Chapter 16

After a somber end to the brunch, Karen and Patricia made their farewells, checked out of their room and headed home. Tamara cleared her and Eddy out of their room and transferred up to the suite. She and Margo settled in on a couch in the bedroom to talk. Harry got back from a trip to the toilet to find Margo on the room phone. When she hung up she said, "Harry, I'm taking Tamara to do a little clothes shopping and it looks like Kelly is coming with us. Do you need anything while we're out?"

"Yes my love, if you can, pick up some liqueurs you think would go well with coffee... I feel many more pots of leaded coming on... a bottle of Bailey's for sure. Now that the cat's out of the bag about us buying Tamara for Eddy, we don't really have to stay here, but we do have the suite for a week, might as well enjoy it."

The ladies ventured forth leaving him apparently alone in the suite. He wandered into the sitting room and found Carol, sitting in the dimness, tailor-fashion on the floor, her hands folded together in her lap. He sat down across from her and noticed that her eyes were closed. She smiled as she heard him sit.

"Hello, sir."

"Hello most precious one. May one inquire... ?"

"It's Sunday, I'm talking with God."

"You're talking with God."

She opened her eyes to look at him. "Sir, I don't know what religion is correct, or if any of them are. But I believe Something, somewhere, was responsible for creation. I happen to believe that It takes an interest in the lives of It's creations but I have no proof. So on Sundays, out of tradition I suppose, I try to find some time to quietly commune with that Entity."

"You mind if I join you?"

"No Harry, I don't mind at all."

After awhile, Carol got up and left Harry sitting there. She wandered into the kitchenette and got herself an orange juice. She thought about reading the paper but realized that she really didn't care. There was nothing in the news she felt particularly compelled to keep track of. Her world was a large one, but its places of import rarely made it into the paper. She decided that a bath was always a good idea, especially if one had a Jacuzzi tub at one's disposal so she began to run herself one.

In the other room Harry had finished but found he wasn't ready to get up just yet. There was something he needed to do, something he wanted to do, something it was way past time to do but he found himself reticent to do it. Finally he realized he was stalling, got up and went to grab his cell phone.

"Hey gorgeous, there enough room in that tub for me?"

"Sure Harry, hop in."

He climbed in to the tub. "You remember me telling you about my sister Nicki?"

"Yes, Harry."

"I called her this morning. We talked for a bit, I apologized to her, told her about Angie, apologized to her, told her I'd really like to see her, apologized to her, told her next week would be fine, and apologized to her one more time."

"So she's coming to visit, in the middle of renovating the bathroom and putting in the pool and hot tub?"

"Yeah, I told her about the state of the house but she wanted to come down anyway. Sounded like she needed to get away for a bit... I figure we'll put her up in her old room upstairs, if Kelly doesn't mind taking my old room as hers. That leaves them the upstairs bathroom and the three of us the guest bathroom downstairs. Jesus, that's gonna be tight for awhile."

"Yeah Harry," she said, cuddling up next to him, "but think how glorious the master bath will be when it's finished."

Harry caressed her breast. "True, room for all of us to bathe, room for all of us to love, room for all of us to shower... God, it'll be positively sybaritic."

"Sybaritic... good word for it... inside of two months it'll all be finished," she said.

Harry's cell phone went off in the other room. He climbed out of the tub, wrapped himself in a towel and went off to answer it.

"Yeah, Eddy... OH SHIT! Oh God man, I am so sorry. It completely slipped both our minds! Oh, please apologize to the two of them for me and I'll apologize to them too and there'll be a bonus for them and oh shit I'm really sorry. Okay, we'll see you when you get here... bye."

He padded back into the bathroom, his face flushed with embarrassment. "We forgot to mention that at some point in the next week, some gentlemen would be delivering your bequest."

"Oh no," she giggled, "so some Italian gentlemen show up and drop something off and Perry and Bevy go on full alert?"

"No, not exactly... a rather large truck showed up and dropped off 178 small but very heavy crates of vinyl record albums as well as 8 larger crates of electronics equipment and speakers. The boys made sure the smaller crates were ok but they didn't have the equipment to check out the electronics for bombs or other nasty surprises, so they called Eddy who brought the equipment. It all checked out. As I'm assuming Tony was the gentleman with the vinyl collection you spoke of, it appears you've inherited it."

