Chapter Two

Two years prior…

“I knew your mother,” had been her opening line.

An open air café in the heart of Paris. The girl, Carly, was dressed in a shabby summer print that hung on her body like a gunny sack, and a short thin yellow sweater that looked a size too small. Her hair is blonde and long, held back with a cloisonné clip. She gave off the sexual pheromones of youth, innocence and frailty, a vulnerable tension in her slight body, quavering with natural eroticism, although it had not been significantly challenged until that day. The woman, Dana, held her cigarette like an extension of her elegant fingers, and in a place where smoking was still chic, not the subject of disdain, she brought her unfiltered brand to her red painted lips and breathed in. As she exhaled, the cloud of smoke that swirled around her lent a mystical aura to her natural poise. That the day was cloudy and the air wet lent its hand in that poignant first encounter between the woman and the girl.

“In fact, I worked for your mother at the embassy, my first job.”

Carly didn’t smoke during lunch, cigarettes were for sex: before to seduce, after to calm the nerves; at least this was what the romance of smoking meant to her. But she was just twenty-two when she met Dana at the open air café and she had a lot to learn about sex, seduction and the powerful effect of Dana and her cigarettes.

That afternoon, they spent in bed.

“A girl needs at least one lesbian assignation in her sexual history,” Dana told her as she was led to the walk-up flat. “I think it’s best to happen early on before a lot of bad one-nighters taint the appetite for good sex. It’s no mistake that womenknow women.”

Still dressed in Parisian haute couture, the woman came on ruthlessly, pushing Carly to the wall with a vengeance, her red nails like talons moving with savage efficiency. She planted kisses on her mouth, delicate ones to start then others with her tongue poking through her teeth into Carly’s parted lips.

The girl was hungry for the experience, for the smell of Dana’s strong perfume, and the feel of her iron will taking her own and casting it off like yesterday’s refuse.

“When’s the last time you fucked a man?” she grilled the girl.

Carly stood with her back pressed against the cold grey wall, the woman in shocking scarlet just inches from her, towering over her in stilettos that gave her fluid body its birch-like grace.

“Tell me, when was the last time?” she took the question serious enough to repeat it.

“Last night.”

For the first time since the encounter began in the café the woman took a moment to pause, as if for one brief second she’d lost control of the scene she’d so carefully orchestrated. She took control back a moment later and moved on effortlessly.

“Well, we’ll need to do something about that, won’t we, my naughty girl?”

Her red lips beamed with a smile so broad and demanding that the girl’s eyes could do nothing but stare. Carly smiled just timidly in return, her body quickening, embarrassingly so, at the mention of the word naughty. The woman was too sharp not to notice that insignificant shiver.

Dana stood back and began loosening buttons, stripping away the scarlet jacket and the silk beneath until she was down to her skirt and bra and stiletto heels. “Take off the dress,” she said as if she was giving orders.

The yellow sweater was already stuffed inside Carly’s bag. Now she felt like a street urchin shucking the only thing she wore; no bra, no panties, no drama in this simple act of surrender. The watching Dana was immediately impressed.

“Turn around,” she said, “your hands on the wall.”

Once the hesitant Carly obe