All of Winterbourne’s exquisite whores were gathered in the Hall: reclining on cushions, talking and drinking wine, or swimming naked in the scented bath. The costume was Roman too: semi-diaphanous togas and no underwear. Some of the girls had been cast in the role of slaves: wearing nothing but jewelled belts and tiny decorative aprons, these girls had been chosen for the exceptional beauty of their breasts, which stood out proud and stiff-nippled in the evening air. Stiff, not with cold but with excitement, mused Delgado with satisfaction, feeling his own prick begin to twitch with delicious anticipation.
The guests were arriving: distinguished, greying men with unspeakable lusts in their tired eyes. As each one arrived, he was introduced to Delgado, and taken away to be robed by Madame LeCoeur. The introductions sounded like the guest list for a Royal garden party or a charity gala night . . . Sir Roger Linford (the Queen’s press secretary), Harold Winterson, Edmund O’Rourke and Sir Jeremy Hunter (cabinet ministers), and David Roehampton, the TV journalist . . . Men in whose hands lay the future of the country; men who could not afford the merest breath of a scandal; exactly the sort of men for whom Winterbourne had been created.
‘Let the revels begin!’ Delgado nodded to Madame LeCoeur, and the procession of guests filed into the Great Hall, almost unrecognisable in their togas and sandals.
He clapped his hands, and at once there were two whores beside each man, taking them by the arms and leading them to the benches beside the scented bath. They sat down on the stone benches, and the ‘slave-girls’ brought in silver trays laden with food and wine.
They ate greedily, fed and waited on by their whores, and watching two naked girls frolicking in the pool. They were twins; exotic coffee-coloured girls with a hint of the Dark Continent; long glossy-black hair streaming out behind them in the water as they swam, weaving about their shoulders and breasts like some strange chimerical seawrack.
At first, their play seemed innocent enough. The girls were excellent swimmers, and moved sinuously like tawny eels through the pink-tinged water. This was deeply erotic in itself. As they glided through the water, it ran like a loving caress across their gleaming buttocks, moulding the ever-moving, ever-glistening curves and awakening long-suppressed desires in the watchers. And the watchers themselves were being caressed, gently, subtly, knowingly: doubly caressed, a beautiful semi-naked girl on either side, twin goddesses of love for every man.
And then the water-games became more adventurous. The girls swam towards each other and began to lavish caresses upon each other. One picked up a cake of soap from the side of the bath and began to rub it lasciviously over her sister’s skin: so bronzed, so perfect, that she might have been one of the statues standing in the candlelit shadows of the Great Hall. The tormentor laughed merrily as she ran the soap vigorously over her sister’s nipples, delighting in the way they leapt to attention, darker brown mounds at the ends of her firm young breasts.
Nor was the first sister indifferent to the charms of the situation. Her own breasts were hardening, trembling deliriously as she worked away vigorously at her twin’s body, the mirror-image of her own vibrant sexuality. Her twin moaned and moved her legs apart, bracing herself on the tiled floor of the bath as her sister slid the soap downwards and inexorably towards her juicy cunt. A well-soaped finger slid inside, and the girl began to writhe about, groaning and flinging her head from side to side.
On the benches, the men wanted to lift up the hems of their togas and masturbate. Some longed to dive into the scented water and take the girls there and then. But their knowing, skilful companions shook their heads and smiled, and whispered secret words into their ears: ‘This is just a beginning, an apéritif’; ‘Save yourself for later’; ‘The best is yet to come . . .’ And they soothed and aroused them with knowing kisses, caresses so skilful that they awakened and prolonged desire, eternally retarding the moment of orgasm until desire became so acute that it was almost pain, and arousal became sheer torment . . .
The girls were now climbing the steps that led up out of the pool. Dripping wet, glistening and with rivulets of water coursing down their impassive faces, their breasts, their bellies, their thighs, their brown bodies seemed even more as though they were cast in bronze: ancient statues discovered by exultant archaeologists and drawn up from the far fathoms where they had lain lost and forgotten for centuries, their perfection unimpaired by time.