"Oh my God, Harry. Over five thousand albums, all of them in perfect, or near perfect, condition... a system that can play them with absolute fidelity... a turntable you could fuck next to without disturbing thanks to the vibration dampening set-up... he left me the most precious possessions he had. He left me the only thing he really could, I imagine. Anything else his family would've gone batshit and fought in court but they never considered his vinyl to be anything but an old man's folly of a hobby."

"Well, Baby Girl, it's your folly now." Harry climbed back into the tub. "I've never asked about your past much but now seems like a good time to, while we have a soak. Feel like talking about it?"

"I suppose so. You know I left college my freshman year. I was nineteen. I knew how I wanted my life to be and so I went in search of someone to collar me. I ended up owned by a guy named Dick Laney who I'd met while exploring the scene before I left school. He still is pretty much a mover and shaker in certain circles and if you are kind and we make the Fetish Ball this year, I'll point him out to you. His was the multi-slave harem I was in, so I learned very early that I wasn't cut out for that kind of service. He was also very generous with his friends and that meant that even though he's kind of a shithead, he's got lots of 'friends'. I think I got loaned out to most of them. I was with him about five months and it felt like five years. It wasn't that he's a bad man or a bad owner or a bad Master, I just don't think he's a very good one either, and he's certainly not the one for me. One night we were in The Elysian Fields, a club down on Guadalupe and I'd displeased him somehow, so I was tongue-bathing his boots when this elderly gentleman came up. It was Tony, although we didn't know it at the time. He seemed very frail and infirm, but confident. He pulled out five grand, put it on the table and bet that against me that he could make Dick shit himself by only saying two words. Dick laughed and said sure, no problem, he'd take the man's money. They shook on it and Tony said "kill him".

"All of a sudden Tony's boys, who nobody had noticed closing in around us all drew down on Dick and he's staring at all this hardware, none of them more than a foot from his face and he shit himself. Tony picked up his five grand, offered me his hand and told Dick to give one of his boys his address. He said that someone would be by the next day around noon to pick up my stuff and it all better be ready by then. That started my three year relationship with Tony Juliana."

"Jesus Christ, he took you away from Dick with style."

"Yeah, Tony had a lot of that type of style. He always said he was old, he'd survived Prohibition and gangland wars, he'd survived his wife and kids, he didn't have to put up with shit anymore. He said the worst anyone could do to him was kill him and at his age, that wasn't much of a threat. He knew he didn't have many years left to him and he'd decided he wanted to see and do a lot of things he wouldn't have otherwise. He'd always known the whole BDSM scene existed and it interested him but he'd never really explored it. So he'd gone to The Elysian Fields that night and being a gentleman had come to this little pet's rescue, not understanding really that I didn't exactly need rescue, although I sure as hell wanted it.

"Luckiest night of my life... for the next two years we went places and met people and saw things... oh, Harry. Anytime you wonder how I know something or where I met someone or how in the world did I ever hear about thus and so, it was probably because of those two years. There was no place his money and reputation couldn't get us into... and there are some stories I could tell and some stories it'd be better if I didn't even remember. If we wanted to meet someone or get invited to a certain party, Tony turned on the charm, made with the money, dropped names if he had to and we were in. A lot of times, the charm was all that he needed. He was incredibly well-read and very well-spoken... he wasn't your typical mobster. He liked to call himself a 'student of the human condition with a lot of lab experience'. He was a witty, funny man. Which made some of what we saw together even harder to keep a straight face through.

"Harry, you remember that woman, used to be mayor, big in real estate? I've seen her kneeling naked, getting a cum shower from twelve men then getting it washed off by a golden shower from the same dicks. And she was the fucking mayor at the time! I've seen that Robert Milton guy, the ex-televangelist, gobbling cock like he was at a hot-dog-eating contest and let me tell you, his mouth works just at fast sucking dick as it does preaching and praying.

"There are still places in this town where you can get anything and anyone you want, for a price. There are places where you can watch any sex act you can imagine being performed, or for even more money, join in. I'm pretty sure we saw most of them.

