Sharon was overwhelmed by the dinner. The fine silver, the white bone china plates with the gold rims, the candelabras at either end of the long oak table…
She had never seen such sumptuousness, nor such food, nor such service, and she felt ill at ease. While Mark and Lena carried on a witty conversation, and sparkling rejoinders back and forth all through the five courses, Sharon kept to herself, only speaking when spoken to, nodding and smiling other times, and worrying about the sleeves of her blue organdy dinner dress when she wasn't eating.
The blue organdy was a bad choice, a mistake she instantly realized when entering the dining room, after having descended the broad, banistered stairs from the second floor. She didn't have the proper clothes for such an affair to begin with; being American and the wife of a still rising businessman, she didn't attend affairs of this caliber. The blue organdy was formal, but didn't have the polish, the sophistication, that, say the black lace Empire dress Lena was wearing possessed. The quiet, dignified grace just wasn't there – it made her seem young like a pubescent girl going to her junior-prom. She was in brief, embarrassed.
Wafto, impeccable in his black uniform, served and cleared with a subservience almost touching. It was obvious to Sharon that the little hunch-back doted on his master, lived and breathed to serve Mark Marlowe, to repay the debt of gratitude for being employed as a respectable man rather than a side-show freak. Wafto hobbled around at amazing speed, his miniature clubfoot with its built-up shoe thumping against the thick Oriental carpeting with the rapidity of a jack-hammer. He had to reach up to the table for the dishes and glasses, but in spite of his infirmities not a dish clattered, or a glass pinged.
Sharon watched Wafto, torn between her ambivalent feelings of repulsion and of pity. There was a sort of horror to the dwarf, a kind of wolfish glitter to his eyes and an evil smirk to his rubbery lips which, when he faced Sharon, made her cringe. It was – well, it was almost as if he was undressing her with his eyes, leering at her as though envisioning her stripped completely naked in bed! A cold, clammy shiver would travel the length of her spine, then, and her stomach would grow queasy.
And yet that couldn't be, she told herself. It was her imagination; it had to be. Wafto had been nothing save the beautifully trained gentleman's gentleman that he was, acting as butler, servant, and chef aplomb. And always with proper manners. Not once had spoken out of turn or made any untoward gesture to her, and he had treated her with the respect and deference that she, as a house-guest of his master, should be afforded. So Sharon felt guilty, concluding that her unwarranted fear of Wafto was nothing more than prejudice, and aversion to his unfortunate plight.
Wafto could not help what he was. It was an accident of birth, she kept reminding herself, a tragedy of sperm and ovum that was a curse to him, and one which he must surely know caused contempt and revulsion on the part of others, more normal humans. She was being unfair and as ugly in her mind as he was on the surface, she thought, and therefore she felt sorry for him as well. "The slings and arrows of outrageous misfortunes," she quoted in her mind. She watched Wafto, then; watched him with the fascination which humanity watches all great sorrows.
Poor girl. Had she but known what was burning through the hunch-backed dwarf's mind, she wouldn't have been so full of self-chastisement. Wafto went through the motions of servitude, starting from the first answering of the door, through the carrying of her bags upstairs to the guest bedroom and the serving of dinner with but one licentious flame lusting in the furnace of his sadistic brain. Soon… soon I will possess this proud beauty, this American bitch who looks at me with such coldness… yes, soon I will have her, and she'll like it. She'll love it, love me, me and my fine, huge cock worming around in her proud young belly. Soon…
The last course had been served, the dessert of Camembert cheese and ripe fruit. The last of the knives and forks which had lined each side of the place settings had been used to cut and eat, the china plates with the pits and seeds had been removed, and there was the long pause as the three of them sat back, touched their mouths with the linen napkins and slothfully contemplated the large amounts they'd just consumed.
"Shall we have coffee now?" Lena asked.
"Ah, yes," Mark replied, smiling. "Wafto!"
"Coming," Wafto said from the kitchen, and then he appeared. "You wish coffee?"
"In the living room, I think. And a little Grand Marnier, perhaps." Mark rose, placing his napkin on the table, and smiled at both Lena and Sharon. "I think we'll be more comfortable there, don't you agree?"
