And the Truth Will Set Them Free

(A companion story to Careful what you ask for)

Caroline, famished after a long day at the fine-art publishing house where she was a Commissioning Editor, finished laying out the trays of the Moroccan takeaway on the coffee table that stood in the angle between the sofa and an easy chair, just as Lorna rang the doorbell. She picked up the bottle of wine from the table and skipped to the front door. She flung it open and theatrically flinging wide her arms shouted her usual greeting, with Lorna making her customary responses with matching extravagance.

"Lornsie!"

"Carrie"

"BIG HUG!"

"BIG HUG!"

"Mwah!" "Mwah!" "Mwah". They kissed cheek to cheek to cheek in best continental style. Caroline held up her wine bottle in expected triumph.

"Safeways 2004."

Lorna played her trump card with a wicked smirk.

"Oddbins 2003."

"Fix! Get inside before I slam the door on you." laughed Caroline.

Lorna draped her black lace shawl over the back of a chair as she looked at Caroline admiringly.

"You look fabulous in that dress Caro'. It's perfect for your figure"

Caroline beamed as she preened and pirouetted.

"Do you really like it Lorn? I wasn't completely sure when I bought it," she lied, smilingly, "so I thought I'd wear it tonight so you could give me your honest opinion."

"Oh well, if it's honest opinions you want, you look like you're wearing a Technicolor bin liner," Lorna giggled.

"Ha! You're just saying that because you're jealous," Caroline flounced and laughed, knowing full well that she looked superb in it.

She was wearing a summer dress in a bright and bold pattern that perfectly showed off her generous assets without being too tight at the top. Below the slightly gathered-in waist was a wonderfully full and floaty skirt that made her lovely legs look almost endless. Caroline was well over five feet ten inches without her high heels and her gorgeously curvacious body and superb legs made maximum use of every inch. Men flocked to her because not only was she beautiful, she knew she was beautiful and was comfortable with her beauty, even though a little part of her remained always sad that the very spectacular beauty of her body itself had ended her dream of being a ballerina.

Caroline's eyes fixed on Lorna's very stylish and sexy black velvety plush high heels.

"Oh Lorn' I love your shoes, Cinderella in High Heels. I wish I had tiny sexy feet like yours."

"You'd never stop falling over My Dear," Lorna giggled as she gave her best friend an affectionate hug.

Just under five feet three inches and with a classic ballerina body, Lorna seemed a not yet fully-grown adolescent girl next to Caroline, her head resting on her friend's décolletage as they hugged. Although bewitchingly beautiful and with a tempestuous personality that excited and challenged men in droves, she struggled with a poor self-image and was only really happy with herself when she was dancing or in her ballet classes, dressed in a tutu or a leotard with tights and wearing her white satin ballet shoes on her lovely little feet.

Having had hardly any lunch during a demanding day at the law firm where she had just become the youngest woman partner in its history, she hungrily surveyed the evening's offerings on the table.

"Moroccan. Fantastic, I love that lamb and apricot tajine. And what's this?" She picked up the video cassette box, "'Trapped in Her Pleasure Dungeon -- He gets more than a hangover when she offers him a drink.' Date rape in reverse, eh?. Should be fun."

They shared out the takeaway and charged their glasses for the first of several times and settled down for the evening's entertainment, which proceeded with an unbroken accompaniment of cogent and insightful analysis along the lines of,

"Don't let him touch you there, ASSERT YOURSELF WOMAN! Show the little runt who's boss," this from Lorna.

"Get it out. Get it out now." Caroline tried to stand up for the underdog, but was disappointed by the result of her efforts. "Put it back. Put it back."

They cheered as she tightened the dog collar around his neck and tied the lead to the bedpost before picking up the whip.

"A damn good thrashing. That's what they all need," Lorna opined approvingly through a mouthful of tajine. "How I wish I was her, with that ubercreep Howard Prentiss tied to the bed. Do you know, he came up to me after my first partners' lunch and casually suggested that we go away for a 'weekend conference.' He's been trying to get his hands up my blouse since the day I joined Pownalls, and my skirt," she added through another mouthful.

"The trouble is, he'd probably enjoy whatever you did to him," Caroline commiserated. "Oh that's brilliant. Well done girl." She gave her exposition as his bound body squirmed and wrenched in his efforts to reach the high heels that had been placed by his captor on the bed just out of reach of his cord-constrained hands. "That's why she asked him in the wine bar if he liked her shoes. He's going crazy now."

