The Encounter Ch 01

This is the first time I have let anyone other than friends read my work. Please be kind in your feedback, and thank you angel love for your time in editing this story....

As I stand here on the platform, I look around, half expecting to see everyone staring at me. I can feel their eyes on me, but as I look I don't see anyone looking my way. I am just another passenger on this train that is coming in. I look down to the ticket that is clenched in my fist and again I check to see that my luggage is right beside me. I am travelling light because I know that I will not need much at my destination, nor will I need much on the trip. I don't want to be weighed down by luggage that is unneeded.

With a blast the train pulls up to the platform and a sea of people emerge. The jostling, pushing and shoving almost separates me from my case, but I reach out at the last minute to save it from rolling away. I don't have the strength that I use to have, but I guess that comes in connection with my condition.

Wearily I go forward to the doorway of the car that is where I will be spending my trip to the ocean. I don't know if I can make it, but at the last minute, as the train starts to move, I feel an arm around me lifting me onto the train and throwing my case on behind me. By the time I have gained my footing and turned around, there is no one there to thank, so I just take my case and go to look for my cabin.

Slowly I walk down the hallway to where I figure that my cabin is, but when I get there I find that there is no cabin with my number on it. Wearily I lean against the side of the hall until I can catch my breath and gain my footing again. I gather up my wits and go to the end of the car where, to my relief, I find a man in an Amtrak uniform. When I show him my ticket he smiles and directs me to the next car. Gratefully he takes my case from me and carries it to a door where he stops. When he opens the door I see that it is just what I was hoping for, a small room with a bed and a private bathroom.

I guess, when you have the money, you can do anything that you want or get whatever you need. Now I am glad that I pursued that lawsuit against the medical facility where I was misdiagnosed, because now I can do what I want with the rest of my life and even give some financial assistance to some friends of mine. I hand the gentleman $20.00 which he tries to give back.

"Please, keep it. I know this is a long ride, and I know that you will be getting as hungry as anyone else. Go and buy yourself something in the dining car.

"Thank you, ma'am. I may just take you up on that. Is there anything I can get for you?"

I smile. "No. I just need to sleep. Please make sure that I am not disturbed, okay?"

"Okay. You just leave everything to ole Wayne. I'll take real good care of you."

"Thank you."

With that I shut the door and go to lie down on the bed. Before I know it I am asleep. With the sound of the wheels rumbling beneath the floor and the gentle swaying of the train I find that I can sleep better than I have in a long time.

Suddenly something wakes me up. I turn over to look at the door and I see the handle slowly turning. I pretend to be asleep and with it being as dark as it is over here in the corner anyone would think that I am asleep if they were just to glance in. Slowly the door opens and I see a man slowly enter my room. I see him glance over at me and continue farther in.

Very gently he sits down on the edge of my bed, almost as if he doesn't want to wake me. I close my eyes quickly when I see him reach out a hand toward my face. Through my closed eyes I can tell that there are now flashes of light in regular intervals, so I know that we are traveling alongside a road of some kind. I try to keep my breathing deep and even as I feel his hand gently caress the side of my face and slowly comb through my short-cropped dark hair.

I almost give it away when I hear him whisper, for I know his voice very well. "Marie, what have they done to you? Why didn't you call me and tell me?"

I know that this is the man that I love, but I can never have. It is getting harder and harder to keep my breathing slow and even when all I want to do is sit up, throw my arms around him and kiss him. Obviously that wouldn't be a good idea since he thinks I am asleep and he obviously doesn't want me to know that he is here.

"Marie, I know that I can do nothing for you now, but I hope that you know you have just to call me and I will be there for you. I don't know if you can hear me or not, but I hope that you know I will always be there for you."

When he sneaks out of my room I sit up in the dark cabin, hug my knees up into my chest and start to cry. As I rock myself back and forth I now know who it was that got me onto the train – it was him. Even though I know his voice, I have never met him, until tonight.

