5 comments/ 10667 views/ 7 favorites Jack Valentine's Love Hearts By: Cleophila A Saint Valentine's Day Fairy Tale 'Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told me in my childhood than in the truth that is taught by life.' (Friedrich Schiller) I remember when it was spring at this time of year. Or maybe I don't. It's always hard to tell with memories. My whole childhood life is bathed in a sort of warm sunny glow, but rational thought tells me that I can't have grown up in a time of forever summer. I remember coming here years ago during my school holidays. I remember running around outside in just a thin cotton dress, the grass that had been dormant all winter now brushing against my bare legs, but perhaps I'm mixing different memories together. Even so, the harsh cold light of my contemporary life has me thinking that it's unseasonably cold for the middle of February. The wheels of my car crunch on the gravel driveway of my grandmother's cottage. I haven't been here in a few years, but seeing it now gives me a warming sense of familiarity. There's a lot of me here, or at least the me that once was, many years ago. Mentally I refer to it as my grandmother's cottage even though technically it isn't, not any more. She's been dead for five years. Actually, the last time I came here, I think now, was for the funeral. I guess it's my cottage now, at least in so much as it is anybody's. It belongs to the family jointly, but we tend to rent it out as a holiday let. I guess it's too cold at this time of year for any takers because it wasn't a problem to take it this weekend for myself. I open the car door and am welcomed with a blast of cold, wintery air. My boot cracks on the white frosty ground as I step out and breathe the fresh air. It feels good to fill my lungs with it after hours in the car's stuffiness. Even more so after spending every day commuting across the polluted city and working in an ever grey office. The sky is a pale blue colour with white clouds draped coldly across it. A thin misty vapour snakes around my ankles. There is a slight breeze in the air, light enough but cold. It seems to blow through my thick dark red hooded overcoat right though to my bare skin and bones beneath. In the distance, I can hear a single bird call in the air, optimistically awaiting the arrival of spring. Apart from that, there is a quiet lying across the tiny village that seems so unusual to my city girl ears. Glancing around as I open the boot of the car to get my suitcase, I cannot see anything or anybody out in the village's one little street. It is deserted, not populated by a single soul. Or so I think at first. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice somebody else, standing so still that at first he blended into the background. He is staring unashamedly right at me in a way that makes me feel awkward and embarrassed. I can't hold his gaze, but still feel his eyes on me as I pull my suitcase out of the car. I feel a flush of annoyance. I don't know this man but I know that I don't like him looking at me like that. It seems impolite, insolent even, to stand there watching, neither coming over to introduce himself nor turning away when his watching eye was noticed. He is standing across the road, lounging languidly against the dry stone wall that encircles the front garden of the cottage opposite my grandmother's. His face displays an arrogant haughtiness, not helped by a wispy little beard and arched eyebrows. He is dressed in a long grey coat with a high collar. At first I thought he was a statue, standing so still and grey, but I look into his eyes and, although at first they appear dark, almost black, I now percieve a bright piercing blue, the colour of the skies above. I turn my back on that bright, penetrating stare to slam the boot of the car shut with an aggressive motion that betrays how uncomfortable I feel being watched. I can't help but look back again, however, a second later, only to find that he has vanished. Still, I feel a little uncomfortable. I like to be alone sometimes, I enjoy my own company, but a part of me entertains a slight fear about what could happen to a young woman alone in the country. I half remember stories heard years ago about girls lost far from home and the strange men who could prey on them. There's a line of poetry playing on a loop in my head and I don't know where it's come from, more of a mantra perhaps than a poem. 