Pandora's Hideaway

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

The long night in the fussy, pink, doll-covered room moved endlessly by, clock ticking slowly toward the morning hour. Mariel could hear the old-fashioned timepiece across the room, though she couldn’t see its face. How many hours past, how many left to go remained a mystery.

Her thoughts were clouded, locked in the enigma of the massive summer house, the antiquated feeling that she was turning back years, that she’d wake up in another world with servants bustling about in long skirts and white, starched aprons—serving tea on silver platters. While her mind was ruminating on past scenes, her body ruminated on the eroticism that swirled about it, unbidden and strange. Hadn’t f*****g Albert been enough to squelch her inner turmoil—a least until another day dawned? Apparently not.

Her crotch was beating for something unknown, tearing itself apart with lust… sometimes seeking out reprehensible fantasies… Jack was in the room next door, breathing, sleeping, settled in until morning. She could hear him through the walls, but not with her ears; something else seemed to fixate on the fact of him in this house, and so very close to her while she was trying to sleep. Sleeping close to scoundrels seemed dangerous.

As the clock ticked, she tossed inside the pink sheets fretfully.

A turn of the knob, the creak of the old hinges, a gust of cool air… then Albert’s hand suddenly across her mouth, silencing her surprised squawk.

“Shhhh… come with me,” he whispered, “but very quietly.”

Silently moving through the dark, through the back corridors of the house, to a door, a staircase, and then another door one flight up, Mariel followed on tiptoe.

“It’s the attic,” he whispered, as if that wasn’t obvious.

“Albert, what are you doing?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Neither could I. But why are we here?”

He didn’t answer, but moved through shadows illuminated by moonlight filtering through clouds, through the dusty windows and the blackness of the room.

Lighting a candle, Albert held it high, dispelling the last of this room’s obscure aspect.

“Look,” he pointed to a wall embedded with rusty eyebolts from which dangled frayed rope and deteriorating pieces of leather.

“What’s that supposed to be?”

He smiled, raised his eyebrows playfully and crept closer to the wall. “You got me thinking,” he said, “about the secrets in our summer attic.”

“This?”

“What do you think?” he said, as he fingered the end of the rope.

“I haven’t a clue,” she shook her head, still too groggy to understand what her fiancé was trying to tell her.

“Don’t you suppose it could be a rendezvous for kinky lovers—forerunners to the leather scene?”

“Oh, Albert, I think you’re taking this too seriously. Is this what you wonder about when you can’t get to sleep?”

“You inspired my thoughts, Mariel. You said you wanted to be bound with scarves. I know it seems as if I’m stretching, but there’s more.” Albert squatted down, fiddling with the boards beneath his feet, finally popping one free and pulling from inside a hidden compartment, a dust-covered tin box. “Just where we left them,” he smiled, as though he just unearthed buried treasure. He blew the dust away with his breath, then spoke in whispers as if the rest of the house could hear him if he spoke too loudly. “Jack and I found this when we were kids.” He opened the lid as Mariel moved closer. She’d shaken off even the hint of sleep, and her interest was as piqued as Albert’s seem to be. “Have you ever seen anything like these?” He handed her several old photographs. Sepia colored and ragged along their edges, the images rendered on paper were clear—and astounding. In the first, a voluptuous woman with long, blonde braids was bound to this very attic wall with ropes circling her wrists. She was looking back over her shoulder at the photographer, with a look of innocence and fear visible in her expression. Though she was dressed in white, what seemed to be a silk nightgown, the contours of her generous breasts, her rounded ass and her hefty succulent thighs were quite visible.

“Oh, my word,” Mariel gasped. Moving to the second snapshot, her eyes widened even more. In this one, the same woman was naked, facing forward, her breasts bound with ropes crisscrossing her torso, digging into her pasty, white flesh. Her legs were spread apart, and her arms were fastened to the wall above her. Eyes closed, head slightly c****d to the side, there seemed to be no fear in her expression, but a look of complete bliss. The third and last of the photographs was of a different woman, with much darker hair and a slimmer body—though she was still a voluptuous beauty with heavy breasts and wide hips, all fashioned into a lovely hourglass shape. She wore a boned corset that pinched her waist, and stockings attached to garters. And while her breasts were amply covered, her Venus mound, covered with a wild growth of dark hair, was completely exposed and oddly tethered to a rope. “My little mare,” was written across the bottom of the picture.

“I think her genitals are pierced,” Albert said, shocking himself with the idea.

“You’re kidding?” Mariel replied, as she squinted to see inside the hidden recesses of the woman’s body.

“Look at the back of the picture,” he said.

On the underside of the photograph, there was taped a thick silver ring the size of a half dollar.

“You think she wore this through her cunt?”

“Jack and I inspected the photograph with a magnifying glass. I’ll bet you’d see the same thing we did.”

“Who are these women?”

“I think they were my great grandfather’s mistresses. There’s also a letter.”

“Oh?” She took it from his anxious, excited hand. “I don’t have my reading glasses,” she reminded him.

He glanced down disappointed, “Then I’ll read it to you.”

Her imagination was spinning, her body suddenly as aroused with s****l need as it had been when she arrived on the island.

“It’s from ‘Colette’ to ‘My Handsome Conqueror.’ Dated July 23rd, 1904.” He looked up, snickering playfully, eyes dancing. Mariel couldn’t help but catch his enthusiasm.

