In the anteroom with its erotic statuary he declined to doff his clothes. Better not. What if the UN Secretary-General were present? It was true that Mistress Kali's rules were severe and inflexible. One didn't enter her presence except in the state one came into the world.
But this was different. He was not here as a supplicant, but as the minister of fisheries and oceans.
And if he erred, well, he wouldn't mind a taste of the whip as a reward for his roguish incorrigibility.
Presenting himself before the mirrored door, he raised his voice. "Permission to enter the awful presence."
"Enter," a cold-as-steel voice snapped.
She sounded delightfully impatient, Gil Houghton thought, stepping forward.
The doors rolled apart, and he froze.
Mistress Kali stood, hands on hips, arms akimbo, her domino-masked face lowered so that her changeable eyes regarded him with an emerald green blazing up-from-under glare.
Then they were like blue diamonds, icy and fiery, and they made the pit of his stomach clench.
"I trust I am not late for the meeting," he remarked.
"You are early."
"Good."
"I despise earliness."
Houghton swallowed. His tongue turned to dry rubber.
"I-I can come back if you'd rather."
At that moment he noticed the long-stemmed scarlet rose tucked into the loop of chain draping her lyrelike hips. With a quick gesture she plucked it into the air.
Turning so that her body showed in full profile, the uplifted breasts and the stunning ice-princess profile, she lifted the rose to the light. Red mouth compressing, she began snapping off the thorns one by one.
"Approach," she invited.
Cautiously he stepped forward. Her nimble fingers snapped off thorn after thorn. They dropped to the black glassy floor with dry tiny sounds like cat claws clicking on porcelain.
"Unzip!" she commanded.
"Whatever for?"
"Obey!" Mistress Kali snapped.
Slowly, because his heart was pounding, he drew down his trouser's zipper as Mistress Kali stripped the stem of its thorns. When the last was on the floor, he stood there tumescent and quivering.
"Whatever are you-?"
"What was it you said the other day?" she said thinly.
"That you never touch me."
"What else?"
"That we never do anything new anymore," he admitted, his voice a bleat.
"So you want to try something new, do you?" she asked in an arch voice. She wasn't looking at him. He felt almost beneath her notice. His quivering member stiffened further.
"I do," he said, bowing his head, "very much."
"Very much what!"
"Very much, Mistress Kali. I want to try something new very much, Mistress Kali," he said hastily.
A faint smile touched her scarlet lips. From somewhere about her person she palmed a long vial of massage lotion. She snapped the cap with her blacknailed thumb and dipped the stem to its full length. A faint fishy scent came to his nose. Cod-liver oil. His favorite. He tingled down to his curled-in-anticipation toes.
"What are you doing?"
"Something new," she said, drawing the stripped stem from the bottle. It dripped viscously.
He licked his lips. "Really?"
Her voice dropped several degrees. "Yes, really."
And whirling, she took his member in one hand and with the other inserted the lubricated rose stem deep into his urethra, jerking it in and out, in and out until he screamed in the exquisite pain and pleasure of a sensation he had never in his wildest imaginings imagined.
The pain brought him to his knees. He knelt there, gasping and clutching himself, a fresh spill like fish milk and dark red raspberry juice forming under his agony.
Her voice cut through his agony like a steel needle. "Never again complain that I won't try anything new ...."
Chapter 32
United Nations Secretary-General Anwar Anwar-Sadat stepped through the buzzing door into an anteroom that was surprisingly sumptuous.
The walls were some pink-veined marble that brought to mind the delicate flesh of a concubine. At least that was how his romantic eyes perceived the cold marble.
There were statuary. A black-skinned woman with more than her natural provision of arms. They were held in an attitude that was both provocative and inviting.
Kali, of course. The Hindu goddess of death. How appropriate for a woman whose cyber-pseudonym was Mistress Kali. The eyes of the statue looked down upon him, two blind blanks.
He noticed that her proportions were generous to the point of ripeness. He took this as a promising sign. Anwar Anwar-Sadat liked his women on the voluptuous side.
On the other side of the door, another statue. This one not of basalt, but porphyry. He did not recognize the god depicted but decided it could only be Shiva, consort of Kali. Shiva clutched in his four arms various devices both arcane and doubtful of purpose.
Clearing his throat, he raised his voice. "Hello?" "Do you desire to enter into the presence of Mistress Kali?" a very firm voice returned.
"I do. Are you she?"