They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. I will tell you now that it is absolute unadulterated horseshit. Absence and distance cut your heart into little pieces and leaves a hole inside that hurts.

Katie. Oh my Katie…

I had been attending a four-day seminar given by the International Business Women’s Association, hosted by the International Banque de France in Paris. The Wall Street financial company I was associated with was paying the bills, and so it was important that I made the most of my first official overseas trip.

The seminar may have initially seemed like a soft jaunt, but it took its business seriously. Aside from the stated core topic, ‘Advancing Women into Leadership Roles’ the seminar also waded off into all business areas and in particular: monetary policy, banking supervision, and financial stability.

I, Miss Junior Exec out of the financial canyons of Manhattan, had looked on my trip as more of a women-in-business hob-nobbing, some pleasant tête-à-tête time buffered by some extra days to go flitting around the shops and bistros of Paris. Oh well, it was all paid for so I could scarcely complain about the assignment.

I was staying in the Hôtel Le Relais Saint Germain, which is a close walk from Saint-Germain-des-Près Metro Station. A place I had found to my liking on a previous visit some years earlier while on a university study trip.

The International Banque was a tall modern structure affording fabulous views across the city. At the first break, I wandered out into the foyer and gazed out of the windows at the people and vehicles trying to avoid each other on the Champs-Élysées. I have never quite decided which is the more terrifying, driving in a Parisian rush hour or its Italian equivalent of piloting a vehicle around the Coliseum in Rome.

I had long believed the surest form of suicide was to enter a taxicab in Paris or Rome and tell the driver to ‘step on it.’

Aside from my vehicular assessments, I was also sipping some excellent dark coffee and stuffing my face with a complimentary assortment of éclairs and petit fours from a large table set up in the foyer.

“I am getting fat just looking at the table.” Exclaimed a British female voice behind me.

Without looking back, I responded. “Yes, and remember to leave some room for lunch.”

I heard a guffaw and turned to face the voice.

We looked to be of the same age, dressed similarly in business suits, jackets, blouses, and slim pencil skirts, her suit a light grey, mine darker charcoal. She had light brown hair that tumbled around her shoulders and a delicate face with a slightly upturned nose. She was as tall as me with a slender well-shaped body, lively and effervescent and in a word, cute.

“I’m Katherine, but I answer better to, Katie,” she declared with one hand holding her coffee and the other wrapped around a chocolate éclair. She stuffed the end of the éclair in her mouth and held out her hand.

Ignoring the chocolate smears on her fingers, I smiled and shook her hand.

“Hi Katie, I’m Helen. Is this your first trip to Paris?”

“Well my first trip without adult supervision,” she answered. “Just some school trips a few years back.”

I smiled. “Had one like that myself. My first time in France we were chaperoned around as if we were a bunch of juvenile delinquents. Then again, some of us probably were.”

She laughed, choking on her éclair. “I know what you mean.”  

We found seats in the foyer and over coffee and pastries and exchanged pleasantries. Katie informed me that she was a junior exec for an advertising company in London while I explained how I held a similar junior exec position with a Financial Brokerage Company in New York. She asked if we could go exploring Paris together.

I did have a tentative evening rendezvous arranged with a Monsieur Henri Robichaux, a French gentleman  I had the dubious pleasure of meeting on the flight over from New York. We had become somewhat acquainted during the night flight from JFK to Charles De Gaul Airport a few days earlier. I found his business card in the pocket of my daily planner.

‘L'Académie de Henri Robichaux pour les jeunes filles exceptionnelles.’

Well, I was never sure of what that alluded to, but whatever it was, I called and left a message with Monsuer Henri Robichaux’s Secretary that I would be tied up at my seminar for at least a few days.

Had it really only been a couple of days since I had made the airborne acquaintance of Monsieur Henri Robichaux?  The memory of him whispering, “J'adore votre culotte,” coupled with the slowly fading, mild red rash on my inner thighs from prolonged rubbing, reminded me that it was indeed.

