Bridge with the Stauntons

"I think he expects you to help," she said. What the heck was that supposed to mean? The question was about to explode from my mouth when Staunton's voice called out,

"Get these two pretty asses down here. Pronto. Or I'll come up and get 'em!"

"We gotta go," hissed Sophie, swinging to the mirror and shooting her damn near perfect face a final glance as she reached for the handle of the door.

"Hey ...I'm not ..." I stammered, for some reason giving my own looks a final once over, wanting to know what her comment meant.

Why was I hurrying from the bathroom?

I noticed her freckles on the way down the stairs. Sophie had a light peppering of golden freckles over the top of her shoulders. I'd noticed a scattering over her nose as we spoke in the bathroom. As she had explained -- and how intense she looked when she had -- that she allowed her boss, 'access to her person', on 'predetermined days of the week'. What might 'access to her person' be called in the better Human Resource Management tracts? 'Licence to roam the intimate regions of her staggeringly good-looking body?' 'Toy with her troublesome treasures?' Troublesome on me, at least. Why would they not be on her? Weren't they on most girls?

Staunton was standing at the foot of the stairs, his face turned upwards, staring up our fluttering skirts at our legs and making no effort to disguise it. As if it was part of some game. Two spades ... three hearts ... four legs. I almost reached for the silk around my hips to hold it tighter, but noted Sophie didn't. And as she was nearer the receiving-end of the bulk of the double barrelled stare, I felt it would somehow be letting her down if I didn't show similar courage. Courage under fire, or something. (Isn't that what guys called it.) I left my dress aflutter, and my legs available for scrutiny.

"Sorry," said Sophie, reaching her boss, allowing his hand to snake round her waist, and draw her into his chest, and spot a soft kiss on her lips.

"You can make it up to me later, honey," he said, darkly, angling his head from hers but holding their groins together. I noted the way his hand had closed possessively over Sophie's perky butt and cupped a cheek. Sophie didn't react. Did nothing. Said nothing. Let herself be held like that. Waited -- it seemed to me -- for him to be finished with her. His glance flipped over the shoulder with pretty golden freckles, caught mine. I was one step away from the foot of the stairs. "And you," he said, releasing his PA, moving her around him, giving her buttocks a familiar pat as he dismissed her. She moved passed him to the room where the cards were. "Why were you keeping these bodies away from we men?" he said to me, holding out his arms.

Shouldn't that be 'us men?' I wondered, absently, as for some obscure reason I allowed myself to be moved into the circle of his arms, and let him hold me as he had Sophie ... then ease me closer to him, just as he had Sophie. His arms around my middle brought our groins together, pulling mine into his in a way that let me know he was there -- soft, but there, if you know what I mean. I let him peck my lips.

It seemed as if I was to be a carbon copy of his more malleable PA, I thought to myself, pecking back at his, and tasting Sophie. When he was done with me, and released me, and I moved past him towards the sitting room, and cards, his hand, I noted, stayed on my butt. I let him do that too -- though I can't think why. Who did I think he was? Who did HE think he was?

Sophie and I were partners this time. They'd moved the cards to the fire. Spread the blanket over the low coffee table that stood before it. Two easy chairs on either side, a two seater sofa on the other, low poof (foot stool) at an angle to the fire. The men had a snifter of brandy each, (they'd helped themselves,) and had taken the two easy chairs. I didn't know which seat was mine but offered the sofa to Sophie. No sooner had I, than I wished I hadn't. It was low, very low, and with legs that length, and a dress that short, it was impossible for Sophie to prevent the entire length of both her legs, being (almost lewdly) exposed.

"Let me sit there?" I offered as soon as she sat, trying to be noble, trying to do something with my own legs. The stool was just as low!

"I'll be fine, thanks," said Sophie, starting to blush. EM's eyes were wandering the impressive length of her impressive legs like a hungry insect examining a particularly succulent flower. Sophie had lovely legs, but the way EM's expressionless eyes were stroking their length you felt his eyes had tongues, and the tongues were slurping her skin all the way up to the top of her legs. The poor girl was helpless. There was nothing she could do. I was about to say something, though hadn't worked out what, when EM's eyes suddenly turned on MY legs. (Which kinda shut me up.) I reached for the cards.

