It seemed every cab in the city had passed her by. In fact, some had probably circled around just to really piss her off, she thought to herself. The relentless rain poured down. The water-logged copy of the evening news was a miserable substitute for her umbrella. That had been turned inside out by a gust of wind, like a pair of laundered socks, and she had dumped it ungraciously in the nearest trash can. Her raincoat was virtually worthless. ìDamn that dry cleaner! He promised it wouldnít hurt the waterproofing. God damn it!î Her silk blouse adhered to her skin like a childís soak-and-peel tattoo. The wind skittered around the bottom of her coat, tickling her calves and drawing any body heat off through her sodden stockings. In that moment, she couldnít remember ever being any more uncomfortable. Just as she turned and was about to give up on humanity and taxi drivers forever, she saw a flash out of the corner of her eye. Turning back over her shoulder, a cab was forcing its way over to the curb from the second lane, high beams insisting on getting her attention. She stopped until the late model GM sedan could maneuver up next to her. She thought wryly to herself, ìYou see, you just have to get pissed off enough that someone finally notices.î But, still, a grateful smile escaped her lips and she slipped inside the back door. The darkness of the interior robbed her of her sight momentarily. The aromas of the carpet, the upholstered seats, the bodies, cigarettes and perfumes of a thousand passengers before her filled her head. ìAre you headed uptown?î In that same instant she became aware of her fellow rider sitting across from her. Her eyes were still adjusting, straining to gather up what few light waves passed through the tinted windows from the street outside. She could only make out a hint of his shape. ìYes, 77th and Lex,î she said, turning to repeat the directions to the driver. ìThanks for stopping, I really appreciate it.î ìMy pleasure. Something about a night not fit for man nor beast, and certainly not a lady soaked to the skin.î She couldnít tell if he smiled at his own twist on the cliche. As the humidity rose off her coat and hit the chilled glass it steamed the windows like a bathroom mirror. The effect was to throw him into silhouette against a diffused halo of back light, obliterating any details. Her mind raced to fill in the blanks and she began to paint a picture of the mysterious companion on the canvas of darkness. She settled into her own private corner of the back seat and stared out the window, now sand-blasted with condensation. So, who was this man? What did he look like? And why had he noticed her on the street? She wondered all these things to herself. But then her thoughts drifted off after nothing in particular. As she watched the storefronts crawl by, she was startled by a sensation on her leg, just above her knee. She brushed at the nonexistent distraction. Was that her coat falling against her skin, or had he grazed her? And was it an accident, or had he intentionally reached out in the darkness to touch her? She laughed at her own thought. How could anyone be so brazen, especially in this town, the capital of keep-to-yourself anonymity. The passing street lights counted off the minutes; maybe five, maybe ten. Then she felt it again. Just a pair of fingertips lighting along the side of her knee where her skirt ended. Along with it came a sensation in the pit of her stomach. Not one of fear or uneasiness, but one of excitement and wondering. Should she respond? Should she turn and confront him? ìGet your fucking hands off of me, you creep!î Something told her this would be an inappropriate response to her savior. Perhaps she should continue to feign unawareness. She decided this was the best course, at least until she knew where this was going. Maybe, without any response, heíll just fade back into the shadow. Or would he get bolder until she couldnít deny it any longer? The feeling in her stomach had begun to spread up into her chest and out toward her shoulders. She recognized its resemblance to giddiness. Her mouth began to go dry. All of a sudden she flashed on a pre-pubescent memory of her bodyís first stirrings triggered by a brief eye contact with one of the boys in her grade school class. She couldnít even remember his name right now, but for the first time since she was twelve she recalled that moment and the flood of sensations and the thoughts beyond the grasp of her understanding. It was just like what she felt right now. As she replayed that long-buried memory in her mind, she also carefully kept monitoring the present situation. His fingertips continued to lightly stroke, almost imperceptibly, just above the side of her knee. In a heartbeat she decided her unresponsiveness could no longer be sustained. She reached out and returned his touch on the back of his hand. He stopped, inverted his hand and gave her fingers a gentle squeeze, accepting her acknowledgement. They had entered into an unspoken agreement. He returned his attentions to her thigh, only now with