The Courts of Pleasure

Chapter 10

The Cornucopians capture Sarah

Evening fell quietly in The Court as the dancers took the final steps into that metamorphosis from fantastically athletic boys and girls to creatures of wondrous skill and artistry. Soon The Court was alive with anticipation as everyone felt the energy of upcoming performance. The musicians addressed their practice with another level of energy, the designers mused over their creations, and everyone felt the pull of drama.

At Bountiful-Towers Orcutt consulted his watch and threw a hawk-like glance nervously out into the opaque darkness beyond the service entrance at the lowest street level. He knew that Vivienne understood that this was to be a surreptitious visit but they were late and he chafed at the possibility of some unforeseen hitch in the plans. Moments later he was very relieved to see dim headlights curving down into the space before him and wink out beside the dock.

Orcutt opened the portal on the sounds of movements below and four hooded duster-clad figures detached themselves from the car and hurried up the steps. Without a word he led them to the secure elevator, keyed in his code and the assembly rose swiftly and silently into the Olympian heights of Bountiful-Towers. When the elevator doors opened the figures followed him into the spacious anterooms of the Grotto Theater.

"Welcome to Bountiful-Towers," he announced. We are most pleased to entertain you this evening and I will be at your service should you need anything. Seating will begin after the first chime and the performance five minutes after the lights dim twice. May I relieve you of your wraps?"

"This is for The Patron," Sarah responded, handing Orcutt the carrying case with her latest canvas in it. "Be careful the paint is very fresh."

"Ah," Orcutt sighed and itched to open the case. "I'm sure he will be most interested."

Cliff was the first to doff his robe emerging as Ares, God of War. He appeared robust with his sword by his side, and relaxed in his chiton and the bronzed half mask that concealed his upper face. Zack cradling the caduceus in his arms seemed vibrant under his mask and winged helmet, his lean tall form equally well suited to the role of Hermes.

Normally there was little that gave Orcutt pause in these fetes at Bountiful-Towers but when he relieved the women of their dusters his eyes betrayed his lingering interest in their display. His expression held a definite cast of approval as he absorbed the way their dually erotic appearances heightened their charms. They each offered a sensuous appeal keyed to the differences in their beauty, and each complimented the other in the subtle harmonies of their obvious attraction to each other, a relationship Orcutt immediately sensed as intensely appealing.

Their hair had been dressed in the ancient Grecian style and bound with ribbons complimenting their costumes. They were obviously naked under the ancient dresses molding to their breasts and throwing their nipples into relief. Soft silken half-masks hid their upper faces and Orcutt's would have lingered over such revelations as he could see, and those he wanted to discover, except his admiration was cut short by the dulcet sound of a chime.

"Ah. If you are ready," he announced, "I will seat you."

Side by side Sarah and Vi, followed by their consorts, strolled in Orcutt's stately wake through the lobby of the Grotto Theater, which they found to be full of characters not only as curious as themselves, but from the looks cast in their direction, even more curious to discover who they might be. Without pausing Orcutt ushered them into the amphitheater giving onto the softly lit stage below and led them to a long ample cushioned couch in the center just a few rows from the stage. He gestured and Cliff followed by Vivienne and then Sarah and Zack seated themselves. Together they viewed their surroundings affording them surprising privacy.

Jagged partitions of rockwork and plantings separated the scattering of couches from one another throughout the amphitheater without impeding the view of the stage similarly flanked by wings of rocks and trees. Evening sounds of birds, crickets, and softly rustling leaves filled the air tempered to that of a soft summer evening.

Spectators voices came to them as the audience, small and select, trickled into the theater and was ushered to the couches by a corps of graceful young women in the scantiest of Grecian dress. Below and barely out of sight between them and the stage a jagged crevice served as an orchestra pit giving forth the sounds of instruments being discretely tuned. Sarah and Vivienne exchanged glances of awed approval and settled back into the soft cool leather of the cushions with little wiggles of excitement as the house lights winked twice.