"I'm not sure I can move," Sharon said. "I'm so full…" There had been soup, a fine clear broth sprinkled with chives and parsley. Then the fish course. Sharon had never been one for fish, but the little fried surf-fish were in a mixture of lemon juice and butter and melted in her mouth. Fresh, Mark had assured her, caught just that morning. And then the filets, the eye of the beef broiled with garlic and the hearts of artichokes, and the side course of snow peas, and the baked potato still in its jacket, bursting with sour cream. And, of course, the final course of fruit. Never had she eaten so much or so well, and her dress was tight around her expanded stomach.
Somehow she made it to the library and was nearly in a stupor, almost uncomfortable, and she couldn't understand how her host could keep such a trim, muscular figure if he ate like that every day. Or, for that matter, how Mark and Lena could still carry on their spirited discussion, have so much energy for other things besides digestion.
Mark was expounding, "… I cannot agree that the change in our government is for the better."
"But you yourself said, my dear Mark, that you weren't for the Liberals or for Labor," Lena replied. "I would think that you'd be all for the Conservatives to be back in power."
"That's just it," Mark replied. "They aren't in power. Oh, they were voted in, Edward Heath to the Prime Minister's chair and all, but it doesn't mean one whit of difference. Not one whit."
"Why?" Sharon asked simply. She had never delved in politics much; as an American she didn't feel that she should form opinions about English politics, and she had left most of the domestic politics to her husband. Still, what Mark was saying puzzled her.
"Because the government doesn't hold the reins of power, Mrs. Court. May I call you Sharon?"
"Of course; please do, Mr. Marlowe," she blushed. "I mean Mark."
He smiled at her slip and continued. "Now in answer to your question, you must understand that in any important nation – yours, mine, Russia, France, whatever – you have a bureaucracy, a gray, anonymous world of officialdom, a growing army of civil servants, council officials, tax inspectors, and big business administrators. It is, as Balzac said, 'a giant mechanism operated by pygmies'."
"Naturally, there's the staff. But…" Lena was interrupted by Wafto, bearing a shiny silver tray of coffee and cups and liqueur and glasses. Wafto set the tray down and proceeded to pour and serve. Lena continued. "But they are controlled by the government."
"On the contrary. Ah, thank you, Wafto." Mark stirred his coffee. "It's the other way around. Consider: the incoming party have been denied information on which to base political decisions because they were formally the opposition. Without such information, all their big talk about changing ways is irrelevant."
"But they have the information when they are in power," Sharon protested. She sipped her Grand Marnier tentatively, enjoying its combination sweet stickiness and bitter fruit flavor.
"That's it, Sharon, Grand Marnier is an excellent digestive aid. I always follow my evening meal with it." Mark turned to Wafto, who had finished serving. "My Partagas, Wafto, if you please. And the ah, special cigarettes." Then he turned back to the beautiful young wife. "I'm sorry for the interruption, Sharon," he sighed. "No, I'm afraid they don't have the information. The only way a Minister could effectively challenge an already existing policy would be by going into the whole thing again from scratch, reading all the papers, tracing all the details of planning and contracting from the moment the project was conceived to the stage at which it arrived on his desk claiming an urgent decision. And that is exactly just what he can't do. He has neither the time nor the specialist knowledge. He is forced to take most of what has gone before as read."
Again the conversation was interrupted by the hunch-backed servant, who this time appeared with a large wooden box and a smaller silver one. He opened the silver box and offered its contents to Lena; Sharon could see slightly that the interior was of scarlet velvet and the contents a brownish type of cigarette. Lena took one and Wafto bent forward and lit the oddly colored cigarette with a large butane gas lighter of the same design as the silver box.
"The Minister," Mark went on to say, "as well as the whole new government are limited by ignorance, in other words."
"Then how can decisions be made?" Sharon asked. The box was passed to her. "Oh, no thank you, Wafto. I prefer my own brand."
"No, do take one my dear," Mark urged. "They're something special, a grade of foreign tobacco much better than our English Virginia which yours are no doubt made of. I insist; it's as much an after dinner ritual at Marlowe Manor as Grand Marnier, or my Cuban cigars."
