The Gift Read online

  Beer sign lights gleamed in a dark corner and a couple two-stepped to the beat of a country song on a sawdust covered floor.

  Maybe all she needed to heal and get her head squarely back on her shoulders again was to get away. What was that old adage? Time heals all wounds? Even so, damn Mark, she’d never cheated on him. He hadn’t cared how much he’d hurt her. The jerk would cheat again. She knew him through and through and needed to forget him.

  Looking at herself she saw a thirty-five year old well-proportioned woman with a fine figure, of medium height and weight, soft dark brown hair, delicate features and doe brown eyes. She was a high-powered attorney who made boque cash: Carmine Ashton had the world on a string. Perhaps she didn’t have a faithful husband, but she had herself. That said she peered up at the bartender and said, “Bring me another scotch and a hamburger.” And as she ate, she remembered the exciting man she had broken up with before she met Mark. The feeling of his lips on her throat came over her. She needed the type of sex he offered.

  What a hunk he was. Tall, dark, muscular. A cop. Clean-shaven. Mm. Her nipples peaked against the lace of her bra at the thought of him. His eyes were obsidian and his facial lines, chiseled. In fact, he looked better than any or all of the California sex symbols--absolutely yummy. Some women might call him a stud. Occasionally she saw him in town; though she hadn’t seen him in over a year. Twice, through a mere chance meeting, she saw him in his squad car, pulling over a speeder. Experiencing just a fleeting sighting of him triggered her to recall the day his hands slid under her slip, under the band in her panties and into her moist slit. Johnny had an ass that set her on fire when he wore jeans. He came to town when he had to appear in court, if she remembered correctly after their break up. Usually he was accompanied with another cop, but she only had eyes for Johnny.

  Her parents had a hand in her and Johnny's break up, because they didn’t want her marrying a cop. Their intentions were good, because Carmine’s mom knew a woman well whose husband was killed in the line of duty, leaving the woman with three kids to raise alone.

  Carmine knew within a year after her wedding to Mark that he didn’t suit her. Secretly, she wanted to go back to Johnny. Why she listened to her mother, she’d never know.

  But Johnny...mm...his lovemaking techniques were...different, masterful and delectably domineering. Perhaps kinky. God, she had loved the frizzles and twists of having sex with him. After they separated, she heard through the female office grapevine and a few other attorneys Johnny had joined a BDSM club. When he was with her he didn’t practice the lifestyle on her per se; he was merely curious. Seemed he got a bit more curious…

  On occasion, he’d handcuffed her to the bed, but she considered that ordinary sex.

  Mark had never pleasured her that way; he hadn’t even tried. He merely pleased himself.

  Over the years, during her marriage, the slightest recollection of Johnny and the dark side of their intimate involvement caused need to gnaw and tumble to the depths of her core. A true blue wife, not promiscuous, she shoved all illicit thoughts to the depths of her mind.

  Shutting out all thoughts of Johnny, coming back to the here and now, Carmine sipped the last of her scotch, left a tip, retrieved her coat, and headed for the hotel. She high stepped over a drift of snow. Nearby a plow cleared a northbound lane. She had to forget him. What was wrong with her, dwelling on what may have been? Again and again her mind slid right back, centering on Johnny.

  Was Johnny still single? She remembered the first time he’d asked her out--she refused! Thank God she accepted the second time. One day when she was up to it, she would look him up. But the more she stewed over it, she surmised he probably would not speak to her. After all she had dropped him for Mark so many years earlier...ten years to be exact.

  Back in the dark motel room, Carmine flopped over onto her front side and gathered a pillow to her face. Need gnawed at her from within. She had left one nightlight on. Later, after tossing around in the sheets, she fell asleep and he came to her in the foggy fringes. His warm body on her backside pressed her face forward into the mattress. On his knees between her thighs, he lowered himself onto her, his lips at her ear. His hot breath moved her long raven hair as his hands moved down her curves, their warm bodies mingling.

  “You’re here,” she murmured. He felt so good.

