might as well go all the way. She was looking forward to his
phone call with such wholehearted excitement that the vacuum
created by his silence has left her feeling strangely weightless.
It doesn’t seem completely real that she is driving through the
night with no real purpose except to satisfy her body’s hunger. She
always forgets how hard it is to park around Coco Walk, even on a
weeknight. She is wasting money by eating out, so she defies the
parking garages and finds a spot on a dark road off Main
Street.

She hesitates before getting out of the car, but
she has come too far to turn back now.

Walking as fast as she can in her high heels,
she passes a deserted baseball diamond on her right. On her left,
glass glimmers beneath a streetlight like a faraway galaxy on the
black asphalt of the road. She is stepping carefully around the
shards in her sandals when two silhouettes suddenly flow out of
nowhere and grab both her arms.

A male voice with a thick Spanish accent
whispers, ‘If you scream, we hurt you!’

‘No tengas miedo, linda,’ his companion adds
more gently, and his hold on her is just as painful.

Carmen feels herself floating across the street
between them like her own ghost. She tells herself this is only a
nightmare, but then her toes scrape against gravel and she knows
her eyes are open because they fill with tears.

Her captors kick open a black wrought iron gate
and swiftly drag her across a neatly mowed lawn crowded with trees
into the shadow of a building, which seems to fall over her mind.
All she’s aware of is a dark stained-glass window broken up by
black branches above her, and of her soul screaming a wordless
prayer. Then the ache in her arms seeps through her numbness,
forcing her to accept the impossible – that she’s in the grip of
mindless animals to whom she is nothing but fresh meat

BOOK: Thor'sday Night - Paranormal Erotica
9.19Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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