The Exchange (Mischief Books)

by Williams, Carrie

  ‘It’s time,’ said Lisette, and she sounded drunk. Drunk on sex, I thought.

  They all stood up, and from a wooden table right across the room Aleksei brought us all some masks, Venetian-style.

  I took mine and made to pick up my clothes, but Lisette said ‘No, just the mask,’ and I watched her pull hers down over her face. It was a remarkable, gorgeous piece of art – green with white sequins and then green feathers at the top.

  Mine was an azure blue. I pulled it on and walked over to a full-length mirror that hung on the far side of the room. As I stood marvelling at myself, Kir came up behind and wrapped his arms around me. I felt his animal heat against my back, the warm fur of his chest and belly. His cock nestled comfortably in the small of my back. His hands took ample handfuls of my breasts and he bit my shoulder. I gazed into his eyes through the slits of his scarlet mask.

  ‘Take me again,’ I pleaded, but instead he just turned me around and led me towards the door. Aleksei and Lisette were gliding out of the room too, and through the open door I could see other couples moving down the hallway, back in the direction of the staircase.

  I glanced back as we stepped out of the room in time to see the slave girl appear from behind the dark heavy curtain and rush across the room to gather up our clothes, which she then began to fold and place in neat piles on the bed. Then she left as quickly as she had appeared.

  We moved down the hall as part of the crowd, and it seemed to me as I gazed around that many people were like Lisette – robot-like, as if in a trance. All were masked, like us, and naked. There were bodies large and small, rippling with luscious flesh or slinky slim. Bodies ebony black, chocolate brown, tanned, pink and white. Bodies hairy and smooth, with genitals fluffy, pruned or shaven bare. I didn’t feel at all self-conscious. It seemed that everyone, despite their external differences, was the same. We were all bodies in search of pleasure.

  We proceeded down the staircase, wave after wave of people, mirrored by other masked and naked people descending the opposite staircase. On a podium that had been set up in the middle of the hallway stood a woman in a spectacular diamanté-encrusted mask topped by a feathery headpiece. She was naked too. When she spoke, I realised it was Solange.

  ‘My honoured guests,’ she said. ‘Tonight, as you are aware, is a very special night, a very rare night. The once-in-a-thousand-years alignment of certain planets permits us access to the Druid’s Temple.’ She gestured towards the rear of the hallway. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, if you wouldn’t mind following my stewards out into the grounds, it is time.’

  Though nobody seemed to speak, a low murmur of excitement rippled through the massed guests, who all began to move towards the rear of the building as directed. We moved with them and slowly approached the back doors, which were flung open to the night. Two servants in black leather thongs stood either side of the doors, holding blazing torches, while outside on a stone terrace were a pair of flaming braziers, beside two huge stone lions gazing impassively out into the dark grounds.

  The pathway was dimly lit by lanterns placed at intervals along it. The crowd moved between them as if possessed of one body and one mind. It was as if Solange’s words had had some hypnotic effect on them, rendering them unable to think or act except en masse. And I felt the same. Part of me observed and thought and felt, but the main part of me just obeyed.

  I wasn’t afraid. I’d come this far and I’d expanded, as a person and an artist, in just a few hours. I knew that whatever awaited us would only take me further along this path, and I embraced it in advance, with my body and soul.

  Lisette and Aleksei were in front of us. Kir’s hand was in the small of my back, encouraging me to go forwards, giving me strength. I felt warmth and protection emanating from him and wondered if I might be falling for him.

  Aleksei’s hand was looped around Lisette’s shapely waist, resting on her hip. I wondered, too, about them. Was their relationship based entirely on evenings like this? Did they have normal sex, together, alone, at home? Could one have normal sex together after sharing a night like this?

  I stopped myself from thinking about the future and what it might bring, willing myself back into the present. It was important that I lived all this fully, drawing everything I could from it, not least because I might never experience anything like it again.