The first few hands went fine. Fine, that us, unless you happened to notice the way EM moved in his seat for a better view up Sophie's legs -- and mine. Fine, if you ignored the speed with which Staunton was refilling their glasses with cognac. Fine, so long as you ignored the way Staunton reached out and cupped the knees of either of his short-hemmed opponents in a friendly sort of way, after a particularly good lead, or a particularly bad one, then left his hand where it was to roam the knee, sometimes to run up the leg aways, and back. Fine, as long as you ignored the curious fact that you were letting him do this, without complaint. And letting EM watch, without demur. Fine, if you ignored how uncomfortable Sophie was becoming with it all -- as if she knew something I didn't.

Then I had a slam to play. A small slam we bid -- I bid. I went up through Blackwood as Staunton explained to Sophie, with generous patience -- a little to my surprise -- what response was required of her. (Her knowledge of bridge was sketchy.) He advised her to show him her hand so that he could help her count the aces, then kings, (for that's what Blackwood is about). I couldn't object, as it was a friendly game, and it was clear by this stage that I would play the hand. Besides, it would not be Staunton's lead, but EM's, so he was gaining no particular advantage. It was a pleasant, almost caring interlude, in which I began to think that I may have been doing Staunton an injustice. He only wanted her to learn.

That's what I thought, at least!

EM led a low club. Sophie laid her cards on the table for me to play. I selected the queen from her hand. The king and the ace were in my hand. Staunton, patience and consideration still (apparently) to the fore, said softly to Sophie, "Come, Sophie. Watch how I play my hand. It will help you learn." I was working my way through the hand, in my mind, when I suddenly became aware of tension building up around the table. No-one was speaking. No-one was moving. Everything was suddenly graveyard quiet. Only the crackle of fire in the grate, and the sound of EM's snifter being replaced (nervously it seemed) on the table.

I lifted my head from my cards, and my mind from its chore. Staunton was gazing at Sophie, his arms held out. Sophie had started to chew on her lower lip. Her eyes, on Staunton's, were like those of a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. EM was staring at Sophie's legs; his tongue came out and he licked his lips. Sexual melt-down. I forgot what the contract was.

"See how I play. You will learn a lot," Staunton repeated, to Sophie, even more softly this time. But the patience and consideration had drained from his voice. Now it was quiet and you knew -- you just knew -- it was no longer cards he was talking about. It was her. It was playing with HER that he meant. My eyes flipped nervously from Sophie to EM. He continued to eye Sophie's legs and lick his lips.

My eyes moved on, to the mantelpiece over the fire. At one end was a photo of me and my family holidaying in Asia. Visiting Angkor Wat. My Mom, kid brother and sister and I were standing by a dilapidated part of a temple that the roots of an ancient tree had coiled themselves around. I was wearing a silly T-shirt. 'Girl' in pink across my boobs. I was eighteen, and pretty damn proud of my figure back then. Now -- especially tonight -- good figures and looks were more of a hindrance than something to flaunt! I could hear the sofa groan as Sophie got up.

I felt I should tell her, 'Don't go,' but how could I do such a thing? I couldn't bear to look at her. At the other end of the mantelpiece was a studio shot of Brian and me, dressed as we were for our wedding. Just the two of us. Brian in grey tails and striped trousers with a blue cravat and pin, looking quite the handsome groom. I was in white. My mother's dress, but altered. I wanted my boobs to show. At least a bit, I'd said.

I could sense, as much as see out the corner of my eye, that Sophie was up and standing by the arm of Staunton's chair. The big stuffed chair to my right. "Sit in my lap, sweetie pie. You can see the cards better from there," said Staunton, with a tickle of innuendo in the tone. Why was I being so cowardly? Why could I not put a stop to this? Why could I not defend the girl? This was my home, after all.

"Maybe if we ALL lay our cards down, we can talk Sophie through the hand?" I suggested, my eyes coming back (from my wedding) to the table.

Why could I not even look her in the eye?

"And deprive you of a chance of making a slam? Wouldn't dream of it," said Staunton dismissively, as Sophie lowered herself slowly and carefully, and I'd have to guess unwillingly, into the big man's lap. "The ten of clubs, third player plays high," said Staunton, to Sophie, inadvertently telling me where the jack was. But I didn't think cards were uppermost in his mind any more. Not with someone who looked like Sophie sitting in his lap. All legs and curves, soft skin, and little golden freckles. But what could I do? I looked at the table. No, not looked, I STARED at the table. Three cards were there, all clubs. I played the four from hand, winning the trick in dummy.

