Two to Tango

I’m not sure if I wrote this story first, or if it just happens to appear first in my collection Kissing Velvet.
At the time, I was passionate about Argentine Tango and had been going to classes in London and Surrey several times a week.  An intensely sensual partner dance , I adored it.  So my character, Rachel, meets her mystery man at a tango class.  She shares a dance with a woman first and one of my most sensual tango experiences was dancing with a firm but gentle young woman at a tango party in Hastings.  I wore a short tasselled black skirt and heels and bodice top.  Dressing up was part of the fun.  It was incredibly sexy and I have this dance on videotape at the bottom of a storage box somewhere, as friends filmed some of the party.  It felt strange when I watched it again, stirring up unsettling memories.  


“Be where I am,” she said. 

In my story, Rachel then dances with her tall dark stranger, with her eyes shut throughout.  Again, I have wonderful memories of dancing tango with my eyes closed, with a variety of male partners.  So intense, so profound.  


I was a fan of the 1990 film Naked Tango, which was a huge turn on, and my heroine, Rachel, gets to experience her own naked tango.  


The tango is part of a flashback, with the opening of the story a set of phone instructions from her mysterious lover.  Those instructions were totally authentic and I had followed them precisely.  They were posted to me, typed onto an A4 sheet of white paper.  Unsigned.  I still have them.  


Like Rachel, I slept on a futon and my favourite book was The Story of O.  






Max told Rachel,  “You will always belong to me.”  I can still hear his voice uttering those words, and I shudder at the tone.  And we went for a walk in the moonlight - me naked - just like Rachel and Max. 


The rest is fiction……….




The second tale in the collection is called Cars.  Now that’s another story, and will probably be the subject of my next blog.