  The path wound its way through a patch of woodland, then we rounded a bend and an amazing stone edifice hove into view. Solange had called it the Druid’s Temple, and although I felt relatively certain that it couldn’t be authentically ancient – otherwise surely it would be a National Monument – it did radiate an aura of sacred mystery.

  A stone arch led into its labyrinthine heart. We processed inside. I had no idea how many of us there might be, but I estimated it might be around a hundred. Within the standing stones that constituted the walls of the ‘temple’ stood other isolated stones and mounds of stones. Some people sat or leaned on them, but everyone looked to the front of the structure.

  Solange had somehow arrived before us and was standing on a large flat horizontal stone, a cape draped around her shoulders. It hung down her body but didn’t join at the front, leaving her breasts and pussy visible.

  A huge church candle placed on the stone in front of her threw her body and face into relief. She seemed to be looking out over our heads, into the night sky, as if searching for the planets that had aligned tonight. Then she closed her eyes for several seconds. When she opened them they seemed to glow.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she pronounced, ‘the time is now. Where is the virgin?’

  From somewhere off to the side of her a girl stepped forward, white-blonde hair pouring down her back like water. In the moonlight her body was like chalk.

  Solange climbed down from the stone and gestured for the girl to get onto it, first divesting herself of her cape and laying it down. The girl spread herself out on the cape, eyes wide open, while Solange picked up the candle and walked round to the back of the stone, holding it up in the air in front of her. A slow incantation began to issue forth from her lips. I didn’t understand a word of it; it seemed to be in Latin.

  After a few minutes a figure appeared by Solange’s side – that of a naked man dressed as a satyr, with a mask with a goatish face surrounded by hair and topped by spiralling horns. For a moment he stood and listened with us as Solange completed her liturgy, then he walked around the stone and leaned over the virgin spread out before him like an offering.

  At once, movement began among the crowd. Kir’s hand disappeared from my back and I saw Aleksei remove his from Lisette’s. They turned and moved towards other women, and in their place appeared other men, masked and priapic. One of them leaned into me, nuzzling me with his face, sniffing me. I inhaled and felt the strong pull of his pheromones. I was sure it was body chemistry that had drawn him to me. He crushed up against me and I felt his cock rootling for me. I didn’t care what his face looked like or who he was. I just wanted him, and I didn't want to wait.

  ‘Take her!’ yelled Solange, as if responding to my need, and all heads turned towards the stone at the front, where the satyr was parting the legs of the virgin and proffering his cock towards her.

  Also watching, my new partner drove me back against the standing stone next to us, and, pushing one of my legs up, looping an arm under it, brought his fingers to my cunt and then, satisfied that I was wet enough, drove himself into me. Moans all around us, echoing mine, suggested everyone was following the satyr’s example. I turned my head and Lisette was laid out on the grass, being fucked by her new admirer.

  My own continued to thrust, and though the stone behind chafed my back, I didn’t mind. I wanted it to go on and on. My head thrown back, I looked up at the star-studded sky and thought I was in heaven.

  Then Solange clapped her hands and barked something out in Latin, and the man withdrew from me – seemingly unwillingly, his hand lingering on mine as if he regretted letting me go. I regretted letting him go too
, but my disappointment was short lived. In his place appeared a woman, who took me by the shoulder and turned me to face the stone, then slipped her fingers inside me and began gently pushing them in and out.

  We changed partners a few times and then the whole gathering descended into erotic chaos as bodies came together and drifted apart, pell-mell. Solange was no longer issuing commands – I imagine she had joined in herself by now – and revellers just crawled over each other, sucking and fucking and caressing and squeezing, rolling and climbing and probing, not caring about gender or anything, just enjoying the pure randomness of bodies mingling.

  It was exhilarating and exhausting, and even as it was going on I knew that it had to end soon. Not that I wasn’t enjoying the thrill of random, anonymous bodies fingering me, and licking me, exploring me with fingers, with tongues, with cocks.

