13

I couldn’t wait to see what was in the suitcase they had given me for this trip.

‘I won’t lie to you,’ Miss Sugar sniffed that morning, opening and slamming drawers in her desk. ‘I am livid.’

‘Were you hoping he’d invite you to go?’ I asked, trying not to lick my lips as I saw her count out some more cash for me.

‘Of course I was. I’ve been here for much longer than you. And I’m way overdue a decent perk. You’ve just strolled in here and taken all the plum jobs. I’m sick and tired of this bloody office!’ She slumped back into her chair and glared at the paperwork.

‘Sugar  . . . this isn’t like you!’ I exclaimed, genuinely shocked. I came round the desk and put my arm round her thin shoulders. She tensed up, but I kept it there, squeezed her hard against me until I thought her bones might break, then released her. Her hand came up and rubbed the shoulder which had been pressing against my breast. ‘I had no idea you felt like this. But what can I do about it? What can either of us do, if Sir Simeon has decreed it?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. She looked up, hooking one strand of hair behind her ear. A couple of hairgrips were about to drop out. ‘It’s not your fault. Just go, will you, and enjoy yourself. It’s New Year’s Eve, after all.’

‘It’s still work, Sugar, remember. It will simply be an extension of working here at the club. And I’m just obeying orders. I’m not supposed to enjoy it,’ I said, but my words lacked conviction.

She snorted. ‘It’s a vocation for you, Summers. All this – entertaining. You’ve taken to it like a duck to water. I’ve never heard such effusive praise from a club member as we got from Geoffrey Grey about you. Not to mention all the other rave reviews since then. Quite sickening, in fact,’ she said.

‘I don’t know what you mean, I’m sure,’ I responded. I raised my eyebrows and picked up the suitcase. ‘I was doing the poor guy a favour, that’s all.’

Was that little dent in her cheek the merest hint of a smile? ‘Yes, but off the premises, Summers. It’s not part of the deal. We are only supposed to commune with our members here, at the Club Crème,’ she said.

‘Oh, sod that,’ I scoffed. ‘I didn’t come back to the big bad city just to be cooped up here all the time! Anyway, we’re all leaving the premises to go a-communing at Symes Hall, tonight, aren’t we? From one commune to another, in fact.’

‘Symes Hall counts as club premises, I suppose, although hiring it out for conferences, even if it’s for a club member, is something totally new to me.’

‘It’s not fair, leaving you here while we all go off and have fun. But someone has to hold the fort,’ I said. I leaned across her and flipped the pages of her ledger. ‘I see that there’s almost a full house here tonight. That’ll be clients, sorry, members, escaping the horrors of Christmas and New Year at home, I daresay. So while the cats are away, Miss Sugar, the mouse can play!’

The dent in Miss Sugar’s cheek deepened.

‘Not a party, Summers. It’s work. Oh, and just before you go. Car keys, please.’

‘What?’ I asked, getting ready to sulk.

‘The MG. Miss Breeze needs it. It is her car, you know.’

‘No. I didn’t know. I thought it was Sir Simeon’s. I thought he’d lent it to me specially –’

‘Sir Simeon drives a vintage Rolls. Surely you didn’t think he’d potter about in an MG?’

Sugar handed me a railway ticket. I decided not to let the removal of my little car get me down.

‘Let’s you and me have some fun when I get back to London, Sugar,’ I suggested. ‘You could do with it.’

It was already evening when the taxi dropped me off at the Hall. I couldn’t see much of the countryside flashing past the train as the sky grew dark. I looked out at the passing silhouettes of trees and houses, remembering what it felt like to travel on foreign soil. It wouldn’t be long now before I had enough money to go round the world, twice over if I wanted to.

But the job at Club Crème had long ago ceased to be solely about the money. A big part of me was reluctant to stop what I was doing. After all, I had discovered a closed world of intrigue and secrecy behind the veneer of respectability and, what was even better, I was virtually left to my own devices to set the scenes as I chose and conduct any liaisons as I wanted. I hadn’t seen Mimi for nearly a month now, and Sir Simeon had stopped showing up to watch over me.

In the taxi I lifted my feet to examine the pointed toes of yet another beautiful pair of boots, this time knee-length ones in soft mulberry leather which matched my low-necked, long-sleeved mulberry T-shirt. I crossed my legs, relishing the swish of silk stocking, so different from my erstwhile uniform of sweatpants and jeans. I was just starting to doze, for some reason thinking about Chrissie and how I still hadn’t returned the borrowed pinstriped suit, when the car started to throw up pellets of gravel and crunched to a halt.

Symes Hall looked beautiful at night, its yellow façade illuminated by arc lights. In the windows, oil lamps burned, as if we’d stepped back in time. I started to feel nervous, something I hadn’t felt for weeks. The wind whistled and flapped my coat against me as the taxi driver dumped my case on the drive and drove away.

