It had been an arduous and busy week. Hagen lay in the semi-darkness on his Le Corbusier chaise longue and relaxed with a glass of Scottish "water of life". Most of the living room was shrouded in shadow, with only a small area in front of the fireplace lit by the flickering flames, and there, right in the middle of his field of vision, he had placed Helena.
With eyes half-closed Hagen followed the seductive dance of light and shade on her bare skin, while from time to time taking a sip from his whisky and enjoying the complex flavors of the 18 year old single malt. However, the greater part of his attention was devoted to the music reaching his ears through high-end headphones. It drowned out the gentle crackling and popping of burning logs as well as the other noises Helena still managed to make despite his countermeasures.
Enraptured, he listened to the virtuoso performance of the pianist and the equally perfect accompaniment by the orchestra. As often before, his analytical mind wondered how some music managed to affect him, virtually without effort, on a deep, emotional level, something which otherwise remained elusive for his conscious mind. Despite his regrets at not having learned an instrument in his youth, he was on the other hand somewhat glad to almost be an utter layman when it came to music. He feared that given too intimate a knowledge of music theory, his naive and purely sensuous joy of it might have been replaced by an intellectual and abstract appreciation of the underlying compositional achievement.
His job as CEO of a private equity firm exercised almost exclusively the rational, left hemisphere of his brain; consequently, at least in his spare time he wanted to indulge the other side of his personality, whose impulses he had to suppress far too often in his everyday life. He managed the conflicting expectations of greedy investors and unreasonable owners with consummate skill, but playing their desires, fears and vanities off against them afforded him little satisfaction. That he reaped when he was able to focus his talents on more rewarding prey, providing himself with both a greater challenge as well as promising greater personal gain in case of success. And at times like the present, of course, when he savored the fruits of his conquests.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on the music that surged around him. After a long crescendo, the Piano Concerto's spectacular finale ended on a triumphant tutti chord. In the ensuing silence a muffled whimper intruded through the padded ear cups of his headphones and made him look up. Once again, he congratulated himself on his good fortune. Since Helena had moved in with him, he had found a way to complement his love for music with a sexual dimension, and thus provide himself with a holistic experience that appealed to all his senses.
Helena was not fond of classical music.
In recent weeks, her original indifference had given way to an instinctive, physical revulsion, since she had - at Hagen's insistent behest - become
intimately
acquainted with the works of various famous composers. Now, the mere mention of names like Bach, Beethoven or Brahms was sufficient to cause her physical discomfort and although Hagen had expected this effect, he was conversely surprised when he observed that merely thinking of classical music got him sexually aroused. Apparently, the process of conditioning did not function as a one-way-street! As far as he knew, Dr. Pavlov had never mentioned this phenomenon in his writings, probably because he had chosen - contrary to Hagen - an experimental setup which had made keeping the required scientific distance to the object of investigation much easier: drooling dogs simply lacked the female stimuli that Helena had to offer in abundance.
Starting with her long legs, the taut stomach, firm breasts and her slender neck she fit the commonly accepted ideal of beauty to perfection. What applied to her body, also held true for her face, with the lively, light brown eyes beneath a high forehead invariably attracting attention first. A straight nose, high cheekbones and a sensual mouth blended harmonically and contributed just as much to Helena's striking looks. At present however, the latter were strongly impaired by a gag harness whose numerous straps held her head in a viselike grip and secured a rigidly inflated, thick latex bladder in her mouth. Or conversely, the strict method of her silencing augmented Helena's appeal, at least if you subscribed to Hagen's point of view, who considered her usual talkativeness to be one of her less endearing qualities.