  I wasn’t just taking, though – I was giving too, sucking disembodied cocks, slurping at delicious honeyed pussies whose owners would remain ever faceless to me.

  Perhaps this was why I was finally able to let go. I knew Aleksei, Kir and Lisette of course, but bar the slave girl and Solange, the others would always remain strangers to me, despite our brief intimacies. For all I knew, I would cross many of them on the streets of Paris without a flicker of recognition on any of our parts, in spite of the bliss our bodies had found together. It was a weird and discomfiting thought. It couldn’t be any other way – without this anonymity, this whole event would not come into being.

  At one point, knackered and overwhelmed, I crawled away to the edge of the stone walls and just sat there, naked and masked, watching the crowd cavort. It turned me on, watching the bodies merge orgiastically in a massive free-for-all, and though I’d come several times that night, I found myself fingering my clit and quickly bringing myself to orgasm again, aware that several people were watching my self-pleasuring.

  And then the crowds started to disperse, with revellers moving out from the confines of the Druid’s Temple and walking slowly up the low-lit path towards the main house.

  Inside, couples and groups withdrew to the rooms they had used earlier in the night to get dressed. Divested of the masks, they gravitated back down the stairs and towards the massive front doors, which now stood open. We did the same, and joined them on the stone steps. The mood was sombre, reflective, as the various parties climbed into their limos and chauffeured cars and began to make their way down the stately driveway.

  As we climbed in behind Aleksei’s driver, I wondered how many of them would return. Was this some kind of secret society, to which only the elite were invited? Was it some kind of clandestine club that took place regularly? There was no way someone like me would have been permitted to take part without an ‘in’. But now that I was an initiate, would I be invited again? And if so, did I want to come?

  We were silent on the way home, and I had plenty of time to relive the events of the evening and assess their meaning. I didn’t think I would go again, even if invited – it was all far too out there for me. But I did think it had been a transformative experience that would have a lasting effect on my life and my career.

  I looked over at Kir, who was gazing out of the open window, blowing smoke from a cigar out into the night. In another life, I felt, I could have loved him. He was kind and he was genuine. He was also gentle, when needed. But he had a dark side to him, too, and I wasn’t sure that I could form a relationship with someone who sought the kind of pleasures that he did.

  Still, I hoped we would stay in touch. If I wasn’t a hundred per cent convinced by his sexual initiations, I did feel that he would still be willing to help me with the introductions he had promised regarding his art-world contacts.

  As the car purred back towards Paris, I thought again of my hero Brassaï and how he had confessed that ‘after having spent the night among workers […] and vagabonds, roughnecks and streetwalkers [he] would be invited the next day to a soirée or masked ball of the aristocracy.’

  The parallel struck me between my own experiences in Paris and those of the famous photographer. I’d lurched from one milieu – the low life of Pigalle – to some kind of elite sex society in the château of a mad aristocrat. I wondered if Brassaï had been able to take photographs during his forays into the world of the elite and imagined that he probably hadn’t. I’d certainly never seen any evidence that he had. It was a shame – they would have been an amazing document.

  And suddenly I regretted that I also hadn’t had the chance to document the event I had just attended. It would have been difficult, but I felt certain that given the amount of anonymous nudity involved, nobody would have been bothered by my taking photos. But I felt sure that Solange would have forbidden it.

  I felt cheated, and I suppose that’s when I realised that whatever had happened that night, I was still an outsider and that’s what I would remain. Sometimes you could be just too involved, and though I wouldn’t change that night for anything, neither would I seek it out again. My artistic horizons had been widened, but essentially I would always be an artist, an onlooker.

  ***

  Little did I know that the night wasn’t yet over. On the way through the forest of Fontainebleau, which Kir explained to me had been an ancient royal hunting ground, Aleksei gave the order and the driver pulled over by a clump of trees fronting a large mound of strangely shaped rocks. I gaped as he opened the door and a prostitute materialised in front of him. Despite the chill of imminent dawn, she was wearing a tiny skirt and a vest top, plus the obligatory stilettos.