‘Step this way, Miss Summers,’ a voice said. The butler, who I’d seen briefly at the meet handing round the drinks, had materialised by my side and he led me into the house. I expected my inexplicable nerves to dissipate and to feel rather smug as I entered. After all, I’d been here before, remember, with the son of the house. But it looked totally different in the dark and there was no one I knew, let alone Merlin, to be seen. The place was shadowy, lit only by flames burning in the same braziers or holders as we had on the stairs at the club. My high heels clicked anxiously along the upstairs corridor.

Up ahead were the double doors of Sir Simeon’s room, but the butler left me alone in another huge chamber with very little furniture except a vast cherry-wood bed all low slung and curved like a boat and piled high with snowy white pillows, a matching, brooding wardrobe with mirrored doors, which virtually covered one wall, and a couple of hard-backed tapestry chairs, the sort that you could only sit up in and beg.

I crossed to the French windows and stepped out onto the balcony. All I could see was the scudding clouds and a full white moon. There was a fire jumping in the grate, just as it had in Sir Simeon’s bedroom. If I turned quickly enough I might catch Merlin creeping up behind me, ready to lift me bodily and sling me onto the bed, peel away my new, smart persona until all that was left to show him was my trembling white skin rising in goosebumps  . . . Except this time he wouldn’t know me. I wasn’t a boyish stable hand any more with messy hair scrunched up in a net and mud in her fingernails. I considered myself a woman of the world now, an expert seducer of men, dressed in designer clothes and with a wallet full of hard-earned cash.

An owl hooted from somewhere close by and I backed hurriedly into the room, and straight into a pair of soft, waiting arms.

‘Everything all right, Summers?’ Mimi said and caught me close against her for a moment as if measuring me. Then she pushed me away. The candles and lamps dotted around the walls threw virtually no light at all and we had to peer to see each other. ‘You seem jumpy. After all the training, all the free rein we’ve given you in the last few weeks, I expected you to have acquired a little more poise by now.’

‘Training?’ I retorted, finding my voice. ‘What training? I’ve been left entirely to my own devices.’

‘I know that’s how it seems, but believe me, Summers, you haven’t made one move without our knowledge.’

I fiddled with one of my earrings. ‘Well, if it’s poise you’re worried about, I’ve acquired that in spades. I’m a very quick learner.’

I lifted my chin and walked deliberately slowly across to the bed. I wanted her to see that I could move like a catwalk model if I chose. Miss Sugar had spent enough time drilling me after all, marching me up and down in the office to get rid of my student slouch. Mimi watched me silently, and I sat down, flung my coat off and calmly crossed my stockinged legs. She looked me up and down, unable to hide her approval. She saw the clinging top, the elegant boots and the tailored skirt in honey tweed, shot through with a burgundy thread.

‘Quite the beautiful swan now, aren’t you, Suki?’ she breathed, coming towards me. ‘My instincts about a person are always right.’

She was dressed in a strapless ball-gown which flared out like a flamenco dress at the knees. It was made of a shot-silk fabric, which threw out varying shades of gold and red. Diamonds glittered at her throat, in her ears, on her fingers and, in this dim light, her lips looked blood red. Her hair was tied loosely at the nape of her neck. She came and sat beside me on the bed. The ancient springs dipped and squeaked alarmingly under our joint weight, making us both break into laughter. The ice was broken.

‘I’ve got you to thank for all this. I mean, all these lovely clothes, all these adventures,’ I said, and I meant it. It was lovely to see her again. Despite my new-found confidence I was still groping to find my way in comparison to her endless finesse. Mimi was like a beautiful ship, sailed back into harbour, and I was one of the tug boats bobbing about in her wake.

‘I should give you more credit, I suppose. You can thank me for discovering you, if you like, but you’ve done all the rest,’ she replied, stroking my face. ‘I have had detailed progress reports from our Miss Sugar, not to mention all these grateful members, panting for more of you.’

A red-hot blush spread up my face.

‘If I’m not careful,’ she went on, turning my shoulders so that I was facing her. ‘Someone will poach you away and I’ll lose my best housekeeper yet. And I’m warning you, Summers. I won’t allow it.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I assured her. ‘Yet.’

She narrowed her eyes at me. I wanted her to know that I was no servant. I would stay, or go, when I was good and ready. I looked steadily back at her, enjoying our physical closeness.

‘So. This conference,’ she said, suddenly brisk again. ‘Allow me to lord it over you tonight and decide your look, would you? You have to be as beautiful and anonymous as possible.’

She quickly painted my eyes and mouth and patted my face with powder until I sneezed. She handed me a long velvet gown in the darkest sea-green and some matching dark green mules. Then she lit a cigarette. ‘Get dressed, Summers,’ she ordered. ‘They are waiting for us downstairs. We are posing as guests this evening. It’s a perfume convention. Mr Hall has organised it, as a gift, or should I say apology, to his fiancée.’

