“People can commit many sins. But the most grievous sins of all are the sins of not knowing your true self, and even worse, of fearing it.” Dr Sandor Kardos

Part One: Dr Kardos

The unexpected arrival, nine months previously, of an itinerant Hungarian psychologist had produced an unfamiliar mélange of suspicion and curiosity among the inhabitants of Puente de Almas, a relatively small, off-the-beaten-track town nestling discreetly in the picturesque folds and foothills of the Spanish Pyrenees to the north-west of Jaca, in the province of Aragon. In spite of this, the enigmatic Dr Sandor Kardos had quickly managed to secure for himself comfortable rooms, including both living space and a surgery, above a rustic, but thriving, craft shop which specialised in the production and sale of all manner of finely-crafted religious artefacts. It offered a particular speciality by way of the production and sale of exquisitely embellished statuettes of the Blessed Virgin (both with and without child). Almost every home in the town and outlying villages contained at least one item or icon which had been obtained from ‘La Casa Sagrada de Madura’, making the sombre and religiously devout proprietor, Don Francisco Farsante, one of the wealthiest, and hence most respected, men in the region.

From the outset there had been considerable doubt as to whether Dr Kardos could, in fact, truly claim to hold that esteemed title. He was, beyond doubt, one of the brightest students of his generation in Hungary, and spoke several European languages fluently. Having graduated with distinction from the prestigious Semmelweis University in Budapest, where he had earned something of an exotic reputation for himself as a bohemian and, some said, ‘dangerous’ free-thinker, he embarked upon a doctoral thesis under the tutelage of Professor Ernst Nagy, who was regarded by many as the leading figure in the field of clinical and experimental psychology in eastern Europe at that time.

As the months passed, however, the simmering personal and academic differences between the two men eventually boiled over, and their already turbulent relationship strained itself beyond breaking point. In addition to his inability to suffer anyone, let alone fools, gladly, Professor Nagy was possessed of an unyielding conservatism in all things, including his fiercely religious beliefs, which led to several bitter and, some alleged, physical, confrontations between them.

Although the precise nature of the matter which precipitated the final breakdown of their relationship was never fully revealed, it was never really in any doubt that it was Professor Nagy’s point-blank refusal to sanction some of Kardos’s allegedly highly controversial experimental techniques and proposed therapeutic approach (which Kardos saw as indispensable to proving his doctoral thesis) which heralded the end of Kardos’s ambitions of securing his doctorate at Semmelweis, and led to him departing from the university under something of a heavy grey cloud. Kardos left Budapest, disappearing to nobody-knew-where for some three years. He then suddenly resurfaced in Salzburg, claiming to have finally obtained his doctorate, although this had apparently been obtained from an obscure ‘university’ in eastern Romania, and in possession of dubious paperwork which he claimed proved this contention.

For the next few years Dr Kardos moved with rather suspicious regularity from one mid-European city to another, before finally settling for some time in Vienna, where his practice became quite successful. He even, gradually, earned grudging respect from some of his peers for his work in the field of analysing and treating a diverse range of fears and phobias. As his success grew, however, so did the interest in his clinical techniques, over which he had somehow always managed to throw, and maintain, a dense, dark shroud of secrecy. Some of his more jealous peers attempted to suggest, without evidence, that his techniques were unethical and hidden suspiciously from peer scrutiny. In spite of these crude attempts to smear his reputation, and perhaps even partly owing to them, Dr Kardos managed to maintain a thriving practice.

Several months before arriving in Puente de Almas, Dr Kardos was approached by a wealthy Austrian of nobility, Baron Karl-Friedrich von Hummelberg. The baron had made the decision to spend at least a year in Brazil with his wife, where he planned to investigate the possibility of investing in several flourishing coffee plantations, and asked Dr Kardos if he could treat his beloved, if slightly coquettish, wife, the baroness, for her lifelong pathological phobia of snakes. Apparently several reputed psychologists had tried, and failed, and the baron was by that time more than willing to ignore the rumours circulating in Vienna about Dr Kardos in an effort to have his wife successfully treated for her extreme ophidiophobia.