I was jarred out of my rueful recollections by Katie nattering on about the seminar, her work and asking me about New York. We were instantly comfortable with each other. Undeniably, there were some sparks flying between us that I could not dismiss as being static electricity from my nylon pantyhose or her silk blouse. The times she gently patted my arms and shoulders for emphasis as we talked or brushed her hips against me as we walked were more than accidental. There indeed were moments when I was looking at her slender legs and was undeniably aware that she was affording me a similar appraisal.

Those moments when nothing is said… often speaks volumes.

As we filed back into the conference room, I saw Katie quickly sweep up her books from where she had been sitting and relocate to a seat next to me. The woman who had been sitting there looked a trifle miffed at being usurped from her chair, but Katie beamed at her and said she was moving to sit next to her cousin. The other woman obligingly moved over one chair to accommodate her.

Later as we ate lunch together, we chatted about her job in London and mine in New York. She also informed me that she had flown into Paris from London in the wee hours that very morning and needed to find accommodation. Tell me the gods of lust were not taking a massive hand in this chance encounter.

At the close of the seminar lectures that afternoon, Katie gathered her suitcase from the seminar office, and we moved her over to the Hôtel Le Relais Saint Germain to stay with me in my room. I told myself, ‘why not,’ it was a case of economics. I received the same daily charge for my room whether double occupancy or single.

After arriving in my hotel room, I shed my suit jacket and kicked off my high heels with the intention of exchanging them for something more comfortable such as pants and tennis shoes for our evening walk. I went over to my suitcase, opened it and took out a pair of dark blue jeans.

As I turned back toward the room, Katie was standing in front of me.

She looked directly into my eyes and then sank down onto her knees. She reached up with both hands and ran them up my legs, under my skirt and slip, and along the outside of my thighs, to the waistband of my pantyhose and panties. Placing her fingers into both waistbands, she rolled both my hose and undies over my hips and down my legs, then pulled them off at my ankles. She then took hold of the hem of my skirt and half-slip and pushed them both all the way up over my hips until they were bunched on my waist.

Kneeling with her face inches from my bare pussy she then placed both her hands on the cheeks of my ass and pulled me to her, rubbing her face against my crotch and licking me.

I should have been shocked, but that would have been childishly ridiculous. We had both felt the same primal spark between us from the first moment our skirts had brushed against each other. I looked down. Katie was still fully dressed in her grey business suit, kneeling with her pretty face pressed against my pussy.

I grabbed a handful of her hair, held her against me and began thrusting my pussy against her face, allowing her just enough room to breathe between her licking and kissing.

She continued licking and nibbling me until I was near to coming, and then she suddenly stopped.

Looking up, she smiled. “How do I say, ‘Please make love to me’ in French?” she asked.

I looked down at her kneeling in front of me. “You say, S'll te plaît, fais-moi l'amour.”

“Well, I can’t pronounce that so how about I just say, Parlez-Vous fuck me?”

I laughed, grabbed her shoulders and stood her up. “That sounds close enough for me, Katie.”

I still stood there with my slip and skirt bunched up around my waist as she stood and looked into my eyes. As we were kissing each other gently on the lips, Katie succinctly summed up the situation.

“Want to get naked and fool around?”

We hurriedly discarded our clothing, blouses, skirts, and bras dropping to the floor. I unzipped Katie’s skirt, and it fell to her feet to reveal baby blue bikini panties and self-support stockings.

I reached out and cupped the mound in her panties.

She put her head against my shoulder. “Do you like feeling my pussy?”

I found her directness unnerving but incredibly sexy and challenging. “Oh yes, you sexy little minx.”

She put her face against mine and kissed my cheek and neck. “Parlez-Vous fuck me, Helen?”

“Yes, oh yes. Parlez-Vous fuck you, Katie.”

Only one day at our business seminar and we were already applying the basic principles of direct marketing and product distribution.

* * *

We stood engaging in some exploratory kissing before finally taking off her hose and panties and wrestling each other naked onto the bed.

Katie immediately pushed me onto my back and straddled my hips. I raised my hips to meet her, and we pressed hard against each other, pussy to pussy, bucking and grinding until I was racked with a massive orgasm and collapsed back onto the sheets. Our eyes never left each other’s face and body.

