The Wine Merchant

I kept up the pace, changing the rhythm of the strokes in tune with her needs and the rolling of her hips. Her body stiffened as she came. She babbled out my name repeatedly. I kept moving, she was mine, and I was going to prove it to her.

She whimpered and cried out again as another and then yet another orgasm washed over her. Until I came with a rasping gasp, pumping my hot cum against the entrance of her womb, covering her cervix with my possessive essences.

Her fingertips were dug deep in muscles on my back and the walls of her passage clenched tightly around me, milking the last drop from me.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked up at me with a look of love and desire. I rolled to the side, but Loren refused to let me pull out. Her finger traced a line of sweat running down my chest. She kept squeezing my shaft with her cunt.

She kissed my nipple, "I'm going to make you a very happy man," she whispered, "and you shall make me an ecstatic woman! Don't leave me."

"I won't, I couldn't. From that first touch, I knew that there was a connection between us."

She gave a little sob of happiness and relaxed in my arms.

~~~~<*****>~~~~

In less than a month, she had moved out of her flat and in with me. Jane wasn't impressed and came to the shop one afternoon. She laid the law down on me.

"I love that girl," she said, and then gave me a disgusted look as she saw my expression. "Not like that, she's been my best friend since school, and I won't let anything or anyone hurt her."

"I don't want to hurt her either," I pointed out. "I'm in love with her. There's been a connection between us ever since the first time we met."

She seemed to relax at that, "I know, I've never seen her so happy, and I'm so glad you insisted that she finish her course."

Loren was in her last year of a specialised art and design course at the Royal College of Arts. An extensive course that rolled three separate degrees all into one. She was interning at one of the major auction houses in London. She already completely redesigned the shop's website for me. At first, she'd wanted to come and help me in the store. I'd refused, insisting she finish her course and the internship, It was our first and only big argument. I'd suffered a couple of days of door slamming, cold shoulders and temper tantrums. That first night she'd gone to Jane's, but she'd sent her back with a flea in her ear.

We made up in what became our usual methods to resolve any minor disagreements. I'd draw her a hot bath scented with her favourite bath bomb. She would lie back, and I'd sit on the floor beside her with my fingers gently caressing her silky skin, and we'd talk. Finally, we would make love in the shower, then wrap large soft bath towels around us and fall asleep in each other's arms.

A year after we first met we stood side by side at the front of the same church my cousin had married in.

~~~~<*****>~~~~

I stretched as I woke up and then realised I'd actually moved. I felt as weak as the proverbial kitten. There was a grab handle hanging above my head. It took me several attempts but finally I managed to grasp it. I was quite surprised that I had any muscle tone at all. Every story I'd ever read about coma victims had gone on about the months of rehabilitation after they'd woken up. Then I recollected the conversation the nurses had previously. They'd use a muscle stimulating suit on me, well I'd be happy to write an endorsement for the thing as it seemed to have worked.

I used the handle it to pull myself up the bed. Of course, I must have set off all the alarms, because next moment two nurses rushed into the room.

"What do you think you're going," one snapped.

"Trying to get comfortable of course." I managed to croak out. Christ my throat was sore.

They both tutted that way only nurses can. I let them ease me up and plump the pillows behind me. For the first time, I got a chance to see the room I was in. A small room made smaller by the equipment, most now thankfully, standing idle. A bedside cabinet and an armchair were the only furniture, other than the bed I was in of course. Taped to the walls were many get well cards, some quite faded. On the cabinet beside a bunch of flowers was a photo of Loren and me on our honeymoon, we sat in the surf on a beach in Barbados.

Seeing the picture, I asked, "Does Loren know I'm awake?"

The nurse shook her head, "I don't think so, I know they've been trying to contact her. Her parents are coming in later, and hopefully, they will have news for you."

If she and Jane had decided to go off grid, then I doubt that George or Sarah would be able to contact her. I grunted and then coughed. I was given a glass of water to sip, and that soothed my throat.

