In Stark Contrast Ch. 01

The warm, re-assuring fizz of the alcohol finally starting to take root in her system, Amber crossed her legs as she sat on the barstool and leaned forward slightly, leering as politely as she could at Phillipe and the 30ish brunette seated on the far side of the club. The odd looking pair had cozied right up to one another in the booth as table in front of them filled with emptied shot glasses.

"No way someone that short can handle that much booze...on the other hand, nothing about him seems to make any sense," Amber sloshed her own drink in her hand and reasoned.

Amber's heart proceeded to lump in her throat a few seconds later when she saw the woman's right hand disappear casually under the table. It didn't take long for a wide, canary eating grin to spread across Phillipe's face, telling anyone who might be watching with a keen eye exactly what was going on.

Her pupils narrowing as she blocked out the cascade of other sensory input surrounding her, Amber focused intently on the playful look in the brunette's eyes as she gladly worked her arm up and down beneath the table. Her pulse right now twice it's normal level, Amber nearly smashed the rim of her drink into her chin when she tried to take a sip.

Exhaling deeply and sitting her glass down when she saw the brunette pull her hand from Phillipe's lap, Amber reached out and anxiously squeezed at the edge of the bar as she watched the couple across the room slide out of the booth and gather their things. The knuckles of her grip white as Phillipe and the woman made their way out of the bar, Amber spun around on her barstool watching them make their way out into the lobby, presumably to the elevator and a waiting room upstairs.

Without anything to really stop her, Amber rose from her seat and fluttered like a helpless feather stranded on a gust of wind behind Phillipe and his conquest.

___________________________________

Phillipe and the woman he was with weren't headed upstairs quite yet. By the time Amber had stumbled out of the bar and re-traced the couple's steps, she caught a glimpse of them just before they disappeared inside a set of double doors at the far end of one of the lobby's long hallways.

Inching forward like a half-drunk and horny zombie, Amber crept along the right edge of the hallway, concealing herself when she felt it necessary behind the cover of the large potted plants lining the wall. Thankfully the hotel was relatively deserted at that late hour as she inched closer to the set of doors.

"It's the hotel's indoor pool," Amber muttered under her breath when she got close enough to read the sign.

It didn't take long for the heavy scent of chlorine to fill Amber's lungs, causing a slight twinge of nausea to roll through her belly as she contemplated her next move. The internal discomfort wasn't enough however to stifle her curiosity about what waited on the other side of those heavy wooden, swinging doors.

Amber just knew if she pressed against the doors, they would create enough sound to startle the couple inside.

"It's a public place for Godsakes," a deviously rational voice inside her head reminded, and before she even knew she'd done it, Amber extended her hands out and cracked the door open a smidge.

"It didn't make a sound," she sighed before leaning forward to steal a peek between the fraction of an opening.

The first thing she saw was Phillipe naked from behind just after he'd stepped out of his pants as he made his way to the steps on the left side of the pool. Even though she couldn't see her, from the sound of splashing and giggling Amber could tell the woman with Phillipe was already in the water.

The brief glimpse of Phillipe's nude frame left Amber breathless. Despite his stature, Amber was viscerally struck by how chiseled his shoulders, back and hips seemed as he disappeared into the pool.

"He's no midget...or child," Amber shuddered as she awkwardly knelt down, holding her breath as the sound of frolicking continued inside.

She quickly found herself at a crossroads.

Even in her drunken and pre-occupied state, Amber knew someone might come down the hallway at any given moment. Knowing such a swank place probably had several cameras mounted inconspicuously as well, she prayed no one was manning the screens at such a late hour. Despite all the embarrassment she was opening herself up to, the pull of seeing what was the other side of those doors proved to be too much.

Pushing the barely cracked door a little further open, Amber could see roughly 30% of the pool, but not the far corner where Phillipe and his lady friend were playing. The room was mostly dark inside, the only illumination coming from the half dozen or so lights built into the walls of the pool, which created quite the psychedelic and shadowy reflection on the walls of the room each time the couple in the pool stirred up another batch of waves.

"What do you think you're going to do...sneak in there like the Invisible Woman?" Amber asked herself.