"We went out to a little concrete bunker in the hills one night, watched some people making what was supposed to be a hardcore porn film with some S & M elements. This big bitch, six foot four, built like a goddess of war, is fucking this pretty young boy, couldn't have been more than sixteen, seventeen, she's on top and he tells her he's about to come and she... she... she shoved..."

Carol's composure had dissolved into tears. "Carol, Baby Girl, shhhh, whatever it is that's upsetting you about this, you don't have to say anymore."

"No, no I do. She shoved an ice pick in the soft spot on his temple and rotated it, wrenched it around in there... and she was coming while she did it... we were watching them make a snuff flick... I screamed and Tony and his boys got me out of there. Tony apologized to me for hours later... he thought it was just a normal S&M porn shoot.

"Two weeks later, I was helping him get ready for bed and he told me that I didn't have to worry about those people ever making another movie like that. Like an idiot I asked him if he'd had them arrested. He said no, he'd had the boys find out who their distributors were and delivered the filmmakers to them in pieces. I asked him about the woman who actually did it. He just looked at me and said there were things I really didn't want to know. About a year later I could have sworn I saw her turning tricks on 8^th Street. The woman's arms had so many track marks on them they looked like railroad yards, a lot of her teeth were broken off and she was definitely working the low rent end of the street. She didn't look like a goddess of war, she looked like a crack whore in the last days of her life and if it was her, it would've been much kinder of them to kill her. I doubt you'll find anybody in this area to this day who'll consider making snuff films.

"After that, I told him I'd heard rumors about a House on the south side that dealt in children, under the age of fourteen, but I never wanted to see it and if he went there I never wanted to hear about it or what happened afterwards. He and the boys would go out without me on occasion, maybe one of those nights they visited there. All I know is I never heard of the place again.

"I don't want you to think that places like those were the only places we went. We went to the symphony, the opera and to the theater. We'd go to clubs that played big band, swing and jazz. We'd go dancing. Of course he didn't have too much use for modern music but I even got him into Absinthe & Opium, a goth club downtown. He never quite got 'goth' or the music and I had no luck explaining it to him.

"After every concert or symphony, after every live performance of music, he'd hunt and peck out at least a paragraph, sometimes much more, on an old typewriter he had. I asked him what he was doing the first time I saw him do it. He explained he was putting down his impressions of the music, the performers, the whole experience, so he could always remember it the way it was that very night. I asked him how long he'd been doing that. He said he'd been doing it all his life. I imagine his family's thrown them away, but Harry, just from stories he'd tell, what was in some of those notes... there probably wasn't a big band he didn't see live. He saw Enrico Caruso perform several times. He caught most of the Rat Pack's Vegas shows while they were there to film the original "Ocean's 11", even hung out with them. He was acquainted with Beverly Sills and Luciano Pavarotti, hell, he knew a lot of opera's biggest stars over his lifetime. He used to take them out to dinner or throw parties for them when he and they were in the same town. He and Duke Ellington were on a first name basis with each other.

"If I had to define Tony by just one attribute it would be his love of music. From the notes he took to his album collection to the joy he took in hearing me sing. The radio was on the classical or golden oldies station almost all day long. When he played a record, it was almost like going to church. He'd pull out the album, carefully remove the disc from its sleeve, lovingly clean it, clean the stylus, put it on and settle in to listen. We didn't talk, we didn't read, we didn't do anything but listen when an album was playing... no humming along, no singing along, no other extraneous sounds. We listened. He always said that you don't read a book and look at a painting at the same time, you don't watch television and examine a piece of sculpture simultaneously, music is art and should be treated as such. I never touched one of his albums, he didn't offer and I didn't ask. Those were his holy icons and I wasn't a member of the priesthood. I guess I am now. Hell Harry, it sounds like I've inherited the temple.

"We lived together, along with his bodyguards, in a suite of apartments in the old Arco Tower building. He was still married, of course, no divorce for a good Catholic, but both he and his wife were happy with him living away from the house, so we had our privacy. Tony and I never did much with each other. He was too old and in too much pain a lot of the time, although only his bodyguards and I knew it, but by God he got to see what he wanted to see. And when he was feeling up to it, we had some very good times together. But mostly I was his companion, someone young and pretty for him to look at.