An hour or so later Rachael dropped by, and we had a long talk. I hadn't appeared to have been severely injured in the accident. I'd been hit by a speeding hot hatch. The car had been stolen earlier in the day and was found burnt out a day later. I'd suffered a few broken bones, nothing too serious in themselves. But unfortunately, my head had collided with a metal street light and had come off worse. A fractured skull and I'd had almost no recordable brain activity for the past two years. The occasional spike, but that was all.

I was interested in understanding why I wasn't going to need months of rehabilitation and physiotherapy.

Rachael looked embarrassed, "This is going to sound harsh, but the reason we were using the experimental suit was so that we could keep you fit."

"What's harsh about that?" I wondered.

"So when we finally got permission to switch off the life support, we'd have been able to use more of you for transplants,. You had a donor card in your wallet."

I leant back in shock. That did sound so cynical, I thought. Then I understood her thought process.

I asked, "I overheard one of the nurses saying that the hospital had asked my wife for permission to switch me off, were you a part of that decision?"

She shook her head, "No, I felt that there had been enough of a rise in your brain activity recently, that we needed to continue to monitor you for a bit longer before we made any decisions. My consultant didn't agree, and he was the one who asked her. Although I think she'd been expecting the call, the finality of the question hit her hard. I suggested that she go away for a while before deciding and that she shouldn't be contactable. She agreed and now I'm in the doghouse with my boss."

"Did she tell you where she was going?" I asked hopefully.

Another shake of the head. "I specifically asked her not to tell me."

"Did she say how long she'd be gone for?"

"I suggested at least a month when she asked me the same question."

"Fuck!! You've no idea at all, where she is and when she'll be back." I knew I sounded petulant, but I didn't care.

Rachael weathered my frustration and changed the subject. "There's a battery of tests scheduled to start this afternoon. If you pass them, there's no reason why you won't be home in a few days."

That made me smile.

"What do you remember about the accident?"

"Just stepping off the pavement, then there was a sensation of flying, and then nothing."

We went through a series of questions about my family and business, all of which I seemed to answer to her satisfaction.

"Good," she exclaimed, "I can't see any evidence of any permanent damage to your memory. All you need to do is fill in the blanks from the past two years. All that you will have to show for the accident will be the scar on your forehead."

I instinctively reached up and felt the puckered grove on my head. She picked up a mirror and held it out to me. My face was thinner and more haggard. My eyes had a tired, sunken look, and I had my very own Harry Potter style scar.

Rachael asked, "Do you want me to schedule you an appointment with the plastic surgeon?"

I shook my head, "No, to be honest, I think it's an improvement, and it'll be a permanent reminder to me not to step out into the road without looking."

She laughed at that, and after giving my hand, a squeeze left to get back to her other patients.

That afternoon the physiotherapist had me out of bed and through a series of light exercises. She was escorting me back to my room when Sarah and George stepped off the lift. Sarah gave a little cry and then I was wrapped in her arms.

"It's a miracle," she kept repeating. "You came back for my baby."

Her emotion got to me, and I felt faint. Fortunately, there was a wheelchair close by and the Physio eased me onto it.

When I was settled back in my bed Sarah and George pulled up chairs, and we talked, well Sarah talked and George and I listened.

The long and the short of it was that six months after the accident, Loren had moved in with Jane. She had told her mother that there were just too many memories in the flat. She was still working at the auction house, now as their senior researcher.

She had employed a manager to look after the shop after Julia had refused the position as she wanted to concentrate on her children.

"She had her second baby last year," Sarah explained.

"But do you know where Loren's gone?" I asked exasperatedly.

Sarah shook her head, "She called three, no four days ago in a right state. The doctors wanted her to agree to switch off the machines. The nice one convinced her not to agree. She told her to go away to make her mind up."

I nodded, Rachael had already told me this.

"But didn't she say where she and Jane were going?"

She gave me a curious look. "I don't think she went with her. Jane's been off on a training course for the last week and doesn't get back for a few more days. I've been going around and feeding the cat. She mentioned something about a cruise or something like that."

