The Gift of Shame (12 page)

Her heart thumping out a drum beat of impending disaster, she heard her name, as if at a great distance, being spoken and a Presidential hand being extended to her.

‘My new inspiration,’ Qito was saying by way of further introduction, and Helen, totally lost, settled for an ingratiatingly embarrassed smile.

‘How charming …’ mused the President in a tone that managed to convey its uncertainty at why such a nonentity should be being introduced, and she felt enormous relief when the hand-shaking personage moved on to greet Carla with more obvious enthusiasm and genuine warmth.

It was then that her swimming vision brought Jeffrey’s face, grinning at her from across the channel left in the crowd and, for a passing moment, she hated him for exposing her to such an occasion with barely an hour’s notice. Carla’s voice broke into her seething mind. ‘Qito tells me you have inspired him.’

Looking into the familiar famous face, Helen felt even more lost. What is there to say to a wife when her husband has declared that he has been ‘inspired’? Fortunately, Carla didn’t
wait
for any cogent reply but instead murmured, ‘So no doubt we will be meeting again,’ before being caught up in a surging crowd of admirers which somehow managed to elbow Helen to one side. Jeffrey caught her arm. ‘Hungry?’ he asked.

‘Aren’t we going to look at Qito’s work?’ a bewildered Helen asked.

Jeffrey indicated the great crowds. ‘We’d see nothing in this scrum. We can come back tomorrow if you want. Meantime, I don’t know about you but I’m starving.’

Not sure if she was hungry, she was certainly ready to flee from the confusion of this sudden exposure to so many famous faces, so she readily agreed to his suggestion that they go and eat.

It wasn’t until they were seated in the small but exclusive restaurant that she realised this was the first time they had formally eaten together.

Jeffrey’s choice of conversational topic was, initially, surprising. ‘When I was ten,’ she heard him saying, ‘my father caught me smoking one of his cigars. I thought he would be furious with me but instead he fooled me into thinking he was delighted. He sat me down and lectured me on the proper way to prepare and really appreciate a cigar. In fact he watched me smoke my way through that first one and then insisted I had another. I got about half way through it before I turned green and spent the rest of the evening in the bathroom. I have never smoked a cigar since.’

Smiling politely, and wondering why she was being exposed to such a mundane tale, she was startled when he came to the point. ‘That’s how I intend to deal with your masochism.’

Gripped with apprehension she managed, ‘“Deal” with it? Is it a sickness then?’

‘Not
the
sickness – a symptom. To get at the root we have to cut away the undergrowth.’

Stilled with fear of what he might be about to propose she nevertheless found herself anxious to be told. ‘To face my nightmares?’ she asked.

‘To find out whether or not the nightmares really exist.’

‘I see,’ she said, filling in time as her mind raced. ‘And how do you propose to do that?’

‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘You have to do it yourself, but what I can do is show you the way. It will be up to you whether you go down that road or not.’

Again the challenge! Again, he was forcing her to commit herself. Once more she found herself excitedly willing to do just that.

‘I’m in your hands,’ she told him.

Jeffrey smiled and, reaching out, laid an admonishing finger on her lips. ‘Now I sentence you to silence,’ he murmured as she, with mounting excitement, reached her lips forward to nibble at his lingering finger. ‘I’ve dismissed the limousine and rented a self-drive car instead,’ he said, as her lit eyes fixed alertly on him, ‘so I will be driving. You do remember our drive to Eastbourne, don’t you? I asked you to do something that night and you refused. You will not refuse me tonight.’ For answer she drew his fingers deep into her mouth and, uncaring what other diners or waiters might think, kept her eyes firmly fixed on his.

‘It is quite a short drive so you will have to be particularly expert since you will be performing that small service totally naked.’ As she stopped sucking on him and stared instead, he added, ‘However, you may remain clothed until we are in the car. Shall we go?’

The formalities of paying the bill, him signing his charge slip and their finding the car, seemed to take forever. Her body was totally encased in the excitement of the moment and the trivial interests of others were merely obstacles in the way of opportunity.

Still trembling she was seated in the car as he turned the heater to full and waited for it to warm up.