"Do you know this ballet?" Vivienne whispered to Sarah who shook her head. "Briefly it's about the threats to innocent young love. Daphnis and Chloe are young lovers who suffer first the flirtations of young maidens with Daphnis, then Chloe's jealous encouragement of a young shepherd, and then the crude Dorkon's advances to Chloe. Daphnis falls asleep and is seduced in his dreams by the temptress Lykanion, and while he is sleeping pirates seize Chloe and carry her off to their chief Byraxis who intends to rape her. The god Pan intervenes to save Chloe and she is reunited with Daphnis in a dance of love."

"It's all about fucking then," Sarah laughed happily.

"You've got it dear, and of course Katia has choreographed the dance especially for this audience, so hang onto your peplos," Vi giggled.

Sarah pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows in anticipation as the house-lights dimmed and the orchestra began with the invocation to the maidens. Katia's cast of girls from The Court transformed into a band of nubile young nymphs clad in nothing but toe-shoes and the tiniest of gauzy shifts streamed across the stage.

Behind his mask Cliff's eyes glittered as he scanned the display and picked up on the girl he had seen in Katia's cottage. Of her skill and athleticism he saw nothing, only the tantalizing movements of Denise's lovely buttocks and his glimpses of the pale shadow of her delta beneath her dress held his eye until Katia's entrance, which he and Sarah both studied with absorption.

She was a lovely Chloe, full of energy and transfixing charm. Like the others she was naked under her simple shift molded to her petite breasts. But unlike the others her dress lifted loosely above her waist with her movements in utter revelation except for the tiniest of gauze thongs barely covering her pudenda. And except for the silken pouch covering his genitals, which was more a necessity of safety than modesty, her Daphnis danced nude.

For Cliff, Katia was a moment revisited. The memory of that interlude in the pond with her only heightened the effect of this new display of her charms, and she again left him transfixed with the craving for her.

For Sarah, Katia proved as awesome on the stage as she had in her studio. Only hours ago those marvelously expressive hands had caressed her nipples with a message resounding in the depths of her loins. Now the display of Katia's skill as a dancer, her artistry, her realization of this Chloe that offered the ripe seductiveness of the fully bloomed but innocent maiden betrayed by her own beauty to the lustful forces about her, overwhelmed Sarah again.

She could now see only too well how passionate this woman was as the sensations of this morning roused again raising her to a suspenseful state of tingling anticipation, anticipation that somehow incredibly included the man so close beside her on the couch.

Sarah threw a furtive glance up at Zack. His heat was melting through the filmy pleats of her dress on his side and mingling with Vivienne's warmth invading from her other side. The sensation made Sarah breathless when she turned again to Katia's entrancing movements upon the stage.

What was she thinking? She pushed the thought away before it could lodge in her consciousness. After-all she had only met Zack this morning and then for just a few minutes yet there had been something about him in that brief encounter this morning that she had found undeniably attractive. She was incredibly aware of his presence; of his lean fluid mercurial quickness that seemed somehow to be directed at her. As a woman she had a sense for these things, of how a man could focus on her without being really open about it.

What would Vi think Sarah wondered about this strange tension that was building within her? She glanced at Vi's face and saw her rapt attention centered upon Katia. And then impulsively Vi nestled herself against Sarah glancing up into her face with a knowing smile that brought back all those moments of lesbian love with her. Clearly Vi was feeling an excitement that mirrored her own only it was focused on the dancer before her.

As the passion between the dancers mounted Vivienne nestled ever closer to Sarah, her hand gliding softly in sympathy with the music over Sarah's leg to rest snugly on the warmth just above her knee. Her fingers made pleasing little stroking motions there and then slid softly up her thigh. Incredibly the sensations were mirrored on her other thigh as well and Sarah glanced down to see Zack's broad tanned hand moving in harmony with Vi's upon her thighs.

A pang of excitement shot through Sarah. Both Vi and Zack seemed to be riveted on Katia's dancing, their caresses of Sarah's legs just absent entertainment's of their hands, which would have been all right she supposed except there was nothing absent about the sensations they were producing in her. Vi knew just how sensitive she was there inside her knee, and Sarah shifted uneasily as the girl's hand slid neatly down, her fingers stroking softly. Oh so predictably Zack followed on her other leg and Sarah couldn't help letting her knees fall open when that happened. Her thin filmy dress was certainly no impediment to the touches that found their way through the unresisting pleats flattening so readily under their fingers and molding to her legs.