"A cruise," I repeated stupidity. "Why a cruise? She's never been interested in going on a cruise before."

George knew the answer to that. "So that the bloody chief doctor couldn't contact her. It's been building up for the past month. He's been pushing her to agree to pull the plug on you. She left her phone with us when she left and wouldn't tell us where she was going, just that she'd be back in a month."

Sarah added, "She didn't want to make the decision, she'd come and sit with you every day for at least an hour. Every time I saw her after she left she was crying. She couldn't bare to see you laying there so helpless. The consultant kept telling her that you were brain dead. But the other one, Rachael, she said that recently you'd been getting spikes of brain activity, and she shouldn't give up hope."

I was beginning to realise just how much I owed Rachael, who picked that opportune moment to appear.

She greeted all of us and then asked. "So do we know where she is?"

"On a ship, somewhere is our best guess."

Rachael gave us an exasperated look, "Christ I told her to make it difficult for the hospital to contact her, but not disappear off the face of the earth."

She shrugged and then said to me. "The good news is that all the results of the tests so far are very promising. We should be able to discharge you in a week or so. But you need someone with you for the first few days as you will get tired rather quickly."

"You can come and stay with us," Sarah said.

I had wanted to go back to the flat, so I hesitated. Then just as I was reluctantly about to agreed, a new voice from the doorway spoke up.

"I'll stay with you at the flat."

Jane was silhouetted in the doorway. "I got your messages, Sarah, so I came back early."

And to my unasked question, she said, "I have a vague idea where she's gone, but I've no idea how to get in contact with her. We talked on the phone after the news, I wanted to come home, but she wouldn't hear of it. She said that she needed to go away to make the hardest decision of her life. She left me a message that she'd be gone for a month and I wouldn't be able to contact her but she was pleased that we'd talked as she had a better idea of what to do."

"Did she say who she'd gone with? Everyone's under the impression she went with a friend." I choked up a bit as I said that. If she hadn't gone with Jane, then who? Was it a man, had she found someone else?

Jane sensed my anxiety, "She hasn't been out with anyone but me since the accident. I guess she hoped I'd go with her. I'm sure she's on her own." I thought I saw the briefest flash of apprehension cross her face.

I blame it on the fact that I was still drained and I wasn't thinking straight. But I just grunted and let it go.

I was allowed to go home seven days later. The only thing of note that happened while I was hospital was a visit from the police. An Inspector and a Sargent turned up one morning and were waiting in my room for me after my session with the physiotherapist.

I hadn't considered that the accident was still being investigated after all this time, but it seemed it was.

There wasn't much I could add to the other witness's statements. I could vaguely recall a couple of cars parked on the street, but that was all. I was surprised when I was asked if I had any enemies?

"Why?" I wanted to know.

There was a pause while the two officers considered my question. The inspector said, "A couple of the witnesses were convinced that the car drove directly at you. And there was no evidence that the driver tried to brake before he hit you."

It made absolutely no sense to me. I wasn't aware of anyone who wanted to hurt me. I'd just assumed I'd been unlucky and had got in the way of a local teenager at the wheel of a stolen car. I told them that I wasn't aware of anyone.

They left after informing me that the accident had been classified as suspicious and would stay open on their books.

At lunchtime, Jane was waiting for me at the entrance of the hospital, and she drove me home. That's such a simple statement to encompass the realms of emotions I was experiencing. I was alive, and I was going home. Soon Loren would be back, and everything would be perfect.

When we were in the car, I asked her if she was aware that the police were thinking that the accident may have been intentional. They thought that someone might have been trying to kill me. She was as shocked as I had been.

"Are they sure you were the intended victim?"

"No, they admit that there is always the possibility it was a case of mistaken identity."

By the time we got to the shop, we were both convinced that I hadn't been the intended victim. It had to be a case of case of mistaken identity.

There was an advert for bottles of wine I didn't recognise in the window of the shop. I tried to look at it, but Jane insisted I go up the stairs to the flat. Once there I forgot about it as I wondered about seeing all my familiar possessions. In our bedroom, there was a half-empty suitcase, a couple of piles of women's clothes scattered about and a laptop bag.