'We must not look at goblin men, We must not buy their fruits: Who knows upon what soil they fed Their hungry thirsty roots?' I remind myself that I am not a stranger in a strange village, that I have not become lost in a dark wood. I spent so many days of my childhood here, it could be a second home. But my adult self still feels a little like an outsider, like I belong here and yet don't belong. Everything around the cottage is familiar, but not quite as I remember it through the rose tinted spectacles of nostalgia. It's as if, looking over the cottage, it is itself the not quite fully remembered image, that the real cottage is just on the edge of my mind and, if I can only summon it up correctly, the one in front of me will become the happy home of my childhood holidays. Without my grandmother there any longer, however, it is, in a sense, a sad, empty place. When I go to collect the keys to the cottage, the kindly older gent next door remembers me. He tells me how I've grown, how the last time he saw me I was barely knee high. This isn't true. He saw me at her funeral. I wonder briefly, as I take the keys from him and our concise small talk concludes, whether he remembers me there or if his whole impression of me is based on the time when he saw me as a neighbour every few months. As he shuts the door, he makes a comment asking whether I've come alone. I infer that he expects a boyfriend, a husband or something. It's not a proposition or anything creepy, just genuine curiosity and a note of surprise, perhaps. I am reminded of the kind of incessant desire to see people paired off that is part of the reason why I have finally decided to take the opportunity to retreat to this pleasant little cottage I've been avoiding for so long. I don't understand why society keeps trying to force me to find someone, like I'm not a whole or complete person on my own. It's as if everybody genuinely believes that having a lover would make all their other worries and problems disappear. I'm not an antisocial person, but I don't need somebody else with me always. Being alone is not something that I've ever felt overly troubled by. Well, except for the way people try and set you up and push you together to satisfy their own desire for neat romantic resolution. Most of the time, these ideas seem to be buzzing around in the background for most people, chattering away amongst a million other hopes and fears. However, at this time of year, everybody seems to go crazy with it. People in relationships either seem smugly gloating or desperate to push their single friends into couplings of their own. Single people seem desperate to avoid being on their own at all costs. And all this because the greetings card companies and flower sellers tell them they should. People are so suggestible. People are so annoying. I'm better off alone, sometimes, I think as I leave the neighbour's cottage. I slide the keys into the pocket of my overcoat, only to realise that I need them almost instantly as I walk up the path to the cottage. As I reach back into the pocket to fish them out from the mess old receipts, loose change, a button and a half eaten packet of mints, my hand closes around something unfamiliar. Or rather, something vaguely familiar, but which I can't place as something in my pocket. I draw it out and examine it, pausing on the threshold of the cottage even though the cold is biting. It is a little flat disc, a sort of yellow-white colour. It looks a little crumbly. There is a design on the surface, a little embossed and coloured pink. I run my finger over it and trace a heart. There are words too, it says 'Eat Me', with echoes of Alice and her cake. It's not just that though, those two simple words conjure myriad meanings, the printed text offering no tone or emphasis. Is it simply making a pragmatic request, is 'eat me' insultingly dismissive or, perhaps, suggestive in a different way, a sexual way? I don't know how to take those words and it bothers me that much less smart people wouldn't be troubled by that. I recognise it as a 'love heart', one of those chalky sherbet type sweets with little words and messages of fondness or flirtiness to share with a loved one. I haven't seen one in years, I'm kind of surprised that they still make them. I never remember them being the nicest, sweetest of treats. These days, they're apparently all printed in txtspeak anyway. Phrases like 'Me + U 4Ever' at least save on printing costs, even if it's hardly 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day, thou art more lovely and more temperate'. Catching my thoughts being cynical and snobbish, I stop myself. I'm not bitter about love. It doesn't much matter to me that I've never met a man to share my interests with, to share my life with, to share myself with. I secretly doubt that there is such a man anyway, so why bother myself too much over it. I look again at the sugary disc in my hand. It seems odd to see just one all alone. Love hearts usually come in packets, all matched up with others of their kind. This solitary candy piece seems almost lonely. A little lonely heart just like me. I did the whole lonely hearts thing once. Never again. That was not the path to meeting a sensible, normal guy. I contemplate this lonely heart's message and decide against taking up its offer. Instead I slip it back into my pocket and take the keys out. Taking a deep breath, I open the door and step through the doorway into my grandmother's cottage. I don't know what I expect to happen to me and my memories of this place as I enter the cottage and shut the door behind me, but all I feel is a little empty, even a little disappointed that I don't feel some kind of grief. It's been a few years now, I guess I'm moving on. I take a look around and everything is solid and familiar, but it is as if I'm seeing it from a distance, as if through the wrong end of a telescope or like I'm seeing through