Journey’s End

       Rose de Fer

      Alice wakes, pale and shivering, her naked body exposed in the chilly morning light. She is still curled around his hand, his fingers deep inside her as he sleeps. For several minutes she lies perfectly still, watching dreams dance across his eyelids. His hand twitches slightly and her tiny gasp of pleasure makes him stir. Slowly his eyes open, meeting hers.

      ‘You’re cold,’ he says. It is not a question.

      He gently withdraws the hand that plumbed her depths so thoroughly the night before and she wriggles a little in protest, tensing her inner muscles as though she might trap his fingers there. He smiles indulgently as he draws the duvet up over her legs, leaving her upper body bare.

      His warm wet fingers trace a line up her body, between her breasts and along the length of one thin arm, coming to rest where the ropes bind her wrists to the iron bedstead.

      ‘Can you feel your hands?’

      She is tempted to lie and tell him yes so he won’t release her, but she knows he would see through any such dishonesty. Reluctantly, she shakes her head. When he unties the knots she lowers her arms with a hiss of pain as the pins and needles bring her achingly back to the real world. Her wrists are scored deeply where the ropes have bitten into her tender flesh throughout the night and he massages the skin as though smoothing away imperfections in a sculpture.

      She moans as the blood flow returns and her legs twine about his, entreating him to stay. But, as always, he leaves with the light, abandoning her to her memories and the lingering pain. She hears the door close softly behind him and she lies in the tangle of sheets for more than an hour before dragging herself out of bed and into the shower.

      * * *

      She met him on the train, on the way to a routine business meeting in London where she’d treated herself to a first-class ticket for a change. Free tea and a bit more leg-room made all the difference to what was usually a long, boring journey.

      She’d been in his seat when he boarded the train and he hadn’t said a word to her as she apologised and shifted clumsily over to the window, where her reservation was. His polite smile made her feel like a child forgiven some bit of mischief. He was well dressed, his dark suit immaculate and stylish, clearly hand-tailored. His face was chiselled and aristocratic, with eyes so deeply brown they were almost black. But it was his voice that really got her attention.

      He was on the phone to someone, discussing his schedule in such vague terms that Alice couldn’t guess what line of work he was in. But his voice! It was beautiful. Rich, silky and resonant. Like someone who read books aloud for a living. Or should do. She eavesdropped, pretending to read her cheap paperback as he confirmed details of a meeting in Soho the next day.

      The firm authority in his voice made her squirm and she felt her cheeks growing warm as he sharply informed the person on the other end of the phone that something wasn’t good enough, that they would have to do better.

      Normally Alice hated the window seat. It made her feel trapped by whichever stranger got the aisle seat next to her. She loathed having to ask to be let out every time she needed the loo, which, with tea and the many hours between Edinburgh and London, was fairly often. The seats on the other side of the table were still vacant, although the reservation cards in the seat backs claimed that passengers would be boarding at Peterborough. In this case, however, she decided she didn’t really mind feeling pinned in. Not by this man. She turned another page in her book and tried to keep her eyes on the page so as not to drool over him. She hadn’t taken in a single word of the prose.

      The man ended the call and tucked his phone away, breaking the spell of his voice. For a moment she basked in the echo of it before suddenly remembering that she hadn’t told her boss what time she’d be getting in herself. She didn’t want to ring him and replace her memory of the stranger’s beautiful voice with Mr Carson’s reedy whine so she decided just to send him a text. She reached into her bag for her phone and gave a small cry as a spike of pain flared in her middle finger.

      Her companion looked up as she tentatively withdrew her hand. A jagged sliver of glass protruded from the fingertip. She stared at it with a mixture of horror and fascination, trying to imagine where it had come from. Blood was beginning to seep from the wound.

      ‘Oh, dear,’ the man said softly. He took her by the wrist and drew her hand towards him to peer closely at her finger. A strange smile flickered across his features. He gently plucked the shard of glass from her finger, making her wince with pain. But he didn’t release her hand. Instead he grasped the injured finger and squeezed it, causing a bead of blood to swell from the puncture. Then he held her finger over his mug of tea. Transfixed, Alice found herself unable to pull away.

      One by one the crimson droplets fell into the cup and dispersed in feathery swirls. The pressure he exerted made her fingertip pulse, hot and stinging. The sensation ran the length of her arm, burning a path along the network of veins to her throbbing heart.

      He released her hand then and her eyes widened even more as he raised the cup to his lips and sipped from it, his eyes never leaving hers.

      Heat flared in her face at this unnatural intimacy. She pressed a tissue to her finger, the skin still warm from his touch. Unnerved, she glanced down at the table and when she looked up again he was still watching her. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She didn’t know what to say anyway. In the man’s steady gaze was the supreme confidence that he was