It was too much. He had already seen far more than he should have. Slumping to the ground, he began working his own hips back and forth in a motion that echoed the blonde girl’s thrustings. His cock was a rod of iron now and he had to give it easement; swivelling awkwardly, he revealed it to the air, then groaned as a vagrant breeze caressed his glans.
His need to climax was urgent, more pressing than he could remember in a long time, and as he pumped himself, he almost forgot his wanton wood-nymphs. Jerking his hips in ungainly circles, he pushed his penis through his fingers, focusing solely on the sensations he created.
It wasn’t until the perfect moment, when his rushing semen jetted out in long white strings, that he thought again of his two companions in the forest. And opening his eyes, he looked up and suddenly saw them.
Like two mysterious blonde phantasms, they were standing over him and watching, their slender bodies naked, their pretty faces wreathed in smiles.
Chapter Three
The Magic Interior
WHEN THEY REACHED the landing, Belinda stopped in her tracks. At the head of the stairs was a large and quite arresting oil painting; a picture of a man in period dress who had eyes that were the bluest she had ever seen. As she stared up at the image, half-entranced by both the eyes and the commanding image that the subject presented, she became aware that Oren was beside her, also – seemingly – transfixed.
‘Is he one of your master’s ancestors?’ she enquired, turning her attention to the equally eye-catching man at her side, the tall sculpture in living golden flesh.
To her surprise, the mute shook his head, his own warm brown eyes twinkling as if he were privy to some private joke.
‘Well, it’s a fabulous picture anyway,’ she said, taking a step forward for a closer look. Although she was no costume expert, Belinda guessed the man to be wearing eighteenth-century clothing. His expression was both solemn and challenging, and his hair was long, caught into a tail at the back, and had a strange whitish look to it, as if it were dusted with narrow streaks of fine powder. He had on a coat of navy blue velvet, with a high stand-up collar and sloping away tails, and he cut a dashing figure in pale breeches and high boots.
He was a handsome man, in both face and body, yet it was his eyes that drew Belinda’s attention. They seemed to bore right into her, directly from the canvas, their colour brilliant and their intensity astounding. There was sadness in those eyes but they also made her feel profoundly vulnerable, so much so that she was forced to turn away. Almost as if he had read her mind and her fears, Oren smiled back at her reassuringly, then gestured that they move on along a corridor to their left.
Still disturbed by the portrait, Belinda followed her guide.
Who is he? she wondered, still captivated by the blue-eyed man. She was aware that the house around her was unexpectedly well-maintained and exquisite, but she felt too fazed to note its decor’s more subtle features.
The man in the painting, she realised, had exactly the same blue eyes that she had seen last night in her dream or whatever it was. They were the eyes that had watched her making love with Jonathan.
Don’t be crazy, Seward, she told herself, almost running to keep up with Oren’s long stride. As they turned a corner and started down a spacious oak-panelled corridor, she saw that a whole row of portraits hung there, and all, it seemed, of either descendants or antecedents of the man at the head of the stairs.
The family likeness was uncanny. The nobleman in eighteenth-century breeches and boots was the very image of the one who now wore the garb of an Edwardian dandy. Strong genes, thought Belinda, pausing before a painting of yet another family member, dressed in a morning suit from the turn of the century. This man had much shorter hair but it still had the same almost dusted look to it, and he carried a top hat, suede gloves and a cane. There was the same arrogant melancholy in his blue eyes.
I’d love to have been able to meet you, thought Belinda as she tore herself away from the picture to follow Oren. Any one of you. Your eyes, they’re out of this world somehow. So beautiful, so brilliant, so alive, even if only in a painting.
At last, she and Oren seemed to have reached their destination, and he pushed open a door then ushered her through into a bedroom.
Belinda gasped. The room was breathtakingly sumptuous and about as far away from last night’s impressions of the house as it was possible to get. Everything around her was luxuriously ornate and made no excuses for being so. She was in a pleasure chamber, a temple of sensuality, a retreat created to please and be pleased in.
