Roman Bus
by A.C. Farro
I can't say when I first noticed him, or rather, when he first appeared to me—a momentary glimpse in a crowded market place, a passerby on some cobblestone via, or a fleeting face in the crowd at the Opera. No matter how phantom-like his appearances, they always left me short of breath, a rush of heat igniting the soft, hidden folds of my body.
I'd tried to convince myself that he was just a figment of my imagination, roused into being by my exciting new surroundings. Then another thought occurred to me:
What if he was a ghost?
In a city as ancient as Rome, a belief in ghosts seemed quite plausible. Once I began to dream about him, to feel the weight of his presence in my room at night, I was more convinced than ever that he was something altogether supernatural.
The bus lurched to an abrupt stop and the doors banged open, breaking my daydream and allowing people to exit and enter, a rush of fresh air sweeping through the stale cabin. My fellow passengers grumbled for the driver to close them.
It was then I felt the odd tingling in my body, always a precursor to his arrival. I couldn't explain why it happened, just that when it did, he would soon appear.
I'd positioned myself at the rear of the bus, opposite the entrance doors and away from the tiny plastic device that whirred and clicked as it validated tickets. New arrivals vied for standing room, while I coveted this particular spot for the chance to greet my handsome stranger as soon as he boarded.
Yet somehow, he always managed to escape my vigilance and turn up standing behind me.
Not this night.
Tonight I'd beat him at his own game, gaze into what I'd fantasized to be a darkly handsome face—for I had never truly seen him—and convey with my eyes that he was welcome to enter my private world. I'd play the temptress for him, embody the lustful succubus that was Rome herself. Tonight was Halloween, a time for pleasurable tricks and treats.
The doors rattled shut and the bus pitched forward into heavy traffic, returning me to the present. Bodies swayed en masse, as hands raced to grab metal grips overhead. It was impossible to view anything beyond the fogged windows, save a constant stream of head and taillights.
But then, I was telling you how I thought my stranger might be a ghost.
A few days ago, I spotted him at a café table in Campo dei Fiori. Navigating the crowded piazza, I lost sight of him several times as people passed in front of me, permitting only fleeting glimpses of dark, wavy hair and a strong jaw. Still, I was determined to reach him, to stand before him, breathless yet triumphant, in my discovery that he was indeed a flesh and blood man.
Once I cleared the crowd, the inevitable happened.
He'd vanished.
Only this time, he'd left behind irrefutable proof of his humanness. For I have yet to hear of ghosts enjoying cigarettes with their morning coffee. In fact, one still burned in the ashtray next to a half-emptied espresso cup. The urge to bring that cup to my lips, to taste the remaining bittersweet liquid his lips had savored only moments before, took odd possession of me. Quizzical stares from patrons seated nearby brought me to my senses and I retreated down a shadowy via. The important thing was learning that my handsome stranger was real, after all.
The bus hit a rut in the road, rousing me from my reverie. Beneath my coat, the heat rising off my body increased, the air around me stuffy and warm again.
That was when I felt it.
Felt him.
How had he managed to board again without my seeing him?
The absurdity of the situation caused me to laugh aloud. If I believed in witchcraft, and I wasn't ruling it out this night, I'd say that he'd cast a spell to distract me.
A body pressed against me from behind, my own suddenly alternating between flashes of hot and cold. I knew who it was, who it had to be. No matter how overcrowded with passengers, my handsome stranger never failed to find his way to where I was standing.
My heart thundered beneath the silk of my blouse. I could feel it pulsate in my throat. Then the bus hit a high spot in the road, sending everyone a few inches off the rubber matting. A pair of strong hands steadied me about the waist. My skin burned with desire beneath those fingertips, a current of warmth spreading underneath the fabric of my clothing, nerve endings igniting all the intimate curves and folds of my body.
Without warning, those same hands raised my coat from behind. The split there made the parting of the fabric easier. I wanted so badly to turn around, finally to see him face to face, but my eyes could only focus on the passing swirls of color and light beyond the misty windows.
He pressed against my backside then.
What was I doing? This wasn't the work of any ghost. I should turn around to confront the jerk who dared to put his hands on me in public like this, but who was I fooling?
I wasn't the virginal heroine of some Edwardian romance novel, bosom heaving above my satin and lace bodice. I was a modern woman, with modern desires, and willing to succumb to this stranger's advances. There'd be no pretense of indignity or shame. I didn't care about morality. This was my handsome stranger, and I did not want him to stop.