There is only one way that he could have known that I was going to be on this train, and that is if he was watching the reservations that came in since the last time we talked. He knew that I wanted to meet him, and he knew that I had won my lawsuit, but I have no idea how he got away to come and get me. I just made my reservations two days before I left. Slowly I can feel myself drifting off to sleep again so I stretch out on my bed and close my eyes.

When I next open my eyes it is to a gentle knocking on my door. I tug the blanket – which I don't remember having the night before – up to my chin and call out for the person to enter. A very nicely dressed woman appears in the open doorway and stops dead in her tracks when she sees me.

"So, this is where my husband snuck off to last night. I know he was here, so don't try to deny it. He bought that blanket at that last stop, supposedly for one of his cases, but I don't suppose that is you, is it."

Finally I gain my voice. "You must be Marsha. Daniel has told me a lot about you. I envy you, do you know that?"

I can see the surprise on her face. "I just wish that I had someone that would love me as much as your husband loves you. Yes, I guess you could call me one of his cases. He counseled me through a lot of difficult times, and I will always respect him for that. He knows that I would never do anything to take him away from you, and I would hope that, seeing me, you would realize too that there is no way I could ever compete with you."

With a sweeping glance she takes in my sallow complexion, the thinness of my features, and my cropped hair. "You are still sick, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am. There is nothing anyone can do about it though, so I am taking one last trip to the ocean and I am going there to die. I know most people would be freaking out, but I have always wanted to see the ocean, so I decided to do so now, while I still can. My doctors only give me about a month to live, so I thought I'd better do it now before I have to go into a hospital."

Again she glances over me. "Now I know why he bought that blanket. I'm glad that he did. You obviously need it."

I guess she saw the shiver that I was trying to hide from her. By now I notice that her attitude toward me has changed. If I felt better I would get very upset at the pity that I read in her demeanor, but right now I just want to go back to sleep. Before I drift off again I hear her say one last thing to me as she is walking out of the room.

"I won't stand in the way of you being with Daniel. You need him right now, and I'll always get him back."

When I open my eyes again we are still moving and Wade is standing in the doorway with a tray of food.

"Ma'am, I know that you haven't eaten anything since before you got on this here train, so I hope you don't mind, but I took it upon myself to get your breakfast for you. It is nice and healthy, since it looks like you could use something healthy." He glances again at my face. "Are you okay, ma'am? You sure don't look all that well."

I smile at him. "Wade, I am going to the ocean one time to see it before I die. I am tired of all the treatments that just make me sicker and feel worse, and so I left it all behind. I know that I am dying, and I know that it will be soon. I just wanted to do two things before I die. One of them is to meet a friend of mine, and the other was to see the ocean."

I can see that what I have said has made Wade upset so I try to gloss over it a little bit. "If there is one thing I have learned through this whole thing, it is that you have to take life one day at a time and get the most out of every minute of it. That is something that I never did before I got sick."

I can see that Wade is still upset, so I ask him to sit down. Thankfully there is a chair in my room and he sits down on that, after setting my breakfast tray on the edge of my bed.

"Wade, I lived like I was invincible, that nothing could ever hurt me, and nothing ever had. When I found out that I was going to die before I was 40, I lost it and went into a deep depression, but that only lasted as long as it took someone to give me a laptop. Once I met Daniel online, things started to look up. I decided to fight for every day that I could, and I did. I went through all of the treatments they had for the last year, and they didn't help a bit. I decided that since the outlook is a bleak as it is, and the treatments were not helping at all I would quit them and do what I wanted to do before I couldn't. I finally walked out of the treatment center and I am never going to walk back in. I have a few things that I want to experience before I die, and one of them is the ocean."

I don't tell him that another one is the love of a man for a woman. How could I tell him that I am a 34 year old virgin? I couldn't.

"Ma'am, maybe it is none of my business, but I couldn't help but see a lot of people in and out of your room last night and this morning. I hope they weren't disturbing you. I tried to tell them to leave you alone, but they wouldn't listen. I guess I failed you."

