Disclaimer: I don't own Beyblade or any of its characters, merchandise, TV rights, ect… (I think you get the point.)

Summery

ONE SHOT – Tala/Julia, AU. STRONG LIME. Memories of what was and what could have been. Just a idea that came to me with the help of a friend. Like all of my work this is just something that happened to float through the empty void inside my head. Like it or hate it please R and R as honest opinions are always welcomed.

Lamanth: As always sorry for any bad spelling and if you feel the need to through thing at me please wait until I've hidden behind the sofa kay!?

Muse: On with the fic!

She's quiet when she's down,
Strangers from other towns,
Nowhere to be found,
On this side of the scene,

Just Some Stranger or The Story Of No

Julia's POV

At first sight I thought I knew him and felt my blood heat, my muscles loosen and the breath evaporate from my lungs. The imprint of his touch rose like a brand on my skin and the memory of his tongue hungry in my mouth aroused a need I hadn't admitted to myself for a long time. A desire for the forbidden.

"What is it?" asked my husband. Startled, I looked across the restaurant table at the well-known face and remembered who and where I was: a wife in her thirties staying in an elegant, expensive English country house hotel with her husband. The holiday our anniversary presents to each other. "See someone you know?"

"No." For that was in another country and besides… "He wouldn't be that young, if it was who I thought he was that age then." The man I remembered would be my age still and maybe would still find me attractive. That young man couldn't be much past twenty. If he looked at me he'd see someone not worth noticing, someone sexually invisible. He turned his head and his clear Aqua gaze fell on me with a shock like ice water and he smiled.

"You're blushing." Said my husband with interest. "Was he an old boyfriend?"

"No. Oh, no." I replied. "Just some stranger I met once in Houston."

Once. A single night. Yet the memory of it is with me always. Many a dull or sleepless night I had pulled it out to comfort myself. I have used it so often it has come to seem like a story that I'd read somewhere and not something that happened to me. As a fantasy, I'd even shared it with my husband some nights in bed. But it was real – or it had been once.

Flash Back (Over ten years ago)

I first saw him in a Montrose bar, drinking by himself. He had blood red hair with bangs surrounding a long, clean-shaven face, with a sensuous mouth and startling aqua eyes. Only the slightly crooked nose kept him from beauty, but his was a striking face and mine were not the only eyes drawn to stare at it. Nor was it only his face that attracted. He had a physical presence as disturbing as some rare perfume. His was not an outstanding body – nobody would have picked him to model for a centrefold – but it was long and slim and wiry. My boyfriend, handsome, tall and well-muscled, was certainly more attractive by objective standards, but I wasn't thinking of my boyfriend as I admired the fit of the stranger's jeans.

I took a seat and ordered a drink. I wasn't looking for trouble. I hadn't been planning on cheating. I was content, I thought, to look and not touch. I liked the way his lips curled around a cigarette and his eyes narrowed against the smoke. I liked his slender fingers and the way he moved, shifting his weight or rolling the stiffness out of neck and shoulders as unselfconsciously as an animal.

I gazed for at a time at his intriguing, less-than-classical profile, then I shifted my stare, let it fall in a caress on his shoulders, his back, down to the ass which so nicely filled his tight, faded jeans. He turned his head lazily toward me as if he'd felt, and liked, my touch. I moved my eyes back up his body to meet his aqua orbs, and I didn't smile. He was the first to look away. Then I did smile, but only to myself.

Someone else, a man, approached him, cigarette in hand, and gave him a light and responded to his conversational ventures absently, his attention hooked by me. I could feel his senses straining in my direction even when his back was turned, his eyes fixed elsewhere, his ears assaulted by the blandishments of the cigarette smoker – who eventually gave up and took his need to someone else. Which is when my stranger turned around to look at me once again.

I had to hide the smile of triumph that played on my lips. That I retained the ability to make a man desire me was reassuring. I had been feeling mired in my steady relationship, as if it had some how conferred invisibility upon me, so his look sent a surge of well-being flooding through me. As he straightened, flexing his shoulders and the muscles of his long back before moving with an easy, loose-jointed motion, I imagined him naked and immediately aroused and felt a tightening of my internal muscles.

He bought me a drink and then I bought him one. We sat and looked at each other. There were few words, none of importance. The conversation that mattered was conducted between our bodies, in minute shifts in posture and attitude. In the crossing and uncrossing of my legs as I leaned toward him and then back, in the way he stroked his own face with his long, slender fingers. He never touched me. I think he didn't dare. I tried to make it easy for him, resting my hand on the tabletop near his, moving my legs under. the table. With every move that I made I aroused myself more until finally, breathless and unthinking with desire, I reached out my hand beneath the table and put it on his denim covered thigh.

The pupils of his strange aqua-green eyes widened and I smiled. He put warm hand on top of mine and squeezed.