a tacit approval. She settled back into her seat and closed her eyes. The arhythmic blaring of dozens of taxi horns and the crackling of the dispatcherís radio were the only sounds. The light filtering through the moisture on the window danced across her eyelids. Her mind seemed to take on a divided vision, like a chameleon, with one part of her consciousness training an eye on the present, and another keeping an eye rotated toward the past. The strangerís hand now insistently invaded her inner thigh. Keeping with their silent contract, she relaxed and her legs parted slightly. Meanwhile, more memories began to surface. Shuffling awkwardly at the seventh grade dance with her first ìboyfriendî as he pressed his hormone-engorged penis against her hipbone; not having thought about this in over two decades, she suddenly understood why he had groaned softly in her ear and then excused himself to the bathroom when the song ended. Then there was an all-consuming crush on her social studies teacher, a journeyman educator just out of college. She often lay in bed at night, touching herself, and wondering what he would look like naked. She tried to imagine him touching the sprouting nubs on her chest and what that would feel like. She tried to picture him lying on top of her, his member where her fingers were now, but this was beyond her experience and the image was fuzzy and undefined. The warm fingers of her unseen companion found the top of her stockings. Just a handís width across bare skin and he would find her panties, now beginning to feel damp like her blouse. She opened herself, inviting him to explore further. The first contact of skin to skin was the like the heat of an overburdened electrical cord sucking too much energy through itself. Another memory: of the first time she was ever touched ìdown thereî. It felt incredibly strange and foreign, not at all like when she touched herself. In a way it wasnít pleasant, too rough. But there was something suggestive in it, suggestive of the possibilties of more. Now she was experiencing those possibilities. His finger found the edge of her panties. Her secretions seeped forth, making the cloth barrier a mere formality. His digit found the center of her sex and she bit her lip in a combination of satisfaction, ìFinally.î, and anticipation, ìPlease.î He began a slow circumambulation, like a pilgrim at a shrine. She began to push her pelvis in a counter-rhythm, increasing and decreasing the pressure he put on her bud. Her mind integrated the two experiences, the past and the present, into one. In a sort of liquid reality she was a teenager again, exploring the frontiers of her sensuality, only this time there was no fear of a midnight curfew or, worse, her ìreputationî being spread around school. She was there living out that common adult fantasy of ìif I had known then what I know now.î Here it was, then and now all rolled into one. His fingers slipped past the edge of her panties. For a moment they felt cool against her moist warmth. Then, there was a heat from inside as first one finger slipped through her puffy lips then a second. He was finger fucking her, there was no other way to put it, and it was delicious. She felt the weight of his body as he slid across next to her. With his free hand he deftly unbuttoned her blouse, tugging it out from the waistband of her skirt. He peeled it back from her skin like peeling back the latex skin from the top of a not-quite-closed can of paint to reveal the hidden color underneath. He pushed her bra up off her breasts, immediately swooping down to take one almost entirely in his mouth while he cupped the other in his hand. His palm was warm on her rain-cooled skin and his tongue was soft on her nipple. She remembered the first time sheíd had her breasts fondled. It was that summer at the lake and her older brotherís best friend, Jim, had been the one. They had been swimming most of the day, playing water games, and he had caught her underwater a couple of times, but in the liquid realm they had casually slipped past each other with none of the others noticing. Back at the cabin, as the sun went down, he approached her from behind as she hung her towel on the old clothesline. She was still wearing the bikini that covered her burgeoning breasts and showed off her hips that were losing their boyish slimness. He kissed her on the nape of her neck while his arms wrapped under hers to cup her youthful mounds. She froze, then melted, turning to him, his mouth on hers, while he squeezed her bikini top and pinched her nipples just a little too hard. Though sheíd wished for it to happen again, that was the last contact they ever had. Now her attentive companion was delicately feasting on the sweetness of her bosom, licking her cleavage like he was catching an errant drip from a summer ice cream cone. All the while his other hand was still slurping in and out of the cleft between her legs, stopping regularly to do a circle dance on her clitoris, raising her to a fevered pitch. The hair on her mound was matted with wetness and the