SATURDAY, MAY 7, 2011
A CHANCE ENCOUNTER 2 (to be cont'd)
A CHANCE ENCOUNTER 2
As he let her in, guiding her with a delicate touch at her elbow, he closed the door behind her and introduced himself: “I’m James Cameron, please come in .. you’re almost blue with cold !”
The touch of his fingers on her elbow and his smile were already - strangely - making her warmer whilst she couldn’t take her eyes off his face, fascinated by the line of his jaw, his stunningly blue eyes and the broad chest which made her wish she could just rest her head on it.
“I must be worn-out with tiredness and cold, to be this vulnerable, or I definitely drank too much tonight ” she thought, and inwardly laughed at herself, thinking she was behaving like a teenager and not like the 36-years old she was; she endeavoured to regain some poise as they proceeded towards the roaring fire in the living-room.
He took her drenched coat off, placed it on a chair against the wall, and almost absent-mindedly combed her wet auburn hair with his fingers to take some tendrils off her face. Each time his fingers touched her, she felt a thrill, shivers ran along her body and – despite herself and her weariness, she felt her nipples harden. She just hoped they couldn’t be clearly noticed under the heavy satin of her black blouse.
“You’re still shivering” he told her with concern and made her sit closer to the fire, on a comfortable lounger. She couldn’t tell him she was now almost burning and her shivers didn’t come from cold but, irrationally and almost primitively, from the contact with his hand and the closeness of his warmth. Never before had she been feeling such an immediate attraction and she put it on account of the long (albeit most enjoyable), tiring evening and her exhausting journey.
She tried relaxing, lying among the pillows of the lounger as James sat at the far end of it, close to her feet. His eyes never left hers and his lips just curved a little bit more upwards as he started taking off her dripping shoes. As he did that, his fingers touched her ankles, heels and toes, with a tender, soft grazing which was more like teasing than helping, through her sheer black stockings. She wished suddenly she didn’t have them on…
“Would you like some hot chocolate, beautiful stranger ?” asked James as he stood to place her shoes next to the fireplace. She raised her eyes to him and felt ashamed to have forgotten introducing herself to her rescuer. Her blush could be ascribed to the fire in front of her but, somehow, James knew that wasn’t the case and she could perceive a twinkling in his eyes.
“I’m awfully sorry, I’m usually not that bad-mannered” she said “my name is ….”
“Sssshhh…don’t tell me” was James’s reply “you’ll just be the Beautiful Stranger who happened to brighten a solitary evening” . And he left her to prepare the promised hot drink. Her pulse quickened at his words and she felt as if there were a kind of veiled promise in them.
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