(Continued.)
Peter trotted down the stairs to the first floor and went into the lavish dining room. The table was imported from Italy, made of molded glass with a smoked finish and with transparent borosilicate legs. The white Kalio chairs that surrounded the table looked like sculptures from a modern art museum. The single serving tray sitting on the table was also exemplary; made of stainless steel and oval shaped, with highly polished handles on either end.
Finding no one else in the living room, Peter went and poked his head into the kitchen. Martha was sitting at a small side table, apparently enjoying her own dinner, but she bolted upright when she saw him.
"Can I help you, sir?" She asked.
"Have you seen my Minton?"
Martha pointed at the opposite end of the kitchen, where sure enough, his butler was pacing back and forth. Minton's attention was focused in a conversation he was having with his cell phone. The phone, Peter noted, was hued in a bright pink, and looked nothing at all like the phone his butler usually sported.
Minton soon finished up his call. As he pocketed the device, he noticed that Peter was standing there watching him.
"Sir." He nodded.
"The color suits you well, Minton." Peter teased.
"The color?" Minton asked. "Oh, you mean the phone. Heaven forbid, it's not mine. It belongs to your aunt. Victoria lent it to me in case the art exhibition proved to be less than stellar, and I suppose that it has been. I would request your leave, sir, if you would permit it, so that I may join your aunt for another evening of carousing, frolicking, and a general state of pleasant mayhem."
"You can't go." Peter said, although he didn't really mean it.
Well, he did mean it a little bit, as the young man was jealous that his own butler was getting laid, and by three women all at once, while he was in a situation tantamount to house arrest.
"In the event you might say that, your aunt is on her way here to persuade you otherwise." Minton finished off.
That was the last thing Peter wanted. He cringed at the thought of his aunt coming after him while wearing her pink camisole. "Minton, I order you to go and stand outside until she gets here. I do not want that woman chasing me all around the house!"
"As you wish, sir." Minton nodded. "I take it that you do not want to meet Eleanor, either?"
"Not right now." Peter shook his head. "Another time, perhaps. Please don't make it sound rude."
"I shall be tactful." The butler replied. "I shall simply say you are too busy with studying for your test, if that's all right. I will see you later then. Goodbye, Martha."
"Bye." Martha waved back.
Minton vanished through the opposite kitchen door and was gone. Peter turned back toward the dining room. At this point, he remembered that he'd be eating alone.
"I simply won't have it." He muttered, although he knew that the only other person in the house was his skittish maid. He turned toward the solitary figure sitting across the kitchen from him. "Martha?"
The older woman quickly stood up at attention. "Yes, sir?"
"I wouldn't like to dine alone." Peter admitted. "I would very much appreciate if you would join me in the dining room."
"Oh, I couldn't." Martha shook him off. "It wouldn't be proper."
"Very well." Peter had half expected such an answer, as he was well accustomed to the old woman's conservative manners. He strode through the kitchen door, took the short jaunt to retrieve his serving tray, and brought it back with him. Peter set his dinner on the table directly in front of Martha. "In that case, I shall eat here instead."
Martha appeared mortified, and ready to move her food elsewhere.
"I order you to sit there, until you are finished eating." Peter demanded.
"But sir..."
"But nothing." Peter said. "You are to sit there and you will eat with me. Is that well understood?"
Martha bowed her head and nodded. Cautiously, she captured a morsel of food with her fork, and pecked at it as if she were being closely scrutinized.
"Oh, come now, you can relax at least a little." Peter tried to joke with the woman, to no avail. At least, he thought, he could get a good look at her, to see if she truly bore the resemblance to the ghost as he'd first imagined.
Martha's fairly unremarkable hair was pulled back into a bun, exposing a bit of a motherly face. She had rounded cheeks spotted pink, a tiny point of a nose, and eyes that verily hid themselves from the world. Martha had a pleasant look about her, Peter felt. With the right touches: a more sophisticated hairstyle, make-up and a better wardrobe, for example, she could have elevated herself from a Plain Jane into something much more desirable. And yes, she did look a lot like the picture of Claire he'd previously looked at.
"So, tell something about yourself." Peter tried to make conversation.
"There's not much to tell, sir."
"There must be something. Were you ever married? Do you have any children?"
"Married, yes. Children, no. The husband didn't care to have any little ones."
"What was your marriage like?"
"Oh, it was a little difficult." Martha sighed, as if she'd just realized that Peter was going to keep asking questions until he'd finagled the truth from her. "The husband was a bit on the controlling side, always watching me. Always trying to keep me in his pocket, so to speak. He wouldn't allow me to go out, and he scared off my friends and all that."
