Atop the console was a singular Chinese incense-burner, which Eleanor now lit And presently the subtle scent of a kind of tantalizing pungency emanated throughout the wide high-ceilinged room. She smiled at the quivering naked man and motioned towards the huge bed. "Just relax and absorb the atmosphere, Tim. That's why I prefer all-night engagements, you see. Don't think about a thing; that's my assignment."
"You're-you're incredible, Eleanor," he breathed, moving to the bed cautiously seating himself on the edge; then he drew up his legs and stretched out on his back. His eyes at once widened; the sensation of the waterbed was new and immensely stimulating. He had the feeling he was suspended in space and time, and with the soft insistence of the music and the incense and the indirect light which cast fanciful shadows on everything it touched, he began to feel an awareness of his own naked body such as he had seldom had.
She stood a long moment contemplating him, an enigmatic smile on her soft red lips. "Feeling better?" she murmured.
"My God, yes!" he blurted, and then blushed, observing that her widely spaced, large dark brown eyes were intently fixed on his nearly turgid penis. Instinctively, he put a hand down to cover himself.
"Now that's naughty, darling," she laughed gently, shaking her head as she moved closer to the bed. "What's there to be ashamed of? My goodness, I told you already that you're in better physical shape at your age than lots of fellows ten and even twenty years your junior. Besides, that kind of false modesty leads exactly to what you want to get rid of. Now you just put your hands behind your head, spread your legs and make your mind a perfect blank. Ready?"
He nodded, bemused. She put her slim hands to the bun of coppery hair and loosened it, letting it fall in a rich, cascading mass below her shoulder blades. Then, drawing the zipper of the hostess gown, she wriggled out of it, and stood for his inspection in a matching black nylon bra and panty set, with a narrow white garterbelt hugging her supple waist and sending its tiny tabs lovingly along the sleek upper columns of her thighs to clamp to the gossamer tops of smoke-hued nylons.
He sucked in his breath and stared avidly at her. In this dishabille and in this pose, Eleanor suddenly seemed familiar to him, though of course until tonight he had never before met her. Yet there was such a striking physical resemblance between her and-no, he mustn't think of that, it was definitely perverse. He cleared his throat rather nervously, pressing his palms down on the soft yielding service of the waterbed, devouring her seductive and yet subtle beauty with all his inflamed senses. She was as tall as Rachel, there was no doubt about that. And this new thought made him wince inwardly with a sense of guilt which might well be destructive. It was to escape all the various kinds of guilt which had cropped up almost at once after his marriage to Rachel that he had taken Ted Amberly's recommendation tonight. And so he forced himself to surrender to the magic of this atmospheric setting and to the alluring sensuality of this extraordinarily intelligent 'young woman who knew enough to turn harlotry into an art worthy of being appreciated by a connoisseur.
"That's better, Tim," her voice was very soft as she moved even closer to the bed. Then she reached behind her to unhook the straps of the bra and to let it flutter to the floor. Once again he sucked in his breath as the proud, boldly round globes of her pale ivorysheene4 breasts fairly thrust out at him. They were widely spaced, high-perched, with broad orangeish coral aureole, and her nipples were full, already almost stiff under the duskier hue. The smooth plane of her belly was exquisitely ornamented with a wide shallow navel, a kind of lascivious eye which winked complaisantly at him. And from above, the diffusion of the bluish light tinted the pallor of her smooth bare flesh in an indefinably erotic way.
The slimness of her waist accentuated the bold richness of her firm naked breasts. And again there was contrast in the long sleek legs to whose marvelously sculptured contours the gauzy smoke-tinted nylon hose called titillating attention.
Satisfied by the almost stunned admiration with which he stared at her, she lowered her arms to her sides and straightened her shoulders, tossing her head Just a little to let the shimmering cascade of her coppery red hair dance and tumble against her bare shoulders and upper back, and to let him see also the resilient jiggling of her bare breasts. It was as if a beautiful Circassian slavegirl, summoned for the first time to the bed of her new lord, set out by every intuitive and disciplined mannerism to demonstrate not only her appreciable beauty but also her intense willingness to submit to his every caprice. To think of this now began to overcome his secret anxieties, and with it came a quivering pulsation all along his thighs and loins, further stiffening his penis.
