Lunch was over, but the remains of it – the champagne, the cheese, the fruit – were still on the table waiting to be cleared away.
On the balcony overlooking the azure calmness of the Mediterranean, Louise, her husband and Claudine were sipping brandy with their coffee. There was peace in Nice at that moment. Not a ripple marred the surface of the sea. The cars had ceased their endless whir of tires against tarmac. Even the people seemed to have withdrawn from the heat of the afternoon.
"I wonder where they all go to?" observed Hector lazily.
"To sleep, I have no doubt. Eat first, then the siesta. What a wonderful custom! And what more wonderful place than this for the siesta to have evolved in?" said Claudine, equally languid.
She had on a patterned sun frock, gaily floral against its basic cream. A frock it was, whose simplicity belied its expensive material and the elegance of its cut. And she had on only the frock, for beneath it, it was obvious that no underwear fettered either her breasts or her hips.
"And it's such a natural phenomenon, this siesta," put in Hector. "You couldn't imagine it in Sweden, for example, or in dreary London. I wonder what they are all doing? How they spend their siestas, all those people who were lazing about in the sun this morning?"
"Making love?" suggested Louise impudently.
"Oh, doubtlessly," said Claudine, taking up the challenge in Louise's remark. "And what more delightful occupation? What better relaxation after a long luncheon than to fall back into bed with one's husband, and give oneself up to his desires?"
"Or one's lover?" put in Louise, eyebrow cocked.
Hector darted a look at his wife, wondering if she were readying to denounce Claudine. But Louise's expression was blandly objective. Amused, he decided to leave the conversational ball where it lay, there in the respective courts of the two women.
"Or one's lover, as you say," observed Claudine.
"And I wonder which might be the more enjoyable?" asked Louise. "One's husband, or one's lover?"
"If we could answer that question, then it might be the end of all lovers and all mistresses for all time."
"I'm sure. Personally, I think it largely depends on three things. The time, the place and the people involved."
"Doesn't that go for all love? Do you object, then, to the lover-mistress relationship?"
Louise paused a moment.
"I used to," she said, finally. "I suppose that's my American origin creeping through. In America we set great store by fidelity, you know."
"There is no infidelity in America, then?" asked Claudine, in mock innocence.
"Oh, don't get me wrong now," said Louise. "There is more probably than here in Europe. But there we keep it hidden. We do not flaunt it as I have found it flaunted here. Or, if not flaunted, then at least condoned. Tolerated."
"So you disapprove then?"
"Did disapprove," corrected Louise.
"And now?" probed Claudine, again innocence personified. "Would you tolerate it, for example, if Hector were to take a mistress?"
Louise allowed a lazy minute to go by as she sipped her brandy.
"Now, well, let's see," she said. "Yes, Claudine. I think I would – now, that is. In six years, Europe and the world, they have broadened me. If Hector had a mistress, a mistress like you yourself, for example, I think I would quite happily permit it."
Claudine's face was a perfect mask, Hector noticed. Expressionless. Not by the movement of an eyelid did she betray an inkling of her knowledge of what Louise meant.
"You see," Louise went on, this time visibly startling Claudine, "I know that you are Hector's mistress. The point I want to make is that I am now conditioned to accept a lover-mistress relation accomplished in bed as I myself am with my ship in Hector – with one proviso. That she be as husband. Perhaps a second proviso, then. That she be as attractive on the street with him as I am. I would not want him to be, or to be seen, with anyone inferior. You agree, perhaps?"
Louise had deliberately chatted on, to permit Claudine to recover from the embarrassment of the direct charge she had made in front of her husband.
"So," Claudine replied eventually. "You know then about Hector and me?"
"I do. And Claudine, because I know, that is why we have lunched together today."
At this stage, Hector interjected: "You see, Claudine, this is what I was getting at when I phoned you this morning."
"I see," said Claudine. "You did promise something interesting. Was it this, then, to bait me deliberately in front of Louise? Fie, Hector! I rate Louise higher than that!"
Hector laughed.
"You're wrong, Claudine," he chided gently. "Louise has another idea in mind entirely. Look, let's not fence with words. Her proposition's a simple one. It's this. We're all reasonable, adult people. We've lunched together. We've discussed together a point in human relationship. What we propose now is to perform openly an act that we have up to now – you and me, that is – performed only in secret. We've agreed, you and me, that it's been divine. Now all we have to do is to show Louise how divine it really was. What we've done together, my sweet one, surely we can do again, now, in front of Louise!"
Claudine thought a while.
"What's the next move?" she asked.
"As I see it, it's this," said Hector, rising. "We go to bed, Claudine, you and I."
