It all began last year when Michele started commuting with me.

Our schedules were almost always the same. She boarded the train one stop after mine each morning and she sat in the same car with me at least four days out of five. Our schedules varied more in the afternoons, but I still saw her at least once or twice a week on the way home.

Both of us always chose the quiet car, me so I could spend time writing, my fingers dancing across the keys of my laptop, her so she could read and make notes in the small notebooks she carried with her, pausing from time to time to write something down. What is was she wrote I didn't know, but hardly a trip went by when she didn't put aside her book, pull out one of her brightly colored notebooks and write something. Sometimes her jottings were just a few words, other times she wrote for as long as ten minutes.

We rarely sat close enough for me to see what she was reading, but the few times that I did see a spine or a cover, it was poetry—once it was Rilke, another time Yates—or the angry novels of the younger generation, works filled with sexual license, terrorism, loneliness, desperate depression and anger. The contrast between the beauty of the poetry and the meanness of the prose fascinated me.

In her bright colors—pink one day, turquoise the next, a glowing yellow the following day, a raging purple the day after—she exuded the careless sensuality of the young. Her hips swayed their invitation when she walked the aisles, her breasts jostling in bras that did not quite constrain them as the train cars shifted back and forth crossing points or changing tracks. The white wires of her iPod always dangled from her ears, a vaguely self-satisfied smirk creasing her face, and a faraway gaze were the constants of her expression as she searched for a seat.

I found that I couldn't help but watch her each morning, peering over the tops of my glasses, the light of my laptop screen a pale reflection in the lenses, as she threaded her way toward my end of the car, always to my end. Because I was one of the first to board each morning, I always managed the same seat, the only one facing forward on the upper level, my line of site down a long row of fold down seats that faced the center of the car. Some days she would land no more than a few seats from me, others as many as ten, but never farther than that.

When someone large sat and blocked my view of her, I was unhappy. When I had an unobstructed line of sight, my day began with a private, inward smile.

Her body was alluring in all the right ways. No more than five feet two, she was petite where a woman should be and nicely rounded in those other places. Her breasts were large for a woman so short, but not so large as to overpower her looks. Her hair was clipped short and spiky in a very modern style, blonde streaked with lighter blonde and hints of red peeking out from beneath. Her skin was so smooth and softly tanned that I felt irresistibly drawn to it, to her calves, her cheeks, and the softness of her neck.

She dressed in a way that spoke of a careful planning. During the warm months her skirts were very short, but not quite so short as to cross the line from professional attire to club wear. Her tops, whether blouses in the summer or sweaters in the winter, were always tight, hugging her remarkable figure. Her jewelry was a perfect compliment to whatever she wore.

Against the glow of her tan she almost always wore bright red lipstick, a shocking contrast to the whiteness of her teeth, teeth that she bared from time to time in a smile to herself as she scribbled away. Her nails were likewise red, a deep, sensual red. And the middle toe of her left foot was bound with a small silver circlet.

She could be no more than 25, just a year or two older than my own daughters, but an entire world away when it came to her sophistication, her grace, the aura of sensuality she exuded.

The ring finger of her left hand sported a platinum band and a second ring with a large diamond, maybe an entire carat. Some man somewhere nearby was very lucky.

As the weeks, then the months went by, we sometimes exchanged glances, those small moments of recognition that two people who do not know one another but who see each other almost every day share. If our eyes met, I always smiled a small smile. She likewise smiled an equally small smile back. Then we returned to our work—me to my writing, her to her reading and scribbling.

Sometimes she would wander into my dreams just before dawn to tempt me with her softness, her lips parted, a thin line of white visible beneath the red, red of her lips.

The change in our non-relationship began in early May. I was stuck on a particularly difficult sentence, one that just would not read the way I wanted it to no matter how many permutations I tried. I found myself growing angry at the words, as though it were somehow their fault that I couldn't make them do what I wanted. Finally, I gave up and slapped my laptop closed, exasperated with myself. I don't know if it was the anger I was giving off or the snap of my laptop closing that caught her attention, but when I looked up she was looking at me, her private smirk spreading across her face, a glitter in her eyes that I'd never seen before.

