I'll Let You Be in My Dreams

Where does real-life end... and erotic fantasy begin...? Cynthia is about to find out

'WHAT A DAY FOR A DAYDREAM...'

It's always there. It's always been there. The background murmur of other minds. His gift. His curse. But now it comes in waves of total sensuality. She's out there, somewhere. She's approaching the 'Big Four-Oh'. And she has

such

dreams. So vivid that their intensity keeps him feverish and strung-out. Infecting him with their urgent need. She might be called 'Cynthia'. Or perhaps that's just her fantasy name. Her cipher. Icon. Or Avatar.

He sits quite still. Questing as best he can to isolate and pinpoint the source of the dreams. There's nothing other than a rather tousled down-at-heel quality to mark him out from anyone else on this city-street, the bohemian scuffed leather jacket and wranglers. For only he is aware he has a special talent. He's secretly lived with this background thought-mumble of other minds all his life. Alone. Until now. Until finding this answering voice. Cynthia. Never before has it reached him as strongly as it does now. Nothing verbal comes from her mind. Merely undisciplined images of powerful emotional eroticism.

And she's out there, somewhere...

----0----

She's thinking this...

Bird playing a slow Blues on the keyboard. Cigarette smoke rising in intricate spirals. She's watching his fingers move over the keys, mesmerised by his improvisational skill. Madame Clare, Maitre D of this 19

th

Century bordello, is sitting a little way away, engrossed in conversation with a tall dark man in a deep charcoal suit. A Police Department ID in his jacket pocket. They're both drinking heavily. Every now and then he laughs throatily with an obscene edge that jars harshly against the ripple of notes. At length he lurches unsteadily to his feet and steps towards where Cynthia is leaning up against the Steinway. 'Hey you, c'mon here. I need a little mouth action.'

Cynthia looks him up and down. 'I may be a slut Mister, but I ain't your slut.'

Madame Clare is on her feet instantly. She leaps across at Cynthia furiously and strikes her sharply across the face. More surprised than stunned, Cynthia falls backwards, hits the piano, and collapses to the floor in a dishevelled heap of silk and flounce. 'See here, you apologise to the Gentleman right now. Chief Fairbanks overlooks some minor by-laws in our favour, Cynthia, so we must demonstrate how much we appreciate his kindness. So you do whatever he wants, girl, and do it good, you understand?'

The blood roars in her ears. Her cheek colours. He's unbuttoning his fly, leering. Clare fusses around him saying 'I do so apologise Mr Fairbanks, such behaviour is just unforgivable.' His fat semi-erect penis flops from his trousers. 'Now apologise for your rudeness, girl.'

Cynthia squats to the floor in a dishevelled heap of exotic lingerie, and looks up at them. Bird keeps playing as if nothing has happened. Mr Fairbanks' penis sways an inch from her nose. Its faint aroma reaching her. She swallows. Her throat dry. 'I... I'm sorry, sir.' He runs the moist tip of his cock along the groove of the girl's pursed lips. She pouts sulkily.

'So show the Gentleman just how sorry you are,' urges Clare impatiently. 'What you waiting for, girl? suck him.' After the merest hesitation Cynthia's lips part compliantly to admit the sudden persistent pressure, and she draws the cock deep into her lipstick-red mouth. He grunts, belches, and laughs, thrusting his hips forward as she begins to suck.

'Is that to your liking, Chief Fairbanks? You like a moaner, I can tell. And she's a moaner. She does it real good, don't you think? She'll do anything you want tonight, on the house. It's the least the ill-mannered trollope can do. She's not normally this stubborn.'

He settles back onto a chair, drawing her with him, easing his pants wide as her head bobs in his groin. His thick-set hands move in her hair, applying slight pressure. The sound of her slurping clearly audible above the unbroken improvisations of the piano. She's crouching uncomfortably, the cock rigid now, hot and hard in her mouth amid little bubbles of saliva. 'She's not bad,' he concedes grudgingly. 'I've had better. Now she's getting the taste of it she's coming around to the idea, and getting to like it. You can tell. They always do. With practice she might improve.'

'She'll get plenty of practice. I'll make sure of that. You want to take her upstairs now, perhaps?' Clare pours him another drink ingratiatingly, and passes it across to him.

He sips critically, exhaling sharply through his teeth. 'No, I'll just let her suck on it a while longer.' Suddenly he growls and eases her head firmly. The drink spills in pools across the table. Cynthia makes a whimpering strangulated sound from somewhere deep in his groin as the first hail of sperm hits her throat and he begins filling her mouth. Madame Clare smiles at him with pleasure and relief as the ejaculation continues, and the man's face contorts in a grimace of almost obscene satisfaction....

