Confessions in Velvet and Leather
Smoke curled lazily in the dim room, dancing with the flickering candlelight that draped over polished mahogany and the plush burgundy velvet of the chairs. There, in the heart of that shadowy sanctum, sat Alex — as naked as the day he was born, stripped bare in more ways than one.
Across from him, a vision in a black leather, an outfit he bought for one of his many lovers that was not for her specifically, was Dr. Kali DuBois. Her thigh-high boots ended where a devilishly cut G-string began, framing legs that would make a priest break his vow of celibacy. But it wasn’t her attire that riveted Alex; it was her eyes — emerald flames that could ignite or extinguish at her whim.
“Truth or dare?” Her voice, smoky and sultry, floated through the air.
“Truth,” Alex declared, his eyes never wavering.
“Is it true, then, that you’ve romanced more women than the stars in the sky?”
Alex grinned. “Not exactly. But a man’s got to live, doesn’t he?”
“And live you have,” Kali purred. “Yet you sit here, laid bare, confessing your eternal love for me. How is a girl to believe that?”
“Because it’s the truth. I’ve been through the wilderness of temptation, yet here I am, hypnotized by the only woman who’s ever enchanted my soul.”
For a second, her eyes softened, and then she rose from her chair like a panther uncoiling. She circled him, her boots whispering secrets to the floor. When she reached him, she leaned down and whispered in his ear, “You are the best but nothing like Peter.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why do you love a ghost?”
She straightened up, her silhouette framed by the molten light. “He is the shadow of the ideal I’ve always wanted in the machine I look to create.”
“A machine?” Alex’s eyes widened, and for the first time, he felt naked in the truest sense.
“Yes,” Kali smiled, a Cheshire grin that promised secrets and mysteries, “A machine not of cogs and bolts, but of desire and longing, programmed to unlock the deepest vaults of pleasure and devotion.”
The air between them became electric, filled with the tangible energy of truths revealed and dares yet to be taken.
“So,” she murmured, her eyes locked onto his, “what’s it going to be now, Alex? Another truth, or dare you risk more?”
As he gazed into her spellbinding eyes, Alex understood that with Dr. Kali DuBois, he would always be tiptoeing on the wire of truth and dare, in a game that was as perilous as it was exhilarating. And right then and there, he chose to risk it all.
“Dare,” he breathed.
Her eyes ignited. “Ah, the game has truly begun.”
And so it had. In that room, between leather and flesh, between truths confessed and dares yet spoken, they each found something — perhaps a missing piece to the machines they were trying to create. But that is a story for another dark and sultry night.