  Without a word being exchanged, she climbed in with us, and Aleksei passed her a glass of champagne poured from a bottle nestled in a fresh ice bucket. The rest of us weren’t drinking, and I felt that we were equally bushed and keen to get back to Paris and our respective beds.

  Leaning back against her seat, champagne flute in hand, the prostitute hoisted up her skirt and parted her legs. She wasn’t wearing knickers, and her pussy sported a freshly waxed Brazilian. She was there for the taking. But who still had the appetite?

  Sensing that none of us were keen, Aleksei unbuckled his trousers and, pulling them and his boxers down around his hips, entered the prostitute roughly, without any foreplay. Leaning back, eyes half closed, taking sips from her champagne whenever his thrusting allowed, she seemed barely there. It was all very businesslike and perfunctory. Lisette, for her part, seemed entirely unmoved.

  We were driving as Aleksei fucked the prostitute, at a slow, almost regal pace. When he pulled out, tossing her a handful of notes that he didn’t seem to have even bothered counting, he ordered the driver to stop and then opened the door and indicated to her to get out, without a word.

  We continued in silence back through the Paris suburbs and into the heart of the city itself. As they dropped me off outside Rochelle’s apartment block, again without a word, I had a sour taste in my mouth as I watched them drive off into the night.

  Chapter 16: Rochelle

  We rolled around on the floor, the girl and I, as two guys – hot guys, as she had promised – sat on the bed and watched us lap each other’s tits, lick each other, and finger and fist each other to orgasm. Their eyes on us made it all the more illicit and exciting, as did the fact that I still didn’t know my lover’s name and probably never would.

  When at last we sat up, glowing with sweat, panting with exertion, we saw that the boys were burning for us, so we reached up and dragged them down onto the floor, and soon the four of us were crawling all over each other, losing all sense of who was who as we explored orifices and velvety swathes of skin. It didn’t matter any more – I had a sudden Buddhist sense that we were all one body, all one mind, some kind of universal being intent on nothing but its own pleasure.

  One moment I was sucking a cock, not knowing if it was the blond guy’s or that of his even cuter friend, and the next minute I was face down on the floor, arse in the air, with the girl below me caressing my nipples with her thumbpads then bringing her mouth to them and
licking, sucking, nipping at them, while one of the guys – again, I wasn’t sure which – pounded into me from behind. Sometimes, for a few seconds, I had to roll away and watch, fingering myself gently, as the girl blew the blond guy while the dark guy went down on her. But I couldn’t stay apart from them for long. It was too compulsive.

  The others sometimes hung back for a moment too, rebooting their sexual energies, considering their options, then re-entering the fray. It was all fantastic, in its way, but for me the real buzz came when the super-horny dark-haired guy bound me lightly to the bedstead by the wrists and then watched as the others, in turn, fucked me – first the girl, and then the blond guy. I loved the way his eyes swept over my body as I twisted and contorted; I knew his pleasure in watching was heightened by knowing that he was going to take me soon himself. I only hoped I wouldn’t be too exhausted. I burned for all of this, but above all I burned for him.

  I was fine. As the others looked down on us, seemingly aware that in some sense the latter part of the evening at least had been building up to this consummation between the two of us, I felt a bolt of new energy pass through my body, like a surge of electricity, and I arched up to meet him as he lowered himself to me. My cunt was open like a flower for him; his cock fitted me perfectly, like the lost piece of a jigsaw puzzle. For a moment we were both so overcome with pleasure that we didn’t move. We just lay locked together on the bed, breaths caught in our throats, the other two beside us motionless, transfixed. And then he started driving himself into me, his eyes on my face, and I felt incredible blasts of pleasure billowing through me from head to foot. Three pairs of eyes all trained on mine accompanied my rising orgasm, making its approach more intense and emotional, but at the moment itself I couldn’t look at them any more. This was too private, too shattering. It would be like them looking into my soul, and I didn’t even know their names.