"It's good fun to really frustrate a guy sometimes. Like you know he wants to be completely naked when he's tied up so you make him wear a thong or a g-string and you do it up on him as tight as it will go so it really digs into him up his arse and all around his balls."

Caroline warmed to Lorna's theme. "Or you know he's a tit man so you put a gag on him and then rub your cleavage up and down his face."

"Is Johnny an arse, tit or leg man?"

"Probably a leg man judging by all the stockings and suspenders sets he keeps giving me, although it may just be an easy present for him to get for me because he's too lazy to think of anything else."

"I think Justin would have had to be a combination of all three to get any satisfaction from me." Lorna's downcast expression provoked a sisterly shake of the head from Caroline.

"Why do you always get so down on yourself, Lorn'? You're so beautiful it's sickening. You could be a better Audrey Hepburn than Audrey Hepburn. The phrase 'Elfinly and gaminely pretty' could have been invented for you."

"I'd still like to have a bit of your Jayne Mansfield to even things up a bit", Lorna replied glumly. "And the trouble with watching porn is I feel so bloody horny afterwards. Oh why was I such a bitch to Justin? Where is he when I need him? What am I going to do now, Caro'?

Caroline patted Lorna's knee consolingly. "We need to get your mind onto something else My Girl. It's time you attempted The Challenge."

"Are you sure it's my turn?" Lorna looked at her suspiciously.

"Yes I am and I'm more sober than you so get on with it."

Caroline picked up a sheet of paper previously concealed and clicked on a pen in readiness. To pass The Challenge, Lorna had to remember, in alphabetical order, the names of all twenty-two of the girls who were in their class on their first day at ballet school and drink a miniature of her choice for every name she forgot or misplaced. Fortunately for her liver, she was in top form, intoning the names in her high, piping, clear-as-a-bell soprano with her perfect diction and Oxford English RP accent.

"Let's see, There was Lindsey Adams; that lovely Japanese girl Michiko Ayanuma; Alessandria Bertorelli; Abigail Dale-Hunt; Sarah Danby, "Little Sarah"; Vivienne Drew; Saskia Earle; Emma Garland and Gemma Garwood, 'Em and Gem'; Cheryl Greenwood."

Lorna stopped for a moment as they remembered their friend who had died of leukaemia at seventeen. Then she smiled and continued.

"The one and only Caroline Knight," Caroline bowed theatrically, "Gaynor Linford; not forgetting Moi of course, Lorna MacAllister; Marietta MacIntyre; Sarah O'Connor, "Big Sarah", she grew to six feet by the time she was 18; Gayle Simpson; the Greek twins, Hera and Laodicia Stefaniades; Lorraine Taylor; Alysha Woodville; Imogen Yardley and, last but not least, Miranda Young."

Lorna drained her glass in triumph and promptly refilled it.

"You've been cramming, you sneaky cow," laughed Caroline in mock outrage.

"But of course," giggled Lorna. "The funny thing was, we called Marietta MacIntyre 'Naughty Marietta' when she was the biggest Goody Toe Shoes out of all of us. I always used to hate it that she was always next to me in the register. It was like 'Lorna MacAllister?', 'Yessmiss!', 'Marietta MacIntyre?', 'Yeess Miiiisss' -- simper, simper." Her lip curled in disgust.

"I never understood why they bothered with a register when we all boarded," Caroline digressed. "It's not as if we were in danger of disappearing through a black hole while we were walking the few dozen yards from our dorm to class. She wasn't all that bad though. She didn't grass on any of us after we tied her to her bed and stuffed one of her ballet shoes in her mouth that night. I liked her a lot better after that."

"Fuck, did we all get into trouble for that. I really thought at one point they were going to expel the lot of us. They probably only didn't because they knew they'd be bankrupt in a week if they did." Lorna still shuddered at the memory. "Yeah, she was OK after all. We had a really good laugh about it at the last reunion. Michiko was the only one of us who really made it as a dancer. She's Prima Ballerina with the Kyoto now. She was like a fairy she was so tiny. Even I looked like a carthorse next to her."

"You would have made it too if you hadn't given up when you did. I would have loved to have had the chance that you turned down." Caroline couldn't completely keep her voice clear of a reproachful note.

"Cheryl would have too, if she'd lived. I felt so guilty and so bad for you when they told you that you had the wrong shape for professional dance. You were so graceful and so much better at portraying character than I was. I cried so much when you did Giselle, especially when you had become a Wili and danced that lovely pas-de-deux with Laurie as Prince Albrecht.