When he drove away she, with a sense of assertiveness, reached to her shoulders for the catches that held the dress and let it slither down into her lap, leaving her breasts bare to the flash of passing lights and the eyes of pedestrians. It was then only a matter of shifting her weight, first this way then that, before she was completely free of the gown. Laying her head across his lap, her fingers sought out his already risen flesh.

The steering wheel rubbed hard against her head as she plunged him deep into her throat. There was only one thought in her mind – he must come before they ended the short drive. At that moment it became her only aim in life beyond which there was nothing. Feeling an exquisite moment of total self-abandonment she worked her lips and tongue feverishly around his stiffened cock, trying as she did so to remember everything she had ever learnt or read about this particular pleasure. She felt almost total despair as she realised that the car had stopped and she had yet to feel his first convulsion. Desperately, she ignored the possibility of passing strangers looking in on her and increased the tempo and intensity of her lips and mouth.

Eerily aware that Jeffrey had remained silent, she continued working on him while dreading that he might intercede and stop her and tell her she had failed. Sensing his first flesh-quickening throb she sucked deeper and harder, forcing herself to concentrate on what she now knew was inevitable. Feeling his hand resting lightly on the back of her head she waited eagerly for his gush but, even as it started, she heard him add yet another condition. ‘Do not swallow it!’ he gasped as he started to issue. ‘I want you to take it and guard it in your mouth. You understand me?’

All she could do was nod as he filled her mouth. When he nudged her to indicate that she could now sit up, she found his imperative that she must not swallow his tribute almost impossible to obey. Having to fight against instinct she was aware that her puffed cheeks and strained throat must be making her look ridiculous. As he got out of the car she sat, still naked, and only vaguely aware that they were stopped in a wide, tree-lined avenue.

When Jeffrey opened the car’s door a blast of the winter’s night air flooded in to remind her that she was still naked. ‘Come,’ said Jeffrey.

Stepping out of the car she found herself keeping her eyes strictly to the front, not wanting to know if there was anyone there to see her. Instead she kept her eyes firmly fixed on his until he, smiling, turned away and led her still naked up the steps to a substantial villa. There he rang the bell and she had to wait interminably, the cold now piercing her body in places she was only vaguely aware existed, and wondered where it was she had been brought and what might lay behind the glossy shine of this green door.

8

HELEN CAUGHT BARELY
a glimpse of the girl who had opened the door before Jeffrey, taking her elbow, urged her into the long, high-ceilinged hallway. At the far end a woman appeared wearing the kind of long floral evening gown that overweight ladies use to disguise their widened hips. She was directing a broad smile at Jeffrey. ‘I had almost given up hope,’ she was saying, before directing her gaze to Helen.

‘Helen, this is Madame Victoria. She runs the most famous House of Pain in Paris.’

Madame Victoria smiled. ‘And all completely English. We English are renowned for our expertise in this field just as the French, in England, are sought out for their cooking. Each to its own, as it were.’ Madame Victoria, whose eyes suggested she had seen everything, looked a little puzzled as Helen stayed silent. ‘Doesn’t she speak?’ she asked Jeffrey sharply.

‘Not at the moment. Her mouth is full.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of me.’

Victoria’s mouth wrinkled into a smile. ‘Excellent!’ she cried and immediately took Helen’s arm and walked her the length of the hallway and into a large room which seemed furnished entirely with a variety of couches. Here Helen registered two girls, one naked and one in an abbreviated rubbery-looking dress that constricted rather than fitted her, while a man sat crosslegged on the floor before the naked girl’s feet. Conscious that all eyes were on her, she was led to stand in the open
centre
of the room. ‘Kate!’ Victoria waved to the naked girl, ‘come here.’

Kate came forward looking directly into Helen’s eyes as if expecting a challenge of some kind. ‘You kneel,’ Victoria said, and it took a moment for Helen to understand that the order had been directed at her. Thankfully the carpet was thick and quite comfortable against her knees. Helen felt her hair taken and grasped firmly, though not cruelly.

‘Be very careful, now,’ warned Madame Victoria. ‘You are going to open your mouth but when you do so you must not swallow. Do you understand me?’

Desperate now that she could no longer see Jeffrey, Helen nodded, aware that she didn’t know how she could avoid swallowing. The moment she had agreed she felt a slight tug on her hair and bent her head backwards until she looked directly up at the worked plaster ceiling. The movement had caused her eyes to close, shutting out the sight of Victoria, but leaving her aware that the woman was peering deep into her mouth and must surely see the liquid which she could feel thickly coating her tongue.

