Laura

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The lounge of the hotel is pleasant in the light. The walls of pink and gold damask reflect the muted glow of lamps that gleam through patterned glass of matching colours. A Turkish cigarette fumes from between my fingers. This, too, is a pleasantry I have of late adopted. It fills my mouth perhaps with Eastern promise and complements my Turkish eyes. If such I have. Most certainly they are large, inherited not from Mama but from my paternal grandmother's side. She was a rare beauty who would clothe herself sometimes, so my father said, in a sari, the better to please the gentlemen who came to admire her. I shall wear such perhaps, in my futureness, my semblance of becoming.

The folds of a sari are long, I am told. My grandmother would stand naked save for a bewitchingly small guepiere, or waist corset, while her maid performed a wide circle around her on and on, swathing her form neither tightly nor loosely, but to such perfection that the gauzy material of lilac-pink or pale, kingfisher blue-would seem to have been poured and moulded to her mistress. My grandmother's hips, being of a certain lushness in her young and middle years, accommodated the material superbly, so much so that she was persuaded to discard the corset and move naked within her light cocoon.

Once, at a ball-and she being apprised in confidence of what was to occur-a gentlemen while dancing with her so loosed the secret enclosures of her sari that, moving from her of a sudden, he was enabled to draw out the silk-threaded cotton and spin my grandmother all about like a top so that she bumped here and there, there and here, within a surrounding circle of admirers, ever spinning faster until she was denuded utterly and fell upon a rug where she lay prey to hands and mouths until her legs were spread and wanton she submitted to the cocks. Eight it was said she took, each one delighting her the more with pulsing and with throbbing until she was so thoroughly creamed that it was as if she had been lathered with a shaving brush.

Her bottom, it was said, was one of ultimate perfection, for she had the violin curves of slender waist and broadening hips, which gave to her nether cheeks a bulge of promise. Being of sultry nature, she adored to have her naked bottom whipped, to which purpose many fine silken cords were bound together and a rosewood handle attached thereto. After some thirty strokes of this admonitory sweetness she was fair to be mounted even as I was taught to be, receiving the pistons-yearling or mature- to pump and froth within her warm divide.

Her outward behaviour hinted not at licentiousness, but were she to be come upon naked or nearly so in her boudoir, she would surrender to the first tongue that insinuated itself between her lips and to the first fingertip that titillated her rosette. Of occasion she might rebel out of mischievousness in order to be spanked, firm and fleshy as she was to the palm, before being put over.

I had never struggled yet, unless my frettings of this selfsame day are to be counted as such. Perhaps it would add a piquancy to the matter. Being of obedience, I had never dared, had yielded my hips, my chasm, my crevice. Yet on the night of which I have spoken my aunt frotted me deliciously and prepared me for the cock without the strap. Such had been my first occasion thus.

The next day, at my fete-since I was to be wed on the morrow-she told me that I had conducted myself well, had offered up, and must be prepared to do so without the admonition of the strap. Thrice indeed that day was I put up to him. Upon the second bout I panted and allowed my bottom to urge back and forth, sucking the sperm of him while yet he groaned. Upon my being done with and my drawers replaced and finding myself alone again, she entered my room, observed my tousled bed and passed her tongue into my mouth. “How deeply he goes up you,” she had murmured. Her eyes were the colour of an autumn sky. There was peppermint upon her breath. Mama knocked at my door but was not answered. She was not of that moment but of other moments when simplicity was more apparent. Mama perhaps did not offer herself so. Such was my intuition. The purity of love between us was not the less thereby, though enfolded, creased, disguised, and crenelated by the mundane, as though in tissue wrapped.

“Do you not prefer a holder for your cigarette?”

A voice assails me. The newcomer, modishly attired in blue relieved by murmurings of white, seats herself at my table. She has lived, as I judge, a decade more than myself. Her hair, bunched high, extols the virtues of an oval face, lips full, nose aquiline, wide eyes. Her voice is mediocre, not displeasing. I am not disturbed-indeed, return her smile.

“Sometimes I use one, sometimes I do not. Have you been dancing?”

“You note the turbulence?” She laughs, her breasts rise, fall, are heavy, somnolent. “There are ever parades, fantasies, illusions, when the music sounds. Have you experienced such? I danced with a girl. Her form was clinging. She had been caressed, I believe, was unappeased, sought more. Her belly blended beautifully to mine. Do I bore you? Do you like such chatter? Have I not seen you on the Downs at Ascot? The jockeys dressed like butterflies- how pretty they look.”

Her excitation is obvious. No doubt it is my eyes. She has swum in the lakes of night and felt the water's lapping at her thighs.