“Parlez-Vous fuck me, Helen?”

She slowly slid up my body, rubbing her pussy across my stomach, my breasts, and then she straddled my face. I grabbed her hips and pulled her down on me, holding her pretty pussy to my lips. I kissed, licked and tongued her deeply, and she soon started madly rubbing her pussy up and down against my face, until she came in a series of spasms.

Afterward, she fell onto the bed beside me, and we gently touched and kissed each other.

There was no awkwardness, no fear of embarrassment or intimidation between us. We were instantly comfortable with each other as if we had been intimate for years.

When I could breathe again, I managed to stumble from the bed and locate some wine in the cooler. We took a break from our exertions, drank wine, and lay naked together leafing through the tourist brochures we had brought back to my hotel room.

We lay on the bed next to each other, laughing and kissing and looking at the pictures and descriptions in the pamphlets.

Katie’s hands were all over, exploring, feeling and fondling, which I encouraged with moans and spreading of my legs. After some minutes I pushed her over onto her back, kissed my way down her body from her face to her pussy, and very slowly licked her to another orgasm.

It was here when I discovered another of Katie’s talents. She was a wordsmith of sorts and would get into these silly moods of making up parodies and singing.

“Oh, what’s that French song that keeps going, ‘inky-dinky parlez vous?” she asked.

“Oh, I think you mean, ‘Mademoiselle from Armentières.’ I replied.

Yes, that’s it. Okay well, how about this…”

“Oh, Mademoiselle from New York City, Parlez-vous

Mademoiselle from New York City, Parlez-vous

Mademoiselle from New York City,

Kissed my tits and licked my clitty

Sucksy-fucksy parlez-vous.”

It was gross but so silly and funny and unexpected that I cracked up laughing.

“Did you just make that up?”

“Yes, I’ve always had a way with rhymes and limericks.” She looked at me laughing. “You forgot I work at a London Advertising agency. I often piddle around making up little ditties. Oh ditties, let’s see now that rhymes with…”

“Yes, a whole lot of things. Tell me, did you scrawl on a lot of school toilet walls when you were a kid?”

Katie feigned shocked surprise. “Yes, how did you know?  Have you been to my old high school?”

“Yes,” I said, “and now I know that you can’t be trusted with crayons!”

Katie nuzzled her face against mine. “Bugger crayons. I can’t be trusted with your bare ass.”

She affected a pensive expression. “Now what rhymes with knickers?”

“Stop it you silly cat.”

“Flickers, clickers, lickers, liquors, kickers…”

I could not help myself laughing at her studied silliness. Katie was a vastly different creature from any of my more conservative acquaintances.  

“I got it,” she cried out. “How about limericks?”

Katie wrinkled her brow and recited,

“Helen and Katie were two city slickers

Both were insatiable lickers

They loved to caress and lift up their dress

And take off each other’s knickers.”

It does not get sillier, but god knows she made me laugh. Those last years in college obtaining my Masters, the long hours and demands of starting into a financial brokerage career had taken its toll. In that instance, I accepted the rather startling self-diagnosis that I was, in fact, long overdue for copious amounts of silly. Miss Katie certainly provided plenty of it.

I wrapped myself in a bathrobe, called down to the main desk, and ordered more wine. I accepted delivery at the door and opened the wine while Katie was powdering her nose in the bathroom.

“Hey,” she yelled from the bathroom.

I looked over to see her holding up a plastic bag and waving it.

“Hey did you know there is an airline sick-bag in here with a pair of knickers in it?”

Oops, Katie had discovered the souvenir from Henri Robichaux. “Yes, I had to change in the middle of the flight over here.”

“Oh, okay. Makes sense. Better than having them loose in your purse I guess.”

I could not help thinking that between Katie and Monsieur Henri, a girl could get her oil changed regularly.

“Would Katie the Poet like to go out on the town and eat snails and frog legs?” I called out.

Without a moment’s hesitation or trace of shame, she replied. “I would rather stay here with a bottle of wine and nibble what’s between your legs.”