‘Strange gift?’

‘She’s mad about her work, I believe, and he’s in the doghouse after his antics with his ghastly sister Avril Grey, so he organised this venue to impress her clients and earn himself some brownie points.’

‘Will she swallow it and forgive him, I wonder?’

‘I don’t know if she swallows.’

I spluttered with laughter.

‘She’s watching him like a hawk, but her clients, and some of her superiors, who have come here from the stores in London and Paris, seem overawed by the place, which will reflect well on her. He doesn’t want her to know who we are, and certainly not that we’re from Club Crème, or even that this place is connected to the Club Crème. She doesn’t even know he’s a member. He wants her to think this is all his own doing.’

‘And we’re all to be on our best behaviour?’ I said, pulling a face.

‘Yes. But who could resist committing wickedness in a place like this? Miles from home, buckets of champagne, a myriad of rooms to hide in  . . .’

‘All kinds of things could happen at Symes Hall. What with the randy lord of the manor and his hunky young son,’ I agreed dreamily, looking round the shadowy room. Then I realised what I’d said. ‘It’s all right, Mimi. I know all about you and Merlin.’

‘I very much doubt that. And it’s dangerous ground, Summers. Merlin isn’t invited this evening, if that’s what you’re getting at,’ Mimi said in a voice tight with warning. She was stern again, staring at me hard.

‘I’m glad he’s not coming,’ I replied coolly. ‘He’s trouble, that one. So it’s good that you’ve chosen his father.’

I took the dress over to the corner of the room and started to wriggle out of my clothes. I could see her eyes glittering behind me in the tarnished mirror. My own reflection was unrecognisable. She had ringed my eyes with smoky shadow and kohl pencil so that my eyes were elongated like a cat’s. She had painted my lips in the same blood red that she was wearing, which leeched my face of colour like a mask. I liked it.

‘You’ve come on a lot in the last couple of months, Summers,’ Mimi said. ‘Changed beyond recognition, I’d say. Even when you wandered into our office on that first day wearing that ridiculous suit with that beret, I thought of you as someone who would learn to enjoy using her own body.’

‘And now you’re annoyed that you were proved right?’ I queried, acutely aware of her watching me undress, and sucking my stomach in. I hoped that the underwear I had chosen to go seamlessly under the tight top would do. It was a strapless magenta corset, which clung light as a feather to my ribs while at the same time lifting my breasts in a cradle of subtle wire. I let the dress slither over my head, the velvet kissing my cold skin as it dropped to the floor. The green velvet brought out the same colour in my eyes, which flashed in the dim light. The neckline rested on the tip of each shoulder, then swooped in an elegant line to a row of delicate buttons just below the divide of my cleavage. The basque was perfect.

‘No. I’m delighted that I was proved right,’ Mimi answered. She blew out a plume of cigarette smoke and stood up. ‘I’m just saying that you mustn’t go hard around the edges. Stick to what you’re good at, and remember your place. You mustn’t start to meddle.’

She was annoyed with me, but she couldn’t keep away from me. Quickly she coiled my hair into a knot at the base of my skull and fastened it with a couple of pins. I still couldn’t get used to the way it stayed where it was put rather than falling straight down in a mess of curls and tangles. I could feel her breath on my skin as she fixed a tiny velvet cap to the crown of my head and unfurled a delicate, gauzy veil to obscure half my face. Her musky perfume filled the air.

‘It’s the clothes,’ I murmured, surprised at how breathless I was. ‘They make me into the person I am.’

‘Don’t blame your tools, Suki Summers,’ Mimi replied softly, pressing her big lips against the bone at the base of my neck. Now there would be an imprint of her lipstick there. ‘You’ve discovered the real thing and there’s nothing like it, is there?’

We swept down the stairs and crossed the hall to arrive at double doors leading into what could only be described as a salon, except that it was as big as a ballroom. A vast fireplace crackled at one end and huge sofas and chairs were grouped comfortably around the room, which was mainly lit by massive, twisted church candles. Tall French windows ran along both sides of the room and were swathed in thick, brocade curtains. The room was so high that you could hardly make out where the curtains ended and the ceiling began.

Mimi held my arm to keep me standing in the doorway. She adjusted the little velvet cap and veil that went with the dress, tweaking the lace cobweb over my eyes. She knew that after a couple of heartbeats the people in the room would turn to see us latecomers.

‘A devastating duo, aren’t we?’ I murmured, sliding my arm round her waist. She nodded, and didn’t pull away from me. The crowd parted, and a man and woman both dressed in black walked down the room to greet us. The man was thickset, like a rugby player. Jez Hall. But things took a distinct dip for the worse. The woman clutching on to his arm and gazing up at him was  . . .

