XIX
Charlotte didn't know exactly what had happened, but all of a sudden her relations in her flat had altered and undoubtedly for the better. For some reason, Emma had started being a great deal more affectionate towards her and nowadays the two girls were more often sharing Emma's bed at night than enjoying any other arrangement. Charlotte had noticed that Maisie had started sharing her own bed with Susan and, when she was visiting, Josephine. Charlotte guessed (although she never witnessed it) that somehow Maisie's affections had transferred to Susan. Certainly, it was far less often that Emma and Maisie shared the bed together, and it was on those nights that Charlotte would get to sleep in her own bed.
Charlotte to a certain extent understood and appreciated why Susan's uncomplicated and straightforward personality was more comfortable for Maisie than Emma's. However, Emma could not accept that and still made great show that Maisie was the real love in her life despite the passionate nights that she spent with Charlotte. Maisie herself took the curious attitude that it was Emma who was her girlfriend but that Susan was just best friend.
This may have suited Maisie: it certainly suited Charlotte who was pleased to have so much more of Emma's attention than she'd ever had before. And it didn't appear to concern Susan who still loved Charlotte with the same selfless and tireless devotion.
Despite spending most nights in Emma's arms, Charlotte would still be awoken by Susan who now prepared breakfast for both lovers and, of course, Maisie who sometimes accompanied her in the morning. Susan continued to wash and bathe Charlotte each morning and offered to extend the courtesy to Emma, who discourteously refused the invitation. She made a point of polishing Charlotte's shoes, washing and ironing her clothes, and, often with Maisie clinging onto her, declaring her undying and unquestioning love for Charlotte. "It's only you I love. You are the only thing that makes my life worthwhile," she would say, taking every opportunity to kiss Charlotte's body.
"If she loves you so much, why does she sleep with Maisie?" sniffed Emma. Charlotte didn't wish to counter, as she so well knew, that it was always, and without exception, Maisie who decided who she would sleep with or make love with. The evenings were often a very curious battle of wooing between Maisie's girlfriend and best friend, where both Susan and Emma for different reasons would try to entice Maisie to sleep with Emma. But almost always, Maisie would stay with the girl who gave so much passion and demanded so little analysis of her affection.
In the meantime, Charlotte benefited as Emma's lover, if a substitute lover for Maisie; even if, Emma made sexual demands of Charlotte of an intensity and a violence that she almost certainly never made of Maisie.
Indeed they were of a nature that Josephine only rarely agreed to make love with Charlotte if Emma was there. "I can't do my job if I'm covered in bruises and scratches!" Josephine complained. She clearly preferring the company of Susan and Maisie, though she never discussed with Charlotte whether or not she also made love to the Maisie. Charlotte's own body often carried bite-marks, bruises and scratches which Susan would uncomplainingly nurse and sometimes apply make-up to, prior to Charlotte going to work. Sometimes Susan would locate wounds that Charlotte never suspected, as when she found a trickle of blood from Charlotte's anus which Emma must have inflicted the previous night with that rubber truncheon she'd acquired from somewhere.
However much Susan tried to cover the evidence, Charlotte's love-life couldn't be hidden from her colleagues at work. This, as Charlotte soon appreciated, was a distinctive downside to working in a naturist environment in such close proximity of others. One of her colleagues, Malcolm, had clearly taken a very strong fancy to Charlotte, and she was quite pleased in a way that the evidence of her love-life appeared to preclude his attentions. He was a skinny young man whose desk was positioned across the office but generally faced her direction. He was always very solicitous towards her, but he didn't have quite the control of his penis he should have had. This was clearly another disadvantage of naturism which women didn't need to worry about. Malcolm's penis very rarely appeared totally erect, but erect enough for Charlotte to be sure of what he was thinking and his acute embarrassment served only to make it more apparent.
There were particular occasions when he had especial difficulties with his loins. The first was when Charlotte started shaving her vulva for Emma's benefit. This was later matched when Charlotte allowed it to grow long again. And more recently, the more obvious bruises and scratches that Charlotte had acquired in her lovemaking seemed also to excite him. After a while Charlotte made a very determined effort whenever Malcolm was in the proximity to hide bruises on her thighs or around her cunt, or toothmarks on her neck or her nipples. Sometimes, like the time when Emma had somehow managed to blacken Charlotte's eye and has left a very obvious lovebite on her shoulder, this could not be obscured by documents she could carry or the shadow of her desk.
Charlotte had made a new friend at work, Becky, who introduced her to an aspect of life that she'd never suspected much before.
Charlotte had always been a middle class girl - and had really only ever known people like herself from similarly middle class backgrounds. Becky however was a junior clerk whose social circle mostly included car mechanics, supermarket checkout assistants, factory workers and restaurant staff. In her social peers she was considered at least as odd as Charlotte might be by hers, because not only was she a naturist, which was strange enough, but she worked in an office. Becky had quite clearly worked hard to get where she was and really had few ambitions to go further. She was sufficiently self-reliant to be a naturist when none of her friends were.