"Can we go to your place?" he asked, his voice husky and low.

Confronted with reality, I lost my smile. What was I playing at? I pulled my hand away and stood up. He followed me so quickly that he nearly overturned the table.

"No!" I said, but he followed me out of the dim, air-conditioned bar, into the parking lot. The hot, tropical night embraced us like a sweaty lover. Someone, in a book I read once, had compared the smell of Houston to the aroma of a woman, sexually aroused and none too clean. I drew a deep breath; spilled beer, petrol, car exhaust, cooking fumes, perfume, after-shave, rotting vegetation, rubbish, and, beneath it all, a briny tang that might have been a breeze wafted in from the Gulf of Mexico.

He was right behind me, following, and as I turned to tell him off, somehow instead I fell against him. And then we were clutching at each other, breast to breast, mouth to mouth, kissing greedily. The need I felt when he first touched me, the intensity with which it rushed through me was so powerful I thought I would faint. Then, slowly, resting in his embrace, I came back to myself, back to him. I had never known anything as sensually beautiful as his mouth. The soft, warm lips that parted against mine, dryness opening into wetness, a moist cave where the sly, intelligent animal that was his tongue lived and came out to nuzzle and suck at me greedily. His breath was smoky and dark, tasting of desirable sins, of whisky and sugar and cigarettes.

His hands, long-fingered, strong and clever, moved over my body as we kissed, at first shy, but then, as I clung to him fiercely, making no attempt to push him off, becoming bolder. He was quickly impatient with the barriers of my clothes, which were little enough: a cotton blouse, a short summer skirt and underwear, my legs bare, my naked feet strapped into sandals. One of his hands, which had returned to again and again to cup and trace lazy patterns of arousal on my bound and covered breasts, bow began swiftly and without fumbling to unbutton my blouse. His other hand, round behind me, was pushing up my skirt and tugging at the elastic of my G-string. In a matter of minuets, maybe seconds, he could have me stripped naked.

I wanted nothing more than to be naked in his capable hands. But not here, in public, surrounded by strangers – was he crazy?

"No." I gasped and pushed him off and pulled away, struggling to refasten my buttons.

He reached for me again and I slapped at his hands. He looked stricken. "I want you. Don't you -?"

I laughed. "Not here, be reasonable!" There were people all around us, getting in and out of cars, overflow customers from the bar and people from the neighbourhood out for a breath of air, drinking beer purchased at the store across the street. This parking lot and the whole street was like a fair or a carnival, an impromptu, open-air party to celebrate summer in the city. I waved a hand to indicate the crowd passion had temporarily hidden from us, and as if I'd waved away smoke we both saw, at the same time, a man and a woman locked in a fervent embrace just yards away from us. As I stared, I realised that the woman had one hand inside the front of the man's trousers.

My stranger grinned at me, a wide, white, wolfish smile. He put his hands on my hips and pulled my tightly to him. His erection felt enormous. His breath was hot in my ear. "Nobody's going to notice. Nobody'll care." He whispered.

It was true nobody else seemed to notice the passionate couple, or, if they did, they politely pretended not to see. Other people had their own concerns; why should they care? Nor would it have been different if the lovers had been of the same sex. The Montrose was the most bohemian and most sexually tolerant area of Houston, which was I had chosen it for my escape that night. It provided a place where I could temporarily forget who and where I was and become a stranger. Pretending I was a free woman at large in San Francisco, New Orleans, or Paris.

The smoky, spicy, sweaty smell of this other stranger, his body's heat and solid mass against me, the hands that caressed my hips and thighs and breasts, all wore away at my hesitation, as did his low voice, telling me a story:

"I was a rock concert one time, thousands of people packed in close together, all standing up to see better, and moving, kinda dancing in place cus there wasn't room to do anything else. I was with this girl … she had on a really short skirt, like yours, and one time she dropped her purse and bent over to pick it up I saw she wasn't wearing any underwear. So … I got her to stand in front of me, and I unzipped, and slipped in, and slowly, easily, pumped away. Nobody knew what we were doing. Even when we both came, cus everyone was yelling and jumping around." He had pushed up my skirt at the back again and now snagged the elastic of my G-string and began to ease them down.

"No."

Half of me wanted him to ignore my refusal. For him not to stop, to take me there among the crowds, even to be seen by disapproving, envious strangers – the other half of me was horrified. What if somebody who knew me came by? Someone I worked with, or one of my neighbours? So I said no again more fiercely, and when I pulled away he let me go.

"You're driving me crazy!"

"What do you think you're doing to me?"

"Nothing, compared to what I'd like to do!"

We stared at each other, hot and itchy with frustration. I grabbed his hand. "We'll find somewhere not so public. Come on."