Our gaze held one another for just a moment or two and then I felt myself flushing, embarrassed, as though she were looking into me, seeing things I didn't want her to see. I smiled wanly back at her, then turned to look out the window, afraid that if I looked back she would still be smirking at me. And I was still angry. I didn't look back at her, but when our train left her stop downtown, she was standing on the platform as the train pulled away and was staring at me as the crowd of commuters eddied and swirled around her, jostling their way to the exit stairs. Our eyes locked again for no more than three seconds and I was gone.

The following morning, I was watching for her as I always did, but more carefully than before. I knew that she was somehow on to me, that she knew I'd been paying very close attention to her all this time, and I wanted to try to pretend that it wasn't so.

She had no intention of letting me.

When she stepped into our car, I was immediately aware of her the way that a small bird is aware of the predator that hovers just beyond its vision. I forced myself to keep my eyes locked on my screen, to not look up. But she came and sat in the closest possible seat to mine, not more than three feet from me, and as she did, her perfume washed over me, a scent of jasmine and something tropical—maybe coconut.

I fought against my urge to look up and lost. As soon as I did, she felt my glance, turned and smiled at me, a full smile, not that little smirk, or the small smile of recognition. It was as if I'd been caught in a tractor beam, my whole being locked onto her for that brief moment. Then she turned away, pulled out her book and began reading.

What could I do? I went back to my writing, but aimlessly, lost in the proximity of her. Several times during our 45 minutes together I peeked over my glasses at her, but she was absorbed in her own work, in her own life, seemingly oblivious to me. But I knew she wasn't. There had been many seats for her to choose from and she'd chosen to sit as close to me as she could.

This became our routine. Me sitting anxiously waiting for her to board our train, her sitting as close to me as possible and each morning greeting me with her smile. We might have gone on like that forever, me afraid to speak for fear of breaking the spell she'd cast over me, but she wasn't willing to let it continue like that.

"You seem much happier with your work lately," she said one morning as she plopped down in front of me.

"I'm sorry. What?" I sputtered, too surprised that she'd spoken to me to be articulate.

"I said, you seem much happier with your work lately."

"Oh, uh, well, yes, I am," I replied. "It's going rather well, actually."

"What are you writing?" she asked.

"A novel."

"Really? That's wonderful. And dangerous, don't you think?"

"Dangerous?" I asked. This was my third novel, but I'd never thought of writing as dangerous before.

"Sure," she said. "Words have a way of taking on a life of their own. How do you control them?"

"Ah," I said. "I see what you mean. Well, I guess I'd never really thought of them as dangerous before. But, yes, they can be more assertive than people realize."

"Yes," she said. "I know."

"And you," I said, rushing forward now that the line had been crossed, "What about your work?"

"Work?"

"Yes," I said. "All that writing in your notebooks."

She waved a hand in the air, a dismissive gesture. "Oh, that. It's not work. Not really. Just an attempt to make sense of things. That's all."

I understood, of course, because I was one of those people who wrote in the margins of my books, sometimes whole paragraphs.

"Yes," I said. "I know."

Then she smiled at me again, but in a different way. In a way that said she knew things about me that I didn't even know myself.

"Yes," she said. "I can see that."

Before we could explore our new found familiarity any further, we arrived at her stop and she exited with only a small wave as she left the car.

Over the next several months that first conversation blossomed into a full-fledged argument—one that spanned the entire trajectory of American culture—literature, movies, music and film. We had wildly divergent beliefs about what constituted beauty, grace and meaning, and our discussions had become so animated that we were banished from the quiet car by a fussy conductor. I'd given up writing in the mornings. If it weren't for the fact that Michele's afternoon schedule was usually different from mine, I wouldn't have gotten any writing done at all. I don't know how she felt about the loss of reading time, but she certainly didn't seem to resent it.

Along the way I learned that she was in fact 26 and she learned that I was 49. She'd been married almost five years, I'd been married almost 20 before it ended five years ago. On the day I confessed my age, she laughed out loud, startling several people around us enough that they rattled their newspapers disapprovingly. When I asked her what was so funny, she said that her father was only 47.

"What's so funny about me being older than your father?" I asked.

"I couldn't begin to tell you," she said mysteriously.

One day she surprised me by demanding to see what I'd been writing lately. At first I refused, embarrassed to let her see something still unpolished.

"Come on," she said. "I've read your other two books and they're very good. I like the fact that they are so different from each other."