"It's not my stuff," Jane was quick to point out. "I'm staying in the spare room. I decided to bring Loren's stuff back, ready for when she returns. I'd thought she'd taken the laptop with her, so I've been sending her emails. But it turned out she'd left it at the auction house. Her assistant was on holiday and only got my messages yesterday. He dropped it off first thing this morning. I had a quick look but it's password protected, and I haven't had a chance to see if I can work it out."

We had a quiet evening, we ordered Chinese and I savoured the sweet, spicy flavours. I was in bed by nine-thirty, but without Loren, the bed felt wrong, and I had a disturbed night.

Next morning, I was up, dressed and down in the shop before the sky was light. The laptop was open on the table in the kitchen, but it didn't look like Jane had been able to guess the password.

My spare keys were still in the secret drawer of the writing desk. I went down the back staircase that connected the flat to the shop via a locked door into the wine stock room. And there was the first indication that something wasn't right. Once I'd unlocked the door, I had struggled to push it open. Finally, I'd managed to open it just enough to squeeze through. And found that it had been partially blocked by a pile of half empty boxes that now spread across the floor.

Over the years, I'd managed to accumulate a large and varied selection of some of the best mid-priced wines available. These were stored in this room. Usually, the shelves would be full to overflowing with cases of these wines. Now they were barely a quarter full. Instead, there was the pile of boxes of cheap wines scattered about.

The very best wines were in a second smaller locked storeroom, which as far as I knew only I had the key. I went to the rack of shelves to the left of the door and sliding the false panel at the back of the third shelf to one side I took out the key. I opened that door and was pleased that it looked like nothing had changed. That was not the case as I checked the last small room where I had kept the rare spirits. That was half empty, and I could see little evidence of any new stock.

The shop made me cry, Gone were the fancy labels Loren had spent hours crafting for me; labels that had boldly and elegantly named and described the wine, the price a little afterthought in the bottom left-hand corner. Now there were just the prices and words like 'cheap' 'fruity' and 'bold'.

The wines on the shelves were at best mediocre, and my beautiful glass fronted cupboards for the best items were half full of cheap spirits. The walls where I had placed framed copies of French cafe paintings from the late 1890's were now covered in garish posters for Bulgarian and Croatian wines.

I had to sit down; what the hell had Loren done to my life's work. I had only intended to have a quick look around and satisfy myself that the shop was all right. I wanted to work on Loren's laptop to see if I could find out where she'd gone. But now as I looked around at the mess and the destruction of my life's work I forgot about the laptop and just sat staring at me. And that is how Jane found me half an hour later.

"What happened, what the hell did she do to the shop?" I asked, looking around.

Jane cursed, "This isn't her, it's that fucking idiot of a manager. She and Julia tried to keep things going. But Julia decided to leave after finding out she was pregnant again. Loren couldn't cope with her and keep her own job, so she got a manager. It was the same as the flat, this place held too many memories of you, and she didn't like being here. The manager and the accountants have been running the place for over a year, and I don't think she's been here at all during that time. The manager used to come to the flat once a week to keep her updated, now it's only once a month. She'll go mad when she finds out he's been changing things."

"He's bloody history," I said. I stood up and ripped the posters and the signs in the window down. Just that simple action made me feel so much better; I was reclaiming what was mine.

"Can you see if you can find the prints that used to hang in here?" I asked her.

Jane found them in the back and between us we returned them to their rightful places.

Next, we started to remove all the cheap wine from the shelves. There were loads of empty boxes, and we just kept on filling them and carrying them into the back. It was exhausting work, and I needed to stop every few minutes. But to see order appearing was so satisfying.

By nine-thirty we had cleared the worse, and the shelves were bare except for a few remaining bottles of the good wine. We were drinking a cup of tea when we heard the security grating at the door rattle to one side. A key turned in the lock and the shop door opened. A young woman in her early twenties stepped into the store and seeing me started to scream.