Your thumb is currently tracing the seam of my stockings under this table, and I am quite certain the Countess is watching.
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[HANDWRITTEN NOTE ON RAILWAY STATIONERY, TUCKED INTO A POCKET DURING DINNER, 8:45 PM]\n\nMy dear Julian, you are a villain. A charlatan of the first water. I am writing this because if I attempt to speak to you across this ridiculously narrow dining table, I shall either scream or attempt to dismantle your ego with the fish knife. Your thumb is currently tracing the seam of my stockings—oh, don't pretend you didn't know exactly where your hand was wandering—and I am quite certain the Countess in the pearls is watching us with the clinical interest of a coroner. You are making it impossible to enjoy this mediocre trout. My heart is a bruised fruit, Julian, thrumming with the indignity of your proximity. If you move your hand one inch higher, I shall be forced to abandon my dignity entirely. Which is, I assume, your plan? You are a monster. I hate you. Do not stop. \n\n***\n\n[EMAIL ARCHIVE: THREE DAYS PRIOR]\n\nFROM: b.vane@vane-interiors.co.uk\nTO: julian.mercier.actor@gmail.com\nSUBJECT: RE: Your audacity\n\nMr. Mercier,\n\nI find it highly irregular that you felt entitled to claim the last first-class ticket to Narvik simply because you ‘needed the atmosphere for your craft.’ My craft, as it happens, involves designing spaces for people significantly more important than a man whose greatest achievement to date is a three-minute death scene in a BBC procedural. I was standing in line for twenty minutes in the freezing Oslo damp. My boots are ruined—they are soft calfskin, not meant for the slush of a Norwegian spring. \n\nTo then have the temerity to offer me ‘half your cabin’ as if you were some sort of benevolent deity is beyond the pale. It is a sleeper car, Mr. Mercier. There is one bed. One. I do not care how many accolades you received at RADA; I am not sharing a twelve-square-foot box with a man who wears a silk scarf with such unearned confidence. \n\nFind another victim for your theatrics. I shall be sleeping in the observation car, and I expect a formal apology by the time we hit Lillehammer.\n\nBeatrice Vane\n\n***\n\nFROM: julian.mercier.actor@gmail.com\nTO: b.vane@vane-interiors.co.uk\nSUBJECT: RE: Your audacity\n\nMy Dearest Beatrice (may I call you Beatrice? It has such a lovely, Victorian-orphan ring to it),\n\nFirst, it was a four-minute death scene, and the Guardian called it ‘harrowing.’ Second, the scarf is cashmere, and it was a gift from a woman who actually appreciated the way I inhabit a space. \n\nThird, you are being incredibly dramatic, which I find delightful but impractical. The observation car is currently occupied by a youth hockey team from Trondheim. They smell of damp equipment and unwashed ambition. Do you really want to spend sixteen hours leaning against a window while a teenager named Lars tries to show you his TikToks? \n\nMy cabin is warm. I have a bottle of decent Sancerre that I ‘liberated’ from the station lounge. And while there is only one bed, I am a professional. I can occupy exactly forty percent of a mattress without ever breaching the neutral zone. We could be allies, Beatrice. Two sophisticated souls against the barbaric backdrop of Scandinavian public transit. \n\nI am currently in Cabin 4B. The door is unlocked. I am reading Ibsen. I look tragic. You wouldn’t want to miss it.\n\nYours, in the spirit of shared inconvenience,\n\nJulian\n\n***\n\n[SERIES OF POST-IT NOTES ADHERED TO THE CABIN MIRROR, 11:30 PM]\n\nB: You are snoring. It sounds like a tectonic plate shift. How can someone so small make a sound like a diesel engine?\n\nJ: I am not snoring. I am ‘emoting in my sleep.’ And you have taken sixty percent of the bed. I am currently clinging to the edge like a mountain goat on a Colorado cliffside. My hamstrings are screaming. You are a space thief, Beatrice.\n\nB: Your legs are too long. It’s an evolutionary defect. Also, your ‘Ibsen’ is actually a crossword puzzle book. I saw it when you dropped it. You’re a fraud.\n\nJ: It’s a very difficult crossword. 14 Across: A six-letter word for a woman who breaks a man’s spirit on a train. I put ‘BEA-VANE.’ It didn’t fit, but the sentiment is there.\n\nB: Give me the wine. Now.\n\n***\n\n[THE SHARED LOG OF CABIN 4B - WRITTEN IN THE MARGINS OF THE CROSSWORD BOOK, 1:00 AM]\n\nBEATRICE: The train just banked. Julian’s arm is now draped across my waist. He smells of cedarwood and that expensive gin he’s been hiding in his flask. I should move it. I should be offended. Instead, I am noticing that his skin is unnaturally warm, like a sun-baked rock in the Garden of the Gods. I’ve hiked the Rockies in a blizzard and felt less frozen than I do right now, paralyzed by the sheer, arrogant weight of him.\n\nJULIAN: She’s awake. I can tell by the way her breathing has changed—short, jagged little hitches that tell me she’s thinking about how much she wants to hit me, or kiss me. Probably both. She has this tiny freckle just behind her ear that I’ve been staring at for twenty minutes. It’s maddening. I want to bite it. I want to see if she tastes as sharp as her tongue. The cabin is vibrating, the tracks humming beneath us, a low-frequency growl that’s getting into my blood. I’m going to do something stupid. I can feel it. It’s like the moment before the curtain goes up—that sickening, electric hollow in the gut.