scent of her arousal wove itself into the olfactory tapestry of the cab. In the past her lovers had always just manipulated her sex to prepare her to be penetrated by their cocks. They poked and prodded in a way that never even had her approach the edge of, much less fly off the precipice of climax. Only one had ever ventured to lick the secret folds of her femininity. But now her new lover was touching her in a way completely unlike she would touch herself but also in a way she had always wished for. The upsurge of impending orgasm swelled in her, first in her loins, then rising through her belly, then pouring back down on her cunt like molten steel being poured from the blast furnace. As the sensation hit home it splattered and sparked out across her body, her back arching to absorb it. As a girl she had always felt like an object of some boyís sexual exploration, but too scared to venture out on her own. Now, emboldened by the wanton actions of her shadowy lover, she reached out to discover more of him and herself. She quickly found the front to his trousers and reached through the opening of his shorts to grasp his erection. It was smooth and the skin was taut. She ran her finger along the seam on the underside of his shaft. It led her to the mushroom-capped crown which she ran over with her thumb like fingering a worry stone. A drop of liquid lubricated the pad of her thumb as she rolled it over the head of his cock and then began to stroke his length. She remembered the revulsion she felt the first time she ever heard about taking a manís penis into her mouth. The sheer foreignness of the idea stayed with her right up until a guy in college had pushed her head into his crotch, urging her to suck him. Over the years she had performed a number of blow jobs, never enthusiastically. Now, in the safety of the darkness, she freed his cock, exposing it to the night air. Holding down the waistband of his shorts, she slipped down on his shaft with her mouth until his pubic hair tickled her nose. She slid back up, lightly grazing her teeth along the top and bottom before sucking her mouth back down on him. His cock danced and jerked in her mouth and she delighted in the sensations she must be causing. She clamped her lips over the head of his cock while she bathed it with her tongue. Her thumb and forefinger making a loose ring around it, she stroked him lightly, then vigorously, then lightly again. But now she wanted more. Releasing him, she climbed up on the seat and straddled his lap. With one arm around his neck, she used the other to pull her soaked panties aside. He guided himself toward her opening hovering over. The head of his cock pushed past her outer lips. She froze for a moment, just taking in the feeling of it barely inside her, before slumping on top of him, impaling herself and burying him to the hilt in her pussy. She just lay on him, luxuriating in the fullness of him inside her. Now it would be obvious what was happening in the back of the cab. If heíd been driving for long, the cabbie would undoubtedly have seen such behavior before. Besides, what could he really see, she wondered to herself, besides their two bodies hulking in his mirror, their overcoats drawn around them like capes. At this point she frankly didnít care. She began a slow, rhythmic dance. Up. Then down. Forward. Then back. Up again. And down again. He met her efforts, grabbing her hips and pulling himself hard up into her. With each completion she let out a quiet groan of satisfaction into his ear. She picked up the pace. It was equally pleasing to feel him at the entrance to her flower as well as buried in her womb. Back and forth she rode him. All of a sudden images of a Friday night school bus ride going back across town from a volleyball game. The talk in the back of the bus center centered on who was doing what with whom, how and how often. Though she pretended to understand and laughed giddily with the rest of the girls, in her mind she could scarcely conceive of some of the things being mentioned. But a phrase she hadnít thought about since that time appeared in her consciousness. For once she appreciated the colorfully descriptive ìriding the wild unicornî. Her lover bent forward and sucked one of her nipples into his mouth. He reached and placed his thumb over her clit. But at this she stopped him. Sheíd already been there. Now she just wanted to feel him inside her, to milk the pleasure out of him. She clamped her muscles tight as she pulled up off him, releasing her grip to slide back down. He thrust himself up into her repeatedly until she felt his whole body tense. His fingers dug into the small of her back and he pulled her down, holding her fast on top of him, crushing her against his chest. Then she felt it. His cock began to spasm and pump. Then she felt his warmth flood her insides. It was as if she could feel is come coat her sweetwalls and roll back down on his cock. He released his grip on her torso and, reluctantly, she swung her leg off of him. For the first time she looked over at him and saw his eyes.