‘On the floor, Calypso,’ commanded the first twin.
‘I obey, Sappho.’
And Calypso lay down upon the mosaic, her bronzed flesh framed by the lewd brightness of prancing satyrs and wanton naked nymphs. And Sappho began, with the utmost lasciviousness, to lap up the droplets of rose-tinted water from her sister’s taut-muscled body. She began by licking the water from Calypso’s closed eyelids, where little rose-scented pools had gathered like tears of ecstasy. The girl trembled, not with cold but with desire: trembled as bronze vibrates when it is struck into sudden and unexpected harmonies.
Sappho’s tongue ventured downwards, lapping greedily at her twin sister’s long, slender throat and plunging ever-downwards to the foothills of her glorious tawny breasts. Her own breasts were hardened with desire and she was breathing heavily as her lips fastened on Calypso’s nipples: first the right, then the left, until each was taut and hard with pleasure and the girl began to thrust her pelvis slowly and seductively upwards, as though seeking an invisible lover who would thrust his massive penis into her cunt and end the delicious misery of her frustration.
But the lover had no need of any penis, Her tongue – long and muscular and lively – was all she needed to satisfy her sister’s cravings. Slowly and tantalisingly, she moved inexorably downwards over Calypso’s flat belly, lingering a little while to send her tongue wriggling playfully into her navel and delighting in the little spasms of pleasure which contorted the young woman’s body.
Calypso was moaning loudly now, and her cries contrasted markedly with the tense silence among the watchers: men of power rendered powerless by the sight of these two lovers who had no need of them. So powerless that they could not even reach for their straining pricks and masturbate themselves to release, for their hands were restrained by their strong-willed companions, and in their heart of hearts they knew that they must hold back their desires for there was better – much, much better – to come . . .
Sappho had rested her slender hands upon her twin sister’s strong-muscled thighs and was now insinuating sly fingers into the hot, moist place where those thighs met, tormenting and persuading the girl to give in to lust: to open her legs and display her treasures. It was a pretty game, for it was obvious for all to see that Calypso’s saintly self-restraint was entirely for the benefit of the important guests watching her twist and turn and cry out in her fury of lust.
The coup de grâce came after an eternity of playful licking and half-hearted resistance. Sappho began to lick her sister’s pubic hair, wriggling into the jet-black frizzy mass and twisting the curly strands around her tongue, tugging lasciviously at that most sensitive part of Calypso’s body. With a cry – half despair, half pain – the poor victim surrendered herself body and soul, and flung her thighs so wide apart that none of the watchers could have been in any doubt about her excitement. Her cunt glistened, pink and wet. And that wetness owed little to the rose-scented waters of the bath. Her own juices were flowing freely, welling up out of her secret spring like healing waters, redolent with mystery and power.
Sappho began to play with these rosy treasures, running her index finger luxuriously down the sopping crack, scooping up the juices and using them to lubricate her sister’s mound of desire. Calypso gasped as her sister’s finger reached, and applied skilful pressure to her yearning clitoris.
‘No, please, no . . .!’ she cried.
But Sappho was pitiless. With a wicked smile she began to rub harder at her sister’s clitty with her left hand, whilst plunging her right index finger into Calypso’s tight but amply lubricated hole. The girl’
s eyes flew open in ecstasy, and she thrust her pelvis forward to take in her sister’s finger up to the knuckle.
Struggling to sit up, Calypso grabbed hold of her sister’s shoulders and pulled her head down, down, down until it was between her thighs. Sappho made great play of struggling, resisting, but the outcome was a foregone conclusion: Calypso would have her own victory. The punters mustn’t be disappointed, as Delgado mused to himself, gently and surreptitiously stroking his penis as he looked on from the shadows.
He was far too preoccupied to notice another, less formless shadow that seemed to grow darker and more substantial as each second passed, as the excitement mounted and the sexual energies in the room grew ever stronger.
Sappho’s face was now pressed hard against her sister’s cunt, her lascivious serpent of a tongue darting in and out of the fragrant depths and her finger still rubbing ever harder on Calypso’s erect clitoris.
