by Troy Conway
She was all woman and she roused my interest. As I came closer in response to her words and the elbow with which Agnete touched me, I saw tiny crowsfeet at her eye-corners and discovered that the eyes themselves were very wise.
“I suppose you’re one of the contestants?” she smiled.
“Mine,” said Agnete hurriedly.
“Ah, yes. Dear Agnete. Always an entrant but never a winner. Let’s hope this one will be different.”
“I’ll do my best,” I murmured.
“Sit down, please. You will not mind if I dress?”
“It will be my pleasure,” I admitted.
“But it must not be too pleasurable,” Sabine Bree laughed with a sidewise glance at Agnete. “We must not interfere with the good care Agnete is taking of you.”
Agnete left us then, patting my right shoulder as if to give me encouragement during my interrogation. Madame Bree observed the gesture with laughter sparkling in her gray eyes. “Agnete does not trust me,” she informed me. “She knows I am a man-eater.”
“To be eaten by you would be an experience to make any man proud,” I told her as the door closed behind Agnete.
“Perhaps it shall come to that, m’sieu. I did not catch your name. Agnete is sometimes forgetful.”
I bowed a second time. “Professor Damon, madame. Rod to my friends, among whom I hope to number you.”
“Professeur? Of what, please?”
She was opening the negligee as she spoke, so that it made a contrast to the white flesh of her mature body. She was in her early forties—a pampered, massage-parlor-and-beauty-shoppe forties, which means she looked about thirty—with heavy breasts boasting large brown nipples, a deeply indented navel, and a blonde privacy that had been recently barbered. She was an exciting woman with an aura of sexuality about her that touched a man where he lived.
She stood there with the black gossamer behind her, held by her back-thrown arms. Her gray eyes challenged me.
“Of sociology,” I answered. “And as a sideline, I am also the founder and chief teacher for the League of Sexual Dynamics.”
Interest blazed in her stare. “Explain this sexual dynamics, s’il vous plait. Is it some kind of cult?”
“Oh, no. I teach the techniques of sex and its benefits to the human body. I tell my pupils that many of our modern ills are caused by the fact that our animal natures are restricted by the modes and manners of a civilization that too often regards sex mystiques as something dirty and degrading. I seek to give them the Eastern approach, that sexual coition and its many byways are an art to be learned and studied all the life long.”
“You joke with me,” she pouted.
“On the contrary, it is quite true. Your Agnete is more fortunate than she knows. I think it is quite likely I shall emerge the winner in your love-in contest.”
“You know many ways to make love?” she asked.
“So many, from so many lands, they sometimes get mixed up in my head. The purshayet position mentioned by the erotologists of India, as an instance, sometimes becomes the nik el kohoul of the Arabs—an entirely different love posture, as you no doubt know.”
Her eyes flickered. She glanced at the brief swimsuit I wore, that did little to hide the fact that I was an amply endowed, eager young man. Madame Bree sighed and let the negligee fall to the floor behind her. She turned and showed me her body in profile, then faced away from me and walked toward the door of her dressing closet.
Her buttocks shook very gently above handsome legs.
“The oval inlet type of pelvis,” I murmured, “a typically European hip structure. Pelvises with round or circular inlets can be found in the South Sea islands, in Malaysia, among certain aborigine tribes. Interesting, isn’t it?”
She turned at the door, looking at me as she might look at a particularly attractive painting she was considering for her collection. “If your performance can match your knowledge, m’sieu le professeur—you will make me a very happy woman.”
It was a question, the way she said it. I bowed the third time. “I am so confident of that, madame, I am willing to make a little wager.”
Her plucked eyebrows lifted. “What sum do you want to bet?”
My hand made a contemptuous gesture. “Money, pah! I am a sensualist, madame. I am more interested in the—ah, shall I say, the intangibles of life rather than in the tangibles. If I win the contest and if the prize is to be a week in your company at the villa—permit me to call the shots, so to speak, on how we shall live that week.”
“I do that,” she murmured thoughtfully. “Yet if you prove interesting enough during the competition, I am willing to agree to give you two days off out of the seven. Is it enough?”
It was actually more than I’d hoped for. I needed those two days to dictate situations because I hoped in that time to learn which of the pretty girls decorating the villa was my fellow HECATE agent. I thought I knew a way to find that out. All I asked was a chance to try it
“It will be perfect,” I said.
“Now,” she announced, “you may zip me up the back.”
She reached into her closet and brought but one of those black lastex and red lace garments that are called a Merry Widow. It would cinch in her middle and the tiny half-circles at the top would permit the breasts to hang free. Dangling garters would allow her to secure her stockings.
Mme. Bree fitted her nudity into the garment and turned her back to me. The Merry Widow gaped from the middle of her bare back to the cleavage of her buttocks.
I stepped close. My fingers gripped the flaps of the corset. “A woman was designed by le bon Dieu to know the admiration of a male—everywhere,” I murmured, and bent to run my lips from the nape of her neck to the sacral dimples just above her buttocks.
She shivered as I let my kisses wander downward to her soft behind. Was it my imagination, or was that a moan in her throat? I rose upward and began hooking the corset to her body.
