Anything Goes

by Cathryn Cooper

  Along with his power to resist her, the melancholy tune came to an abrupt end. A spellbound Max let his gaze wander slowly up the pencil slim dress of shimmering stuff that almost seemed to tie Stacey's ankles together. As if it could. She made him feel helpless, but also incredibly randy; like some old billy goat. The thought both upset and annoyed him. He moaned and shut his eyes. Perhaps then she might disappear. But he knew she wouldn't; knew what she wanted; knew he was powerless to resist.

  A slave to her will, he opened his eyes and turned his gaze slowly to her.

  Her lips were bright red. Her eyes heavy with make-up. Hardly a hair of her blonde head showed from under the close-fitting cap she was wearing that accentuated her cheekbones and the sharp pertness of her chin.

  'I'm feelin' pretty sad, but then you know that.' Max's voice had the same, dark melancholy about it as his trumpet playing.

  'Want to tell me about it?' Stacey smiled provocatively.

  At the same time, her long, languid body seemed to wrap itself around the pillar she leaned against.

  'You know about it.'

  'Then perhaps you should tell me again. In private. Come on. I'll give you a lift home.'

  Max had an urge to reject her offer. If he did, it would be the first time so far. But his need for someone to share his sadness was too much to bear. Slowly, he got to his feet. Almost with a sense of reverence, he put his instrument into its case and closed the lid.

  As though she were leading him on some imagined leash, Stacey took him to her car which had dull mustard paintwork and a large white tyre clinging to its side. Like a limpet, or a clam, Max thought. Like her. Sticking real tight until needed elsewhere.

  Just as he knew she would, she drove him to some place out near the sea where ramshackle huts clung to the sand between the swamp grass and the shoreline. It was a place that had become familiar to him since Emmeline had left.

  She got out first, wrestled with the door of one of the huts, then went inside. Trumpet case in hand, he followed her.

  The place was derelict and smelt of sea salt and leaf mould. Moonlight filtered through the windows and fell in patches on the sandy floor.

  Max could see the shape of her, familiar as being Stacey Brabonne, Rene's wife. He put the thought of who she truly was from his mind. In this light she could be any woman. Any woman at all. But there was only one in his mind. As it was, her features were hidden in the shadows.

  'Emmeline,' he whispered. 'You still think of me, honey?'

  Stacey's voice had changed, just as Max knew it would. 'All the time.' His voice was little more than a whisper. 'Are you going to get it out, honey?'

  Max stared into the shadows. Not once did the woman with him stray into the moonlight. Just as on other occasions, she would play her part.

  'Yeah.' He sounded breathless because he had almost convinced himself that she really was someone else. But he gathered himself together, took his trumpet from its case and began to play.

  His soul soared with the tune. Through half-closed eyes he could see her shape; the high breasts, slim waist, curving hips and long legs.

  Yet he did not need to see to know that she was undressed. He could smell her. Female flesh, warm and getting warmer.

  He willed himself to keep playing and willed her not to step into the moonlight and destroy the illusion. He closed his eyes and let her smell wash over him.

  He dropped to his knees. She came closer then; ground her pelvis over his trumpet so that the sound became muted.

  He smelt her sex, pungent, enticing. A woman's smell, though not the woman that was in his mind. But she knew that. Stacey knew that.

  Not Stacey!

  Think of Emmeline.

  He thought of Emmeline as he put the trumpet down and stood up.

  As slim fingers groped at his trouser buttons, he kept his eyes closed. Even as her lips closed over the ripe, pulsating end of his penis, he kept thinking of Emmeline, of her lips doing this and not some woman who wanted a real man for the night, not the sweet-smelling, neat-suited Rene, her husband.

  He waited for the signal.

  At first only her tongue licked over his flesh. Then her teeth nipped him gently. Then harder.

  He grabbed at her head, pulled her to her feet.

  She groaned and cried out as he pushed her against the rough, wooden walls, his fingers digging into her haunches as he spread her legs and pushed himself into her.

