Chapter 10

‘Bloody hell, it’s huge.’ Most of it was wet and shiny and glistened in the light, the remainder was dry, matt, smooth and brown. Hugh thought it was a great image. Even allowing for his egotistic delight in his own handiwork, the picture was good; he’d caught every detail with pin-sharp clarity, from the shiny wetness of the stretched pink lips that clutched eagerly around the dark shaft, to the arched tension of Susie’s straining body and the young man’s apparent aloofness as yet another orgasm rippled through her.

‘Fucking fantastic,’ Hugh murmured to himself, as he held down the mouse button and dragged the picture across the screen, examining it critically.

There was no need for him to be checking so closely, since all the relevant material was already in London. His filter had worked perfectly and his pictures were even more perfect. He’d shot everything on his new digital camera and emailed the best pictures the next morning while Susie was still asleep. Well, the best pictures for the paper, he thought smugly, the ones with the group of eager amateur photographers crowded round Susie’s naked form while she played with herself, the ones with them reaching out to touch her with expressions of lustful desire on their faces, the ones of them screwing her and being sucked by her - all the ones with identifiable faces that would incriminate when they appeared on the front page.

But in between those ‘working’ pictures, Hugh had also taken shots for his private collection, where the subject of the pictures was not the group of men but the girl at their centre, in detailed close-up. These pictures of Susie being fucked would soon be appearing on numerous adult websites, with the faces suitably blurred or masked so there would be no comebacks.

There was little money to be made in such a plan, but the power it gave him, the knowledge that Susie’s pretty little pussy was exposed to the world, that her intimate moments of delight as her fingers gave her relief or the huge black erection thrust into her - this was his reward, this was his secret pleasure. And he was enjoying it now, poring over the computer screen, selecting the pictures he would publish, choosing the ones which revealed the most - not just her nakedness, but her character, her being. He could see the need, the lust, the pleasure, not just in her face, but in every line of her straining body. These were his best work ever.

‘This is your best work ever,’ stated the editor on the telephone, even though he hadn’t seen the ones Hugh thought were the best ever. ‘The pictures are perfect, the faces clear, and they’re the right people, too. Just what we wanted; one of them is definitely the opposition candidate, and one of them we think is the mayor, false beard and all!’

Refraining from disappointing his boss by revealing that the bushy black beard was all real and therefore the person behind it was not the local mayor, Hugh basked in the warmth of the editor’s approval for a few moments longer, before delivering his pièce de résistance.

‘They’ve asked me to go back again,’ he said. ‘At the weekend.’

‘You?’

‘Well, us; Susie was quite a hit, actually.’ Hugh was reluctantly forced to share the credit, but added nastily, ‘Seemed to enjoy it as much as they did, if you ask me. Couldn’t get enough. I suppose that’s why they want us back.’

‘Back where?’

‘To another of their little get-togethers.’

‘We don’t need it, to be honest. We’ve got everything we want with this lot. No need to stay around and repeat the exercise. Just pack your bags and come on home.’

‘But it’s not another photographic night,’ Hugh argued. ‘It’s a party. A party with a difference, they told me. Fancy dress, no holds-barred and anything goes. At Mendlesham.’ Hugh had deliberately waited with that one, before dropping it into the conversation like a well-timed bomb. There was a short delay before it exploded.

‘Mendlesham?’

‘That’s what he said.’

‘But that’s... it’s...’ The editor’s voice tailed away into silence as he contemplated the list of rich and famous people likely to be at Lord Crispin’s weekend party, and then thought about the sort of compromising activities they might get up to if the party was as wild as Hugh had suggested it might be. Moments like this were what gave tabloid editors a hard-on, and he savoured it for some time, enjoying it rather more than his last visit to Soho’s most sumptuous gentleman’s club - of which he was a life member, naturally - until his pleasurable anticipation was interrupted by Hugh, adding more fuel to an already raging furnace.

‘This might be the swingers’ club we came here for originally,’ he stoked helpfully, although he was sure the editor had already thought that far himself. But there was no point in taking chances. Not when he wanted to go to this party as badly as he did. The opportunity to indulge in his favourite passion - taking pictures of people indulging in passion - was almost limitless, and he wanted to go more urgently than he’d ever wanted anything else in his life.

‘Okay,’ said the editor slowly, and Hugh released the breath he’d been holding. ‘We’ll hold over the story for a week, while you two go to the party. As long as Susie doesn’t mind, of course.’

‘Oh no, boss, not at all. She loves it.’ Hugh meant that remark quite literally, but the editor either didn’t notice or didn’t care. And so it was settled. They’d go to the party armed with all the secret recording devices Hugh could muster, and get as much dirt on as many people as they could manage in one evening.

Hugh switched off his mobile with a malicious grin, clicked the mouse button and watched a fresh picture unravel on screen. Flat on her back, legs wide apart, Susie was holding herself open with the outstretched fingers of one hand and aiming a cock between her thighs with the other.

The expression on her face was one of desperate frustration, but in the next shot, with the stubby erection comfortably buried to the root, the frustration was gone, replaced by exquisite relief. In isolation neither picture was as expressive as the pair, and Hugh sniggered nastily as he gazed between them. ‘Oh yes,’ he said to himself, ‘she loves it all right.’

What Susie didn’t love, as Hugh discovered, was being told that it had been decided she would be reliving the previous night’s experiences on a grander scale in a few days’ time, and as a result she was irritable and he wisely refrained from pursuing the matter, switching into full oily charmer mode, fixing coffee and food and running her a bath - which he naturally watched in secret on his hidden cameras, recording it for posterity as well.

