by Tulsa Brown

As soon as I saw the black silk top hat, I began to pray.

Oh, please -- not a magician. Anything but a magician.

He'd pulled up beside me in the parking lot of the conference hall. I was leaning against my car, wearing a defiant yellow sun dress, and drinking a coffee. I watched him set the top hat on the hood of his pick-up truck, then lean inside to get something else.

It was only a briefcase and a cup of coffee -- from the same drive-thru I'd just visited. Yet there was still something suspiciously magician-y about him, despite his fusty tweed suit. Perhaps it was his short dark beard, or the quick light in his brown eyes. They sparkled when he noticed me, and he lifted his extra-large-to-go in a toast over the truck's hood.

I raised mine, too, a millimeter.

He turned and strode jauntily toward the hall, the top hat tucked under his arm. I sighed.

The school board I worked for was renowned for two cruelties: always scheduling a conference on the first day of summer, and adding something fun! to the plenary session. Last year it had been a clown, a wretched, horn-honking gnome who'd reeked of rum at ten in the morning. The year before that, a balloon artist had inflated and twisted a whole zoo for our amusement, an irritating squeak-squeak that set my teeth on edge. In three minutes, I'd wanted to go after him with a tack.

"Oh, Meg, lighten up! Connect with your inner child."

Today my inner child longed to be outside. June was at its most benevolent, summer's honeymoon in blue, pink and laughing green. The grass on the boulevard begged for bare feet, but they wouldn't be mine.

I'd worn the sun dress as an act of rebellion. A buttery yellow with a tight halter bodice, the whooshy skirt whispered like tissue paper when I walked. I felt naked with my auburn hair pinned up, my arms, back and neck so bare, but that was defiant, too.

Inside the conference hall I discovered that the top hat man was not a magician. Barry Blake was a storyteller with a deep, rolling voice and vibrant, expressive hands. He built castles in the air that captivated even me. When he shrugged off his suitjacket, the man beneath was solid and comfortable, a teddy bear in pushed-up shirt sleeves. I was surprised, though, that he left the top hat sitting on the podium.

"My last story is one that I never tell at the Children's Festival," Barry said, his eyes twinkling. "I'll need the assistance of a beautiful woman wearing a yellow dress."

He swept his arm out to me.

I felt stricken. My colleagues burst into applause, cheering me on. There was nothing to do but walk to the stage, a rebel with burning cheeks. His eyes put me instantly at ease, a warm welcome I felt in the pit of my stomach. He turned me gently to face the audience, fingertips smoldering against my cold, bare shoulders.

"Once upon a time, there was a beautiful empress who hadn't found true love by the ripe old age of..." Barry waffled playfully, looking me up and down. "Twenty-five."

The room laughed and so did I. I'd seen that birthday ten years ago.

To choose a husband, Barry continued, the empress planned a ball, but first issued a proclamation: she would need the most exquisite dress in the kingdom. The next morning, there were a hundred tailors on the castle doorstep.

"And one blacksmith," Barry said, setting the top hat on his head at last.

The blacksmith couldn't sew a stitch, but he'd dressed in his finest suit, hoping to catch a glimpse of the empress.

"And when he did, the whole world spun." Barry took my hand and twirled me around like a ballerina, my skirt fluttering. "She was as fresh as new daffodils, as brilliant as summer sunshine...."

"As sweet as a lemon?" I teased. The audience laughed.

Barry smiled. "As surprising as a lemon."

The ‘blacksmith' pretended to take measurements of the most unusual kind: the distance from my nose to my fingertips, the circumference of my ankle, the length of my ear. And I had the strangest response. Even though I was standing on a stage, on display for a hundred curious faces, my body came awake under his hands.

Wherever he touched me, heat glimmered: my wrists and neck, my foot cradled between his big palms. His strong, square hand on my waist sent a warm murmur down into my haunches. I caught myself pressing him back, whenever I had the chance.

Meg, are you mad? You don't even know this man.

Yet it seemed like...play. A secret game between the two of us. When I felt his warm breath on the back of my neck, the silvery pleasure shimmered down to my nipples, which hardened to raspberries. I prayed no one in the front row was watching me closely.

But Barry was. His eyes flickered with animal light. He placed his hand casually on my naked back, his thick middle finger resting intimately in the crevice of my spine. Lightning leapt beneath the chiffon, a V between my thighs.

At last he stepped away and turned to the audience.

"The next day, the blacksmith returned to the castle, and told the empress he had the perfect garment -- in his pocket. She was astonished and said she would marry him if that was true, for it meant he was skilled in magic. And the blacksmith said, 'Your highness, no man knows you as I do now. I have studied every beautiful curve and soft shadow of your body, I've come to love the length and breadth of you. And I know there is no finer garment in the entire world than your own skin.'"

The sound rose from the audience like champagne bubbles, an effervescent sigh of delight. Barry held up his hand to shush them.

"But every gown will one day go to tatters, and even beauty will give way to age." He reached into his pocket and pulled out an iron ring. "This is a symbol of my devotion that will never fade or change, and if you wear it, you will always be surrounded by my love -- the perfect garment."

The storyteller turned to me and held out his hand. "And the empress answered...?"

Oh! What was I supposed to say?

"Blacksmith, you are a magician."

The room rang with happy thunder.

We met again at the door. To anyone else, it looked like chance.

"What other stories do you know?" I said.

Barry smiled. "Only epics, twisting sagas that take a whole evening to tell."

"Well," I tilted my head, "it is the longest day of the year."

Hours later, after dinner, when the carefree June sky had deepened to cobalt and then to amethyst, Barry told the story of the Empress's New Clothes again. Only this time he measured me with his mouth.

He explored the length of my naked neck in a wet trail that sparked with the exciting bristle of his beard. When our mouths met, he coaxed my tongue into the hot cavern of his kiss and sucked on it sweetly, a tease that called my clit forward in a surge. My sex lips thickened, slippery, aching for touch.

But his hands were still traveling, measuring, discovering. He stroked my ass, strong thumbs following the swell in a slow, hot stripe, from the dimples on my spine to the tight tuck underneath. There he cupped the soft flesh as if weighing it, spread the heavy globes just enough that my lips beneath opened in a moist, surprised sound.

I pressed harder against him. I liked the solid size of him, the woodsy, damp smell of male sweat that clung to the thrush of hair. His cock was a robust presence in the soft valley next to my hipbone, a call to my center. When I closed my hand around it, Barry moaned, his smooth storyteller's voice rough with pleasure.

I told him my story, the endless female love story, my delight in that hard, velvet column, my thrall to the wild mushroom scent and shape of it -- in my mouth, in my hand, and deep inside the ripe, reaching sex that wanted it most.

He took me from behind, one hand on my waist, the other between my legs, his thick finger nudging my swollen clit with every thrust. I rode his power, felt his bear's deep rumble vibrate against my back, my own helpless cries rising, ringing, twisting up at last into sweet, pulsing joy.

For a moment we held still, joined and damp, hushed as the fluttery waves of pleasure smoothed to silk.

"Empress," Barry breathed, "You are a magician."

My inner child laughed out loud, and gave us both a squeeze.

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