  He felt her buttocks clench, her hips jerk against him.

  She hit him, yet when he retreated she pulled him to her again.

  The weight of his body pinioned her against the wall. No longer did he need to grasp her buttocks or her hips. She was helpless. His hands were free to cover her full, weighty breasts.

  Each time he squeezed them she cried out for him to stop.

  'No!' she wailed. 'No!'

  But he knew she didn't mean it. So he pulled on her nipples until it seemed they were twice the length they had been. Her cries turned to squeals.

  The wet, warm flesh between her legs was open and inviting. His muscular buttocks clenched tightly as he plunged himself into her, sad it wasn't Emmeline, but glad it was someone.

  He wanted to shoot his come into her, finish the natural process without having any regard to what she wanted.

  But she was playing a part. And so was he. Until she came, he had to hold out.

  'Oh, no!' she wailed again.

  In turn he covered each nipple with his mouth, bit at her until she wailed out again and again for him to stop. But he didn't stop. The scenario was always the same. She never really wanted him to stop.

  The tip of his penis rammed through the neck of her womb. His length, his breadth filled her. She was speared on him like a trembling doll.

  His pelvis thudded against her until Max perceived that familiar tightening of her stomach, the spasm as her body constricted around his rod.

  Long and slow she wailed now, her body going limp as she yielded to a shattering orgasm.

  'Emmeline,' Max whispered. 'Emmeline!'

  At last, the orgasm he had held in check until she had come burst forth. He rammed his body against the now recumbent woman. She cried out as his weight squashed her against the rough wood of the shed wall which must surely have scratched her back. Would Rene notice? And did it matter if he did? It didn't matter to Max. Behind closed lids, he was imagining the woman he really wanted it to be.

  'Emmeline!' And his voice echoed around the rotting wood and filtered out over the shingle and towards the sea.

  Chapter 4

  Emmeline wore silver shoes when she danced and, as she twirled and tapped her way across the stage of the Cotton Club in New York's Harlem, a few in the audience likened her speed to a bird in flight.

  She was wearing white feathers on her head, and nothing more than a string of bananas around her waist, a tribute to Josephine Baker, a dancer she'd heard strutted her stuff at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. She laughed as she danced, a wild, infectious laugh that made her audience laugh too.

  To wild applause, her legs kicked and her feet flashed, and all the time she sang a raucous song, the words of which made some laugh louder and others hide their blushes behind their hands.

  Cheers and riotous clapping filled the club as she finished her dance and exited from beneath the bright lights. Sweat glistened on her face. By the time she regained the cooler confines of the back-stage dressing room, it was trickling down her neck, between her breasts and down her spine.

  Lance was waiting for her in her room, his suave appearance marred by a lock of hair that fell decadently over his eyes.

  Emmeline grimaced. Tonight she had a yearning to be alone. She had things to think about. Old problems to mull over. Her tone reflected her sullen mood.

  'You've been drinking. What are you doing here?'

  'Waiting for you.'

  'You're a fool. And what's more you're an irresponsible fool.'

  'I'm in love.'

  As s
he eased the heavy silver earrings out from her lobes, she laughed and shook her head.

  'Then you are a fool!' And I should know, she thought to herself. Suddenly, the pain she felt inside turned to anger.

  Lance looked hurt, and seeing that made her feel powerful somehow. Here was someone to vent her anger on. There he was, an English earl or whatever, and he was in love with her, a girl from the deep south with dark brown skin and an offhand way with men.

  He clasped his hands together, elbows resting on knees, face intensely anxious. 'You shame me, Emmeline. You call me a fool. But I can't help being foolish. I'm besotted with you. You know that.'

  The loudness of her laughter hid her own pain. Her throat vibrated with the sound of it as she threw the silver earrings onto her dressing table where they landed with a heavy clunk.

  It was one laugh too much. 'Damn it, Emmeline!'

  He sprang to his feet.

  'This is too much. You're right. I am a fool. A fool to hang around here!'

