The Pleasure Quartet (19 page)

Edward was still standing in the same position, but he had dropped the robe. Clarissa had removed her white trouser suit but donned another outfit altogether. She was smoking a cigarette,
sitting on the futon and dressed all in black; patent stilettos and sheer stockings affixed to a skin-tight corselette with lace cups through which I could just see a hint of her nipples. Around
her hips, a leather harness was fastened, and attached to that, a large black dildo. Whether it was the same one that she had earlier penetrated me with or if she had a whole collection, I
wasn’t sure.

They were engaged in conversation and did not hear me enter. I stood silently for a few moments and observed them. Edward’s cock had half softened, and between puffs, Clarissa would reach
out and stroke it gently. Once, she sat up and idly licked the full length of the shaft, then took the head into her mouth just for a moment and let it fall out again, then she leaned back and drew
in again on her cigarette. He was playing with her lighter, flicking the top back and letting loose snatches of flame.

The main lights had been turned off and candles lit. One lamp in a corner remained on, casting a pleasant amber light through a thick yellow shade.

Clarissa turned to me.

‘Come on back in then, lovely,’ she said, ‘and let us admire you.’

I walked towards them and stood in front of her, alongside Edward.

His cock immediately hardened again.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he said.

I thanked him, although I didn’t really agree. I was grateful for my body, glad that it worked the way it did, but I did not believe that I was beautiful. I did not possess Iris’s
delicate beauty, like a newly budding rose, or Clarissa’s cool, languid elegance, or Matilda’s striking form.

‘She is a little gem, this one. Rough cut but so open to being polished into fine form.’

Clarissa spoke as though she thought of me not as a person but as a plaything, and implied that I might be one of many. This idea didn’t bother me. It excited me. At least for tonight, I
wanted to be Clarissa’s plaything.

She stretched a leg out between mine, flexed her foot and ran the round toe of her shoe between my thighs, encouraging me to open them further. I shuffled my feet apart, obliging her.

‘Good girl,’ she said.

She traced a path with her fingertips, over the bump of my ankle and up the sides of my calf, the backs of my knees to the inside of my thighs, then around the neat mound of my bush. She dipped
lower, outlining the shape of my lips, but careful to avoid dipping inside me. My pussy was becoming slicker. I could feel the slow rise of heat there, the gathering wetness that might make my
panties damp, had I been wearing any. I imagined a drop welling up and pearling all the way down to the floor, following the map that Clarissa had earlier drawn.

Edward set the lighter down and took my chin gently into his hand, turning me towards him.

‘May I kiss you?’ he asked.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to, but I nodded in agreement, reasoning that a kiss would make clear whether or not I was truly physically attracted to him.

His mouth met mine. His lips were full and wide, and close to him, I caught another whiff of his cologne – something generically masculine, but it had a warmth that suited him, although I
could not pinpoint the particular fragrance. He tasted of red wine, a note of bitter tannin mixed with dark fruit. His arms hung by his sides and I took hold of his hands and guided them to my
breasts. He kissed me harder, open mouthed, and his tongue touched mine, just a little. His palms were soft and dry, the brush of his skin against mine like an intimate conversation, our bodies
communing beyond the barriers of our minds.

Clarissa nudged the round of her shoe against my opening.

‘Very nice,’ she said, ‘and so unlike you, Edward, to be so restrained.’

Her lips formed a cupid’s bow and a ring of smoke drifted lazily from her mouth. She took her cigarette into her left hand and with her right, picked up a bottle of red wine that was
resting on the thick wooden bed frame, in between our two glasses. They must have opened it while I was in the shower, and between them, finished half already. She tipped her head back and
swallowed a mouthful straight from the bottle.

‘You’ve never been with a man, before, have you?’ he asked me. ‘Not even a kiss?’

‘No,’ I told him.

‘Did you like it?’

‘Yes, I did.’

There was something curiously genderless about kissing, I mused. I wondered if the same applied to sex, since as Clarissa so aptly demonstrated during our fuck on my last visit, a biological
penis was not a requirement for penetration.