\n\nBEATRICE: He just shifted. His hand isn't on my waist anymore. It’s lower. His palm is flat against the curve of my hip, and he’s pulling me back against him. My back is to his chest. I can feel every button of his shirt through my silk slip. He’s hard. There’s no pretending he isn't. It’s a blunt, insistent pressure against the small of my back. God, he’s thick. I should say something cutting. Something about boundaries. Instead, I’m arching my back, pushing my ass into that heat because I am a weak, pathetic creature of the flesh.\n\nJULIAN: I’ve stopped pretending to be asleep. I’ve buried my face in her hair. It smells like jasmine and expensive spite. My hand is moving now, sliding under the hem of her slip. Her skin is so soft it’s a provocation. I’m tracing the line of her thigh, my fingers heading toward the junction where the heat is concentrated. She’s wet. I can feel it even through the silk. A slow, honeyed slickness that makes my head swim. I’m going to ruin her. I’m going to make her forget her own name, let alone her interior design commissions.\n\n***\n\n[SCRAWLED ON THE BACK OF THE DINING MENU, 10:15 PM - PRESENT MOMENT]\n\nB: We left the table. We’re back in 4B. Julian has locked the door, and I am currently pinned against it. He is not being a gentleman. He is being a predator. His hands are everywhere—unzipping, unbuttoning, discarding my dignity along with my evening gown. The air in here is thin, like we’re at the summit of Longs Peak, and I can’t catch my breath. His mouth is on my neck, and it’s not a kiss; it’s a claim. He’s sucking the skin there, right over the pulse, and I can feel the vibration of his low, theatrical growl in my very marrow. \n\nJULIAN: She’s magnificent when she’s unravelling. I’ve got her legs wrapped around my waist, her back pressed against the cold metal of the door while the train hurtles through the dark. I’m not waiting. I can’t. I’ve spent two days wanting to dismantle this woman. I’ve got my trousers down to my knees, my cock straining, heavy and aching, pulsing with every throb of the engine. I guide myself to her, rubbing the broad, wet head of my member against her slit. She’s drenching me. She moans into my shoulder, a sound of pure, unadulterated surrender that’s better than any standing ovation I’ve ever received.\n\nBEATRICE: He pushed inside me in one long, devastating thrust. It felt like being split open by lightning. He’s so big—too big for this tiny room, too much for my body to hold, yet I’m clawing at his shoulders, urging him deeper. Every time the train jolts, he sinks further in, hitting my cervix with a blunt force that makes my toes curl. My hands are in his hair, pulling, demanding. I want the friction. I want the mess. He’s grinding his hips against mine, his pubic bone crashing into my clitoris with a rhythm that is absolutely savage. It’s not a performance. It’s a war.\n\nJULIAN: I can’t keep my eyes off her face. She looks wrecked. Her head is thrown back against the door, her eyes blown wide and glassy in the dim amber light of the cabin. I’m watching the way her breasts bounce with every shove, the nipples dark and stiff. I reach down, catching one between my thumb and forefinger, pinching hard as I pull nearly all the way out and then slam back in. The sound of it—the wet, slapping impact of our bodies—is the only thing louder than the wind outside. She’s tight, squeezing me with every stroke, her internal muscles pulsing around my shaft like they’re trying to wring the life out of me.\n\nBEATRICE: I’m close. It’s a terrifying, high-altitude tension building in my lower belly. Julian knows. He’s a bastard; he knows exactly what he’s doing. He slows down, agonizingly, just dragging his cock an inch deep and then out again, over and over, until I’m sobbing, begging him to just finish it. He leans in, his breath hot against my ear, and whispers, ‘Say it, Beatrice. Say you want the actor to take his bow.’ I hate him. I love him. ‘Please,’ I gasp, my fingers digging into his ass, pulling him back in. ‘Julian, please. Now.’\n\nJULIAN: She said my name. It sounded like a prayer. I lose my grip on the performance then. I start hammering into her, fast and shallow, then deep and punishing. I’m a man possessed. I want to leave marks. I want her to feel me inside her for the next three countries. I can feel her climax starting—the way her walls begin to quiver and snap around me, the way her breath catches in a high, thin whistle. I shove my hand between our bodies, my thumb finding her clit and rubbing in hard, fast circles while I pump into her. She shatters. She screams my name, her entire body convulsing, her heat flooding over my hand, over my cock, pulling the come right out of me. I groan, a deep, guttural sound from the bottom of my lungs, as I spurt deep inside her, filling her, my forehead dropping to her shoulder as the world turns into nothing but the rhythm of the rails.\n\n***\n\n[A FINAL NOTE, SLID UNDER THE PILLOW THE NEXT MORNING, 7:00 AM]\n\nBeatrice,\n\nI have gone to find coffee. Real coffee, not the sludge they serve in the car. I expect you to be awake and twice as difficult as you were yesterday by the time I return. Also, you left your stockings on the door handle. I’ve taken them as a souvenir. \n\nBy the way, 14 Across was ‘ENIGMA.’ But I think ‘BEA-VANE’ was more accurate. \n\nThis is all your fault, actually. If you hadn't looked so damn tempting in that calfskin, I might have remained a gentleman. We both know that would have been a tragedy.\n\nWait for me.\n\nJ.