I blushed then. I had no idea she'd done that.

"It's really not at a place where I could show it to you," I said. "I'm too unhappy with it right now."

"All the more reason to let me read some of it," she said. "A fresh perspective can't hurt can it?"

The real problem was not the unpolished nature of what I'd written, it was the content. The erotic content of the current draft was very high and at this particular moment I wasn't ready to share it with anyone. For one thing, I'd been tapping into the hidden corners of my own sexuality for parts of my characters and if she were to read what I'd written, it would be like exposing myself to her.

"Seriously," she said, her voice firmer now. "I've been screwing up my courage for more than a month now to ask you. Now that I have, you have to let me read some of it."

Something about the way she spoke to me, whether it was the timbre of her voice or the fact that she'd invested so much in my writing already overcame my reticence. I held up one finger to make her wait, opened one of the chapters I was happiest with and handed her the laptop.

She grabbed at it like it was a lifeline, turned away from me and began reading. For the rest of our ride she didn't speak again, although her expressions gave me some clues. One minute she was frowning, another she was smirking. All I could do was sit there quietly and watch her eyes darting back and forth and her fingers tapping the scroll keys.

When we neared her station, she closed up my iBook and handed it back to me.

"Thanks," she said. "Thanks a lot."

"Well?" I asked. "What do you think?"

She shook her head. "It's too soon for me to say anything."

"But."

"I've got to get off," she said.

She grabbed her bag then and bolted for the door, her black pleated skirt swishing back and forth as she hurried to make sure she didn't miss her stop. I turned to the window to watch her walk away, childishly hoping she'd wave to me. Instead, I saw her standing stock still on the platform, commuters surging around her. She wasn't looking at me. She was writing furiously in one of her notebooks. I felt the urge to jump up and pull the emergency stop handle on the train so I could watch her write. But of course, I didn't.

That afternoon, she wasn't on the train. I felt a tremendous disappointment wash over me as we pulled out and she didn't board. I needed to know what she'd written, how she'd made sense of my work, of me.

Fortunately, I didn't have too much longer to wait. The following morning Michele boarded our car, came straight to the seats that I'd come to think of as "our seats," smiled, put out her hand and said, "Laptop please."

"Not until you tell me something," I said.

"You know I can't do that," she replied. "I only managed to read 20 pages. I can't tell you anything from that. Hand it over."

So I did.

All the way into town, we repeated our performance of the previous morning—me watching, her reading.

Ten minutes out from her station, Michele sighed, closed up the computer and handed it back to me. I was about to ask her what she thought again, but she turned away from me, pulled out a bright red notebook, the one I'd seen her writing in yesterday, and began to write like she was possessed.

When the scratchy voice on the intercom called her station, she closed the notebook with a snap, turned to me, smiled and said, "Well. That was very good."

I felt a blush rising to my face. Unaccountably, I cared a lot about her opinion. I hadn't shown any of the draft to anyone—not my editor, my girlfriend, not anyone. That she liked it pleased me immensely.

"Thanks," was all I could think of to say.

"No, really," she said. "It's really good."

"Any other insights than that," I probed.

She pursed her lips, then she smiled a mysterious smile and said, "Let's just say there's more to you than I realized."

The train lurched to a stop and before I could ask her what she meant by that, she was up and off to the door. This time, though, she was looking up at my window as the train pulled out. She didn't smile or wave. She just looked.

I didn't open the computer again until I arrived in my office. When I did, I was surprised to see that she'd gone well beyond the chapter that I'd opened for her to read and had read the entire next chapter. This was the one where the main characters end up trapped in a mountain cabin by a blizzard and spend a week together in desperate sexual combat, wrenching at the darkness in each other's souls. If I'd known she was going to read that chapter, I'd have hidden it on the hard drive.

I'd written that chapter several nights before in one sitting and it was one of the most emotionally draining things I'd ever done. It was still very raw and the mix of anger and anguish I felt as I wrote it was palpable. At least I thought it was.

That afternoon I hoped against hope that Michele would be on my train, but once again she wasn't. And because it was Friday, I knew I wouldn't see her again for at least two days. If only I knew her last name, her telephone number or her email. I wanted to explain, to ask her to unread what I'd shown her, to say something that would make me feel better about what she'd glimpsed.

