Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (46 page)

The slippers fell silent as a mannerman
wandered by to inspect their bikinis, resumed their noisy banter at
his departure.

Had the man found either woman improperly
attired, wearing the wrong color for example, she would have been
tied at the wrists to one of the hemp lines undergirding the canvas
ceiling. Her bikini would have been gently removed, then she would
have been strapped by a moistened fabric strap—nipples, posterior
and crotch—till she was twitching from the reprimand, and carefully
and correctly attired by his hand. The Merkin almost wished it had
happened, or even better that he could perform this function
himself, but he was already quite aroused and such intimate and
unstructured contact with a pretty woman would have resulted in his
helplessly licking and sucking and fucking her, to the complete
eradication of his dignity.

No… that was the reason for the mannermen.
And his flower garden.

Striking off to the right, the Merkin padded
his way down to a well-occupied region of the laundry and was
shortly striding up a giant fabric sleeve. Servants hustled
deferentially from his path—he was easily recognized anywhere he
ranged due to the unique fringe of hair at his lips—and he took
three progressively smaller sleeves up to the highest levels of the
Tent, arresting at the vigilantly doormanned entrance to the calyx
dormitory.

Doormen were specialized servants. They were
trained by the Dowser to remember any face they saw, which was
something the mannermen couldn’t do at all—their perception was
completely fixed to extrinsic qualities of personhood such as
clothing and accouterments. The Merkin used doormen all over the
Tent for their singular ability to police its complex privileges of
access, and even had fancy uniforms to distinguish them, replete
with buttoned vests and smart-looking caps. They formed an
automatic hierarchy, and he only had to deal with the top doorman;
his orders automatically propagated down from there to the other
ones in service to the Tent. The fellow stationed before his flower
garden allowed no man but the Merkin to enter it, and dutifully
swept the curtained arch wide at his approach.

Within, a slipper enveloped by a flowery,
mint-colored ensemble straightened at his presence. His
gardener.

“
Arrange a dox of flowers in
the moss grotto,” he instructed, and she stalked off to see this
done as he repaired to the big gnome-pumped tub in a nearby hall to
bathe. Canvas sinks were only available in the laundry, where the
underside of the Tent was directly permeated by fresh water—all
higher levels of the Tent got their supply courtesy of flow gnomes
with posterior intake hoses drawing from the lowest level. He
soaped himself thoroughly, washed off and stepped out as water
drained back to the laundry through another flexible
conduit.

The garment bag he had brought held a bulky
black and maroon trefoil-patterned suit tessellated by an almost
invisible threadwork at the lapels. It was the latest style—his sew
gnomes had just begun to produce the design. His swarthy reddish
shirt was cut from the finest linen he possessed, exquisitely soft
against his skin. The tie he had chosen was a wide persimmon plain
dotted by a round silver disk.

Clean, freshly attired and psychologically
rehearsed for what would follow, the Merkin traversed the twisting
fabric corridor from the bath to his most exclusive garden. Pausing
one last time to estimate his long-condensing arousal, he
entered.

Under the sensual radiance of a stylishly
robed gnome lay a rumpled terrain of shaggy green fabric, artfully
staged in soft, randomly descending steps to form a low glade at
the center. There, women sprouted from the ground upside-down,
bound from head to abdomen in stem-like sheathes of emerald linen,
stockinged legs emerging as figurative stamen from upturned fabric
skirts. Their arms were trapped behind their backs—they were
totally immobilized within their peduncular jackets and blind to
the affairs of the garden—but their thighs shifted freely among the
linen petals blossoming high from their waists.

This elaborate arrangement of flesh was not
as whimsical or fatheaded of intent as it might have seemed. His
spies said that the Dowser and Gnomon consorted with women on
casual, even functional terms, but the Merkin was never so
incautious.

Unlike the other judges, he had the sagacity
to acknowledge that the female sensuality was the most potent and
mysterious of all phenomena, subtly but inevitably surpassing his
estimation. As such, it could only be safely engaged where the
context of interaction was steeply advantageous to the man
involved.