"That explains why you're so shy."
"No, I've always been shy." Martha said. "Ever since I was a little girl."
"But that must have been ages and ages ago." Peter kidded, as he started working on his food. He expected some sort of mild reaction from the maid, as he was teasing her about her age, after all. He didn't get one.
As the young man ate, he considered the few women that currently surrounded him. It was much different that what he'd become accustomed to seeing back home, where his father had no less than three attractive Latina maids tidying up the various areas of the estate. In addition to that lovely scenery, several young ladies close to his age could be found in the nearby residences.
Here in La Jolla, Peter had his aunt and her friends, who were all in their fifties, and his ghost Claire, who was in her middle forties. This last example consisted of little more than a vague, vaporous state, unless she happened to become focused enough to pull on his willing wanker.
Right in front of him, however, he had Martha, who was what, forty-one, forty-two? The maid was still what he considered to be too old for him, or was she really? Martha didn't have the deeper wrinkles his aunt carried, perhaps because she was a little plump and younger.
Martha's breasts were certainly attractive to his eyes. Peter tried to consider the rest of the woman, but he couldn't really. She always kept her form well covered with her somewhat shapeless uniform. If destiny determined that Peter must succumb to an older woman, the young man decided, then he would choose Martha first, before aunt Victoria or any of her friends.
"Martha, have you ever done anything exciting in your entire life?"
The maid thought this over, as she chewed on a particularly tough mouthful. "I can't recall that I have. I suppose I may not have it in me."
Not yet you don't, Peter almost blurted out, until he realized how deeply the woman might become offended if he said that.
Very few words crossed the table during the remainder of their meal. In the end, Peter resigned himself to the library, only slightly more knowledgeable regarding his maid than when he'd first met her.
Peter was deeply absorbed in his studies a few hours later, when he sensed the ghost sliding over beside him. Like a close friend, the ghost placed its soft chin on the young man's shoulder and peered over at his books.
"Hello, Claire." Peter said, rubbing his eyes and feeling very tired after having stumbled through one too many math problems. "I don't suppose you know anything about calculus?" When he received no ready answer, he sighed, "Well, neither do I and it's driving me insane. Actually, I've had about enough of this for one night. I've an idea. Will you follow me to my bedroom?"
Instead of pulling out his willy, this time Peter simply held out his index finger.
The ghost tugged on it once.
Peter left the library and strode up the stairs. The quiet ghost floated in a circle around him wondering what he was up to. The young man stepped into his bedroom, and before you could say lickety-split, he'd shucked off his entire outfit and skipped over to the bed. He jumped into the center of it and spread both his arms and his legs wide.
"Claire, I would like for you to kiss me all over." He declared. "You may start anywhere you wish."
Eagerly, the ghost complied with the directive. She began with Peter's lips. Although Peter tried laboriously to wrap his lips or his tongue around hers, it was a futile task, for the ghost was as far from being solid as she ever was. He soon gave it up, and simply lay there and relished the attention the ghost gave to him.
Claire really did kiss him all over, starting from the top of his head, from one shoulder to the other, all the way down to his feet. She even surprised Peter by sucking on his toes. Once she was done showering him with this tender display of love, Claire went to Peter's middle. She gave the young man what one of Victoria's friends, Eleanor, would have referred to as phantasmagorical fellatio. Afterwards, the ghost was content to simply lie close to Peter's side, nuzzling its head close to his chest as a lover would.
"I do feel as if I'm exploiting you, Claire." Peter lamented. "You give me all this affection, and I can do nothing to return my own affection towards you." He ran through several scenarios in his mind, but none of them would have made Claire more concrete. He admitted, "You know, the thought of having a relationship with an older woman never even crossed my mind before I came to this place. I've since changed my outlook, thanks to you and my randy aunt. Now that I've seen your picture, I do believe that you're quite beautiful. I would have loved to have known you as a real person."
The ghost slid up a short distance, and planted a dozen or so kisses all over Peter's face.
Peter grinned, when he recalled one of his more farfetched ideas. "Please don't be offended when I say this, but I think that the maid, Martha, looks a bit like you."
The ghost gave his noodle a pull.
"You think so, too?" Peter asked, relieved that Claire hadn't thought Martha as being too far below her social status. "I know this sounds silly, but I had a notion to dress Martha up in a costume, something contemporary to your era, and..." He faltered a bit here. "That perhaps I could make love to her. I know this is stupid, but I could pretend that it was you I was making love to."
One pull was felt on his shank.
"It was stupid, I know." Peter agreed.
Two wanks.
"No?" Peter asked.
Two wanks.