"You and Gary danced it better." Caroline rebuffed her with gentle modesty. Then noticed that Lorna suddenly looked anxious and uncomfortable at the mention of his name.

"I've got something to tell you about Gary and me." Lorna took a deep breath before continuing. "We had a relationship for six months before he joined that foreign touring company and he ditched me. I gave him my virginity. I gave him All of Me and he broke my heart."

Tears ran down her face even though she remained composed while Caroline held her close, hardly able to believe what her friend had just told her.

"But we were only seventeen when he joined that company. We were still at school. You never told me anything about this. How did you keep it a secret from everyone?"

"I told so many lies to everyone to hide that I was meeting him to sleep with him. I never told anyone until I told Uncle Robert and Aunt Amanda last week*. I was too scared and too proud to tell anyone until then. I gave up ballet and became a lawyer because I was frightened of meeting him again professionally and wanting to be involved with him again. I've screwed up all my relationships since then by trying to control everybody to avoid being hurt again. It's taken me until now to realise that and finally sort myself out. So now you know. You're my best friend and I never even told you. I'm so sorry."

"It's alright My Dear, it's alright. I've forgiven you already. Don't cry. It's OK." Caroline was all gentleness around Lorna as she cried in earnest now. After a good weep and another big hug she felt better but still unsatisfied.

I'm still missing Justin, Caro'. Now what will I do?" Caroline threw the latest 'Cosmo' in her direction. She looked at it aghast. "What are you thinking of, Girl? This'll make me worse."

"If you can't not think about sex you might as well think about alternative methods."

Lorna thumbed the pages agitatedly. "Oh not another bloody article on deep throating. It's all you can ever read about nowadays. It's like 'Excuse me, what is this hole between my legs for?"

"Oral is the new anal," Caroline philosophised as she parried Lorna's attempted playful slap. "Why don't we have a go? We need something to channel your urges into." She fetched a pair of cucumbers and a packet of flavoured condoms while Lorna studied the article dubiously.

"'The key to successful deep throating is suppressing the gagging reflex as the penis comes into contact with your throat. This can be achieved by taking deep breaths whenever the feeling starts.' It sounds like you need to have advanced level yoga to do this."

"I wonder if it's slightly easier if he's Jewish?" Caroline mused.

"Careful now. You do realise I'm technically Jewish." Lorna smiled in mock admonishment.

"What do you mean?" Caroline laughed at her indulgently.

"My Mum's maiden name is Levinson but her family have been secular for generations so it never crossed her mind to bring me or my brothers up as Jews. She wouldn't have known the first thing about it if it had."

"Choose a flavour then." Caroline was unperturbed as she handed Lorna the packet and an impossibly large-looking cucumber.

"Passion fruit and raspberry sounds about right." Lorna rolled it onto her cucumber while Caroline went for cherry and kirsch. "Do I put the tit end or the knob end into my mouth?" she asked.

"The latter I presume," Caroline opined.

Looking into a mirror as they squatted on their knees next to each other on the carpet, they negotiated the blunt ends of their cucumbers into their mouths and slowly fed them in. Lorna stopped as she felt the first onset of the retching impulse and took several deep breaths. Emboldened by her success in driving down the desire to gag, she resumed and was elated to see another couple of inches slide past her poppy red rosebud lips. She continued her deep breathing as she felt the head of the cucumber resting on the back of her tongue, closed her eyes and pushed it further back until it was right in the top of her throat opening. She closed her eyes and heard her breath like steam through pistons as she imagined her mouth and lips enveloping around warm, quivering erectile flesh.

Caroline had made similar progress and they both held their organically grown sex toys with one hand and with their other hand reached up their skirts and slipped their hands inside their pants to enjoy the spreading warm dampness within. Their muffled sighs and moans of pleasure gathered volume, pace and intensity as they pleasured themselves in rhythm with their virtuoso cucumber work until they reached orgasm together with throaty gagging cries. They carefully extracted their cucumbers before collapsing back onto the floor in semi-dazed delight.

Lorna could just about smile at Caroline through her still laboured breathing.

"I've really got going now. What shall we do next?"

"Do you fancy a bit of girl-on-girl action?"

Caroline's expression and voice had an eager edge. Lorna wondered about it for a second and then grinned as a frisson of excitement shot through her at the thought of it.

"OK. What do you want to do? I'm really not sure how to go about it."

"Why don't we feel each other's breasts first and see how much we like it," Caroline suggested gleefully.