The way she continued to squirm by the door, looking vaguely like an agitated minx in heat as she struggled for a better view provided the answer to her question. Before she could muster the courage to dart through the doors like a soldier storming a beach, the skinny-dipping couple inside swam back into her field of view.

Instantly freezing every muscle in her body, Amber waited there in hushed silence as she peered in at the playful lovers kissing and fondling each other, oblivious to the fact they were being watched. Knowing in the back of her mind someone could come along at any moment, Amber tried to steal every bit of guilty voyeuristic pleasure.

Contorting her six foot plus frame the best she could in a mini-skirt and high heels to see between the gap she'd created between the doors, Amber looked comical closing her left eye slightly to focus her right on the shadowy figures inside. The woman was reclining with her back against the edge of the pool with her legs outstretched to each side as Phillipe floated in front of her, both blissfully unaware they were being watched.

Kneeling even further sideways as she rested her right knee on the thankfully plush carpet below, a thumping rush of adrenaline shot through Amber's body when she saw Phillipe, just like a wild and calculating animal, lunge forward on top of the woman.

A piercing female groan instantly ricocheted through the cavernous room, causing Amber's hair to tingle as the cries from inside reverberated inside her head.

"He just mounted her," Amber licked her bone dry lips and muttered, seemingly having to tell herself what she was seeing was real.

Her internal conversation ceased when she began fixating on the way the marbled muscles in Phillipe's upper body flexed and fired each time he drove his crotch forward.

"YEEESSSSS," the woman in the pool moaned over and over, the splashing waves creating an eerie and erotic backdrop each time Phillipe connected with yet another virile thrust.

With light being at such a premium inside the room, thankfully Phillipe and the woman were close enough to one of the underwater lanterns that Amber could make out the joyous expressions on each of their faces as they savagely thrashed together in the water. Seeing the way the much taller woman's legs flared out like oars to each side of Phillipe's churning waist, Amber had to fight the dreadfully pressing urge to reach down and acknowledge the bonfire growing between her thighs.

Losing track of how long she'd knelt there in that cock-eyed position as she peered through the narrow opening of the door, Amber could feel her calves and neck steadily start to cramp as the couple in the pool gradually fucked towards a trashing crescendo. Her knees trembling on the carpet as she struggled to keep her squinted gaze steady, Amber could tell from the increasingly violent way the woman's feet splashed in the water that she was on the verge of cumming. Seeing the way Phillipe's hips tightened as he intensified his thrusts, she knew he was close as well. The vicious and jagged howls that bled from their throats a minute or so later simply confirmed the inevitable.

Holding her breath as she absorbed the sensory overload taking place inside the room, Amber could almost feel the waves of the pool cascading across her very own skin as the two bodies heaved and shuddered in front of her.

Realizing she better get to her feet and make a quick get-away before possibly being discovered, Amber stumbled to her feet, stealing what last few glimpses she could through the gap in the door before silently allowing it to shut. The last thing she saw was Phillipe and his conquest making their way over to the same steps they'd used to enter the pool. The image of Phillipe's rubbery and freshly used penis, and just how disturbingly disproportional it seemed to the rest of his dripping wet body, was seared into Amber's mind as she struggled to let the door close all the way.

The last thing she remembered before tearing herself away was the look of exhausted glee on the woman's face as she and Phillipe giggled their way out of the pool and reached for their towels.

Immediately turning to scurry away from the scene of her voyeuristic crime, Amber hadn't taken two steps before the charley-horse that had cropped up in her lower right leg nearly sent her toppling over.

"GOD...SHIT," she cringed. "I feel like I've just been shot!"

"Please let me get back up this hallway before they come out those doors, " Amber muttered under her breath, and she probably would have if she hadn't spilled the contents of her purse on the floor when she tried swinging it over her other shoulder.

Wanting to scream in frustration, Amber was thankfully able to stifle the urge between her severely gritted teeth as she gathered herself to kneel down and collect the make-up compacts, lipstick cases and various other feminine effects.

Still in her high heels, and more than a little drunk, crouching down to pick up anything was a challenge for a woman of 6'2". The sleepy tightness in her calf didn't help, but she was sure she could stuff everything back into her purse before the doors 10 feet behind her opened.