‘I can’t do this, Mimi,’ I hissed desperately, turning my back as they paused briefly to speak to a couple of other guests. ‘I know her. She’s Chrissie, my oldest friend!’

‘And Mr Hall is her naughty fiancé,’ Mimi hissed back, spinning me round and leading me towards them. ‘Jeremy. How lovely of you to ask us here tonight. And what a divine setting.’

I shook Mr Hall’s hand as if I’d never met him before, and he almost wept with gratitude.

‘Meet my lovely fiancée, Chrissie,’ he gushed. ‘This is her baby, really. She might look like a pussy cat, but she’s worked like a beaver today, and pulled in some big business, I believe. Now it’s time to celebrate.’

‘Thanks to you, Jeremy, for organising these posh surroundings,’ Chrissie simpered, and then, as she remembered her manners and turned to shake hands, she let out a screech.

‘Suki! What the fuck are you doing here?’

I thought fast. ‘Lord Whatsit,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘You know. Lord Whatsit, who I used to muck out stables for? This is his place. He rents it out. I kept in touch after I left. You know  . . . the only job I wasn’t sacked from.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Chrissie squealed obediently, ‘Lord Whatsit’. I could have kissed her. My excuse for being there had been as clear as mud. She peered at Mimi, who was still holding Jeremy’s hand. ‘And you are?’

Mimi stepped in possessively as I waved my hands helplessly.

‘I’m Suki’s new friend. We go everywhere together, don’t we, darling?’

Mimi stroked my cheek, and Jeremy smirked. Chrissie scowled.

‘How charming,’ Jeremy said. ‘The sort of girls I like – er, approve of.’

‘It’s time to eat,’ Chrissie butted in, tossing him a filthy look and trying to take my arm. She hissed in my ear. ‘What’s come over you? What’s going on?’

‘We’ll be there in one moment, Chrissie,’ trilled Mimi. ‘Suki has something in her eye. But then you’ll have to separate us, you know. We are rather joined at the hip, aren’t we, darling? Put us next to someone interesting at dinner, won’t you? Preferably either side of your gorgeous fiancé.’

Chrissie gave Mimi one of her curt nods, and I started to feel dreadful. I wanted to tell her the truth. She didn’t deserve any of this subterfuge. And she certainly didn’t deserve that sleazeball of a fiancé.

I started to reply to her, but a very young man with golden curls and a clipboard sidled up to Chrissie and instantly she put on her working face.

‘That was quick thinking, but I don’t think she bought it, or liked it,’ I said to Mimi. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Your dear little friend needs to know what he’s really like. She obviously has her suspicions, and it’s not just the sister that she’s worried about. Once you and I are unleashed on him, he won’t stand a chance.’

Mimi started fussing with my face. Everyone filed past us across the hall and into another cavernous room.

‘I told you. She’s my oldest friend. I can’t do this, Mimi, however badly she wants us to.’

‘Explain, or you’re fired,’ Mimi said. I couldn’t tell whether she was joking or serious, but she was still stroking my face.

‘I shagged her precious Jeremy at Mikhail’s party, for God’s sake. I mean, I didn’t know it was him until they turned the lights on, but I can’t look her in the eye.’

Mimi’s finger brushed a strand of hair back under the little velvet cap. She looked down and I realised she was trying to suppress a smile. Mimi’s black eyes danced at me and I put my hand over my mouth and started to giggle, too. We had to wait for the giggles to pass.

‘Right,’ Mimi said after a moment. ‘In that case, I will have to take over as his honey-trap. Just when I was looking forward to observing your technique at close quarters. Ah well. Think of this as a freebie and enjoy the show.’

We started to walk towards the dining room.

‘Where does that leave me?’ I asked and pulled at her hand.

‘I guess that leaves you as a free agent, darling,’ Mimi said. ‘You can simply watch Mimi Breeze in action, and learn.’

It was an hour or so later, when Mimi flicked her tongue at me just before sitting on Jeremy’s face, that I wondered how much of ‘the show’ was for my benefit by then, and how much for his. All through dinner I hadn’t quite relaxed for fear that Chrissie would cotton on, realise that I knew Jeremy Hall after all, and make a horrible scene. I knew about Chrissie’s horrible scenes. I wanted to tell her everything. I felt a heel, skulking in the shadows, watching her fiancé fall under Mimi’s spell.

But what I wasn’t expecting to happen at her precious perfume convention was to see the old Chrissie, the Smithson Sandwich, emerging from under the blue eyeshadow. Perhaps it was my presence that encouraged her, or perhaps it was the way everyone else was behaving, but either way I stopped worrying. As the inhibitions fell like so many autumn leaves, so I reckoned the explanations could wait.

Mimi had ignored me throughout dinner, focussing on Jeremy, softening him up for the kill. That was fine by me. A tiny man sitting on my other side, who looked like Hercule Poirot, started to ogle my cleavage.

