Tag Archives: wicked wednesday

Eliza sat at the bar, her legs crossed as she nursed her drink. Josephine, the bartender smiled at her intermittently. The sparkle of her own diamond engagement ring made Eliza blink so fast, an eyelash slipped into her eye. She blinked until the lash did not irritate her anymore, and took a sip of her cocktail. When the man walked toward her, she knew him and did not know him at the same time. She studied Oscar as he approached. 

“Waiting for your fiancé again?” he asked, sitting next to her so that her thigh pressed against his. 

Eliza saw Josephine look at them out of the corner of her eye, but Eliza was not able to restrain herself from pressing closer to Oscar. Not able to resist her making thigh press even more to his.

She nodded in response to his question.

Oscar put his hand on her thigh, and Eliza saw Josephine actually lean over the bar to look to see where his hand fell on her thigh.

“You going to leave with me again?” he asked. 

Eliza put her hand over his on her thigh.

“You wanted me here Eliza, you wanted me and now I am here…”

She nodded, and got up with him.

“Do you have a room here?” she asked quietly.

Oscar was quiet, and in her heart of hearts, Eliza had to admit that she liked him best like this. Rougher, and taking charge of everything. Taking charge of her. He took her hand, and they walked out of the bar urgently.

“I do not have a room here, but I cannot wait anymore…” Oscar said, his hand on her hip. 

They walked to a door marked “Staircase B.” And like on the staircase in the gallery at Fiona’s opening in Shanghai, Oscar kissed her. He pressed her to the wall, and it felt like a fever spread between her legs. Eliza was smoldering. When their lips parted, her mouth was still open as she panted.

“You want more?” he teased before he kissed her again, and held her face in both of his hands. He bathed her face with warm kisses, it felt like he was kissing her between her legs.

She had memorized his touch. Just as she was about to come, she was startled.

“Liza?”

Eliza’s eyes were slit, and heavy with sleep.

“Mmmmm…”

“You were moaning loudly in your sleep Liza baby, you were having a bad dream…”

She closed her eyes, heavy with sleep and deception. 

Rafe kissed her shoulder, and she curled up against him. He took her hand with her ring on it, that felt like lead on her finger. She felt the weight of it, even when she was not thinking about it. 

And she liked it, what the ring signified. When Rafe proposed to her again, she did not hesitate not to say yes. Yes to him, yes to wearing her ring. Her finger literally had felt naked without it. She said yes, and  Josephine had given them celebratory flutes of champagne with strawberries.

Her dream did not make sense, it did not make sense that she would imagine herself meeting Oscar all over again. But this time knowing him. Knowing they were going to go off together. Knowing they were going to make love again…

Until Rafe woke her up, thinking she was moaning over a bad dream.

He did not know…
More Wicked Wednesday dreams here:

  
bar photo with dreamstate filter by f dot leonora

Eliza stared at the frosted glass of the hotel bar, and hoped for some kind of epiphany. She was with Rafe, they had finally gotten out of bed.
Being in bed with him made her lazy, and her body craved the familiar warmth of his. He could not keep his hands off of her. She knew that she was an addiction for him, the same way sleeping alone was an aberration for her.
The frosted glass behind the bar made her see things in a frosted way.
Frosted and dreamlike.
Rafe put his hand on her thigh, every time he touched her it felt very right, but she still waited for the moment when she did not question. When she realized again that she did want to marry him.
She loved him, through everything she loved him and that was why it hurt so much. Why she had had to leave, and created the dream sequence that was her life since they were not together.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked looking into her eyes.
“You.”
He looked down, she knew he was not confident now. That her saying that she was thinking about him, did not have to be good. He looked down at her, his hand still trailed her thighs like he was trying to find his way…
“Your table is ready.”
Eliza looked up at the gorgeous woman, who was dressed in pinstripes with suspenders and whose eyes slid over both of theirs. Her name tag said Josephine, and they followed her. Both of them slid past her, incidentally caressing some curve of her body. Josephine lingered at their table for a moment, after she told them she would be their server.
“You are the most exquisite couple I have seen here for a long time,” she said. “It will be my pleasure to serve you both tonight.”
She walked away, her curves oozed effortless sensuality in tandem with the swaying of her body.
“Wow,” Eliza said under her breath, as Josephine walked away from them.
This was not the first time that Eliza saw Josephine. Josephine worked every night that she had gone to the bar, and that had been often. Rafe was the third man that Josephine saw her there with.
But Josephine had never said that she was exquisite with Oscar or Marcus.
Eliza knew that she and Rafe looked like a couple. They did not even have to engage with each other for it to be obvious. The fact that they had spent so much of the day in bed together, it was like they were still in bed. The way he touched her, the way she looked at him. 
She wondered of he was looking at Josephine, who was the kind of woman that made men and women alike look at her. Heads turned to follow her every movement, so that they looked like waves that splashed against her.
“She is beautiful Liza, but I do am not interested in her,” he said, reading her mind.
“I didn’t…”
“I fucked up with you so bad Liza, but I cannot live without you. I cannot be without you, you saw how I looked when I was at your hotel room door…”
Eliza look down at his hand on her knee, she still fiddled with her engagement ring in her hand. It had become so much of her identity that even if she did not put it back on, she needed to fondle it. She looked up at Rafe and studied the growth on his face, he did look haggard.
“But you will do it again. It is what you do.”
Eliza sucked the diamond on her ring looking at him, and he leaned to kiss her mouth filled with the diamond.
“Put it on,” he said in her ear, his lips lingering there sent shivers through her first and then the bristle of his cheek made her tremble.
Rafe got down on his knees and in an even more dramatic way than he had the first time, he kissed both of her knees and her between her thighs before he said,
“Marry me.”