“If I did not want poor Agnete to win the contest, I would myself test out your fitness,” she hissed softly.
“You would not tire me, madame,” I stated boldly, “though I must admit you would prove very titillating.”
She swung around and eyed me carefully. “You are a braggart, m’sieu le professur. I hope for your sake you do not boast very often.”
“And not now. Especially not now.”
Her eyes brooded at me. Above the cup rims, her soft white breastflesh quivered and her dark red nipples were long and rigid. In the black corselet, with her legs bare from her hips downward, the dangling garterstraps like fingers trembling there, she made an erotic picture. A picture that tempted me mightily.
I refused temptation and made my fourth bow.
Then I turned and walked to the door. An instant before I could touch its knob, the door opened. Madame Margot Metayer stood there, gaping at me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
She was even more surprised than I.
“You! Here?” she gasped.
Over my shoulder, I heard Madame Bree murmur, “You know him, Margot? The reason I ask, he is entered in my carnality contest. Do you think he has a chance?”
To my surprise, Mme. Metayer did not hoot with derision. Certainly that evening in my rooms at the Plaza-Athénée must have left psychic scars on her female soul. Yet she might have been remembering the performance I put on in the HECATE testing maze.
“Either he will make your other young studs look like fags—or he will be less potent than a hundred-year-old man. Professor Damon is a puzzle.”
Sabine eyed me wonderingly. “So? One or the other? What is the key, Margot?”
“If you find out, tell me.”
I flashed both women a smile and fled. I wanted to find Agnete Stralsund and learn a little more about this contest. I wanted to learn if Margot was to be among the contestants. I dearly wanted to get that bit of feminine fluff on top of a bed for a couple of hours, just to show her that the evening I’d insulted her had been a fluke.
Agnete was in the bar-kitchen, brooding over the remains of a sandwich. At sight of me, her eyes and lips flashed into a happy smile. She straightened up and cut off my excellent view of her heavy breasts in the scant bikini halter.
“Well! Will wonders never cease? I didn’t expect to see you for an hour, at least.”
“Sabine respected your rights as the owner of a contestant,” I grinned. “She wanted me to hoard my manhood for when it would be most needed.”
She slid off the counter stool with a flash of handsome tan legs. “First time I’ve ever known her to be so solicitous,” she murmured. She came so close her breast tips touched my chest. “What would you like to do?”
“Throw you down on the nearest cot and enjoy you,” I said frankly, at which bit of honesty her eyelashes flickered, “but since I have to reserve myself for the contest, why don’t you take me away from temptation for the rest of the day, the night, and tomorrow?”
“Good. I wouldn’t mind some good clean fun myself. You have a car? Then we could drive into Copenhagen and I can show you the sights.”
I pulled her against me and kissed her pouting red mouth. She let her thighs touch mine, her belly pressed me, and when the pudendal bulge at her bikini pants nudged my own bulge, her hips slid around and about in something approaching the bump and grind of a strip-teaser.
“Now look what you’ve done,” she breathed.
“Me? You were the cause of it.” I kissed her soft throat, murmuring, “You’re going to have to behave yourself, darling, if you intend to keep me chaste until that contest.”
She pulled away hurriedly, shaking her mane of glossy black hair, parting it with her hands, thrusting out her tongue at me impishly. She was discovering how hard it was to keep me chaste.
“I expect a little cooperation from you,” she giggled.
“If the sight of my girlish body excites you so much, maybe I’d better wear a Mother Hubbard.”
“You don’t own one,” I jerred.
She laughed and caught my arm and walked beside me out into the Danish sunlight, her hip and thigh bumping mine as a constant reminder of her attractiveness.
“I must pack an overnight bag,” she was saying. “We shall spend all our time together, naturally. I don’t want some hussy to get her hands on you and deplete you of your strength.”
I did not bother to tell her this was an impossibility, since I was now safeguarded against my former radio-controlled impotency by the counter-stimulator the Thaddeus X. Coxe Foundation dentist had put into my tooth. And that was the only thing that could interfere with my satyriasis, which enabled me to play the stud male with unceasing vigor.
I like to surprise a girl occasionally. Agnete Stralsund was in for a very pleasant surprise, once that contest began.
“I gather that you and I are to perform together?” I asked. “While Hannie and Kaija and their young men will do the same?”
“Oh, yes, that’s the way we do it.”
A shadow touched her face. I did not understand that momentarily emotion yet, but I would before the contest was to begin, I promised myself.
“What about Madame Bree? And Margot Metayer?”
“They watch us. They and a third lady who comes with Sabine. A Madame Germaine Audibert. They act—like judges.”
“What do they get out of it, except hot pants?”
Agnete giggled, but did not answer.
I clapped her soft behind with a hand, on the beach patio, telling her I would go get my Volvo and be back in half an hour. She promised to be ready.
She was standing in front of the beach villa, two bags at her feet, as I braked the Volvo to a stop. She wore a simple mini-skirted dress and beige nylons with ivory pumps. A Pucci scarf was twisted about her long black hair.
Happiness was a smile on her face as she let her head fall on the seat rest as I started off. “It’s been a long time since I went out with a young man just for fun, and no games.”
