Special Excerpt
From the short story: Melinda

By Mitzi Szereto
WordDabbler@yahoo.com

As M. S. Valentine, Mitzi Szereto is the author of The Martinet, The Captivity of Celia, The Governess, Elysian Days and Nights, and The Possession of Celia, along with numerous short stories in collections. She also wrote Erotic Fairy Tales: A Romp through the Classics, and has just edited Erotic Travel Tales 2 (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1573441554/qid=1056063537/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/102-8035280-7744900 ). Mitzi’s books are available on www.Amazon.com

Read the SCENEprofiles Interview with Mitzi Szereto

It hurt at first. But then it got better. Just like they told her it would.

Melinda had never considered allowing anyone to tie her up. The idea of handing her body over to another person – of relinquishing her control and her womanhood to people she barely knew had no place on her list of Things To Do Before I Die. Of course there were a lot of things Melinda would never have considered doing before the night she went to the annual company Christmas party, unescorted and conspicuously alone.

The event started off like all the Christmas parties that had gone before, with nearly everyone in attendance parading their dates before their colleagues, their overly loud laughter and too-bright smiles making Melinda feel more out of the social fray than usual. Not fond of large gatherings, she immediately regretted her mistake in not having coerced her gay friend Joel into coming along with her. He was always a handy escort when she found herself in a pinch, particularly since he knew just when to fade into the background. But tonight Melinda didn’t want to be bogged down with a date, bogus or otherwise. She wanted to be available, just in case. She’d even brought along her credit card to splurge on a room in the swanky hotel where the party was being held. Why, she could see the misty green landscape of Hyde Park from the window already!

As it happened, the only view of Hyde Park Melinda ended up being treated to on this wet December evening was the one from the hotel lobby. Evidently the creative head of corporate advertising had far more interesting things to do with his Saturday night than spend it with the office gadabouts, unlike Melinda, who really didn’t have anything else to do on this rainy Saturday night. It was either the company Christmas party or cuddling up with the cat to watch yet another television documentary featuring a rhapsodic David Attenborough narrative on the sex lives of creepy-crawly things that live under rocks. At the moment Melinda was more concerned about her own sex life, which had definitely hit the skids.

This recent downward sexual spiral had gained some unwanted momentum thanks to Melinda’s involvement with a man from her gym. In retrospect, she probably should have realized that anyone with that many muscles spent most of his time lifting weights and none on building up a career. Therefore it didn’t take long for Melinda to decide she could easily forfeit all that hard defined male flesh in return for a steady bed partner with a steady salary and something to talk about beside abs and pecs. For after only a couple of steamy sessions, Blake and his weightlifting paraphernalia had virtually moved into her tiny flat. Granted, they were pretty good steamy sessions as steamy sessions tend to go, though certainly by no means fulfilling enough to warrant her financial support of the man – not even if his tongue claimed the distinction of being as muscular and rippling as the rest of him! Whether at her most exhausted or sexually apathetic, one dose of Blake’s hard-working tongue between her thighs would be enough to make Melinda forget the pile of paperwork waiting for her at the office. It was only too bad the rest of Blake wasn’t quite as industrious as his tongue.

As she stood by the bar sipping spicy Christmas punch from a plastic cup and nodding the occasional hello to a familiar face, Melinda’s glittery evening bag burned an embarrassing reminder against her hip. The unused VISA card that had been placed inside it with such careful premeditation before she left home for the party now made her feel like a fool. At the time it had seemed like a terribly sophisticated thing to do. But as her meticulously made-up eyes swept across the crowd of revelers searching for the one face she most wanted to see, Melinda realized that the expensive French perfume lavished behind her ears and on the insides of her thighs had been wasted, along with the outrageous sum of money that had gone toward the purchase of her new black dress, which had looked so-o-o sexy when she’d tried it on in the shop. So profound was her disappointment on what should have been a festive occasion that she considered leaving. However, all this changed when her crestfallen gaze met that of a dark-featured young man who looked as out of place as she felt.

Perhaps it was the expression of contemplative amusement in his smoky Eastern eyes that set him so apart from the others in the noisy hotel banquet room. This and the fact that he appeared to be the only male in attendance not drinking himself into a state of obnoxiousness or risking his teeth on the dried-out chicken wings, made his presence all the more noticeable. Or at least it did to Melinda, who found his aloofness strangely appealing. This was not a man who needed to call attention to himself. And neither, for that matter, was his fair-skinned female companion. For he stood in a gaudily decorated corner elbow-to-elbow and thigh-to-thigh with the most stunning woman Melinda had ever seen: an ephemeral white-blonde with eyes as amber as a cat’s and the stealthy mouse-bating movements to go along with them. How was Melinda to know that she would be that mouse?


~~~

Copyright 2003

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