Calypso came to her climax, crying out and writhing on the mosaic floor; and Sappho fell upon her, panting. They lay there for a long time, long coffee-coloured limbs entwined like tired young animals curled up together for warmth.
The room grew darker as the concealed electric lights were dimmed. Now the only light came from the hundreds of flickering, dancing candles warming the gloom and bringing the lewd figures in the wall-paintings strangely to life.
A blood-red velvet curtain at the back of the hall twitched and swished back, revealing a dreamlike procession. Two tall negresses in long white robes led the way, their ebony skin gleaming eerie and blue-black in the light from the flaming torches they carried. They wore long white robes which clung to the swell of breast and hip and revealed a sinuous ripple of muscular strength.
Behind them came four young blond men, naked save for tiny loincloths which bulged with the promise of their manhood. They carried an ornate curtained litter with gauzy curtains, behind which could be glimpsed the vague form of a woman. At the rear of the procession came Madame LeCoeur, plump and appetising in her guise of Roman procuress.
The whores were chivvying their guests to their feet, and leading them over to join the procession. They seemed slightly dazed, slightly drunk, though they had consumed little. They were not to know that the sweet wine they had drunk had been laced with a little concoction of Madame LeCoeur’s own devising, guaranteed to sweep away all inhibitions and convey whoever drank it into a realm where dream met reality and fused seamlessly with it.
The guests would enjoy the spectacle, rise to new heights of ecstasy, experienced undreamed-of orgasms tonight. And their pleasant memories would be bound to ensure their swift return. No man who had once stepped into the world of Winterbourne Hall would ever quite escape its special charm, its seductive lure.
The curious procession wound its way slowly around the Great Hall six times, accompanied by sensual music whose beat grew gradually more insistent and its rhythms more and more lewd. The guests processed behind the litter, flanked by their whores who continued to caress and excite them, always withdrawing their subtle fingers before their victims could reach orgasm. The atmosphere was heavy with sex and anticipation.
At last the tall negresses led the way to a softly carpeted corner of the Hall, strewn with rugs, floor-cushions and rich wall-hangings. In the middle was a low bed with a soft mattress. At a sign from Madame LeCoeur, the blond youths set down the litter and stepped away into the shadows, almost regretfully, as though they were loth to miss what was going to happen next.
This was what the men had been waiting for: the highlight of their evening’s entertainment; the special, piquant pleasure which they could buy nowhere else. A young girl’s flesh, unsullied and fresh as a dew-kissed fruit still clinging to the bough, just begging to be plucked and defiled. Men licked their lips, forgot the seductive delights of their companionable whores, and all their eyes turned to feast on these new wonders, these delights chosen especially to revive their flagging tastes, their much-abused libido. For these men had the power and the money to afford any perversion, any baseness, any indecency they craved . . . and they craved this young flesh which they had not yet even seen, craved it because they delighted in the perversion of innocence, the sight of fear darkening cloudless eyes, the power of doing wrong.
Delgado stepped forward out of the shadows and addressed the throng. In his immaculate black tuxedo, leaning on his silver-topped cane, he looked strangely out of place in this satyric mise-en-scène. Out of place but superior, he knew that. He was the ringmaster, and these guests, however rich, however powerful, were merely the beasts in his circus. He enjoyed that kind of power. A sardonic smile played about his lips as he began to speak:
‘Gentlemen, you are gathered here tonight to witness and take part in an erotic pageant – the greatest the world has to offer. Already you have witnessed a little spectacle, which I believe we all found enjoyable.’
There were nods of agreement.
‘Well, gentlemen, now we come to the highlight of the evening: an auction which I know will interest and excite your passions. Within this litter sits a girl of rare beauty, innocence, docility. Innocence most especially. I personally have verified her virginity, and I can tell you she has been with no man in her young life. A mere child, a slip of a girl, inexperienced, filled with fear.’
One of the watchers had found his voice:
‘How do we know she’s a virgin?’
More nods. Drugged or not, these men had lost none of their business instincts.