‘I am Jacques,’ he announced, in a thick French accent, ‘the chief supplier in Paris of perfumes to our beautiful Chrissie.’

Any more of that accent and I would blow my cover by laughing out loud. I willed my new, knowing self to take over. I leaned towards him with my arm thrown over the back of his chair so that my breasts were spread out for him and anyone else to admire. Across the table I watched Mimi’s big red mouth moving in flattering, seductive chatter, watched Jeremy’s lips part, saliva gathering at the corners as she spoke to him and watched his teeth snap together when her brown fingers stole into his lap and unzipped his flies.

I caught her eye occasionally across the candlelight, then glanced to see if Chrissie had noticed, but Chrissie was already tossing her blonde curls around, flirting outrageously with the golden-haired youth and his friend who were on either side of her. I knew she was good at flirting, but she had a long way to go if she was going to catch up with what Mimi was doing.

I simpered sweetly as the Poirot lookalike started to stroke my velvet thigh. He leaned hungrily towards me so that his nose was level with my just-covered nipples, and one or two men started craning their necks to see what was happening up our end of the table. I wanted to watch Mimi, but now it was my turn to be distracted. My neighbour lifted his glass to drink and tipped it sideways, spilling white wine right across me so that I gasped out loud. The cold liquid trickled down my throat and droplets seeped between my breasts. The little man flicked out his napkin and started dabbing painstakingly, snuffling his nose between my breasts as he tried to dry me off, edging the napkin under the bodice of my dress and flicking it across my skin. It tickled, starting up little pinpricks of pleasure in my nipples.

He saw me smiling, and allowed his other hand to creep, under cover of my napkin, on to my thigh and started to claw the velvet dress up my leg towards my crotch. His eager groping started to arouse me. I’d become hypersensitive to any kind of touch, I realised, no matter who was touching me. I could make something sensational happen, just by parting my legs a little, letting him push the dress right up, letting him stumble into my warm bush, unearth my secret crack. I felt my head swim a little with the enticement of leading him on, getting pleasure and making his day by letting him finger me.

By losing myself to the possibilities of what the little man could do to me and, by looking suitably demure and keeping my eyes down, I could also see what Mimi was doing. The white tablecloth jerked up and down under Jeremy’s plate as she massaged his cock. He gaped helplessly at her, biting his lips to contain the yelp of noisy lust threatening to burst out. Even Jacques stopped short of uncovering my pussy when he saw what was happening to his host, and we all watched silently as there was one final thrust of the tablecloth, Jeremy sank back in his chair and Mimi tilted her head back to lick drips of creamy dessert off her spoon.

‘Time for dancing,’ called Chrissie, clapping her hands as the conversation threatened to stop altogether. My neighbour removed his hand, leaving my pussy warm with thwarted anticipation, and suddenly dinner was over. Faces calm as if nothing had happened, everyone filed back into the salon and a couple of dark, bearded waiters started gliding about in the shadows with champagne and liqueurs on silver trays.

Chrissie and Mimi ran over to a vast music system in the corner of the room and giggled together as they looked through the CDs. I felt my chest tightening with jealousy. They were both my friends, after all. But tonight I wasn’t allowed to play with either of them. I snatched a flute of champagne off the silver tray being waved in front of me and watched as Jeremy went up to them. A blast of dramatic Spanish guitar music started. Instantly, Mimi started clicking her fingers above her head. Jeremy grabbed her waist and pulled her across the floor. She snatched up the hem of her dress and started swirling it in a wild flamenco dance.

Chrissie’s little face puckered into fury. She watched them with her hands on her hips, chewing her pink lips. I couldn’t bear to see her like that. I was about to rush up to my old friend when, as if by a secret signal, my French dinner companion bobbed up in front of me just as the young man who had been sitting next to Chrissie at dinner approached her, kissed her hand and bounced her into an energetic rock and roll.

As they twirled past Mimi and Jeremy, I heard Chrissie shout, ‘I’ve scored the best-looking toy boy in the perfume business!’ and it was Jeremy’s turn to look furious. Mimi started whooping and writhing round him as the music became more and more frantic, and soon the two couples were separated by their own competing floor shows.

The toy boy, with his blond curls and bright blue eyes, looked rather like Chrissie herself. I wondered if she could see it. Whatever she could see, she obviously liked because she started running her hands up and down his sides as they danced and, after an anxious look towards Jeremy, the boy copied her. Chrissie’s black dress was short, unlike most of the other dresses in the room, and was slashed into ribbons that spun away from her legs as she danced, and it soon became obvious that she wasn’t wearing any knickers. It was all I could do to stop myself shrieking ‘slapper’ at her like we used to when we were kids.

Jacques couldn’t keep his eyes off her either. He steered me in a sedate waltz nearer to Chrissie, murmuring something about speaking to our hostess, then he let go of me and started to dance with her and the toy boy. Relieved rather than insulted, I backed quickly away, but Chrissie was too engrossed to notice me. She was dancing, opening and closing her knees, wriggling up and down the toy boy’s body as if he were a pole.