On Sunday night I hardly slept. Three times I got out of bed, sat at my computer, and tried to rewrite that goddamned chapter. But I couldn't. Each time I managed to change a few words, to move a comma, or correct a typo. But that was all I could do. I had to talk to Michele first.

Monday morning dawned oppressive. It was already 80 degrees when I left my house at 7:10 a.m. and the prediction was for over 100. The humidity was supposed to soar to 80 percent. Standing on the platform waiting for the train I began to sweat, little beads of moisture forming at my hairline, others running down between my shoulder blades. The train smell of the platform, that mixture of oil, rust and things I didn't want to think about made me want to gag.

To my great relief, Michele boarded as per usual. Today she was a vision in yellow and blue, floating down the aisle like a sexy Bumble Bee. I had to smile when I saw her. I'd never had that kind of self-assurance and I found it very attractive, maybe even a little daunting.

"Good morning," she said as she sat. "Good weekend?"

"Not particularly," I replied truthfully.

Her eyebrows hitched upward. "Oh? Everything okay?"

"Yes," I said. "I was just frustrated most of the weekend. Every time I tried to write I got stuck."

"Oh my," she said. "That's bad."

"Yes. It is. But what about you? Good weekend?"

"Not particularly," she said, then laughed lightly.

"Oh? Everything okay?" I asked, mimicking her tone of voice as best I could.

"Yes," she said. "I suppose so. Let's just say I was frustrated in my own way all weekend."

I know I should have asked more, but I was panting to know what she thought of what she'd read and I needed to explain it to her.

"So," I began.

Before I could say anything, she leaned forward, lowered her voice and said, "One reason I was so unhappy all weekend was because of what I read."

"Let me explain," I began again, but she waved me off, needing to say what she wanted to say.

"That chapter was so intense. I was there with them the whole time, you know? I couldn't stop thinking about how much they wanted to hurt one another, how much they needed to inflict pain, how damaged they both were."

"Yes," I said. "That was the point."

"I know it was," she continued, her voice still hushed, but with a thrill to it. "And it was also incredibly hot, you know. The way they battered one another in bed, driving themselves to those depths of pain and pleasure at the same time. How did you know?"

"How did I know what?" I asked, not sure what she meant.

Her voice dropped even lower, so low that the noise of the train's wheels all but obscured it, forcing me to lean even closer to hear her.

"How did you know it would be like that?"

How to answer? Michele's eyes glittered as she stared at me, waiting. It was as if my answer mattered very, very much to her.

"I'm not sure, really," I said. It was true. The chapter had just sort of surged out of me in one of those bursts that sometimes overtake me. I'd written it in one sitting, almost twelve hours straight.

"It was just what happened to them," I continued. "The two of them have been bothering me for a long time—the way they dislike each other, the way they have to make love despite that dislike, the way they each use sex as a weapon against the other. For some reason, when I turned them loose on each other in that cabin, it's just what happened."

She just nodded and didn't say anything. I noticed that her lips were parted slightly and she seemed to be breathing a little more heavily than normal. It occurred to me that she was turned on not only by what I'd written, but also by talking to me about it. It was a flattering feeling, so I kept talking.

"It seems to me that sex is often combative, each person using the other for his or her own needs. People like to talk about sex as giving, but I think there's a lot more taking involved. Both of these characters are takers, and as things unfolded, they just kept taking until there wasn't anything left on either side of the bed." She nodded again.

"I wrote it in one sitting, you know. It just kind of poured out of me one night. I started around 7:00 and didn't finish until after 6:00 the next morning. It wrung me out."

"I'll bet," she said, the first words she'd spoken in close to five minutes. Her voice was husky, her eyes were locked on mine. I realized I was starting to get turned on myself, a swelling beginning in my pants.

Before I could say anything else, the intercom called her stop. Michele's head jerked up and she stared at the speaker as though it was a pile of shit in the sidewalk on front of her. "Fuck," she muttered.

"Michele," I began, but she cut me off again.

"Look, I need to talk to you about this some more," she said. "Are you on the 5:20 this afternoon.

"Yes," I said.

"I'll be there too. Second car from the back, like usual?"

"Yes."

"Okay," she said. "Bye then."

As before, when I looked out the window at the platform, there was Michele, her notebook out and her pen attacking the page. She never looked up as we rolled away.