With that short utterance, Katie effectively negated any ideas I had for wandering the local Parisian bistros that evening.

I poured two glasses and wine and stood before her naked. “So Miss Katie. Are you in the mood for an aperitif, entrée or hors-d'œuvre?”

Katie studiously looked me over from my earlobes to my toenails.

“I’m ordering the buffet,” she replied. “I want a taste of everything.”

I toasted Katie with my wine glass. “Mmmm touché Miss Katie.”

“As long as you to touché my tits and between my legs, I’m a happy tourist.”

Oh, Katie, she did make me laugh.

I stood in front of her with my legs wide apart. “Bon appétit, Katie. Bon appétit.”

We played Parlez-Vous fuckme until we were exhausted. Up until that point in my life, she was the most uninhibited charmer I had ever known.

Katie was not just a fresh breeze in my life - she was a damn whirlwind.

* * *

The following evening we actually made it out of our hotel room and over to the Peniche Marcounet Café, which is actually, a barge parked next to the Pont Marie and a great place to soak in some ambiance. It has tables, both on the barge and spread out along the embankment. It has good beer and wines and usually a live band.

We dressed casual, jeans and light tops. Naturally, Katie was braless and checking out her backside in jeans, I had to admit that while my ass did not look quite as tight in jeans as hers did, I contributed an extra cup size in the bust. I deduced that equaled things out between us.

We eagerly devoured grilled chicken skewers, quinoa salad, chips, and guacamole, sipped chardonnay and people watched while continuously talking about nothing in particular.

The café was a nice place to hang out, with a relatively young crowd and Katie was getting down to the music. I have reservations about public displays, but Katie danced close, facing me, the front of her sweater against me, pressing her breasts against mine and shaking them back and forth. Of course, I have seen women dance together before in a provocative manner, but this was a little too public for me.

“Can’t you wait until we get back to our room?”

“Why should I wait?” she replied. “I love your tits.”

“My god, you are a mad bitch.”

“Yes, but I am your mad bitch.”

Later, back in our room I lay on the bed with a pillow behind my head and shoulders and perused the tourist pamphlets I had accumulated.

I read aloud to Katie. “Are you aware that the Eiffel Tower is a lattice tower made from iron, built in 1889?”

Overwhelmed with that piece of architectural knowledge she replied. “Would you help a girl out here and lift your New York ass so I can get your jeans off?”

In compliance to her wish, I lifted my hips enough for Katie to pull my jeans down over my hips and off at my ankles.

“Do you know that it is situated on the Champ de Mars in Paris and is named after the designer and engineer Gustave Eiffel?” I asked her.

Katie loomed over me. “The more important question of the moment is, should I munch down on those silky white knickers of yours, or rip them off?”

I turned the page and persevered with my reading.

“Standing 984 feet high upon completion on March 15, 1889, the Eiffel Tower became the world’s tallest structure.”

Katie lowered her mouth to the crotch of my undies and nuzzled.

“The… oh geez… er …the Eiffel Tower was the tallest… Oh, my go…. Katie…!”

She nibbled and kissed my panty as I struggled to read.

“It was the tallest until… oh, Christ Katieeeee…”

Katie hooked a finger through the crotch of my undies and pulled it aside.

“Until… oh Katie, Katie… until… until… the Chrysler Building in 1930…”

As her tongue entered me, I dropped the damned pamphlet, grabbed Katie’s hair with both hands and held her face tightly against my wet pussy.

“Parlez-vous fuck-me, Helen.” She murmured.

“Oh yessss you mad bitch…”

So we fucked, and severely parlez vous’d until our bodies were slippery wet with each other’s fluids.

Later, recovering, we held onto each other as if we were the last two human beings on the planet.

* * *

Our third day presented us with the gift of a free afternoon, and the seminar attendees were encouraged to explore the wonders of Paris.

I lay on the bed wearing only panties with dozens of tourist pamphlets scattered around me. I was trying to plan some walking tours where Katie and I could spend some leisurely time taking in some of the more iconic attractions.

