by

Alicia Night Orchid

(Copyright 2005 and 2008 Alicia Night Orchid. All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced electronically or otherwise without the author's express written permission)

“Marissa.” His voice was thick and raspy. He was calling from London where he was consulting on a shoot. It was morning there. He was still in bed. She liked him in the morning. She liked waking up in his arms, his furry chest against her back, his hardness pressed into the furrow of her ass.

“Oh, Umberto. I miss you.” He’d been gone two weeks.

“I miss you, too.” A pause, a rustling of sheets. “You were incredible.”

by

Alicia Night Orchid

(Copyright Alicia Night Orchid. 2005 and 2008. All Rights Reserved.)

Michael glimpsed her as he entered the elevator, before the crowd spun him around and forced him to stare at the closing doors. She was dressed demurely in a charcoal gray pinstripe suit, white blouse and low heels. He stood next to her, separated only by the width of the slender brief case she held in her hand. Her dark hair cascaded onto her shoulders and hid her profile, despite his best efforts to view her with his peripheral vision. When she exited on the 21^st floor, he strained for another peek at her features—the wide-set eyes, the high cheek bones, the full lips, the strong jaw line.

by

Alicia Night Orchid

Copyright 2005 and 2008. All rights reserved.

The sound of the surf on the beach is a slick kiss. The coarse sand blown by the wind, a lover’s slap.

She came here out of duty and a sense of adventure. Her brother, the bond portfolio manager, and his slinky Jamaican wife have abandoned their home on Manhattan Beach for a year in London. Now that she’s graduated college, now that it’s time for her to experience more of the world than cornfields in Iowa, can she come house sit for a year? Maybe she can find her muse here? Maybe she can find fulfillment?

By

Alicia Night Orchid

Copyright Alicia Night Orchid 2008. All Rights Reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced in whole or part without the author’s written permission.

I see Grant across the hotel lobby before he sees me. That same easy jock’s stride, except there’s a hitch in it I don’t remember—maybe a flare up in the Achilles’ tendon he tore in the Michigan meet. The blonde hair, thick and wild as always, shows flecks of gray. The sparkling blue eyes, bright as ever, are ensconced in a mangle of crows’ feet I don’t recall. It’s hard to believe we’re getting older.

by

Alicia Night Orchid

Copyright Alicia Night Orchid 2005 and 2008 All Rights Reserved

Every week, it’s the red-eye from Los Angeles to New York. It’s been this way for a year. Out on Monday, back to New York on Thursday. It can take a lot out of a girl. The litigation itself is a bitch. We represent a venture capital firm that lost money on a dot com, and I’m doing my damnedest to get some of it back. Then there’s the travel itself. Let’s just say it puts a strain on a girl’s personal life. In the last year my only sustained relationship has been with a plastic instrument that runs on AA batteries.

by

Alicia Night Orchid

Copyright 2006 Alicia Night Orchid All Rights Reserved 

Patrick placed his order on an autumn afternoon while his wife, Diane, was away shopping. He built the first fire of the season, a stake in the ground against the cooler weather that was just around the bend, pulled on his warm sweats and sat down in front of his computer. Brown and gold leaves skittered across the ground, chased by a chill December wind.

He felt his loins stir when he typed the letters—www.sybian.com.