A Girl's Adventure - full length erotic novel (12 page)

Weird. When she was 17, a boy she had taken home from the disco had tried to stick his thing in her mouth while her dad was in the next room watching the late movie on TV. They had been kissing and groping and suddenly it was there, smelly with fags and cheap lager, probing at her open lips, and it managed to get between her teeth before she knew what it was. She bit down as hard as she could and the boy screamed and was rolling around on the floor clutching his wounded pride when her dad came belting in wondering what all the commotion was about. She just shrugged and he shrugged and she never knew for sure whether her dad had guessed what had happened. Anyway, cocks in her mouth were a no-no.

Two years had gone by and now, Greta couldn’t imagine anything more perfect, more beautiful, more natural. Richard’s long, polished, glassy-smooth talisman was like a jewel, like a sculpture carved on another planet, and seemed to have been designed to slip into her mouth, her bum, her greedy wet pussy. He completed her, made her whole. Richard’s cock was a deity from Olympus and she was his hand maiden,
his mouth maiden
. She worshiped the phallus.

Greta was getting emotional, frenzied, moving mechanically, covetously, and he stopped her, holding the side of her head and easing her gently away before his climax burst into her mouth as she craved. He kept a grip on his essence and spent ages licking out her two holes, his cunning tongue taking the warm juice from her pussy to oil her bottom. When his hard cock probed at the slippery pleats of her arse it slithered in painlessly, pressing through the tender walls to massage her singing tingling clitoris. He moved without haste, bringing her along slowly, steadily, until she burst like a flower and Greta realised with immodest pride that this was her first anal orgasm. The first proper one. She panted like a pony and he turned her round and kissed her on the mouth.

This was the first time that Richard had made love to her without any slaps or spanks, and his black leather belt remained in the loops of his trousers. He kissed her eyes and kissed her seashell ears and when he got up to dress, he must have seen in the amber glow from the streetlight outside the wretched look on her face. He bent to kiss her brow.

‘You are doing very well, Greta,’ he said. ‘I am going to be so proud of you.’

He left then, left her alone, her body pulsing blissfully, and she wondered what it was she was going to do to make him proud of her. Not that it mattered. She would do anything.

H
OW DO YOU DRESS
for a count? She was annoyed at herself for considering such trivia because one thing she did know was that you dress for the upper crust the same way as you would dress for Dirty Bill, whom she thought of as a good representative of the lower orders. Nobles aren’t special, but she had to admit that they do make you feel special when you are in their company. Greta had met few knights of the theatre in her time. They were just like everyone else – they just had better diction and louder voices.

Still, a count! And an Italian at that.

She spent a long time in the shower washing off the last of the paint. She still had traces of yellow on the soles of her feet and had to balance on one leg to scrub it off. She warmed henna oil in her palms and smoothed it over her arms and legs, her sides and back, under her neck and into the hollow of her collar bones. The little bump of her tummy, which she considered totally sexy, was still putting in an appearance and her breasts had become quite a handful. They were just so
out there
, so perky and inquisitive, her nipples a deeper shade of red and so firm they throbbed for attention. She gave them a squeeze and suddenly remembered Tara Scott-Wallace tripping out of Hades with Gustav. The little minx still wasn’t home.

Greta spent like
an hour
going through the skirts and tops in the two bedrooms. Girls tend to have heaps of clothes and they all get mixed up in one giant jumble sale, as Richard had noted with his tut tut tutting.

She closed her eyes and held her breath. It was
the morning after the night before.
Richard had made love to her like a hero in a story book, and while she had come to enjoy all the dares and derring-do, the trappings and thrashings, Greta felt like a new person, complete, invulnerable, contented. It seemed as if living inside her all these years, there had been a shop window dummy, a marionette on strings, a lifeless puppet filled with other people’s thoughts and opinions, or having no opinions at all. She was the frightened girl who had run away from the theatre like poor little Orphan Annie. The girl had gone, waved goodbye from the deck of a ship sailing to the new world. She was a woman now. The strings guiding the marionette had broken and Greta had the feeling that she was becoming exactly who she always should have been. Confident. Compelling. Well-disciplined. She could see her profile in the mirror, everything rounded, soft, feminine. Greta adored her new life and realised with a stab of panic that she was totally, outrageously happy.

Ohmygod, the time!

Greta opened her eyes. She ran her gaze over the heaps of clothes and finally plumped for the demure but practical look and laid out a white bra and panties, a fitted, rather formal black skirt of the sort Miss Moneypenny might wear, and a white blouse that buttoned sensibly but left a hint of cleavage like a mystery or a promise. Finally, she chose the pink jacket she had once worn as a bridesmaid when Antonia from school married a South African old enough to be her grandfather and richer, she had whispered, than the man who stole the golden goose. In his honour, Greta put on a gold crucifix on a short chain and, before dressing, sprayed scent in the air and shivered as it rained in fairy kisses over her bare skin.