But what
was
that context? The Merkin had
endlessly labored over this question, eventually settling on the
floral paradigm; it offered an optimal combination of security,
secrecy, intimacy and aesthetic, rendering an intricate means of
negotiation through a simple concept.

He stepped down into the garden and strolled
among the flowers, eyes narrowed in pleasure. Legs kicked gently,
rustling colorful, upturned skirts to fan intimate odors. He
inhaled the musk of vaginal excitation drifting in tiny
cross-currents about the glade. For a while he did not touch
anything, letting the anticipation build.

A subconscious predilection led him to the
lithe, modestly widened limbs of a red-blossomed flower and he
stopped before it, hands braided behind him, eyes closed, breathing
deeply. His erection strained the crotch of his trousers, and he
exulted in the patience he demonstrated before its beauty. Sensing
his proximity perhaps, the flower twitched, and a fantastic aroma
clouded the Merkin’s head.

He leaned forward into the ambit of her
flared skirts, gently drawing them down to expose her to the
crotch. Her long legs, straight-aimed but slightly separated, drew
demurely together at this; a delightful reticence that he
cultivated while it could last. Fingering the seam of her left
stocking, the Merkin peeled its scarlet skein up and off with
luxuriant unhaste. He took a moment to feel it against his cheek,
then lovingly removed its twin. Then he slipped her matching
panties off with infinite appreciation for the significance of the
act, letting her feel them caress her thighs in departure, her
calves and ankles… Their fragrant warmth kissed his face.

Her limbs bent a little at the knees from
this romance, straightened again self-consciously, toes pointed
elegantly up. The poise and sensuality of her body overcame him
then, and the Merkin put one hand on each calf, proceeded from the
arches of her feet to kiss down the length of her legs. As he
descended in alternating little installments, left and right and
left, her thighs began to loosen, and when he reached her crotch
they widened in submission to show him the secret perfection of her
sex.

The Merkin inhaled deeply, drew the scent of
her scrubbed and perfumed cleft deep into his body, then swept his
face down to access its deepest pungency. He smoothed his fingers
along the oiled folds of her labia, tenderly split the lips wide to
expose her engorged clitoris.

From his pocket he retrieved a phial of
tickling oil and dribbled a little onto his fingers. With a shy
smile he lathered it onto her genitals, spread a little into her
anus, then stepped away. Moving to a purple-skirted flower with
thick legs next, he repeated the whole act.

When he was finished with them all he
withdrew to the edge of the glade. The tickling oil gently
tormented slipper genitalia as he watched, goading their upturned
legs to a helpless dancing; some kicked, others flexed and swept,
still others rubbed or gyred. A few women demonstrated a beautiful,
self-censuring poise.

He let the flowers express themselves for a
while till his sense of each slipper’s personality was
well-established. By then the oil had worn off.

The Merkin stood, rubbed his bulging manhood,
and strode with quiet anticipation to a yellow-petaled flower at
the far side. She had comported herself with great aplomb through
the trial; limbs pointed straight, swaying in a faint, imaginary
breeze with an incredibly natural, delicate artistry of effect. He
regarded her with sublime affection, in awe of her performance.

Now she would be rewarded for it.

He gently drew her thighs apart and settled
his lips to her vagina, lapped avidly at her clitoris. His pulse
sprinted, as it always did when he was connected to the source, the
center, the wellspring of all things sensual and beautiful. For the
Merkin there was no posture more essential, no joy so activated as
the oral stimulation of a woman’s spread genitalia. And there was
no practitioner more skilled in this art than himself...

His yellow flower shivered in climax, legs
drooping slackly to either side as she helplessly negotiated the
most intense pleasure of her experience, and with one hand on her
posterior the Merkin followed her there, masturbating to a
glorious, time-slowed expulsion all over her crotch.

That night there was a tension in the Tent,
suffusing the air with an uncanny energy, elusive but
omnipresent.

