Prisoner of the Pages

She stepped through the dingy glass door into the shop, the soft tinkling of the overhead bell alerting the owner to her presence.

"Kori, is that you?"

"It's me, Mrs. Grossman."

"Running late today. Kept you at the hospital, they did?"

Kori smiled. Sometimes trying to decipher Mrs. Grossman's Jewish came close to having a conversation with Master Yoda. She seemed to be about as old and as wrinkled as the puppet Jedi and even had wispy white hair growing out of her ears. The only thing missing from the heavy set matriarch of used books was the green tint. Kori felt a little odd at being such a regular in the bookshop that the owner knew when she was running late, and yet, it also was a strong sense of belonging. Of family.

Family was something Kori was sorely missing in Omaha, her Radiology job having taken her away from her brother Julian two years earlier. She still missed him terribly, and had found nothing to fill the void but her books. Her Kendal was full, the bookshelves in her tiny apartment stuffed to overflowing with hardcovers, paperbacks stood in perilous stacks on every available surface and along baseboards and in closets. A co-worker witnessing the disaster picking her up for work once commented, "Heaven help the apartment complex if there was ever a fire." To which she'd replied, "Heaven help Omaha."

Today the hospital had indeed kept her late with a backlog of paperwork of all things. She hated paperwork, and wanted her Thursday night ritual: to go home, strip out of her blue scrubs and take a nice long, hot bath, complete with bubbles and candles and a good book, then masturbate until she came and pass out till tomorrow.

"Yes Mrs. Grossman, it's me." She called out before beginning her exploration of the shop.

It mirrored her apartment in many ways. Books crammed every available surface, nook and cranny. The one difference was outside. Her apartment was on the third floor of huge building, part of an immense complex, but when you opened the door it seemed cramped and tiny amid the printed chaos. The book store was a small brick building on a remote and forgotten side street, but it seemed bigger on the inside. Kori kept meaning to ask Mrs. Grossman how she did it.

She moved into the bowels of the store, past the racks of western and military fiction, breezed through the sci-fi and fantasy, then ignored the fiction of F. Paul Wilson and Dean Koontz. It wasn't that these categories didn't appeal to her, it was simply that she knew what she wanted today.

The last row of shelves along the back wall of the store were stacked floor to ceiling with the vibrant red, pink and purple spines of the romance novels. But even these she passed by, moving to the swinging doors at the end of the aisle and into the "21 And Over" section.

She breathed in deeply, enjoying the musty smell of the books and closed her eyes. She could still make out the brazen images the blazed from the book covers behind her shut lids. Hunky men with raging hard-ons ravaging busty women who always seemed to be wearing that dumb "It's so big!" expression. She opened her eyes and started her search, barely looking at the books, but moving instead by instinct. Her hands feather light caressed the spines of the books, moved from one shelf to the next.

She knew she'd find what she needed this way. She didn't know how or why it worked, just that it did. The tactile touch of the books was part of the ritual.

Her fingers paused briefly on a copy of Naughty by Julian Soul, then kept roaming. The movie adaptation had just come out, and she'd spent two hours in a theatre—alone—getting sexually frustrated at the goings on. It was a HOT book and a HOT flick. But she wasn't quite ready to revisit the story this soon after.

Not to mention that Julian Soul was her brother. She was immensely proud of him as a writer (even when explaining to people that yes, he was THAT Julian) and while she loved his way with words and how they got her wet, she wasn't quite ready for the where the complex nature of those thoughts might lead.

At least, not today.

She moved into the gay and lesbian section, her favorite, and continued feeling up the books. Her fingertips slid over the spines not unlike that of a responsive lover, and at last she paused again on the bottom shelf. She had stopped on a hardcover, bound in purple leather, and she freed it from the bookcase and reeled it up with the deftness of a deep-sea fisherman with today's catch.

The book was old, it looked to be hand written and bound. Inscribed on the cover was the title: Lady Catherine and Sarah Hawthorne.

This one. She thought, not knowing why she felt so confident and compelled, but sure it was right.

Well, right for tonight, anyway.

Kori moved back through the double swinging doors and joined Mrs. Grossman at the counter.