  He thought the words, You want it, don’t you?

  She felt his luscious, hard rod pressing into her buttocks.

  Imagining it in full color, she trembled like a leaf, her clitoris aching for the thrust and the rough slide over her skin.

  “Johnny?” she called to him in the foggy, gray dream world. “Mm. Oh yes.” It had been so many years.

  She felt his calloused hands moving over her ample mocha colored breasts.

  “Would you like it in the ass?”

  “Yes, Johnny fuck me now.” Please let him be real. “I need you.”

  She gasped at the touch of his fingers on the outer lips of her pussy. “What are you doing?” she asked without fear, loving the sliding feel of him, spreading, opening herself to the limit, even lifting her derriere under his weight. He’d never done it to her in the ass, but she wanted it very much, even if it hurt.

  When she looked back for a fraction of a second, his eyes caught a glimmer of the moonlight that filtered through the slitted drapes.

  We have unfinished business. I’ve bought you a gift.

  “For Christmas? What is it?”

  Silence, dead and empty, stagnated in the room.

  “Don’t go.”

  “I’m leaving this world now, Carmine.”

  Bewildered, she turned her head, watched his figure dissipate, then sat up and looked at the time. It was two a.m. and she’d merely dreamt of him. It had been so real! Her inner thighs were wet! When would she see him again?

  Chapter Three

  Mark’s infidelity had doomed their marriage. After she returned to Mt. Vernon and rented a townhouse, she immediately and fully separated from Mark. Within the week she had signed the divorce papers and was free. Carmine took a week off one week before and after Christmas under her soon to be ex-husband’s watchful eye, ignoring his interest, retreating in icy silence. To get her groove back, Carmine accepted a date with another lawyer from Centralia, but any sexual attraction for him eluded her.

  She caught up on personal correspondence, went shopping and one day after hashing and re-hashing what she’d say, Carmine casually called the telephone number Johnny had given her ten years ago. Much to her dismay, it had been disconnected.

  After three hours of shopping in the mall, she lingered over lunch with her best friend Kenna, enjoying chatting over coffee. The lunch crowd left two waitresses to clean tables all around them as busboys lugged the tubs of dirty dishes into the kitchen.

  Carmine revealed all her feelings about letting go of Mark and her decade long marriage. In turn, Carmine learned some disconcerting facts that took her back, but she didn’t bring up Mark’s name at first.

  “I’m really sorry Mark wouldn’t try to please you.”

  A sigh of frustration left Carmine’s lips. “I know. Some marriages just weren’t meant to be. I love my Mom and Dad. But Kenna, I shouldn’t have listened.”

  “It’s too bad about your old boyfriend, isn’t it?”

  Carmine swallowed and carefully set down her cup. “Who do you mean?” she asked bracing herself.

  “It happened while you were away. Johnny. It is too bad he died of cancer...pancreatic cancer. Three weeks earlier he found out he had it and knew he was dying.”

  “My ex? Johnny you mean?”

  Slowly Kenna nodded. “Oh. I’m sorry.” Kenna’s mouth formed an “O.” “I should have broken it in more easily.”

  “He--he died?”

  Slowly Kenna nodded and picked up her cup.

  Hot tears welled in Carmine’s eyes. She’d so much wanted to see him again. Actually wanted was not the correct word. She needed to see him
again.

  “I should have realized you still had a flame for him.”

  The talk continued and Carmine realized that he quite possibly died around the same moment he had visited Carmine in the dream.

  “It’s uncanny,” said Carmine, shaken. “He died maybe around the same moment he had come to me in a dream...right after I had left Mark. He had said some things I didn’t understand. I took it he wanted to see me again.”

  When they ambled out to Kenna’s red Mustang, Kenna said, “Call a psychic. Find out what the hell he was trying to tell you. I had this premonition last night to say something to you.”

  Carmine didn’t tell Kenna but she too had the idea come to her in a dream. “I don’t know...do you believe in psychics?”

  “Maybe psychics are real.”