More epiphanies here:

frosted bar photo by f dot leonora

Eliza rolled onto her side, her arm fell across Rafe’s chest that felt like summer to her. Their post-lovemaking felt like summer, she felt moist and sultry beside him. His body was so familiar to her, every touch felt like lovemaking so that when they did make love it was on another level. He grabbed her hand with a neediness that she had never felt from him before. It broke her heart on so many levels, to feel the emotion in his touch. When he entered her, it felt like he wanted to stay and never leave.

But she was not so sure that she wanted him to stay. 

She rolled onto her side and out of the bed, wanting to be alone. Just for a moment. The tiles of the bathroom floor felt like cubes of ice beneath the soles of her feet. The mirror greeted her with her fresh, roughly fucked countenance and hair. Her reflection disappeared when she sat on the toilet to pee, and she did not look back at the mirror when she stood back up.

When she got back into the bed, Rafe wrapped his arms about her. Eliza settled into his embrace. She was just about to fall asleep, when his phone buzzed. Her heavy eyes lifted, and she reached for it.

Sandrine.

She typed in Rafe’s password which was “allies,” since using her name would be too easy for someone to guess.
Are you with her? 
Eliza read the text, before she typed.
Yes.
This afternoon was a mistake, everything was a mistake Rafe. You need to stay with her…
Eliza put the phone back down.

Everything was bringing them back together, but she did not know if she wanted it. The feeling of summer in an air-conditioned hotel room from the intensity of their lovemaking. She was not sure that she wanted the fire that they always were together.

Even with Sandrine conceding for a second time.

She remembered the first time that Sandrine conceded. Rafe told her he would love Sandrine forever, the same way he would never stop loving her. 

“The difference is, ” he told her that summer. “is that I want to be married to you eventually.”

The gleam of her engagement ring in her periphery vision, made her pick it up. Rafe had said that he wanted to marry her years before he proposed to her…

…and then he eventually proposed to her. The proof was sparkling between her fingers.

Usually when they made love, they got back together. She never expected to make love with him, get filled with all the summery feelings that he left her with and not know if they were going to get back together again.

If she wanted to be back together again.

Somewhere after those thoughts, she fell asleep and woke up shivering. Suddenly it was winter, she was freezing cold, even in Rafe’s embrace. He was cold and she was still trying to assess if he was breathing, because his body felt so cold. He did not snore, but his soft breath changed the rhythm of her heartbeat and she closed her eyes.

Morning would have the answer as to which season she wanted to live in.
More summer here:

  
garden photo by f dot leonora

Eliza rolled onto her side, her eyes still fixed on the screen. Marcus said Sandrine had been vague, but he needed to go home. She watched him put himself together again, while she stayed as she was. Ready to be devoured. 

She closed her eyes when she heard her phone, figured it was Marcus calling to give her some more sweet nothings…

“Eliza?”

The sound of Rafe’s voice had startled her at first, but she ended up giving him the address of the hotel and her room number. Unlike Marcus, she had to get up to answer the door for him. She would have given him her card, it was so easy to fall into their usual pattern.

The Rafe she let into her room, was not the man she had been engaged to. He was gaunt, dark, and looked broken. Before she could say a word to him, he knelt at her feet. He caressed and kissed her calves and bare feet.

The moisture she felt was first her own tears as she watched him darkened by his demons, and what he thought she had done to him. And then she felt his tears on her feet. He whimpered, and sunk more to the carpet.

Eliza pressed her head to the wall, and let him hover. Her eyes closed, and her mouth trembled.

“Please get up,” she choked, sounding harsher than she wanted to.

He hugged her calves and kissed her feet once more, before he stood up. She had never seen him like this before. They had had fights, and had made up in dramatic ways…but this…

Looking up at him, was like looking up at an eclipsed sun. The love that she felt for him was eclipsed by everything that always happened with him.

“Eliza,” he croaked, his body sagging.

She was silent, but tightened his tie and his belt.

“You look like shit…” she said looking down, not wanting to look in his eyes. You never looked at an eclipse with your bare eyes.