someone's eyes but my own. I'm overthinking it again. It is every bit as cold inside the cottage as it is outside. I get the feeling that there hasn't been anybody staying here in a little while. I flick a switch to bring the heating on and hear the boiler whir to life, but I know it's going to be a little while before the cottage is warm. It's a fairly small space with a low ceiling with wood beams, so it shouldn't take too long to heat up, but in this cold even that feels a bit of a wait. There's an old fashioned fireplace as well and I decide, even though I hadn't been intending to, that I should light a fire. The idea of a fire seems appealingly traditional, feels like it will make the place cosy with more than just the literal warmth of its glowing flame. The ground floor of the cottage is small enough to be all one open plan room except for the little bathroom beside the stairs. The fireplace is at the heart of the living area, beyond that is a kitchen area with a gas oven and four gas burners. I'm glad that I've bought a carton of milk with me as the fridge is completely empty. I turn on the gas, hoping the blue flame will help the cottage heat up, and put an old metallic saucepan full of milk on to heat while I get the fire ready. The kitchen window looks out onto the cottage's back garden, covered in crisp, bluish coloured frost. The sun is starting to set over it, the low lying light making the crystals of frost sparkly like fairy lights. I recall warmer, sunnier days and rushing around that garden playing at being a heroic knight errant, rescuing a beautiful damsel, also me, from a wicked witch, usually played by my grandmother. Beyond the low stone wall and tangled weeds and brambles at the foot of the garden, there is a path and a rather feeble stream beyond which there is nothing but low empty fens. The fens, those damp, dirty marshes, always held a kind of scary fascination for me as a child. I was never allowed to play there, I was told that the wet marshlands were a place where a little girl could get lost all too easily, that the landscape was deceptively treacherous, that you would not know when you stepped on something that looked solid if it might in fact suck you in. On evenings like this one, the fens are shrouded in thin slivers of mist and seem to give off an eldritch light that has no discernible source. I catch myself staring out at the fens, lost in my own thoughts, and make sure I go out to the coal shed. I leave the cottage by the rustic looking solid wood back door into the garden and go around to the side of the building where, as I remember, a little shed holds coal for the fire. There's a little stack of dusty black lumps of coal on one side of the shed, while a helpful local woodcutter had come over at some point and chopped up some logs. I grab a couple of these and fill the coal scuttle, covering my already dusty red overcoat with coal dust and woodchips, when I spot something in amongst the pile of black coal, something blue. Putting the scuttle down, I reach to pick up this mystery object and let out a little sigh of surprise as it reveals itself. I brush the rest of the dark smudges of dust from it to be sure, but I was right, it's a little flat disc of pale blue sugar. Another love heart. I think that it's a bit of a strange coincidence after the one I found in my pocket earlier. I wonder how long it's been in the shed, it's dirty and dusty enough that it's hard to tell for sure. I know that sugar tends to keep without getting mouldy. It could be any age. I wonder if perhaps I was the one who lost it as a child. The message written on the sweet with smudged red food dye is, however, not like any that I recall seeing on love hearts before. For a start, it has a lot more words than the simple phrases I'm used to seeing, so much so that I have to hold it up to the light from the cottage window in order to read it. The words are not exactly romantic, but then not exactly unromantic either. Mostly they're just cryptic. The blue love heart's message reads: 'When the wind has laughed and murmured and sung, The lonely of heart is withered away.' Lonely hearts again. It seems to me like the world is out to convince me that lonely is how I should be feeling tonight without a partner. Even the candy is against me! I feel almost like it could be protesting too much to insist that I do not particularly need nor desire the withering away of my loneliness. Or maybe it is suggesting that I myself will wither away due to my loneliness. Not the most pleasant thought there. Given that I had just pulled it from an old coal shed, I decide not to eat this one either. I slip it into the pocket of my red hooded coat with the other, neither such lonely hearts now, before picking up the logs and coal scuttle and returning to the cottage. As I do, I continue to wonder about the coincidence of discovering these two similar sweets together within minutes, two of a type of candy I hadn't thought about in years. Probably not since when I used to come here as a child. I ponder once more whether it could have been me leaving things here. A memory comes back of being here about twenty years earlier, in this