The Return of Colby Hodge
It was going on eleven when the rain finally ceased to fall. As Susan helped Dennis and Carmen restore some semblance of order to the kitchen, Anthony found Cassandra locking up the loft. The nearly full moon emerged between the parting clouds to illuminate the misty drive as Cassandra turned to smile up at her benefactor.
“The party went well, don’t you think?” she asked as he stretched his hand out to her.
“Marvelously well,” he agreed, leading her towards the sheltered side porch where they began to stroll up and down. “I couldn’t be happier with what you’ve done here.”
“Me?” she laughed. “You and your magical credit cards did it all.”
“You made it all come together,” he told her. “Just as I knew you would.”
“I wish this summer didn’t have to end,” said Cassandra, stopping to lean against a post and look out into the dripping forest. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Will you?” Anthony seemed pleased.
“So much!” she cried.
“Write me every day,” he told her. “Tell me what you’re doing and all about the club.”
“Will you have time for that?”
“Of course I will. Don’t you know how attached to you I’ve become?”
“Have you, really?”
“Can you doubt it?” he asked.
“I shouldn’t, after all you’ve done for Amanda and me.”
“Amanda is an adorable girl, but you’re the one I love.”
“I don’t know why you should, but it makes me very happy.”
“I’ve been obsessed with Random Point ever since I threw my first party up at the Cliff house years ago. It’s my happy place.”
“Not Broadway?”
“That’s a different happy place. But coming back to you, the fact that you were Hugo’s first Random Point girl fascinated me, especially when Amanda showed up. You were a romantic figure to me before, when you were a disappeared mystery, but when your girl arrived, it reawakened my interest in you and I had a Venus club ring made for you as the original member. I knew it would bring you to me.”
Cassandra did not think of reminding him that Eddie leaving her had been her primary motivation for migrating back to the eastern seaboard. She too was romantic and more than cosmic and understood the meaning of rings as well as he did.
“And then you arrived,” he continued, “and were just the kind of girl I like. That’s why I went with your idea and bought this place right away. I want you to stay around and be in my life.”
“Anthony,” said Cassandra tentatively, “maybe it’s presumptuous of me to even ask, I know how busy you’re going to be as soon as you get back to the city, but would you ever want me to get in touch with you if I happened to be in New York this fall?”
His face lit up and he replied, “I would take it greatly amiss if you didn’t, young lady. And you might make a note that Monday afternoons and evenings are when I’m most likely to be free.”
“I might have to visit in October. It’s my favorite month in New York.”
“Let me know when you’re coming and I’ll book you into a close by hotel. We’ll go play at my friend Isabel Bruno’s club and line up some visiting talent to come out to Random Point. “
Cassandra’s heart throbbed with gladness at not being invited to stay at his house, where Susan also lived. A hotel room promised a continuation of their erotic adventures.
“By the way,” he said, as they reentered the house through the side porch, “I’d keep an eye on Amanda. She’s looking a little unsteady on her feet. Might be time to put her to bed.”
On the way through the east wing, Cassandra passed by the open door to Carola’s bedroom and saw her sister touching up her lipstick in her bureau mirror. Since the photo shoot, Carola had changed into a black and white tulle hostess gown outfit with tight fitting satin pants.
“Are you good?” Cassandra asked her sister, joining her in front of the mirror and running a brush through her silky brown hair.
“I just saw poor Dru sighing and pining for Pamela Bartlett. Then she disappeared down the hall with that devastatingly handsome Sloan Taylor.”
“Yes, he’s been her plaything all summer and suddenly he’s forced to see her on her husband’s arm and then go off with her former lover,” Cassandra said. “But after all, he’s had a great summer and he’ll be going back to college next week.”
“If he’s still at loose ends at the end of the night, I might let him stay with me,” said Carola. Cassandra started with surprise. “Just to console him,” Carola hastened to add. “He is my favorite new client. And a client like that, you keep for life.”
“Have you ever slept with someone that much younger than you before?” Cassandra asked.
“Why? Do you think it wrong?” Carola asked casually.