“Good. We’ll keep it that way,” I agreed.
The first thing we did in Copenhagen was rent two bicycles and go riding over the cobblestoned streets, past the neat house fronts and shop windows like any boy and girl on a date. We parked the bikes and went strolling on what is known as Copenhagen’s “walking street,” the Stroget.
The Stroget is lined with stores and shops. Tourists from all corners of the world come here for Georg Jensen silver, for Flora Danica tableware, for Royal Copenhagen of Bing and Grondahl porcelains. I bought a Royal Copenhagen statuette for Agnete, a shepherdess in straw hat and flowing skirts.
From the Stroget, we bicycled down to the waterfront along cobbled streets without a speck of dirt on them and flanked by narrow walkways, to walk along the Langelinie Promenade from which we had a good view of the Little Mermaid crouched on a rock in the harbor.
Hand in hand we strolled through the streets until my stomach told me it was long past the time to eat. Agnete suggested the Seven Nations restaurant, where seven dining rooms are assigned to seven different countries.
We ate in front of a rock grotto, at a table where a miniature stars and stripes was planted. We feasted on roast beef with a bearnaise sauce, and flaming crepes suzettes. We toasted each other with Cloc whiskey and finished off the meal with Cherry Heering. It was a grand success, that dinner. Agnete was a laughing witch who completely captivated my heart, while I was at my very best as a raconteur of funny stories.
As dusk swam over the city, we left the Greenland Room, Agnete with her head resting against my chest, my arm about her middle. She had suggested as our next stop, the Tivoli Gardens and one of the two dance pavilions it boasted. I was in the mood for dancing, for holding her soft body close to mine as we moved to slow waltzes or faster fox trots. Even the fish or the bugaloo sounded good to me, if Agnete Stralsund was to be my partner.
I paid the one kroner admission fee (fourteen and a half cents) and wandered hand in hand with Agnete past the softly lighted fountains, tinted red and green and yellow by the many electric lamps. We paused in the shadows to kiss, we went arm in arm by flower beds that seemed to scintillate in the many lights.
We danced cheek to cheek at the pavilion that was Agnete’s favorite—it played more romantic music than the other, she explained—and when I held her too closely so that she could feel for herself how she excited me, she wriggled away and chided me with glee in her voice.
“You must behave,” she would breathe, snuggling her cheek to mine. “You must not get too excited.”
“Are you worried about me—or yourself?” I wondered.
She drew away so she could look up at me. The shadow was there on her face. “What makes you ask that?” she demanded breathlessly.
I shrugged. “I am a professor, you know. I teach sex techniques as an adjunct of my sociology courses. I am the founder of the League for Sexual Dynamics.”
Her blue eyes were very wide, her bee-stung lips open. “You are not teasing me? Is this really so?”
“It is so. I informed your Madame Bree about it, in case she might want to disqualify me.”
“Disqualify you? Oh no! What did she say?”
“She said she hoped I’d make her very happy, if I won. However, she doubted that I would. We even made a little bet.”
“You didn’t!”
I told her about our bet. We were dancing slowly to a romantic number at the moment, and as I whispered into her ear, I noted that she came crowding my body with her own. She was breathing a little faster too.
“You really think you can win?” she asked wistfully.
I hugged her closer, noting that her breasts had become hard. I began to think about Agnete Stralsund and the shadow on her face. I was reasonably certain she had a problem; I wanted to learn what it was, because suddenly I understood why she was always an entrant in the sex sweepstakes and never a winner.
“I’ll win—with your cooperation.”
She digested that, moving her hardened breasts against my chest. �
�What’s that supposed to mean?” her voice demanded harshly.
“Don’t be angry. I want to help you.”
Her face was genuinely puzzled as she stared at me. “Help me? If you win the contest, you’ll help me all you can’t.”
“Oh, the contest. I don’t mean that. I mean this other thing, this coldness in bed which troubles you.”
It was a long-shot, but I had years of sexual study, of contact with many girls and women with sex problems. I had studied Agnete Stralsund enough to understand a little about her.
She drew herself away, remote and inscrutable as we finished the dance. When the music stopped she headed for the edge of the dance floor with me in close pursuit. She was angry, but she was even more troubled.
As she threaded her way toward the walkway, I caught her hand and held it with sheer strength. I murmured, “I am not going to apologize. You know yourself even better than I do. You do have a problem. Without knowing any more about you that I do now—never having been to bed with you, that is—I can tell you it is your own fault you’ve never had a winner in those sex contests.”
Suddenly she grated, “Damn you!”
“There’s no need to be ashamed of it,” I murmured. “Everybody has a kind of bag on about sex. It’s not always peaches and cream. Believe me, I know. I’ve met and talked to all kinds of females.”
Agnete turned her face toward me. Now I could see the angry tears staining her cheeks wetly. I drew her into the shadows and licked those tears off her smooth cheeks with my tongue. Her body was stiff, unyielding.
I whispered, “I like the taste of your tears. I will like the taste of your body too.”
She shivered and moaned faintly. I was positive of my quarry then. Agnete Stralsund was a coprolaliast, aroused by the use of erotic language during lovemaking.