Dr Kardos accepted the case, for a significant fee, and began treating the baroness. The treatment, however, produced both positive and negative results. After the first two or three sessions with Dr Kardos, it was apparent that the baroness’s deep and lifelong phobia was being significantly, if not miraculously, reduced. However, from the baron’s perspective, it came at a high price, for as the phobia began to diminish, the baroness became ever-more withdrawn, both emotionally and physically, from her husband. She began to refuse to have sex with him, and after three or four weeks she moved out of their bedroom altogether, and into her own.

In spite of the spectacular progress, the baroness began to insist on visiting Dr Kardos on an increasingly regular basis, raising the obvious suspicion in the baron’s mind that the two were having an affair. The baron confronted his wife about this. She told him that she had nothing to discuss with him, but this confrontation simply seemed thereafter to make her even more remote and cold towards her husband, and increase her desire to visit Dr Kardos for further treatment which the baron was now convinced was not needed. In a state of frustration and desperation, the baron then confronted Dr Kardos and demanded to know the truth. Dr Kardos maintained the obviously ethical position that what occurred between himself and his patients was subject to the strictest confidentiality. Finally, in an effort to break whatever spell the baron knew Dr Kardos was holding over his wife, he offered Dr Kardos whatever sum of money he wanted to close down his practice and leave Austria for good, and to never contact either him or the baroness again. It was an offer that Dr Kardos told the baron he would consider carefully.

Part Two: Magdalena

Puente de Almas was one of the oldest towns in Aragon, with a rich history bathed in religious fervour and superstition. The town in which Dr Kardos arrived had barely changed for centuries, at least from the perspective of the deeply ingrained religious beliefs of almost all its inhabitants. At least two sightings of the Blessed Virgin had been claimed there in relatively recent times; the first in 1864 and the second as recently as 1939, at around the time General Franco assumed power in Spain. However the town had previously seen events equally strange and mysterious. In fact, on the day Dr Kardos arrived, the town was celebrating a fiesta which had been known for centuries as ‘El día del fuego misterioso’ or ‘The day of mysterious fire.’ This fiesta was connected to the apparent sighting of another supernatural figure in the town, several hundred years earlier.

In 1484, a young woman then in her early twenties, named Magdalena, claimed to have seen visions of a beautiful Hellenic goddess, who appeared in her room over a period of several weeks. Magdalena said nothing to anyone about the visions, knowing that to do so may have led to allegations of sorcery or heresy, and of course being fully aware of all the potentially horrific consequences which such allegations entailed at that time. However, one night Magdalena’s widowed mother woke to hear her daughter in the next room, seemingly talking to herself in the middle of the night. The whispering and mutterings gradually became louder, until it appeared to her mother that Magdalena was in some pain. She could hear her moaning loudly and beginning to let out small screams. In a state of concern, she hurried to Magdalena’s room and threw the door open, only to find her daughter writhing and thrashing wantonly on her hay-stuffed mattress, her legs parted wide with her fingers between them, moving and twisting them deep inside her drenched sex, and on the very verge of her climax. Her mother ran to her and tried to shake her but Magdalena was not to be denied. She continued to pleasure herself wildly, on and on, until the deep desire of her body eventually broke uncontrollably over her, moaning the name ‘Sofia’ over and over until, several minutes later, she fell into a deep, dark sleep, with no inkling of the presence of her mother beside her.

The following morning Magdalena’s mother confronted her, asking who Sofia was. In a state of initial shock, Magdalena told her mother about Sofia’s visitations. Beside herself with worry, and not knowing what to do, Magdalena’s mother sought the assistance of the local priest. By this time, far from feeling fearful, Magdalena told the priest everything relating to her visions of Sofia. She told him that Sofia said that she had been sent by the mother spirit to release her, Magdalena, from the bondage of lies and deception, and also that Sofia had seduced and ravished her many times in the previous weeks. The priest immediately suspected demonic possession and, wishing to try to deal with the problem without ‘higher’ intervention from the religious authorities, who were then engaged in serious persecution of heretics and witches, for the sake of the young woman’s mother he attempted to perform an exorcism upon her. However, even after this Magdalena insisted that Sofia was still visiting her, and had told her that she was to tell the priest that a time would come when the dove would cross with the sword, and the people of Puente de Almas would begin to embrace a new and freer spirit. The priest then conceded that he was unable to exorcise whatever ‘dark and malevolent spirit’, as he termed it, was possessing Magdalena and reluctantly handed her over to the Inquisition who, after questioning and torturing her for some time, then decided on an auto-da-fé .

