Dear Readers - This is a modern story of love and danger in many parts. Enjoy.
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Fashion is our Name - Part 1 - They had to carry on
Chapter 1 - Philip Disappears
Her hand on his shoulder woke him. "Let me in there."
He sleepily moved over, saying, "I don't have anything on."
She was very cold and pressed herself to him.
"Neither do I. Don't worry about it."
"How did you get so cold?"
His strong arms gathered her in. She was shaking and he discovered she was crying.
"I miss him so."
Adrian's father, Philip, had failed to return from a business trip. Obliquely, he had warned them them this could happen. When it did, they were miserable, knowing that he was in some obscure way part of the intelligence community, and normal inquiries would be hopeless.
They did what they had to do, which was to go on with their lives. Adrian was about to pass out of public school and Nicole was a designer in a furnishings emporium catering to upper class residents and Londoners with country places nearby.
Almost three months to the day after Philip's trip had begun, a man in nondescript clothes appeared at their door at dinner hour and said he would like a word with them. A look at his face dashed any hope they had of good news.
"I am very sorry indeed to inform you that Philip is dead. We don't know the exact circumstances because it appears he was on an unofficial mission." The man opened his satchel and removed two cardboard packages. "One of these is a few of Philip's personal effects, and the other is his ashes, or at least part of them. They were delivered to us by an agent of the Czech government, who said he was an intermediary and not able to say where they came from or who gave them to him."
The gentleman would not identify himself and departed in a few minutes, leaving no more information than he had just provided. At the door, he pulled a card from his pocket and scribbled a phone number on it. "If you find yourselves in a genuine emergency, call this number and use Philip's name, not the Sandringham alias."
The boxes sat unopened on the table in the foyer for several days. After meals, Nicole would gaze at them as she came into the front room and fall into Adrian's arms on the sofa, sobbing.
Finally, on the weekend, Adrian announced he was opening them and took a knife to the wrappings. He carefully placed the contents on the dining table. It was a pitiful collection. A sturdy plastic sack with the ashes could easily have been mistaken for ordinary mortar powder. The small pile from the other box included his NHS card, in the name of Alex Sandringham. A British passport in the same name. A nylon keychain with three keys on it. A notebook, about the size of a wallet, with a great deal of small and fine handwriting in code. A tiny container of waterproof lip balm. Several one Euro coins. A rail receipt from Paris to Geneva on the TGV dated four days after he had left on the trip.
In the dark of his bedroom, Adrian tried to console Nicole, patting gently on her shoulder. She guided his hand to her breast and pressed back against him harder. He had an erection and moved to get it away from her rear.
"It's all right," she whispered. "Guys your age are always hard."
As she warmed, the sniffles stopped and she was asleep. He lay there for a long time, wondering what they should do. Philip's way of life left them with few connections to the places where he purchased houses. Adrian had never met his mother, although Philip spoke fondly of her from time to time. Nicole was a teenage runaway dancing in a Paris club when Philip connected with her and promised a good life if she would become his companion. He spoke Parisian French and wooed her carefully and sweetly. Nicole told Adrian she never doubted his affection even after he revealed the existence of other women friends.
As the black outside turned to gray, his eyes closed and sleep claimed him.
He woke to find a naked Nicole climbing back into his bed with a tray of coffee and croissants.
"That was nice of you to take me in last night." She handed him the small cup of thick coffee and a large piece of pastry. In Nicole's view, the day could not begin until coffee and croissant has been consumed. It was Saturday, and he was expected to return to school in a week. He thought they had better talk through some plans before then. When Phillip was home, an air of exquisite organization pervaded the house. For every eventuality, short or longer term, he seemed to have already created a plan. Adrian felt a vacuum in their lives, which had been on hold for more than three months.
The unexpected intimacy of Nicole's body next to his was powerful. An unmistakable odor coming from under the sheet covering her left no doubt that a woman was in bed with him. If he had any doubts, his cock didn't. It was fully erect and making a tent in the covers.
Nicole gestured at him and smiled. "I've never told you how handsome and manly I think you've become. If Philip were here, he probably would not like my making eyes at you."
He emitted a small noise of embarrassment. At school, there was a lot of gutter talk about girls, but truth to tell, he had no close up experience. Until last night, he had never had a woman's breast in his hand. Worse, to his mind, he was still a virgin, even though his eighteenth birthday had passed last fall.
She ran her hand through his auburn locks. Until recently, his friends, all boys, had kidded him about his girlish looks. A year of growth, a vigorous beard, and muscles from varsity rugby had changed that around. Girls looked at him, and his teammates respected him. It didn't hurt that he was always at the top of the Dean's list.
She said, "We can't just lie around here. Philip would not have wanted that. After you graduate, what then?"
He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it. She turned so the nipple on her right breast was in reach of his tongue, and he licked it.
After Philip enticed her to come back to Britain with him, Nicole realized she needed to be more fit. Somehow, in their first wild bouts of sex in his Paris hotel room, she had not noticed what a tight, hard body he possessed. The house she first lived in with him and Adrian was outside York, in a small village on the edge of marshlands. He had an adaptation to cold, and perpetually went around the house in short and tight briefs. He introduced her to commando style dressing, which shocked her French upbringing and love of lacy underwear. He favored her black boy shorts with the elastic band, so that he could slip up unnoticed and have his hand down her front and in her bottom in seconds. She told him if he wanted the easy access to continue, he had to help get her body into shape like his. This was a bit of a joke, but they enjoyed bantering about how she was going to best him at arm wrestling any day.
Her hand on the back of Adrian's head was filling his mouth with a large amount of firm breast. "Yes. Use your tongue on me." Her fingers were running up and down his back, digging here and there, finding muscles to massage.
He came up for air, only to find his mouth now mashed against hers, with their tongues exploring each other.
"I suppose you are old enough to know what my problem is?"
Adrian may have been inexperienced, but he wasn't a fool. "You need sex. You got a lot from him and now he is gone."
