To my dismay I woke to the same symphonic crashing of waves, but there was no sunlight flooding the room. The city below my lavish prison suite was silent, night had fallen. As I sat up the sheet covering me fell away and I saw that I was still naked. I panicked when my thoughts took me back to my tussle with this Alessandro Rossi.
When I passed out he had been gazing at me as if I were an exquisite meal set before him to devour at his leisure. My tears had already begun to fall as I threw back the sheet still covering my lower extremities. I had to see the blood ... I needed to confirm his violation against my person. But, the sheets were not stained. I touched myself, and my fingers came back clean. Could he have defiled me and so quickly cleaned me up after? But no, I felt no different than I had before I passed out.
"You are still ... intact ... Nicolette, for now. I am not an evil man after all."
I yelped at his sudden announcement that he was still in the room with me. Immediately I began gathering the sheet I had just moments before tossed away from me. I made to cover myself as I cursed his audacity in presuming that I would give myself, my virginity to him. Before I could pull the sheet up to cover my breasts it was ripped from my hands so fast it seemed like it left a trail of fire searing my palms in its wake.
He stood between the opening in the bed draperies casually looking me over.
"I have warned you once already Nicolette; do not hide your body from me."
"Why shouldn't I? It is my body; I choose who I allow to look at it."
I tried to sound bigger than I was, and with the naivety of a child I hoped that he would fall for my ruse as I grabbed several pillows and piled them in front of myself to obstruct his view. He made no move to stop me right away. So I figured I had won the battle, which gave me hope that I had a chance at winning the war he had started when he removed me from my home.
"What time is it?"
I tried to keep my voice conversational. Perhaps if I could make 'friends' with Alessandro he could be made to see reason, that I did not belong there, in his bed ... in his home ... in his life.
"It is just after ten in the evening Little One."
His voice sounded cold and calculating as he spoke not looking at me, instead his focus was on the five or six pillows surrounding me. He stepped back away from the bed so fast that I had no idea what had just happened. I heard the shuffling of his feet, fabric rustling, and in what seemed like a matter of seconds he was back and in bed with me naked as the day he was born. Before I had time to react he had me pushed up against the headboard of the bed. He looked me dead in the eye as he began ripping the pillows away from me.
With each toss of a pillow far from the bed he emphasized a sentence that snapped me back to reality forcing me to realize that I had won nothing ... and this 'war' was not a war so much as it was in fact his will keeping me there, and it would be by his will alone that I would be released.
"This body, you have claimed as your own Love ... is mine! The sweet tears slipping down your pretty face ... are mine! Every breath you take Nicolette is a gift I give freely to you because Nicolette, you, your heart and soul are mine!"
The pillows were all gone and we sat there naked before each other. His chest heaved, at first I thought it was out of pure anger, but the look in his eye betrayed that emotion for something more primal. Even being a virgin, I understood that look emphatically. He wanted me right then, and he was not going to take no for an answer, nor would my fainting stave him off again. "Do-Not-Hide-From-Me ..."
I jumped when I felt his hand caress my hip when he finished speaking. I knew I had only one chance to draw this thing out. Why it mattered I did not know, really it didn't matter ... I was just frightened. When I imagined my first time, I thought it would be this glorious thing between me and a man I was hopelessly in love with. He would be a beautiful man, a man whose utter beauty would put Michelangelo's David to shame.
His love for me would teeter just close enough to obsession as to have people who knew us best slightly worried that he might snap at even the slightest attention I would get from another man. He would take his time with me that first time, and most of all ... I would be given a choice. This night, with Alessandro ... I knew nothing about this. This was something straight out of a nightmare, but strangely, through morbid curiosity, it was a nightmare I was hesitant to end.
"Alessandro ...?"
His head snapped up and his gaze softened completely when he heard me say his name for the first time. He looked like a different man. He looked like the man I had dreamed would take my virginity. But I had to be careful ... Alessandro Rossi was not my gentile dream man who actually cared about my wants.
"Yes Love ..."
His voice was tender for the first time. It reminded me of someone. I had heard this voice before, but I could not place it.