One morning in late April, she was taken to the town square where she was tied unceremoniously to a rough stake and the firewood under her lit, ‘in the name of all righteousness’. As the flames began to gather their crackling menace around her legs, almost tasting the warmth of her skin, witnesses to the scene then watched in horror as Magdalena’s body suddenly, somehow, became translucent. She smiled at the onlookers to her fate and then, almost instantaneously, her body became transformed into a wide, twirling velvet ribbon of lime green smoke which swirled and twisted from the stake to which she had been bound. The ropes that had held her hands behind her fell into the flames and were devoured by them. Those gathered to witness ‘God’s vengeance’ and righteous punishment being dispensed watched in a fearful disbelief. Many began crossing themselves frantically, or clasped their hands together, wringing them like damp rags, whilst muttering impromptu supplications to the Blessed Virgin, as they watched the dancing plume of smoke that was once a young girl dance and wind its way into the thin, cool mist waiting patiently on the nearby mountainside.

Part Three: Paloma

With possibly enough money on offer to make him comfortable for life, Dr Kardos considered where he might go in order to both fulfil the baron’s desire that he ‘disappear’ from Austria permanently, and his own desire to further the work which was his passion. Quite by chance, as he browsed the shelves in a small Viennese bookshop, he came across a volume entitled ‘Faith and Fear’, by Spanish author Juan Miralles. As his eyes scanned the text, they suddenly alighted on the name ‘Puente de Almas’, which he noted Miralles had described as ‘probably the most religiously conservative town in Spain, if not the world; it is dense and thick with the most ingrained religious superstition and fear of change that I have ever found anywhere.” Within moments, Dr Kardos had made up his mind to extract as much money as he could from the emotionally crippled baron and, for a while at least, move to Puente de Almas in order to explore the relationship between faith and fear.

Having heard her mother leave the house for the local bakery where she worked, Paloma removed the small key from its hiding place within the hollow metal tube of her bed frame and went to her wardrobe. She knelt down and pulled a robust metal trunk from inside the wardrobe, put the key into the lock, turned it and lifted the dense, weighty lid, which creaked its resistance. Pulling a variety of items from the top of the trunk, Paloma rummaged around towards the bottom. Having found what she was searching for, she pulled it free and removed it. It was a lime green notepad, almost full. She locked the trunk, pushed it back into her wardrobe and, clasping the notebook to her chest, she then left the house and began to make her way towards the town.

Paloma had returned to Puente de Almas two years previously, and had resumed living with her mother, if only because she felt she had few realistic alternatives. The relationship between them was still as strained and unhappy as it had been upon her return, something which had its origins in events four or five years previously. As she made her way along the dry-dust track that led from her modest wood-built home to the town, she cast her gaze up the nearby mountainside where the trees, rising like proud green spires into the far distance, were draped in a morning mist, like a grey, wispy veil covering the face of a sad bride. How often she had walked along that track in the mornings and seen the mist, wondering to herself whether hidden somewhere within its soft, cool depths was Magdalena, her voice still and small among the boughs and branches. She would dream of one day meeting Magdalena and disappearing into the mountainside with her. Then the sun would gradually burn off the dream and it would disappear for another day into who knows where.

She then cast her eyes across the fields to the south, where as a sixteen year old girl she had played, begun to discover boys and learned to ride her uncle’s magnificent chestnut horse, its muscular flanks shining brilliantly in that same early morning sun. Often she would go riding with a boy for whom her heart had danced, named Alonso. They would gallop up to the trees, tie up the horses and then disappear, often for hours, within the cathedral pillars of rising trunks and silence, to talk and kiss, and kiss again, as he days melted away like warm butter.