Claudine, suddenly understanding, gave a low hum of comprehension. Why? – but wait, she thought – this thing, startling as it had been a moment ago might yet turn out all right, might have in it after all the elements of something quite amusing. If it caused no marriage spat between husband and wife, then why not?
Coolly, she rose, as did Louise. Giving her hand to Hector, she exclaimed theatrically: "Then lead on, MacDuff!"
The bedroom was shady and tastefully furnished – a vast boudoir of mirrors and deep-piled carpets, in which the pair of beds, wide, low and inviting, were the main feature.
Claudine stubbed out her cigarette in a heavy venetian glass ashtray, and squirmed deliciously in her dress.
"This I think I am going to enjoy. Yes. This I might enjoy very much."
She held out her arms to Hector, and he came to her. His hands were practiced as they fondled her back, establishing the nudity he had suspected lay beneath the single sheath of her frock. She surrendered to his caressing, writhing at the hips as she pressed herself hungrily to his body. Her hands seemed all over him. Now they cupped his head as she drank in his kiss. Now they were about his shoulders, and from there she ran them down his back, his flanks, and his thighs, the better to provoke desire in him.
And as the kiss lingered on, she was active at the buttons of his silk, open-throated shirt, loosening the belt that held his trousers up, she feverishly tugged at the fastening of his fly. She felt how his and was thickening and caressed it expertly with the three fingers and thumb she had managed to insert among his trouser buttons.
Then she broke away from his embrace.
"Quick, Hector," she said urgently. "Undress. Strip! Let's end this useless suspense!"
Obediently, Hector stripped, sending a succession of garments flying into a chair until he stood naked and sun-bronzed as Louise knew him so well. So brown was his body it seemed as if it had never endured a winter.
Louise sank back into an easy chair to watch the couple. She was mockingly expectant, as if she were seating herself at the theatre, challenging the cast to amuse her.
But Claudine retained her dress. She sank down to the bed and gazed at the nakedness of the man whose body she knew so well. And then, with studied coquetry, she allowed her thighs to part and her skirt to fall back upon the alabaster pillars that were her legs. Plainly visible was the fuzz of hair that surrounded her cunt and Louise, feeling a stirring of sex herself, gazed at the brazen display upon which Hector, too, was feasting his eyes.
Languidly, Claudine reached for Hector, closing her hand over his fully-erect prick as he came to her. Keeping him still standing, she bent her face to that mighty staff, and took its reddened head into her mouth in an act that was all pure worship and devotion.
As she sucked for a while at his throbbing lance, she allowed her dress to fall still farther up her parted thighs, until the full glory of her twat was completely exposed.
By some trick that only she knew, she kept that twat gaping and closing alternately in some ferment of desire and Louise stared, almost hypnotized, at the consummate art of this woman – feeling her own cunt hot with the dripping and splurge of her rising randiness.
Gradually, Claudine eased up in her languid tonguing of Hector's penis and lay back upon the bed. She was panting now, eyes dreamily closed.
She lay writhing for several moments, alternately opening and closing her thighs.
Her own fingers stole up to her opened, exposed twat, and went snaking into its warm depths. Watching her, Louise gave a shiver of apprehension at the actual sight – being performed openly – of female masturbation…
As Claudine stroked the nerve ends of desire within her vagina, she seemed to fuck with thrusts of her hips toward her fingertips, thrusting back with those same fingertips as she permitted her hips to recede once more. Involuntarily, Louise found her own fingers speeding up her skirts to the fragment of nylon panties sheathing her own cunt.
As Hector sank down to his mistress' side, so Claudine rolled away from him, arid stood up on the other side of the bed. She arched an arm up behind her, disengaged a zip and, in movements ineffably slow and deliberate, she permitted her frock to fall from her body, keeping her gaze all the time upon the smooth head of Hector's cock.
It was as provocative a sight as Louise had ever seen, the disrobing of this accomplished coquette. Louise's own desire was now a fever of lust.
Quite oblivious as to the disheveled sight she presented, she had ripped down her panties and was now sitting, thighs spread as far apart as they could go, with all four fingers of her right hand moving wildly inside her cunt, masturbating with a sort of screwing motion – first to the right, then to the left – a motion that brought pressure into play upon vagina, labia and clitoris in turn.
And what a magnificent sight was Claudine, naked now and unashamed, as she stood there in an attitude of for-the-last-time domination of her lover who lay, prick erect, in wait for her to descend upon him! For that moment he was the sacrifice, and she the high priestess of this devilish ceremony they were about to perform together.
Claudine's tits stood out, their nipples hard, brown chestnuts of torment. Straight as a lily was her glorious body, with its rounded belly descending to perfect alabaster thighs. From where Louise sat, the twin swellings of the girl's buttocks were glorious cushions of pleasure. Plain to see was the valley into which her cunt-hair seemed to be sucked, as it were, into the gash that was her twat.