He could not sleep, restlessly paced the
deserted region of the laundry where his bed now resided—a slovenly
territory of dresses, lingerie, slacks and jackets and towels and
blankets strewn in unsorted dunes under the carnelian glow of a
desolate gnome with mismatched socks. He had been forced to remove
the bed from its location in the heated canvas sink where it
formerly resided; the area was now relentlessly guarded by
mannermen due to its unique vascular connection to the Lap.

He had done this in secrecy, as no one could
be allowed to know where he slept. It had required the aid of a tow
gnome, which could pull with the strength of many men. He looped a
thick hemp stage line about the creature’s waist and tied the free
end to the ankles of one bed poster, then taking its hand in his
own he had walked with it, guiding it along as they dragged the
giant furniture from its isolated pool over to the nearest channel
wide enough to give it passage. Then he had floated the bed down a
series of connected waterways deep into a long-abandoned region of
the laundry.

Now it drifted in a larger, crescent-shaped
water that was nowhere deeper than his waist, and lukewarm to touch
like the rest of the sinks in the laundry. It was the same bed; a
floating, circular affair with three big drawers in its base, one
of which could be opened, and three posters shaped like pairs of
strong female legs supporting a huge fabric canopy. But he missed
the heat and periodic effervescence of its old berth, where it had
always resided. He just couldn’t imagine sleeping there now with
other men constantly looking on.

Vapor restively swirled high in the sky
above the park where the clouds endlessly wheeled, charged with
brilliant but fugacious equalizations of desire the Merkin could
feel but not see. Lightning. No thunder sounded to reach his ear,
but he sensed a storm in formation, massing slowly across the long
reign of night.

The Dowser

The morning after their flight from the hotel
and its treacherous employees, Emma was lingering in Dean’s salon.
Her inebriation had finally dissipated to a hazy dismay she was
suppressing like the others. Ione didn’t want the drummer to know
anything about what had happened to them last night.

Emma sighed, shrugged a little lower into the
gentle embrace of the couch. The wide front window conveyed an
intricate spectacle of city life; the deep valley in which it was
all distributed allowed the inhabitants to regard the whole breadth
of their civilization, and Emma stared onto countless roads and
houses and buildings that swept up to the encircling plain of sand.
It was not hard to navigate about the City; the Dowser’s Club on
the big hill, the Gnomon’s Tower, and the sky-shouldering vapor
column from the park between them were infallible visual
references.

“
Deano!” someone shouted,
banging on the latched front door.

“
Dean the
machine!”

“
C’mon, open up man…” a
third voice complained.

Emma ignored them, in no mood for another
round of tiresome flirtation with his friends. None of them could
rival Mark’s intelligence or charisma, or Dean’s sensational
artistry, constantly and violently confirmed from his music room as
he practiced.

Manassa had gone down to the park and its
clothing boutiques earlier, likely motivated by her voluptuous
scale, which strained the possibilities of Dean’s guest closet,
limiting her ability to leave the hill. Ione and Mark were out
cruising the streets in his big green convertible, planning things
Emma couldn’t imagine.

She worried about Mark,
knowing they would have to give their troubled lover some relief
soon. This would be awkward to attempt in Dean’s place, especially
with his buddies hanging around day and night. It took real privacy
and coordination to surprise Mark with the bondage and discipline
ritual necessary for his fulfillment, which wasn’t just a matter of
physical restraint. They felt ridiculous trying to dominate him
with his cooperation the few times they tried—he
had
to be trapped when he
was asleep. Mark probably wanted independent accommodations as
desperately as Ione.

Dean thundered on down the hall, and Emma
snuggled with herself and listened for a while, sipping a pale
bottle of fruity, diluted stillwater that conferred just a mild
warmth. The noise didn’t bother her. She liked Dean and the
hard-partying life he exemplified. And she admired his ambition; he
was preparing for an audition at the Dowser’s Club later that
night.