  At that point, Carmine would try anything to communicate with Johnny. “You want to come when I go?” asked Carmine as she opened the car door.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Once inside, their seatbelts clasped, Kenna said, “I know where one lives. She charges by the sitting and takes credit cards.”

  “This is so silly. I feel badly that he died, but really? Go to a psychic?” whispered Carmine fiercely.

  Wearing a smile, Kenna offered, “See if what she says makes any sense.”

  After a thoughtful pause, “I will if you go with me.”

  “You and I aren’t working today, so let’s do.”

  * * * *

  During a forty-five minute wait in the designer red and blue waiting room of the psychic, Madame Culver, the ladies read Hollywood scandal sheets.

  “I think we were lucky there was a cancellation,” whispered Carmine, as she daubed a new batch of tears. “I may not have come back.”

  Kenna remarked, “She must be good. Maybe it’ll give you a chance to say goodbye, since you loved him.”

  “I did.”

  “What else did you like about him?” asked Kenna dreamily.

  “He was a good lover. He tied me up and tortured me with his mouth. It wasn’t average torture, it was d...”

  “Ohhhh?”

  “He took his time...even if it took all night.”

  An elderly lady who was dressed in a blue pants suit came to the door and peered at the suddenly quiet Kenna and Carmine. “Please come in. I understand you want to connect with a departed soul who was once your lover.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think he’s here already waiting to talk to you.” She flattened a hand to her chest. “I am Madame Culver. Extending her hand towards the room she stated “Both of you are welcome to come inside and take a seat at the table.

  Within five minutes, Madame Culver’s body was taken over by an entity who Kenna and Carmine thought to be Johnny. Colorful specks flitted about the room as if blown by wind even though the narrow ceiling high windows had been shut drum tight. Mesmerized by the sudden strange surroundings, they took a seat on the floor among brocade throw pillows.

  Her voice and features suddenly seemed masculine.

  “Is there something you’d like to say to me, Johnny?” asked Carmine.

  “Yesssss,” said the woman, her eyes rolling and her head and upper body weaving otherworldly. “I’ve known for a long time that you’re marriage had soured.”

  “It was never good, Johnny.”

  “I want to tell you goodbye in a special way.”

  “I don’t see how that can happen.”

  “I loved you, Carmine...you left me for Mark. But I want you one last time.”

  “I don’t understand...”

  “Ask him what he means,” Kenna whispered.

  "What do you mean?"

  “You will find a business card in a parking lot. Take it to Club 99. It’s a gift.”

  "Johnny? Are you still there?"

  "Yes."

  "I miss you. Can you come back? I made an awful mistake. I--I listened to my family. Now I realize that I shouldn't let them choose my love. For the past ten years I've agonized over that wrong decision. Oh Johnny. Forgive me."

  "I forgive you, my love. Accept the gift and we can see each other again."

  In a vaporous cloud Madame Culver disappeared into thin air for a moment, the room shook and she returned, her facial expressions normalized. “It’s over...”

  She looked exhausted. “I’m sorry?” asked Kenna.

  “It’s over. He left.”

  Carmine asked, “What do you think he meant?”

  Madame Culver stood. “I’d say that you’ll be finding a card.”

  And, exactly two days later, in the City Hall parking lot, Carmine found the card. Immediately, recognizing it, she took it to her townhouse, readied and dressed for bed and called Kenna telling her the news.

  Kenna said, “I don’t want to throw water on your plans, Carmine, but do you know what type of club Club 99 is?”

  “What type?” she asked already having an inkling.

  “It delivers sex to women, maybe men too, in a very ritzy way. It’s a BDSM club or something like that.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Yes.”

  “It sounds interesting. Definitely different.”

  “Are you serious about going through with it, Carmine?”

  “I want any sex Johnny sends even if it’s not him and it’s sent from the grave.”

  “You must have loved him. Why was it you left him again?”

  “My parents didn’t approve.”

  Kenna rolled her eyes and shook her head, smiling. “Well good luck.”

  “I may need it.”

  “It’s spooky Carmine.”