One day she had gone riding alone. It was a day when she felt truly free, the wind whipping her wild auburn hair back, licking and cooling her face as she galloped on, ever faster, as though she were flying. She circled the fields; the horse beneath her was shining and glistening, her blue floral skirt was hitched to the very top of her lightly bronzed thighs, contrasting deliciously with the sleek, shining chestnut coat of the horse between them, riding hard until she was once more in sight of her home. As she slowed, she became aware of a wetness between her legs. She dismounted and lifted her skirt to see a wet, red circle of blood on the white cotton of her panties. She screamed out, almost involuntarily, causing her mother to rush from the house. Upon seeing the blood, her mother without hesitation accused Paloma of having what she called ‘the sin of carnal relations’ with Alonso, an allegation that Paloma obviously denied vociferously. She was immediately banned from seeing the boy again, and her mother made immediate arrangements to send her to a school near Burgos, run by the sisters of one of the strictest religious orders in Spain, for the following two years, all for the sin of breaking her hymen on a wild, ecstatic horse ride one summer’s morning.

Paloma had always secretly despised religion and the way it restricted her. All of her craved to be free; free of being told she was sinful, worthless, guilty and under the continual judgement and punishment of an omniscient and harsh deity. The following two years were austere and cruel, and the regime humiliating. Gradually she withdrew into herself, a burning, torrid rage moving inside her for which she had no outlet. Upon her return to Puente de Almas, she became almost a recluse, shutting herself away in her room, and whiling away the hours writing feverishly in her notebooks, which she then locked away in her trunk. Her mother became increasingly irritated and upset, constantly telling her that she had to get a job, pray several times daily, confess her sins daily, and go to the church of San Lorenzo every Sunday, something she had steadfastly refused to do since her return from Burgos.

One day, things became so heated between them that Paloma ended up throwing various items against the wall and shouting uncontrollably at her mother in frustration. The local policeman, Santiago Fuentes, was called. During the course of the intervention, the police officer tried to take Paloma’s arm to calm her down, whereupon her elbow flew back quite accidentally into the policeman’s nose, causing it to bleed profusely. Serious consideration was given as to whether to bring Paloma before the local court for assaulting the policeman, but eventually it was decided that if she agreed to seek help, she would escape with a warning. Her mother had wanted the ‘help’ to be given by the church; something which Paloma flatly refused.

Eventually, the police officer Fuentes, who had had some personal dealings with Dr Kardos over the mild issue he had with claustrophobia, suggested a compromise; namely, that if Paloma agreed to see the psychologist for several sessions, that would suffice. Paloma reluctantly agreed. Dr Kardos had an initial meeting with Paloma and considered that he could help the young woman, and moreover would do so for a nominal fee.

Part Four: Therapy

The first two sessions were uneventful. Paloma sat in a chair opposite Dr Kardos for the full hour. They sat silently, listening to each other breathing, interrupted only by the occasional sound of the craft shop door banging shut beneath them as religious seekers came and went.. Every so often, their eyes would meet: hers, dark and almost impenetrable; his, the colour of a clear Spanish sky on a sultry summer’s day. During the the third session, something moved and Paloma began to ask Dr Kardos a little about himself; questions which he appeared to consider politely before smiling and brushing each one aside. Then came another question:

“What does your name mean?” asked Paloma.

“Sandor? It’s the Hungarian form of ‘Alexander’. It means a ‘defender of men’, or ‘help’.”

“Is that what you are?” she asked. “A help?”

“I think so,” he replied, smiling again. “Only you can answer that question.”

“What about ‘Kardos’? What does that mean?”

“It comes from the Hungarian word ‘kardo’. It means ‘a sword’.”

“I see,” replied Paloma

During the fourth session, it was Dr Kardos who first broke the silence. He ran his fingers into his coal black hair and leant forward in his chair.

“You’re not understood in this town, are you Paloma?”

“No. In truth, I am not.”

“Tell me. What do you write about? I mean, in your room, all day, every day. What fills the pages that carry the weight of your soul?”

Paloma was taken aback. She had not mentioned writing, or how she spent her days.

“How did you know I write?” she asked. “I mean, I do, but how did you know?” Dr Kardos smiled.

“Spirits like you always find an outlet, Paloma. I was just guessing when I said writing. It could have been painting, drawing, music, or any other free expression of your soul. I just got lucky.”

“I write about all kinds of things,” she continued. “Things I am passionate about.”

“And what are you passionate about, Paloma?” She felt her cheeks flush, her head lowered and there was a brief pause before she raised her head and held his eyes with hers.