Sarah darted quick glances down at their hands and then around the theater. It was so public here for such boldness. Through she really couldn't see anyone through the rock-work and plantings there were people all around them, and she could just imagine that someone might be watching.

But the touches were becoming unbearably sensual now as they moved up to the fullness of her thighs, not only sensual but insistent. They were actually separating her legs, Vi pulling on one side, Zack on the other, and she had an impulsive urge to just relax and let them do what they wanted. The notion was appalling but thrilling too in a crazy way.

She was sitting chastely with her hands folded in lap, covering herself actually, until at last Vi's hand snuggled beneath hers and her fingers curled down over Sarah's inner thigh. The feeling was very cozy and less appalling to Sarah now that Zack seemed satisfied to linger and stroke on the inside of her other knee. Sarah slipped her hand over Vi's and squeezed it. Then a new sensation began at her ankles, a wispy tickle on her shins that quickly translated into the hem of her dress lifting over them. Each stroke of Zack's fingers raising it higher until it hung at last just at her knees. A few more clutches and her knees lay bare before them and now Vi was stirring beneath her hand and slowly gathering the slack beneath her palm.

Sarah tried not to stare at her own legs emerging nakedly under this conspiracy but her dress was half way up her thighs now when Zack's big capable hand left the gathering of folds to descend onto her bare skin. Vi and Zack were working together to seduce her and Sarah gasped at their boldness, at how his hand took command of her inner thigh while Vi continued to haul her dress higher and higher so that he could have more and more freedom to explore how hot and moist and full she was becoming.

Of course she was totally naked there, no panties or anything, just her swelling, quivering, engorging labial lips shifting wetly above his fingers. Sarah caught the wicked glance of Vi's eyes on hers through their masks, and the playful smile on her beautiful mouth when she reached across and tugged on Sarah's near knee with her free hand, utterly opening her legs to Zack's hand and his heavy hard middle finger feeling its way over her sex.

There was absolutely nothing Sarah could do but raise her pelvis and groan under her breath as he played with her. If she had dared she would have moaned out loud it felt so good. As it was she simply squirmed and wiggled luxuriantly craving the moment when he would do what she wanted more than anything else right now.

But he played with her a long time first, cruising her sex until it was swollen, hot, wet, and begging for penetration, so when his finger finally slipped into her palpitating vagina she immediately wanted another beside it.

As if the slow maddening pumping of his fingers wasn't enough Vi joined in the delicious torture. Unerringly her touch centered and swirled down upon Sarah's clitoris and between the two of them they held her suspended in rapture while Katia's sensuous ballet unfolded before them all.

Cliff unmindful of the erotic dance unfolding beside him was totally absorbed with the little nymph that had first entranced him at the rehearsal in Katia's cottage. Denise was on the stage before him now utterly naked and dancing the role of the enchantress, Lykanion. The gauzy shift of her maiden's role replaced by nothing but a silken scarf in her hands to shield her total nudity from the audience. Her maidenly flirtatiousness had matured to an utterly erotic display of her body in seducing the vulnerable Daphnis. Their pas-de-deux, with nothing but the scarf between them, soon roused the audience to appreciative murmurs and Daphnis himself to an admirable erection.

Sarah felt the tempo of her heart rising in harmony with the sensuous music. The last shreds of her reserve melted and flowed out to her fingertips. Vi's dark shadowed sex beckoned beneath her own dress and Sarah wanted nothing more than to share the ecstasy on her own vulva with Vivienne. Her hand curled over the fullness of the girl's leg and plunged into the hot valley of her crotch opening to Sarah's knowing caress, finding the hard bud of Vivienne's pleasure that had emerged to meet it.

Before them the sensuous display of the dance filled their eyes and the utterly evocative music swirled around them as they began the invention of a mutual massage of touch and counter-touch, of subtle signals, and tender readings of the other's pleasure. Their fingers moved now in a maddeningly delicious slow secret massage carrying them ever closer to utter rapture in the darkness. As the ballet moved from one scene to the next Vi's stirrings under Sarah's hand signaled that she was reaching a level of arousal approaching their lovemaking this morning, and when Katia appeared in her dance of supplication before the pirate chief Braxos, Vi's body warmed even more.

