Mariposa Soul

  Investigative journalist Andre Cordaire spends the majority of his time globetrotting around the world and flitting from bed to bed, never tempted to stay in any of them. Always searching. It's a lonely existence, but he has never been able to find that special woman with whom to share his life. Soul-mates, however, can turn up in the most unusual places at unexpected times.

  An encounter in a bar, a hiking trip up a mountain, and discovering a soul-mate in the person he never would have expected, who makes him want to share the love trapped inside him, was the last thing Andre was ready for. Finally, here is someone who understands more about him than he did himself. Once revealed, can he acknowledge what his heart and soul cries for? Or will he keep running, denying his need for the one person he knows could make him happy? Even if that person is a man?

  This story is a work of original fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author.

  This book remains the copyrighted property of the author.

  Copyright 2017 by Adrianna Dane

  Cover Art Designs by T. A. Gallup

  This story was originally released in October 2006 by Amber Quill Press/Amber Allure

  CAUTION: This story contains explicit sexual situations and strong language. You must be over the age of 18 years of age to read this story.

  Mariposa Soul

  By Adrianna Dane

  Dream Romantic Unlimited, LLC

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  AUTHOR BIO

  NETWORKING LINKS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Andre looked down at the woman as she slept, a satisfied smile on her gently parted, soft lips. One arm was thrown upward curved around her head, the silky exposed flesh would have been enough to draw any other man back to her bed to stroke her drowsily awake.

  Any other man would be eager to suckle her breasts as he parted her legs to burrow inside the welcoming satin heat of her vagina. She had been wet and ready for him immediately and his cock had slid effortlessly inside her silky passage.

  She was a beautiful woman by anyone’s standard. She was responsive and sensual and he’d given her pleasure, brought her to orgasm more than once, hence the contented, peaceful look on her face right now. And stroking her heat had brought his own orgasm spurting forth with ease. If only it had been thoughts of the woman lying beneath him that had fueled his explosive climax.

  He smoothed the wrinkles from his shirt and reached for his jacket that was resting on a chair near the bed. He sat down and slipped into his shoes, tied the laces, then leaned back and watched her for long moments.

  Why did he feel so removed from his emotions? He should be feeling satisfied and happy. He’d met her in a bar earlier that evening. It was one he frequented often, meeting up with other journalists like himself, chatting for long hours over several beers, debating current issues. More times than not, leaving with a female colleague to end the night in her bed or his. They were casual encounters, scratching an itch, and then they’d go their separate ways, on to the next story. No commitments, no ties, no part of his inner self shared with another human being. That had occurred only once, and he shied away from remembering the ecstasy of that particular memory. No, he wouldn’t think of that.

  Recently, he’d returned from an assignment in South America, and had spent the night swapping stories as he often did. She’d walked up to him, having recognized Andre from a picture she’d seen in a current article of his and introduced herself, offering to buy him a drink.

  She’d told Andre her name, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember it right now. Maybe he didn’t want to remember it. Once he walked out of her apartment, she’d be no more than a fleeting snip of a memory, hardly more than a quick byline in a newspaper. A blur among other nameless female faces, and, like inexpensive wine, he’d used them to numb his thoughts and make him forget—just a quick, cheap fix of forgetfulness. Only it didn’t work the way it was supposed to. All it did was emphasize the deep well of loneliness he was always on the verge of tumbling into head first.

  Sometimes he felt like Prince Charming looking for the owner of the glass slipper. Finding that one person who fit him like no other in the kingdom would or could. And sometimes he felt like the girl in the story, where he was the one quickly slipping away, fearful of discovery, yet holding fast to the dream her prince would find her. And knowing that for one brief moment, he really did exist.

  He now had to wonder whose discovery he was more afraid of—his own or his friends and colleagues?

  He rose from the chair, gave one last look toward the bed, then turned away to walk out of the bedroom, quietly letting himself out of her apartment. Sometimes the painful loneliness he felt inside yawned like a chasm of darkness waiting to consume him entirely.

  He felt it more deeply now than he had six months ago. He didn’t want to acknowledge the reason for the deep, gnawing pain that seemed to be ever present. If he attempted to pry open his soul and look inside, he was afraid of what he’d discover. It would be a negation of all he thought he was.

  It was one of the reasons he’d fled on assignment to South America, putting some distance between himself and temptation.

  He stepped out of the elevator, strode across the floor, and out onto the sidewalk. He breathed in the scent of nighttime and it seemed to cleanse him somewhat or at least helped to clear his head.

  Pulling out a pack of cigarettes and the lighter from his inner pocket, he quickly put one in his mouth, lit it, and inhaled, feeling the bite of the nicotine as it attacked his lungs. He looked down at the lighter, studying the elongated silver outline and the deeply etched multicolored butterfly on its face. It caused a deep ache inside him, a longing for something ethereal and delicate he couldn’t touch, couldn’t hold onto. Was afraid to capture.