"Didn't take long, that. Find a good one, did you?"

Kori smiled while digging money out of her purse. "Maybe." She said. "Won't know till I get it home."

"If it's mushukina, you bring it back. Oi, what am I saying? Two years you've been coming to my shop, I've yet to see you sell anything back."

"Selling books makes me sad." Kori replied. "Like they are unwanted and not good enough to be given a home."

"Stay away from the homeless pet shelter, I advise you." Mrs. Grossman deadpanned. "Selling books I love, but that means money in my pocket, so what's not to love?" She looked through her bifocals at the cover as she rang it up, then over the frames at Kori. "Another smut book?"

Kori laughed, knowing that Mrs. Grossman read erotica as avidly as she did, and had pointed her toward a juicy selection on more than one occasion. "It's what I'm in the mood for."

"A nice person to share your empty bed, that's what you should be in the mood for." Mrs. Grossman admonished. "Forget these books. Beautiful you are! Make someone happy, be it a man or woman!"

"Oh, go on."

"If even thirty years younger I was, I'd take a pass at you myself."

"And how would Mr. Grossman feel about that?"

"Inviting a beautiful black woman to share our bed? How do you think he'd feel?" She leaned over the counter with her arm raised and hand clenched into a fist to emphasize her point. "Rock hard, that's how he'd feel!" She waited a beat, then cackled at her own joke. "Now, of course, well..." She looked around the bookstore. "These stories are what get me off. These stories and my dildo."

"Why Mrs. Grossman, what will people think?" Kori deadpanned.

"What? So I've got a dildo! Mr. Dependable, the sales lady called it, and boy is he! Mr. Grossman... well, he isn't so much in that department these days." She handed Kori a plastic sack with THANKS FOR SHOPPING! printed on the side, her book tucked away inside. She leaned over the counter conspiratorially. "Sometimes I suction cup it to the bookcase. That way I can fuck both the dildo and the books at the same time." Kori laughed hard at that, and Mrs. Grossman joined in. "Have some fun you should. Have it before you grow old like me. Before you rely on your books to have the fun for you."

Kori patted Mrs. Grossman's hands. "Maybe soon. Thanks."

"Bah. Me thanking you, that's how it should be. I think you single handedly keep me in business."

She'd made it home, stripped out of her scrubs and set the tub to fill and form bubbles. She padded around the stacks of books in her apartment in just her bra and panties, a matching blue cotton set that matched her scrubs and contrasted her dark skin. She loved the way they looked and felt, so she lingered a moment longer in the kitchen, having decided to add a glass of Sangria with crushed ice to the Thursday ritual.

She carried the wine glass, candles and book into the bathroom with her. She stopped the bath water, towers of bubbles threatening to spill over the side of the tub, and once the candles were lit, dimmed the lights. She took a long look at her reflection; dark chocolate skin, blue bra and panties bathed with firelight. She struck a pose or two, then laughed and unceremoniously stripped the rest of the way nude.

She was about to step into the tub when she realized there was no music playing. What on earth was she thinking? The Thursday night ritual is a ritual because of the things that must be done, and one simply did not bathe without music.

She moved back to the living room, shafts of light pouring through the still open window shutters from the walkway lights outside her apartment. Normally she'd be a little more self conscious about being seen, but what the hell. It was Thursday.

The stereo system blared to life and she cued up the special playlist she had built for these nights. Mostly soft jazz with the occasional suggestive pop song added to the mix. John Mayer started singing about her body being a wonderland and she smiled, deciding it was a more than satisfactory start and moved back toward the bathroom when she noticed the front door was open.

Not just not closed, but standing wide open.

She froze, whirling around in search of an intruder. But there was no one but her and John Mayer.

A gust of wind blew through the doorway and fluttered a couple of books open on top of their various stacks. The air moved across her bare chest and her nipples sprang to instant hardness at the sensation. The door banged slightly against the bookcase behind it.

The wind. That must be the answer she decided. She moved to the door, poked a head out to survey the walkway with one arm covering her breasts, just in case. But there was no one the length of the balcony either direction. She closed the door and latched the deadbolt, then surveyed the room once more. Realistically, if there was someone in the room with her, she'd never find them hidden behind the stacks of books, but she shook that idea off.