I had nowhere in mind except to get away from the crowds. We walked away from the laughter and talk, away from the amplified music and the bright blur of neon signs. We walked toward the quieter streets where there were no bars or all-night stores; quieter streets lined with trees where the buildings housed beauty salons and dentists, small businesses that closed at nightfall. On one such half-deserted street he pulled me suddenly into the embrasure of a darkened antique shop and pushed me against the wall.

"No." I whispered the word, soft as a caress. I wasn't even sure he heard. His hands swift and urgent. My blouse was unbuttoned, my bra undone, my breasts out, nipples teased and kneaded to an aching stiffness. I surrendered, undone melting, and then quite suddenly I saw myself from the outside: some slut, half undressed in a public place with a stranger, letting a stranger do that to her – I woke up with a sickening shock. That couldn't be me. I'd always been a good girl, I'd never picked up strange men. Now that I was in a steady relationship this sort of behaviour was unthinkable. Sex was something that happened at home, in bed, not in a shop doorway.

I tensed and fought off his hands. I twisted to one side and struggled to push him away. But he pinned my wrists together effortlessly, one-handed, and stared at me, a faint smile twitching his lips.

"No." I said weakly, not meaning it, I suddenly wanted more than anything to be overpowered, to be made to do what I wanted to do, to have the guilt taken away. He gazed into my eyes and read there what I wanted as he rolled and erect nipple between thumb and forefinger. I felt fixed by his gaze, unable to fight. I stood still, quivering. He let my hands go and tugged my skirt up to my waist.

"Take them off and spread your legs." He said.

I felt dizzy with desire. "No." I whispered. I didn't mean I didn't want to, and I didn't mean I did. By my word I meant a different kind of yes; meant make me do it, do it to me, I'm helpless now.

His eyes were unwavering on mine, but for a moment I was afraid he wouldn't understand. Then he said. "Try and stop me." He tugged at the waistband of my G-string, and then peeled them down my legs. When the reached my ankles, I stepped out of them and stood passively, exposed to his view.

A little sigh of pleasure escaped his lips as he looked at me. Then he became stern again. "Up against the wall and spread your legs."

I swallowed hard, then found my voice and the only word I had left. "No."

He laughed. "No? No? What does that mean? Your body's saying something else." He slipped his hand between my legs. I gasped and quivered as he found my wetness. "Your body dosen't lie. Your body says yes." His touch was as soft as his voice, delicate and perfectly judged. I moaned and closed my eyes. unable to watch him watching me. I let him continue until his touch was too teasing, his fingers too delicate for my much harsher desire, and then I reached down to push his hand harder against me and his fingers inside me. he gasped as if he were the one penetrated, and I cried out in pleasure, a loud and violent "No!"

The wall was hard against my back. My thighs ached with strain as I road his hand. The clever, stranger's fingers that knew just how to stroke and probe together, knowing when a teasing gentleness should become more brutal. All this time he watched me, watched my face contort and read my desire as he murmured obscenities and endearments, commands and compliments alternating with a purpose like the hard soft touch of his hand.

And then his other hand was on my ass, fingers probing the crack, and I moaned as he began to work me with both hands. Front and back, and I cried out for more, still more.

Without taking his hands away, hardly faltering, he went down on his knees and began tonguing my clitoris, breathing hard with his own excitement. The warm, wet touch of his mouth was gentle, exact, and excruciating, and was more than I could bare. Like lightning, white-hot, jagged, and intense, the orgasm flashed as I cried out and yelled and clutched his head. "No." I cried, and "No." Again, as if I must, in my last, desperate moments of pleasure, deny the force of the pleasure, or the reality of it – as if that word would keep it from being real to anyone but me.

Later, but still too soon, while I was rocked in the after-glow, unwilling to be disturbed, he caught my hand and carried it to his crotch, pressed it against he hard, warm bulge of his cock.

End Flash Back

I have often wondered what I meant by that. Never in my life before that night had I said no meaning yes, but that night no was my word, my only word, and he had seemed to understand.

I had pulled my hand away. "No."

Maybe I'd forgotten how to say yes. Maybe I'd wanted him to force me. Maybe I'd just had enough and wanted to send him away. Maybe, my own desire sated, I simply wasn't interested in his. Later when, I'd wanted more, I couldn't believe I'd meant I'd had enough then. I didn't want to believe I'd been selfish enough to send him away unsatisfied simply because my own immediate need had been met. Most of the time I prefer to believe that when I said no at the end I still meant yes, and it was his understanding that had failed him, and me.

Whatever I might have meant, whatever I'd wanted it to mean, he'd heard me say no, and taken me at my word and left and I made no effort to call him back.

I never saw him again, although there were nights when I went looking and there has scarcely been a night since that I haven't thought of him and longed for another chance.

"Just some stranger." I murmured more to myself than to my husband when I sensed his eyes still on me. "Just some stranger."

Please R and R as I'd love to know what you thought

Big luv see ya

Lamb