Once again her optimism wasn't rewarded. Her ankle twisting slightly under her awkward and gangly weight, Amber stumbled down on her side just as Phillipe and his lady friend made their way out of the pool entrance and walked by, both clad in little more than wrapped towels and a freshly fucked smiles.

Shielding her face away from the passing couple, embarrassed to no end by her predicament, not to mention praying Phillipe wouldn't recognize her from their brief meeting months earlier, Amber was sure she could feel the weight of their gazes as they slipped quietly by.

"They probably think I'm either a stumbling drunk whore or a klutzsy escort who just lost her marbles," Amber reasoned, quite correctly.

All that was left now was for Amber to gather her stuff, stand up then try to collect the remnants of her pride before hailing a cab to take her home. A voice in her head suggested she go back inside the bar to get another drink or two to take the edge off, but she was simply too exhausted.

Besides, even if she wasn't going to get lucky that night, she had quite a memory full of stuff she'd just witnessed to help her fall asleep by when she finally tucked herself into bed. Sadly however, her frustration that evening was just beginning.

Desperate to jump into a taxi and get home, Amber overlooked one minor detail. Hailing the first cab that came along, she told the driver where she lived and the two were on their way. It wasn't until they were about two minutes from her house that Amber looked around at the decals on the windows and didn't see a Visa/Mastercard sticker. Realizing then she'd jumped into a cab that wasn't one of the more better known or more reputable companies she usually used, Amber was left with a nauseating roll in her belly as she fumbled through the scattered contents of her purse.

"There's no cash in there, Dummy," she chided herself, knowing she'd given the little cash she carried with her that night to the bartender as a tip.

Turning the corner to the apartment complex where she lived, Amber felt a somber wave of dread building inside her as they crept up to her front door.

"You...don't take...credit cards...do you?" she asked meekly.

"No Ma'am," the driver replied dismissively in a thick Egyptian accent.

___________________________________

Siyeed Taliq had been in the US just over three years, having joined his brother here in the States after his family business tanked in Cairo. The brothers had started a taxi company 18 months earlier, and while they weren't getting rich by any means, they were making due.

Forty-four years old and not exactly the most progressive person when it came to gender roles, Siyeed was still acclimating himself to the way women behaved here opposed to what he'd grown accustomed to back home. Biting his tongue quite often when he encountered such situations, Siyeed bottled that visceral disapproval inside as her ferried many of the business women in downtown Portland from place to place.

Thankfully in those cases, the tips he received was enough to offset his moral discomfort, but the women that really struck a nerve were the spoiled and sloppy college girls he dealt with most weekends. Cleaning up puke out of a backseat wasn't all that cool no matter what one's heritage was, but the girls' behavior often flew in the face of everything he'd learned a woman should be. That, and those girls were usually lousy tippers on top of it.

While Amber was certainly much older than the college-aged girls Siyeed detested, the way she stumbled to get into the backseat and the subsequent way she seemed to sway like a drunken bobblehead doll behind him the entire trip home caused him to repeatedly roll his eyes in the privacy of the front seat.

When she asked out of the blue if he would take a credit card when the sign on the dash clearly said "CASH ONLY" as soon as they arrived at her place, Siyeed's dander crested.

The bickering that ensued between the two wasn't pretty, comical perhaps, but certainly not at all productive. Amber still owed the man $18.75, and for the life of her she didn't have an immediate way to pay.

Knowing there was no cash in the house, Amber asked if he'd drive her down to the strip mall a few blocks over so she could use the ATM. He told her he wasn't going to move another inch unless she came up with some sort of collateral. Siyeed knew he could have easily agreed to scurry her over to the nearest cash machine but he was having too much fun watching her become unhinged in the backseat.

"You don't have any friends to call to bring you the money?" Siyeed asked, more than half mockingly in his broken English.

"Its almost 2 o'clock in the morning ...I ought to call the Goddamn police!" Amber countered in a slow, methodical, almost Eastwood-esque voice.

