If Wishes Were Horses Read online

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  If Wishes Were Horses

  Chapter 12

  The film festival was being held in a restored 1950’s movie house downtown. There was a glittering chandelier in the front lobby, illuminating a tapestry carpet and wallspapered in rich reds and golds. The concession stand offered kettle corn as well asbuttered, and a selection of old time candies in clear glass containers with metal scoops to deposit one cup servings into small brown paper bags. Chocolate-coated raisins asbig as grapes, maple nut clusters and Jordan Almonds all caught her eye, but it was theperfect cubes of chocolate covered caramel she could imagine melting on her tongueeven before Justin bought her a bagful. He waved away her money and got her a frosty fountain coke as well.

  The ushers dressed in black tie formal wear escorted them into the theater. As they stepped down the aisle, Sarah felt Justin’s hand at the small of her back, a gentle possession and protectiveness that her husband had never offered. As if because she was a woman who could protect herself physically she didn't need to feel protected emotionally by the warmth and strength of a man.

  They were shown to two seats along the aisle, and the usher courteously encouraged them to make it known if anything interfered with their movie-going experience. The seats had deep red soft cushions, and the screen was covered by a heavy velvet curtain with gold tassels. Classical music mixed with familiar movie soundtrack scores played quietly over the hushed murmurings of other attendees. The theater was filling up rapidly, and as far as Sarah could tell, it was going to be a full house. Most attendees were well-dressed pairings, coming in groups or as a single couple.

  “It's crowded,” she said.

  “You sound surprised.” He chuckled. “Sex is legal and it feels good, Sarah, to men and women. There aren't enough venues that make women feel comfortable to indulge their sensual curiosity. This is one of them. Ergo, a crowd.”

  “I guess.” She settled next to Justin in the dim light. She immediately fished in the bag in his hand and took one of the caramels. “I haven’t really been to any kind of movie in years.”

  “Why not?”

  “Mmm…” She didn’t answer right away, closing her eyes as the outer chocolate coating melted upon contact with her tongue. She bit down, mixing the flavor of the soft caramel with its lingering taste. “Oh, God. I might have found something better than sex.” She cracked open a lid, grinned. “Almost.”

  “That’s a relief.” He chuckled. “You don’t like going to movies?”

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  “Well, I used to. It’s just not like this anymore. It's rude people, cell phones, twenty advertisements instead of previews before the movie, dirty floors and worse bathrooms because the employees could care less. I got tired of it, and stopped going. Thirty bucks to listen to some inconsiderate moron behind you talk about his tax returns to his buddies throughout the whole movie.”

  He nodded. “I discovered this place last year. They have to struggle to keep going,but it's always a pleasant experience. The ushers are here to make sure people don't actthat way, so don't worry, you shouldn’t have to draw your gun to keep people settled down. You can just enjoy the movie.” He touched her chin with a finger. “And the company. I liked your talk on drugs. I plan to go home and throw away all my heroin and needles tonight.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, I can tell you're the type with railroad tracks up your arms. Glad to put you back on the straight and narrow.”

  “I'm glad you came tonight,” he murmured.

  “You didn't tell the usher to leave a seat between us.”

  “Well, it was crowded, and you couldn't reach the caramels.”

  “I could if you'd let me hold them,” she retorted. “I'll make you go buy me another bag.”

  “I'll buy you ten more if you want,” he smiled down at her, “and then hold your head while you throw them up.”

  She flushed, looked away. “You need to stop it.”

  “Stop what, Sarah? Enjoying you? Desiring to pleasure you, make you laugh? I like you, very much.” He leaned closer, spoke with his nose pressed against her hair. “I desire you, I want you, I crave you like a drug. You didn't tell the kids what to do about that.” The tip of his tongue touched the delicate skin just behind her outer ear and she shivered. “I don’t think 'Just say no' is going to be a very effective method for me.”

  “Quit it.”

  “No. Every time I'm around you, I get lost. All I want is to plunge into you, be absorbed in you, drown in you.” He caught her chin before she could pull away, and whispered the next words into the shell of her ear. “That's not a line, Sarah. No one's ever made me want to open myself up like that. I thought when I finally met her it would be a slow thing, some gradual attraction or friendship that would turn into something more. I saw you, and I got it all at once. The attraction, the lust, the need to know you, be your friend, earn your respect. It's damned unsettling, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let it become some high burn infatuation that will use up its fuel too fast. I want it to last, for a long, long time.”

  Now his fingers eased so she could pull back, stare up at him in the dim light provided by the brass wall sconces and overhead chandeliers. His countenance was alive with the emotions he had expressed, and they were drawing her in, like sirens calling her toward the rocks hidden in the pounding surf off a beach.

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  There was one free seat to her left. She got up, moved over, moved her coke over tothat seat’s cup holder. Justin watched her, his dark eyes like lagoons cloaked in themysterious shadows of ancient trees. “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure the fuel doesn’t burn too fast,” she said. “And retreating, a little bit.”

  “Because you want to, or because you're scared?”

  “Because I'm scared.” She couldn't be less than honest with him.