garden, on this same night of the year, and being given a shiny pink tube shaped packet of just these love hearts, albeit with more conventional slogans. Although, come to think of it, I wasn't really given them. They were left on the doorstep. I remember my grandmother telling me a little story, a fairytale, about Jack Valentine. According to my grandmother, Jack Valentine was the Valentine's fairy, but rather than being a cupid figure spreading romantic love with his arrows of desire, he was more of a Santa Claus type. Every year, on the night of February 13th, Jack Valentine would come from over the fens and knock on the door of every child in the village. He would leave a small gift or some sweet things on the doorstep and then, just as the child opened the door, would snatch it away. Just as the door was shut on the now empty doorstep, Jack Valentine would knock again and the present would be there again, only for it to be snatched away once more when the child went to get it. How many times this ritual went back and forth seems to have varied from household to household depending, I now suspect, on the commitment to the story of the parents or grandparents. However, in the end, the child would have got his or her little packet of sweet candy and the story would have ended quite happily. I don't know why, but part of me always found Jack Valentine a little bit of a sinister character. The idea of this strange fairy creeping across the weird fens to come knocking at my door, leaving me anonymous sweet gifts, made me quite uncomfortable. I had always felt safe and secure in the cosy surrounds of the cottage, but on this night it had seemed that it was not such an impregnable stronghold as I had imagined, that it could be penetrated by the fairy trickery and magic from across the fens. I shudder, partly at the fact that I am still standing in the cold, partly at the memory of how what should have been a special treat as a child had actually given me the creeps. I shut the door behind me, shutting out both the cold and my childhood fears, and dump the coal and logs by the fireplace. The pan has boiled and I pour the hot milk into a mug and stir in some cocoa powder until it goes a thick brown consistency. Sipping the chocolatey drink, finally starting to feel warm inside, I kneel in the fireplace and clear it of the ash of past fires. The knees of my old jeans are getting covered in soot, but I'm not overly bothered. I plan on shutting myself in the cottage in front of the fire, drinking my cocoa and burying myself in a good book. I have no intention of leaving the growing warmth of this small space tonight and, thus, have no concern about looking my best. It's quite a pleasant, liberating feeling. Despite this, I brush a little coal dust from my coat as I drape it over a chair and put a match to the kindling and coal I have arranged in the old fireplace. I feel a triumphant jump in my stomach as the flame ignites first time and soon I am warming my hands over its orange glow. I sit myself down in a comfortably ragged armchair by the fire and pull my knees up to my chest protectively. My shapeless knitted sweater is too long for my arms after being put through too many washes, but I enjoy the sense of its frayed sleeve covering my hands, one wrapped around the warm mug of cocoa, the other leafing through the book I have taken from my bag. Choosing appropriate reading material for this trip proved surprisingly tricky. I turned my nose up at romantic stories about soul mates finding each other and living happily ever after. And yet picking stories with no romance in them seemed once again to be trying too hard to avoid thinking about my own single status. In the end, I decided that all the true classic love stories are tragedies anyway, and that I had a plentiful choice by dipping into some of the delightfully leather bound books with yellowing leaves that I had inherited from my grandmother. The story I am reading is 'Tristram of Lyonesse', the classic tragedy of Tristram and Iseult as written in that era of Victorian King Arthur enthusiasm. Before too long, I find myself lost in the world of mediaeval heroism, chivalry and courtly love. I linger on the passages that describe Iseult and her noble rescuer Tristram drinking the love potion intended for the lady and her husband and the yearning feelings of mixed desire and fear before they consummate their union. Jack Valentine's Love Hearts 'And shuddering with eyes full of fear and fire And heart-stung with a serpentine desire He turned and saw the terror in her eyes That yearned upon him shining in such wise As a star midway in the midnight fixed. Their Galahault was the cup, and she that mixed; Nor other hand there needed, nor sweet speech To lure their lips together; each on each Hung with strange eyes and hovered as a bird Wounded, and each mouth trembled for a world; Their heads neared, and their hands were drawn in one, And they saw dark, though still the unsunken sun Far through fine rain shot fire into the south; And their four lips became one burning mouth.' I blink and then wake up. It's dark outside. The dregs of my cocoa are cold in the mug in my hand. The