“Can it be, my dear Marion,” I pursued a new track now, “that all this hostility of yours originates from your jealousy of Alice?”
She was startled by this unexpected question, for she looked at me with a piercing, questioning gaze, and her fine forehead furrowed as she strove to catch my meaning. Before she could reply, I continued in the same bantering tone, “Perhaps with you it is a case of sour grapes, my charming sister-in-law to be.”
“You contemptible liar!” was her angry, hoarse retort. “You have no more intention of marrying Alice than does the man in the moon, and you will not have the chance, for I intend to inform her once and for all of your heinous character, you odious blackguard!”
“It has been said by many a famous writer, my dear Marion,” I ignored her furious insult, “that hate is akin to love. Well, presuming that is so, you must secretly love me very dearly to hate me so, or at least to profess that you do.”
“I-love
I drew up a chair and seated myself before her. She caught her breath and bit her lower lip, staring down at me. Now, perhaps for the first time, I could detect a hint of fear in those dark blue, imperiously cold eyes, for they now held a shadow of uncertainty. Almost instantly, however, she looked upwards and jerked strongly at her wrists, finding it difficult to balance herself, for the ropes at her ankles had drawn her legs slightly apart-though not to their fullest extent-and the traction in two directions was proving to be a sore trial for her.
“I assure you they will hold you fast till I deign to let you down, Marion. Yes, you are quite attractive, and I think you know it. I think perhaps you give yourself too many fine airs, and this may be one reason why you are no longer united with your husband. But quite beyond that, and let us be honest at this moment if at no other,” I blandly continued, “is it not the truth that having learned that I am really not such an odious person after all and that my prospects and my person are quite sanguine, you resolved that if you could not have me you would make certain Alice would not either? This, my dear Marion, is the very quintessence of sour grapes.”
“You are absolutely insane, sir, to even suggest such a despicable thing,” and her voice trembled as her magnificent bosom began to heave wildly again. “I detest and abominate you, do you understand? If it meant my very life, I would never submit myself to you, and the thought that you have been able to enjoy my sister as intimately as I know you have-for her stupidly radiant behavior has told me that without her having had to say a word about what has passed between the two of you-really makes me quite ill!”
“But if Alice has not told you-to use your words, my dear Marion-what has passed between us two, yon have no realistic basis for your repugnance. I mean to put you in a practical way of understanding just what does occur between a man and a woman. It may well be a lesson that you stand in need of, considering that you could not hold your husband for all your delightful charms. And now, with or without your leave, I am going to learn for myself something of their nature.”
I had seated myself in this chair, just as I had done with her sister, only with Alice I had not bothered to bind her ankles because she had not thought of kicking me. I now placed my hands on Marion’s waist, and she at once uttered an angry cry and twisted herself back from me.
“I warn you, sir, I warn you,” she panted. “If you do me any indignity, you will expiate your crime in prison and for as long a time as I can have my solicitor charge you!”
“Well, since you have already determined to have me languish in a cell, my dear sister-in-law to be,” I retorted merrily, “I may as well be hanged for a wolf as a sheep.” So saying, I slipped my hands behind her shapely back and moved them round until they were at the sides of her breasts.
Marion uttered a wild cry and twisted and dragged at her wrists, to no avail. Gnashing her teeth, her eyes bulging with fury and now a definite fear, she tried to evade my unwanted caresses. I prolonged the moment to the longest possible degree, and then I boldly cupped the globes of her bosom through her clothes!
“Ohh! I forbid you-you inhuman monster. Stop that at once, you vile, lecherous fiend-Oh, help, for God’s sake, help me! I am at the mercy of a monster,” she shrieked.
I dropped my hands at once, letting her think she had won her point, for when I next pursued my devious designs upon her, it would be the more shattering to her enervated psyche. I stared up at her, seeing how violently her face was flushed, her lips trembling, her eyes exorbitant, her forehead deeply furrowed, and, delicious telltale sign, a bead or two of sweat appearing along her high forehead at the fringe of those flouncy, affectatious curls. Her breath was erratic, and her nostrils flared and shrank as she tried once again to wrest herself free.