‘Yeah, let us check out the merchandise before we part with our money.’ It was Gavin de Lacy, the well-known City broker with an equally well-known penchant for young men and women – sometimes both at once.
‘All in good time,’ replied Delgado. ‘You shall have ample opportunity to . . . examine . . . the girl before you place your bids.’
This seemed to placate the guests, so Delgado continued:
‘Gentlemen, whichever of you is the highest bidder shall have the great joy of taking this girl here, on this bed, in front of us all. He shall have the singular pleasure of being the very first to thrust his manhood into her cunt, to tear into her and destroy her innocence. And he shall have his will with her until he is sated. After which,’ he added, with a conspiratorial glance around the room, ‘anyone else who desires her may have her. And of course any others of our magnificent whores who take your fancy. And the orgy shall continue until dawn.’
He signed to Madame LeCoeur, and she drew aside the curtain. Inside, Joanna Königsberg sat unmoving, pale, trembling slightly. She seemed not to know quite where she was or indeed who she was. Aided by Madame LeCoeur, she climbed out of the litter and stood obediently in front of her would-be purchasers.
She was dressed in full Roman costume, with her breathtaking blonde hair piled up in an ornate style, perfect ringlets framing her ivory cheeks. Her firm breasts thrust against the diaphanous material of her robe and the nipples were hard as iron.
‘Delicious.’
‘Good enough to eat.’
‘Like a little white dove just before the eagle swoops down and devours it . . .’
Appreciative murmurs came from all sides. Like the slave master at a slave auction, the French madame led the girl around the circle of men, letting them see, touch, handle. Joanna submitted silently to every indignity, standing docile as the gazelle waiting for the lion to strike.
Lewd hands clawed at her dress, tugging it from her shoulders. The fabric gave way and the bodice dropped down, leaving her naked to the waist. Fingers plucked at her perfect pink nipples and for the first time it was obvious that Joanna was feeling not only fear but the beginnings of pleasure through her drug-induced trance. Her breathing became halting and her eyes half closed. More hands, and the rest of the dress fell to the ground.
She was entirely naked underneath. The broad perfect sweep of her hips and the blonde curly triangle of her pubis were breathtaking. A bold hand ran down her taut belly and toyed with the blonde curls. Instinctively the girl
began to open her legs almost imperceptibly, until at last her feet were several inches apart and the man’s finger was teasing the gateway to her maidenhead.
‘Lie down on the bed,’ Madame LeCoeur commanded her, leading her across and sitting her down on the satin sheets. She took the pins from the girl’s hair and it tumbled in a blonde wave over her ivory shoulders.
The girl obeyed and stretched out full-length on the bed.
‘Spread your legs.’
She did so, and Madame LeCoeur beckoned Gavin de Lacy.
‘Feel for yourself that she is a virgin.’
He needed no second bidding. Roughly, quite without gentleness, he thrust two fingers into the girl’s damp crack. Joanna gave a little cry, perhaps of pain, perhaps of anticipation, and she began to tremble. De Lacy gave a self-satisfied grunt and withdrew his fingers reluctantly. His rock-hard penis was clearly visible, beating an insistent tattoo beneath the fabric of his toga.
He looked around the gathering and nodded.
‘She’s a virgin all right. And tight as a sparrow’s arse,’ he laughed. And his laughter was as cold and unfeeling as the night wind shrieking cruelly through the woods enshrouding the Hall.
The girl lay, oblivious and unmoving, on the bed: legs splayed wide and her virgin wetness glistening in the candleglow. She seemed younger than her eighteen years: a protected, sheltered child with a body as precious and fragile as Dresden porcelain. Her extreme youth and innocence had delighted Delgado the very first moment that he set eyes upon her: not because those qualities appealed especially to his own tastes, but because he knew that they would appeal to those of his guests. Herr Königsberg had provided a precious commodity in offering his daughter as a sacrifice to the prosperity of Winterbourne Hall: her virginity would fetch an excellent price.
Kiss of Death (Modern Erotic Classics) Page 2