Sunday 27 April 2014

Sunday, April 27, 2014 -

From Innocence to Experience

by Abigail Armani
Published: Mar 27, 2014
Words: 35,925
Category: romance, bdsm
Orientation: M/F
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OPENING EXTRACT
She struggled up the hill, head down, shoulders hunched against the biting wind and icy rain that battered her face. Her hands were numb with cold, for no sooner had she put them in her pockets, a vicious wind tugged off her hood for the rain to pummel her head. Defeated, she gave up the battle of trying to hold her hood in place, so now thick strands of sopping wet hair blew wildly, whipping her frozen face as the wind gusted. Her feet were blocks of ice and every bone in her body ached with weariness as she trudged on, water spurting and squelching out of her flimsy court shoes with each laborious step.

Not that she particularly cared. No job. No money. No husband. No future. Nothing really mattered any more. Her spirits matched the grey November afternoon, paltry sunlight already dimming as the fading sun sank between the hills behind the great wood. She passed a cottage or two, shuttered windows hiding the warmth and light within, giving a bleak and unwelcoming external appearance to passers by.

A dog shouldn't be out in this weather. She smiled grimly, and continued battling against the wind, neither knowing where she was bound, nor caring. The wind grew in strength and began howling like a raging beast. Trees by the roadside creaked and bent in a mad dance, branches arching, contorting, snapping, screaming as they were whipped by the wind. Then with a sudden capricious twist, the wind changed direction, blowing her effortlessly up the steep hill. She experienced a n unexpected surge of elation and almost laughed as she became a matchstick kite, fragile and insignificant, tugged and hurled and whirled at the mercy of the elements.

The force of the wind propelled her. Up she stumbled, bumbling along at a staggering pace while all around her the world shrieked as the wind blew and the relentless rain pounded. Up and up she went, gasping, spluttering, blinking through water-logged eyes, water cascading down her cheeks, trickling down her neck, soaking her skin.

And then the cacophony quieted ... hushed ... stopped, leaving her panting, saturated and exhausted. She found herself clinging on to an old stone gatepost at the edge of a field by the road, embracing it as though it were a lover. She appeared to have lost a shoe and her coat was a teeming river, blanketing her in its sodden folds. It felt strangely comforting, inviting her to sleep in its chill grasp. Her eyes closed as she rested her frozen face against the pillar of wet blackened stone.

He saw her through the glare of his headlamps as he rounded the bend in the Landrover; she was a moulded shape in the greyness, her contours melting into the stone, gradually being enveloped by the encroaching darkness. Concerned, he slowed to a halt and observed her through the windscreen as the wiper blades moved rapidly to dispel the torrential rain. A moment later he snapped open his seat belt and approached her, striding across the road and onto the sodden grass beyond.