As she observed this further tumescence, she uttered a soft little laugh of pleasure and nodded, then turned and went over to the hi-fl console and adjusted some more dials, next touched a switch at the back. Instantly the light turned to a pale green, and also he became aware that the bed was moving In a slow but very definable circular pattern.
"Yes, it's like those famous revolving restaurants. Only it revolves a little better than 360 degrees an hour, as you'll feel, Tim dear," she answered his ins-spoken question. Then- she moved back to him and mounted on the bed, swinging her beautiful long legs onto it to lie beside him on her left side. Her left hand moved to stroke the back of his head, while her right hand tentatively glided along his calf, thence over the knee, and then along his inner thigh. Once again he could not help sucking in his breath and this time quite audibly. His hands clenched under his neck and -he made a gesture of withdrawing them, but she shook her head: "Not yet, dear. Just let me go on as I'm doing. You'll know when it's time to take action. And besides, it will be a long night and you mustn't try to do everything the first time. That's part of the secret of letting yourself go and relaxing. All right?"
He could only nod, stricken with delight and wonder at this novel and yet marvelously sympathetic attentiveness. Thus far there had not been a single gross or coarse word or act or the least suggestiveness; it had been, indeed, the most imaginative and esthetic prelude to fornication that he had ever encountered, even in a book!
Eleanor moved closer to him, and he could feel the slightly moist warm flesh of her upper thigh against his hip. Her soft fingertips lingeringly stroked the back of his head and then his earlobes, while her right hand continued its gradually ascending, stroking maneuver along the inside of his thigh, halting just before reaching his now achingly readied penis.
Now, bending her head towards him, she began to apply rapid little kisses all over his chest and collarbone, while he closed his eyes and gave himself up thoroughly to the multitudinous sensations now beginning to take full hold of him. The pungency of the incense blended with the spicy scent he could detect from her half-naked nearness; and the soft moist, quickly fleeting pressures of her red lips on his prickling skin began to act like a cantharis in predicting the carnal euphoria in store for his long-deprived maleness.
And now, very lightly and tentatively, the fingertips of her right hand grazed the throbbing glans of his penis, frictioning the puckering lips for a memorable instant, then moving quickly to his testicles and tickling them in an evanescent way that made him groan with remembered pleasure. She shifted herself now, moving slightly below him, and now her lips attacked his belly while her left hand trailed slowly over his throat and chest, the fingertips just brushing his quivering flesh. And meanwhile the slowly revolving bed on which he lay sprawled and abandoned had inflicted its own novel and exciting sensation on her nerves and sinews. By now, the shadows of the unfortunate past had been crowded out, to be replaced by all these delicious new nuances of sensuality by which she was so expertly seducing him.
He opened his eyes, and saw their bodies reflected down from the ceilinged mirror. Now the light was red but soft and not at all harsh, and it emphasized the libidinous and imaginative setting in which they had come together. The music, too, had changed, and he recognized the strains of Deius' "Walk Through the Paradise Garden," music of hauntingly evocative beauty and appropriate for the languorous dalliance by which this imaginative red-haired beauty sought to produce pleasure and release for him.
With a kind of wondering joy and grateful awareness now, he became conscious of the virility of his wakened body. Now it was time to concentrate no longer on the brooding speculations over previous failures or secret, forbidden longings; now it was time only to be sensate and alive and capable of communicating to this beautiful young houri all his pleasure in her artistry.
Her lips had reached his lower abdomen, and now both hands stroked his sides and hips, as she huddled at his loins. Leaning slightly more forward, she let the rich firm curves of her naked round breasts brush against his groin, and the thrilling friction of her warm woman flesh to his sent a spasm of tortured joy throughout his eager body.
He lifted his head, his eyes wide now as he strained to watch her every movement in this exquisitely prolonged foreplay. And as he did so, she glanced quickly up at him and smiled sympathetically, then put her lips to the very tip of his penis in a stinging little kiss that made him groan aloud and reach out his hands for her.
"Oh no, not yet, dear, let me do it all," she murmured.
