The Lesser Portal

As I approached the grimy premises of Jones, Chemist, I could see through the glazed door Mrs Jones, dressed in the white cotton coverall-coat her husband made her wear, arranging bottles on the shelves. My errand was serious, but the tinkling of the bell on the door expressed the cheerfulness I nevertheless felt in my heart.

Mrs Jones turned, and was ready to serve me as a customer before she recognised me. Then it was as if a shaft of winter sunlight struck her face. "Freddy!" she exclaimed. "I thought I might not see you again."

"Jenny, how could you think such a thing?" I replied.

"I suppose," she said, "marriage has taught me that a man who seems to desire a woman may be after something else. My husband wanted an unpaid shop-girl and a mask for his real nature. You, I feared, only wanted that tintype photograph."

We were facing each other across the counter and began leaning with our forearms resting on it, so as to speak in subdued tones, since Mr Jones could not be far away.

"I thought I should have an excuse to return."

"You mean that my person alone isn't enough of an excuse," she said sadly.

Here our conversation began to be punctuated with kisses, thus:

"No, no. It's only that women often regret, you know." Kiss.

"My secret place could not regret that beautiful," kiss, "powerful," kiss, "magnificent beast between your legs." Kiss.

"Sweet darling Jenny!" Kiss, kiss.

"Thrilling man!" Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss.

Readers of a sternly unsentimental nature might feel a touch of nausea at this point. Fortunately, perhaps, Jenny saw something behind me that caused her to stand up and straighten her white coverall-coat -- a potential customer, no less. Moments later the shop-bell was jangling as he entered. I said, "A bottle of permanganate of potash, if you please." I saw the permanganate on a shelf just behind her.

"A large or a small bottle, sir?"

A minute more and I was standing behind a posting-box, attempting not to look furtive while observing the door of the pharmacy. Two minutes, and the customer had left, and I was kissing Jenny again -- only to be interrupted again.

"A small bottle of permanganate, please," I said. There was about a quart of permanganate in the lab, but no matter. The sooner she served me the sooner the new customer could complete his business.

Again I stood casually behind the pillar-box, coat-pocket now clinking with permanganate.

At my third entrance Jenny said, "We have a new set of our special photographs for sale, so it seems men of a certain type will keep coming in. Will you wait here a moment, Freddy?" She disappeared down the corridor behind her, and after a little while returned with a stack of the large, stiff-backed brown envelopes that contained the photographs. These she placed on the counter.

"Now," she said with a smile, "if I lift the flap of the counter, thus," and she suited her action to her words, "and if you will pull open the gate in the panelling beneath it -- and, if you will, please kneel down in the space."

Seeing where this was tending, I laughed, and did as directed.

"And latch the gate behind you, and I shall close the counter -- there you are, concealed very snugly."

I was kneeling in a dusty recess looking at her white coverall, and beneath it, the bottom of her skirt. Straight away I undid all the buttons of the coverall that I could see.

She reached down and gripped her skirts, and began to raise them slowly. As I admired her ankles, she said with a smile in her voice, "Now, what was your excuse for coming?"

Her black woollen winter hose did nothing to hide the graceful shape of her calves, and I ran my hands over them with pleasure. I said, "I had a question, but never mind that now."

She lifted her skirts higher until I saw where the black hose gave way to white thighs. Naturally I caressed the backs of her thighs and kissed the fronts, and the skirts rose further still, and to my delight disclosed that she was wearing no drawers. She must have discarded them while fetching the photographs.

Though in shadow, I could see her female parts pretty clearly. They seemed to me at that moment, as perfect as any woman's could be. Her secret hair was darker than the pale gold hair on her head, short and not at all dense. It did not extend far to the sides or above, nor did it dare trespass onto her outer lips. These had a plump, pouting character, with the inner lips protruding enough to show clearly that they glistened with moisture.

I thought I would tease her a moment, so I only slid my hands up to fill them with the soft smoothness of her buttocks, and brought my face so close to her womanhood that I knew she could feel my breath there.

At this precise moment the shop-bell jangled. She dropped skirt and underskirt and I found myself in a shady cavern, beautifully scented by her female parts.

I heard her clear her throat and try to subdue her breathing. "How can I help you, sir?"

The male voice that replied was young and nervous. I heard the mumbled word "photographs". I believe it was at this point that I commenced kissing and gently biting her thighs, which she immediately spread so that I could reach the inner surfaces.

"Certainly sir. If you would like to glance at one of our latest," she said, with a hint of the thickness of passion in her voice. I moved my kissing closer and closer to the crease where thigh meets body. Above me, stiff photographic paper slithered from an envelope. There followed a pause in which the customer's and Jenny's heavy breathing played in counterpoint. I pressed my mouth to her

labia

. From above there came a mumbled inquiry about the price. I tilted my head sideways to nibble one plump outer lip with my lips, Jenny panted out the answer to the query, there came a clink of coins and the young customer hurried out as quickly as -- well, as an enlarged member contorted by constricting under-garments would let him, or so I deduced. And then Jenny let out a groan.

But almost at once the shop-bell rang again. I gently bit her other plump lip with my teeth and spread my fingers to dig the tips a little fiercely into her rear.

The new customer sounded to be about the middle age. As he spoke I transferred my attention to her inner

labia

, silently kissing them and pressing one then the other firmly between my lips to tug at it, drawing it out and then letting it slide from the hold of my lips.