So I pushed back against his pelvis tapping and rubbing against my buttocks, which urged his hands to stroke me with greater resolve. His touch sent another wave of tiny electrical charges through my body, causing my legs and other, more hidden parts, to quiver.
My stranger was tall. The leading edge of his coat wrapped around me like being enfolded in a vampire's cloak. His warm breath against my neck sent the soft down there in to a riot of storm-tossed waves, and his scent reminded me of pounding surf.
I startled at the feel of his large hands as they found my breasts, cupping and fondling them with unabashed delight through the fabric of my blouse, taunting my nipples over the lace cup of my brassiere. All the while his pelvis sustained a slow, rhythmic motion against my buttocks, rocking in time to the sway of the bus.
The passion in me redoubled and the moisture between my thighs intensified. I'd hoped for an encounter with my stranger tonight, so I wore no panties; the pair of thigh-high tights beneath my skirt held in place by a garter belt, leaving my sex exposed and receptive. It welcomed a sudden gust of air that twisted and swirled, snaking its way up my inner thighs and coaxing me to spread my legs a little further in the hope of capturing another one.
Take me now, I wanted to cry out. Take me hard.
As if in response to my thoughts, one of his large hands slid down the side of my skirt, raising the fabric over my hip. He kneaded the soft, sensitive flesh of my inner-thigh and I let out a tiny gasp. Fingers traced the opening to that most private part of me and my entire body shuddered under their touch. Bathed in my excitement, those same fingers were like slick tongues against my swollen flesh, tickling and teasing the hard little mound in alternating fast and slow flicks.
His own passion swelled from behind woolen trousers, solid and impatient for release, which he freed now and nuzzled against me. He then prized my buttocks apart, prodding the opening to a threshold that no man had ever breached, and yet I bid him access.
When the bus hit another large rut, I screamed, the majority of passengers gasping along with us. Their reason and mine were like night and day. Oblivious to their grappling for handholds, their need to anchor themselves to other bodies, I clamped down around my stranger's exquisite maleness, allowing the pleasure of this new experience to fill me.
The back-and-forth motion of the bus soon stabilized. Nevertheless, my stranger used the irregular road beneath us to heighten our sensations, and then froze inside me, as we stopped to take on more people. The crush was truly dizzying now, the stranger throbbing inside me. I was so utterly lost in desire that I failed to notice a young Roman squeeze into the narrow space between the window and my body, his angelic face kind and apologetic.
He deposited a briefcase on the floor, securing it fast between his feet and calves.
Blood and heat flooded my cheeks. This young man would see my raised skirt from this angle and know what we were doing. The crimson dancing in my cheeks deepened.
He smiled again, bracing his back against the window, not yet comprehending the depths to which I'd let myself sink. The soft curls of his chestnut hair glistened under the cabin's dull lighting.
When had it started to rain? Oh, but his lips were so full and pliant. I had an uncontrollable urge to reach up and kiss them. Stop this, Katie! This isn't you.
My body refused to obey my mind. Pleasure was all it understood.
A slow, exquisite burn began to spread through my belly, replacing the misty images beyond the windows of our crowded bus. Suddenly I recognized the face of this adorable young man. It graced the canvases and frescoes of the great masters—Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Tinoretto. I'd stared at it for hours in the Vatican Museum, in the old churches scattered throughout the city.
The bus lurched forward, and this masterpiece of male perfection, this man-angel, fell into me, then I into him, the stranger still buried deep inside me. I gasped again as the bus lumbered into traffic once more, conducting me closer to my final destination—a cleaving orgasm.
His contrite smile quickly dissolved with a glance down at the almost non-existent space separating our bodies. The hand of the stranger, once holding me about the hips, was gently nudging the fly of this young man's jeans. For one terrifying instant, I feared everything would fall apart. This angelic creature was going to strike out at us and expose our depravity.
Yet when he looked up again, his eyes fixed on my stranger with a flash of recognition. My mind, rife with disbelief and sudden envy, finally grasped that this divine young man knew my stranger. He could physically see what I had not, could not.
I watched in further amazement as the young man glanced with perfect casualness to his right and left, lips uttering words I could not hear, and then shared a secret smile with my stranger. Delight reflected in his dark, soulful eyes; eyes that perfectly mirrored my own hunger.