“I would dance with you.” Exclaiming as she does, my silence evidently provokes.

“Very well, but let me finish my cigarette. Are you from here? Do you inhabit the hotel?”

“I shall not tell you. You must discover. Come.”

“To feel my belly against yours?”

“If you wish. What purpose is there otherwise? Do you wear your garters high, as I? They will rub to mine. Women are more sensuous than men. What are your theories about the matter?”

My hand is taken, warm, enclosed. In my rising. The lilting of the orchestra attracts. Through curtained fringes we obtain the floor. The languid dancers stare and then perform. We, merging, bring our flesh to feel the flesh. She is no more over-dressed than I. A blindness takes me. We kiss in our circlings. There are intervals of watchful eyes that pass between my own and yet are strangers to me.

“It does not matter if they look. Let them look. Have you been mounted, spermed, and satisfied today?”

“How frank you are!” I cannot help but laugh. Her tits wobble gelatinously and bulge against my own.

“Have you? Who were you given to first? You are scarce twenty. Laura? Is it Laura? There was once amid the stirrings of the elms, bold beatings of the bushes, a vision of you. As I recall, as I recall, as I recall.”

“Yes.” I know not here or now, nor there nor here. It matters not to me to be uptaken. Columns of silk, our thighs rub sensuous. “Were you of the county? I do not recall you.”

I have never asked before. To ask is to impinge, to break the spell.

“You do not ask. You know you do not ask. To ask is to impinge, to break the spell. Come with me. You will come, come with me, come?”

“If you wish. Do you wear drawers?” It is my turn for laughter. The dancers, still, bemused, are left behind.

“One should always wear drawers, my pet, unless one is about to be wed. Your baggage will be sent for. There is no returning. You do not wish to return? This is a place of lost souls. The corridors are dark by night; I would not have you stay. Come.”

We are gone-among the lost, the found. Her carriage horses paw the sad and dirty road and we are gone. Her arm enfolds my shoulders, draws me close. Tongue leaping wet to tongue, my corsage loosed.

“Let me see them. Were they fondled often? Cupped in his palms while he put you to his pestle.”

“Yes.” I drool with love, confused by love surrender. My skirts are raised, the carriage bumps, my thighs assailed.

“What a softness and yet firmness of contours! How your bottom must have wriggled to him, legs kept straight and linen ever clean. What pantings in the night-what dreams of lust. Loosen your drawers-let me feel your rosette. How tightly it puckers and yet will open like a baby's mouth, absorbing the full the stem.”

“How do you know?” I would ask yet not ask, in my feverings. The soft rotation of her finger round my rim.

“Was it not so? Brown your dress and brown your drawers. Did you not rut in secret with him? Come, bring your nipples to my lips that I may lick them. What fine points they have! What aureoles of bliss. I will put a cock up you tonight myself.”

“How wicked you are!”

I cannot help myself, have fumbled, found. Her bush sprouts springily beneath her drawers. Some passage of time, some passage of time, passing, is gone, is gone in our embrace. Leaves stir beyond the windows, brush the carriage sides. We are gone beyond the town, I know not where.

“Mind the branches, dip your head, be careful. Have you been chased by trees, as I? There, my love, where the lights glow-across the sward. I call it my Petite Trianon, as Marie Antoinette did. Her adventures were numerous, though little detailed. How she was licked and loved! I will show you a trick or two of hers. You are not modest, I trust?”

“Was I in the carriage?”

The carriage goes, a trundle-roll of wheels, is gone. Bells jingle faintly. A dimness of cows, here now, there now, and darkly through the pasture lowing.

“You were never modest within enclosures, Laura, though fain would have been had not the leather bit into your bottom. We are at Richmond now-home of sobrieties, licentious secrets. My neighbour is an ass-that is to say he has a donkey's prick. His wife and daughters bray upon receiving it. I have listened at windows, heard the calls of night. Perhaps in mirrors have I seen you, turned about, upended, put to it, my fingers scratching at the glass, yet never would you turn about to look, embrace my eyes, draw me within your realm.”

“Such is improper to do,” I laugh.

She has the merit of attractiveness, of guile. Her fingers weave a spell about my orb. The Trianon comes closer-laughter sounds. Tall windows hang their gaieties of light. There are statues here, in the dimness. Perhaps I shall see Perdita again, the tears of rain upon her bottom round.

“What do you think of? In this instant?”

Upon the curving steps we halt.

“In this instant and in all others one can see within a mirror and yet not without. Those within are ever cased in glass. Is that not a sadness?” I reply.

“You may be quiet tonight or speak as you wish. There are no rules to the matter. Those who come silently to us are ever the receivers, abundant gatherers of sperm. Within the mirror or without, it does not matter. Shall you be unclothed? Were you unclothed before?”