“No, of course not. You’re giving him a gift and he’ll appreciate it to his dying day. He’s a nice boy.”
“A very nice boy,” Carola laughed, fondly musing on her new admirer’s youthful attributes. “And I thank you most sincerely for sharing him with me.”
“Oh, you know I’m not really a top. What would I do with a boy like that?”
“You seem to have made pretty good use of him so far.”
“Speaking of which, you know he’s been with Amanda at least once, right?”
“I didn’t know the exact details but he gave me to understand that he didn’t want to be treated like a subbed out bad boy by me in front of her.”
“I think it was on a double date with Colby and Pamela.”
“Quite the decadent little niece I seem to have,” Carola observed with a grin.
“She was the catalyst that made all of this possible,” Cassandra indicated the fine house that surrounded them. “I mean her coming to Random Point last year to make herself known to Hugo and then bewitching everyone he introduced her to. That was what got Anthony thinking about me.”
“Not many kids bring their parent a patron. You did a good job with her.”
Cassandra found Amanda pacing back and forth on the front porch as the tapering raindrops turned to mist. Malcolm was leaving with Jane and Cassandra bade them both a fond good night.
“Eleven and he’s still not here!” Amanda complained to her mother. At that moment, Colby and Michael Flagg drove up in Michael’s pickup. Cassandra immediately took Michael inside to set him up with food and drink while Amanda confronted Colby with her hands on her slender hips.
“What kind of boyfriend are you?” she asked, in exasperation. “It’s not enough that you fuck another woman but you miss the whole party for a baseball game and beers in a bar?”
“I thought you’d enjoy the party more without me standing between you and your long line of elderly admirers,” he cheerfully rejoined.
“Oh, so you were just being unselfish and considerate?” she removed her arms from her hips to fold them across her bosom.
“Exactly!”
“Sending me through my first grown up scene party all by myself seemed like a good idea to you? And not just any scene party, my birthday party too! Do you really think a nineteen year old wants to be at that kind of party without her boyfriend?”
“I didn’t think of it like that,” Colby admitted.
“Of course not, you were too busy spending two hours with Marion Craig at the Ball and Feather Inn. Why two hours, Colby? You must have known I was waiting for you to come back. You obviously had to service her, but that could have been accomplished in twenty five minutes and still allowed for foreplay.”
“You heard about the flat tire, though?” he asked.
“Yes. I’ve seen you fix a tire. Make it forty minutes with Marion, including sex and the tire. You could have been back to me within an hour of going to pick her up with very little harm done to my evening. Instead, you chose to be MIA the entire night.”
“All right,” he paced, “I’ll admit, when the tire blew on top of me spending too much time with Marion, I was nerve shattered. Besides being a mess. After your Dad lent me the suit I figured I’d steel myself for the party with a couple of beers at Michael’s.”
“Why did you have to steel yourself for the party?” she demanded.
“Mingling with all those grown ups who want you is an unnerving prospect.”
“Who? Who the hell wants me in there? People have been unbelievably respectful of my age tonight. No one so much as suggested a public birthday spanking. But if they had, you should have been there to administer it.”
“That man you prostituted yourself to last spring is in there.”
“Yes, but he hasn’t come near me all night. He’s far more interested in the new blood in the club tonight. Last time I saw him he was going into the exam room with Marion.”
“Really?” Colby’s face broke into a grin. “That’s great!”
Amanda’s face and stance softened as she realized how heartily Colby wished to be rid of the obligation of entertaining Marion.
“You’re lucky you came back when you did,” Amanda said, “I was about to give up on you entirely and pick out one of my not so elderly admirers to console me.”
“That wolfish photographer?” Colby asked.
“No, someone even younger and more handsome. But you just reminded me of something; you weren’t here for any of the pictures. As a penalty for being a horrid boyfriend, you have to come inside with me and pose for a photo.”
“I will if you say you’re not mad at me. I know it wasn’t right to hang out at the bar, but I had a hundred bucks on the game.”
“Did you win?”
“Yes!”
“Good, you can make this up to me by getting us a suite at the coolest hotel in Boston for my actual birthday night.”