“Things I have no experience of,” she replied. “I am passionate about filling the gaps between my thoughts and desires, and my experience of them.”

“Next time you come, bring me something you have written, Paloma.” She started to shake her head and feeble excuses began to rattle around inside her head like marbles in a velvet bag.

“Paloma. Next time you come, you are going to bring me something you have written.” She nodded.

Paloma paused in front of the glass-fronted window of ‘La Casa Sagrada de Madura’. Inside, she could see a number of customers browsing among the azure coloured and highly glazed statuettes, all of which she had been told display the myriad virtues of the Blessed Virgin: chastity, purity, restraint. Using the shop window as an imperfect mirror, she ran her fingers through her long, wavy auburn hair, and allowed herself to feel content with the way she looked, dressed as she was in an exquisite, pale blue summer dress, the skirt of which floated lightly around her legs like feathers falling freely from an angel’s wings. Satisfied with how she looked, she made her way up to Dr Kardos’s surgery.

Upon knocking, and receiving the awaited permission from inside, she entered to find Dr Kardos sat, not in his usual comfortable chair positioned in the centre of the room facing Paloma, but behind his wide, imposing leather-topped desk. He invited her to come in and take a seat opposite him at the desk. The chair was set back a little way from the desk, such that Dr Kardos had a full view of Paloma as she sat there, clutching her notebook to her chest with folded arms, like a treasure she was unwilling to yield up. Paloma began to ease the chair further forward towards the desk, but almost the moment she began to do it he told her to stay exactly where she was. She could tell immediately that there was something slightly different about Dr Kardos; that he was more austere and serious. His manner was soon to confirm what she was sensing.

“I see you’ve brought your notebook, Paloma.” She felt herself clutch the book containing the most intimate outpourings of her soul just a little tighter to herself.

“Yes, but...”

“No ‘buts’, Paloma. Pass me the book, please.” The use of the word ‘please’ carried no hint that this was a polite request. She slowly relaxed the notebook from its position next to her chest, and passed it to Dr Kardos. As she did so, she felt her cheeks flush once more.

“Give me a few minutes, Paloma,” said Dr Kardos, without even looking at Paloma. He took the book, sat back in his black leather chair, and began to read. As the minutes passed, he sat there, every so often turning a page, his eyes moving with ever-increasing animation over the words. Minutes passed: five, ten, fifteen, and still he sat reading attentively, appearing lost in each page, each paragraph, each word. Finally, after some twenty minutes, he put the notebook down open in front of him and leant forward, his elbows on the desk, looking her deeply in the eyes, almost hypnotising her with their sudden power.

“Tell me, Paloma. What do you fear?” His voice had suddenly acquired a smooth texture, like crushed purple velvet or honey poured slowly from a silver spoon.

“I fear.......I fear......not living,” she said, her words stumbling from her full red lips like a schoolgirl stepping off an out-of-control roundabout. “I fear not experiencing.”

He held her eyes in a sweet steel gaze which seemed to drench her body and mind in some kind of warm, smooth liquid. He picked up the notebook and held it out in front of him.

“And have you experienced any of this, Paloma?” he asked, his voice lowering to little more than a whisper. She shook her head. He turned another page.

“Or this?” She shook her head. “Or this, or this?”

“No, no. I haven’t,” she said, lowering her eyes.

“And yet you write about it, don’t you. You write about it as though you have intimately felt the power of each word and each thought; as though you have felt them take hold of your body and soul, and move through you as though it was all that mattered in life.”

“Yes, I do, and I have. It consumes me.”

Dr Kardos turned the notebook around and laid it on the desk in front of him.

“I want you to stand up, walk to the desk, and read what you have written here, out loud, Paloma,” he said, an insistence in his voice that she know was not going to be denied, even though she tried.

“But I....”

“You are going to read it, Paloma, and you are going to read it now.”

She stood up and approached the desk, each step taking her closer to her words, her thoughts, her passions. Now, what had flowed from her so fluidly as the words filled page after page with the ease and grace of an eagle moving on a current of warm air, seemed to provoke fear in her. She knew that her thoughts and her desires really were strangers to her life. Nevertheless, she reached the edge of the desk, leaned forward a little, and began to read the paragraph to which Dr Kardos was pointing, falteringly at first.