Wherever Belinda looked she saw velvet, brocade, rich carpeting and the choicest of rare antique furniture, every piece softly gleaming with polish. The colour scheme was womb-like reds, ruddy pinks and vibrant corals, with ornamentation – wherever possible – in gold leaf.
‘Wow!’ she said, at a loss at the sight of such magnificence.
Oren just smiled and made an expansive gesture which seemed to indicate ‘enjoy’. Then, while Belinda stood and stared, still unable take it all in, he retreated, leaving the red room with only a pause for a shallow bow.
What now? thought Belinda, staring around at the chamber that contained her, then walking over to the bed and sitting down.
This wasn’t the sort of guest accommodation she would have expected for someone who had literally wandered in unannounced. No, this was the sort of setting a wealthy man would commission for a loved one, either a wife or a treasured mistress. It was a place for trysts and the long, lazy rituals of passion; it seemed to echo with the cries of past desire.
Rolling on to her back, Belinda kicked off her trainers, stretched out on the crushed velvet bedcover and studied the elaborate mouldings of the ceiling. What would Jonathan think of all this when he arrived? she wondered. If he arrived … Oren had implied that someone would fetch him. But who? The whole priory had an odd sense of desertedness about it, even here in its magic interior which was so different from the way it looked outside.
Something unusual caught her eye as she tilted her head back, and sitting up and twisting round she looked more closely at what appeared to be a set of velvet curtains, a couple of yards deep, that hung against the wall over the carved head of the bed. It seemed strange for them to be there as the windows were all on the other side of the room, and immediately her curiosity was piqued.
Shuffling up to the pillows, she reached for the gold tasselled pull-cord that hung by the curtains and gave it a slow, steady yank. Immediately, as if on a well-oiled modern track, the curtains parted to reveal what was behind them.
It was another portrait. Another handsome man of the same blue-eyed lineage.
The pose this time was far more casual and naturalistic, fusing a modern look with an antique background and clothing. The man in the picture appeared to be half-sitting, half-lying on the same bed that Belinda was on, or one very like it. He was leaning back languorously against a mound of crimson pillows, his expression vaguely sleepy. And though his eyes had the same hint of sorrow that pervaded the portraits of his relations, he was also smiling a smile of satisfaction. His hair was long, loose and slightly tousled, and he wore just breeches, stockings and a voluminous cloud-white shirt that lay open to show his slightly hairy chest.
It was the most erotic image of a man that Belinda had ever seen.
A woman painted this, she thought suddenly. A woman he was involved with. He looks almost as if he’s just been making love.
Turning around again, Belinda slid down to the bed’s wooden footboard, and leant back against it to stare up at the unknown man.
He really was exceptionally good-looking, and would have been so as much today as in any age. His features were strong and candid, with a slightly snub nose and a generous, sensual mouth. As ever his eyes were an electric, lightning blue, only this time they were hazed, as if with passion.
‘God, you’re beautiful!’ whispered Belinda, noting the way the pale déshabillé clothing only accentuated the fine struc
ture of the man’s body. He was well built – athletically ‘chunky’, she would have called him – although the contemporary term seemed inappropriate somehow. And there was no denying the promise of his virility; a substantial bulge deformed the smooth line of his breeches …
On this bed, she thought, feeling a faint stirring of lust in her belly. At some time in the past, her unknown blue-eyed paramour had made love to a woman on this bed. Closing her eyes, Belinda imagined him first smiling, then stretching, and then rising up from his resting place among the pillows and beginning to strip off his few items of clothing.
It was the ultimate romantic fantasy. To be taken in these magnificent surroundings by a powerful, courteous lover from a bygone age. She pictured him naked, his hair loose, looming over her, his strong body primed and ready for sex.
‘Mademoiselle, I must possess you,’ he might whisper as his elegant hands peeled the clothes from her body. When she was as bare as nature intended, he would probably kiss her all over, touching his lips and his tongue to her every sensitive zone. Modern men thought they knew it all where sex was concerned, but something told Belinda that this nobleman from the past possessed more knowledge and erotic skill than all her small band of contemporary lovers put together.