----0----

Forty is a dangerous age, Cynthia. That's a movie-title, right? Either way, it's true. See that 'Big Four-Oh' on the horizon, and you snag into the symptoms. Take stock, stack up the pluses against the minuses, things done, things achieved, ambitions realised... against the big fat zeroes, zilches, and unfulfilled dreams that get more poignant the faster they speed away. Discontent creeps up and mugs you when you least expect it. It's that 'Wisteria Lane' complex. Desperate...? Me? I guess so.

Sometimes I hear voices too. They burned Joan of Arc at the stake for that, didn't they? It's kind-of similar to... as if someone has left the radio on so low I can't hear the words, just the hum of the background voices. But when I check, no, the radio's not on. It's not voices in the street outside either. They're in my head. It's scary. I try to force them away. Pretend they're not there. Put my iPod on loud and drown them out. Then the erotic fantasies come, so vivid, as though they're thought-streams picked up from other lives. Detritus from other minds. As though those things are really happening, and I'm just the psychic receiver tuned in to their low-frequency pulses, their lost echo

Then I'm getting undressed for a shower, unhook my bra, and catch my reflection in the mirror-tiles. My 38D cup shrugging away, breasts come free, bobbing slightly with the movement. 'What would a new lover think now? Seeing me like this for the first time. Would I turn him on?' I examine my tits critically, looking at them as a man would look. They're large -- guys like that, still firm with dark full nipples (sometimes their size and prominence can be embarrassing, the way men look when I'm in a skin-tight T-shirt! -- but then again, if I

really

didn't like it, I wouldn't be wearing a skin-tight T-shirt in the first place, right?). But only a precious few men have ever seen them like this (so far!). A few fumbling boyfriends. And Dave. He used to say how horny they made him feel, he'd come up behind me, reach his arms around me to squeeze them and groan appreciatively. I'd always laugh and push him away. Now he doesn't do it anymore. Perhaps he's bored with them?

Forty on the horizon. Soon they'll start losing that firmness, there'll be sag-lines and wrinkles. I look at the steamy mirror, imagine a guy standing there, tall, dark, his face in shadow so I can't quite make him out. Like one of the voices that talk to me in my head. I sketch him with my finger in the condensation. He looks good. I sketch in his genitals -- no, his cock and balls, his pleasure-pump. I make it big -- then bigger, giggling at my own crudity. His eyes are on my tits. I pose for him in sultry pout, hide my nipples with my fingers then slowly, teasingly, let him see. Hands on hips, I face him, brazen now.

'Come on big boy, look all you like, this is what you want, isn't it?' Shimmying my shoulders so my breasts -- my tits, dance, it looks good. I smile approvingly, and move on down, teasingly to my briefs. You want more? Look at this. His cock is even bigger now, the dribbling moisture makes it seem he's sweating furiously, tormented to distraction by my sensuality. Fingers inside my briefs worm through my pubes like they're in some way detached from me, his fingers -- not mine, working on impulses beyond my logical control, burning into flesh in a way that has me groaning. My pants down around my knees as I worry my clit to bursting point until it all climaxes with a breathtaking power that leaves me weak.

And he's already melting -- typical, dissolving down the mirror-tiles, drools of moisture from the penis suspiciously resembling ejaculation... But it's all make-believe. He's not real. It's a game. Nothing more. A mind-fuck, a fantasy. The only games I get to play these days. Suddenly I'm empty and scared of the intensity of my feelings. Is it normal to be so obsessed with sex? To fantasise about it like I do? Or is it just that 'Four-Oh' deadline bringing it all into perspective?

Not that I'm unhappy in my safe, secure marriage, so safe, so secure, so uneventful I could scream. Sometimes a girl doesn't want considerate politically-correct sex, sometimes you just want to be slam-fucked like a dirty slut. I get the sneaking suspicion that somewhere out there there's a world of erotic sensation I've missed out on -- am missing out on, and probably now will never be a part of. Unless I

do

something -- NOW, before the bio-deadline. Is that unreasonable? One night in shining amour, one vein-bulging epic to fire the desire. Is that too much to ask? 'IN DREAMS YOU'RE MINE... ALL OF THE TIME...'