All day I was distracted at work, unable to concentrate on the project I really, really needed to finish up by early next week. My conversation with Michele had left me too unsettled. I was thinking about her in more overtly sexual ways than I ever had. Sure, I'd always found her sexy and had enjoyed looking at her body, then later speaking to her. But this was different. I was actually fantasizing about her, the two of us alone in a mountain cabin, snow damping down all the sounds around us, taking what we wanted, not caring about the consequences.

When I arrived at the platform for my train home I instantly knew something was wrong. There were way too many passengers there and they were muttering and fanning themselves with whatever was available—folded newspapers, hats, even a popcorn box.

The announcer informed us that due to the heat all trains out of the city were running at half speed. My train was running close to 30 minutes late already. Shit! How was I ever going to meet Michele in this mess?

There was nothing to do but wait it out.

When my train finally arrived, it was already too full to take on everyone waiting for it, but I wasn't about to get left on the platform in this sweltering weather. I pushed my way on, wedging myself between a fat man with little shells braided into his dreadlocks and a couple of businessmen like myself, large half moons of sweat growing under the arms of their blazers. The only thing to hold on to was a pole just at the edge of my reach. Even with that, I bounced off the fat man as the train pulled out. I was too pissed off and hot to apologize.

When we pulled into Michele's station, it was all I could do to turn myself so I could see out of the doors as they opened. Absolutely no one got off the train—how could they—but to my delight, there was Michele first in line to get on. She looked up, made eye contact, then dropped her shoulder and bulled her way on board. Disregarding the protests of the people around me, she kept going until she was right in front of me.

At 6'3", I was looking down at the top of her head.

"Hi," she said, turning her face up to mine.

"Hi. Nice day isn't it."

"Fuck no," she said, getting a few chuckles from the people around us. But even as we began our conversation, another six or seven people followed her example and shoved their way onto the train, packing us like sardines and eliciting several howls of protest from the people already on board. Michele was crushed against me, her head against my sternum. I was immediately very aware of the fact that her breasts were pressing against my chest.

It was the most uncomfortable situation I think I've ever been in. It was about 90 degrees in our train car, the air conditioner barely making a dent in the heat. People were jammed up against me on all sides and were sweating on me. And this beautiful young woman, the woman I'd spent much of the day fantasizing about, was pressed against me in ways that were making my cock begin to grow. Worst of all, there was nowhere to go, no way to shift so she wouldn't feel it.

"Sorry," I said to the top of her head.

"No point in talking," she said into my shoulder. "It'll just make it hotter."

My cock was now mostly hard and pressing against her stomach. I tried to push back against the man behind me, but there was just no give. I looked left and right to see if there was any escape that way, but there just wasn't.

And then I felt it. The fingers of her right hand were walking up my thigh like a large spider preparing to bite me in the balls. They moved with excruciating slowness, drawing out the tension, making my cock jump even though she hadn't touched me. But I knew she was going to. Her head settled into a more comfortable position and she sighed. I knew she had to be turned on, but not nearly as turned on as I was at that moment.

When her fingers found my cock at last, it was all I could do to keep from cumming right then and there. I was that excited.

I thought she would continue to stroke me, but she didn't. Instead, to my horror, she began to tug my zipper down, one or two teeth at a time. I knew no one in our sardine can could hear the teeth parting, but the idea that I would soon be unzipped in public, a woman's hand on me, was terrifying. And very exciting.

Speaking would have broken the spell and as much as I wanted her to stop, my desire for her to continue was greater. It didn't take long for her to have me mostly unzipped. Her small, delicate hand slipped into my pants and parted the fly on my boxers.

When she touched me, her fingers were so much cooler than my cock. More than anything, I wanted her to stroke me to an orgasm, right there in the midst of all those people. But she didn't. Instead, the coolness of her fingers slid around my shaft, she gave me a very hard, almost painful squeeze, then slid her fingers down until they found my balls. Again, she squeezed me, this time painfully. It was all I could do to keep from yelping.

Then her hand withdrew and she began to zip me back up, slowly, carefully.

I was dimly aware that we'd passed through three stops as this had been going on and that several people had managed to worm their way off the train. In fact, the crowd around us was starting to thin enough that it was a good thing she'd zipped me up. Silently I blessed her good judgment.

Three more sweaty stops later, we arrived at hers. She looked up at me then and said, "This is your stop, isn't it?"

