Shameless Exposure (17 page)

 
Sixteen

There was already a crowd of people on the dock waiting for the boat out to Mura when Regina and Caroline arrived. Everybody wanted to be at Castle Dunlaggin for the solstice moon ceremony.

“You’ll nae all get on the boat this time,” said Angus when he eased the flat bottomed boat up to the dock.

“We don’t mind waiting for the next trip,” said Georgina, thinking of another round of coffee and cigarettes at the Blackwaterside Hotel.

“I
do
mind waiting,” said Joni, desperate to get back into her practice at Dunlaggin.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” said Angus. “It’s nae long te wait.”

“You go in the boat, Joni,” said Greta. “I’ll wait with Georgina.”

“Yes, you come on the boat,” said Jocasta. “You can sit on my knee.”

There was much laughter on the twenty minute ride to Mura, the spray breaking over the front of the craft as Angus gunned the engine. Caroline picked up on the high spirits. She had spent the entire year inside offices, aircraft, and conurbations. A break from her normal life would do her good. She would give Castle Dunlaggin, and herself, a chance. Maybe she would even give Robert a chance, though at the moment she thought not. Why had she been so naïve? It was typical male behaviour to take advantage when sex was on offer, but to prey on a vulnerable woman was unforgivable. What if he was barred from the Bar too? Then they really would be up the creek.

She breathed in the cool clear air and let it calm her worries. She would treat this as a holiday, a much needed break from her life. She joined in the laughter as the women scrambled from the boat onto the wet concrete ramp. She looked up at the fairytale castle, dark against the grey sky.

Every room and bunk was already booked for the solstice, so Regina led Caroline up the narrow stone steps to the unused bedroom above her own.

“I’m sorry it’s so dusty,” said Regina. “I’ll organise a work party to clean it out and make the bed.”

“I can do that myself if you tell me where things are,” said Caroline.

“No,” said Regina. “I’ll get Jocasta to do it. She finds cleaning therapeutic. I want you to begin orgatron practice right away. It’s only three days until the moon ceremony and I want you to be ready.”

“Ready in what way?”

“You could be my first high priestess, but we need to build up your vaginal power. Come, I’ll give you an introduction and you’ll see what I mean. I have a machine which can accelerate the learning process. Here, let me put this on you.”

She clipped an orgatron over Caroline’s wrist and gave her a brief instruction on the significance of the flashing colours.

“Is this the machine you were talking about?”

“All the proselytes wear the orgatron for practice. I have another machine which is only used in circumstances when time is short. Most of the women build up their orgasmic power over a few weeks, a whole month ideally. But I realise that busy people like you can’t give up a whole month, much as they might like to. That’s where the orgasmic accelerator comes in.”

She led Caroline down to the practice rooms and found Joni and Jocasta practising together spread across some large cushions. Regina made a sign and withdrew from the room. Five minutes later a flushed Jocasta emerged and bowed meekly to Regina.

“What duties do you wish me to perform, Mistress Superior?”

“Please clean the room above my own. Make sure it’s spotless. I will inspect when you have finished.”

Two minutes later, Joni emerged, panting lightly, her orgatron still flashing yellow.

“How can I serve the spirit of the orgasm?” asked Joni.

“In the best way imaginable,” said Regina. “Take this novice and show her the love of the community. Wash her and oil her, give her loose robes, then take her to GEORGe. Set the timer to one hour.”

“One hour, Mistress Superior? I understood novices began with fifteen minutes.”

“Caroline is a special case, she has great potential.”

Caroline relaxed into enjoying the ministrations of Joni, who lovingly carried out Regina’s preparation instructions. She took Caroline to the shower room and washed her with sandalwood soap and hot flannels. She laid her face down on a wooden massage table and warmed some oil in her hands.