"Alessandro ... why-why am I here? I don't understand any of this ... I don't understand you. I have never even seen you before, how do you figure you can just take me from everything I know? How can you do this to me? Am I being punished?"
He regarded me for a long while, the raw passion not dimming in his eyes, but he pushed it back a bit so that he could better focus. He did not mind my questioning him; I saw understanding in his eyes. For the first time I noticed his silky black hair as he smoothed it back out of his eye. I wanted to reach out and touch it ... suddenly I saw myself fisting my hand in his mane, tangling it in my hand as he brought me to heights of ecstasy unimaginable. I was immediately embarrassed and I tried to shrink from him, but he reached out sliding a hand around my waist as he pulled me to him.
I had never actually seen a naked man, much less touched one. I became a statue in his arms as he gently massaged one of my breasts. When I reached up to push his hand away he grabbed my wrists in his free hand and pulled my hands down to rest in my lap. Only, as soon as he put them there they flew to his hand again. Again, he grabbed my wrists, harder this time, and placed my hands back in my lap. "Please do not make me bind your hands Nicolette. And no, you are not being punished. Nicolette, I know that you do not remember me, but you have known me. We have met on several occasions during your life, the first time being when you were an infant, and the last official time we met was when you were fourteen. I knew then you would forget me with the passage of time. God, You have always been so beautiful."
He sighed as he spoke in barely a whisper. His hand now switched breasts. His fondling obviously had the desired effect, I had stopped trembling as we sat there talking, and I was more pliable in his arms.
"Nicolette, Love, there are things in this life that you will only understand with time. I can tell you why you are here, I can tell you who put you here in my bed, but Love, I do not wish to cause you pain. Just know, the world is not always a very nice place, and extenuating circumstances will decide a person's fate long before they ever have a chance to choose their path."
He was speaking in riddles, and now I had to know exactly what was going on. I tried to move away from him a little and quickly thought the better of it when he pinched down on my nipple and twisted it just enough to get a yelp out of me. I settled back in his arms allowing his molestation of my breasts.
"You said we last met when I was fourteen ... where, and why?"
He hesitated a bit ... he leant down and suckled at my neck causing me to swoon ... I could have sworn I felt the sting of his teeth right at my jugular vein. With a few short flicks of his tongue at the now overly sensitive skin he continued speaking.
"You were at summer camp. Your mother sent you every year from age seven. And every summer, I would fly to Dallas to follow your bus out to Possum Kingdom Lake. After your third summer I bought a house on the lake there, directly across from your location. I still own it, though I have not been back in ages. I own the only home that lies beyond Hell's Gates. Every Fourth of July I would throw a party there. Beginning in the morning my helicopter would fly my gusts in and you campers would watch in awe as it landed. I could only imagine what you were thinking as I stood watching you sun yourself on the docks right across from where I was ... it was torture being so close to you and never being able to speak with you. Anyways, your second to last summer there I just could not take one more season of watching you from afar. I had to find a way to get next to you, but you made it easy. I guess you and your friend's curiosity got the better of you that summer because I overheard my steward yelling at you from our boat house. Do you remember Love?"
I sat stark still as I listened to him speak. At first I thought he was lying, but I did remember that day, and he was right. Three summers had passed since us girls spent every fourth of July wondering what Prince owned the home set in its very own cliff side. We liked to imagine ourselves as one of his party goers ... each of us imagined in our pre-pubescent innocence that sometime he would show up in the night to scoop us up and away from our drab little teenage lives to hold hands and kiss in every room of his lavish home. So, one day, we decided to at least find out who lived in that house.
We all knew how to sail well having taken lessons at camp since we were ten, so one morning before the rest of the camp woke, the four of us set out in a medium sized catamaran for the other side of the lake. It was a good distance away; we had been over to that side of the lake before, but on sturdier crafts, and always with supervision. Now we were alone, and with every breeze second guessing our intentions. Once we crossed the threshold from the lake proper, sailing into and passed Hell's Gates, I got an eerie feeling and begged that we come about and go back, but my friends were instant.