“Maria saw his hard cock spring from within his trousers; long, thick and harder than the bars of the steel cage that her life had been held within. She had always been judged; every action, every thought. But now the only thing judging her was his needy, urgent length. She was a woman now and wanted; not as an object of criticism and guilt but as a sexual being who needed to be fucked like nothing else in the world mattered. She looked at it, devoured it with her sultry hazel eyes; every throbbing, pre-cum soaked inch; every vein. He wanted to get between her legs, to drive himself into her as though if he didn’t he would explode into a million fragments of desperation. His need was to fuck her. Her need was to let him.”

As she read, she became vaguely aware of Dr Kardos standing up and moving around the desk. However by this stage her mind was becoming increasingly ensnared by the words she was reading; words she herself had written; words that had, as she had written them, began to arouse and overtake her; words that had, so often, tempted her to put down her pen, lean back in her chair, and slide her hand under her dress and into her damp, sex-drenched panties. She became aware now that Dr Kardos was behind her, but not exactly where. Suddenly she heard his voice, slick and smooth, whispering in her ear.

“Bend forward, Paloma. Put your elbows on the desk, and keep reading.”

“She lay back on the grass and parted her slender, smooth legs. His eyes followed every inch of them, all the way to her panties, wet with her deep need, wet with her desire to fuck, and fuck, and fuck...”

She suddenly felt the back of her skirt being lifted, the light material gathered and raised in almost one easy movement, her calves and the back of her thighs being slowly unveiled. She felt the words slightly catching in her throat, as she felt herself caught in an exquisite, velvet vice; between the sensations she was feeling being created by the words on the page living again in her imagination and the reality of the skirt of her dress being lifted.

“Her wild eyes urged him on, like raging fire, which burned into his soul. Every moment increased his lust. His cock was now as hard as he could ever remember it ever having been, and his need to bury it inside Maria’s soft, yielding sex was becoming unbearable. She teased her wet panties aside to reveal her glistening pussy lips, almost whispering their need to be parted, and for his now dripping cock to drive up inside her...”

As she read the words, she felt herself being bent forward, lightly but firmly, against the edge of the desk, by the pressure of Dr Kardos, who was now stood behind her. Suddenly she felt a feeling, the fantasy of which had been responsible for so many of the words she had written; a hard bulge was pressing insistently against her bottom, which was then ground provocatively against her in a circular motion.

“Maria wants his cock, doesn’t she Paloma,” whispered Dr Kardos into Paloma’s ear. “She wants his big, hard, needy cock right up inside her, doesn’t she.”

Paloma let out a little moan of pleasure as his words slid through her body.

“Yes. She does,” she said. “She wants it so badly.”

Paloma’s eyes were still focused on the words on the page in front of her. Her eyes were now so close to them as she felt herself being bent forward by the delicious pressure of the man behind her. She felt the delicate material of her panties being pulled aside as Dr Kardos hooked a finger inside the leg, stretching the material, allowing Paloma to feel the slightly cool air of the room lightly kiss the growing fire beginning to burn between her legs.

“She teased her wet lips apart with her fingers using nothing more than her natural instinct to get what she wanted. But it was much more than want. It was a cry of her soul to feel his delicious, slick cock penetrate her, stretch her pussy walls and take in everything about him that mattered; his relentless lust and need to fuck.”

Paloma vaguely heard the faint, metallic sound of a zip lowering behind her and within seconds she felt herself being bent forward slightly further, until her face was now just an inch or two from the notebook, such that she could barely make out the words. Suddenly, she gasped as she felt the sensation of the hard, large bulb of Dr Kardos’s cock against the slick lips of her juice-drenched sex. She knew now that his length was in position, and that one easy thrust would see him inside her. She felt his hands take hold of her waist; a firm but comfortable hold which she knew put him firmly in control of her.

“You have a relentless need to fuck too, don’t you Paloma,” whispered Dr Kardos, his voice almost hoarse and husky, like a rasp being drawn slowly against hard wood. Paloma swallowed hard, barely able to speak.

“Say it. You have a relentless need to fuck, don’t you Paloma.”

“Yes,” she whimpered, “I really do.”