“Now you’re talking!” he said, taking her hand.
Just as they were about to go inside, Raphael Price exited the front door.
“Oh, hi Raphael,” said Amanda, “I don’t know if you’ve ever met my boyfriend Colby. Colby, Raphael.” The young men shook hands.
“I think we met once at the Dutch,” said Raphael.
Colby asked, “Is the party ending?”
“Of course it’s ending,” said Amanda, “it’s late!”
“No, it’s still going, but nothing is going to top the scene I just had with Carola, so I’m going home,” said Raphael.
“Will you take our picture first?” asked Amanda.
“Sure!” said Raphael.
“Colby, give Raphael your phone.”
Colby produced his phone, the photo was posed and taken several times and Raphael bade them a fond goodnight.
“That’s going to be a terrible picture,” predicted Amanda; “You’re completely rumpled from fucking other women and drinking in a bar all night and I’m wasted from drinking five Bellinis.”
“He’s the one, isn’t he?” Colby asked Amanda as they entered the house.
“Which one?”
“The one you said was younger and more handsome than the camera wolf.”
“Oh, yes, of course he’s the one. But don’t let talk about that now. I know you can’t tell but I’m barely holding it together. I need you to get me out of this torturously tight dress and monstrous shoes and put me to bed, preferably in the next three minutes.”
If there was a duty Colby could be relied upon to perform with alacrity, it was removing all garments from Amanda’s body. Not even the intricacies of the glove tight PVC dress confounded him and he soon had his girl nude between the cool sheets of the large and luxurious bed in her assigned room and was serving her ice water, which Amanda sipped thoughtfully while sitting up, the bedclothes pulled up to her shoulders. Colby was about to turn off the lights and take off his own clothes when Amanda startled him by announcing that she was feeling a little better, and getting her second wind.
“Go and bring me some food from the kitchen while I put some clothes on,” she said.
“Seriously?”
“If you see my mother there, she’ll make a plate for me.”
Cassandra was indeed in the kitchen, as was Josette, returned from her blissful scene in the loft and wandering about the big room performing small duties, as though in a trance. Cassandra had been informed by Susan of the little cook’s adventure with their master that night and had been keeping a fond eye on Anthony’s latest protégée since she had come back. But when she heard that a plate was required for the daughter of the house, Josette came out of her reverie and rushed to fill a dish with small sandwiches and deviled eggs. Cassandra added two petit fours to the edge of the plate, then remembering Colby was going back with her, added two more.
When Colby returned to Amanda he found her up and dressed in a short, form fitting hound’s-tooth jumper, mahogany penny loafers and white anklets, sitting at her vanity and slipping a different headband onto her short, blonde hair.
Colby watched Amanda eat, surprised at her powers of recovery.
“You know, Colby, you’re right. There are a hell of a lot of older individuals at this party.”
Colby wasn’t sure where she was going with this and let her continue without comment. At any rate, it didn’t really matter what she was saying, the important thing was that her tone was friendly and non-confrontational. He felt he’d gotten off very easy that night, what with his blatant unfaithfulness and then missing her whole party. Even so, he wasn’t prepared for the generosity of her next statement.
“We all know this party wasn’t solely for my birthday, but my birthday was a definite part of the event. Well, I really didn’t get to play at all so far, and neither did you. But listen to this, Colby, even though there are a lot of thirty somethings and up in the house, there are also a bunch of us kids. So I propose we round them up and take over the loft for the next hour or two and have a party of our own.”
“Who did you have in mind?” he asked, his mini tablet and a stylus appearing in his hand.
“Okay, let’s see, Thalia, Dru and those two young girls from my Aunt’s club, Tai and Lydia, Diana Currie, she’s thrill-starved as you know, and she adores you; and Pamela needs to lose some stress before Fashion Week, so make sure you find her. I’ll hunt down Susan Ross.”
Colby liked the odds of two boys to seven girls very much and merrily went out to hunt down the group of guests on the list. Meanwhile, Amanda finished her midnight snack, fixed her lipstick and went looking for her mother.