She painted her lips pale pink, brushed mascara over her eyelashes and trembled with vague excitement as she recalled the all-knowing eye of Pegasus staring back at her from Vanlooch’s painting. She was all the things he had captured on canvas, a butterfly girl on angel’s wings, a renaissance woman bursting from the husk and transforming into something air-borne and mythical.

Madame Dubarry had been right. When this week was done, she would never return to the shoe shop again.

Under Tara’s bed, she found the black heels she’d been searching for and concluded as she studied her reflection in the mirror that she looked every inch like the City girls who would come crashing into the tube rustling their newspapers at South Kensington.

She clickety-clicked her way along the pavement with the slightly puzzled look of a celebrity, something she needed to practise, and blithely ignored the builders emerging from a white van with gaping mouths and broken teeth. Did they really imagine the ‘
Bleeding hell, look at the tits on that,
’ and,
‘
I’d give her one up the Khyber any day...
’ was going to win their way into a girl’s knickers?

Greta weaved a path across the main road to the Underground and realised the moment the little bald man touched her derriere that he was bitterly disappointed. Everything was tightly tucked and neatly put away. His hands roamed her hip bones and across her tummy. He gingerly cupped her breasts when the lights dimmed and his hands fell away as they brightened again, the bulbs hissing, the rails screaming, the crowd squeezing them so tightly together she could feel his modest erection poking hopelessly at her thigh like an accusing finger.

She turned to face him. His head was just below her chin, his nose resting in her blouse. She slipped her hand down his trousers and his eyes went pop as she fished about for the little worm trapped in his Y-fronts. His lips parted and a tear jerked into his eye as it wriggled into her palm. She didn’t need to move about. The train was rocking and rolling, nursing the warm croissant of flesh in intermittent jerks, and it was all going rather well when the driver slammed on the steel brakes and they were thrown apart.

A look of distress came into his features as he stumbled backwards over his briefcase. Greta was about to topple on top of him, but a steadying hand came to the rescue.

‘Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut,’ she heard and turned to the man with the bowler hat, another regular in their carriage. He was staring down at the little bald man as if at a football hooligan.

‘Thank you,’ Greta said.

‘A pleasure, my dear,’ he replied, and manoeuvred her away from the bald man as if for protection.

They remained separated for the rest of the journey and Greta gave her companions a little wave as she stepped out at Green Park. She set her long legs in motion along the platform as the train vanished into the tunnel and was aware of her reflection in the glass fronts of the advert displays as the escalator rose like a stairway to heaven. The sun outside was warming the pavement in Piccadilly and she hummed the music from Hades as she ambled through the jostling throng.

Life, she concluded, was more fun when you don’t take it too seriously, when you just let things happen. She had once read on a birthday card the message: ‘Be yourself and try to be happy. But first be yourself.’ Greta considered it extremely good advice.

Madame Dubarry was sitting in the staff room smoking a cigarette with a gold filter ringed in red lipstick and stood to kiss Greta’s cheeks when she entered. She studied her outfit.

‘Very fetching,’ she said.

‘You, too. That’s gorgeous.’

‘It is a woman’s duty, don’t you think?’

‘Women seem to have lots of duties,’ Greta answered.

They both smiled. Greta watched the smoke rise in curls from the ashtray and did something so naughty she would think about it for the rest of the day: she took a drag from Madame Dubarry’s cigarette and her head started spinning.

‘I thought you’d given it up.’

‘I had, no I have,’ said Greta. ‘I can resist anything except temptation.’

‘You should always do whatever you feel like,’ said Madame Dubarry and smoothed down the folds of her smart frock as if for Greta’s benefit.

Madame Dubarry had only ever worn black suits, but the day before she had switched to white and this morning she was wearing a pink paisley A-line frock that fell an inch above the knee and showed her girlish figure to best affect. Her hair, always severely held in a French pleat, had been released and tumbled in raven’s wing curls about her shoulders. Her eyes seemed brighter, glinting like black stones, and her lips were scarlet like a gypsy.

There was another change, too, and when Greta had first entered the shop it was several moments before she realised that soft music was issuing from speakers set up on the shelf behind the counter, and there was a stack of CDs next to a brand new stereo. It wasn’t long before the bell was chiming and people were dancing across the burgundy carpet, slipping into new shoes and waltzing out with a distinctive red bag on rope handles swinging from their shoulders, the name of the store in gold lettering letting everyone know they were blessed with good taste.

‘Sex and Strauss, it always works,’ Madame Dubarry whispered during a brief lull, and then the bell was ringing again.