The perfumed oils made Caroline feel dreamy. Joni lingered over massaging oil into every nook and cranny. She asked Caroline to turn over and trickled oil down her torso. She massaged her temples, her neck. She paid close attention to Caroline’s breasts, confiding that one of the drawbacks of modelling was that she’d lost her curves. She moved down to her feet, spending ages rubbing between each toe.

“That feels wonderful,” said Caroline.

“A lot of tension collects in the feet. It’s a serious effect of gravity. You can heal the whole body just by treating the feet.” Joni explained how each part of the foot corresponds to an internal organ, and gave her a demonstration.

“Here is the heart.” Caroline felt her heart flutter.

“And here is the kidney.” Caroline felt pressure in her lower back.

“And here… is the sexual organ.” Joni made rapid circles of pressure on the sole of her foot, between the toes and the arch. Caroline felt something melt inside. She had been holding in a lot of tension.

Joni warmed more oil in her palms and without warning drenched her pubic bone in oil, letting her fingers probe between Caroline’s legs. She separated them slightly to allow the oil to trickle over her labia, and then fingered her way into the small folds of sensitive flesh that shaped her pretty genitalia, made famous to a worldwide public by Erik’s erotic painting.

Benjamin Cummerbund of
The Times
, having applauded at the time, had called the exhibition a
shameful exposure
when he filed his copy. Caroline was having second thoughts about the wisdom of revealing so much of herself. Would people at work take her seriously, if she ever worked again? Why hadn’t Robert been firmer? He should have stopped her doing the modelling.

She had to admit it had been a huge ego boost to be second on the auction money list, only a whisker behind Miss September. Cecil Sharpe’s post-modern ironic interpretation of a nurse stripping had captured the public mood. It gave her great satisfaction that she had beaten Miss August into third place, not that it was a competition. Caroline opened her legs a little wider. Her hole welcomed the exploring fingers, first one, then two. Joni made sure that Caroline was well lubricated. She knew an hour with GEORGe would require it.

Joni dressed Caroline in a robe of yellow voile and led her to a room in the practice suite which she opened with a big iron key. The room was tiled and clinical, reminding Caroline of a hospital. In the middle of the room was a dentist’s chair with a large TV screen where the dentist’s powerful light would usually be. At the foot of the chair was a complex contraption of pistons, pulleys, and levers, with the label
GEORGe Series Three
on the side. Joni directed Caroline to lie in the chair and handed her a three hundred page manual.

“You only need read the first three pages and the health and safety information,” said Joni. “The Wimples will keep an eye on you.”

“The who?”

“Haven’t you met the Wimples yet? They carry out religious functions and oversee penances. I’m surprised Regina hasn’t introduced you. They’re not allowed to speak and you can’t see their faces. It’s not a permanent position. Regina bestows wimpledom as a reward for successful proselytising.
Twenty converts makes a Wimple
, the saying goes.”

“So GEORGe isn’t a nickname. I thought it might be a person,” said Caroline, studying the manual.

“I just think of the actor,” said Joni. “The avatar looks just like him.”

“Graduated Energy Orgasm Response Generator,” Caroline read aloud.

“Series Three,” added Joni. “It’s a prototype incorporating Regina’s personal modifications. It connects up to the orgatron. I’ll come back and collect you in an hour, if you can handle that long.”

The Wimples floated forward. Wimple One checked the wi-fi connection to GEORGe’s onboard computer and turned on the screen with a remote control. The image was fuzzy and the colours all wrong like it was a poor signal. Wimple Two slid a pair of 3D goggles onto Caroline’s face and a conventionally handsome man with a lovely smile walked confidently up to Caroline.

“Does he speak?” said Caroline.

Wimple Two slid hands up under Caroline’s red tresses and slipped stereo sound into her ears. The handsome man whispered sweet nothings against a background of smoochy music and gave a half smile while removing his shirt. Whilst Caroline watched the avatar, the Wimples took one ankle each and clamped them into the leg-holders on either side of the chair. They did the same with her arms.