“May we use the loft?” Amanda asked Cassandra, noticing a shudder pass through the small girl cook in the blue sundress when she said the word loft. Amanda explained her idea of a junior players’ party where she and her younger friends could just be their version of kids.
“I’m so glad you’re feeling better,” said Cassandra. “I don’t think anyone is in there. Go for it.”
“Oh wonderful!” cried Amanda, hugging her mother. “Do you like this dress? It’s one of the presents Mr. Bartlett brought me.”
“Adorable,” said Cassandra, and then noticing Josette returning to her neatening up, drew Amanda’s attention to the pretty culinary student. “We just found out tonight that Josette is one of us, Amanda.”
“Really?” Amanda turned to gaze at the small brunette, who blushed. “Oh, how cute is that! You have to come to our private party then. Meet us in the loft in five minutes!”
Amanda found Susan playing billiards with Pascal Robbins in the lounge. She explained her mission and apprised Susan of everyone else she was inviting to the loft. Susan was quite ready to accompany Amanda back to the party within the party when she heard that Josette had just been invited to attend. She hesitated for a moment, then shook her head and said, “I think I’ll pass.”
“But why?” Amanda cried.
“Josette is going to be working for us come the new year and I’m going to be her mistress. If we play together now, it might be awkward later, when I’m her boss.”
“Not if you just come and play as a top,” Amanda suggested.
“No, thanks,” smiled Susan, “I think I’ll just hang out here and try to seduce Mr. Robbins. I’ve been trying to catch his eye for years and I just might have a chance tonight.” This little speech was made in Pascal’s hearing, in order to make him smile. He knew he was being teased and suspected it was to keep him pleasantly occupied while his wife was engaged in some piece of forbidden behavior in a different part of the house, but it also occurred to him that it might serve them both right, his sometimes unfaithful wife and her sometimes lover, Anthony Newton, if he dragged that blonde girl Susan Ross off into a cedar scented walk in closet and ravished her in the way that he believed spanking girls fancied. Susan had been flirting with him for years and he had long admired her petite curves and waist length wheat gold ponytail.
“Well, if you happen to see Diana before Colby intercepts her,” said Amanda, “send her straight to us in the loft.”
Susan promised to deliver an enchanted Diana into the hands of Amanda and her friends directly and went off to find her closest girlfriend. She found the small brunette just leaving one of the powder rooms and made Amanda’s invitation to her.
“Oh, isn’t this good timing!” cried Diana, “P.C. has just gone into the room with the claret walls with Damaris, Carola and rope. He’ll be an hour.”
Meanwhile, Amanda found Pamela, who was still inwardly vibrating from her prolonged encounter with Sloan, surreptitiously nibbling on a piece of Josette’s dark chocolate raspberry ring torte while studying one of the delicately moody Ray Caesar portraits in the hall.
“They’re wonderful and then they’re horrible, the way they morph into insect legs and limbs,” said Pamela. “Why are they all mutants? And did you notice that they all have the tiniest waists?”
“Some of them are only barely deformed,” said Amanda, “some just have large foreheads and translucent skin. I love their retro costumes.”
“The costumes are everything. They’re God,” agreed Pamela.
“It doesn’t bother me that they look teenaged. I’m teenaged and I enjoy being eroticized,” admitted Amanda.
“They look younger than teenaged,” Pamela felt bound to point out. “And they look like they are being prostituted, in a Storyville style bordello at the turn of the 20th century, with their deformities a selling point.”
“I agree, displaying a little girl in an eight garter corset that shows when her tiny skirt is blow up by the wind is very perverse,” said Amanda.
“I would like to see what Ray Caesar’s bedroom looks like,” said Pamela. “I’ll bet he has kept all of his mother’s vintage toys, from the 1950’s.”
“I’ll bet his closet is even more interesting,” chuckled Amanda, “where he keeps his own collection of 9” ballerina pumps.”
“Where are you bound for?” asked Pamela, turning away from the mesmerizing print to regard Amanda’s preppie outfit with interest.
