She breathed a puff of smoke into the winter air, cursing the wind when it swirled around her to blow up the short train of her coat. As always, she was dressed for work: a white ruffled blouse tucked underneath a tight black skirt that reached just below her knees. Her thin, nylon tights were nearly black, making her legs look soft and very long, as she clanked down the empty street in her favorite pair of high heels.
So cold. The wind was relentless, tossing the short length of her midnight hair across her heart-shaped face to shield the dangerous spark of dark green in her emerald eyes. She moved to brush the tangles aside, but as the winter caressed her bare hands, she shivered; and then quickly replaced them back inside her coat pocket.
Every fiber in her body began to tremble. It wasn't from the shimmering, occasional snowflakes falling down upon the nearly vacant streets of Belton, Mo, a place she had called home for too many years. And it wasn't from the thinness of her dress coat that she continued to shiver, or the fact that her legs were practically bare, or because it was in the middle of December and she still had another block to walk before she reached a little local bar at the end of West and 6th. where a few of her friends were waiting for her.
No. If it had been any other night, the weather would have been solely responsible for the ice-cold shivers coaxing her mind and body into shutting down. But tonight...things were different.
Him...she thought frantically. After all this time, he had come back.
She could never really escape him. She could never truly leave or abandon or dismiss him. She could never reject or deny him. Him, the man whose memory still burns into her mind like an iron steel blade. Him, whose voice still feeds her lonely weakness at night, and who hides in the rhythm of her chest during the day. She was restless; her mind was in constant turmoil, knowing that once again he had left her helpless.
Damn the man...
His memory was nearly as cruel as waking up to cold sheets and an empty pillow. It had been six years, six long years since she had invited him into her life, into her home, and into her body. He had claimed her well, multiple times in that one short night, leaving plenty of marks to prove his greedy ambition.
She could still feel his teeth cutting into the side of her neck, his fingers pinching her aching nipples into hard, round beads of pain, his hands, hard and firm around her throat, holding her wrists above her head, pinning her down to the bed where they had spent hours sating each others' lust.
But one night. One night was all that he had allowed her to take. No questions, no answers, no goodbyes. And in the morning he was gone, like he had never existed at all, like a dark phantom in the bleak folds of her mind that seemed so real so long ago, but were slowly starting to fade.
Until now.
She had seen him only a few short moments ago through the window of a small coffee shop as she walked by on the street. It was only for a few seconds, but she remembered him. How could she ever forget?
The strong scent of his cologne was seductive--overwhelming, even from outside the coffee shop. It pierced her memory with flashes of one dark night and two forceful hands that had literally tore the clothes from her body. His eyes, like silver and gray that burned so cold and bitter through the heat of her own gaze. She could get lost in those eyes; they seemed to captivate her--possess her, as if he were more than a man.
No...she wouldn't go there. She wouldn't allow her mind to wander into forbidden territories. He was gone, dead. He had walked out of her life once and for all, and she'd be damned if she let him back inside.
She brushed aside her silent thoughts, damning them to hell. She spent the next few minutes concentrating on the sidewalk, the wind, the gentle snow flakes, the few passing cars; nothing else. She reached the end of the sidewalk and waited for a vehicle to pass before she could continue on her path, where her destination lie not too far ahead.
But she never made it.
Standing in the darkness, surrounded by falling snow and small streams of light from the overhead street lamps, she heard a sound. A voice. A name. Her name.
She jerked around to see nothing. No one. Not a single soul on this side of the street other than her own shadow that had succumbed to isolation many nights before this one. Narrowing her eyes with unease, she hesitantly turned back around to make her way across the street. But as soon as she stepped up onto the curb, the strong, unmistakable cologne of a certain erotic spice slammed into her, practically knocking her back a few feet.
She slowed her pace, listening carefully to her surroundings, her eyes wide and focused on everything around her.
But she didn't see anything.
She kept moving forward, determined to control what was left of her sanity
Gone. Dead, she steadily reminded herself.
She reached the end of the block and turned a sharp corner when his scent began to loom over her again. And then she heard a voice, his voice, as if she could ever forget it.