And then, still moving slowly, Claudine raised one leg, placing it upon the bed, so that her cunt was drawn apart, red-brown and inviting, open to Hector's delirious gaze.
Slowly, she allowed her fingers to stray once more into its luscious depths, betraying by weird little animal moans the pleasure she was giving herself. The sight of her splendid abandon was having its effect on Hector. Now he raised his head to her parted cunt lips, brushing away her masturbating fingers and bestowing a long suck-fuck kiss, drawing the liquid ambrosia from its ciliated bed. And as he closed his mouth upon her cunt, Claudine threw back her head in passion, madly fraying at her nipples with her fingers as if seized by some frenzy of masochistic desire to hurt herself.
It was then, through the haze of her abandon, that Claudine noticed Louise, one thigh splayed over the arm of the chair, gloriously tossing herself off as, entranced, she watched the lovemaking.
Claudine suddenly ceased finger-thrashing her nipples and Hector, sensing something, drew away from the torrid wetness of her cunt hairs.
"Look at Louise!" whispered Claudine, directing Hector's attention to where his wife lay obscenely sprawled, open-legged, in the armchair. "Wait, Hector. The poor girl is beside herself with desire. How can we leave her out of this."
Claudine moved quickly, soundlessly, over to the chair, and sank down before Louise. Gently she disengaged Louise's fingers from her cunt…
"Poor thing," she soothed. "Never mind, Louise. You shan't be left out. There's something in this for you as well. Come on, get undressed."
Eagerly, Louise submitted to Claudine's disrobing hands. First the frock, then the brassiere followed each other to the floor and Louise stood revealed in all the glory of her nudity, so that Claudine could not hold back a murmur of admiration at the magnificent figure so proudly naked before them.
"How wonderfully beautiful you are," she whispered. "What adorable breasts, so big, yet so utterly feminine! What a belly! What superb buttocks!"
She led Louise to the bed and then, on a sudden impulse, knelt reverently in front of Hector's wife, her mouth presented imploringly to the black-haired cunt. Louise fell back on the bed and Claudine used both hands to part the thighs before her, exposing the cunt that had been so vigorously finger-fucked until now.
"Let me kiss it!" she pleaded.
"Kiss it then! Suck it, in God's name do me the kindness, Claudine! Suck me off so I can know the relief of coming. Oh, Christ, I'm so close to it already."
"So are we all," Claudine murmured into the cunt she was already so avidly mouthing. "But that, my darling, is the peak of all sex – to die at the zenith of desire – to die but to stave it off, always, forever. You mustn't come yet, Louise! Wait."
She stood up and maneuvered Louise into a lying position, with her head upon the pillows.
"Now I'll show you something," she whispered. "A lesbian trick. Have you ever been with a lesbian?"
"Never," moaned Louise, limp in her torment. "But do just what you like. Please! Anything, so long as you get me to come. Sweet Christ, what glorious agony this is!"
Hector looked on in amazed delight as Claudine turned Louise upon her side. Then Claudine herself clambered upon the bed, her head at Louise's feet. From this position she adroitly insinuated her thighs between the thighs of Louise, pressing up as she did until the two bodies were forked, as it were, upon one another's cunts and their two cunts met transversely in a tangle of brown and blond cunt hairs. (You might achieve the same position by sliding your fore and middle fingers of each hand into and between each other.)
Both girls were wet and dripping with desire and, expertly, Claudine applied the pressure, working only her pelvis, so as to bring their two sets of labia together. When their cunts met, they did so with a delicious squelch and Louise, feeling for the first time the cunt of another woman in contact with her own, instinctively bore her share of the cunt-to-cunt-searching that was in progress.
Never before given to lesbian activity, she nevertheless found no difficulty in accommodating to Claudine's pelvic movements, who was practiced in the ways of the half-world of the theatrical crowd in which she moved. And Louise found an unnatural thrill in the cunt-to-cunt contact she was now experiencing.
Hector watched, as if mesmerized, as the two women went at each other, one skilful and the complete mistress of what she was doing, the other instinctively giving the participation required of her. Indeed it seemed as if Louise was trying even more expertly to duplicate the tricks of the practiced lesbian forking into her.
Their cunts were hidden by their intertwined thighs, but the drenched squelching was audible through the room as the two twats met and parted, met and parted, met and parted in strenuous fuck.
But their breasts were visible – all four of them Claudine's, pancaked upon her chest, as she lay on her back, and Louise's, naked, jiggling furiously – as she lay sideways, forking her partner.
Instinctively, as he watched, Hector grasped his tool and slid the foreskin to and fro over its red dome. The sensation was made all the more delicious by the lascivious sight of the two prone women. He prolonged it, to just that pitch necessary to sustain delight, without forcing himself to a climax.
