This is an excerpt I sent to a few message boards for Ancestral Reunions.

His eyes blazed as they gazed at me from across the room.  He presented a powerful figure in the shadows—dark hair and eyes setting the stage for rugged features and a tone body.  The clothes were always high quality, and fit my general aesthetic at the time.  A palpable attraction formed.

I had been having that particular fantasy for a long time.  Sometimes it happened in my sleep, and sometimes I’d experience it in the middle of the day when my mind had a chance to wander away from the mundane tasks at hand.

This particular visit to my own little world came while I was driving to the lawyer’s office and dear God, did it make me blush.

I was in an old forties style cafe.  Jazz played quietly from somewhere off in the shadows.  I sipped from a glass of chilled vodka while seated at a tall stool.  My navy blue mermaid dress plunged low in the front thin shoulder straps that left my arms bare.  Most of my back was bare and my nude legs were crossed, offering me at least some sense of modesty.

I tried to ignore those eyes staring at me even as I took in every detail about him. The expensive white suit made him look like Rick from Casablanca, and allowed him to stand out in the darkness.  I kept him in my peripheral vision but somehow he seemed to know that I was watching him even if I wasn’t outright staring.

Minutes passed before he pushed up from his table and crossed the room toward me.  There was no dialogue, no pretence or pandering to flirtation or ego.  He clasped my hand and I didn’t hesitate to let him lead me out onto the dance floor.

His free hand fell to the small of my back, his thumb and forefinger kissing bare skin.  I pressed close to him, peering up into his face as we began to build a slow rhythm.  We began a fox trot of some kind.  Why was I such a capable dancer?

My Rick Blaine led like a real pro, circling us time and again.  His eyes remained fixed to mine as if that gaze had belonged only to me.  The heat from his body aroused a passion in me that made my vision tunnel.  He had become my world, a place where only the jazz and our motions existed.

We changed steps to a waltz and he moved in for a kiss, lips on soft lips, pressing with that Hollywood embrace meant to melt the hearts of the voyeurs in the audience.  My grip on him slackened but his strength held me aloft.  Desire made me dizzy and when our lips parted, I gasped in protest.

Words invaded my consciousness, plodding through the enchanted moment.  There were things I needed to ask, aspects of this little fantasy that I wanted to understand, but I fought off my curiosity.  Talking would slaughter the connection.

We hugged but it was brief.  He turned his head as if to whisper but there were no words.  Only the motion of his lips to indicate I was missing whatever he had to say.  The frustration made me bite the inside of my cheek.  Much as I wanted to ask, I couldn’t find the strength to speak. 

The music of the club faded into the background.  He was drifting back from me.  Our fingers slowly slipped apart inch by inch and when contact was lost, I wanted to shout.  He couldn’t leave, not yet.  I didn’t know his name, I didn’t know where he had come from… question after question invaded my mind and all of them refused to be answered.

Please!  The thought came unbidden but it wouldn’t pass my lips.  Don’t go!

The world around me began to make a little more sense.  Every aspect symbolized my passions from a love of history to the glamour of old-world Hollywood—this was about as comfortable as I could get outside myself. 

I struggled to move forward, reaching out my hand to pursue him.  I wouldn’t let him go so easily….

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