Sharon selected one, feeling its course paper in her fingers as she put its cork-wrap tip in her mouth. Wafto applied the fire; she inhaled. It was strange, an entirely different kind of taste than her brand – an odd sour-sweet flavor which seemed to go deeper in her lungs, imbibing an entirely new sensation than she had ever experienced while smoking since… since she first began! She inhaled again, smelling the pungency of the tobacco. It wasn't rough, like a coarse American cigarette might be, just edifying, giving her that same euphoria as had happened when she had snuck a Camel from her father's package and smoked it secretly behind the garage many years ago. A simple matter of getting used to, she supposed…
"Certainly strong," she commented, blinking.
Mark had clipped the end of the Partagas cigar, which he had selected from the large wooden humidor Wafto had brought to him. "Yes, aren't they? Very tasty, I'd say. A mixture of Latakia, Turkish, Burley, and Cannabis," he winked knowingly at Lena, who seemed to have a silly smirk on her face as though she was sharing some kind of secret with him. "Mostly the latter," he added.
"Can – cana…?" she tried to pronounce the last named tobacco. Somehow she was having a hard time focusing her mind on the word; things were getting a little woozy, in fact.
"Cannabis," Mark repeated. "Sometimes referred to as grifti, when it comes from Morocco as this particular batch did."
"Oh." It really didn't seem to matter. She continued to smoke, letting the lethargy she felt after the meal, the liqueur, and, peculiarly, the cigarette, take over her body.
"To get back to what I was saying," Mark continued, "the information the Minister receives has been filtered many times by who? By the same bureaucracy, by the same civil servants who have been there before him, before his predecessor no doubt. The Minister has no way of knowing what was discarded, what was emphasized. He may think he has a choice of three or four courses of action, but each of those courses has been plotted by his top civil servants, and they leave him little doubt about which course they think to be the best. Theoretically the Minister is in power, is free to reject that advice, but the fact is that he must always be dependent."
"That's a very cynical approach, Mark," Lena was saying.
To Sharon, her hearing was fading, for Lena seemed to be further away, as if speaking from the end of some long, narrow, echoing hall. She frowned and shook her head, trying to clear her mind, but it didn't seem to do any good. Moreover, she didn't really care. Everything was too pleasant, too relaxing to get excited over. She sunk still further in the feather-like softness of the couch and kicked off her shoes. Yes; it was too much trouble to keep up the pretense of correctness – she hiked her stockinged feet up and tucked them under her buttocks. Her dress bunched around her waist… she should pull it down, stay modest, if informal… but again, it was too much trouble. So much nicer just to stay as she was and drink her Grand Marnier and smoke the odd cigarette with the Moroccan grifti.
"Not cynical, Lena," Mark replied. "Just practical."
"Practical," Sharon repeated soporifically. She thought the word was fun and tripped it lightly over her tongue a few times, even humming a little tune along with it. There was a small, faint warning in the back of her head, saying: what's wrong? Why are you acting like this? But she didn't pay any heed to it. The room was so beautiful, more beautiful than she had realized, so full of colors and that tapestry hanging over the credenza seemed almost alive with hues and shades. She stared at the tapestry, soaking in every detail and thread of its woven Hunter-and-Stag design.
"Practical," Lena was saying from far, far away. "Practical like smoking marijuana, Mark?"
Marijuana… that was bad… very naughty to smoke marijuana… did things to people. Sharon smiled at Lena vaguely, not once relating the reference to the drug to her own condition.
"I'm always practical, my love," Mark said. "That way I get what I want."
"You always get what you want, don't you?" Lena stood up and crossed to the wide leather chair in which Mark was seated. She seemed to take a century to walk to him, or so Sharon thought; such a slow walker… and now what was she doing? Leaning over, also in slow motion, I can see her lips puckered as though she was going to kiss him… how nice… kissing is a sign of love… I kiss Neal all the time… I'd like to have Neal with me right now, to kiss me hard as Mark is kissing Lena, to fondle my breasts as he is…
"And you want her, don't you?" Lena asked nibbling his ear. "You want to fuck her as you have fucked me and all the other girls, don't you?"