Then, striving for an even greater thrill, he took Louise's hand and placed it around his prick, so that she might masturbate him. With his own two hands now freed, he reached out for one of Louise's breasts and one of Claudine's, rolling their nipples between his fingers to their mutual and insane delight.
For long moments Claudine permitted the cunt-to-cunt contact to continue, delighting in the moans of agonized pain continuously being emitted by Louise.
Then, as she felt the pitch of Louise's passion approaching, she drew suddenly and swiftly apart down the thighs of the other woman. The destitute cunt, searching to prolong its pleasure, seemed to gape open and shut as does the mouth of a fish in a glass bowl, blindly seeking for that which had so recently pleasured it.
Deliberately and slowly now, Claudine twisted to bring her mouth into contact with Louise's pain racked twat.
The movement, of course, placed exactly the same contact between Claudine's cunt and Louise's mouth slowly, inch, by inch, the women then proceeded to a mutual soixante-nuef embrace of cuntlicking.
Being women, they knew just how best to do that each knew exactly what she wanted done to herself to excite her the most. So each did exactly that to the other. This time, it was Claudine who reached out a hand to contain Hector's palpitating prick, skillfully masturbating him so that his randiness was maintained at peak pitch.
Hector was utterly fascinated as he studied the deliberate use being made by each woman of her tongue. Claudine would hold her entire face away from Louise's cunt. Then, with tongue fully extended, she would flick it lightly in tiny licks at the palpitating protuberance that was Louise's clitoris.
Louise, on the other hand, lashed out with great licks at Claudine's cunt, seeming to splay her whole tongue over the inside-out, parted lips of the twat before her.
Instinctively, Hector increased his titillation of the bosoms of the two women. Finally he could no longer bear the agony of his lust. He parted the two women from their lesbian embrace.
"Any minute now, one of you's going to come. One of you, or perhaps both together. What'll happen to this penis then? You, Claudine, you give me your cunt! That, after all, is what we're here for, for me to fuck you!"
The two women were already excited to fever pitch by their erotic delights. Vigorously they resisted Hector's efforts to part them. But he was adamant, and even cruel, in his use of them. Rolling Claudine upon her back, he was over and on top of her in the same motion, boring down into her crotch with his erection lancing her to the very cervix. Into the slimy depths, warm, lush and inviting, it went. And he kept it there.
Louise, demented, was imploring him to give her back the mouth that had been giving her so much unendurable pleasure. But, viciously, Hector silenced her.
"Enough!" he growled. "If you can't do anything else, then jerk yourself off like you were doing when Claudine got you into this. But right now, Claudine's mine!"
Louise, however, was a fury of thwarted emotion. She had to come now. Like some tigress, she refused to be put off. Clambering over the prone face of Claudine, she arched up, supporting her body on feet and hands as she pressed her cunt into the face of her husband.
"Then lick me off, damn it!" she gloated, as she felt her cunt squelch into his face and against his mouth. "You robbed me! You pay for it, then. After all, it's not taking anything from Claudine!"
Hector had no alternative. Turn his face where he liked, he could not escape the cunt being thrust at his mouth. Capitulating, he sucked – and he loved it. The suck and the fuck-together they were divine.
Darting his tongue into his wife's cunt, he bored away with his penis deep within the bowels of Claudine. All three bodies, now unbridled in their passion, were avidly thrashing about in the delirious pursuit of happiness.
Claudine was being fucked. Claudine, in her turn, was fucking right back at the prick that was lancing deep into her intestines. Louise was being sucked. Indeed, she was busily fucking at the tongue that was sucking her.
And Claudine, opening her eyes beneath the raised buttocks of Louise, had the marvelous view of the tight-clenched asshole under the gaping twat lips into which Hector's tongue was snaking.
Frenziedly the three of them lashed about on the bed, each feeling the rising, the coming climax, and none of them able any longer to defer the glorious moment.
And then it was upon them – all of them – in one sudden moment, together. Each howled as their great coming took place. Claudine and Louise squealed at the cascade of emotional flood that was unloosed by their climaxes. Hector, in his turn, was animal-like in his strength as he ferociously shot his bolt time and time again, deep into the womb of the woman who was beneath him. Claudine, feeling the squirts of semen drenching her insides, did a veritable split as she parted her legs to absorb all he could give. Louise, feverishly trying to trap forever inside her cunt the tongue that had sent her cascading vaginal juices spraying over her husband's face, moaned unashamedly.
So they struggled, fighting some demoniac sex battle there with the glorious name of fuck.
And presently, their passion spent, all lay limp and flaccid as they fell into blissful slumber.