‘So,’ Clarissa broke in, ‘you promised that you would be prepared for anything.’

‘I am.’

‘Good.’

She reached under the bedspread cover and pulled out another dildo and harness. Both the leather straps and the toy were a rich purple. The whole contraption looked heavy, and uncomfortable.

‘You have two options,’ she said. ‘The first: Edward fucks you. The second: you fuck Edward. Either way, a virginity lost. Which would you prefer to lose first?’

Edward had moved behind me, and was still idly running his hands over my body. His palms grazed my ribs and my body, scooped up to my breasts and touched my nipples, then over my arms and
shoulders to my neck. He lifted my hair back and kissed the hollow of my shoulder, the top of my collarbone. I was not accustomed to the manner of his caresses, and initially, was not sure how to
respond.

‘Just relax,’ he murmured, sensing my tension.

Iris was also gentle, like Edward, but her touch always tentative. By nature she was much more comfortable as the recipient of pleasure. Clarissa had been rough and forceful; she seemed to
prefer being in charge, as I usually did. Edward was somewhere in between. Languid, slow, but confident, lazily building my arousal as one might fan an ember into a blaze by blowing steady, patient
breaths.

Clarissa picked up the harness with her middle finger and dangled it in front of me. The dildo threaded through the centre swung from side to side like a pendulum.

I took it from her and then tossed it to the foot of the bed, out of the way.

‘I want Edward to fuck me,’ I said, and as the words formed on my lips I felt a surge of arousal flooding my veins.

I genuinely did want him to fuck me.

He pulled me back against him and his cock jutted into the back of my thigh, rock hard.

‘Make her wet,’ he ordered Clarissa.

She ran her fore and index fingers through the valley of my cunt and then placed them to her lips and sucked off whatever moisture she had found there.

‘She’s dripping. But a little wetter never did any harm . . .’

She stubbed her cigarette out on a silver ashtray that rested near the wine bottle and glasses and then shifted onto her knees in front of me.

Her tongue parted my lips.

I groaned.

Edward let go of my breasts and stretched in front of me, gripping Clarissa’s hair and pulling her face hard against my cunt.

‘Suck her,’ he said.

Clarissa obliged.

I was sandwiched between them, struggling to keep my balance, the hard wooden edge of the futon’s frame pressing uncomfortably against my shins. Edward kept one of his hands clamped onto
the back of Clarissa’s head, and the other he lowered to my arse. His finger travelled between the cleft of my buttocks to my opening. He pushed inside me, one finger, then two, as
Clarissa’s tongue teased my clitoris. I felt as though I might faint.

‘Ohh,’ I moaned.

Clarissa pulled away, gasping for air, and I crawled onto the bed on my knees, and kissed her. Her mouth and chin were sticky with my juices. I wanted to climb onto the dildo that still hung
between her thighs and ride her, but instead I moved into the position that I had adopted for her when we fucked, the same stance that Iris had adopted when Thomas had entered her. All fours.

He promptly flipped me over, and pushed one of my legs into the air and over his shoulder. He raised himself up over my body and I looked down and saw the head of his cock, millimetres away from
my hole. It was covered with the thin, almost clear film of a pink condom, stretched so tight that it looked as though he might burst out of it.

‘Look at me,’ he said, and I did, and he plunged inside me.

‘Oh, Jesus!’

I had seen it coming, yet his moment of entry was still a shock.

There was the sound of buckles unfastening as next to me, Clarissa removed her harness and set it aside. She began to moan softly and I could hear the slip, slap of her finger rubbing against
her own nub. She was watching us, masturbating.

I ground my hips against Edward’s, trying to feel him deeper inside me. He grunted, pushed my other leg up so both were hooked over his shoulders and his cock was filling me completely,
and yet it still wasn’t enough. I grabbed his arse with my hands and pulled him against me harder with each thrust.

He bent down and kissed me again, wetly this time, our mouths open and clumsy, teeth knocking, tongues out of time, neither of us able to co-ordinate the rise and fall of our jostling bodies and
the uncontrolled sounds of our pleasure.