"Yes," I said. "It is."

We forced our way off the train, my hardness brushing against two people on the way down the stairs to the platform. As soon as my feet his hard concrete, I wormed my way out of my blazer and threw it over my arm in an attempt to hide the tent in the front of my pants.

Michele walked away from me without looking back. She knew I was following.

I let the wave of angry, hot, smelly commuters carry me with her. We clattered down the old metal stairs and spun through the turnstiles to the street beyond. Someone bumped into my shoulder, almost knocking me into the street.

"Sorry," he muttered, head down and moving toward home and air conditioning.

Michele was already turning the corner onto a side street and I had to jog a few steps to catch up. The street was lined with old oaks and elms, fashionable brownstones on either side. She was walking so rapidly that if I hadn't been so much taller, it would have been difficult to keep up. But when I did, I asked the question that had been burning in my brain ever since we left the train.

"What about your husband?"

"Fuck him," she said through clenched teeth. "He's not around."

At the next corner we turned right again. At the second house, Michele opened a small wrought iron gate and followed a brick path to a flight of steps that led down to a lower apartment, the kind that used to be called a grandmother suite.

I stumbled after her, dimly aware of daisies blooming along the fence separating her yard from the one next door. I could smell basil as I descended the stairs and saw several pots of herbs on the wall that screened the basement door from the street.

She fumbled with her keys for a minute, cursing under her breath at the difficulty she was having getting the key to slide into the lock. I realized I was holding my breath and let it out just as she pushed the door open. A blast of cool air washed over us. Thank God. Air conditioning.

I stepped through the door and as I did, she slammed it behind me and was on me like an animal whose den has been invaded. Her hands were everywhere, yanking at my belt, grabbing my hands and pressing them onto her breasts, cupping my balls, reaching up to pull my hair. The two of us, desperate to be nude, began tearing at our clothes. Several buttons from my shirt flew across the room, scattering on the floor. I heard fabric tear as she ripped off her panties.

The very last item was my boxers. My cock caught in the fly as I pulled them down and bounced wildly as it came free. A crazy laugh burst from Michele at this. I looked up at her then and saw that she was completely given over to an animalistic lust. She jumped at me then, throwing her arms around my neck, her legs around my hips.

The head of my cock banged hard against the space between her pussy and her ass. With one hand, I lifted her ass and with the other, I pushed the head against her lips. She cried out and let her weight drop onto me, impaling herself in one stroke.

I turned her to the wall, pressed her back into the flowered wallpaper and began to fuck her harder than I've ever fucked anyone in my life. I wanted my cock to spilt her small body in half, to force her open in ways she'd never been opened before.

Michele was grunting with each of my strokes, her nails biting into my shoulders as I crushed her against the wall. The pain I felt only elevated my desire and soon I knew my goal was close. I began slamming into her so hard the walls vibrated. Something fell from the wall next to us with a crash, but nothing was stopping my drive to orgasm.

When it burst from me, I rose off the floor onto my toes, pushing her toward the ceiling, and yelled as semen blasted out of me into her. Michele grabbed my hair and pulled me head back as I drove into her again, a second and then a third spurt issuing from the head of my cock.

As the orgasm subsided, I became aware of her weight for the first time. My arms began to shake as the adrenaline leeched from my muscles.

"Goddamn you," she hissed. "Get down on the fucking floor."

I eased her to a standing position. Her face was contorted with a mixture of need and anger. Her breasts heaved up and down, their deep red nipples standing straight out. Placing a hand on my shoulder, she pushed me away.

"Now, goddamn it!"

I did as I was told, my cock still half hard and drooling semen. No sooner had I lay on my back than she straddled my face, a mixture of my semen and her lust dripping down to land on my cheek. I saw that she had a full bush of pubic hair, but before I could see any more, she dropped to her knees over my face and then pressed her pussy down onto my mouth, banging my head against the floor so hard that I saw stars.

"Eat," she ordered, her fingers twisting into my hair again for emphasis.

In response I shot my tongue into her, fucking her with it. She writhed over me, grinding down against my chin and nose. Unable to breathe in this position, I reached up and pushed her back toward my chin so that I could get access to her clit and get my nose into the air.