It was pointless to get worked up and ruin her ritual. She had wine getting warm and a bubble bath getting cold and that was reason enough to abandon the search and move back to the bathroom.

Kori gingerly stepped into the tub and lowered herself into the water, content to just soak for a bit with the wine glass dangling out of the tub in her right hand, the book in her left.

Very quickly it became obvious that it was worth the price of admission. A gothic tale about a manor house haunted by the spirit of a dead governess, who had been having an affair with the lady of the house, and kept it up as a ghost. Normally Kori wouldn't go in for this kind of pseudohistorical fiction, and it had seemed a little hackneyed at first, but soon she was into it, turning pages and feeling parts of her body heat up, either from absorbing the warmth of the bath water, or the racy story.

Okay, that was it.

Normally, she restricted herself from any kind of self-fulfillment until she'd finished a good story, wanting to relive the details in her mind as she masturbated. That was also part of the ritual. But damn it, the story had her turned on already, and she deserved it.

She set the book and wine glass down, closed her eyes, and raised her left hand up to her head. She gently touched her forehead with a fingertip, and slowly began to drag it across her face. She first traced the soft hair of her eyebrow, circled around back across her eyelid then dragged it down her nose. Her finger played across her lips, down her chin, down her neck and into the water. It was purposely done in a methodical, agonizingly slow manor. Her skin responded to her touch, and the heat she felt between her legs flared with impatience.

Her finger rose out of the water as she encountered the swell of a breast, and she slowly traced the curve of her cleavage before climbing Kilimanjaro and grazing across a nipple before all her fingers got involved. She squeezed first one then the other tit, savoring the lingering before her hand continued to her sternum and it's downward exploration.

Marvin Gaye came on the stereo as she felt her firm belly, circled her belly button and plunged back into the water, to the smooth, hairless area just above her crotch. She stretched out her arm, with her middle finger just fluttering over the hood of her clit. She caressed it once, twice, sending shivers of anticipation through her body. She meant to be gentle and instead found herself as impatient as any teenager, diving in with fingers flying, patting, stroking and mashing up against the lips of her pussy.

Sexual Healing indeed.

She forced herself to pull away, raising both hands to interlock the naughty fingers behind her head as she panted with excitement. Another gust of air blew threw the bathroom, fluttering the candlelight and sending her nipples into orbit. Before she could wonder, something touched her under the water, as if a pair of hands were being run up the inside of both of her thighs simultaneously.

Kori jumped, sloshing water and bubbles out of the tub as her hands came down between her legs to find...

...that she was alone.

Gasping, she sagged back. "Okay, no more wine on ritual night. Got it." She couldn't believe she'd imagined it, and yet... there was something familiar about the touch.

She looked over the lip of the tub, and (thankfully) had set the book on top of the wine glass, so it didn't get wet from her flailing about. Just before she had stopped reading, the ghost of the governess and the lady of the house were engaged in a very hot bit of cunnilingus in a bathtub.

She looked below the book at the empty glass of sangria. "I must have nodded off and dreamt it." She said to herself, not quite believing it, but unwilling to believe she had a sexy spook of her own.

Although, she supposed, lying back in the tub, it would be rather hot.

"Sarah Hawthorne?" She said aloud, then giggled, lacing her fingers back behind her head. "I'll be your Lady Catherine. Just treat me the way you did her in the book and you've got yourself a date." She shook her head at how silly that sounded... until another gust of wind blew threw the room, blowing out the candles altogether.

Kori lay in the dark, listening, but there was no sound other than Chris Isaak's Wicked Game and the occasional drip of water from the tap. But her sense of touch registered another pass of hands up the inside of her thighs. Unlike the wind they weren't cold, quite warm blooded in fact. But they weren't solid either. She lay still, a little freaked out but curious to see where this was headed. And how.

Just like the passage in the book, the hands traveled up the inside of her thighs, caressing her skin, then slid up and over her hips and around to her bottom. And although Kori could feel the hard porcelain of the tub underneath her ass, she could also feel a soft pair of hands holding her there. And then a tongue licked her, one agonizingly slow full stroke from bottom to top of her sex.