“I thought you saw!” I laugh at her dismay. “Once I was married and my husband lay upon my belly, nightdress to my armpits. He alone assailed my cunny then.”

“My love, were you not mounted thighs to thighs before?”

“My bush was never sprinkled, no. I had full knowing of virginity until the marriage bed. It was proper so to be. Do you not think it was proper so to be?”.

A curiosity has seized me on the matter. Had my aunt told me to lie with legs akimbo on my back, my bush full ready for the ripened fruit that daily cleaved my cheeks, I would have done so, done so, done so, waiting there.

“What a sprinkling he would have given you-more a flood! Come, there are girls here to be annointed. There are rehearsals for some-not all. Will you titillate, spur with your tongue? I will hold the first, to your pleasure. She is the youngest of the tribe, has yet to take the cock. What a coming he will have of it! Her nooky is delicious, her breasts as pomegranates. Such hard nipples they have at that age. Show me your willingness and doff your drawers as even now shall I.”

The deed is done-our bellies palely gleam. A lambent moon glints diamonds on my bush. Our hands extend to cup each other's mound.

“Does she know-the young one?”

“Did you know? Upon your taking, Laura, did you know?”

“His cock was at my bottom ere I knew.”

“So shall it be with her, except her cunny's offered to his prick. Did you then suck him ever, feel his balls?”

In such excitement I am blind to her as well she knows. My eyeballs roll and show their whites. Were her hand not at my bottom I would fall.

“I will not say, I will not say, I will not say.”

I knew the ardent crest once at my mouth, sperm flooding to my lips, the heavy hang of hairy testicles, frail in my nightgown, head dipped to his will.

“We do not always remember.” Her voice is soft. “It is the way of those who travel, parting the curtains of the morn to come with suddenness upon the night.”

I remember. I recall his sobbing as I sucked. My lips moved light and easy on his stem, cupping the manhood of his heavy hang. A finger teased my bottom as I stooped-he standing legs astride, I bent to him. Suck deeper, Laura, suck — annoint your lips, the blossoms of the sperm upon your tongue.

“If there had been another I would remember.”

“Another, yes-a third, you mean, an index? A-watcher at the feast? Eyes pointing as a finger points? The eye informs the brain, the brain the mind. The mind imparts its message to the tongue, which speaks and blabbers on, forgetful of the paths it scours, the trees torn by the winds of fury.”

“Were you then betrayed? If I have heard you right, you were betrayed?”

Our breaths puff, pant. We are both on the point of coming.

“One who is betrayed knows not her circumstances, for all should be inveigled to the scene, aunts, mothers, nieces, nephews, kin. Even so there are servants. I have had maids whipped for talking, then put them to the pestle of my sin. I have made my gifts, bestowed my knowingness, have known dawn's early frothing of the cock, the laboured workings hot between the sheets. We are as one another, perhaps-perhaps yet not. I shall put a prick to you. You will not resist?”

“I think not. How you sprinkle on my fingers-I on yours! Press your belly to me. How delicious! What shall we be at? Are there many within? Are there no encumbrances?”

“None, my love, but many are the modulations. There are set pieces. It would be unseemly otherwise. I will not have the rabble-touch. The men may toy with you-the women, too-but none may expend their sperm until the principals their own have spilled.”

“There are set pieces.” I echo her words. “It is arranged?”

“Were your own not set pieces? There were no rumplings in the summerhouse, upon the lawn, amid the shrubs, a gaiety of cunt to cock amid the empty bottles, the discarded plates?”

“He did not do it to me that way.”

I would cry now for the lack of it.

“You are no poorer for it, Laura. You have learned proudness, obedience, have spilled yet to his thrusts between your cheeks. Your eyes have glazed with lust.

You worked your bottom to him, did you not? The curtains stared. You knew the dust of night, your aunts upon the stairs, their candles lit.”

“I held him always 'til he came, then on and on until his prick had shrunk. Not a drop escaped me-I was praised for my absorption. Upon descending I would look demure. Mama would compliment me for my colour, my rectitude, the cleanness of my linen. My stockings were ever tight-my bottom a pure gloss of white as made the moon seem yellowing with age. Oh, do not make me speak more, on and on!”

“There is no need. What need is there for that? You will tell me soon enough when a prick is 'twixt your cheeks and my tongue is lapping at your quim. You must permit yourself to be made a spectacle of, on occasion.”

“I do not know.” I bite my lip, retreat. Our drawers drawn up. We are respectable.

“No matter of your knowing. All things shall be as they shall be. Come within, come within, come within.”