Next, Staunton let Sophie hold the cards. He told her to. I didn't look. I heard the cards change hands. The merest sigh of card against card. After the third trick Staunton suggested she play the cards as well. On the fourth, she did. Her slender fingers delivering a diamond to the blanket surface of the table. I kept my head down, focussed on the table, focussed on the cards, focussed almost anywhere but the large leather chair on my right.

It was a button Chesterfield. Ox blood red. A wedding present from my folks. Now it had a large man in it. Brian's boss -- my husband, Brian's boss. In his lap was a girl only two years older than me. Who had a boyfriend who on Friday evenings was normally with her. Dinner, perhaps, just the two of them. Talking about their hopes, their dreams. Their future together, perhaps? But tonight she was here, with her boss. And he was ... I just KNEW he would be, (though didn't dare look to confirm it) ... stroking parts of her that perhaps she would have preferred her boyfriend to be stroking. Arousing parts of her (against her will?) that perhaps she would prefer her boyfriend to be arousing, instead of this odious man.

I was suddenly in trouble. I didn't see how I could make the contract. Eight cards played but a problem I hadn't anticipated, had arisen. I could only assume that EM had bid wrongly at the start. The missing king should be with him, but now I wasn't sure it was. And Sophie had started breathing so heavily, and raggedly, that it was starting to drown out the sounds of the fire. And effect my ability to concentrate. Now she was groaning as well. I kept my head bowed. I thought back through the cards I'd played -- the king that I lacked was a spade -- when Sophie's foot kicked my knee. My head jerked up.

Sophie was sprawled in Staunton's lap, side on to the table, cards held over its edge. The cards were clutched in both her hands so tightly they were curled, and the knuckles of both her hands showed white. The leg that had kicked me was stretched out, rigid as an oar. The foot now sat in my lap. The other was bent, the knee at Staunton's chin, the side against his chest. His hands were in between the two, stroking and toying with all that was there. The hem of her dress was around her waist. Her neck was bared and stretched. Her head was on his shoulder, face to the ceiling, eyes squeezed shut. As I watched, a tad aghast, her lips opened and a series of guttural mewing sounds came out of her mouth. I dropped my head, flustered and embarrassed, to note the red silk thong around the ankle that sat in my lap. What did I do? What COULD I do.

I tried a finesse.

It worked. I didn't think it would. But it still didn't tell me where the damn king was! "Please. Please don't. No more. Not here," Sophie whimpered, interrupting my thoughts, sounding strained and suddenly, miserably, exhausted. Staunton's fingers, working their questionable magic in and around her glistening pussy -- yes, even in the firelight I had seen that she was hopelessly moist -- would easily disarm, disable, tire, and yes, arouse the girl to a state of deepest desperation. I remembered his touch. It was skilled. If you couldn't put a stop to it ... if you had to let it go on, forced to let the fingers play, and stroke, caress, excite, continue on, and on, and on ... what else could possibly happen?

We weren't automatons, after all! We weren't programmed robots who could turn it off, or on, at will. We couldn't simply decide it wouldn't happen now, with this man, here, doing what he was doing, when someone else, last week, doing the same thing, had us climbing the bedroom wall! Our brains may differentiate one set of toying fingers from another, but our bodies aren't nearly so particular. Not if we allow them to go on. Not if we are unable to prevent them from going on. Groping on, and on, working their dubious magic.

"Ngaaar!" moaned Sophie, her pretty stockinged foot in my lap snapping right, then left, then right, like a windscreen wiper on a car. "Please, no. Aaargh!" Her foot whipped about in my lap as her pelvis curled and writhed in Staunton's. Her anguished knee rolled once, then twice across his chin, as if that leg too sought to straighten. To ease the pain perhaps. That exquisite agony that even now was peeking out atop the horizon of my own unforgivably suggestive senses. I hushed it away. I didn't need that now.

"Whoooorgh," then, "Graaaaagh" gurgled up from Sophie's throat. Sounds of high arousal, deepest torment. Groans and moans and ragged breathing; catches of breath, huge intakes of air; the sounds all rushing and melding together in a hopeless orchestration of deepest despair.

"Please," she gasped. "No more. Not here," she groaned.