fire is dying into glowing embers and the book has slid from my hands. I'm not sure what time it is, how long ago the sun set nor how long I have been asleep. I had gone so far into the world of the book that I have passed some time, between sleeping and waking, in the surroundings of mediaeval romance and it takes me a few moments to set straight what is the dream world, what the book world and what are my real surroundings. I stand up, stretch and yawn. I go over to the fire and poke at the embers until I get a bit of a flame back and then add some more lumps of coal. In a couple of minutes I've got a real fire going again. The rest of the room is in semi-darkness and the flickering flames of the fire produce a dance of light and shadow shapes on the cottage's opposite wall. With the room this dark, I begin to be able to see outside through the window. There is a bright moon, almost full. It glints off the marshy waters of the fens opposite, giving the illusion of light that I always found so fascinatingly disconcerting. I feel myself drawn to it, I am excited by the mystery the marshes offer. As I stare out of the window, however, my eye is caught by some light and colour that I had not previously noticed. I think to myself that I must be seeing a trick of the light, a combination of the bright moon and growing cold breeze, but it looks like where there just weeds and messy hedgerows earlier this afternoon, flowers in scarlet and violet have blossomed in the night. I know that it's foolish to go out into the cold in the middle of the night chasing an optical illusion, but I am curious. Part of me wonders whether my garden might genuinely have been filled with roses while I slept. At worst, I'll just be a little cold and embarrassed when I see nothing but overgrown hedges and wet marshland. There isn't anybody here to laugh at me. I pull on my boots and open the door to a blast of February cold, which causes the fire to flicker more violently than before. I let the fire settle and then step out into the garden, dressed in just my shapeless knitwear, no need for more when I'll be back in a few seconds. I walk over towards the low stone wall that borders the garden and the fens opposite. Sure enough, to my slight surprise, there really are dark crimson roses and indigo coloured violets springing up from a bush that I could have sworn was not a rose bush earlier this afternoon. This is pretty weird, I think to myself, shivering with the cold. In fact, it's weird enough that it makes a strange kind of sense when I spot a purple disc of sugary candy nestling amongst the petals of a particularly luscious red rose. I reach out and take it and remain somewhat unsurprised to see fading red letters roughly embossed into the heart design. Once again, the motto appears more than a little cryptic. 'Bathe with roses red and violets blue, All the sweetest flowers that in the forest grew.' I don't pretend to have any idea what that means. My head feels light and confused from the unexpected sleep and dreams that I have just woken from. For some reason, I find the idea of bathing in rose petals a supremely tempting one at that moment. It seems to offer a sensual relaxation that I have not enjoyed for a long time. I also begin to feel an overwhelming urge to eat the sweet as if that will somehow conspire to make the words printed on it come true for me. I must still be half dreaming, because there's still a part of my mind telling me not to be so stupid. I shake the dream logic from my head and turn to go back inside, but, as I do so, I notice another flat round love heart on the floor beside my feet. And another a foot or so further away. And another. There's a little trail of them leading from the seemingly magical rose bush back towards the doorway of the cottage. How they can have got there without me noticing as I walked out here is a mystery to me. I am enchanted by the sweet trail. Somewhere in my mind, it conjures up images of the story of the children leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to lead them home. And all the time these images are running through my head, I am, almost unconsciously, following the trail back to my own cottage, my eyes glued to the ground in front of me as if fearful of missing a step even though I know exactly where they are leading me. The firelight from within the cottage falls on me as I return to my doorway, but it is blocked momentarily by a dark shadow. Finally, I look up from the love heart trail to see him standing there. It's the man from earlier in the afternoon, the one who was staring at me from across the street. He is blocking my path back inside with a wide lopsided grin that speaks of mischief and desire. Over his shoulder, the flickering fire makes it look as though he is wreathed in flame. His crystal eyes dance, the blue points against dark like stars.reflected in a midnight lake. My heart skips a beat and then pounds faster to catch up. Is this fear? Or excitement? I can't tell. There is no longer a single note of surprise in my mind, however, when I see the red disc in his hand is another love heart. The message, printed in white text not red, is so long and in such tiny writing that it should be impossible to read in the dim glow of firelight and yet I can see every word as if it is burned into my brain. 