Michele began to grunt again as my tongue lashed against her clit. The saltiness of my own semen mixed with the bitter tang of her desire, the smell of her passion and sweat all but overwhelming me.

Thankfully, given the way she was crushing the back of my head into the floorboards, it didn't take long for her orgasm to roll through her. A chorus of grunts began somewhere deep in her abdomen, her thighs tightened on my ears and then she threw herself down hard on me, one hand yanking my hair, the other slapping the floor behind my head. Juices poured out of her in a wave and she moaned "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

I thought we were done, but Michele had other ideas. Although I continued to run my tongue back and forth over her clit, she rolled off of me, climbed to her knees, then stood.

"In here," she barked, walking away from me into the living room.

I managed to stand, followed her and found her draped over the back of a large arm chair, her ass in the air, white against the deep green fabric covering. She had one hand on each arm of the chair and her face was turned toward me, that wild look still in her eyes.

She didn't have to say a thing. My cock was hard again, or maybe had never really gotten soft. I stepped behind her and buried myself into her in one smooth thrust. Her cunt was boiling now, clamping convulsively on me as I reached the apex of my thrust.

"Fuck me. Fuck me hard," she cried.

I grabbed one ass cheek in each hand and began to stroke into her with long, full strokes.

"No, goddamn it. Fuck me I said!"

So I did. Digging my fingers into her ass, I yanked her back toward me and began to pound into her again. The way she was writhing under me, grunting with each stroke, begging me to fuck her, fuck her harder, awoke the blackness and I began driving my cock into once again with the same desperation, the same anger I'd felt earlier.

Sweat was pouring from us both, stinging my eyes, making her body slick and hard to grasp. I dug my fingers deeper into her flesh. She cried out with pleasure. I was dimly aware of another orgasm making her clench onto my cock, but I was no longer interested in her pleasure. My cock had become a battering ram, driving, pulsing, with only one goal.

And then she was pushing me away, forcing me out of her. I fought back, trying to hold her down on the chair.

"Wait," she cried. "Wait damn it!"

I stepped back, panting, my cock a deep red, the veins pulsing with blood. Michele, put out her palm and spit into it. Then held it up to me. "Spit," she commanded.

My mouth was dry from my exertions, but I managed a small amount of spittle. She spit into her hand again, then resumed her position on the chair. The hand with the spit in it came up to her ass and she smeared it all around the tight rosebud, sliding first one, then two fingers into herself.

"There. Fuck me there."

I managed to get a little more spit onto my own hand, slathered it on my cock and then pressed against her opening. She slid down the back of the chair toward me, anxious to have me inside. I grabbed her hips again and forced her down onto me, watching the head of my cock pop past her ring, and then the shaft widening her hole as it disappeared into her.

"Yes. Yes. Yes," she moaned, writhing again.

Grabbing her ass cheeks again with each hand, I resumed my fucking, splitting her open. I could feel one of her hands under us now, her fingers strumming wildly on her clit as I pounded into her.

I felt her cum again, her sphincter clenching against the base of my cock, her voice rising, her thrashing making it difficult to hold on. And then I felt my own orgasm rising. Goddamn her! I wanted to fuck her so hard, to make her feel it as I came. My strokes drove the chair was across the living room floor, making the rug bunch up against a glass topped coffee table.

Michele was moaning incoherently and at some level I realized that I was too. I didn't care. I just wanted to cum and cum hard.

Suddenly, her hand dropped down from her cunt to my balls. She grabbed me, rolling them back and forth between her fingers, squeezing them firmly, almost painfully.

"Cum, you fucker. Fill my fucking ass. Cum!"

And I did. The electrical pulses started somewhere down in my calves and rose to my balls, making them twitch. Michele must have felt it, because as the semen began to rush from them, she squeezed me so hard I yelled, driving my cock into her as far as it was possible to go. My orgasm burst from me into her and with each pulse she squeezed me again. The pain and pleasure together was so intense I almost blacked out, stars shooting across my eyes, my ears ringing with it.

"Yes, yes. Yes!" I heard her over my own cries.

And then I was done. I had nothing left. No more semen. No more energy. No more anger. I was completely spent.

I let go of her ass, seeing the prints of my hands white against red skin, several small bruises already showing from where my fingertips had dug into her flesh. I fell forward over her, my cock popping free from her ass, the slickness of our skin mingling.