“I feel like shit.” He put his hands over hers, adjusting his accessories.

Eliza dropped her hands, from touching any part of him.

She turned back to the bed to sit down, Rafe sat beside her. She knew he would, it was almost an invitation to him.

They sat beside each other, the familiarity of being with him was so easy to settle into again.

“I came over to bring you this.” He placed her engagement ring in her hand.

Eliza looked at her ring, it was like a magical amulet almost sticking to her palm.

Like it belonged there.

A Streetcar Named Desire was coming to an end on the television.

“I left the house this morning, and the only thing on my mind was to get this ring back to you and on your finger. I…I went to see Sandrine, because I have been such a fucking piece of shit since you left. It got too intense, I left her. I am always going to be friends with her, I am always going to love her…But I cannot live without you…”

“Did you fuck her?” she asked, as her fingers clawed at the bedspread.

“She went down on me and I let her, I had a weak moment…I hadn’t been touched since you left me…” He placed his hand on her thigh. “I miss you…”

It was then that she realized she could see how broken Rafe was, because she was saw her own reflection through him. She always saw herself through him. Her entire adult life, she saw herself through him. 

He slipped his hand up her thigh, close to where she was broken the most…Eliza knew only he could make her whole right now, and collect the shards of her.

“I’m never going back…never…” Stella said at the end of A Streetcar Named Desire, while Eliza was going back to her familiar…
More Wicked Wednesday here:

  
fragonard postcard photo by f dot leonora

“I don’t want realism, I want magic! Yes, yes, magic!”
Eliza was lying on her stomach, on her hotel bed in and out of sleep, watching A Streetcar
Named Desire.
She wanted magic too, she was desperate for it. When she first met Rafe, it was magical she had believed. Everything was magical up until the engagement. And then Oscar had been magical, and in ways maybe they both were. A kind of black magic that she had been naive about.
The door opened.
Her heart pounded and between her legs thumped, as she rolled onto her back on the mattress.
She had given Marcus her extra hotel key, even though she had not gone out for drinks with him, Elliott and Carla. Her intention was to give him time, time to decide if she was what he wanted. They had been playing such a sexy game until Rafe and Sandrine decided to play a game of their own without telling them. Eliza had to end the engagement, because it never ended with Rafe. There was always something or someone she did not know about with him. But meanwhile she ended her game with Marcus as well.
Marcus sat on the bed beside her, his suit still on him but everything of it begged to come off of him. His loosened tie, unbuckled belt…he fiddled with his cufflinks.
“How were the drinks?” Eliza asked, sounding to herself like Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois. She knew Marcus was mad that she had not gone with them, but she knew he would come back for her.
“I thought of you the whole damn time, and of fucking your heat with my fingers. I could still smell you on my fingers when I raised my drink, or had a cigarette!
She laughed and closed her eyes.
“You are not on set now Marcus, no need for the dramatics.”
Eliza was naked practically nin her negligee, the fabric of it felt like her own skin against her. Every part of her body was ripe for any part of his body to touch her hot skin. She really felt like she was on the fire that he said he wanted her to be on for him. Her legs were parted, and the flimsy material of her negligee that caressed the inside of her thighs made her squirm.
She squirmed more under Marcus, when he knelt on the bed with his arms were on either side of her.
Like the bars of a cage.
“You are not on a set either Eliza…” he said, his hot breath over her made her squirm even more.
“You are not on a set either, and you can stop playing the role that you have been playing. I can smell your heat you know? I know you are on fire, I know you are burning…” He paused and let his fingers slip under her negligee. “But I do not know if I am ready to put it out yet baby…”
Eliza was ashamed when she heard her own mewling under him, as he lifted up from over her. She had no intention of begging him, as she heard his belt buckle. Marcus caressed the curve of her neck. She was startled when his belt whipped forward out of the corner of her eye. He slipped the belt about her neck, tightening the loop about it like a leather aura that barely touched her skin. He let the strap of the belt fall between her breasts, and caressed her face like she was the most precious thing in the world. With his fingers inside the loop of his belt around her neck, he pressed his lips to her forehead. He kissed the wrinkles out of her forehead, the tip of her nose and then her mouth as her face relaxed.
Like magic.
Marcus pressed her close to his body, and she felt his desire ignite hers like a flame. Her body ruminated with a vibration she was not expecting, as she felt Marcus’ hand reach for his pocket where her hand rested.
“It’s Sandrine,” he said huskily.
Eliza knew he had to answer the phone, because they had children. Marcus had checked his phone frequently when they were in Paris. But right now? Eliza craved magic, she craved everything that she had wanted but did not have. She wanted magic, but it thwarted her pursuit every step of the way…

I love that Marie created this prompt based on a Twitter conversation that I had with Flutterby Flip, who encouraged me to watch A Streetcar Named Desire. I loved this quote so much from Blanche, I put it on my blog.