Chapter 12: Betrayed

Putting her thoughts on paper was like squeezing a galaxy through the tube of a pen. So many ideas she had, one on the heels of another — and such a short time to get them all out.

Angique was working. She crouched on the big rug in the main room of her Club's hideaway. She was wearing her favorite blood-red kimono robe. All around her lay sheets of paper, scrawled with spidery drawings. Every few minutes she added a new one to the pile.

Angique didn't often take her work to Villa, but sometimes, when the pressure was on and the atelier was a madhouse, she found refuge there.

Measuring clients, entertaining them, sounding out their wishes, finding the materials and bargaining the right price could easily fill her days without leaving time to do her designs. Solving the peculiar problems of a prototype and supervising the execution often distracted her from what she really loved doing just as personnel problems could, and the financial side of a business.

Angique designed and created corsets, but not corsets in the "fat-lady-needs-a-waist" sense. She catered to a small clientele with a certain lifestyle. Most of them clung to rather dark traditions going back to the roots of their wealthy families — 18^th century France for example, with its libertine practices, or 19^th century Victorian England. She had customers who still thought their world was the Habsburg Empire in times when Sacher-Masoch wrote his philosophies of humiliation.

Angique was good at what she did, and very expensive. She also was discreet. Her atelier did not formally exist as such. There of course was a business registered for tax reasons. It was called Couture Le Chateau, never stating the specific branch of fashion she produced. It had no website, not even a sign at the door. But everyone needing her services knew where to find her. "Uncles" brought their "nieces", "daddies" with dark complexions ushered in their tall blonde "daughters," white-headed octogenarians were helped out of their limousines by 15 year-old Thai "grandchildren."

The morals of her clientele did not concern Angique. Every commission was a challenge and she never let a customer down. Let's just say that her horizons had grown wide enough not to judge the lifestyle of others. People forcing on others what they ruled to be the "right way" disgusted her. She considered anyone who was attacked by them as her friend — especially since so many of the judgmental pricks were the first to drop their own principles when they thought no one looked.

The only fault she considered truly evil was hypocrisy.

Any spectator might be amazed by the chaotic way Angique worked. She seemed to just scribble and draw wildly, throwing her work around. Then she would suddenly stop and start searching through the snowfall of paper. She'd compare three or four pages, crumpling up two that she threw into the dead hearth and adding numerous notes and lines to the paper at hand. Sometimes, as she rutted through the layers of paper like a truffle-searching piggy, her robe would slide off her shoulder exposing a pale, swaying breast; or it would fall open to show her naked thighs. At times she ended up just having the robe bunched around her waist, never bothering what she looked like.

Angique at work was a sight to see. But she always ended up with three or four designs that she knew would keep her atelier in business for months to come. She also knew that there would be at least a few extra ideas that might be bought by fashion houses. More often than not she recognized the telltale details much later on the catwalks of Paris and Milan.

Some said she should go there herself and design couture. No one doubted she'd be a success. But she always smiled graciously, knowing privately that she'd be bored out of her mind. She had been an intern with Jean-Paul Gaultier during her studies and had seen first hand how those houses were veritable snake pits, teeming with politics and envy.

The old Jugendstil clock on the mantle struck four deep tones. Angique looked up, amazed at the amount of time that had passed. It was then that she saw the girl at the entrance — fingers busy undoing the buttons of her red blouse. Their eyes met and Angique held her gaze throughout the stripping.

When all of Alicia's clothes had fallen around her feet, she stood naked, hiding her crotch with both hands.

"Angique," she said. "I did it. I did it for you. Look." Her hands opened like a flower, framing baby-bare cunt lips and a slick, hairless mound.

Angique rose, smiling. Her unruly robe slid off her shoulders as she walked over to the girl. She pulled her into her naked embrace — kissing.

"Let me see how lovely you look," she then said, stepping away from the kiss and sinking to her knees. Her fingers traced the bare mound from the belly button down to the top of her slit. She looked up, past the girl's breasts to find her eyes. Then she closed in on the puffy lips, licking them.