I realized she was crying, sobs wrenched from somewhere deep inside. I raised a hand and brushed her hair back from the side of her face where it lay against the arm of the chair and tried to comfort her. I was sure I'd hurt her and felt guilty immediately.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, my voice raw from yelling.

"How can you say that?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"That was it. Don't you see?" she said between sobs. "That was it. That was the way it was supposed to be. The way I've wanted it to be for so long. I knew you'd know."

I thought about what she was saying. And yes, I had known. The darkness was there in both of us. The need. The anger. The desperation. Mine was born of the hatred both of my parents poured into me. Where it came from in her, I couldn't guess, but whatever the reason, it wouldn't be pleasant. It was that dark place that I'd written from and it was the darkness that resonated with her.

We were damaged in the same ways, probably for different reasons. But we were alike.

"Yes," I said. "I knew. I just didn't know you were so like me."

"Get off," she moaned.

Standing with difficulty, I pulled her up from the chair and watched her stagger back into the front hall where our need had overtaken us, stepping carefully around shards of glass from the picture that had fallen.

She returned carrying one of her notebooks. For the first time I was able to take in the whole of her nakedness. Her body was perfect, taught, rounded, alive.

"Sit," she said, pointed to the chair that had been our rack. I sat and she sat across from me on the sofa, one leg draped over the arm of the sofa, the swollen lips of her cunt exposed, our passion leaking onto the slipcover.

She opened the notebook to a page dated almost nine months earlier, long before we'd started talking to one another on the train, and handed it to me.

Astounded, I read what she'd written almost nine months earlier. It was as though I'd written it myself. But where my book was peopled with imaginary characters, her writing was more of a diary, a tale of pain, lust, anger, and desire. It was as if, all those months staring at her on the train, I'd been channeling her as I created the female protagonist in my book.

A chill ran through me then, gooseflesh starting on my arms and my thighs.

"You see," she said, pointing to the pages of her notebook. "That's me. But the woman in your story, she's also me."

"Yes," I said.

"And the man. That's you."

"Yes," was all I could say. We both knew it was true.

"When I first read those chapters, I thought you must know me somehow. I wracked my brain for any connection that we might have, any way you could have known. But you didn't did you?"

"No," I replied. "I saw you for the first time on the train last summer and until now, I've never seen you anywhere else."

"Then," she asked, swiveling so that we could look into one another's eyes again, "How did you know it would be like that?"

"Because that's the way it is," I said. "At least for me. It's always been like that since the first time. I didn't want it to be. I wanted it to be the way you read about, you know, in other people's books? But it never was, never could be." Her eyes welled up then and she took my face in her hands and kissed me, her lips impossibly soft. I kissed her back and for a moment, we tried to drain each other of the feelings we had, like two emotional vampires. Then she pushed me away and nodded.

"Yes," she said. "It's always been that way for me too. Sometimes I think it's going to kill me. I know it's killing my husband. He can't understand, or he won't. I'm not sure which. But I know he can't take it much longer."

I nodded. "In the end, it's what drove my wife away," I said. "She tried. She wanted to be what I needed. But she didn't have it in her. She was too normal, I guess."

Michele laughed at that, a bitter sound that rose to something more triumphant. "Normal? What's normal? This feels normal to me," she said, grabbing my cock in her hand and squeezing it hard, the way she had on the train.

I laughed then too and reached up to her breasts and twisted one of her nipples just as hard to signal my agreement.

Her eyes lit up then, the craving returning. "Go shower," she said. "It's just down the hall. Wash your cock so I can suck it. If I smell anything on it from my ass, I'll bite you!"

Then she slid off of me to the floor, grabbed one of my hands and pulled me to a standing position. Towering over her, my cock at the level of her face, I had an overwhelming urge to grab her by the ears and force my flaccid cock into her mouth without washing it. But I also knew she wasn't kidding when she said she'd bite me.

So I lumbered off toward the bathroom. Stopping half way down the hall to look at myself in a mirror hanging next to a closet door, I saw that my face had that same faraway smirk that Michele wore so often on the train.

A door had opened unexpectedly before me and I knew that on the other side was an abyss, a darkness that would devour me in the end. But I also knew that it was the darkness I'd been searching for, the one that would make me whole, at least for a while, and that for now anyway, Michele and I would go down into it together.