  He made for the door, his old-fashioned opera cloak flying out behind him.

  Suddenly, Emmeline felt regretful she had treated him so. After all, having an English lord enamoured of her went some way to healing the hurt she felt inside. Both her attitude and her tone of voice changed.

  'Lance, darling. How can you leave me like this?' Her voice was as sweetly beguiling as thick treacle.

  Fingers curled over door knob, Lance turned and looked at her.

  'How can you leave me like this?' Emmeline said again, her voice more plaintive, tempting, as she eased the thin straps of her odd outfit off her shoulders. Smiling seductively, she reached behind her to release the last fastening. 'How can you possibly leave me like this?'

  The string of wax fruit and its thin, silk bodice slid down over her body and lay in a heap around her ankles.

  Underneath, she wore nothing except silk stockings held up by silver garters with small bells on the sides. Smiling triumphantly, she held her arms out to either side of her and shook her body. The bells on her legs tinkled. So did the ones that hung from her nipples.

  Because her breasts were small, no one ever noticed that her nipples were unusually pert by virtue of the tiny silver bells that hung from them. Piercing had taken place when she had been younger - about the same time her ears had been done.

  Every man she had ever met had been charmed by them, keen to look closer and set the sweet chimes in motion with his finger, his tongue or something much larger.

  Her gaze fixed on the captivated Englishman, she took her feet out of the nest of bananas and, after kicking it to one side, stood with her legs slightly apart.

  'Do you like my tune?' she murmured, and shook her body again.

  This time another bell joined in.

  Lance gasped. Sweat broke out on his forehead.

  Besides having bells on her garters and jingling from her bosom, a glint of silver shone from between Emmeline's legs. Finding her pierced nipples had enhanced sexual pleasure, she had immediately imagined how her clitoris might respond to extra stimulation. Accordingly, a piercing had occurred there too.

  'Well?' she asked again, delighting in the fact that the look and the sound of her could make a man turn white and cause him to sweat like a horse.

  Mouth opening and shutting like a goldfish, Lance continued to stare, his breathing coming in quick, short gasps.

  Emmeline shook again and the bells jingled. Just as she had danced before an audience, she now danced before him. But this was so different.

  Her brown limbs glistened, complimenting the glint of the silver bells that sang a merry tune when she moved.

  Lance sank trembling to his knees, his eyes never leaving her body, his lower lip quivering and damp.

  At last her dance stopped. She stood before him. 'Worship me,' she hissed. 'Worship me as I should be worshipped.'

  There was a look of ecstasy in her eyes as she gazed down on him.

  His breath stirred her cluster of thick, black pubic hair. Lance's mouth hung open, but no words came out.

  'Go on,' she urged. 'Worship me.'

  She shook her hips. The bell that hung from her clitoris tinkled and glinted.

  Like a man whose will is no longer his own, a limpness came upon the honourable lord. The gap between his mouth and her pubes narrowed. His tongue snaked out of his mouth and tapped at the bell.

  Emmeline laughed, opened her legs a little wider.

  Now his tongue prodded and paddled over the slippery wet flesh of her sex. Above him, she moaned, raised her arms above her head and stretched her body. As she did so, the bells that hung from her nipples rested against her flesh, their peal silenced whilst the man kneeling before her paid her homage.

  Delicate tracings of sensation began where his tongue travelled. Emmeline made long, low sounds like the contented purr of a cat. She even looked like a cat stretched as she was; a lean feline giving nothing in return for the pleasure given her.

  Her hips swayed slightly as the sensations increased.

  His hands caressed her thighs as his tongue caressed her sex.

  Aware she was becoming aroused, Lance tempered her progress by transferring his attention and his tongue to the crease where her right leg joined her trunk. He did the same to the left.

  Clitoris aching for attention, she moaned, then shook her hips so that the small bell rang, demanding his return.

  Poor Lance. His will was not his own. The bell summoned him back and he was too weak to refuse.

