5 - Different Strokes

She visits him after dusk has become deepest night, and enjoys teasing his passivity with her nearness, caressing and kissing intimately and without abandon. Throughout his body she sends shivers of delight and apprehension, and a breaking sweat. Rocking astride him, his breath catches and air is a struggle until all is over and they are spent.

Waking he finds her gone, leaving only a fleeting sense of her retreat into the shadows.

He switches on the lamp, fearful of its illumination of his all-too-real dream. In the mirror opposite he wonders at the oppressive gloom and the opalescence of the coyly smiling watercolour nude above his hotel bed.