‘Ah, yes,’ murmured Victoria. ‘Do you see it, Kate?’

Helen felt a pang of excruciating humiliation as she sensed movement in the room and knew the others were coming to peer into her mouth. Kneeling there, mouth open like a hungry chick in a nest, she wondered how Jeffrey could have known how excruciating this would be for her. She had always dreaded visiting the dentist. Not because, in these days of sophisticated painkillers, she would feel any discomfort beyond the initial needle, but because the man would be peering into her mouth in a manner she thought more intimate than that used in a gynaecological examination. Gynaecologists didn’t loom over her mouth like a threatening lover!

‘Kate will clean your mouth,’ said Victoria in such quiet conversational tones that Helen didn’t understand the significance until, opening her eyes, she saw the bright-eyed Kate leaning closer to her. Her mouth closed on hers and a seemingly huge tongue probed into her, leaving her desperately breathless, while scooping and seaching out every last drop of Jeffrey’s deposit. Helen wanted to scream protest at being so intimately invaded by another girl. Her hands moved as to fend off Kate but were taken, even as they moved, and lightly but firmly clamped behind her back. Her vision filled with Kate, she was uncertain who had taken her hands until she heard, close to her ear, Jeffrey’s voice. ‘You are being tested.’

These simple words flushed away the protest of her rational mind. What was being done to her was now sanctioned – gifted to her – licensing her to dismiss any consideration but that Jeffrey wanted this to be done to her. An overwhelming sense of relief flooded through her. What she was doing was being done for Jeffrey, which gave it sense and meaning.

Eyes closed, she now gave her mouth to Kate’s searching tongue, opening to it as if she opened to Jeffrey. It no longer mattered if four people – or four hundred – watched her as, giving way to a gentle pressure on her shoulders, she felt herself being laid back to stretch full-length onto the carpet.

Kate had shadowed her movements and now Helen felt the full length of another girl’s naked body on her own for the first time in her life as the tongue pressed deep into her mouth. Consciously or otherwise she had opened her thighs and Kate lay between them – one pubic bone pressing hard against the other – and to her astonishment Helen’s loins began to flow as if in answer to a lover. Confident that nobody
but
her could tell of this shaming response she became alarmed when Kate suddenly lifted herself and knelt to straddle Helen’s belly but, instead of covering her, she felt an unseen hand searching out the damning evidence of her arousal. Distracted now she sought to wriggle free of the unknown fingers that probed her outer lips before entering her, but Kate’s firm pressure restricted any such protest, which soon turned to writhing as she felt the hand replaced by the gentler pressure of a tongue. Doubly invaded she wanted to scream to them to stop before she betrayed herself totally, but then she heard the benediction of Jeffrey’s voice: ‘Relax. Go with it.’

Tearing herself free of Kate’s relentless kiss she let go a long, repressed orgasmic scream as her entire body convulsed under tidal waves of release. Now, with Kate’s head tucked in against the side of her own, her eyes were freed to roam wildly and search out Jeffrey.

In response to her silent appeal he came to lie beside her, his hands gently caressing her breasts. As she reached to embrace him he closed on her and gifted her a deeply searching kiss. The wave came again as the unknown tongue probed even more deeply and she was forced to break off from Jeffrey’s kiss as yet another wave engulfed her.

Looking manically down to see who it was inducing such pleasure she saw the thinning hair of the other man, which unnerved her only momentarily until Jeffrey renewed his kiss.

‘Screw me!’ she gasped into his open mouth but was then shattered to hear Victoria’s voice cut through her consciousness. ‘Enough!’

Suddenly, all activity had ended. Kate had gone, the man with thinning hair had gone, and Jeffrey was standing at a
distance
, leaving her spread and totally exposed on the carpet, the centre of all eyes and feeling like a beached whale. Wildly she looked from one face to the other, trying to divine the meaning of this sudden abandonment. It was then she realised that everyone was waiting for Victoria to speak. ‘Come with me,’ she said, and it was Jeffrey who reached down to offer a hand to help Helen to her feet.