  “But, I want his gift.”

  Chapter Four

  She celebrated Christmas, with her family, on the 23rd of December because her first cousin, Alexia, a cello player, planned to leave on an overseas musical tour with the orchestra she played with. Since everyone in her family was off work, they decided to move the dinner and gift exchange to the 23rd.

  Once the dinner and gift exchange had ended, on Christmas Eve afternoon, with a carload of newly opened Christmas gifts, Carmine drove home to Mt. Vernon. Later, that night, she made the final decision to turn the card in to the front desk of the Club 99 and accept the sexual gift that Johnny had given her from beyond the grave. There was no doubt that he had sent it. She just didn’t want her clients to know she attended such a club. Before she turned off the light, she flipped the card and read some fine print discovering there was a second club in Saint Louis, a hundred and fifty miles from the one in her hometown. Surely, no one would know her there.

  The initial visit to Club 99 consisted mainly of getting Carmine’s okay, her signature and receiving a general orientation of the “rules” and a list of how the “gift” worked. It was conducted in a very business-like way. Carmine realized they had to cover their butt legally, which was understandable.

  A well-dressed attractive woman who had a wealth of long black hair, wearing a low-cut tight black dress said that a visitor come to her house at an unannounced time and would fly her to Jamaica. He wanted it to be a secret as to what he’d do to her, but that it was a gift. She was given a vague list of the acts the stranger would accomplish, including one sex act that she didn’t recognize called “punishment," using Velcro restraints, spreader bar and a blindfold. That intrigued her very much.

  “Does the gift cost a lot?” asked Carmine as she read the list.

  “Yes, it does. The trip to Jamaica is included. Do you want the refund?”

  The gift, she ascertained was a type of "sexually enjoyable punishment" that was harmless. A BSDM novice, she was unclear of the exact nature of the gift Johnny had purchased and that she had just signed for, she hesitantly answered “No.”

  “Okay then,” she said as she turned the papers around for her to sign. “If you don’t want the refund and you agree to the stipulations here, this and this, please sign here.”

  Carmine hesitated. “The benefactor. Who is he?” she asked, wanting to
make sure it was Johnny who arranged this for her.

  She took a sheet of paper from a folder and read his name. “A Mr. John Brooks.”

  Carmine nodded. “I see.”

  The woman’s eyes rose from the legal sheet. “Is everything all right?”

  “Um, yes. It’s fine.” Carmine looked around at the gold chrome, marble and white carpeted room. “Is this type of store or club new?”

  “Not really. Our particular service is very popular throughout Europe, United States and Canada. Club 99 also has a private club.” The woman nodded. “Do you have any more questions?”

  Having to ask difficult questions made Carmine nervous. “Um yes...after reading the brochure for Club 99, I realize the man will wear protection against disease and are very average, who you’ve checked the backgrounds on. But, whoever does this...they will stop when or if I ask them to, right?”

  “Say ‘red flag’, or ‘stop’ and he will stop, get your signature and leave. Is that okay?”

  “It’s fine.

  “The gift is called ‘Visiting Stranger.’ We arrange to have you flown to the rendezvous point. It’s all private.”

  * * **

  After she settled in her room at the Tropical-Blainsworth Hotel, a strong tall white male hunk appeared at her door. He looked so sexy in a pair of black dress slacks, a suit jacket, a white shirt and tie. He looked every bit as handsome as Johnny, with raven long hair. His cologne smelled yummy and he looked familiar.

  “I’m your gift,” he said as he slipped out of his jacket. “I was sent to you by Johnny. I’m Hank. And you’re...Sarah?”

  She realized they weren’t their real names. Her nerves quaked throughout her body; her knees felt like they had turned to jelly. Sex was such a foreign event that happened to everyone else except herself. Now a gorgeous hunk stood before her ready to please her sexually.

  “May I?” asked Hank.

  She stepped back, grasping the front of her robe, holding it closed thinking that perhaps it had been a mistake to divulge a lot of information and say yes to the gift.