I had to lift my head to look, and when I did, I found that Staunton's eyes were fixed on mine, his arms around his trembling prey. Her pretty breast in one broad hand, her naked pudenda the other, while she hung onto his cards. Four cards. Four lousy cards. His eyes snuck into mine. They were vulgar eyes. Gateway to a vulgar mind. It was a vulgarity you could almost feel, practically touch. A vulgarity that rendered Sophie's hands mere pacifist onlookers. Unfighting hands, unbattling hands, unresisting hands. As her mouth begged, and her back arched, and her pelvis squirmed, and her legs strained, and her senses reeled ... her hands did nothing. They merely hung onto his cards, as if they were her talisman, but with all that was happening, she couldn't hold them still. They waved and fanned and flurried like a flag in a gale.

"Have you ever felt a woman like this?" Staunton asked me, as if he were asking whether I took milk and sugar with my tea, or preferred it plain.

I noted the missing king of spades flash before my eyes, like a wave of a flag, as the holder's spine arched taught and then she gasped,

"Please, No. No more. Please, Dick ... Ngaaaargh!"

So that's what she called him. Dick. (How apt.)

"Well?" he pressed. "Have you?"

The slender windscreen wiper foot in my lap flipped suddenly left and she groaned, then right, and she moaned. He had three fingers gently pushing into her. Her thighs gaped wide. He made no attempt to conceal what he was doing to her. Neither did she. He was putting on a show, for us all. So was she, in truth, although a lot less willingly than he. The fingers that slowly moved in and out of her glistened bright, right up their length. Although not particularly wishing to, I found my eyes take note of the way his thumb played with her clitoris, and how her clitoris stood out from its hood, almost like a miniature penis. Her clit was much larger than mine. I wondered where this was going. And why I had stopped being disgusted by it all. And what I had become.

What would Brian want me to do? I wondered, denying the flurry of feeling I was starting to feel in ... places I'd rather not. "Would you like to feel her?" Staunton whispered, loud enough for all to hear. Sophie was gasping like a steam train. EM moved in his chair, crossing his legs first one way, then uncrossing them, then crossing them the other. Reaching for his brandy, finding that he'd finished it, putting the glass on the table again.

"Another, EM?" said Staunton, ever the gentleman. My next lead should have been the ace of Spades, but before I could play it I had Sophie deposited in my lap. I was perched on this silly foot-stool. I fell over backwards to the carpet with an almost naked Sophie in my arms. (The top of her dress, by now, had joined the skirts around her waist.) I lay there, staring at the ceiling. Not sore -- more surprised, and a little bit shaken. Sophie was on top, one leg between my own, her naked chest against my dress, her face cheek to cheek with my own. She was dishevelled, distraught, aroused, embarrassed, out of breath. I put my arms around her.

"It's all right, Sophie," I whispered in her hair, stroking her back with one hand and her long silky hair with my other.

"You are almost out of brandy," called the bastard from the kitchen.

"There, there. It's all right now," I crooned to Sophie, stroking her hair down her back. Her bare back. Her dress, was a rumpled belt around her waist. I imagined her naked rump sticking up in the air. EM's eyes devouring it. Licking it with his eyes. If he liked to watch, as Sophie said, then he was having plenty to watch tonight. Plenty of Sophie to watch, that is. I resisted the temptation to rearrange Sophie's dress to cover her butt. If he was the financier, after all, what harm could it do? If it was important that he invest in the company, an investment that Brian had confided would do the company no harm -- and him no harm -- then ... what harm could his looking at her naked butt, possibly do?

"I said, you're almost out of brandy," said Staunton, back in the room, handing one to EM, and still (I noted) with a fairly generous measure in his own. I ignored them. I coddled and caressed my exhausted charge. "Feel her," said Staunton, coming down on the carpet beside us, tucking his fat calves beneath his thighs. The carpet was a Bokhara. Not a particularly expensive one, but a nice one. It was our celebratory present to ourselves, Brian and mine, for him getting the job.

"Go on," said Staunton, reaching for my hand on Sophie's hair, taking it to her buttocks, placing it over one. I lifted it away. He put it back, spread the fingers, clamped his hand on top of mine. "I said, feel it," he said, with just a dash of insistence in his tone. So I did. (What harm could it do?) He raised his hand to see if mine would flee. But I didn't think that would achieve anything, so I continued to caress what I had in my hand. "Well," he enquired, his face over mine.