For him, gifted or cursed with his particular talent -- his extra sense, this place is more than just a place. There's the constant jumbled thought-streams of other minds in a hushed roar that surges and recedes like surf on a beach. Shadow-shapes that come and go about him. He's listened in to other minds all his life, for as long as he can remember, listened in curiously to jumbled drunken minds. Some unbelievably ugly. Crippled inside with a bile of resentment and hatred. Scary insane minds. Dark disturbing sexual impulses that lurk deep within the psyche. Whispers of passion, the scent of hair, the warmth of skin, the secret touch of a hand. The pinpoint whisperings of birds, the jittery mind-strands of rats beneath the floorboards. Once, even to a mind fading away into the silence of death. All minds are open to him. Sometimes the ideas are too crimson and too loud. Others smell of deep midnight. Others are so intense that each night of them lasts three months. There had been another answering voice. A child he thought might be in north Africa. Then she mind-screamed, and the voice went silent. As though she'd been killed. But he's never encountered a mental presence as strong with life as this...

Sometimes he speculates, like now, about this 'gift' maybe being the start of the next evolutionary step in human consciousness. A psi DNA kink that, at some point in the future, everyone will share. Able to reach out and interact with others, freed from the clumsy restrictions of language. Into a real empathic 'Hive Mind' connection of mind-to-mind. But more likely no, you're just a freak. An isolated mutation. And if these abilities become known you'll be reviled, ridiculed, hunted down. Or hauled off to some laboratory and dissected in the name of research. Maybe, if there are many more like me out there, things will get really scary. People will feel threatened. We... assuming there is a 'we' -- the 'Espers' with ESP, will become the new oppressed minority, caged in ghettos, forced into a new kind of apartheid enforced along lines of mental abilities.

There's enough Sci-Fi about telepathic mutants persecuted by jealous norms to know, this is how it happens. This is how it begins. No, keep quiet about it. Tell no-one. Swim in this ocean of endless minds unique and alone. Keep it strictly hush. Move from place to place, never rest long enough for anyone to suspect. Don't meet their eyes in case they sense that you're also looking deep into the secret recesses of their minds. And now, this woman. This raw, untrained mind. Unaware of her full potential. Best keep this nailed down tight. Just me. And just her... the two of us. Sharing this connecting bond in a mutual virtual fantasy-space. With her cipher. Icon. Or Avatar.

----0----

Now she's thinking...

Four Mobsters, and two Molls. Augusta sits on Mr Fabricio's knee, her camisole disarrayed so he can idly toy with the darkly prominent nipple of her left breast as the men argue. Cynthia stands by the bar, her short slip revealing an inch of bare bottom as she bends to help herself to another bootleg bourbon.

'I should be given control of the West Precinct' shouts Salvatore. 'I'll clear it good.'

'Control? You ain't got no control. I deserve to get the Precinct' protests Mario.

'You're both amateurs. Me, I'm the only guy for the position, and ya knows it,' insists Stephano coolly.

Mr Fabricio considers the three younger men for a moment, pulls contemplatively on his Havana cigar. Then snaps his fingers suddenly, 'Cynthia, here.'

Cynthia turns, and does as she's told. Stands at the edge of the foot-stool as the older Mobster indicates. 'Control? You guy's are talking control? So we'll find out who's got control, right? You three get your pepperami's out and give the lady a taste, in rotation, ten full-penetration strokes each, ten-seconds apiece. Augusta holds the stopwatch. The last one to cream her, gets control. That's my decision. Go to it.'

There's a stunned and confused silence as Fabricio indicates the position she is to assume. Augusta laughs nervously, 'Mr Farbricio, you have the wildest ideas,' holding her face in her hands so that her hair shimmers and dances down around her shoulders. Salvatore grins stupidly. Then his grin turns into an unpleasant leer as he catches the mood. Cynthia angles forward, down from the waist into a 'touch-your-toes' pose, but gripping the foot-stool in both hands to brace herself. The slip riding high as she spaces her legs firmly apart. The sound of jazz oozes up from the rooms below. The lights are flesh-pale. He stands up with a deliberate slowness and moves across, behind where Cynthia stands, unbuttoning his fly. She looks apprehensive, but a little intrigued too. Mario and Stephano watch, squirming uncomfortably, but fascinated. Cynthia glances around at him. Tall, with dark Italianate features enhanced by the macho arrogance of his manner. Then her eyes re-focus downwards. Onto his protruding cock.

Augusta stands shakily. She has Mr Fabricio's pocket-watch in her hand. She shrugs the disarrayed shoulder-strap of her camisole back up into position absently, but it immediately falls away again re-exposing the shimmering curve of her breast. She seems not to notice. Salvatore holds his firming erection like a weapon. Runs its tip down the curve of her arse, seeking out the moist fleshiness of the poised pussy between. 'Stick your ass higher so's I can get in.'

'Sorry.' She reacts, raising her bottom towards him as high as she can, hoping he'll hit the correct target.