I hung onto his shoulders, embracing him tightly, biting his shoulder, my legs tangled around the backs of his thighs, trapping him against me, willing him to drive inside me deeper and deeper
again, never hard enough, unwilling to beg him to fuck me even more fiercely for fear of sounding ridiculous.

Clarissa let out a strangled cry. She was nearing the point of orgasm.

Edward’s whole body tensed and I pulled him inside me and his sounds mingled with hers, a chorus of coming, and he shuddered and collapsed. I lay beneath him and continued to grind my hips
against his until his cock softened.

He kissed my cheek, and rolled off me, then threaded his arm under my shoulders and I leaned against him. Clarissa scooted up and nestled into my other side, and we fell asleep together, the
three of us, still wet and embracing.

I had mentioned the discovery of Joan’s erstwhile association with the theatre to Clarissa, and enquired whether there was any way that Gwillam and I might obtain access
to some of the Princess Empire’s records to investigate further. At first, she had appeared reluctant. An initial sweep through personnel records proved inconclusive as only the previous ten
years’ were held.

‘Might they be kept anywhere outside the theatre?’ Gwillam asked. ‘In storage?’

It appeared not and, apart from profuse bundles and dusty folders of mementos of previous shows, past programmes, photographs, cuttings, stage notes and financial papers, it seemed that the
theatre had not retained anything of a practical nature about the people who had worked there over the decades and any information that might once have been retained had by now been disposed of or
even destroyed. Living memories are seldom documented.

The news was immensely disappointing to Gwillam, as if a promising line of enquiry had been nipped in the bud. I was in two minds. After all, Joan was a relative of Iris’s and the abrupt
severance of my ties with Iris had made Joan’s memory more distant, less immediate. In addition, all the events of the past few weeks, the questioning of relationships, the new bonds I was
forging, the complications of sex, all of this still left me bewildered and confused.

Clarissa promised she would ask further questions of some of the older stage hands when the opportunity presented itself, and a week later she called me down to her office and informed me that
someone who had once worked in the props department had a vague memory of Joan and there was a remote possibility she had left something of hers behind. She had, it appeared, departed the
theatre’s employment under something of a cloud all those years back, and not bothered to gather all her belongings in the rush to leave.

Clarissa suggested Gwillam and I come to the theatre the following Sunday morning and we would go hunting for the possible papers or clothing Joan had abandoned; the older backstage guy who had
come up with the information was unsure what exactly Joan might have left behind, the news of its existence having only reached him second-hand.

It was a rainy early winter morning, the leaden sky heavy with rolling masses of low clouds, and a bitter chill clouded our breath. Clarissa was alone at the stage door in the small alley that
bordered the theatre and opened the door for us. The building was in eerie darkness, a sight I hadn’t come across before, with just the faint glow of security lights flickering across the
narrow corridors surrounding the auditorium, leading past a series of doors to the backstage areas. She had warned us to each bring an electric torch, but the illumination our trio of amateur
explorers thus provided was notably insufficient, barely forming a slither of light in front of our feet before being smothered by the surrounding obscurity. I felt as if I were living through a
Hammer horror movie as we made slow progress, reaching a concealed set of stairs that led to the theatre’s basement areas and tentatively putting one foot forward at a time as we began our
hesitant descent.

‘Couldn’t we switch the main lights on?’ Gwillam asked.

‘I haven’t got access to the central electrical controls,’ Clarissa explained. ‘They’re disabled when no one is around, to save on bills. We’re not supposed
to be here,’ she added. ‘The only reason we got in is that I did a deal with the night watchman and promised him I would keep guard on the place while he returned home two hours
early.’

‘Is there anything valuable stored here?’

‘Not really. I suppose mostly the costumes. The remaining sets in storage couldn’t really be used again elsewhere.’

By now, we had reached the third basement level. I had never been aware how far down the theatre’s premises extended.

‘I’ve only come down here once before,’ Clarissa said, ‘and that was years ago. I’m told there is a depository area of some sort. Stuff that’s been sitting
around for ages but no one can be bothered about getting rid of, let alone investigating. If Joan left anything, we should locate it there.’