"Then, the last year of his life, I was his nursemaid as well. I loved him, Harry. Not the way I love you, or Margo or even Kelly, but I loved him. He was good to me, he was kind and he was a gentleman. So when he got sick and wanted me to leave I told him in no uncertain terms that he'd have to make me go because I knew in his heart he didn't want me to. He hired a nurse and outfitted the apartment so he wouldn't have to go to the hospital till the very end. On his good days he and I could ignore all the damn machines and the nurse and pretend he wasn't dying. Those were some bittersweet days, Harry, when I could forget what he'd been most of his life and hold him and tell him honestly that I wished I'd known him when he was younger.

"Eventually the day came he had to go to the hospital and we all knew it was the last trip, so I packed up what I absolutely needed into two small suitcases and went to live at the hospital. Vic made sure the family knew that when they came to see him I'd be nowhere around but none of them ever made the trip. They were so angry at that sick old man for shit that had happened over the years that they risked pissing off Vic just to snub him. I suppose they had their reasons. I'll never believe they were valid enough to leave an old man dying alone but then again what I believe doesn't matter. They didn't come. Late one night he called me over to his bed side, and he looked at me and said "Gimme a kiss, sugar, I got to go"... and I did... and he left..."

Harry took the weeping woman in his arms and stroked her hair. Her sobs shook the two of them for a long time. "God, I wish you'd have been able to meet him, Harry... he would've liked you... you would've liked him..."

"Anyway, after he passed, Vic put me up in a hotel until the funeral but after the graveside I did a vanishing act because Phil had been eyeing me for years. I was so alone. For three years I'd had this man as my owner, my companion, someone who'd been unfailingly polite and kind even when he was in so much pain that morphine was doing nothing for him, even then he was always a gentleman to me.

"And he was gone and I had some money and two small suitcases and no owner and nowhere to go. I was staying with a girl I knew and her Master, a repulsive little toad of a man named Morgan, who was starting to eye me, so I was out actively looking when I found Paul, Paul Sands, a high school English teacher. A nice enough guy, rather new to the scene, had a real taste for it. The only problem with him was he liked watching me get fucked by other guys and like I told you, I'm monogamous when it comes to men. We'd been together for over a year when one of his resumes landed him a job offer in Michigan to teach at a private school. He couldn't afford to take me with him."

"But honey, if Paul was going to work at a private school, surely they were paying him more money, even with cost of living differences."

"Harry, you ought to know, there's 'affording' in the fiscal sense and 'affording' in the social sense. As a new teacher at a private school he was going to be under the microscope and a live-in slave didn't fit the school image. I didn't want to leave here anyway. All my friends and contacts are here; in Michigan, I knew nobody. When he left I went to work in a Denny's, earned just enough to keep a roof over my head and while I had food if I was working, I wasn't working all the time. So, Rick came along and I knew better but I was tired and I was hungry and I wanted out of the life I was in. I'd been with Rick about 7 months when I wandered into the Pearl and saw you trying to drown yourself in alcohol."

"Carol, what would you have done if I hadn't collared you? Would you have gone back to Rick?"

"Maybe, sir... I know I was scrambling for excuses to stay with you just a little longer, hoping you'd get the hint. I was even trying to work up the courage to tell you how to make it happen, if you wanted it to. I'd like to think I'd have gone in, packed up my shit and left him... but he'd been beating me for 7 months and I hadn't left yet so I probably would have been stupid and stayed."

The two of them sat in the tub while they held each other and snuggled together, once again lost in the feelings that had brought them together in the first place. They had a bond that only others who had been where they had been, broken and dying inside, could understand.

Benjamin Sapperstein had been having a shitty week.

He had been so paranoid about setting up airtight pre-nuptials... Margo and her lawyer had insisted on equal protection for both parties so there was absolutely no way he could screw the bitch over. She wouldn't get anything that wasn't, he was forced to admit to himself, rightfully hers, including half the assets of the surgical practice, but he really wanted to nail her to a wall. And there was nothing he could do to her.