Now, Alice’s breasts were firm, upstanding, saucy, and inviting. Perhaps a trifle too full for perfection, but they were also set rather widely apart, and the aureolae were wide and of a most delicious soft pink hue, in whose centers nuzzled dainty little crinkly buds. Yet from the first tentative palpation I had had of Marion’s bosom, it had seemed to me that her breasts were rather closely set together and splendidly shaped like firm ripe pears with an uptilting verve to their crests. Even through the thickness of dress and bodice and perhaps the camisole which she must be wearing, her flesh seemed to me to be wonderfully resilient and jouncy. It was a magnificent augury of what was to come.
In the pocket of my dressing gown I had deposed a pair of shears. These I had used to dispossess Alice from the confinements of her final veils. There can be no doubt that once a woman is stripped naked, and no matter how obdurate or insolent her nature, she cannot but sense an atrocious loss of pride and dignity when in the presence of her disrober. Well, I was counting on that in my plans for the final subjugation of arrogant and beautiful Marion.
I should say that she was about an inch taller than Alice, though the rather bulky way she was dressed suggested an even greater plumpness than her sister had in fact. This is why the disrobing of a charming woman is such a treat for a connoisseur of feminine pulchritude: until the very last moment he is kept in suspense as to the true beauties of the body he is about to lay bare for his carnal appeasement.
When I saw that the heaving of her bosom had somewhat subsided, I took hold of her waist again with both my hands and caressed it. Marion shuddered and closed her eyes, setting her teeth to keep from uttering a word. It was evident that she wished to give her executioner not one ounce of satisfaction. It was equally evident that she wished to give the impression of death before dishonor, which was rather ludicrous, after all, in a married woman. But it was totally in keeping with her affectations and holier-than-thou personality.
Again and completely at my leisure, I considered her. She was damnably delicious, now that there was proof of her being somewhat less than an icy, untouchable goddess, a statue posed high above me on a pedestal. Now the gleam of sweat was more evident than before on her forehead, and long, shivering tremors swept along her tractioned arms and shoulders, while her face was flushed and taut with a mounting anxiety that insidiously began to gnaw against all her angry and heroic defiance. She realized that she was well caught and vulnerable, but I do not think she believed, even at this moment, that I would really go so far as I planned to do; undoubtedly the prim propriety of her upbringing and her outlook on marriage-though here, I will confess, I was speculating-made it absolutely inconceivable that a man should take and pinion and strip and feel and then have his way with her.
“If you were not quite so rebellious, my dear Marion,” I now coolly remarked, “the two of us could be far more comfortable than I fear you are at this moment However, Goethe has an admirable proverb which I shall render for you in the English translation. ‘What you can do without, do without.’ I fear, therefore, that I must content myself with the sparse means at my disposal till you show a less unruly nature.”
And with this, rising from my chair, I pressed myself against her till our knees met and my hands moved round to press against her shoulders so her bosom could not evade my eager chest. Thus her face was posed inches from mine, and I could hear the rapid, agonized stress of her breathing as well as see the broadening of her lovely nostril-wings and read also in her dilated eyes the glazed shadows of her rising dread. She jerked convulsively against my hands, but I nonetheless thrilled to feel her fine, firm breasts mashing against my chest, outlining their rondures against the thick cloth which kept their olive-satiny goblets from my entranced gaze and touch. She twisted her face to the left, closing her eyes as another long shiver ran through her. Now I could see the fine beads of sweat all along her forehead and at the sides near those dainty ears, indisputable proof of her terrifying uncertainty, of the loss of her vaunted poise and arrogance… the first true triumph against this embattled, beautiful young virago!
I could savor each triumph in its turn and time, and I was not greedy, though I confess it required the most powerful self-control of which I was capable to keep from altering my schedule of divestiture of Marion’s raiment and the progression to tactual and erotic torments and tauntings which would finally wreak havoc on her delicious,