Greta heard Madame Dubarry laughing on several occasions and watched her become coquettish when a tall, elegant man made his way through the pattern of sunlight piercing the windows like a matador crossing the
sol y sombra
of the bullring. They spoke Spanish. The bullfighter bought two pairs of shoes and took Madame Dubarry off to lunch... and it was only 10.30 a.m.

‘You’ll be all right on your own,’ she said.

Madame Dubarry skipped along on tiny steps and Greta didn’t get her break until four o’clock, when her boss returned with puffy eyes and a faraway expression.

‘You look like you’ve fallen in love,’ Greta teased.

‘In lust, my dear, in lust,’ she replied, and Greta understood exactly what she meant.

Madame Dubarry was aware that Greta had an appointment with Count Ruspoli, and as it was so late she gave her the rest of the day off.

Greta didn’t want to be too early. Wasn’t it a lady’s prerogative to be late? She grinned and wondered what Richard thought of the old cliché. She was strolling along on her way to Pret, oblivious to the men taking note of her presence, but changed her mind and set off in the opposite direction. She made her way towards Soho and in Golden Square there was an internet café where she ordered sparkling water and went online.

She tapped in the word Pegasus and googled down the list. The flying horse had quite a history and was even a constellation with eight major stars;
more than Titanic!
Medusa with her snake hair and mesmerizing gaze was the creature’s mother, born from her blood when she was slain by Perseus, which wasn’t very nice but to be expected when you hang out with Gods. Poseidon was probably the father, which meant Medusa must have been playing the field, but Poseidon chose to ignore his equestrian progeny. It was said that one kick from Pegasus’s hoof caused the spring of Hippocrene to gush from the earth and its flow was famous for inspiring poets. ‘A muse. How lovely,’ she whispered. Zeus lured the winged horse into a golden bridle and, once tamed and disciplined, Pegasus carried thunderbolts across the night sky.

Well, well, well.

Greta typed Count Leonardo Ruspoli in Google and was disappointed that there were so few references. She did learn that he came from a long line of Italian nobility with three Popes in the family and a wayward branch related to Machiavelli. Villa Mangia Baldini, his estate in Tuscany, produced Chianti and the count had business interests in the Far East. There was nothing personal, nothing to say what he was really like.

She finally put Greta May in the search engine and nothing came up at all.

Greta walked slowly back through Soho and made her way to the hotel, which was just around the corner from the shoe shop. The doorman turned the card she gave him through his fingers for several moments. He studied her legs and her cleavage, looking her up and down with the same louche impudence as the builders in their white van, and it occurred to Greta that someone should write a book or open a school to teach men how to behave in the company of desirable women.
I am a desirable woman
, she thought with sudden pleasure, and let the thought slip away in order to pursue her thesis. Men like Richard and Gustav, like Count Ruspoli, know exactly what a woman wants and needs and for those men women will literally bend over and give everything in the knowledge that what they receive will make them truly thankful.

‘I have an appointment,’ Greta said crisply, pointing at the pale grey card, and the man awoke as if from a deep sleep. He led her to an elevator set in a lushly-carpeted passage. He pressed a button, she stepped inside, and the doorman stood back as the doors whispered to a close.

The lift rose without haste and opened on the top floor. She stepped out into a vestibule filled with flowers and tall mirrors. The solitary door was large, highly polished and half open. Greta heard foreign voices as she poked her head into the room.

A man with a fierce moustache, and not dissimilar to Madame Dubarry’s bullfighter, was directing three women in pink gingham uniforms as they carried great platters of fruit from one side of the suite to the other. The count was in an armchair by the window reading
Corriere della Sera
, the shadowy light falling in stripes across his pale linen suit. He was wearing a dark blue shirt and no tie.

‘Hello.’

He seemed surprised to see her and, as he stood, nodded his head in that old-fashioned way of men with good manners.

‘Ah, you are early, I am so sorry, we have yet to finish.’

‘Should I come back later?’

‘Good heavens, no. Come and see the finishing touches.’

He smiled now, took her hand and led her to a marble bathroom that was totally huge and where, in the sunken jacuzzi, the three women were busy assembling from the platters of fruit the perfect recreation of an Italian villa with its formal gardens and surrounding tree-clad hills. Rings of pineapple formed six columns across a palladium façade that was pale pink as if caught in the setting sun and must have been assembled from a whole market stall of mashed strawberries and cream. There were lawns of kiwis dotted with apple sculptures, sprigs of mint like olive trees, an orangery of orange slices, a lemon grove, beds of dried raisins, banked hills of greengages and cherries, mangoes lined with banana stepping stones, a fruit miracle that could easily have been created by Archimbaldo, another Italian.

The work was almost done. One of the gingham maids added a pond of pale ice cream, ‘Blueberry flavour,’ the count whispered, and the woman slid out behind the man who looked like a matador and was in fact the count’s equerry. Greta stared up at Count Ruspoli and he swept his hand through his leonine hair.