So, to relax on a Sunday afternoon, he decided to take a drive in his Diablo.

It had been a whirlwind shopping trip. They had hit five different stores across town, along with a brief stop at Le Madeleine's, primarily for the benefit of Tamara, to have some divine French onion soup, fresh baked bread and coffee. They arrived back the hotel hot, tired and loaded with packages which the bellmen were more than happy to help them take upstairs. Not having warned Harry and Carol they were on their way up Margo said "No show this trip, boys", tipped them and had them leave the packages at the door. They entered the suite to find Harry and Carol curled up together on the bedroom couch, cuddling.

"Harry, my love, my husband, would you be a manly man and help Kelly carry in the packages we've got outside the door?"

"My beloved wife, you have but to ask," he said, hugging her on his way past.

"Carol, come give me a kiss and then get down on your knees," she said as she sank onto the couch. "Clothes shopping with Kelly shouldn't be undertaken lightly. I almost raped her in every store we hit today."

Carol bent and kissed Margo, accepting her tongue deep into her mouth. She dropped to her knees and began removing her Madam's skirt. Next shoes and hose, then panties and finally she was able to sink her face between Margo's thighs. The pungent mixtures of old desire, new passion, sweat and body odors were intoxicating to her, a heady aroma of reality instead of some perfumed, soap-scented fantasy. Carol burrowed down and came up with Margo's legs on her shoulders. She attacked Margo's cunt, her mouth a blur of motion as she tried to lick, nibble and kiss everywhere at once. Her arms wrapped around Margo's thighs like restraints; Margo could swear she heard them lock into position.

For her part, Margo felt as if she'd suddenly had a rabid ferret listening to the all-Barry White station on a double-espresso-laced aphrodisiac turned loose on her cunt. She wasn't being teased or titillated toward an orgasm, she was being jack-hammered toward one and while that wasn't unusual during intercourse with a man, she'd never had it happen during oral sex from either gender. The stimulation rode the edge of her enjoyment of pain. There was only one thing she could think to do, grab hold of Carol's head and hold on.

Carol brought Margo through her first orgasm like a runaway freight train, scarcely leaving her mistress time to enjoy it before carrying her on towards another. As she continued to power-fuck Margo with her tongue, among many other stimuli, Harry and Kelly brought the last of the packages in. They joined Tamara as she watched Margo and Carol, the three of them slightly aghast at the ferocity of Carol's oral assault.

"What in the name of God got into her?" Harry asked.

"I don't know, Harry," Kelly replied, "but if she was going at me like that I'd be backing my ass away as fast as I could."

"Kelly, I don't think it would help," Tamara observed, "I think you'd look like a prey animal running away. That could be bad."

"Oh God... Baby Girl... fuck me..." moaned Margo.

Carol's left arm unlocked from Margo's thigh and pointed unerringly at Kelly even though the woman was behind her. She snapped her fingers, pointed to her crotch, made a stroking motion and then locked her arm back around her Madam's thigh. Kelly went and retrieved the other strap-on and knelt behind Carol. She carefully fit the harness around Carol's body and made sure it was snug before she tightened the straps down. Her job finished she rose and stepped back to rejoin Harry and Tamara.

Carol's arms unlocked and her hands moved up, smoothly undoing Margo's blouse and unhooking her brassiere. Her body moved up Margo's body and as their crotches came together Carol slid her dildo into Margo and began to fuck her furiously as her mouth lowered to Margo's breasts to savagely chew and suck on them. Margo's sudden scream turned into a cry of longing as her hands caught the sides of Carol's head, not to force it away as the onlookers had expected, but to pull it closer to her, as she forced the buzzsaw of Carol's mouth harder into her breast. Margo was somewhere beyond her previous pain limits and although she knew in some part of her mind that she would pay for the experience with soreness and tenderness in the days to come, she no longer cared. Her orgasms no longer seemed to have beginnings or ends, just slight lulls when the sensations from the rest of her body were louder than the screaming pleasure of her cunt. Tufts of Carol's hair were loose in her fists and she felt her pet's fingers as they dug into her back and bruised her. Carol didn't notice when Margo's hands let loose of her head and began to wave feebly, but Harry and Kelly did. They moved over to pull Carol off of her.