My philanthropic plans seemed of little interest to Katie, but I persevered. “Now I plan to include the Louvre Museum, the Place de la Concorde, the Arc de Triomphe, Champs-Elysees and, of course, the Eiffel Tower, plus we can stick our noses into whatever boutiques and bistros that take our fancy along the way.”

Katie lay next to me walking her fingertips up and down my inner thighs. “Oh, I am all for sticking our noses in places.”

She pulled up on the waistband of my panties until the gusset was tight against my body, then placed her finger and traced the depression in my panties with her fingernail.

“Now my idea of a tour is this.” Katie circled my mound with her fingertip. “Now my tour will begin at the exclusive Helen Camel Toe Café which leads to your Cleft of Venus, conveniently located between your left and right inner thighs.”

It was indeed impossible to be serious around Katie. She was irrepressible, passionate, and hilarious.

“Did you know that the Arc de Triomphe was commissioned by Napoleon in honor of his army's victories; and the Place de la Concorde served as the site of royal beheadings during the French Revolution?”

“Mmmm how fascinating.” Katie murmured as she continued to finger the cleft in my panties. “Do you know that you start to wet as soon as I feel your knickers? Now to begin my tour, I will start off at your Mons Pubis where I shall cup and fondle your soft mound until I think it is time to begin the tour.”

She kissed my dampening panties.

“First we have the short circular tour. This is where I slowly nibble my way around your inner labia with occasional stops at the clitoris.”

She pulled aside the crotch of my panty and licked.

“Now the extended tour takes more time of course and consists of my kissing and licking from your pussy, up to your belly button where I shall apply some lick and tickle on your tummy followed by a circular tour around your tits. I shall then suck and nibble on your gorgeous junior executive, all-American tits while you tell me how much you love me, and then slowly work my back down again. If the tour is enjoyable, I may repeat the trip.

I could not stop myself laughing.

“Mons Pubis?  Inner Labia?  Cleft of Venus? When did Crazy Katie who unmercifully butchers the French language, become so proficient in Latin?” I inquired.

Katie smiled and fluttered her eyelashes. “I just went to the right schools… I guess.”

“A selective gift of tongues?”

“Well, Miss Helen. I don’t hear you complaining.”

Indeed, she was correct. In that particular department, Katie provided more tactile inducement complete with irrepressible linguistic accompaniment than any lover I had ever known. The young lady was eminently fluent in flagrant debauchery.

It came as little surprise that we never made it out of the hotel to explore the wonders of Paris. We became insatiably lost in the wonders of exploring each other.

* * *

The fourth day at the seminar was a little more relaxed. Three guest speakers in the morning extolling the new opportunities opening up for female executives in worldwide commerce and following lunch we circulated through different groups with mediated discussions regarding our own experiences in the workplace.

We stayed local that evening. Le Editeurs Restaurant opposite our hotel is located on a delightful small square with multiple intersections and surrounded by cafes. It is people watch paradise; locals, tourists, tradesmen, tour buses, and all the students on bicycles running into each other.

It was a warm, pleasant evening. I wore a light dress and comfortable sandals while Katie accentuated her charms in tight jeans and a light blouse minus bra.

Katie’s visual appraisal was embarrassingly intimate. She did not merely undress me with her eyes, she stripped me bare and made love to me. When I saw the way she looked at me, my face blushed, and my panties dampened.

“Ladies don’t look up other lady’s dresses.” I playfully admonished.

“Oh yes they fucking well do,” she replied.

Following our meal, we bought two bottles of Chardonnay from the wine shop next to the restaurant and carried them back to our hotel room.

Once more, back in our room we immediately closed out the rest of the world and were lost in each other.

We kissed and brushed our fingers through each other’s hair.

"Would you like to taste my cunt?" she asked.

"Yes, very much," I whispered.

"Good."

She stood before me, pulled off her silk blouse and displayed her pretty braless tits. Her nipples were already hard with excitement. I immediately clutched her hips, and slowly sank down onto my knees while kissing from her breasts to the waistband of her jeans.