  Being in South America had only exacerbated the need and the feeling of solitude. There were lots of butterflies in the jungles of South America. He should have known better than to take that particular assignment to try to forget. His fingers tightened around the lighter, the metal beginning to warm in his hard clasp.

  His footsteps carried him along the wet, silent street, shoulders hunched forward against the damp night air, his mind focused on internal thoughts. And memories.

  The encounter with the woman upstairs had meant nothing. It was a sad fact, but true nonetheless. He’d wanted it to mean something—he’d wanted to feel, to embrace her fragrance and femininity. He wanted her to offer him forgetfulness. He willed her to make his soul come alive, to be able to answer her mating call.

  But like all the many meaningless times before, it hadn’t happened.

  He turned a corner, heard the echo of a lonely siren in the distance, felt the moisture of late night rain cling to his face.

  Today he should take that assignment his editor had offered him. It would send him far away from the temptation for a good year. Then maybe the aching need would finally dissipate and he would remember how good it felt to ease his body inside a woman’s soft caress.

  Who was he trying to kid? Those days had been destroyed forever. He shoved a hand into the pocket of his coat. His fingers encountered the sharp edges of a business card and a wave of longing sliced through him. He didn’t have to pull it out to know whose card it was. He had it memorized, the name seared into his brain.

  You hav
e a butterfly’s soul, Andre, beautiful and fragile. I await the day you set it free to live the way it is meant to live. Come to me when you’re ready.

  He’d fought it for so long, trying to lose himself within other warm bodies, in other arms, through other lips. He’d tried so damned hard to surround himself with the scent of women, to make him forget.

  But they had all paled, and were all forgotten because he could only remember one set of arms, one mouth that consumed and pulled at his soul, eyes that stroked him to life and filled the loneliness of his soul, like nothing had ever done before.

  His response had scared him, yet excited him. He’d wanted to give in to the feelings, and although they’d felt right at the time, he’d shied from acknowledging what they meant about him.

  He stopped walking and looked up at the street sign and sighed. Pulling deeply on the cigarette, he tossed it down and ground it with the heel of his shoe. It was as though it was inevitable his footsteps should have carried him to this particular street corner. He’d fought the feelings for so long and was tired of the struggle. The confusion inside him swirled around him, ever present no matter where he went or whom he was with.

  But suddenly, as he looked up at the street sign, his hand closed over the card in his pocket. Mariposa Street. Was it a sign that he should accept the message of the soul he’d tried to forget? In Spanish, mariposa meant butterfly.

  Was he finally ready to accept the nature of his needs to feel complete? He turned toward the street, saw a taxi, and hailed it. He felt the flutter of trapped wings beating inside his soul. Was he ready to fly? He knew he feared leaving the safe, familiar boundaries of his cocoon.

  The taxi pulled up, he opened the door, and stepped inside.

  “Where to?” the older gentleman asked him.

  Again, his fingers encountered the card in his pocket, like a talisman. He didn’t need to take it out to provide the driver with the address.

  “Twenty-one Morgan Street—to the Morgantown Apartments.”

  The driver nodded, pulled away from the curb, and Andre settled back in the seat, his heart pounding—was it excitement or fear?

  How could he have known that signing up for that investigative journalism conference would change his life? That it would alter everything he’d thought true about himself. It had been the moment when he’d known why every relationship he’d attempted to have over the years had ended up transitory and fleeting. Unfulfilling. Somehow his unconscious mind had refused to accept picking a long-term partner simply to assuage his superficial requirement for intimate contact with another human being. It wasn’t just a body he needed to fill the solitude, he knew that now. He wanted a heart and a mind that understood who and what he was inside.

  Those encounters had paled when he’d been confronted with the one person who connected with him on more than a surface level. They had touched at so many levels and in such a short space of time. And, yet, he’d run from the knowledge. Was it too late?

  The taxi pulled up to the curb in front of a brownstone apartment building. He pulled out his wallet and paid the driver, offering a generous tip. Then he stepped from the taxi. He stood there, staring up at the building.

  Once he walked up those steps, there would be no turning back. Not this time. The person waiting there would expect more than just a fleeting one-night stand. Was he ready to look deeper into what was in his soul? To accept who he was?

  Ascending the steps, Andre pulled open the outer door and stepped inside. He surveyed the apartment numbers, stared at the one he wanted for long, tense moments. His body had begun a low humming of anticipation. He wanted to feel, wanted to acknowledge what was in his soul, and only one person could help him find himself—help him break free of the rigid cocoon that forced him to traditional boundaries.

  Andre reached out and pressed the bell, waiting for a response. He wanted to be inside, out of the cold darkness. He wanted warmth, understanding. He wanted to feel true passion, not just sexual release. He had experienced both for just one moment—a delirious, wonderful afternoon of love that he’d never experienced before.

  Finally, he was ready to accept the lessons Simon Doran was willing to teach him. If Simon still wanted that as well.