It was the eyes that made her think that way, she supposed, sliding down to lie flat on the bed, her own eyes still locked with the blue ones in the portrait. The man in the picture had a gaze that was full of experience. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had a whole gamut of poignant memories to draw on: passion, love, excess; conquest, loss, sorrow. There were lifetimes of wisdom in that look.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered again, as in her fantasy he began to caress her. Pushing up her T-shirt, she cupped her bare breasts, imagining that her hands were those of the man on the wall above her.
As she squeezed gently, she caught her breath. Her palms and her fingers felt suddenly and inexplicably cool. Not cool within, but simply cool against the skin of her breasts. Her nipples puckered at the sensation, tingling deliciously. The coldness seemed to spread, even as she acknowledged it, moving down over her midriff towards her belly. Opening her eyes, she looked to see if one of the long casement windows was open and letting in a draught.
One window was open, but the day was calm and the curtains hung still and heavy. Belinda shuddered, not from the cold, but from a strange excited fear. With shaking fingers she unfastened her shorts and eased them down, with her panties, to her knees.
Was it wishful thinking or was there a presence in the room with her? Belinda thought of all the tales of the supernatural that she had read in her lifetime and wondered if her own close encounter had finally arrived. It was something she had always wanted to happen, something she had often hoped for, in spite of the continued opposition of her rational mind. She had never truly believed in the supernatural but what was happening to her now felt incredibly real. The coolness flowed down over the skin she had just bared and seemed to soak in through her pores and tickle her innards like chilly fire.
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ she said accusingly to the portrait, half-expecting the man to be laughing. But still he simply smiled his teasing smile. ‘Oh my God,’ she croaked, twisting on the bed as she felt something almost liquid seem to flow into her vulva. The texture was honeyed, yet cool; insubstantial yet paradoxically tangible against her burning sexual membranes.
What’s happening? What are you doing? she thought frantically, pushing her fingers into her furrow to try and authenticate the sensation she was feeling. Her flesh was running wet but it was warm to the touch; she could not detect the chilly unction from the outside but could only feel its strange effects from within. With a groan she began rubbing her clitoris, massaging it slowly with the silky thrilling coldness.
Helplessly aroused, Belinda circled her hips, enjoying the constriction of her tangled clothing around her knees and the thrill of a peculiar dual reality. She could see that she was alone in the room but within her mind she was convinced that she had company. The blue-eyed man from the portrait was with her. As she slicked her aching clitoris she felt his hand upon her breast, long fingers cradling it, his thumb pressing against her nipple.
‘You devil … You devil …’ she whispered as the mysterious coldness aroused her teat and her vulva. The fluid, viscous chill was overflowing between her legs now, its ghostly trickles running down across her anus. ‘What are you doing to me?’ she begged as her sex-flesh rippled. It felt as if someone was pouring cooled syrup directly on to her, relentlessly filling her sensitive channel until she was awash. ‘Oh God, stop it!’ she cried, knowing in her heart that she really wanted more.
The ectoplasmic essence was oozing inside her now, creating chills of cool sensation within her body. She could feel it in her vagina, pushing and welling, and more subversively, sneaking its way inside her anus. The invisible substance was rising into her and filling her, creating pressure on hidden pleasure nodes in her sex.
Looking down between her legs, Belinda tried to see the flow of fluid, imagining it blue as its cool nature suggested. But all she could see was herself.
With her thighs as far apart as her makeshift shackles would allow, she had a perfect, uninterrupted view of her womanhood. She was wet and her love-juices were glinting on her sex and on her fingers, yet there was no sign of the ghostly inundation. She could feel it and feel the tension it created, but all that was visible were her genitals, pink and normal in their arousal.
‘Oh please …’ she groaned as the pressure still increased, and her beleaguered clitoris seemed to swell beneath her finger. It was pushed out now, like an insolently proud berry, as if there really was a volume of fluid massed behind it. Increasing her efforts, she pounded hard on the tiny organ.