'Marked where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound. The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid Will make or man or woman madly dote Upon the next live creature that it sees.' I open my mouth to speak, to ask any of the million questions flying confusedly around my head. Before I can say a word, he takes a step towards me and puts out his hand. I don't lift a finger of my own as he reaches out with his and touches me on the lips, signalling me to remain silent. Remarkably, as he does this, my need to question abates. I feel happy just to have my curiosity sated by how this situation progresses. It is as if I am willing to go along with whatever is about to happen just to find out exactly what it is. In his other hand, he holds the love heart, that fascinating piece of strange candy. He moves his finger from my lips and my mouth opens as he puts the love sweet into my mouth. I can feel the sugary taste on my tongue and I expect the slightly chalky disappointment that the thought of these sweets conjures up in my memory. The taste on my tongue right now, however, is nothing at all like that. It fizzes like champagne, it's sweet as sugar, but with the taste of luscious fruits and berries all thrown in together. I offer no resistance, indeed I feel almost helpless as he takes me in his arms and pulls me into him. I open my mouth slightly and he stops it with his lips. He pushes his body against me but he feels lights as a feather, his lips are soft but mine are burning with desire as they come together as one. The curves of my body form themselves against his. I feel myself swoon a little as he holds me across my shoulders and holds my bottom lip in his mouth. I gasp for air momentarily and hold on to him as if I am slipping away. My eyelids flutter delicately as his tongue slips between our lips and into my mouth. My hands are in his hair. I feels thick, soft and luxuriant like the coat of a beautiful animal. He pulls me into the warmth of the cottage and I kick the door shut and kick off my boots in what seems like a single fluid movement. As the door slams the wind builds up, beginning to howl and rattle the windows. I'm distracted instantly from the world outdoors, though, as he covers my lips with kisses once more and I'm staring into those deep dark eyes. My mouth can taste his, but it is a taste that is intermingled with the sparkling and fizzing of the strange sweet I have eaten. My body feels more alive than it has done in a long while. Every part of me is aching to feel his touch. His tongue rubbing against mine tastes so sweet. His hand slides down my back as he pulls me in to kiss me again and again, moving from my mouth down my neck. Meanwhile, he pulls at my shapeless knitted sweater, tugging the whole lot of it up and over my head, leaving me in just my sensible black cotton bra. I offer no resistance as he, almost instantly, unclasps this, frees my naked white breasts and casts the bra aside. I hear myself sigh as I feel his long fingers on my bare chest, cupping and caressing the pale mounds of warm flesh as his kisses continue to move down my neck. His tongue starts to run down my collar bone and in between my breasts, while his hands run down my side to my waist. As he kisses my breasts, his hands, so gently that I barely notice it happening, have unbuttoned my jeans. In a moment he slips his hands into the waistband and drops my jeans around my ankles. Dressed just in my plain blue panties I felt exposed but excited. As he stands up in front of me, my body almost all on show, I can feel his eyes burning into me. They are so deep and dark that the colour in them is hard to see at first, but as he eyes me up I can see sparkles of blue shining in them once again as when I first saw him. His thick dark eyebrows are arched tempting me, taunting me, inviting me to enjoy him. His mouth curls into a hungry looking smile, a lopsided look wider on one half than the other to show his surprisingly sharp incisor. He has the appearance of something primal, bestial, a strong and irresistible desire. I can't help myself as I place my hand on his chest, sliding his shining grey overcoat off his arms and onto the floor with my clothes. Beneath this he is wearing a shirt of an unusual shimmering material and tight trousers. I tear this shirt open with a passion that I didn't know I could possess and reveal his naked chest. He is skinny but his muscles are firm and taught and his chest is covered with curls of hair matching his beard. I've never found chest hairs especially desirable on a man, but right now nothing feels so right as running my hand across his chest, feeling that soft hair running through my fingers. His hands grasp my buttocks, fondling me, getting me hot and bothered. Pulling me back into another kiss I feel a lightheaded thrill as he slides my sensible panties, the last item covering my modesty, right over my naked thighs. I am completely naked in the middle of my grandmother's cottage, the fire flickering higher and