  CHAPTER TWO

  That morning of the conference Andre’s alarm had failed to sound off. He was late for the panel he was supposed to sit in on. As quietly as possible he slipped into a seat near the front. He’d signed up for this conference particularly for this session and he couldn’t believe he’d almost overslept and missed it.

  Simon Doran was scheduled to be a participant and Doran was one of Andre’s heroes, so to speak, an active investigative journalist himself at one time, he now taught at the local university and wrote about his adventures as a journalist who had ventured into some of the most explosive moments in history. South Africa. Kuwait. China. Just to name a few.

  Andre had first watched an interview with Simon on television when he was sixteen. Doran must have been around his own, current age at the time—maybe thirty-five or so. Almost twenty years had passed since that moment when Andre connected with the passion and excitement of the image on the television screen. Since that time, he’d practically inhaled every ounce of information on the man, studied his techniques, read his autobiography, and consumed the events surrounding the stories he’d covered.

  But this was the first opportunity he’d had actually to hear Simon speak. Usually, when the veteran journalist was in town, Andre was away at college, or in recent years, gone on assignment. But this time everything had worked out where he could be present at the same time his unknowing mentor was giving a presentation.

  Andre surveyed all the panelists, but his attention was drawn to only one man. With a head of gleaming white hair, a warm, golden tan to his skin, and the riveting turquoise depth of his eyes, Doran stood out far and away from the rest of the panelists, who dimmed well into the background.

  One would have thought that after all these years, Andre’s fascination with the adventures of a journalist who was now, for all intents and purposes, in retirement, would have paled. It was no longer the hero worship of an adolescent sixteen-year-old, but had developed into more of an appreciation and recognition of a talented colleague.

  For two hours Andre sat and listened attentively to the well-modulated voice, the passion and excitement still evident in every fiber. Other than the white hair, he didn’t have the look of a man pushing toward sixty; he radiated energy. There didn’t appear to be one ounce of extra flesh, and the suit he wore fit cleanly over his solid, muscular frame.

  He was a man comfortable with himself and his environment. Andre knew, from watching his many interviews in various parts of the world, that was true no matter where he was—he always seems to fit within his environment. Adaptable, like a chameleon. It was one of the things Andre had always admired about him and had tried to emulate. To become one with the culture offered him a better opportunity to get the story beneath the surface—and had worked for Andre in a number of situations.

  When the spirited discussion ended, Andre was surprised to look at his watch and realize two hours had flown by since he’d walked into the room. And he regretted the conclusion. He left the room in a daze as his thoughts continued to digest the discussion, remembering the vibrant speech. His attention had never wavered, not for an instant.

  Pulling out his program schedule, Andre noted the next session he planned to attend, and he walked down the hall toward the appropriate room. The day moved by swiftly, and the last session of the day ended. It was five o’clock and he had a couple of hours to kill before the awards dinner at seven. Instead of heading back to his apartment, he made for the bar.

  Grabbing a vacant stool, he ordered a neat Scotch. As he downed his first swallow, someone sat on the stool beside him. He glanced up and swallowed hard. It wasn’t possible.

  The man who’d sat down next to him turned and smiled. Small lines of maturity crinkled near his eyes an
d Andre was fascinated by the depth of those deep blue mirrors.

  “Simon Doran,” he said as he held out a hand.

  Andre nodded and extended his own hand, noting the firm, callused grip. “Andre Cordaire. Yes, I know who you are. I sat in on your discussion this morning. Great job.”

  “Thanks. I don’t do as many panels as I used to, but this one sounded challenging, and I liked the combination of panelists they had lined up. Glad you got something out of it.”

  Andre took another swallow of his Scotch. This was more than he could have hoped for—to actually hold a conversation with Simon Doran. Once Simon’s drink arrived, he took a long swallow and leaned back with a sigh.

  “Yeah, I needed that. Conferences are thirsty work.”

  Andre chuckled. “Yeah, I guess they are.”

  “Are you staying here at the hotel?” Simon studied Andre. Andre recognized that look—it probed for a way to get inside his head, to find out what made him tick. He met the look, guessing it would challenge Simon to dig past it.

  Simon leaned back, visibly relaxing, and grinned. Andre felt an unfamiliar heat dig inside him at that look of acceptance. What surprised him was that Simon was as magnetic and attractive in person as on television or in photographs Andre had seen of him.

  “I recognize your name. You’ve done some great investigative pieces recently, if I remember correctly.”

  Andre nodded. “Thanks. Yes. I have to say, I’ve followed your career pretty closely and it’s an honor to finally meet you in person.”

  Simon chuckled. “Don’t tell me you became a journalist because of me. You’ll make me feel a whole lot older than I want to.”

  It was Andre’s turn to grin. “Wouldn’t think of it. I will say you inspired me in the right direction. I’ve always written, but you got me on the road to investigative reporting—and I have to thank you for that.”