Katie ran her fingers through my hair, held me against her and wriggled the crotch of her jeans against my face.

“Are you going to chew your way through my jeans or take them off?”

I could smell her the moment I unzipped her denim jeans and slid them down her legs. Her black bikini style undies were already moist. I knelt and kissed her panties, tracing her cleft with the tip of my tongue.

"Stop piddling about Helen, take my knickers off!"

So I pulled her lovely little English knickers down her legs and off her ankles, and she was naked in front of me.

I buried my face between her legs, savoring her pussy, smelling and licking her pretty slit. I was overwhelmed by her moist heat and thoroughly intoxicated by her musky perfume.

As she stood in front of me on quivering legs, I licked her to several orgasms. When her strength finally gave out, we retreated to the bed with our glasses of wine.

We had barely recovered our normal breathing when Katie felt the back of my dress and told me to kneel on the bed.  It never entered my head to object, merely comply.

Moving close behind me Katie slid her right hand up under the back of my dress and between my legs.  I automatically leaned forward and grabbed the wrought iron headboard for support.  

I felt her fingernail trace a teasing trail up the backs of my thighs, then lift and push aside the crotch of my panties, spread my vagina and thrust her fingers into my wet pussy.

Katie kissed the back of my neck and whispered, “Do you like me fingering you, Helen?  Do you like me playing with your cunt?”

Bent over, I gripped the iron bars on the headboard and gasped, “Oh my god… YES.”

Jesus H,… she owned me.

I tightened my grip and braced my arms against the headboard, lowered my face into the pillows and stuck my ass out for her to stroke and finger my soaking wet pussy. Little Miss Katie had her arm up under the back of my dress and fingered me until I was crying.

“Helen Darling.” She cooed while fingering me. “When you put your briefcase down and get those glasses off you really can be a horny bitch, can’t you?”

Then she pulled my panties off and lifted my little summer dress up over my hips and ass.

"Oh, yes," I moaned. “Oh yes, oh yes, ooooh yessss…”

Katie fingered me until the wetness ran down the insides of my thighs and I finally lost the strength to hold onto the iron bedstead. When I collapsed onto the bed, Katie rolled me over onto my back, pushed my dress up onto my stomach, straddled my hips and slowly ground her wet pussy against mine.

We fucked, gentle at first, and then slowly building in intensity and emotion. We frantically embraced each other as if we could not get close enough. Despite growing soreness and some pain, we rubbed ourselves silly against each other. We squealed, laughed and wept, and we fucked insatiably, neither of us wanting to stop or let go of each other.

We exhausted ourselves responding to each other’s demands.

“Parlez-vous fuck-me, Helen.”

“Yes, yes, goddamit YES. Parlez-vous fuck-you Katie.”

* * *

Afterward, wet and naked beside each other, we drank wine, gently touched and kissed each other and once again leafed through the tourist brochures we had brought back to our hotel room.

Katie once again waxed lyrical. “After we saw the Eiffel Tower, Helen fucked her English flower.”

She giggled. “Is that right, Helen?”

There we lay, exhausted from our exertions, wet with each other’s fluids, and she is making up rhymes.

“No, it isn’t right. We have not made it to the Eiffel Tower yet.”

Katie sniffed. “Well bugger the Eiffel Tower. How about, Helen was from New York City, fucked Katie’s cunt and sucked her titty.”

“Stop it you, silly mad bitch.”

Katie rolled onto her side and looked at me.

“Ah, but I am your mad bitch, aren't I Helen?”

“Stop it you silly thing,” I answered.

“Ah but you love me saying it.”

Little surprises me, but Katie was correct. I was never that crude or dirty-mouthed, but with Katie, it just did not seem that crude. It may have been childish, but it was also an unshackled crazy feeling of freedom, silliness and daring, an unrestrained assing about. Upon reflection, I suppose that should have sounded a warning bell to my more pragmatic brain cells, but… well dammit, I did not want to challenge it or question it. I did not want to examine or dissect it… I did not want to over-intellectualize it to learn what made it tick or even what made it delicious, unrestrained sexy, filthy fun. I just wanted to embrace it and ride the whirlwind…

We ravaged each other as if the world would end the following day. We wanted each other, we wanted it all, we wanted it then and now, and then all over again. We fucked each other silly. While I would not usually use the word ‘fucked,’ I had been around the block enough times to recognize the difference between ‘making love’ and unrestrained sex. Whatever it was that we found ourselves immersed in, it contained an insatiability quotient that elevated making love into pure unbridled fucking.

