With those words he shoves me down on the table, holding one wrist above my head while he ties the other to a corner of the bed. Alarmed, I cry out, "What do you mean? What will they do to me?" His response is a stinging slap to the face followed by the placement of my other wrist. Beginning to panic I implore him, "Please, señor, I am not ready. What will happen to me?" Working to replace the bonds that cover my entire leg with a restraint just at the ankle he pauses to move to the head of the bed. He strokes my hair tenderly as I writhe in a futile attempt to free myself and says, "Be easy,
mi amor
, I never break beautiful women completely until they are ready. This is just an introduction to some of my friends. You must let yourself be carried by the current, it is entirely out of your hands." Returning to his work he frees me from the old silk pressure bonds and leaves me with my limbs spread to the four corners of the bed. It is still impossible to move my body except for a little motion in my hips and while I am experimenting with this slight new liberty I feel his hands again at the neckline of my nightgown. "It is time to reveal you completely, Graciela. I want to see what a glorious woman I have acquired." He begins to unbutton the pearl clasps that run from my chest down to my ankles and, as he undoes each one, he kisses the skin directly underneath. I start to cry. Ignoring my tears, he moves leisurely between my breasts, across my abdomen, and down, down, to my pubis. When he kisses me there he lingers and murmurs against my flesh, "You are perfect,
hermosa
, you fascinate me. You tremble with fear and cry with shame yet your body betrays you with this sweet moisture. I cannot wait to begin your lessons."
He moves on, down my legs until the gown is completely parted and he pulls it away, focusing new attention on kissing and licking each of my toes. I continue crying, horrified that he is touching me so intimately, terrified of how my body responds, and wanting more than anything to be back in my room, safe and pure again.
Am I a whore now?
A door opens and I start against my bonds, hearing the laughter and heavy footsteps of many men.
My captor leaves me, walking to the door and welcoming the newcomers. No one mentions me at first, as if I were not naked and chained in the middle of the room. But soon I feel a strong hand massaging my breast, another sneaking between my legs to stroke the hair there. I breathe shallowly and swiftly, beyond crying now, and willing them all dead and gone. They comment in different accents about my hair, my face, my tiny waist, calling me an angel and a temptress and a hundred things I never want to be for them. And then, all at once, they leave me and that velvety voice is speaking.
"Gentlemen, as you know, I called you here today because I wish to offer my latest prize for your inspection. She has already convinced me that she is a unique jewel and I shall take the time necessary to make her shine brilliantly. But although I am not ready to share her completely, I invite you to aid me in this early lesson of her instruction – her first orgasm."
I twist and turn fretfully on the bed as I hear him walk closer. I do not know what an orgasm is but when I feel his hands upon my thighs and his breath near my loins I know I will learn soon. Suddenly he is kissing me again, kissing the place between my legs and I am overwhelmed and lost. He flicks his tongue over a little bud I had not known I possessed, a place from which sensations explode and travel through my entire body. He suckles me there and I flood with a hot wetness that he begins to search out, dipping his tongue inside me over and over until I feel faint. I begin to desire, completely against my will, something large inside me. I feel empty and want to be filled. I forget about anything beyond that intense probing in my woman's center. I am going insane, his tongue sweeps over that impossible bud again and I need more, I lift my pelvis closer to his face, silently, helplessly begging for more. At this the audience cheers but I am almost beyond hearing. Footsteps approach and I only know that I moan for the first time as fingers begin to play roughly with my nipples, pulling and twisting them in time with the strokes of my captor's tongue. Then someone else is sucking my toes, another my fingers... someone is nibbling my earlobe and another kisses my neck. Then I feel a finger insistently pushing into me and I tense, terrified, but suddenly it is past, inside, and I am floating and falling and rising and that finger circles within me. It leads me high to a mountaintop from which I fling myself and as all the mouths and hands stimulate and guide me I shudder and cry out with release and pleasure and as they withdraw I sink into the blessed peace of oblivion.
********************
I gaze down at my protégée and note that, even after this ordeal, in sleep her face is tranquil and at peace. So much about her is still childish, but she verges on the edge of a womanhood I will share completely with her.
And what a magnificent woman she will make...
I bring myself back from the idle reverie to move among my guests, thanking them and exchanging promises of future exhibitions. My acquaintances all move within the same circle – all keep women for pleasure, hidden from every world but this one, in which sensuality reigns as king. These men are all powerful, all rich, but range from extreme to extreme in age and taste and motivation. I know that some have no patience for seduction, preferring to use their captives as unwilling sex slaves. Some excite themselves coupling with stolen maidservants and dancing girls to whom formal public life restricts their access. Almost all take women for short periods of time, never revealing their identities so they can later return their captives to the outside world and search out fresh conquests.
For all these reasons and more, I will never leave my Graciela in their hands. Many of them exchange women from time to time, relishing the novelty of new flesh moving beneath their bodies. But I crave something more passionate, more sublime. After years of searching I believe I have at last found a woman who can enchant me for life, who with time will come to adore the secret life of pleasure I embrace as much as I but who can also be my intellectual match, a partner for my soul. This certainty began when I saw her dance.
Señorita Mendoza and I move in the same social circle, although she will never guess it unless I tell her the truth. She has only seen me twice, once when she was a mere child and again at a recital for young ladies of society. Surely she does not remember me, but I have learned her by heart. When she was a girl of eight I found her charming and quite quick, inventing games of chance and skill for her little playmates. Her full, red lips and mahogany curls gave the promise of a ravishing natural beauty still to blossom. But I was entirely unprepared to find her again at sixteen, posed on the stage in a flood of red and amber lights. She held the opening position of the flamenco to perfection, a glorious tension trembling in her long, graceful neck and the artful attitude of her long-fingered hands. I devoured her with my eyes. She wore a traditional costume, crimson fabric clinging to her supple young frame and accents of flashing gold highlighting the rich coloring of her skin and hair. The lights focused and gleamed, the music leaped into motion, and Graciela began to dance.
The other debutantes of the evening had selected serene, composed numbers such as a subtle ballet or a local harvest folkdance, but not my darling. Blessed with forward-thinking parents she, although quite innocent of the sexual overtones, grasped something of the power and fervor of livelier dance and had been permitted to showcase her knowledge. She was ravishing. She bent and swirled, leapt and rose high, clapped her hands to the music and caught all of her audience up with a captivating, ardent sweep of her eyes. She allowed no room for escape, she demanded the respect and awe the ancient dance deserved, and, when she finished in a blaze of whirling skirts and caught breath, I was entirely convinced that she could come to understand and adopt a life of overwhelming passion as could no other woman on earth.
But, back to the present... now I have her here, and as my guests file out, whispering amongst themselves of her grace and beauty, I move to stand by her bed and let my vision play over her body. She is divine. Her small, high-arched feet and strong, rounded calves lead up to long thighs and a patch of soft, cinnamon-colored curls. From feet away I can smell the natural scent of roses, vanilla, and musk that curls up from her unblemished skin. Her waist is petite but curves down across the flat plain of her stomach into well-molded, sensuous hips and, moving upward, yields to the small mounds of her adolescent breasts and the slightly muscled curve of her arms. Her face makes me catch my breath, her striking features exotically marked by the mixed Spanish-Turkish heritage to which her father does not admit. Her curls fall back in unruly profusion from her high brow and, though they are closed now, I know her eyes to be of a startling aquamarine. I have seen her smile many times now, though never for me, and I know that when she does her face transforms into something ethereal, her love for the world beaming out.