Dear Sir… I am most humbly yours, captured, owned and bound to you. It is by your grace that I live. I wear your marks, relishing the fire that brings them on, how they devastate me one minute and are treasured the next. I ache in my both heart and body for our next occasion of bliss. I will kneel at your feet, kiss them lovingly, and then graciously make an offering of myself to you. Though I fear your designs for me, I promise to accept and obey your every command. And though I might falter in my visage, trust that I am roused by the swift administration of your corporeal duties to me. Your discipline is sound and well-earned. I dread it, that is true, but look forward to each demonstration of your stalwart purpose for it gives me boundless pleasure amidst the pain.

Finally, Sir, this ring that tethers me to you, I treasure each hour, each minute that it weighs heavily on my body. I think achingly of the next time you leash me in my captivity and bring me before your good friends as your gift. My heart bleeds to be at your mercy again.

Your loving and devoted slave, Colette.

“Oh, my, what do you suppose she meant by all that?”

“That she was happily my great grandfather’s s*x slave.”

“No!”

“And why not? Don’t the pictures say as much?”

“I can’t believe that any woman of her day would … it was such a prudish time… I mean.” Her face felt hot, her body roused. “Albert, why would you show me this now?”

“Our conversation this afternoon made me think of the pictures. Jack and I must have been twelve and fourteen when we found them. We ogled over them for days that summer. Then forgot them ever since. We didn’t come to Gull Island the next summer. Mother took us to Spain. And by the time we returned, I guess our boyhood fantasies had more to keep them stimulated.”

“Albert…” she whined.

“You’re flushed.”

“I don’t know what I think.”

“I shouldn’t have brought you here? You’re embarrassed, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It is quite a titillating fantasy. But I have no desire to be bound to that dusty wall.”

“I wasn’t thinking that. In fact, when I came up here tonight, I was looking for some old scarves in these trunks… and well; I saw the wall, the ropes and remembered the pictures.”

“What are you going to do with them?”

He shrugged. “I suppose they ought to go back right where I found them.”

Mariel gazed down at the three photographs, and then shoved them back into Albert’s hand. “So, did you find the scarves?”

“Hummm….” he didn’t say, but smiled and stuffed the pictures and the letter back in the box, returning it to its hiding place beneath the floorboards. Moving to a stack of old hatboxes, he opened one, pulling out several wide ribbons of silk—purple, gold and blue. “These should do.”

“You’re really going to tie me up?”

“Only if you want to be?”

She stared at his face, then at the ribbons and the wall, and around the room, then back at her fiancé’s face. “Yes,” she said. “I think I would… but I want to do it here.”

“Not in my bed?”

“Yes, here. Not on the wall, but…” she looked around. “There.” She pointed to a small bed covered in old quilts.

There was something perfect about submerging herself in things of the past—an extension of her fantasies—and though being bound was only a vague thought inside the many that took residence in her consciousness, she moved into the moment with deliberate ease.

Albert removed the first dusty quilt from the stack, and then the second, finding the third fresh, even though it smelled of mothballs and old lady’s perfume. Lying down, Mariel raised her arms above her head and spread her legs wide, waiting for her nervous fiancé to begin.

“Do you want me naked?” she asked.

“No. I like seeing the outline of your body underneath your nightgown—like the picture.” His grin was sweet and devious and perfectly innocent of the dark, deeper realm in which Muriel’s mind had taken flight. Poking through the fabric, her firm n*****s announced her arousal, in case he doubted the fact, which he did not. If Mariel had not been so much inside her own thoughts, she might have giggled seeing the distinctive outline of her fiancé’s expanding p***s knock against the front of his loose pajamas. Instead, she licked her lips at the thought of his c**k pressing between her lips for entrance in her mouth.

Albert’s poor fingers could hardly accomplish the act of binding his lover, as he clumsily wound the lengths of silk ribbon around her wrists and looked for some place on the simple cot to tie her down—finally deciding that the legs of the cot were the only available place. After several attempts adjusting the length of the bonds, he finally had her immobilized. By then, he was sweating profusely, as some unearthly sensation seemed to overtake his sense of reason.

Like a soft and delicate flower, Mariel lay wilting before him, helpless, defenseless, under his power. His mind reeled through the remainder of the scenario, realizing that he had no idea what to do with her now that she was at his mercy. At his mercy … that was Colette’s fantasy, was it Muriel’s, too?

“My darling, how does that feel?” he asked.

She turned her head toward him, opened her eyes and smiled, “Very wonderful.” There was no fear in her expression, but a serious questioning look, as if to ask what comes next?

He had no clue, and his instincts told him nothing of her need.

“Kiss me,” she finally said, drawing him into her, without arms or body, but with passion alone.

He leaned in awkwardly, giving her his lips. When she closed her eyes, he finally sat down on the bed and began to run his hands over her body, about her breasts, down her torso, and finally between her thighs. She writhed silently beneath the massage, squirming fretfully, wanting something, but couldn’t understand what that something was. When he finally pulled her nightgown up to have her flesh bare, she seemed to explode, jerking with a sudden and unexpected orgasmic wave cresting in seconds. Eager to take advantage, Albert pulled his pajamas down and climbed between Muriel’s legs, planting his erection in her tight, coming space, setting off another spasming wave of climaxes in her that brought him to a quick end.

He collapsed on her and finally rolled away, toward the attic rafters at their side.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped.

“Sorry about what?”

“I don’t know… it just… I should have…”

“Shussh,” she softly whispered, “and untie me.”

“Of course.” He scrambled quickly to undo the ribbons, rubbed her wrists where the silk had dug into her flesh and left its mark. “Was it all right?” he wondered aloud.