With that, Paloma suddenly felt the hard dome being pushed between her wet lips, which yielded willingly to the firm thrust. She felt herself being stretched inside; stretched and expanded, as his length began to fill her. Deeper and deeper it went, her sex drawing him in, every inch more becoming an invitation to go deeper. She felt his naval bump against her, letting her know that his full length was now inside her. He then began to withdraw, leaving her feeling momentarily adrift with simultaneous sensations of disappointment and desperate anticipation. When he was almost fully withdrawn, he pushed it inside her again, this time a little harder, once again all the way to the hilt. He then began to repeat the motion, in and out; stretching and withdrawing, filling and emptying, each time with ever more passion and urgency, and slowly building a rhythm.

Paloma laid her cheek against the cool, leather-bound desktop as her fingers curled around the edge of the desk. She felt his hands move round under her, cupping her full breasts in his palms through the light material of her dress, weighing them, and feeling her nipples respond against the palms of his hands as they became as firm and smooth as beach pebbles as he squeezed and teased her swollen breasts. Her body was now awash with sensations; the experience that she had craved; the experience she had laid in her bed at night and pleasured herself imagining. Her mind was filled with nothing but a swirling explosion of excitement and pleasure, as behind her Dr Kardos drove himself inside her; fucking her, fucking her, fucking her.

She reached round behind her and her fingers found his smooth, full balls. She caressed them lightly, as best she was able. As she did so she could sense that the urgency of the man behind her was increasing. He was now ramming his length inside her as though he were possessed by the very spirit of sex itself. She could not have believed how this would feel, but she wanted it to go on and on. She wanted to feel him, fucking her, stretching her from now until the end of time. But she knew that as she teased his balls, his climax was approaching. Almost instinctively she slipped her other hand down between her legs and began to vibrate the tips of her fingers against her clit. As she did so she felt her own climax surge within her.

He drove on, pounding her from behind, like an animal in heat. Suddenly, she felt instinctively that moment when she just knew he was about to spend his lust inside her. That realisation provoked her own climactic response, and as she felt Dr Kardos suddenly drive in deep and hold himself there, her own climax took hold of her. She heard Dr Kardos let out several loud grunts as his juddering cock, deep inside her, slipped wave after wave of warm, creamy lust deep inside her, at the same time as her own climax broke over her. She gripped the desk, writhed and let out loud screams of seemingly endless pleasure as her body and its wanton lust took her completely over.

Part Five: Departure

As Paloma left Dr Kardos’s surgery, she felt like a different woman. In fact, she felt so much more than a woman. She smiled at Don Francisco Farsante through the window of the shop, as he was busily selling more icons to those desperate to buy them. As she walked home along the dust track, she realised that she had left her notebook at Dr Kardos’s surgery. She smiled. Something inside her told her that it really didn’t matter.

Then, out of the light mist which still hung over the trees on the mountainside, Paloma heard a whisper. She looked to the mountains to see a velvet ribbon of lime green smoke swirling and dancing from within the mist. She smiled again. Then she watched as the exquisite plume of smoke snaked its silent way towards her. She stopped where she was, held out her arms to the sides, lifted her face to the sky and said with a smile on her face: ‘I have been waiting for you.’ Within seconds she was enveloped in the odourless smoke. Moments later she was gone, carried off to the mists of the mountains.

Postscript:

Nobody ever discovered where Paloma had disappeared to. A year after her disappearance, when it seemed clear she was not returning, Dr Kardos managed to persuade a publishing house which specialised in erotic literature to publish the stories contained within the notebook she had left at his surgery, which achieved widespread acclaim amongst those who appreciated her, and mourned her as a lost talent as a writer of erotic fiction. After her mother’s death three years later, several more notebooks which Paloma had concealed within her trunk, containing further stories and poems, were discovered and they, too, were published and equally acclaimed. She became popular, almost as a cult figure, although of course she would never have wanted that, and those who loved her work began to visit Puente de Almas to see where she had lived, to learn more about her, and to learn about the legend of Magdalena and Sofia. The town of Puente de Almas was never really the same again.

Copyright: All of my stories are written entirely by myself. Please do not copy or repost them.

Copyright 2015: claire2013 All Rights Reserved. This story may not be copied, reproduced, or linked in any manner without the express written permission of the author.