Now very gently she put both hands to his rigid shaft, stroking it from scrotum to glans with just the tips of her fingers, back and forth in slow, deliberate titillations. He could feel all of his marrow, all his juices, all his vitality yearning towards her touch, and he could feel himself arch and flex as he awaited her, Having been admonished to hold himself back and to let her take initiative was a sweet knowledge now, and the pangs of this denial became at once a novel pleasure for him yet without any sacrifice of his own determined masculinity.
Now, deftly and felinely, she had moved between his straddled thighs, bowing to him as a slave to her overlord. She cupped her full ivory-sheened breasts in both hands and lowered herself to him, and he uttered a strangled gasp of ecstasy as he felt the smooth warm globes enclasp his turgid organ and hold it sweet captive. She began to shift herself slightly on her knees, and again he opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling to watch the reflection of this erotic ritual, the first such ever performed upon him. He began to tremble and he could feel the pulses pounding in his temples. He could feel his penis rubbing back and forth along that gloriously improvised cleft which her two fine round breasts made for him so obligingly, and his entire body was stricken with a readiness and keenness that had been lacking all those times before.
Now, suddenly, she straightened, a roguish little smile curving her soft mouth, reached back to gather her tumbling, shimmering coppery hair and to furl it down towards him. Moving slightly backwards on her nylon-sheathed knees, she arched herself, turning her head this way and that so as to make the fringe of that silken cascade ticklingly graze against his inner thighs and his swelling penis in evanescent caresses that made him shudder with their subtle delicacy.
His eyes feasted on the. jiggling firmness of her splendid round breasts, and now, wonderingly and delightedly, looked upwards at the ceiling where all this fascinatingly prolonged preparation was being mirrored, then to the walls where, here too, he could observe himself in this exquisitely passive participation at the ritual of passion.
Now again she paused, and this time it was to tug the clinging, gossamer black nylon panties down to her knees, lift each in turn and then toss that gauzy sheath to the floor, remaining in garterbelt, nylons and spike-heeled pumps. His eyes blazed at the revelation of her loins, for Eleanor's love cleft was completely depilated: like a soft pouting, ripe fig, shell-pink and daintily vulnerable, the lips of her vulva offered themselves without dissembling, and as he stared avidly-for he had never before seen the female Venus so provocatively unadorned-he could just glimpse the furtive nodule of her clitoris peeping from its discreet hiding place at the very apex.
Now the softly diffused light had turned to a warm yellow, and the music, too, had changed. The piquant chromatics of Ravel's "Alborada del Gracioso" filled his ears, courtly and gallant, archaically romantic, with the hint of bitter sweetness that was part of this inventive seduction.
Never before had all his senses been so sharpened, so cumulatively aware of his aching maleness and his need for cohesion with the female. Distractedly, he found himself thinking of Plato's theorem that man and woman were of the same polarity and thus were fulfilled only when their two divergent entities were brought together. And for this unison he longed now with every fiber of his wakened being. The incense, the music, the changing light and the sensation of movement which the constantly revolving waterbed procured heightened the imminence of longed for ecstasy of the flesh. And beyond lust which filled him now, there was a profound gratitude for this imaginative and intellectual young woman who, even granting that she was for hire, had given him the gift of restored manhood and a rich exultance in its possession. He found himself fiercely impatient, and put out his hands to her with a hoarse groan of "Eleanor, please-now, now!"
"Would you like some more champagne first, Tim dear?" she teasingly proffered. And when he shook his head, she laughed softly, and murmured, "That's very flattering. Well, maybe you are just about ready. But first let me make sure, darling. I want this to be perfect for you.
Now, taking her hair in both hands, she bent over him and began very gently and lingeringly to friction his aching penis with the silken strands. He ground his teeth to hold back the savage urge to ejaculate, and the muscular cords along his inner thighs flexed sporadically. The soft brush of her fingers as they guided the coppery red curls up and down his now fully rigid shaft could discern his frantic eagerness for consummation. Gently she stroked his testicles, rubbing the ends of her shimmering cascade against the gnarled, hairy sacks till they contracted and spasmed with the furious urgency that-had begun to take hold of him.