To Sarah it was as if her soul was expanding into a closeness growing between the three of them and it was she herself who moved upon the stage, her own body a helpless offering to the pirate chief's unbridled lust. Katia's trembling surrender was her own, and Chloe's awakened passion her ecstasy. Sarah looked down at her own loins, at her dress that had ridden up to her hips, at Vi's fingers slowly massaging her clitoris, at her glistening soaking wet thighs embracing Zack's hands plunging and thrusting with all the lust of a hundred hungering pirate chiefs. She raised her gaze to Vivienne's seizing hers with the intensity of lovers in the extremes of passion before dropping hungrily to her mouth.

A kiss? The desire for it overwhelmed Sarah and Vi's mouth opened eagerly below hers.

Before them the stage was filled with dancers in an orgiastic ecstasy of nakedness, movement and sound. The music rising in a crescendo of incredible beauty was utterly in syncopation with the magic swirls of Vi's fingers upon her clitoris as Sarah lowered her mouth and they touched.

In that instant Vi climaxed, and the throbs rocketing though her body touched off Sarah's own orgasm convulsing within her in ecstatic tremulous wonder. Wedded in the ecstasy of their embrace Sarah and Vi joined the triumphal union of Katia and her lover on the stage, and the wild celebration of the bacchantes was as much for them as for Chloe and her Daphnis.

'Unbelievable!' Sarah exclaimed to herself as the ballet ended, her orgasm ebbed, and her whirling senses focused on her surroundings. Zack was applauding beside her and Vi was slowly returning to reality herself. With a quick movement of her hands Sarah flung her skirts over her knees just as the lights came up in the theater and the dancers emerged to take their bows.

The ballet had clearly been a sensation and this mad experience accompanying it utterly breathtaking. Sarah was still thoroughly unsettled inside when the audience rose in ovation carrying them to their feet with it. She had just had an orgasm amidst all these people rising all about her. Breathless, her knees shaking she glanced at Vi who seemed almost as dazed as herself. Utterly thankful for the masks that covered their faces Sarah felt her composure returning at last when she faced the stage and applauded Katia taking her solo bows. The enthusiasm only mounted as Katia was recalled and she appeared to so many repeatedly wildly enthusiastic curtain-calls that at last she slipped her hands under her shift and in a gracefully executed gesture slid her tiny thong to her feet, stepped out of it, and tossed it out to the audience. Sarah watched it arching towards them, a tiny wisp of pale silk that Cliff snagged out of the air with incredible aplomb. A gale of laughter and a spattering of applause hailed his success and the theater began to empty.

Sarah and Vi turned to each other at last and as Sarah took a deep breath Vi whispered, "That was some performance, Sarah." Beneath her mask Vi's mouth had softened into one of her sumptuously sexy mischievously meaningful smiles. "I couldn't have done it without this wonderful supporting cast," Sarah returned wryly with a glance from Vi to Zack. "It was such a pleasure to have made your acquaintance," Zack replied flashing that charming smile below his mask and gazing slyly down at her.

She gave him a playful punch on the arm in reply and then wrapped her hands around his naked biceps and squeezed. It was the only thing she could think of to let him know how she had enjoyed his attentions as he led her out into the aisle.

Behind them Vivienne was lingering with Cliff, and as Sarah glanced back she could see that his hand was busy fondling her bottom before they followed herself and Zack up the aisle and into the lobby crowded with spectators waiting by the elevators.

Orcutt's tall form appeared from the crowd beckoning them to follow and he led them off to a side corridor with its reserved lift. "Did you enjoy the performance?" he asked politely when they had boarded.

"In a word," Sarah replied "it was stupendous!" What else can I say she thought? Besides the more she thought about it the more true that was.

"Yes," he nodded sagaciously, "a triumph for Vyrobrovna and The Court. She shall surely be asked for repeat performances. And quite soon I would venture by the enthusiasm tonight," he added when the doors of the lift slid silently back upon the expanse of The Gallery and the early arrivals scattering though its spaces. "Please enjoy yourself. Katia and her dancers will soon be here. I shall be about and will make arrangements for your departure when you are ready to leave." And with that they watched his tall form stroll off into the maze ahead of them.