higher, lighting up my body's shapes and curves. Outside the wind is becoming stronger and stronger, huffing and puffing, blowing at the windows, but the cottage remains strong and sturdy and all my attention is on the strange man in front of me. He takes me by the shoulders and pushes me down to my knees on the soft woollen rug that lies before the fire, kissing over my neck and breasts as he does so. As I kneel in front of the fire, he kneels before me and pushes me back further until I'm lying on my back on the rug. He positions himself between my legs and pushes my knees open. I am about to give my body up to this man I've never even spoken too and I could hardly be more needy for it, my body burns to feel him inside me. His face is now between my legs and my heart is pounding in my chest. He kisses my naked white thighs and I find myself holding my breath in anticipation of what is to come. And then his tongue slips right between my thighs and starts gently to play around my labia, causing an abrupt gasp of arousal to escape my mouth. Gradually his tongue swirls around my wetness, moving inside until it is penetrating me, before flicking back and forth over my aroused and desperate clitoris. I've never felt so good, never had such expert oral attention to my moist sex. It makes my whole body tingle with pleasure, making me writhe and squirm, desperate for him to hit just the right spot to drive me wild, abandoning myself completely to the skills of his lips and tongue. I know, though, that I want more, so wet and hungry with desire I want him completely inside me, I want him to take my body for his. No words are exchanged between us but he seems to sense just what I'm thinking. Either that or he wants just the same thing. Those dark, thick eyebrows are take on a purely suggestive appearance as he pulls his tight trousers off to reveal he is already hard and as fuelled by pure lust-filled desire as I am. I hope that the light in my eyes as the fire flickers and reflects off them, the look on my face, the smile on my lips, all serve to tell him how much I want this, to invite him in just as obviously as his own expression tells me he wants me, a compliment more thrilling than any spoken out loud. Lying over me, his face close above mine, he enters me. I feel all his hardness push up inside me, rubbing against me, exciting me in a way that I haven't felt in what feels like forever. Arching my back, I push my hips up to meet him, wrapping my bare legs around his thighs, wanting to draw him deeper and deeper inside me. I feel him thrust inside me, gentle strokes at first, becoming harder and deeper, pushing right into me, my body filled with electric flushes. Like that burning feeling inside me, the fire sparks and flares up, casting great wild shadows of our passionate lovemaking across the room. Outside the wind howls as my mouth cries out in echo at how my body is being taken over by pleasure. Deeper and deeper he thrusts, not just opening my legs but my heart and soul. Every part of me feels for once united in a single purpose, a desire to reach an ultimate expression of pleasure. He covers my 'o' shaped mouth with a kiss and the blue crystals in his eyes stare into mine and I'm lost in the galaxy that fizzes and sparkles there like the taste of the love heart still on my tongue. I know it's coming now. I know I'm close and in his eyes I see that he knows it too. My body becomes tense in anticipation as my hips still rise to meet his thrusts. And then it hits me. Almost literally hits me with a tsunami of pleasure. My orgasm crashes over me and it is like all the cares have been washed right from me in a moment of incredible release. My mind is lifted to an unimaginable high. I have had men make me come before but never quite like this. This fills every fibre of my being with a sense of absolute joy. Aftershocks rise and crash over me leaving me gasping and light headed. I don't know if he had a moment of climax to match mine. I open my mouth to speak but once more he puts his finger to my lips and suddenly I feel quite exhausted. I have a feeling that the night has satisfied all other needs within me and I now want nothing but sleep. Feeling bathed in a warm glow of contentment I lie there naked on the rug by the flickering fire. He wraps the woollen rug around me, tucking me in as my eyelids begin to drop. I never see him leave, never know if he departs across the misty fens or simply vanishes into the air. I never know if he instead just crosses the street and returns to his own cottage. I am fast asleep in seconds and slumber deep, happy and uninterrupted for hours. I wake up lying on the cosy rug in front of what remains of the fire, a tiny orange glow amongst grey ash the only testament to its former burning glory. Outside there is a near total quiet that is almost harder to sleep through for someone like me, used to the aggressive traffic sounds of the city. This silence is only occasionally broken by the twittering of birds outside the window, joining the lone, solitary creature of the day before. The sun streams through the uncurtained window, warming my naked skin, yesterday's harsh frost replaced by a