  “Okay,” he said after a moment, though she saw that tic of muscle along the line of his jaw. He settled back and held out his hand, his knuckles resting on the cushioned seat between them that was still warm from her body.

  Sarah considered his open palm, the lines that creased the skin, the welcoming strength it offered. She laid her hand in his, felt his fingers close around it as the theater darkened and the curtain rolled back with a rhythmic clacking noise.

  Justin leaned over, tugged her so she came close enough he could speak to her without disturbing the others. “This film is a montage of images and music, with storylines interspersed. It's about an inundation of the senses, not a plot line. It's supposed to be director Marie Gerault's finest erotic piece to date.”

  She felt a slight pressure against her leg and looked down. He was holding out the small bag of caramels, giving them to her to hold. Sarah positioned the bag between her thighs so she could use her one hand to dip in, and kept her other hand linked in the firm grasp of his on the seat between them.

  He had on cologne tonight, the smell of a well-groomed man, a man who had taken care to be pleasing to her. With that and his two tickets, it was obvious he had known she’d taken Eric’s place on the speakers’ list. She drew a deep breath and let that thought and those scents fill her. The first strains of the film score began.

  The name of the director had not meant anything to her, but she soon understood

  Justin's appreciation.

  The first shot was a close up of an orchid. The camera zoomed in, followed the curving line of one petal, lingered on a glistening drop of dew barely holding onto the delicate edge of the white, veined curve.

  A hand came into the frame, a male fingertip tracing those crevices, gently pushing into the folds to stroke the texture deeper within. There was a soft woman's sigh, andwind ruffled through the petals. The image faded and evolved, a seamless transitionfrom the stroking of the exotic bloom to the stroking of a woman's clitoris and labia. The shot widened, and her thighs were strewn with the orchid petals . Drops of dew were still on them. The male finger
touched one of the petals, gathered up the moisture and feathered it across the clitoris. He picked up a petal, shaped the silken fabric of it over the clit’s shape.

  The profile of the man’s face, the long sloping line of his jaw, came into view. Slowly, slowly, his tongue inserted itself into the vaginal folds beneath the hooded clit. The woman's breath rasped, and the music became all winds, underlined by a slow

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  drum beat that thrummed in Sarah's chest even as she shifted, aware of the arousal

  growing in her own cunt, watching the woman's being so beautifully tormented.

  The camera pulled back so the audience could now see the woman from waist to mid-thigh, and the full profile of the man's head. His dark wing of hair, his shaven jaw. His hand fanned out on her thigh, slid under it and rolled her to her side, so now they saw a lovely heart-shaped ass, two petals clinging to one cheek. He rolled her all the way over to her stomach, scooped up a handful of ivory and burgundy petals and scattered them so they fluttered down onto her buttocks, the flesh quivering at the light contact.

  Justin's fingers had begun a slow, idle stroke down the center of Sarah’s palm, and now he made a lazy circle at her wrist, caressing the pulse jumping there. His hand waswarm, his grip gentle but strong, and the yearning between her legs tightened, making her legs twitch.

  The man's long fingers followed the crevice between the woman’s buttocks, guiding the petals so they lay there in a line, teasing the sensitive area. The woman's hips were moving, small circles, her thighs spreading for him. She whispered to him, the words unintelligible, although the need was not. Sarah swallowed as one finger dipped,guiding a petal deeper between the cleft, using it to massage her anus hidden withinthat fold. The other petals tumbled down to the valley where her thighs and the curves of her bottom met.

  The beat picked up, became more primitive, as both his hands entered the scene. He parted her thighs wide, the petals drifting to the ivory satin sheets beneath her body. The woman whose face they could not see, so that she became every woman watching, moaned, and the soundtrack somehow echoed and enhanced it, vibrating the desire through all the watching bodies.

  The hand lifted, that strong hand with long fingers, and then came down in a firmslap. Sarah jumped. The blow left a red handprint on milk white skin. Another blow, then another, and Sarah remembered Justin's fierce, short spanking, and how it had stirred her in a way she did not anticipate, as this was doing.

  She wanted him. Now. This second, or her lower body was going to utter a vocal scream of need.

  Was everyone else as affected by the film, or just those who had recently re-discovered their hormones? She stole a glance around. The audience looked as absorbed in the film as she was. Civilized behavior dictated that they disguise their full response,but she saw enough parted and moistened lips and crossed legs to think that otherswere feeling the same pounding in between their thighs, matching the rhythm of theerotic music.

  The spanking was over, and the hand smoothed over the curve of the rosy buttock. Using the nail just a bit to leave a light scrape, the man traced the crease between theweight of the cheek and the top of the thigh. The woman sighed, the sound captured and embraced by the wind as part of the music, and then the camera shot moved back

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  in, focusing on the flesh of his hand, examining the beauty of the knuckles, that ability to curl, bend fingers to touch, press, stroke. When the view widened again, the scene had changed. The hand was pressed against the bare abdomen of a woman dressed in a sheer tight top sprinkled with sequins, and harem pants slashed up the side so as she turned, the flank and thigh were exposed, as well as a hint of the soft pelt of hair covering her mound.