Kori sank back into her hands with a moan and ceased caring about the how.

Emboldened by her surrender, the phantom visitor began to pleasure her in earnest, alternating between licking and flitting and darting about like a hummingbird searching for nectar. The fingers of the ghostly hands kneaded the flesh of Kori's butt cheeks, lifting her off the bottom of the tub to pull her closer.

Kori moaned again, and brought one hand down to rest on top of the phantom. She encountered a luxurious full head of hair. She opened her eyes, but while her hand rested on something solid, there was nothing there. And then the phantom probed her with its tongue, moving inside. Kori gripped the head a bit tighter as one ghostly hand left her butt and traveled up to play with a breast, while the other circled back around and inserted two long fingers into her, working them into the folds of her sex. The back and forth was pleasurable, but once they were buried deep inside, they started making a "come hither" motion.

A pert nipple was being teased into excruciating hardness with one hand while the fingers of the other were inside her stroking and playing. Her pearl engorged; the mouth never stopped sucking.

Kori's heart was pounding, beating out a rhythm that pulsed in time with her clit.

Suddenly, she smelled lavender. Her own bath salts had been honey almond, but the smell had unmistakably switched to lavender. Shadows danced on the walls from gaslight lanterns, even the smooth porcelain of the tub had changed to a great copper basin with claw feet.

She gasped at the intensity of the sensations. It was happening just like the description of events in the story. More than that, she was in the story. This was the bathroom, just as described. Her hands reached up and behind her head, gripping the lip of the tub basin. Her breasts swelled with the movement, and the ghost reacted, squeezing the one nipple firmer. Those long fingers on the other hand drove deeper, the mouth sucking and licking more furiously.

Kori's eyes fluttered closed, panting heavily. She was Lady Catherine, and the ghostly governess was Sarah Hawthorne, and it was this name that Kori called out as she climaxed, bearing down hard on the fingers and mouth that were giving her so much pleasure. Kori writhed in the tub, sending water and bubbles cascading over the lip and across the floor. A flood of cum gushed out of her as all her muscled clenched and trembled.

A hum and a flash beyond her orgasm forced Kori's eyes open. There was an ethereal purple neon glow in the tub with her. It was faint, but gaining in intensity as it solidified and formed the lines of a woman with long hair. Hair that Kori's fingers were currently entangled in. Still panting, she released her grip on the ghostly head between her legs.

"Sarah?" she asked.

The woman raised her head, and was just as beautiful as had been described in the story, with full lips and big almond shaped eyes.

"How? What happened? What—" Sarah cut off her line of questioning with a finger placed firmly against Kori's lips. The ghost disengaged her other hand from inside her—leaving a pang of regret that died in Kori's throat over the loss of that contact—and slithered her purple outline up the length of Kori's body. Sarah's full bosom rose out of the water and slid up and over Kori's thighs, her stomach and her own breasts as Sarah came eye to eye with her. Kori felt Sarah's nipples graze against her own, and despite the power of the orgasm she just endured, her pussy trembled with desire again.

Sarah was still vaguely transparent, but solid enough for Kori to see into her eyes, also rimmed with that weird purple energy. Her eyes were sad, but also full of passion. She placed her hands on either side of Kori's face and moved in for a kiss, their lips first gently brushing together, then fully engaged as Kori responded by kissing back. Their bodies fell together with as much contact as they could manage, and Kori wrapped her arms around the other woman, enveloping her.

Images began to flood into Kori's mind:

It was Sarah's first day as the Governess to Lord William and Lady Catherine. Standing in the study feeling so very unworthy of the job, then meeting the children and falling in love with them. Her sudden, instant attraction to the lady of the house. It started tentatively, side glances during tea time and meals, taking every opportunity to linger in rooms after everyone else had left, the first halting contact that left both of them heaving and shuddering in their bodices. Lady Catherine's attraction to her was just as strong. Lord William traveled often, and the lady of the house took full advantage of his absence to take full advantage of Sarah. It was a first for both of them, the attraction to another woman, but the forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest. Their illicit affair was so shocking that when he did discover their secret, Lord William killed Sarah rather than have anyone find out.