When anyone first looked at Esmeralda Verde, she shimmered such that the observer would need to blink. As the viewer's eyes cleared, so did the perception crystalize. Always she was seen as most appealing. Whether tall or short, younger or older, slim or voluptuous, her aspect was unique to the beholder, but even among a horde of witnesses, there was never an argument: Each could only ever describe her as 'beautiful'.
Across cultures and continents, Esmeralda's universal attractiveness was possibly the least of her many powers, but it was a well-used tool. As she traveled widely, the ageless sorceress was like a goddess to her fawning subjugated toys until she released them and moved on. Her current lackey, an albino dwarf named Principe Argot, had preceded her to Quito, Ecuador and secured for her there an invitation to bedazzle the local high society with illusion, slight-of-hand, or such pedestrian stage magic as she should conjure at their Carnival Masque Ball on Tuesday, February 9, 1937. Now, as she scanned the elegantly costumed elite in and around the top floor terrace of the Hotel Plaza Grande, she thrilled to see so many prospective new playthings.
Fifteen metres away, at a table in the main bar, Germán and Isabella Vásquez chatted the way only long-married couples still much in love do. As he signaled a waiter to bring them their second champagne bottle, he nodded toward the dancing throng and suggested, "The kids are out there somewhere having fun, Bella, shall we join them before the band breaks and the magician begins?" He looked lustily past her sapphire-and-diamond pendant to her blue sheath's plunging escote and added, "Maybe they will play a tango."
Isabella flushed the same as she had twenty years earlier when she first met Germán, to whom she had already been formally affianced by her parents for over two years since her twelfth birthday. Nine years her senior, he was a dashing young cosmopolitan man just returned home from completing his studies in Seville. While they danced at her quinceañera which, not coincidentally, was also their wedding party, he had confided, "Things are not so good in Spain. They remain neutral, but I am glad to be with you, here." Dipping her low, then snapping her back upright with dizzying speed, he had growled liquidly, "You will find I am a lover, not a fighter!" The passion he ignited in her at that moment had never quelled.
"Sí, vamos a bailar," Isabella breezed with a loving smile as she set down her empty glass. When he had pulled out her chair and she was standing beside her husband, she put aside all thoughts of her unprotected vulnerability. Melting against his tuxedo, she snaked her right arm around his waist and whispered, "Am I as desirable as when I was but a girl?"
Germán, stealthing his left hand between her upper arm and ribcage, burrowed behind her backless dress's shoulder strap. As he cupped her mature breast's smooth naked skin and tweaked its fat nipple, he gently chastised, "Don't be a prick-tease, Bella. You are more desirable to me every day, but I have a calendar, also. I know I must wait another ten days before I may come into your parlor."
Isabella sucked in a short sharp breath as a racing thrill shot from her heart to her womb. Swallowing the sudden lump in her tight throat, she murmured, "My house has more than one door, you know. We may be cautious and still celebrate." She craned her neck and kissed him sweetly as she asked, rhetorically, "¿Sí, mi cariño?"
"El alcalde keeps a room permanently rented here," Germán replied huskily, sotto voce. "Perhaps, if you feigned some woman-trouble or other, I could persuade him to give me the key..."
Isabella patted Germán's cheek lightly and shook her head, "No, my love, it is better that we wait until we are home in our own bed. Besides, we have looked forward to the famous illusionist that Doña Escobar has imported from Trinidad to entertain us. Let's have our dance and see the show!"
While their folks were threading their way to the dance floor, twenty-year-old Alejandro Vásquez crutched his hands under his trembling sister's armpits and hauled her from her knees to her feet between two potted palms in a very dark corner. Pulling up the eighteen-year-old's strapless gown's top, he squeezed her tits back into place behind its satin-lined underwired cups, and praised, "Eso fue muy bueno, mijita... I am proud of you. Did your light-headedness clear up? I also know another treatment..."
Cumandá Vásquez nodded and clung to her big brother's biceps as she continued to lean on him for support. Not even in her wildest and most emotional moments, when she was masturbating alone in her bed, had she ever imagined herself doing for him what she had just done. As she tongued a small gob of his spunk from her mouth's corner to her cheek and then swallowed, she thought confusedly, "It was wrong. I ought to be ashamed, but it was wonderful, too!" Not knowing what else she could or should say, she answered aloud in a hoarse whisper, "Sí. Me siento mejor... but, I am a little tired. Will you walk me back to our table, 'Jandro?"
By the time the sated siblings returned to the bar, the orchestra had quit playing and Doña Escobar was near the bandstand, microphone in hand. "Damas y caballeros," she began. "May I present tonight's entertainment? Fresh from her triumphant tour of The Caribbean, we have engaged Esmeralda Verde, known on five continents as 'La Hechicera', to amaze you!"
Suddenly, an emerald-green smoke-puff popped loudly beside the dowager hostess. The assembly gasped its surprise as faintly acrid wisps disappeared and the witch materialized from no one knew where. To most of the assemblage on the terrace she was moderately tall and svelte. Her ivory skin tone and long blue-black hair were perfectly set off by her chic brilliant green bias-cut satin sheath.
The body-hugging gown's gathered shoulder straps draped sleeveless in a plunging vee. A sequined side-slit split provocatively from its ankle-length hem to the left knee. Every man imagined the dress covered no lingerie at all. Every matron wished to be as slinky.
About her waist Esmeralda wore a wide gold patent leather belt with a crystal buckle. On her right hand, over her shiny green satin opera glove, she sported a twenty-five carat table-cut emerald ring. Resting dramatically in her décolletage, on a long eighteen karat gold chain, an impressive pear-cut forty carat emerald sparkled among diamond chips.