By Bristol Thrall

She turned to him during the strategy workshop and smiled, and he noticed how beautifully smooth and young her skin looked; she had a tiny blemish high on one cheekbone which was mostly concealed beneath a light foundation, but she glowed. A subtle gloss to her lips and a delicate brown blush around her eyes added an alluring understatement to her face, the whole picture set in context by a frame of long, sleek dark blonde hair which coloured to chestnut at the crown of her head. When she passed the sheaf of papers to him, her hand made the briefest of contact with his, but it electrified him. Her nails, rounded to perfect white tips, caught the boardroom’s overhead light and shimmered a satin coral hue. He imagined those fingers dancing on his skin, and nearly dropped the documents he’d taken from her.

Now, in the warmth of a late summer evening, with an empty wine bottle on the table and another fallen to the lawn, she was smiling at him once more. Never mind the circumstances that had contrived a necessary meeting out of town - this time, her long fingers really were playing along his chest, undoing first one button, then several.

Her blatant flirting was taking him quite by surprise. Jane was powerful in the organisation following a swift rise up through the ranks – the first female to make executive director and the youngest member of the board – and he was, well, just a manager. Daniel had never shared the same hunger for success that drove others onwards and upwards, but he enjoyed his job and he was good at it.

When they finished the work which was required for the following morning, Jane explained that she had booked a table for dinner and would like him to join her, so they could get to know each other a little more. Despite an initial embarrassment in not having dressed up for the occasion (‘Casual’, she had said - he should have known that Jane’s casual meant more than shirt and jeans), Daniel felt he had acquitted himself well over three courses and, although not really a great socialiser, he felt comfortable in her presence. She proved to have a voracious appetite, a consequence of her demanding schedule, he supposed. The wine had flowed, and when they finished the meal Jane gathered up the last of the claret and two glasses, and ordered another bottle to take outside, where they were alone on the magnificent lawns of this estate which stretched lush and green, unbroken, to the river.

In this essential English country garden, on this sultry evening, she slid her hand beneath his shirt and drew a nail lightly across his nipple; Daniel shuddered and closed his eyes. He could feel his whole body responding to this tiny touch; he imagined it as a prelude to something more - heaven and danger. His nipples hardened and contracted, his stomach dipped and lurched, and his erection blossomed into a tight pressure against the denim that held his composure in check. What on earth should he do? He already felt out of his depth.

She giggled. “Silly.”

Daniel had been holding his breath as she touched him. Now he let it out slowly and looked at her. She had removed her hand to moisten her fingers, and as she slid them from her mouth he could see traces of lipstick on the wet fingertips, now glistening and glittering with intent.

“Do you like this?” she asked, and her hand disappeared back inside the white cotton. As she ran small wet circles around his nipple with one hand, her other came up behind his head and, taking a firm hold of his shaggy hair, she was able to pull his head slowly and gently back so he was looking into the starry void above them. Her fingers continued their delightful play on his chest. Daniel rested one hand lightly on her hip; in the other he still held his glass.

“Oh yes, Oh god Jane your touch is like fire.” He laughed, perhaps a little nervously at having said anything to her quite so…poetic. The bravado of fine wine. Or perhaps because she still held him there looking heavenward.

“Good,” she whispered.

He felt her move up close against him, felt her body press against his. Through the dark silk of her summer dress she radiated heat. He let out a low guttural whimper.

“Very good, Dan-i-el”  As she spoke his name she pushed her hips into his and rubbed up against him in a slow, teasing motion. He had no idea she felt this way about him; it made no sense. She was Jane from the corridors of power. What could she possibly want from him?

Her mouth came up to his neck and now he could feel her breath on his skin and smell her perfume. It was intoxicating. His body tensed, waiting for the silken mouth to plant a delicate kiss there, on his throat. Daniel had fantasized a thousand times about a moment such as this; a sensual high. He could hardly believe this was happening.

Jane let her tongue trace a line along his neck then put her lips to his skin. He closed his eyes. Still she held him, still she ground slowly against him. He could feel her other hand slipping open the remaining buttons of his shirt, and then she was tugging it free of his jeans.

“Jane, let me kiss you.” He tried to turn his head down towards her but she held fast to his hair and whispered close into his ear.

“My touch is like fire?”

“Y-yes”

“Then I must burn you some more.”

She leaned into his neck again and he sighed as she simultaneously kissed him and unbuckled him. With a deft flick of her left hand his jeans were popped loose and the zipper drawn down.

“Is this hot enough?”

She pushed her hand down into his shorts. He drew in his breath and tried once more to turn his face towards her.

“Is this hot enough?”

Daniel heard his own weak response, barely audible.

“Hotter”

“Hotter?” She smiled and began to work her hand up and down. “You can have hotter my darling.”

Jane’s perfectly manicured fingernails scraped him deliciously inside his shorts and he thought a man could die from pleasure. She sensed his inability to resist her, to even hold on, and - satisfied - she increased her rhythm and returned to his exposed neck where she planted another slow kiss. He was groaning, pushing his hips against her movement, accelerating his pleasure. Red wine lapped at the rim of his glass.