‘You! You bastard!’ she cried, focusing again on her blue-eyed nemesis as she climaxed and the urgent forces instantly dissipated. Kicking her legs and cupping her vulva, she thrashed and moaned and rode the waves of sweet release until they mellowed.
‘You …’ she muttered vaguely when the tumult was over, and she sat up, still bare-bottomed, on the bed. The man in the portrait looked exactly as he had before she had begun her self-pleasuring, but somehow she sensed that a change had taken place. He still looked ever-so-vaguely unhappy, but there seemed to be a faint glow of hope about him too.
‘You!’ she said again, studying the painting in search of a more tangible change. ‘You did something to me … You’ve done something. What is it?’
The handsome blue-eyed man seemed to mock her, to challenge her.
‘I’m not crazy, I’m just tired,’ she told herself, trying to take hold of her innate lucidity. ‘It’s just the novelty of this room, or hormones or something … Imagination.’ Shaking her head to clear it, she began pulling off her clothes, then stood up, looked around the room, and wondered where the promised bathroom was.
After a moment, she realised that there was a door set into the panelling on the far side of the room, and beside it was a fine Chippendale chair with what looked like a silk robe laid across it, something she could have sworn wasn’t there when she had first entered. Frowning, she crossed the room and picked the garment up.
It was a kimono, a very beautiful one with the traditional square sleeves. And on the back of it was embroidered, in fine silver thread, the design of a rearing mythic beast. Discovering a tall mirror – something else she had not noticed before – Belinda donned the robe and looked over her shoulder to admire the skilful embroidery. It was an eagle-headed gryphon most probably, she guessed, although her knowledge of mythology was somewhat sketchy.
Jonathan will know what it is, she thought, turning from the mirror and cinching the robe’s belt.
Remembering her boyfriend, she wondered where he was now. Had he been brought to the priory, as Oren had so calmly informed her in his note? Or was he still fast asleep in the folly? Belinda glanced at her wrist, then remembered her watch was in her bag which she had left behin
d when she had set off exploring.
What on earth was the time? It seemed as if hours and hours had passed since she had first entered this house and then this elegant, red-hued room. And yet it was probably still early. She could not ‘sense’ the proper time as she usually could, even when she looked out of the window. The sun was shining but its radiance was diffuse, as if it were veiled. The whole sky seemed to give off a luminosity, a brilliant blue that lit the landscape and the gardens. She had the weirdest feeling that she was trapped in a bubble, and that the priory and its grounds were a place out of time. She ought to worry, but she realised that she couldn’t be bothered …
Opening the inset door, she found, as she had expected, a private bathroom; beautifully appointed and with well-kept antique fixtures.
‘What? No blue-eyed men on the wall?’ she said to herself as she began to run a bath.
Bathing took quite a while, not only because Belinda had felt sweaty and grubby after twenty-four hours without a proper wash, but also because the old-world fittings in the bathroom intrigued her.
The bath, the handbasin and the lavatory pedestal were all enormous, gleaming creations made out of white porcelain; archaic in appearance but supremely efficient in function. What’s more, the water had been piping hot and abundant, and Belinda had discovered a cache of luxurious but unbranded toiletries which catered for her every feminine need. The soap and body lotion had been scented with camellias, the face lotion had been rich and silky, and the toothpaste had had a faint but delicious taste of herbs. The towels had been the thickest she had ever handled in her life, and as soft as a baby’s breath against her skin.
Clean, refreshed and revivified, Belinda returned to the red and gold bedroom – to find yet more surprises awaiting her.
On the bed lay a beautiful if rather old-fashioned set of clothes: a dainty calf-length shift-like garment in white cotton – which Belinda suspected was Victorian underwear rather than a present-day dress – a pair of rather loose-legged knickers in oyster-coloured silk, and a pair of flat slippers embroidered with a mandala design on each toe. Not much, but when she had put them all on at least she was decent, or partially so. The loose shift was extraordinarily thin and her nipples were clearly visible through the cloth’s fine weave. When she smoothed the shift down against her body, she felt both unsettled and delighted by its daring.
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