  An unsmiling sheik, his face indiscernible in shadows, let her go. She began to dance for him, a sensual belly dance where each leg turn and undulation brought a gift, the swell of her breast against the binding of the top, the sheen of sweat on the bare small of her back, the fluttering of the diaphanous cloth over her ass as she turned.

  The shadows shifted, and the audience could see the intense dark eyes of the man who watched her every move. He lounged back on a pile of cushions now. As he wore nothing but an open silk robe over loose pants, it was possible to see the increased rate of his breathing from the rise and fall of his smooth chest, and the growth of his erection against the pants as she danced.

  She loosed her hair, and it spun around her like a velvet cape, then out. Her arms did a dance of their own as she came to stand between his knees and dance for him, her eyes large, round, liquid, her lips parted, tongue touching her teeth.

  He reached up, tore the sheer gauze of her top away so her breasts were loose. She did not break the rhythm of the dance, continuing her rolls and twists and shimmies. Her pert nipples grew erect from the movement of her full round breasts, responding to her own sensual display of them.

  It was Valentino's Arabian Nights, only technology and movie effects made it real, with the music score and the fluttering of the tent cloth. They captured the bead of sweat at her jawline, closed in on it, followed its slide down her throat, its trickle to thetop of her breast. The sheik’s hand came into the screen to cover that drop, cup her breast and weigh it in his palm. His thumb rubbed the perspiration into the areole. Soft Arabic whispers joined the music, and Sarah did not need to know the words to knowthey were murmurs of passion, heated promises, oaths of devotion.

  The film was supposed to be ninety minutes, and each subsequent scene started with that male hand and finished with it.

  Sarah was a disciplined person, so she made herself sit through every image, her heart racing or slowing with the mood of each scene as Justin's hand continued to caress hers. He stroked the delicate veins of her wrists, traced and captured each finger,

  dipped into each curve between. At forty-five minutes, halfway through the film, her body was damp, coated with a light sheen of perspiration like the harem dancer, and her pussy throbbed so hard it was painful. She had never wanted to touch herself so much, or have a man touch her. She became more and more still throughout the movie, except for intense, spasmodic vibrations in her limbs she could not control, a trembling that she knew Justin must feel through his contact with her hand. She felt his eyes on her, watching her, and when his hand slid down her arm, just an inch or two further than her wrist, she gasped at the new ripple of sensation.

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  She didn't want a quick mechanical rush of release, a simple application of friction. She wanted to be joined with him again, filled by him, feel that rush stroking her tissues within and without, feel the weight of his body in her arms. She wanted all of it, the whole experience, and she wanted it now. And forever.

  She was losing control. Was she losing her heart to this man or was it just lust? Shefelt bound to him in a way she did not understand at all. It was physical desire, but itwas also pure, bone deep attraction. He interested her on a tremendous number of levels.

  She needed…oh, hell, she needed, period, and she wasn't going to analyze the hell out of it. Sarah bolted out of the seat, tripping over his long legs to get past him. “I've got to go,” she murmured, and fled up the aisle.

  She burst out the exit door, into the side alleyway where movie patrons were funneled at the end of the movie. The detail-oriented owners had not missed an

  opportunity, mounting a display of movie posters out along the facing brick building and arranging the alleyway into a courtyard of sorts, with cobblestones and a wish fountain into which patrons could throw their change and play with the Japanese koi swimming there. An old bicycle had been turned into a decoration, petunias spilling out of its basket and impatiens gathered in pots around the wheels. It leaned against an oldfashioned street lamp, wrought iron with a trio of glass globes. Chimes hung from the decorative curls beneath the globes and toned softly in the warm evening breeze funneling down the isolated alley
way.

  Justin came out the door behind her, but she backed away from him, circling the fountain to keep something between them. “No, don't touch me. I'm going out of my mind.” She paced. “I'm not like this. What are you doing to me?”

  “I could ask the same of you. Do you think it's ever been like this for me, Sarah? Maybe you just like me. Maybe I just like you. Why is our attraction so difficult for you to accept? Haven't you ever been drawn to someone?”

  “Not like this. Not this all consuming, everything feeling. I don't know what I feel for you, because you've got me all revved up all the time, with your movies, and your Tantra, and your shop. I'm out of my depth, and you're taking advantage of it. I'm confused— ”

  “Now look.” He closed the distance between them and swung her around, his eyes and mouth hard. “I haven't taken advantage of you. I told you. It's never been like this for me, either.”

  “I don't know that. I can only speak for me. You've got me all confused, and I can't think past the lust right now to know how I feel for you.”

  “Then let's take care of that, get the lust out of the way.”

  He caught her wrists and yanked her into the shadows at the back of the courtyard where a small container garden was clustered in the corner. She caught the fragrance of lilies before he had her up against the brick.

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  She expected violence and roughness, the release of the storm of energy vibrating from him. However, instead of crashing it over her like a wave, he stopped. Simply held her body against the wall, making her stare into his face, feel her own need bouncingagainst his like electrons in too close a space, as he had said. She whimpered as he leaned in at last and pressed against her from chest to knee. He cupped her jaw in his hand, rubbed his thumb down her jugular, and his knee pressed against the seam of her thighs.