"Little Cunt, relax, calm down," Harry whispered into her ear, "Madam has had enough and it's time for you to come away now."

Carol's eyes weren't focusing and her breathing was shallow and very rapid as Harry sat next to her on the floor. "Take it easy, beloved and just calm down."

In the meantime Kelly was helping Margo to sit back up on the couch, a difficult task given Margo's jello-like state.

As Carol caught her breath and Margo slowly regained sentience, Harry and Kelly sat and looked at each other. "Damn, that was like watching an industrial machinery demo," Harry said.

"I was thinking more of an episode of 'When Animals Attack' myself," Kelly said, "but I'll go along with yours."

Carol unstrapped herself and crawled over to Margo. "Oh Madam, I am so sorry," she said, tears filling her eyes, "I've hurt you and I apologize."

"Shhhh," Margo replied, "I asked for it, I enjoyed it and you did very well. Now come here and let me hold you." Carol crawled up onto the couch with her and Margo held her tightly in her arms, kissing the top of her head. "Yes, I'm going to be a bit sore, but you did what I wanted you to, Baby Girl. You did well, my precious one. After we rest a minute we can go bathe, I'll wash you and you'll wash me."

Kelly sat with Harry on the floor. Together they watched Margo and Carol snuggle on the couch. "Tamara," Harry said, "I'm sorry I didn't think of telling you this sooner, but Eddy called. Everything's okay, we neglected to tell him and the boys about a delivery. Then he called back and said there was a little business he had to tend to and that he'd be back in time to take you to supper."

"It's okay, Harry, you had other things on your mind. I hope it's alright if I wait for him here."

"Tamara, if you don't mind the floorshow, you're welcome to stay as long as you like."

The small woman smiled sweetly at him and went to the sitting room to gaze out at the city below.

"Harry," Kelly said, "come cuddle with me on the bed for awhile."

"An invitation I'll rarely pass up," Harry answered.

"That's because you're a very wise man," Margo observed.

"Thank you my dear. You two have a good bath, whenever you get there."

"You two have a good snuggle and whatever it develops into."

Harry and his wife smiled at each other as he and Kelly headed for the bed.

"Harry," Carol said before he got too far away, "I think I know someone who might be worth talking to about rings for the two of you. She's a real craftsman, does beautiful work. Should I call and set up an appointment?"

"Sure darling, you think she could see us today?"

"Probably later this evening... she prefers to work at night during the hotter months."

"Sounds fine to me if it sounds fine to the missus."

"Works for me, wonderful husband."

"Make the call, sweetie."

Kelly had shucked her clothing and thrown on a robe when she joined Harry, also robed, on the bed. She lay down close to him and he put his arms around her. "I gather from the fact that you haven't attacked me, you little sex maniac," Harry said, "that this isn't one of those kinds of cuddles and is in fact a comfort cuddle."

"You're right. I'm scared, Harry. Scared of what I'm feeling about Jess and women in general, scared about moving in with y'all, scared about a lot of things."

"Okay Sunshine, let's handle them one at a time. What's got you scared about Jess?"

"Harry, until a little under two weeks ago, I'd never even been in a relationship with a woman. Now I'm in a sometimes fuck-buddy, sometimes slave relationship with two women and I'm developing pretty strong 'serious' feelings about another woman. It's not that I'm giving up on men," she said as her hand briefly caressed Harry's cock, "it's just that aside from you and Eddy, there aren't any I really want to let get near me. Not to mention that I'd jump in the middle of Karen and Patricia with a moment's notice and let the two of them do any goddamn thing they wanted to me. I've gone from having the occasional deeply erotic fantasy about a woman to thinking maybe I'm heading towards the lesbian side of bisexuality. I haven't had a boyfriend since high school and I've been telling myself it was because during the school year I was too damn busy and during the summer I was still too damn busy and I'm wondering if the truth isn't something different. I mean, I still find men attractive, but while we were out shopping today I saw lots of very cute guys, and they registered on my radar as such, but I saw quite a few women that I would've knocked to the ground and fucked right then and there if I could've."