'Wait until I say' breathes Augusta, her full attention on the second-hand of the gold watch. 'Wait... wait. Now.' And he nudges forward, sliding into her, deeper and deeper. The atmosphere is charged. They all watch in a breathless silence as Salvatore stands, his head thrown back, as the girl braces herself to take him.

Mario and Stephano begin sliding their trousers down, and take their places, waiting their turn...

'Ten strokes' giggles Augusta. 'Sorry, next...'

Reluctantly Salvatore slithers his now-moist cock out, and steps back. Mario struts across, lines his penis up, and slides it in, the full length in a single stroke. His exhalation of breath matches Cynthia's gasp... 'DREAM LOVER, WHERE ARE YOU...?

Then my mother is taken ill. Dave has a full work-schedule, but he's sympathetic and supportive. He makes me feel guilty for my sexual self-indulgences, for my imaginary lovers, for Madame Clare's 19

th

Century bordello, and the three Prohibition Mobsters fucking me from behind in strict rotation. Nevertheless, I pack a weekend case and catch the intercity north to Scraborough, to where my parents had retired just before my Dad died. It drizzles depressingly all the way. I stay a week, and the rain never relents.

I'm sitting in the kitchen with a note-pad, the itch still there between my legs, and -- like some silly game, I start writing down the things I'd most like to do with a stranger, ten fantasies to fulfil before it's too late, before my fortieth birthday. (1) a crude fuck in the back-seat of a big SUV with a man I've just met, not even knowing his second name, acting like some cheap dick-hungry Slapper. (2) a night in a Hotel with a new lover, nude under my coat, and doing

everything

all night. (3) being fucked from behind by a total stranger, wearing a bondage-mask so I can't even see his face. (4) sucking an uncircumcised cock until it spurts-off into my mouth (Dave is circumcised, and much too fastidious to do that). (5) me down on all fours, being fucked by two men simultaneously, one coming in to stuff my throat, another taking me from behind. (6) making love to a woman, licking a strange pussy. (7) fucking furtively in the Park in broad daylight with people walking past nearby who don't suspect what we're doing, removing my knickers, then sitting on his lap, easing myself down -- inch by inch, into his stiff cock, impaling myself on his aching hard-on. (8) doing it underwater. (9) sucking one man while another watches, studying my technique, waiting his turn. (10) ...what shall I choose for no.10? Starring a Hard-Core Porn Movie? Camcorders spooling in every ripple of my orgasm? Knowing other men are going to wank themselves stupid watching me perform... Or educating some virile young male virgin in the art of pussy-sucking? Coaxing his eager tongue in deeper, deeper? ...which one?

Until that final day. Mum recovers remarkably. I phone Dave to say I'll be home, and take a cab to the rail station. And I'm hearing voices again. Well, not precisely the same as before. One voice. One male voice. And it's here. Inside my head. This time it's more spooky than scary. More teasing than unsettling...

And the train is delayed. I have an hour to kill. The platform clock says 09:46... 'I'LL LET YOU BE IN MY DREAMS, IF I CAN BE IN YOURS... I SAID THAT'

She doesn't know she's 'sending'. If she did, she wouldn't be so indiscreet. The intensity of the sensations she radiates has him in a cold sweat, a rage of erotic energy that invades him totally and gets his groin crawling despite his attempts at control. Chief Fairbanks, the corrupt cop in Madame Clare's brothel, his fat cock exploding a gusher of hot sperm into her trapped mouth. Mario, Stephano and Salvatore shagging her from behind as she bends over the foot-stool, grunting and spurting their loads deep into her as she moans and accepts each one. He can feel it all. Should he 'look away'? Of course. He's prying into her deepest intimacies. But to look away is impossible. He can't staunch the flow of her thoughts, even if he wanted to. And her powers are strengthening as she returns to the virtual thought-space of her fantasies.

All minds are open to him -- after all, he's an Esper, but he's never encountered one that's responded so fully, until now. He's been lured so far by the beacon of her mind, and now she's so close she's coming at him from all directions. She's like him. She has his talent. Only not as developed. She's not even aware of it herself as anything more than an 'oddness'. But now, concentrating hard to dampen out the surrounding noise, he can enter her dreams, travel through the bays and inlets of her mind. Actively participate in her fantasies, share the same dream-space... and by making another person's fantasy life into an interactive eroticism -- he tells himself, 'we will become what the Greeks's call 'oneironauts' -- Dream Explorers'. The only limits are our pooled imaginations. And that goes a long long way. She's open to him... and entering her mind now, so near, so physically close to her, is like being abruptly immersed in a hot bath. The blood pounding in his ears, he has to strain to steady his breath... he can feel the floor beneath his feet, taste the air but it's not this air, it's air that only exists in the virtual world of her imagination...