Fuck… fuck, that's a bad word, isn't it? Fuck, fuck… mustn't use the word fuck. Why is Lena using the word fuck? Who is this other "her" that she is talking about? Sharon saw then that Wafto was bending over her, his wicked grin making his face a contorted mask of lechery. She allowed him to remove the stub of the cigarette from her fingers, place another tube of Cannabis – of marijuana – in her mouth and light it. She sucked in the smoke as he refilled her liqueur glass…
"To my mind," Mark said, "the only thing wrong with the system is that we pretend that the civil servants, that the bureaucracy isn't running the show. I think that they should be recognized for what they are – professional managers."
Mark Marlowe seemed to be talking to Lena, to continue explaining about the true happenings behind the scenes at Whitehall, to be exposing the workings of the inner circle of the British government – of, in actuality, any elective government. What he had to say was as important to understanding Washington, DC as is was the Conservative government in England, and perhaps at another time, another place, it would have been appreciated for the insight that it was.
But Marlowe was continuing for other reasons. His eyes were beadily fixed on the ever-more drugged young American wife near him, greedily watching her as she fell more and more under the hypnotic powers of the potent cigarettes… yes, he wanted to fuck her something fierce… his penis and testicles ached to slip inside the tender, palpitating cunt of the innocent beauty and spew his hot white seed deep, deep inside her proud womb. That, and other, more intensely exciting defilations of her body and soul. And Lena would help him, he knew, just as she always had, for she got tremendous enjoyment out of bringing lovely haughty young wives to their knees and seeing their helpless subjugation, their eventual change into debauched women of the flesh, and her own joining in the fun and games.
All in time. In good time, he realized, for he was, as the harlot wife of his best friend, Rodney Alvaro, had said, a totally practical man. Planning… that was the key, and so he droned on, making sure that Sharon Court was lulled into an unguarded position in which it would be easier to strike her.
He droned on, and all the while he had his hand up the frilly dress of the black-haired wife sitting in his lap. His fingers teased the inside of her creamy thighs, making them quiver, then his fingers tickled around the secretion band of her panties, feeling the outline of her fleshy, palpitating pussy, the wetness of her lubricious, excited state, the curly hairs of her pubic mound as they peeked out of the sides of her panties and grazed his hand.
"In short," he was saying, his mind delving on the fun which he would have in a few more minutes as he would fuck the older of the two women within an inch of her life, conjuring the image of her firm, yielding flesh cemented to his hard, muscled body and the look of glazed enrapturement in her eyes as she cried out her passion. "In short, the healthiest thing would be to cast out the fiction. Let the politicians remain responsible for the broadest policy, and let the permanent officials come out from behind their bushes and be ready to take public accounting for their management of our affairs."
"Ohh… ohh… ohh…" breathed the now trembling black-haired female in his clasp. "Ohh… I want you to fuck me, Mark… take me like some rutting beasts of the fields… give it to me… ohh…" She surged against his wandering fingers, which were now insinuated inside her panties and sliding into the slippery, pink vaginal opening of her cunt. "Uhhhh…"
"But alas, I see no sign of it happening." Mark still had his eyes feasted on Sharon Court, the naive wife who would never return to her old ways after the stay at his mansion, and he saw that the marijuana had now taken its fullest effect. She was sprawled most unlady-like on the sofa, her legs dangling and her dress nearly up to her hips. He could see up her legs, up to the little wisp of flimsy white nylon that separated him from his goal of her tender young pussy. It excited him, and his cock leaped into total erection, hurting to be released from the prison of his pants.
"I think she's ready," he said to Lena.
"Ohhhh… I am… I ammmm… too." Lena Alvaro was panting now, openly spreading her legs to his searching hand.
"Then let's get started. Right here, right in front of her. She's so doped up that she won't be horrified; only excited," Mark chuckled obscenely, pulling his fingers from the older woman's vagina with a slight wet sluicing sound. "Get up, my love. Get up and take your clothes off. I want to fuck you right here, right on the rug, right in front of Little Miss Sweetness. Hah. Let's see just now much of a goody-goody she is after she gets a taste of voyeurism, eh?"