She stood up, looking glorious in her colourful strappy summer dress which showed her gorgeous hourglass figure and superb legs to perfection. She reached behind to unzip herself and pulled it off over her head in one fluidly graceful movement to stand before Lorna in her green satin bra and pants and white high-heeled slingbacks. Her fabulous dark copper coloured hair cascaded down in waves to her shoulders and beyond and her bewitching turquoise eyes shone with pleasure and excitement. Lorna, emboldened and wanting to trump her friend's performance, slowly pulled down the zip of her classic black Coco Chanel little black dress that caressed her ballerina body, pushed the straps from her shoulders and let it slide down to the floor before sexily stepping out of it. Her lithe and girlishly slender body was displayed to full advantage by her black lace bra, satin pants, stockings and suspenders and black velvet-plush high heels. Her underwear was the perfect accompaniment to her dark hair piled up on her head, her heart-meltingly-beautiful dark eyes and her pale skin, flawless apart from a small circular brown birthmark on the inside of her left calf.

They appraised one another with pleasure for a moment and came closer. Caroline's eyes shone as she beheld Lorna's perfect little breasts snuggled roundly in their nest of black lace. Lorna looked a little enviously but with equal delight at Caroline's ample bosoms, with their light honey-coloured skin strewn with a brown sugar speckling of freckles, which almost seemed dammed up behind the shiny green fastness of her cups.

Lorna tried to enjoy herself but got little stimulation from Caroline's gentle caresses through her bra.

"It's not working for me like this. Come on Caro', let's go topless."

She unclasped her bra and almost shook her little bobbing breasts free of it in her eagerness. She had taken Caroline's ample assets for granted after years of sharing hotel rooms and changing rooms with her. But in this new and excitingly unfamiliar context she couldn't help exclaiming "Wow!" when she saw the results of Caroline's response to her lead.

"I never appreciated how beautiful your breasts are, Caro'. They are truly gorgeous."

Caroline beamed as she took Lorna's hands and placed them on the undersides of her buoyant hemispheres that seemed to float on top of Lorna's palms as she began to feel them admiringly. Her swollen nipples islanded within the midst of her blushing areolas looked like cherry halves resting on pink saucers. Lorna was amazed by the excitement she was beginning to feel swelling inside her and tingling and welling warmly and wetly within her pants. Then she gasped with pleasure and closed her eyes as Caroline's warm and sensitive fingers began to gently stroke her breasts.

"Mmmm, you're so good at this," she murmured.

"You have the most lovely little breasts I've ever seen," Caroline half-whispered, "mine are like great lumps of marshmallow compared with yours. It must feel lovely for you when a man is cupping them in his hands while he's kissing you."

Turned on even more by the delightful suggestion planted in her mind, Lorna pushed herself up to Caroline and they gasped in delight together as Caroline pressed Lorna's breasts on to hers and their throbbingly pouting nipples rubbed together.

"Oooh, that feels soooh lovely", Lorna groaned with pleasure.

Caroline cupped Lorna's pert little bottom cheeks in her palms to pull her even closer and Lorna clenched fistfuls of Caroline's gorgeous red hair as they began to kiss open mouthed, Lorna's sweet little rosebud enveloped in Caroline's generous and smiley scarlet melon slice. Their hearts pounded and their soft sighs and moans, Lorna's anxiously questing soprano and Caroline's languidly contended mezzo, mingled harmoniously, as they became ever warmer and damper together.

Lorna felt Caroline's fingers begin to slip inside her pants and she pulled away in surprise and confusion, the spell suddenly broken.

"Hang on Caro', we didn't talk about touching each other there."

The effect on Caroline was dramatic and distressing for Lorna to behold as she watched her friend put her hands up over her face and begin to sob convulsively.

"Shit! Oh Shit! Oh Lorna I'm so sorry. I feel so guilty for doing this to you. Please forgive me Lorna, please. I'll die if you don't."

Unable to comprehend what was happening, Lorna's first thought was to comfort her friend.

"It's all right Caro'. Caro' it's OK. Hey, don't cry. Don't cry My Dear. Don't worry."

Lorna put her her arm around Caroline's quivering body and squeezed her hand encouragingly as she led her over to the sofa and sat down with her. She slipped off her high heels and used her very flexible toes through her stockings to push Caroline's slingbacks off her feet. They snuggled together on the sofa with Caroline in just her pants and Lorna in her pants and stockings. As Lorna cuddled protectively up to Caroline she seemed to stretch her butterfly ballet girl body to enfold all of Caroline's Venusian voluptuousness within her compassion. When Caroline's weeping had abated a little, Lorna decided it was time to get to the bottom of the mystery.