Jacques went round behind her, planting his small hands on her gyrating hips and guiding her. He was the right height to press his groin right in between her buttocks. I saw her give a little start and glance over her shoulder, then she tilted her bum invitingly against him before grinding her crotch against the toy boy. She was lost in the game, happy to let the two of them push and pull her between them. She was jerking her hips and writhing frantically as if she wanted to go to the loo, and yanking each man against her as she rubbed first her crotch, then her bum, against them.

Mimi and Jeremy had danced into the far corner of the room by now. It was difficult to see them by the light of one solitary candle. Their flamenco had slowed and they were circling each other slowly like combatants, a few inches apart. Mimi had pulled her dress right up her legs until it barely covered her pubes, and Jeremy was licking his lips, his hands itching to touch her. She continued to twitch herself out of his reach until he grabbed her roughly, his big hands digging into the soft flesh of her upper thighs, and lifted her so that she was wrapped round him. He was big and strong, and carried her like a feather, but he hadn’t bargained for her determination. Even in the flickering light of the tall candle I could see her face harden as he tried to take control. She started to struggle, and it was then that she glanced round the room, assessing the scene, and saw me standing by one of the long curtains, watching. Our eyes locked and I held my breath.

Mimi stopped struggling in Jeremy’s grip and let herself go weak, and he lowered her to her feet again. She rewarded him by putting her hands on his shoulders. He obviously thought she was going to kiss him because he closed his eyes. But it was me she was looking at. She gave me a sly wink and ran her tongue slowly over her lower lip in a gesture so sensual that I could almost feel her warm, wet lips fastening onto mine, and I gripped the back of a sofa.

Then she pushed Jeremy down until he was on his knees. She hitched her dress up to show him her startling black bush, straddled his head, and pushed herself into his face. I gasped, but no one else appeared to notice. I was aware of one of the waiters hovering next to me. I thought he said something, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from what Mimi was doing. She tensed her legs to angle her goods against Jeremy’s mouth, and I saw his tongue come out and start lapping at her, his fingers scrabbling to part her sex-lips and get to the fruit inside.

‘Do you think madame la hostess is aware?’ a voice asked. The waiter was still beside me, presumably repeating what he’d said before. I didn’t look at him, but frowned, as if he’d woken me up. I was so wrapped up in the scene with Mimi. I wanted to feel a wet tongue lapping at me. Her tongue, anyone’s tongue. My fanny was hot and prickling with frustration, ignored and abandoned under my velvet dress, while Mimi’s was tongued ferociously by the lusty Jeremy.

The waiter pointed and I tore my eyes away from Mimi. On the other side of the room, Chrissie was now tossing herself wildly back and forth between the two men, rubbing herself up and down their groins, her slashed dress giving easy access to her bare, ready cunt. She wasn’t interested in taking anything more from them. She was lost in her own abandoned pleasure. Both men were sweating. The boy swallowed hard as Chrissie thrust her hips against him. Jacques looked more composed, a smile fixed on his face. I glanced at his trousers and saw an enormous bulge outlined there. One of his hands was inside, clamped round his penis, bringing it to life while Chrissie parted her legs, wrapped one round the younger man’s leg, and swept herself up and down. Her buttocks clenched and her head fell back as she started to thrash wildly against him, her throat bulging as she moaned out loud, ‘Somebody screw me, while I’m hot.’

There was an electric silence in the room. All at once she arched herself away from him as her climax overwhelmed her. The boy just stared at her as she started to fall backwards. Another woman had crept up behind him to get a closer look and now, tired of Chrissie’s hogging the limelight, she snaked a thin white hand down the boy’s trousers and whipped out his fully erect penis. The boy rocked on his heels as the woman pulled him out to his full length, enticing the rounded end of his cock from its foreskin until it stretched out for more. The woman pulled and stroked for a moment or two more, then started to pull him backwards. Most of the other guests formed a circle and closed round the pair of them, clapping and cheering as if they were at a bullfight, so that they were lost from view.

It was up to Jacques to catch the falling Chrissie. He was a lot stronger than he looked because, as he caught her, he deftly flicked her onto a big sofa, where she fell, still twitching, onto her back, arms and legs splayed open. The little man lost no time. He clambered between her legs, arranged her against the cushions until she was in a suitably inviting position, and then unzipped his black trousers.

‘Aren’t you tired of watching?’ the waiter murmured in my ear.

‘I get my fair share of the action,’ I replied absently, keeping my eyes on what was going on in the room. ‘Sometimes it’s a turn-on just to watch.’