The room was spinning for the beautiful young wife, Sharon Court. She had been drunk before, her surroundings revolving as if she was on a carousel; but it wasn't like that this time. No, it was if the colors and the objects were made of some pliable rubber which would alter and vary shape, size, and texture at will. A kaleidoscope of patterns which were dizzying and satisfying both, and gave new and deep meaning to the everyday items that they were. Sharon didn't understand what had taken over her mind, her body… but she didn't care. Nothing mattered except the song in her ears, the sight before her eyes, and the sweet pungency of the cigarette between her lips.
But what were Mark and Lena doing? Where were they? She tried to concentrate on the two people. They were… were on the rug…! And, and it seemed as though they were naked! Sharon shook her head again, her blonde hair whipping around, unable to believe what she was seeing. No… she clenched her eyes tightly together, then opened them wide. They were still there… and they were… Oh MY GOD! Sharon's heart skipped a beat.
Lena was lying spread-eagle before the fire-place, completely nude. Sharon felt as though she could have reached out and touched her. Lena's head was rolling back and forth, her face contorted with ecstasy. Mark was kneeling between her naked widespread legs, running his tongue moistly up and down her body. Lena writhed beneath his flickering caresses like a woman possessed, her hands tangling tightly in his hair, pulling his lips greedily to her tingling skin.
Sharon gripped the corners of the cushion, leaning forward. Lena… and Mark! She tried to blot out the shocking picture, but she couldn't. She had to look – the obscene spectacle mesmerized her. Her mind rebelled at the sight of a man toying with the naked, squirming body of a woman who was a good friend of the wife of your own husband's boss… she knew she should turn away. But she couldn't. She couldn't move!
Sharon sucked harder, as if hypnotized on the brown cigarette, the conscience-killing smoke sweeping away the revulsion, lightening her head. Then, after a few, deep inhalations, she found herself wickedly enjoying the scene before her; watching with studied detachment the pagan ritual that was as old as time itself.
Lena was beautiful, she thought as she gazed in intoxicated rapture at the enchanting woman spread on the floor. Mark had worked her to a fever pitch and the older woman's mouth hung open in ecstasy. Mark Marlowe's face was just above her softly curling pubic mound, his hands pressed on the smooth flat plane of her stomach and his thumbs lay pressed into the fleshy outer flanges of her cunt lips, pulling outward, exposing the moist red slit of the woman's vagina. The dainty pink bud of her clitoris was clearly visible, throbbing into hardness just above the stretched elastic opening of her vaginal tunnel.
Mark's head dropped and his long wet tongue snaked out to flick at the quivering little nub of raw nerves. Mrs. Alvaro's body jerked as the electric contact was made and her legs clamped tightly around his head, her soft inner thighs imprisoning his ears in a vise-like grip. Her hips began to rotate and soft wails of animal pleasure escaped from her mouth.
The innocent blonde wife on the couch gaped in disbelief as she watched her husband's boss' wife's lustful twistings to the depraved mouthing of her loins. She drew deeper on her marijuana cigarette, feeling her mind opening like a budding flower, uncertain any more whether the two writhing figures on the floor were real or figments of her imagination. Time was dancing in her head, and nothing existed in the world except the couple before her – and somehow she felt mystically connected with them.
Sharon's own torso began an involuntary swaying in time to that of Lena's, and thin folds of her dress and panties grated against her tiny, sensitive anus and vagina, sending spasms of pleasure rippling through her loins and belly, and on up to the rising nipples of her breasts.
And then Mark extricated himself from the now mewling, now mindless black-haired woman on the floor, and he gazed down from his kneeling position at the wife of his friend, his mouth and lips wet from his saliva and her vaginal secretions. He was panting from his own excitement, Sharon could hear his ragged breaths, and he stroked his hard penis which jutted from his thighs.