gentle heat. I stretch and yawn and begin to sit up. My mind remains hazy, trying to recall things, trying to piece together the events of the night before. I rub my eyes and attempt to clear my head, get my thoughts in order. Beside the rug I see my near empty mug of cocoa and 'Tristram of Lyonesse' lying open, pages down, as if casually discarded. I remember falling asleep with the book in my hands and the cocoa unfinished. I remember this and then... Why was I naked on the rug? And then the rest of the night before comes back to me as my hands run over the rest of my bare, exposed flesh. Now I recall the dark eyed stranger with his curls of hair and suggestive lopsided smile. I remember the sweet candy, the electric taste on my tongue and him pushing me to the ground right here on the rug. My mind dwells on the completeness and contentment as he entered me, took over my body. But it seems so unreal, so dreamlike. I don't know whether to believe any of it ever happened, yet the thought feels good none the less. More by instinct than thought that hand which had been touching my body as if to make sure I am all still there now strays between my naked legs as my memory dwelt on the night before. However, instead of the wet openness my fingers expected to find, there is something else, a soft, thin curve of something delicate and organic. I sit up further and take out whatever lay between my legs. It is a set of crimson rose petals like those that had appeared amongst the weed filled hedgerow at the end of the garden last night. Looking out of the window now I see nothing of the sort, just the garden, its weed covered wall and, beyond that, the endless empty marshlands of the fens. I turn my attention back to the fresh petals in my hand with no idea of where they have come from. I feel something wrapped inside them, something harder. Filled with curiosity I peel back the petals and fill the empty room with my laugh at what I find. It's a little white disc of chalky candy, a red heart shape and words printed on top. Once more the message is more of a verse than a simple phrase. 'If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumbered here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme No more yielding but a dream.' Later on, at the end of the weekend as I pack my bag to leave my grandmother's cottage, my cottage, and return to the city, I am unable to find this piece of verbose candy. It's possible that I ate it, although I don't remember doing so. It's equally possible that I imagined it, that it was the last lingering vestige of a fevered fantasy. Either way, it has already done its job, along with all the other sweet hearts. Whatever the truth of that night it has opened my own heart to new and happier possibilities. I no longer feel such.determination to be, myself, a lonely heart. The morning of my departure is warm and mild. The crunch of the gravel beneath my feet is no longer the crunch of frost and ice and there is a new spring in my step. A spring matched by the spring that now fills the pleasant rural air. My mind feels as clear as the sky, not filled with a thousand competing thoughts, doubts and questions. I am even looking forward to returning to my city life with a renewed optimism and desire to be more outgoing. As I return the keys to the kindly older chap he compliments me on how well I look. I'm positively glowing in his estimation and the compliment gives me a giddy, childish pleasure. I almost wonder whether there is a knowing look in the twinkle in his eyes but it's probably just my mind playing tricks again so I thank him and turn to leave. Jack Valentine's Love Hearts As I load my suitcase into the car there is nobody watching me as there was when I arrived, but my attention is elsewhere. I am looking forward, anticipating a future in which anything could happen. In this pleasant weather I'm wearing just a more flattering vest top beneath my red hooded coat and even then the overcoat is a little warm. As I slam the boot of the car and walk back around to the driver's door I reach back into the pocket of my coat for my keys. My heart pumps faster as it closes around a familiar sugary disc. I pull it from my pocket as I slide myself behind the wheel of the car, a yellow piece of candy with a pink heart shape printed on it. Spelled out in pink letters I can clearly see two words: 'Eat me'. THE END Author's Note: - Jack Valentine is a character in the folkloric traditions of Norfolk in the East of England. A kind of Valentines version of Santa Claus, he traditionally leaves presents and candy for children on their doorsteps on the eve of St. Valentine's Day. - This story quotes from a number of existent texts, all out of copyright and in the public domain, and available in full online. These are 'The Piccolomini' by Friedrich Schiller, 'Goblin Market' by Christina Rossetti, 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' by Lewis Carroll, 'The Land of Heart's Desire' by William Butler Yeats, 'Tristram of Lyonesse' by Algernon Charles Swinburne, 'The Faerie Queene' by Edmund Spenser and 'Sonnet 18' and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' by William Shakespeare.