Giggling again, she could taste the perspiration on his neck as her kiss turned into a slow, gentle suck. She moved him towards his point of no return.

“Your wife will love your new decoration”.

“Uh, Jane, no. Don’t do that. Please.”

She withdrew her hand.

“Oh god, don’t stop.”

“You can’t have one without the other.”

“Jesus. Look, let me kiss you.”

He was whispering into the air, trying to ease his head away from her but conscious he must keep his wine away from that expensive dress; as a consequence his struggle amounted to very little. Jane seemed to feed on his anxiety.

“No deal. I‘m fire, remember?. You play with fire, you get burned.”

He was too close to stop it now. Daniel suddenly despised himself for being weak, but he was out of control. With his free hand he found hers and pulled it back into his shorts.

“Finish this, please Jane. Just this.”

“No deal.”

But she took him in her hand and began to stroke again. Then she stopped.

“Jesus. Come on. Jane, come on.”

“I shall have you as I want you” she breathed into him and resumed her hand movement. He was on the edge and she knew it. As she felt his body tense, she stopped once more.

“Christ, fuck me Jane, have me. Anything.”

“Oh, I shall. You have a deal.”

She moved her arm quickly and tightened her grip - it would only be a few seconds more. She fastened onto his neck again, so that as he came into her hand he might feel the bitter pleasure of ecstasy and remorse. She worked him relentlessly and he groaned, head forced back, his veins pulsing in his neck as her hot mouth clung there like some languorous, obstinate leech. Then it was over.

“There you go darling, simple.”

Before he could gather his thoughts and work through the consequences of what had just happened, before he could even draw breath, she moved to the other side of his neck, and bit down hard. He cried out – it was agony, she was biting too hard; he knew she had split open his skin and could feel the warmth of his own blood spreading out across his throat. Then she bit a second time, and a third. His legs gave way and the wine glass slipped from his fingers; he didn’t understand what was happening.

“Jane?”

She pushed him effortlessly to the ground and pinned him to the damp grass. Her weight on his chest was immeasurable; he couldn’t move. For a moment, Daniel almost believed he could feel her lapping at the blood that had pooled at the base of his throat. Her hair fell across his mouth as he tried in his confusion to cry out, but she swept it aside and instead, sat up and forced her fingers deep inside, scratching at his throat. He gagged as she tore the delicate skin with her nails, her gorgeous eyes fixed to his, a feral smile playing on her lips, now red with his blood.

“Now you can kiss me.”

She laughed and closed her sparkling mouth over his. As her tongue invaded him he felt only pain, and tried to force her off him, but to no avail. He was floating, lightheaded, and could barely manage to squirm his face away into the earth. But Jane was not finished, not by a long way. This was far too invigorating to stop now; the raging heat in her body demanded an endgame. She dug her fingers into Daniel’s cheek and clawed his head back up to where she could see him. For a second, her raised arm was a blacker silhouette against the night sky; then her hand came crashing down into him. He was able to screw his eyes shut just moments before her rings gouged a fresh trail of destruction across his face. Daniel had admired those rings in an earlier time, another life; he had thought the diamond a particularly fine adornment, a brilliant and ornate complement to Jane’s sensuous hands, the hands he had longed to feel on him, the hands that were now betraying him beyond his blackest imagination.

Her scent cut through his senses like a knife; it was mixed with the taste of iron in his mouth and the sticky sweetness of the blood pumping from his neck where Jane had taken out his artery. Then she was on him again, a suffocating presence of sex and death.

“Look at me.”

He opened his eyes but they filled with a salty crimson mist and closed up again.

“Look at me.”

Blinking back the wet pain he peered up at her. Already his eyes were swollen and soon he would be able to see nothing, feel nothing. Daniel would be nothing.

She looked down at him and smiled, and he noticed how beautifully smooth and young her skin looked; she glowed. A small cluster of red freckles traced a path high across one cheekbone and her lips wore a red sheen. This evening she had darkened her eyes to charcoal and brushed out her lashes into a jet black frame, from within which her eyes blazed a thousand shades of red. He could see dark blonde highlights in her long trail of deepest red hair which was damp and clung to her face and her neck. As she brushed it away, he could see her nails, rounded to perfect tips; they shimmered a wet carmine hue in the rising moonlight.

“Fuck you!”

He heard his voice from miles away but wasn’t even sure it was his; maybe it was just an imagining, a last will and testament in his head to this… ending.

“You wanted hotter darling. Now you truly burn.”

She laughed, stood up over his still form and gazed around her. Lights twinkled from the house and she could hear a gentle lapping from the river. It was late, and she was tired; tomorrow’s schedule was a busy one. Turning towards the house and the graveled car park that adjoined the east wing, she dabbed at her mouth, just as she had when they’d finished dinner – when she had still been hungry. Always hungry.

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© 2006 Bristol Thrall