Over in the corner, Mimi had Jeremy’s hair tangled in her fingers as she kept his head clamped between her strong brown thighs. But they were equally matched as far as control went. Mimi’s pelvis tipped and twisted and her long throat was stretched with pleasure as he lapped and sucked at her. His big hands had pulled her buttocks apart and his fingers were probing and prodding inside that dark crack. He must have located his target because the long rope of black hair swung across her back as Mimi, like Chrissie had done, started to buck and thrash against Jeremy’s face. I saw flashes of his wet mouth as he tongued and nibbled her remorselessly and finger-fucked the hidden hole of her arse at the same time. She hammered her fists on his back and then she, like Chrissie, was falling, and Jeremy was catching her, and they were in a heap on the floor.

‘By the looks of him he thinks he can give her a fucking she’ll never forget,’ the waiter commented, as Jeremy pulled the collapsed Mimi across the floor towards him. ‘But how do you fuck the woman who’s already had the best?’

The small man, his dinner jacket still buttoned up, was humping his hostess with vigorous thrusts of his neat bottom, his eyes and mouth closed and silent while her arms and legs waved like tentacles around him and her blonde curls tossed happily against the sofa.

The waiter had melted away again. He’d left his silver tray on the table next to me. I reached for a full glass, and drained it. The music seemed to have faded and the sounds of sexual ecstasy and the applause of the voyeurs clamoured around me. I glanced from one madly rutting couple to the other, two cocks momentarily visible as they drew back to ram again and again in to the two waiting pussies. I felt a weird mixture of randy desire and dull emptiness.

I was off my guard because someone suddenly nudged me from behind, pushing me out of sight into the dark alcove provided by the window seat and the tall curtains. I half stumbled, half fell, with my knees on the window seat and my hands up against the windowpane. Outside the sweeping drive was lit by flickering torches and the moon cast mysterious tree-shadows beyond the ring of light.

‘They won’t notice we’ve vanished,’ the person said. The heavy curtains fell shut behind him and we were enclosed in a kind of tent, with the windows making a mirror in front of us. The squeals and laughter of the other guests were instantly muffled.

‘Shouldn’t you be handing round the drinks?’ I asked stupidly as a pair of strong arms trapped me in front of a taut body and a warm tongue gave tiny laps at the edges of my ear.

‘So I get sacked,’ he said and laughed softly, blowing the nape of my neck. ‘But I get to screw the horniest person here.’

I tried to twist round to see him, but it was all I could do to retain my balance. The waiter’s warm hands stroked over my bare shoulders and spine. I gave up and looked back at the window. The effect of his touch on my skin was mesmerising. His hands came to rest on my waist and I flattened my palms on his hips, pulling his stomach in to my back. We paused, as if waiting for the next step of the dance.

Very subtly, so that I had to concentrate to be sure he was doing it, he pressed his groin against me, moving slightly from side to side so as to edge my butt cheeks open. Then he stopped, only moving his hands up my velvet ribcage towards my breasts. I pulled the focus of my eyes in from the world outside, and stared at our reflection in the window. My eyes were wide and dark, still half hidden by the veil, and he was just a shadow behind me, eyes whose colour I couldn’t determine glittering in the half-light.

He leaned over my shoulder, trapping my reflected eyes in his, and then we both watched as his fingers slid easily down the front of my dress in search of my breasts. I held my breath as he drew one out. The air shrank my flesh into little bumps and the rosy nipple sharpened up instantly.

‘Juicy as ever,’ he breathed, massaging the soft mound and tweaking the hard nipple with his thumb. I couldn’t breathe, let alone ask him what he was talking about. The questions were knocked out of me as he scooped my other breast out of my dress. He started to knead them both together so roughly that I rocked back and forth against him. Seeing my own naked breasts hanging there in the window sent new shocks of excitement through me and I rocked harder against his caressing hands.

As my nipples hardened I felt the thick shaft of his cock stiffen between my buttocks and we swayed together, backwards and forwards, my legs starting to melt apart and faltering on my heels as he continued to flick his fingers across my nipples while grinding his pelvis harder against my bottom until his cock was hard as a rock.

I reached behind and felt it bulging painfully against his tight waiter’s trousers. I started to rub myself against the lewd shape, but he bent me forwards onto the window seat so that I was forced to catch my weight with my hands. This way I couldn’t touch him, but I could steady my wobbling knees. I was aching and wet with excitement now, and all I could do was watch my shadowy lover as he released my breasts, letting them brush against the window cushion. He pushed my dress up to my waist and my legs trembled even more.

‘Like unwrapping a delicious parcel,’ he murmured into my neck. So far I had only heard him whisper. ‘Do your employers really have a clue how good you are?’

‘Who are you?’ I gasped. ‘How do you know who my employers are?’

‘Well, I’d say you’ve shagged at least one of them already. Mimi, was it? She’s on heat all the year round,’ he said.

He hooked my French knickers down my legs and cupped my moist bush. One finger led the way into the wet crack and started circling my wet lips, and I moaned loudly.