Somewhere between the Chardonnay and the wet bedsheets we saw very little of the city. I was surprised that we attended any of the seminar lectures at all, but we did. After all, our respective employers were paying for our hotel accommodations.

Katie and I were both instantly ass over teakettle in love with each other.

* * *

Before I had even completed the business seminar, I phoned my New York office and begged an extension on my trip, two more weeks to visit England.  My New York Company had affiliated concerns in London, so they considered it an excellent idea that while I was on the continent, it might be educational for me to get a look at the English ways of doing things. It most certainly was. My English Katie commenced educating me royally up one side and down the other, while not neglecting any remaining bits and pieces in between.

We spent one crazy week just driving all over England from North Yorkshire where I drank the best beer in the world to Southend where I ate the worst fish and chips known to mankind plus emergency stops at Boots Chemist Shop in Canterbury and Woodstock for gel lubricant. Gene Pitney may have sung, ‘It Hurts To Be In Love,’ but I could have shown him the friction burns.

We behaved like giddy teens. Our frocks were seldom down and our panties rarely up. I spent every waking moment watching her watching me while she was doing likewise.  My god, this was what it was all about, two people totally lost in each other. We laughed ourselves silly and cried with the same intensity. There was seldom a dry eye or dry pair of undies between us.  

For our remaining couple of days together we took accommodations in the Randolf Hotel in Oxford, which was some fourteen miles from Katie’s home out in the countryside.

When we finally stopped ravishing each other, at least slowed down long enough to take a breath, we finally talked about things. All of those little things we had never spoken of because they were considered minor details and unimportant to our obsession for each other.

One revelation became immediately apparent. When you are inside the whirlwind, you cannot see anything outside of it.  

Taking breakfast in the dining room of the Randolf, I sat quietly looking out of the windows across Beaumont Street at the forecourt and pillars of the Ashmolean Museum. Inside those walls were contained age and wisdom and provided a fitting sober backdrop for discussions involving plans and practicalities.

Katie finally spoke of some of the intricate details of her life. How her mother had cancer, that her father could not cope alone and all of those attendant reasons why her family needed Katie to stay close. Katie had merely assumed I would stay with her in England. Why not, she knew I adored it there. She said, perhaps I could find a position in London similar to my work in New York.

Whereas, I had assumed Katie would leap at the chance of living with me in Manhattan. I also had obligations. I had a toenail on the corporate ladder… expectations for completing my Doctoral thesis and moving upward…  

Reality is a cruel bitch sometimes.

Few of us are immune, and no one can claim perfection. We may know better, but do it regardless, and I suppose, that is what makes us human, and not automatons. Love might prevail against all the odds, but lust… Ah, lust is its own fiery creature that while supremely intense, is remarkably immune from reason. A white-hot flame that consumes all of the oxygen surrounding it until insatiable demand exceeds the capacity to provide.

It devours itself.

* * *

It has now been four months.

Four months ago, I last saw Katie. FOUR DAMN MONTHS!

In a scene taken from a thousand movies, we had waved each other goodbye at Heathrow International Airport in London. She stood in the departure lounge as I entered the tunnel leading to Continental Airlines Flight 202 departing for JFK International Airport, New York.

God help us we were playing the role to the maximum, frantically waving our arms and mouthing identical platitudes. ‘Promise you will write, yes, and I am always there on the phone, and yes it’s a quick flight between London and New York so we will have no problems visiting and yes I love you… yes, I love you too…’

However; talking and even seeing someone on a damn cell phone and not being able to hold them… rips your heart out.

But Katie and I were…

I mean, Katie and I are… in love… aren’t we?

~ ~ ~