Читать книгу Sex and the Stranger 2: A Mischief Erotica Collection - Justine Elyot, Victoria Blisse, Giselle Renarde - Страница 8

I didn’t know who was going to come up the steep Nepenthe stairs, hopefully not breathing too heavily. All I knew was his name, Simon, and his love of music, and of the New Yorker magazine. And some other shared interests, of course.

The first time I got to the cliff of the Big Sur, the very first day, I ran through the scent of the pine trees towards the soft moist ocean, and I saw two huge grey whales.

They surfaced just as I got there, ascending from the blue waters in a long elegant arc that looked absolutely effortless but must have challenged all their enormous muscle strength.

Then they submerged again, in perfect sync, without so much as a splash. Power and control.

Was this what I expected from Simon as I was waiting in my four-inch heels (slipped on surreptitiously for good luck after the boys in the van left)? Was I waiting for the Tall Dark Stranger that every fortune teller had promised me?

Mobile reception is very bad in the Big Sur. So all I could do was watch the gathering shadows. And the door.

I had become quite good at recognising who my suitor was when he entered the place of our rendezvous. I always tried to be there first, and this time I had positioned myself carefully, on the terrace, just outside the big glass doors to the well-lit restaurant inside. I could see him before he could see me.

As always, the stranger looked different from any way I could have imagined him.

Simon – I was sure it was him – was neither dark nor particularly tall. He was slim and slight, with a stylishly trimmed beard and somewhat thinning hair up top.

Good thing I was sitting down with my four-inch heels.

He looked around, quickly, almost as if he was an animal of prey rather than the big bad predator his online name had suggested, and when he didn’t immediately see anyone who matched my description and (somewhat partial) picture, he seemed to shrink a little. I saw a familiar expression on his face. ‘Life has stood me up again.’