  Knowing her time was near, he cupped her buttocks in his hands and sunk his tongue back into her cleft. She began to rock backwards and forwards against his face. As she did so, the bells on her body began to peel in unison.

  Suddenly, her whole body shook as if in time to some unheard music. Eyes closed, she moved to the tempo she heard only in her mind, its tones, its melody saturating her body. Like music, it reached a crescendo, then fell, softening, breaking into many different pieces until the last note had sounded.

  A tune in my head, an earl at my feet, she thought as she eyed the top of his head through narrowed eyes. If only Max could see me now. If only Rene hadn't come between us.

  Chapter 5

  Prisms of colour flashed from the tight-fitting cap that Sheree wore that first night she sang in the Catnip Club.

  The cap was of blue satin encrusted with crystals, and because it hid her hair and sparkled like some angel's halo around her head, it made her eyes seem greener, her cheekbones higher, and her lips as glossy as satin.

  Before she started singing, the band had belted out a fast and furious number that had sent feet tapping and couples dancing crazy concoctions of Charleston and sheer tribal jumping all around the dance floor.

  When she started to sing, her voice crept along with the sound of the sax and the soulful sobbing of Max's trumpet. Her hips began to sway, her shoulders to shrug alternately in time with the music.

  Emotion and pathos mixed with sexuality in the same way as Sheree's voice mixed with the growl of the groaning brass.

  Infused with the sensuality of her voice, the couples on the dance floor changed tempo, bodies seeming to fuse into one, undulating as they moved slowly around the floor.

  'Man, you make your mamma cry,

  Cos you don't come round,

  You leave her high and dry,

  Don't come round and love her,

  Anymore...'

  Just like the dancing couples, Sheree's own body swayed suggestively to the music.

  'Come and love her,

  Come and feel her,

  Take this body, and do whatever you wanna...'

  Eyes half closed, Sheree clasped her breasts as she sang, then ran her hands down to her waist and over her belly.

  Slowly, as if the hands belonged to someone else, she thrust her pelvis backwards and forwards, bending her knees, opening her legs slightly so that the multicoloured silk dress she wore shimmered like the cool greens and blues of the sea washing over her body.


  As she moved, she relished the cool feel of the silk and the mix of thick smoke that curled up between her legs.

  Those not dancing listened spellbound as her voice plunged to deep bass, then lifted, climbing the scale like a slow, sexual arousal.

  Although her eyes were half closed and her mind and body immersed in her song, Sheree was very aware that Rene sat at the bar like a man carved from wood. Like a cigar-store Indian, she thought, and felt as though she were singing and moving just for him.

  There were others in the audience who looked at her in a similar way to Rene, her image clear in their minds despite the thick curtain of cigar smoke.

  But like her voice, Sheree let her mind wander around the room. And, also like her voice, her mind seeped into the minds of others.

  In the past she had been afraid of what she had seen in men's minds. Just lately, fear had changed to amusement.

  One man, his face aglow with smug pleasure, sat holding the hand of the woman with him. They were both in their late thirties and every so often he would pat the woman's hand and smile at her reassuringly.

  Each time he turned his eyes back to Sheree, she saw a vision. In his mind, she was like a wax doll lying quietly in a box, swathed in layers of crisp, white tissue paper. She saw him put the box up on end and slowly peel each piece of paper away until she was exposed; completely naked!

  She saw the rest of his vision. Saw him move to a gramophone, wind it up, then place the needle onto the record.

  The music on the record and that in the club were one and the same. In the club she was fully clothed as she moved, but the doll in the man's mind was completely naked and the dance unbelievably lewd. She blinked and the vision disappeared. Her gaze went elsewhere.

  Vibrating with song, her body swayed. She spread her fingers and fanned at the air as her voice and the music reached fever pitch.

  As the music touched her very soul, desire was born deep in her body and slowly spread outwards like the rays of a very warm sun. Errol, then Rene came into her mind; Errol's brown body, naked, aroused and undulating with hers until they were like two hungry snakes both waiting for the chance to devour the other.