"And tell them what...you don't have the money to pay your fare?" Siyeed smiled back without missing a beat, his reply creating what amounted to a pale of silence for several seconds inside his car.

"No luck...you know...on your night out?" Siyeed asked in a snarky, insinuating tone.

"WHAT?" Amber snapped.

"A pretty woman like you...dressed like that...coming home alone...you couldn't find a man tonight?" he continued to sarcastically dig.

"...Oh God...," Amber let out a disgusted hiss, ready right then to just get out of the cab and walk to her apartment if it wasn't for the fact that she knew he'd call the cops and all the neighbors would come to their window to see why all the blue lights were flashing at her place at two in the morning.

Instead, the two continued to sit there in increasingly pressurized silence.

"I have an idea," Siyeed spoke up a few seconds later with cool, nearly dramatic precision.

It didn't take Siyeed a great deal of clairvoyant thought to size up his fare's current condition, just a well trained nose. The alcohol on Amber's breath each time she bellowed out a complaint about her situation was clue number one, but from the moment the woman had set foot in his cab, the subtle hint of her unquenched arousal had wafted freely all around him.

The tide of pheromones swirling through the air each time Amber tried shifting her obscenely long legs to make herself comfortable in the back seat, Siyeed gradually made his assessment.

"You wanted to have sex tonight...with a man you didn't even know?" Siyeed quizzed with smile, the words especially cutting given his thick foreign accent.

"...Wha...WHAT?!" Amber shuddered then seized out of reflex into the corner of the seat.

"You perverted, sick piece of shit!!" she wanted to yell up to him, but the muscles in her mouth suddenly knotted.

As stridently as Amber wanted to defend her honor against the cabby's crude accusations, the truth of the matter was he was right.

"You go home alone most nights, don't you?" Siyeed continued to prod after allowing Amber to stew in her juices a little longer.

On the verge of reaching for the faux diamond ring on her right hand to throw at the prick up front to settle her debt, an unsettling wave of dread seemed to settle over Amber as she realized this wasn't about the fare any longer.

"You need to be fucked but you can't find a man to meet your standards...so you go home alone...again," Siyeed soberly made his assessment. "But that itch...that itch you have...it won't let go...you were going to go inside and take care of that...that itch ...weren't you?"

Amber's tongue rolled like a drill-bit in her mouth, desperate to spit her reply but instead, with every second of silence that passed, the taunting man in the front seat knew it was true.

"Are you wearing panties?" he sneered, still looking straight forward.

All Amber could manage was a sickening groan when she absorbed Siyeed's latest query. Staring straight at the door handle on the passenger side, Amber thought she could reach for it and make her escape but her arms wouldn't move. Her gangly legs clenched knee to knee as she tilted sideways on the cool vinyl seat, Amber gripped tightly to the purse resting on her lap.

"Open your legs...let me see," Siyeed said softly, his voice calm and strangely at ease given the circumstances.

"...I... WILL...," Amber planned on adding "NOT" to the end of her sentence but once again her tongue seemed to drown in molasses.

"You wore them planning on someone seeing them tonight...that I know...or maybe you're not wearing any at all," Siyeed was unrelenting. "I can maybe just...you know... forget about this $20 fare...or maybe I can just keep the meter running?"

The clock on the cab's dash had crept past 2am and there wasn't a soul stirring around the apartment complex as a layer of fog settled in. It would have been an eerie time of the night as it was, but given the spot Amber found herself in, it felt positively surreal.

Deep down she knew she had her phone and could call 911, but she had no clue what she'd tell them. She was the one who was drunk and had no way to pay her fare, and in front of her sat a sober driver with a fatherly glow on his face, that is when those vile and horribly demeaning words were dripping from his lips.

A dizzying parade of jumbled thoughts swirling around her as she sat there brooding in the still of the night, before she even realized she had, Amber unfolded her legs.

Turning her head as if to swallow something bitter but necessary, Amber reached down and took the purse off her lap before laying it aside. Staring into the man's dark eyes when she turned and met his gaze in the rear view, Amber bit her tongue as she reached for the hem of her very short skirt.

"Is this good enough?" she snapped up to the man in front of her as she worked the material up to her hips.