Sharon Court, who had never had or seen any other man except her own husband, paled and sucked her breath at the sight of the almost stranger's cock. She sat immobile, much of the nirvana that the drug had caused ripped from her as cold air can revive a drunk. She watched in terrified fascination as Mark's fingers skinned the thick foreskin rapidly up and down the full length of it, the hardened head bursting momentarily into view each time like a giant monster crawling from its secret lair. She was so close that she could see the glistening seminal fluid oozing forth from it. Mark's hoarse breathing made it quiver, and right then, his penis seemed to the frightened young wife as the most monstrous thing in the world. She could not imagine ever having something like that inside her. No woman could take it! It would kill her!
And then Lena reached up and grabbed Mark, and Mark lunged – and without hesitation, his gleaming rock-hard cock plunged into her moist, open vagina. He immediately began to fuck Alvaro's wife with long, hard strokes, and Sharon could clearly see his shaft sliding in and out of her friend's pink widespread cunt like a well-oiled piston, his sperm-laden balls smacking rhythmically into the moist crevice of her wide splayed buttocks below.
Sharon waited for Lena to scream in protest, or to fight back against the obscene rape of her open vagina – but none came.
Instead, her older girl friend's legs quivered, momentarily up into the air and then snaked back python-like around his waist. Her hands slid slowly down his gleaming body and come to rest on his white, hollowing buttocks. The fingers spread, whitened from pressure, then pulled him gluttonously into her, while below the softly clenching lips of her cunt flowered open in acceptance. It swallowed the whole of his plunging cock with each surging heave, and small piteous pleas of passionate supplication began to roll from her lips. They were lewd and filthy supplications, using words which Sharon had seldom heard except in whispers from the more daring girls back in college.
Sharon held her breath, more of the marijuana induced veil being lifted from her hazed, unbelieving eyes, and though she sat there as if glued, her hands over her wide open mouth in horror, her mind was now beginning to snap out of its lethargy enough for her to grasp firmly the total salaciousness of the situation. The complete alieness of the act as compared to her own sheltered life, the absolute nadir to every moral code to which the young naive wife had ever subscribed to.
Lena's buttocks were grinding ever faster now, and the groans and mewls of pleasure were becoming more desperate, and the demonic couplings were met with equal fury by Mark as he fucked harder and harder into her, driving her buttocks flat to the rug with each lust-inspired surge. The loud slap of their naked bellies against each other resounded in Sharon's fevered head like clasps of thunder. The drugged girl stayed in her seat as though hypnotized by the curling and uncurling legs as her girl friend strove in final desperation to reach her completion.
Sharon couldn't stand any more! Her heart and soul was a turmoil of revulsion and excitement, of horror and lewd interest, of unbelief and realization, of the shock of reality and the lulling of the drug. Something had to give!
Suddenly from Lena came a low, unearthly howl, and her hotly grinding buttocks quivered and jerked up tight against the hardened penis sunk deep in her cunt. Mark groaned above her and ground down hard, his thick fleshy rod throbbing its white, milky sperm deep up into her widening belly. The rich fluid filled her to overflowing and cascaded warmly out around her pink, moist vaginal lips. To Sharon's horror, she could see clearly a tiny white stream of it wetly trickling down the wide split crevice of her buttocks and onto the Oriental rug. The couple spasmed, endlessly expending their mindless orgasms as though she, a guest in the house, did not even exist!
The loud cry, the sight of another man's seed spilling so wantonly upon the carpet – the final link had been broken, and Sharon was released from her subjective bondage on the couch. No longer did the drug or the shock of seeing her friend, another man's wife, copulate openly before her with a strange man fascinate her to immobility. Everything was shattered. She leaped up and stumbled blindly toward the hall. Tears of abject humiliation rolled down her cheeks, smearing the light coat of makeup she'd applied before going to dinner. She ran up the stairs, not knowing where to go, where to hide, where to find an avenue of escape.
There was none. She was stuck in a house of sin and deviltry, a captive of the immense, silent, deadly moors with no means of crossing them at this time of night. She couldn't leave… but she couldn't stay. Not now!
Oh God, what could she do? She flung herself down the upstairs hall toward the only sanctuary she knew, the only place even remotely familiar and comforting – her guest room.