"You are perfect, honey," she said, her voice vibrating against the flesh. She felt a shiver run through Alicia's body. "Please lay down and spread your legs, so I can inspect you."

Gently circling the creamy insides of the legs with her fingers Angique saw how meticulously every single hair and stubble had been removed. It touched her deeply to see the occasional tiny cut where the blade had nicked her. She kissed each one of them. Then she lifted a leg and spread the ass cheeks to inspect her crack. She touched and kissed until the girl arched her back and made the room ring with her excited voice.

Soon Angique's finger sank into Alicia's sphincter while her tongue slid over her vagina to find her clit. The arching body rose even higher as did the moaning until it suddenly stopped. The tenseness of the silence was incredible. Then Alicia's entire body shuddered. Her cunt muscles strangled Angique's tongue and a long, long scream of release reverberated from the walls.

"Good girl," Angique whispered. "Sweet slut." She crawled across the spent body to find the flushed face and the open, gasping mouth to seal it with a kiss.

When Angique started to drip fragrant oil on Alicia's shaven pussy, the girl returned from her semi-consciousness. She rose to her elbows watching what the woman was doing to her. Little winces shook her body whenever the rubbing fingers found her sensitized clit.

"Thank you, Angique," she whispered. "Did I do well?"

Angique looked up, smiling.

"You did gloriously, lil girl," she said. "Now take this vial and oil your entire body. Be generous. I love my girls shining."

Through the entire oiling Angique's eyes never left the girl. She drank in how the new highlights followed every curve and movement — the sleek lines of her belly and thighs, the pronounced roundness of her lovely ass, the golden shivers of her tits.

"Come sit in my embrace, honey," she then said, letting the girl between her legs as she sat on the cool marble floor, feeling her nipples kiss Alicia's back. She nudged and kissed her neck, rubbing her hands over the now slick belly. They rocked slowly in their embrace.

"Did I interrupt anything, Angique? You were working."

"No, honey. You were a wonderful distraction. Please, always feel welcome at my Villa. I love having you."

The girl shuddered.

"This is all so..." she started, interrupted by a moan when one of her oiled nipples slithered through Angique's fingers.

"All so... ?" Angique asked.

"All so disturbing, Angique. Confusing." Angique softly bit the girl's shoulder.

"Please tell me what confuses you."

A sigh made Alicia's chest heave and fall.

"Why am I here, Angique?" she asked, turning her face to hers. "I ran off twice because I was shocked by what you did to me — or planned to do."

The girl turned inside the circle of their embrace and started kissing Angique's exposed nipples. Angique caressed her hair and pulled her face closer to her breasts.

"You made me — panic," Alicia went on, her words interspersed with pecks and little licks. "I was so — scared — by the dog — and the blade. And yet — here I am — with you. I must be — crazy?"

Angique chuckled, pushing her tits into the girl's face.

"Oh yes!" she said. "You are crazy, girl. And so am I. Didn't you know?" She started singing softly. "'You are the closest thing to crazy that I've ever been' ... I love that song. It so very well sums up what is happening to me."

"I don't know it," Alicia said, taking Angique's left nipple deep into her mouth. "Is it new?"

"You don't know Katie Melua?" Alicia shook her head. She never let the nipple escape from between her teeth.

"I only love classical music and old films," she said.

"A pity, honey. She looks so much like you, you know? She has your hair, and your eyes — almost."

Alicia's only answer was to suckle harder on the nipples.

Angique went on singing, but her voice became weaker and started trembling while Alicia's mouth continued its travels down her body.

"Closest thing to crazy ... ever been ... feeling twenty-two ... acting seventeen... mmmm ... nearest thing to crazy ... ever known... oh god ... I was never crazy ... on my own..."

By now Alicia was crouching in front of Angique's spread thighs. She lifted them with both hands and sent her tongue up and down the woman's pink slit; then she concentrated on the stiff, exposed clit. Angique's hands ran feverishly up and down the black hair. She gasped. There were more moans than words now as she tried to sing on.

"And, oh, and ... now I know ... there's a link between the twoooo... oh my god, girl, what you do to me ... link between the two... aaaaaaah ... being close to craziness ... is being close to you."