"No one sees," he whispered to me, and then refocused on the man behind me.
The stranger's hand unbuttoned the young Roman's fly, loosing a phallus the likes of which I had never before seen. He permitted the stranger to fondle its impressive length before inching it forward to brush the slick, hooded tip against the dark triangle between my legs. With a playfully gesture, my angel removed the stranger's hand from the thickening length of him and nudged the head against my opening, which he separated now with eager fingers.
The young man's face neared my own—or was it me moving closer to him? The crown of his excitement pierced the swollen heat of me and hesitated, before gliding slowly into the hot furnace of my body. Despite his size, I was so wet that he entered with little effort.
My angel shared another secret smile with my stranger, my...devil.
On this night of all nights—All Hallows Eve—my favorite day of the year, I had been visited by a devil and an angel. The thought brought me over instantly, the first delicious wave beginning to crashing over and through me. My legs quivered and grew weak, but the crush of these two virile bodies sustained me, suspended me, the back and forth motion of the bus keeping their rhythm measured and from drawing any unnecessary attention.
"I enchanted them," the angel sighed against me. "No one but you can see us."
I was too lost in pleasure now to worry about the others around us.
Then the driver unexpectedly hit the brakes, pitching me forward and impaling me on my angel, the thick length of him slamming into the deepest part of me. I cried out so loudly that heads did turn, the violent thrust pushing me over the edge a second time.
I ignored the curious glances and let loose another loud gasp, as a third surge pounded against and around my man-angel. He began to tremble, as did my devil from behind. The weight of their bodies pressed against mine, their culmination filling me, released a fourth and final wave to the surface in an explosion of light, like a galaxy of shooting stars behind my eyes that caused me to fall against my beautiful angel, his body suddenly cold and unnaturally hard.
The muffled sound of female laughter brought my eyes open with a start. I was clinging to the seatback in front of me, my forehead against the cool metal there. Save the warm stickiness coursing down my thighs, my clothes were as they should be.
The conductor was standing over me saying, "End of the line, Miss," in an irritated voice. "You need to get off now."
How could I possibly explain that I already had? That I'd just experienced the best damned orgasm of my life?
Instead, I discovered that I was alone on the bus, except for this aggravated man. The doors stood open to the chilly Roman night beyond, and through the defrosted windows, Stazione Termine, the travertine and glass-walled main train and bus station, glowed like a beacon in the dark night.
The driver watched me stand and adjust my skirt and shoulder bag. I was careful to bundle up before stepping out into the cold, and then caught him shaking his head. "These foreign girls are nuts," he mumbled, closing the doors behind me with a rickety bang.
About to head for the subway entrance, I glimpsed two men walking away from me between a gap in the crowd. Low-lying fog banks drifted across the asphalt and gave the appearance that they were walking through clouds. The man on the right was carrying a briefcase, his jeans and sport coat a handsome fit on his lean frame. The second man was taller, with a mane of dark, wavy hair that reached his shoulders and had an almost bluish cast in the moonlight. His long, billowing coat reminded me of a cloak.
A cloak!
I reached back and braced myself against the cold exterior of the bus. My entire body was trembling, the last traces of pleasure from my erotic fantasy trickling down my thigh to catch on my tights. Because there under the lamplight, the young man in the jeans appeared wreathed in a curious aura, while the other—my mind had to be playing tricks on me—radiated heat, like a mirage of waves rippling across a desert road. And something protruded from between the rift in his trench coat, something that twitched and whipped back and forth.
A pointy red tail!
The young man in the jeans turned in that instant and smiled back at me. Handsome beyond words, he was more radiant than any male I had every seen, like a brushstroke from one of the great masters. Oh, but he was the young man from the bus. My angel.
A glimpse of the other's face revealed a hint of dark goatee and the beginnings of a wicked grin forming at the corner of his mouth. My heart caught in my throat.
"Devil and angel!" I whispered.
The tall one's tail whipped again impatiently. The other continued to smile the same beatific smile that made me want to cry.
Walking shoulder to shoulder from beneath the puddle of lamplight, they both vanished into the misty night. And from out of the darkness I heard mischievous male laughter.
"See you again, beloved," the night echoed softly around me.
A deeper voices added, "Soon..."
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