Jenny managed to speak almost as normal, though the effort made her legs tremble. All the same, the customer asked with polite concern, "You seem flushed for such a cold day."

I was now quietly lapping up Jenny's feminine juices. "I feel perfectly well, sir," she said breathlessly, then, "I assure you I truly never felt better," as I stealthily sucked and licked, still attending to her inner lips.

The customer bought a set of prints "for a friend studying anatomy", and left.

The moment the bell was jangling behind him Jenny seized my head through her skirts and pressed me fiercely to her. I commenced running my tongue, flat and broad, from as near her female opening as I could get it, up to the very top of her crack, where her little mount of pleasure lay. She began to work her pelvis against me. I then deigned to attend solely to her pearl, and it did not seem long -- but time with Jenny could never seem long -- before I detected in her groans the first opening notes of a crescendo of pleasure.

But before the crescendo could rise to a climax, the bell jangled once again. I returned to gently kissing her wetness and all about it, in case she might reach a climax without being able to abandon herself to it.

This time I heard a rustle of skirts, and guessed a lady customer would want something from the shelves. Jenny would have to move away, so I completely suspended my adoration, only wiping her juices from my mouth and chin to lick them off my fingers. But the customer said quietly, "I have heard that you sell an unusual sort of photograph." Her tone was suppressed, but had a streak of mischief in it.

"Why yes, madam." Jenny said hoarsely, and cleared her throat. "This is a new batch just fresh in. You'll observe, the gentlemen perform as if they would

never stop

." And she thrust her hips meaningly towards me, and when I did not take the hint, repeated the action several times.

But for the moment I was distracted. The customer's voice -- surely it could not be young Florence Courtenay's? It was not loud, and it was muffled -- I could be mistaken.

"I should like to buy only this one -- and this -- and these two." Many young ladies might speak with such a

timbre

.

"Of course, madam." There was a rustle of paper and photographic card. The lady paid, and departed.

Jenny's scent was magical. I forgot the lady customer at once, and resumed kissing with lustful adoration, and kissing yet more eagerly, and then fastened my lips about Jenny's beautiful pearl and sucked on it while I pressed her against my face. Her legs almost buckled under the onslaught.

She put her hands over mine and guided me to firmly mould and caress the cheeks of her rear. I sucked harder, then lifted my mouth away from her pearl with a loud smack of release, but sucked it again, harder still, then released it again, over and over, until from the groans and whimpers above me it seemed she was in a delirium of pleasure.

Her most sensitive part seemed to have become more sensitive still through my encouraging the blood into it. However it was, the instant I began to scrub across her firm little swelling with the tip of my tongue: "Oh! Oh!

Oh!

", and only the strength of my rower's arms pressing up under her rump kept her from slipping to the floor. I was merciless, however, and kept up my lustful assault until her climax reached the crest of another wave, and then a third, and more after that.

When the last wave had sunk to nothing I lifted her skirt, freed myself from it and tried to lift the flap of the counter, but there was resistance. I therefore opened the gate under the counter, and extricated myself inelegantly backwards, to find Jenny in a sort of smiling trance, prostrate across the flap.

I stroked her hair and kissed her cheek, and at length she roused herself.

"Oh Freddy! I was already in love with your male part, but now I think I love your mouth too." She kissed me full on the lips, smiled and said, "Why do you taste different? Is that the taste of myself?"

"Certainly."

She positively grinned. "Improperer and improperer! as Mr Carroll might put it. Do you know, I don't taste bad at all. I was taught that that part of me was dirty, but I taste rather wholesome."

"You taste like nectar, Jenny."

She sighed, and kissed me again. "We do need pleasure, don't we? We human beings."

"Of course. Where's the harm in it?"

She smiled her sad smile. "But you said you had another reason for coming here."

"Why, yes. The last time, I was too stunned by finding the tintype gone to think of this, but I have been wondering whether you might find a pretext for calling it back. Say it needed better fixing or something, and then somehow lose it."

"I can see how that would solve your problem, Freddy," she said gently, "but it's not possible. You told me that a Reverend Handscombe lies behind all this, but he's never shown himself. He might have been watching her from along the street, but it was some flaunting, strapping London girl who fetched and returned the photographic apparatus and later on came back for the finished tintype. Mr Jones would never have trusted her with the camera but that she left a most surprisingly large deposit. And the address she left was only some cheap inn on the edge of town."

"And no doubt she's back in the East End now," I said bitterly. "Handscombe has set up a home for rescuing fallen women, which would make it easy enough to lift a girl off the street and have that taken for a Christian act. Still, I will not despair. I see I must try to place a spy in the enemy camp. Failing that, I'm not above attempting a modicum of burglary. Desperate ills, desperate remedies."

"Be careful, Freddy. I'm hoping you'll fill me up with that wonderful member of yours again, and you won't be able to if you're locked in a cell. Is there any other way I can help?"

"Just keep me informed if anything turns up, I suppose. I left you my address last time." My eye lit on an open book on the counter-top. "Brown and Fraser's

Notes on Organic Chemistry

. The book that started me on my researches. Why on earth are you reading this?"

"Oh, since I seem to be running the pharmacy side of things more and more I thought I should try to understand the science of it all, you know."

At this point the bell interrupted us again, and a foppish undergraduate -- his lilac kid gloves have remained in my memory -- ambled delicately in. Since it seemed the flow of customers had resumed, I bought a third bottle of permanganate and politely took my leave.