her.
“She laughed, hesitatingly, not a little surprised. We talked for a few more minutes, I keeping my voice light and ingratiating, to suggest a whimsical caprice on my part, something one did only once in a lifetime. She said in a voice broken by tiny gurgles of laughter, 'All right, then-I'll come to your room in about twenty minutes, but please open the door as soon as I knock-or, I know- I'll phone just before I start so you can leave the door ajar.'
“The ring came in less than twenty minutes. I half opened my door. A few moments later she slipped into the room wearing a silk dressing gown and mules. She thought, I assumed, if people saw her thus in a large hotel corridor they'd avert their gaze, but I confess I felt touched by her courage in setting just the right note to my suggestion. I felt there'd be no beating about the bush. I told her how sweet it was of her to come and how lovely she was, and began by kissing her lovely hands. Then I took her in my arms. I could see she had on next to nothing under her dressing gown. When I opened it, she stood revealed in no more than a shift, without either panties or bra, and her body smelled of bath salts and of scent. “I said to myself that here was an intelligent woman, with a proper feeling for a situation. She knew that if she had come along prepared to play the part of a woman of the world paying a casual visit with hat, suit and the lot, she would have been bogged down in an adventure in the same old rut. She saw that once she accepted the adventure in the spirit of my offer-and my cynicism left her no doubt about that-she must take a line of utter shamelessness and be prepared for the 'assault direct.' A minute later, stretched out on the divan, we were exchanging the most outrageous caresses. I chose now to omit all the usual transition and prelims; first I had to remove her gown. Cupping her breasts and kissing them through the shift, I carried her to the divan in my arms, trussed the shift, removed my own dressing robe, and mounted her naked, kissing her mouth and breasts and neck while my hands kept caressing her belly and thighs.
“She seemed prepared to second me quite admirably in this. She understood that my methods were not the results of a natural crudity, but dictated by a sense of style. I found out, during a pause, that she was Austrian living in Paris as the mistress of a rich Austrian banker. As she was about to return to her room, she said, giving me a hug, 'Perhaps we shall meet in Paris and if I'm not alone you can bow to me, but you won't kiss me on the lips, will you, or pinch my bottom as you're doing now?'
“And there, my love-ends my magic carpet's flight, being back in New York with you, the final woman of my most cherished dreams.”
7. the climax
“Darling-” Marcia's voice was very soft and muted, quivering with an intensity that enervated him.
“Yes, my dear one?”
“Please put out the light. I want you to sit here a moment just thinking about me, and making conjectures whether I'll be as nice for you as all those other lucky ones. I'll be back very soon. I want to get the taste of the cigarettes and champagne out of my mouth. I can't kiss you properly otherwise, you know.”
“As you wish. Yours to command, mine to obey,” he reached for the lamp cord and tugged it. The room was plunged into darkness.
He saw her in the shadows, nubile and fluid as a nymph, rise quickly to her feet and hasten silently out of the room.
He lit a last cigarette. The twinkling pinpoints of light alone illuminated the soft aura of shadows, the atmosphere of desire amid this luxury, the setting of worldly goods and magnificence which was to be their trysting place this night. It was a little past midnight.
He did not see her return, having closed his eyes. Only the intuition of her presence roused him.
Then he felt soft hands on his knee and felt softer, long and tapering fingers take gentle hold of the folds of his dressing robe, draw them apart and then slip to the belt of the robe, loosen it.
“Marcia-”
“No, don't move, my lover, let me be the priestess of ritual preparation now, please-no, my love.”
“Yes, yes-” his voice was choked with a great and overwhelming desire for her. Hastily, he crushed out the cigarette, his body shivering, his skin prickled by myriad irradiations.
Her hands again on his knees, gently, insistently parting them. As if will-less now, he obeyed. Again the fingers took hold of the robe's folds, yawned them, and his male loins were bared to the priestess.
Pagan now and virgin yearning priestess, who would not be a vestal virgin beyond this hallowed hour. Then he was shaken with ecstasy and torment too sweet to bear and yet too agonizing not to bear at the touch of her elusive soft fingertips that had glided along the insides of his legs, rising from calf to knee, pausing there, thence to lower thigh, tracing a lingering and evocative pattern of response and perception till they reached the apex.
They were like butterflies, these fingers, so evocative, so delicate and sensitive, that he held his breath for fear he would not savor every nuance they conveyed to him.
They brushed his navel, made the circles and depth of it, then returned to his knees, his calves, and his ankles-thence to the upper thighs and at last, after an agonizingly Tantalus-ridden pausebrushed the tip of his penis.
“Marcia-oh-my darling-my sweetheart-”
“Shhh, don't speak-please, not yet, let me-” she whispered, her voice trailing off, and her fingertips resumed a far more eloquent message.
She gathered up the head of his hot prong between the middle three fingertips of each slim white hand, pressing them together gradually, then gliding along in delicate friction. He leaned back, hands on the loveseat, giving himself up to an ethereal and sensuous reverie in which, through his titillated brain and senses, the clear sharp memory of feminine flesh, of coquetry, of caresses and words exchanged and kisses taken passed intermittently.
Then these magical fingertips glided along the shaft, cajoling it and pressing it lightly, never seeming to touch the same surface of over-sensitive skin twice, bringing a varied and yet cumulative league of sensual forces into play over all his being. He felt his very essence summoned up, not imperiously, but in an ecstatic drawn-out etherized sensation, to focus all his life and radiant energy in his male organ. Then, as if divining that their work was done, those lovely tapering fingers took up the caressing of his balls, feeling the crinkly-gnarled sack, brushing the undersides of the scrotum, which they plied with soft wantonness and delicacy impossible to describe, incredible in their summoning forth of vitalized sensation.
His lips twisted, tensed, and shudder upon shudder rippled his yawning thighs, all his body was relaxed that it might taste every infinite shade of voluptuousness.
Her fingers suddenly ceased their ardent ministrations; the silence in the great and luxurious salon was torturing yet it fancifully heralded unspeakable joys to come.
Then her lips brushed his left knee and with the exquisite nibbling of a bee at the corolla of a flower began to traverse his naked thighs.
His nails drove into his palms; the aura of mystery, of darkness, and of beauty in which he inhaled the smell of her hair, the heavenly odor with which she had adorned her lovely ivory body, enchanted and intrigued him.
His legs yawned wider of their own volition, to grant her access. Her lips had paused at midthigh then circled around to touch the inside of his leg and her fingers now resumed hold of his penis' head, but with more sagacity than before, more sensual blandishment, for they tickled the circumcisional groove, the tips pressing into the indentation in the sexual flesh that was the weapon of her womanhood, the tool by which her womanhood was to be infinitely achieved.
Then, quickly to his balls, cupping them up, as if weighing them, determining the potency they bore for her, gauging it and preparing to revere and worship it in this role of priestess.
Then-again-a pause-a silence.
And then, he had to suppress a cry of ecstasy and of mad desire. Her lips had brushed the tip of his now surging organ, made it loft in fierce exultance and in proclamation of its male stature.
And her fingers weaved myriad patterns along his inner thighs till they shuddered and his flesh seemed drawn into the crux of carnal appetite, granted a mystic power far beyond its portent.
Lightly at first, as if shy and maidenly, as if curious and hesitant, yet latently ardent, those soft moist lips attained him, taught him a new delight, for she was virgin-wanton and wanton virgin in her waking hour. On the