"Oh no, Wade. They are friends of mine that I didn't know were going to be on this train. You'll probably see the guy come in here more than the woman though. I have never really gotten along with her. He is the guy that is going to help me fulfill my desire to see the ocean. He paid for this trip after all."

That isn't entirely true, but he would have paid for it if I had asked him. I know that Daniel could have done it for me, because he offered it many times in the last couple of months.

"Ma'am, I am sorry, but I don't even know your name."

I smile to him. "I have many names, Wade. If you ask the people coming and going from this room they will say I am Marie Johnson. On my medical records it says that I am Mary Jane White. On my birth certificate it says that I am JoAnna Michaels. I have gone by Mary Jane White for so long now that I may as well just continue with that name." I look out the window and sigh. "No one will ever know what happened to JoAnna Michaels. That, I guess, will be a mystery for the ages."

So, what should I call you?"

"Just call me Mary or Marie. They sound similar enough that you could be saying either name, and that way no one will get confused."

"Okay, Mary. Well, I'll leave you to eat your breakfast, and I'll come back in a little while to collect the tray. If you would like, you can just put it outside your door and I'll get it from there."

I smile to him again, this self-appointed protector. "Thank you, Wade, for everything."

"No problem, Ma'am."

With that he is out the door again and I start to lift the covers off my tray of food. I have to laugh when I see that he got me a little bit of everything, and a lot of fruit. I take the fruit off the tray and place it on the chair that he so recently vacated, and then I start to eat.

Before I am very far through the amount of food that Wade had brought me there is a knock on my door. "Come in?" I have a good feeling that I know who it is, and when he pokes his head around the door I find, to my relief, that I was right. Daniel is standing there looking at me.

"Marie?"

"Hello, Daniel. Thank you for this lovely blanket. Thank you also for helping me get on this train."

"How did you know that I gave you the blanket and helped you out?" He comes in to the room a little farther.

I smile to take the sting out of my words. "I had an early morning visitor and she told me that you had bought it for one of your 'cases.' I guess that means me." I snuggle under the blanket a bit more. "I have never felt one so soft and warm as this one is."

Astonishment is written all over his face until it is replaced by suspicion. "What did Marsha say to you? She didn't upset you, did she? I told her not to come to see you, but I guess she had to. Are you all right? She can be pretty harsh when it comes to other people in our lives, but I told her that you are dying, and right away she wanted to know what it was from. I could only tell her that it is a non contagious disease, right?"

I clear off the fruit that I had put on the chair, and motion for him to sit down. "She was very understanding. I am not sure I would have been in her situation. She said that I could have you, because you always come back to her. After she looked me over a few times I guess she was convinced that I am, in fact, dying."

Surprisingly he doesn't sit on the chair, but moves the tray and all the food over to it instead, choosing to sit on the bed by me. I pull my knees up close to my chest and snuggle into the blanket even more.

"Marie, I want you to come to me of your own will. I will not force you, but you know what we had talked about on the phone and online. I just have to know, are you a tease, or are you a lady of your word?"

I feel a shiver go through me and I know that it is not from being cold or scared as I was earlier. "Daniel, there is one thing that I wasn't truthful about with you."

"What's that?"

"I was not truthful about the amount of experience I have had."

Cautiously he looks over at me. "What do you mean? You weren't a lady of the night?"

I smile a half smile that I know he loves. "No, Daniel, I wasn't." I take a deep breath before continuing. "Daniel, I have...well, I mean...this is so embarrassing."

Caution turns to stunned amazement as I watch his face. "Do you mean to tell me that you are still a virgin?" I nod. "Is that another reason why you wanted to come and meet me in person?" I nod again. "Wow! To be the first and the last for a woman, that will be an interesting twist for the whole thing."

I carefully reach out my hand and hold onto his. "Will you, Daniel, be my first and last? Will you initiate me into all the wonders of love-making and all the fun of sex?" His hand turns over in mine until he is holding mine as I am holding his.

