Free Beauty and Pain by Harlem Dae

Chapter One
    Every morning was the same routine, except for weekends, when I didn’t have to get up at stupid o’clock to catch a train to work. Monday to Friday saw me wishing I could do something different—so different that if my colleagues or friends heard about it they’d possibly think I’d gone insane. I wanted… I wanted a man, plain and simple. A stranger who wouldn’t see me as a brazen tart if I approached him in public and made it clear that I wanted to have sex with him. A stranger who’d desperately want to see me again after our first fuck, beg me to meet him at the same time the next day. Until we were together again I would become his everything, dominate his thoughts, hold his desires harnessed.
    Did such a man exist?
    Did I have the courage to go and find out?
    Had I already met him without knowing?
    These were questions that spun web-like in my mind. But I wanted clarity. I wanted answers, so today I was going to pay a bit more attention to what I wore and see if that kick-started my luck.
    I needed something alluring, a red skirt a little shorter than I’d usually wear to the office, a flash of stocking lace visible, perhaps even the suspender clips. A black chemise, with lace on that, too, just above my breasts, the kind that would make a man wonder if I had a bra on underneath. I slipped on black stilettos then turned to look at my calves to make sure my stocking seams were straight.
    Perfect.
    I secured my hair on my crown in a loose bun with tendrils hanging around my face. I thought of the coming train journey and how, even though it was winter, the bright sun, as it streaked through the window, would highlight the blonde. My makeup didn’t take long. I went for the understated look—a thin covering of foundation, light brown dusting on my eyelids, one sweep of the mascara brush per set of lashes and a faint tinge of red on my lips.
    Downstairs in the kitchen I poured a coffee. With my backside pressing against a cupboard, I sipped my drink and thought about the scenarios I’d envisaged so many times before. Life rarely reflected my fantasies these days, but nevertheless I looked forward to seeing just what would happen when I approached the man I’d been ogling for the past two months.
    Could he be the man of my sordid dreams?
    Oh, he was very different physically from my last lover, Ian, who had been a dab hand with the tools of the trade, but sadly his roving eye had meant he hadn’t been a keeper.
    This bloke, though, I didn’t care if he was a keeper or not. He was a stranger and that was the way my fantasies had headed of late. A little dangerous maybe, but hey, I could never be accused of having boring daydreams. They always hung on the edge of extreme—it was my favorite place to be.
    He didn’t wear a wedding ring, this new man, but that didn’t mean anything these days, did it? He traveled alone, boarding and getting off at the same places I did every morning. He’d glanced at me a few times, but if I’d ever caught him staring it hadn’t appeared to bother him. He’d stared harder, if anything, until I’d been the one to look away.
    Today I wouldn’t.
    I glanced at the time, startled to see it was bordering on seven thirty. I tipped my remaining coffee into the sink, shrugged on my long black winter coat, slung the handle of my bag over my shoulder then left the house.
    October was a strange month, all frost with a mean bite, the wind sometimes so fierce it stung my face. Thankfully the pavements weren’t slippery this morning, so my choice of shoes hadn’t been a bad idea. I got into my car, a trusty red VW Beetle I’d had for years, and peeled away from the curb, destination the train station. On the way there, I entertained myself with thoughts of the man and how he was in for the surprise of his life today—providing he was single and everything went to plan. Perhaps he was driving to the station, too, an Audi or a convertible of some sort his vehicle of