“Is this really necessary?” said Caroline, but she received no answer. Wimple Two pressed a button and the chair and TV screen tilted backwards together, so that Caroline’s feet were higher than her head. She could no longer see the works of the machine, but could hear them starting to move. A digital clock in the corner of the screen began to count down from sixty minutes.

A warm sensation came over her, focussed on her vagina. It felt like someone was breathing on her sensitised clitoris and labia. The avatar was naked now, and telling her softly what he would like to do with her. She knew it was a machine, because no mouth was that big or soft or rubbery. It clamped over her genitals creating a vacuum, and her labia began to swell and pulse. A tongue drew circles and darted unpredictably into her hole. It was a languorous tongue, it had all day. It was careful not to over-stimulate her clitoris.

She didn’t like people who talk all the time during sex but the avatar was so gentlemanly and complimentary that she didn’t mind his whispering in her ear.

“I love a woman wearing goggles. On you it’s very sexy.”

After a much more careful preparation than she was used to at home, the avatar asked if he could enter her, and though she knew her answer was irrelevant, she said “Yes” out loud.

The machine nudged at the entrance to her vagina. Amazingly, the tongue was still there. The attachment nudged some more, tantalising, but not fulfilling. She moaned, and felt an orgasm coming as the tongue picked up speed. The orgatron flashed yellow. The machine stopped in mid lick. She was left hanging. The digital counter paused. Her orgasm retreated back down its virtual hole.

The avatar whispered, “Not yet darling.”

The machine didn’t start moving again until the orgatron had stopped flashing. This time the tongue had gone away. The mechanical dildo entered her smoothly and withdrew smoothly, over and over again, but too slowly to build any orgasmic tension. It was pleasant enough, but not exciting. Wimple Two placed the remote control in her hand, indicating the coloured buttons along the bottom.

She fumbled one handed with the remote and pressed red. The pace increased: too fast. She pressed blue. The dildo slowed: too slow. She pressed red again and let the speed build up to the point she could take no more. The orgatron flashed again and the dildo withdrew, just like that, leaving her hole aching for more. She tried to suppress a flash of annoyance. She hated it when the road to her orgasm was interrupted for no good reason.

“Take your time,” said the avatar, with an infuriating smile.

“I’m not sure how much more I can take of this,” said Caroline. The counter had frozen again. It said forty-five minutes to go.

When the whirring started up again, Caroline experimented with the yellow, green and purple buttons. Yellow brought the tongue back. That lasted all of fifteen seconds before the machine cut out again. Green produced a rough lusty pounding with no light and shade. It did nothing for her. Purple sent a funny shaped thing boring into her other hole. She tried to switch it off but pressed the wrong buttons. The remote control dropped to the floor with a loud clang. Caroline squirmed.

“Help me,” she said to a Wimple. The Wimples shook their heads. Half an hour to go. Caroline gritted her teeth. In a moment of downtime Regina intruded into her mind. Should she call her mother? What an appalling thought. But it was true, Regina did look in some ways like an older version of herself: the big hair, the proud posture. And she liked what she had said about turning the tables. Undeniably, the woman had power. And Regina believed in Caroline and said that she had power too. She would practise turning the tables on the avatar. She stared into the deep blue eyes of the handsome face and mouthed her defiance.

“You can do whatever you like to me; you’ll never make me come.”

“I love a woman with goggles and spirit,” said the avatar.

“Fuck you.”

She would wipe the smile off the avatar’s face. The machine had its frustrating way with her, trying every conceivable combination of its extensive special features. She suppressed a cackle. She felt her power growing. She didn’t flash yellow. The machine was relentless. She saw the vixen, her animal spirit ally scurry across the screen and jump out into the room. She knew she would pass this test.

After fifty minutes she vowed never to watch another film by that actor. After fifty five minutes she swore she would leave the island that day. After fifty nine minutes she just swore, loudly. Joni opened the door and the Wimples slipped away.