"Marie, for you only will I do this. I'll check with my wife and see if everything is cool with her, but from what you say she has given you the opportunity to do this. I just hope that I don't get chucked out of a window and off this train before we have the time to do this right." Leaning over to me he places a kiss on my cheek. "I'll be back in a couple of minutes, okay? I just have to tell Marsha where I am going." With that he gets up and walks out of the door.

As quickly as I can I get up and pull out my case. I quickly hop in the shower for a quick wash. By the time that I get out I know that I am going to have a hard time going through with this. Sure enough, when Daniel walks back in to my cabin I don't know if I can. Being the caring type of guy that he is, though, he can sense that I am having second thoughts and he sits down on the bed next to me.

"Marie, if you have changed your mind, I will understand." Just hearing his voice that is smooth with that eastern accent, has me melting as usual.

"Daniel, I haven't changed my mind, but I am nervous. I don't know if I can just do it. Do you know what I mean?"

Very tenderly he smiles at me. "Marie, I am not a monster. I do understand. I can't say that I understand about you telling me that you had way more experience, but I promise you that I will be very gentle with you."

Slowly he gathers me close to him and starts to tenderly kiss me. I can feel that he is holding back, but surprisingly I find that I trust this man that I have talked online to for the last four years. Very gently he unbuttons the front of my shirt and starts to tenderly caress my breasts. When his hand cups my breast and he places his mouth over the peak I feel like I am on fire. I have never felt a sensation like this before. Slowly he starts to suck on it, all the while kneading my other one. Finally when I think I can't take any more of this wonderful torture his hands wander lower.

"Daniel!" I gasp his name as his finger starts exploring the area between my legs.

Instantly he stops and looks up at me. "Am I going to fast, my Marie? If I am, then let me know."

It feels like I have just run a marathon so I try to catch my breath before answering him. "Please don't stop."

I feel like I have just made the biggest decision of my life, and I am happy about it. When I look at Daniel's face I know that he is happy as well.

"Help me take off my clothes." I reach down and help him pull his shirt off over his head. When I hesitate at his belt he senses my hesitation and draws back a little. "Marie?"

I draw in a breath. "Just give me a minute. I haven't had this much exertion for a long time and I want to enjoy this."

"That's okay. I don't want to rush you." Slowly my breathing returns to normal and I reach out to his belt.

Before I can undo it though he takes my hand away. "Marie, I know that you have seen it on the computer camera, but I don't think you realize how big I really am."

I run my hand down over the crotch of his jeans and feel him straining to get free. "Daniel, I know exactly how big you are. I know that it is going to hurt when you take my virginity, but I have to do this."

"But you don't have to do this right now, do you?"

"Daniel, I have less than a month left to live, and I am not going to wait for anything any more. I am tired all the time, but I just have to deal with it." While I am talking to him I manage to get his belt undone and his button unsnapped.

I guess my news has shocked him because he freezes like a statue. There is shock on his face as he looks at me. "Less than a month? They can't do anything?"

"No. They tried everything and nothing worked. I'm not going to die in a cold and sterile hospital." I grimace. "I would love to die on the beach as long as I know that I wouldn't be found by some kids."

"I will make sure of that, Marie."

"Thank you."

"Where are you staying?"

"I have reservations at a hotel that is right on the marina in Newport. It sounded nice online so I thought I'd give it a try. I hope that it is what I am looking for."

"I'm sure it will be." When he looks over at me I can see that there is still one thing and one thing only on his mind.

"Daniel, are you going to fuck my ass too?"

"If you want me to. I would love to take both of your cherries. I think we had better see how you feel, though, after we take care of your first one." He places my hand inside his jeans and I feel, for the first time, a naked cock. I gasp.

"Yes, Marie, that is what you are going to have inside of you in a little bit." Quickly he stands up and strips. When I see how big he really is I get a little bit worried, but I know that I will stretch to accommodate his massive size. He is at least 10 inches long and about 2 inches across. Leaning down he works his finger back into me.

"Honey, lay back and spread your legs. Soon you will feel the fullest sensation followed by some pain as I tear through your virginity. I will be as careful as I can, but I am so hot for you."