By late afternoon Susie was feeling more resigned to the whole plan and more receptive towards the instigator of it, following a long hot soak and something to eat.

Drowsily content she succumbed to Hugh’s suggestion that they should attend the party on Saturday, mostly because of the lure of the celebrity guest list and potential for front page headlines. Or so she told Hugh, and to an extent herself, and if Hugh was fooled, deep down inside she wasn’t. In truth, the prospect of being the centre of attention once more was not only arousing, but highly compelling.

She slept well again that night, eased into a peaceful slumber by the waves of pleasure produced by her gentle fingertips. Watching the bedcovers quiver, knowing what was happening beyond the reach of even his ingenuity and the best technology Japan had to offer, Hugh cursed silently, and for the first time in a long while looked through his library before selecting a video to watch. It was the day Susie first arrived in Norfolk, and Hugh settled back in his chair as her image entered the bedroom...

Next morning Hugh broached the subject of the party, and its particular fancy dress theme, which he’d so far failed to mention to her.

‘A Roman orgy?’ she asked, raising an incredulous eyebrow. ‘In Norfolk?’

‘Well, you know, Boadicea and all that.’

Susie had quite forgotten that the avenging Queen of the Iceni had been a Norfolk lass. Norwich, in fact, a woman spurred into violence by the rape of her daughters by some lecherous Roman tax collector.

‘I thought you could be Cleopatra,’ he suggested.

‘Now that really is ridiculous,’ she scoffed. ‘She was Egyptian.’

‘Yes, but she always wears a crown,’ he said meaningfully. ‘Very useful things, crowns... especially if you wanted to hide a camera.’

Susie saw the point at once. Togas and tunics provided little in the way of hiding places for half a kilo of high-tech hardware, and few Roman noblewomen carried handbags. ‘Surely just a little one, for lipsticks or something,’ she protested, but Hugh would have none of it.

‘Strict period costume, I was told,’ he said adamantly. ‘Strict period costume. That means no modern bits and bobs.’

‘Well how are you going to hide one on your costume?’ she demanded. ‘Mark Anthony didn’t carry a briefcase, did he?’ Hugh smirked odiously, and she knew he’d done something clever. Fumbling among the rubble of a worktop strewn with electronic components, bits of wire and various tools, he produced a broad leather belt and pouch, from which dangled an authentic-looking Roman sword in a decorated leather scabbard.

‘Recorder in the pouch,’ he boasted triumphantly, camera in the hilt. ‘He pointed to where three large jewels embellished the handle of the sword. ‘It’s the big one,’ he said unnecessarily, because now she was examining it closely, Susie could tell that although two of the stones were coloured glass the largest of the trio was a plain, impersonal black: a lens. She handed it back without a word. It was a masterpiece of Hugh’s art, she had to admit; invisible, simple and under direct control of its operator. By resting his hand on the sword hilt, like any swaggering fancy-dresser pretending to be a Roman general, Hugh could point the camera in any direction, at any subject, without anyone ever being suspicious. It was clever, but she couldn’t bring herself to praise him.

‘There’s one in your crown, too,’ he said, reaching for a shiny gold object hidden among the debris of his workbench. ‘A bit heavy, but it’s all self-contained. You can take it off whenever you like. Just remember to put it on something strategically positioned and point it in the right direction.’

‘Where’s the rest of it?’ she asked.

‘That’s it. All of it. It’s a self-contained unit and all you have to do - ’

‘No, not the camera,’ she interrupted. ‘The costume.’

‘Oh, just get a big white sheet or something. You can fix it up.’

‘What about you?’

‘Me?’

‘Your costume.’

‘Got it already. From the hire shop near the theatre.’

‘Oh, thanks very much,’ she sulked.

It took an afternoon for Susie to complete her own costume, after an hour in the library looking for pictures of Cleopatra. But by the end of the day she had what she needed, and after only a brief outing on Friday morning she’d acquired her own stroke of genius - a dark straight wig with a fringe low over her eyes. Not only did it look good, but everyone would know it was a wig and not be surprised if she had to wear her crown at all times in order to keep her hair on. She thought herself very clever. Perhaps not as clever as the ornate golden object with its snake design, the neck and head raised to strike, the gaudy eyeball pattern painted on the cobra’s outstretched hood acting as perfect camouflage for the well-positioned lens, but very clever nonetheless.

‘I wonder what you’ll see at the party,’ she asked the cobra, lying back on her bed, holding the crown up high with one hand, pulling her skirt up with the other, seeing herself as she imagined she would be on Saturday night, white gown pulled roughly aside, legs held apart by eager hands, fingers touching, pushing, penetrating.

Pulling her panties aside she let her fingers trace a fiery path up and down the soft pink lips, feeling the heat, feeling the wetness, feeling them open wider, asking her to push deeper.

Frowning with concentration Hugh twirled the buttons on his control panel, switching from camera to camera, cutting between the wide shot of Susie on her back across the bed with her knees high and wide and the close-up view, frame filled with wet pinkness and thrusting fingers.

But as Susie’s thoughts joyously travelled every known path of human depravity with herself at the centrepiece, revelling in the imagined sensations, Hugh’s pleasure was slightly dulled by his own perception of what Saturday night had in store. He’d already received one phone call from a member of the camera club, asking if Hugh’s pictures had also assumed a somewhat murky appearance, as if taken underwater. Secretly delighted at his own success, Hugh had managed to share the poor man’s disappointment without giving the game away, but now realised that part of his Saturday evening at least would be spent comparing notes and recriminations with the other members of the club who were likewise distressed by their lack of photographic success.