“The loft and you’re coming with me,” said Amanda, linking arms with her same size but ten years senior friend. They had both cut their hair short at the beginning of the summer, Pamela choosing a Louise Brooks bob at Amanda’s suggestion and Amanda electing the more radical Jean Seberg crop. Now Pamela’s jet black hair was a smooth, sleek, collar length version of the Veronica Lake side part wave and Amanda’s ash blonde bob was at last once again long enough to grab her by.
“Why? Who is in the loft? And where is Ambrose?” asked Pamela. She had only been married since the spring and this was the first scene party they had attended as a couple. During the last and only other scene party they had ever attended, on New Year’s Eve at Anthony house the previous year, she had come as Sloan’s fiancée and Ambrose had escorted his first wife, Paula, with the party acting as the catalyst to the dissolution of both relationships and the forming of the two new ones.
“He’s locked in the exam room with Marion Craig. I doubt he’ll be out anytime soon. Come along with me, I’ve got Colby, Dru, those cute club girls from Boston, Thalia and Diana waiting for us.”
“Colby and Dru!” Pamela clapped her hands.
“And that adorable little cook, Josette, it turns out she’s in the scene.”
“Just two young boys for all those girls?”
“Two strapping young men can certainly handle a half dozen girls.”
“I count seven girls, with you,” said Pamela.
“Oh, I’m going to be the mistress of ceremonies. I’ll think up the games and make everyone obey me. It is my birthday.”
“And I’ll nominate you for a birthday spanking from every one of us in case no one else does,” said Pamela helpfully.
“I don’t mind,” laughed Amanda, for she had selected a group of playmates too close to her own age and generation to feel embarrassed before. “I’d die if all the old guard were watching every smack that fell. And my father and his best friends would be even more squeamish about witnessing his own daughter bare-bottomed. It would confuse and distress us all.”
When Pamela entered the loft and saw its occupants to be already fully engaged in making use of its unique appurtenances. Lydia and Tai were at work fastening Diana, clad only in a sheer black bra and panties, to the St. Andrews Cross, facing it, with her back to the room. When she was perfectly bound, the experienced club girls began to slowly rotate the wheel, a few inches at a time with the eventual object of completely inverting the bound girl. At some point in the evening, every girl in the room would take a ride on the wheel, facing the room with her back to the wheel, to be either nipple tweaked, breast spanked and pussy whipped or facing the wheel, with her bottom to the room, to be bottom smacked, caned or flogged. Colby and Dru divided up the dominant duties between them very quickly. Colby started downstairs, manning the St. Andrews Cross while Dru escorted Josette and Thalia up to the bedroom to dispense strappings to them as they lay face down across the bed or side by side over the large, tiered, leather spanking bench.
Pamela didn’t know where to look first, it was all so interesting. She was no stranger to the talents and abilities of Colby and Dru, both of whom she had gone cheerfully submissive to at a word from her much younger friend, Amanda. Pamela’s relationship with Dru had developed into a discreet but nonetheless continuous love affair all summer long, with Dru meeting her for trysts both in her old studio above the Damaris shop and here at the Pine Tar house.
In the end, Pamela decided to perch on the corner of a sofa and watch the St. Andrews Cross show as it progressed before her and then volunteer to take Diana’s place and experience a flogging from Amanda’s college sophomore boyfriend as soon as possible. Amanda stood behind Pamela, watching with all her attention as well, while gently massaging her friend’s shoulders through the feathery silk of Pamela’s cropped top.
“I so wish I could be with you at Fashion Week,” Amanda sighed.
Pamela turned to her and said, “I’m not showing until Friday night. Even if your last class is that morning, you could catch a train and be in Manhattan with plenty of time to spare.”
“Oh, that’s perfect!” Amanda cried, hugging Pamela.
“You can stay with us overnight and we’ll spend Saturday together in New York. Ambrose got us a suite at The Library for the whole week.”
“Let me talk to Colby first. He might want to come with me.”
“Damn right I’m coming with you,” Colby turned from the cross and Diana to tell Amanda. “Think I’m letting you shack up with that sophisticated slut and her Back Bay bred Tiberius for a weekend if I can help it?”