‘Don’t talk about her like that.’

‘Not going to deny it, then?’

Two fingers slid up me. My breath blew clouds on the cold windowpane and he held me impaled while he unzipped his trousers with his free hand. I tried to bring one knee up onto the seat so that I could balance myself and turn round, but he simply pushed me forwards so that I fell on all fours, my butt waving naked before him.

My befuddled mind wondered if anyone had missed us. Mimi, perhaps, or the butler rounding up his staff. All it would need now was someone to fling back the curtains to get some air into the room.

My thoughts were snuffed out by the blunt knob of the waiter’s cock pushing into the crevice of my bottom. My face was almost crushed into the cushion. I reached up to cup the soft balls dangling beneath the solid shaft nudging into my flesh and they retracted slightly at my touch.

‘Let’s do it while they’re not looking,’ he ordered roughly, lifting my hips up. With his fingers still diving into my snatch and his stiff cock probing underneath me, I was more than halfway there, stimulated by everything I’d seen that evening, by the promise of unadulterated lust idling behind me like an engine, and by the constant threat of discovery by an accidental, or deliberate, voyeur.

The thick muscle found its target at last and started to nudge blindly in between my waiting lips. I flung myself greedily on to him. His fingers stayed where they were, plunging in alongside his cock, filling me to bursting point, one or two of them tweaking at my clitoris, playing every tiny part of me.

‘If they don’t see what you’re up to, then you won’t get into trouble,’ he crooned. I was pinned by his fingers and his cock, helpless. All my thoughts were centred on what he was doing to me. I gave up trying to see his reflection clearly, to make out his features. I should have paid more attention to what he looked like when he was waving the silver tray in front of me. All I could recall was a dark, piratical beard. But who cared about his face? He was inside me now.

But then something caught my eye in the glass. A movement. It wasn’t him and it wasn’t me. It wasn’t coming from inside, either. There was someone outside the window. Looking in at us. Two people, in fact. I could see their faces rising in the moonlight a few inches away from mine and, as I watched with a mixture of horror and fascination, they came right up close and stared boldly in.

‘Stop!’ I squeaked. ‘Look!’

The two spindly lads from the stables, wearing thick jackets, were shivering in the night air, but remained open-mouthed, practically dribbling as they watched what the posh guests were doing inside the Hall.

‘Stop?’ he muttered, starting deliberately, slowly, to slide himself up me, pushing my face closer to the window as he did so. ‘You must be bloody joking.’

They might already have had a good look at Mimi and Chrissie’s antics. They ogled me and I gaped at them and, as I worked out what exactly they could see, my shock turned to wicked excitement. I wondered if the waiter could see our new audience. If he could, he didn’t care. He didn’t alter his rhythm. And I didn’t want him to. I wanted my lads to see. Being watched, not by a group of world-weary adults but by a couple of hot-blooded, randy youths was thrilling. They would be able to see my tits dangling out of my beautiful green dress, my hands spread out on the window seat to keep my balance, my body being rocked forwards as the man rammed me from behind. God, they might even know him! He might have arranged to do this, talked about it with them earlier, told them he’d pick one of the randy female guests and fuck her in front of the window at a certain time of the evening so they could see.

‘Those boys. They can see us,’ I gasped. ‘What about those boys?’

‘How about we give them a show they’ll never forget? You’re good at that.’

Their young pricks would be shifting and stiffening inside their grubby jeans. Their hands would be in their pockets, rubbing themselves. They would be muttering obscene comments to each other, but finding it harder to speak as the sight of me and the waiter rutting got to them, made them impossibly horny, and the spunk started rising, ready to pump uselessly over their hands.

The waiter and I were totally locked on to each other now. His cock pushed on up me until it could go no further. I slid down on to him until I could go no further. And then he held my hips totally still, forcing us both to pause again.

‘Suki Summers,’ he murmured, as we hovered on the brink. I couldn’t struggle, let alone demand to know how he knew my name. I didn’t want to lose the momentum. He murmured something else, but I couldn’t hear him. He pulled out the pins that Mimi had secured in my hair so that it unwound over my shoulders. He stroked it for a moment, smoothing it against my back as if I was a horse, and I felt a jolt of recognition. I tried to focus my mind, but then he started thrusting violently, ramming full length inside me, lifting me off my knees with the force of his thrusting.

‘How do you know my name?’

‘It’s more polite that way, don’t you think? Now, just concentrate on the boys all cold and hungry out there. Give them the thrill of their little teenage lives.’

I let myself go limp and managed to find a way to slip my hand down between my legs. The sight must have blown the minds of the young voyeurs outside, and it certainly did the trick for me. His cock jerked faster and faster into my cunt. The rhythm overtook me, overtook us both. Every nerve centred on the desire and pleasure spreading wherever he penetrated, and wherever I rubbed, setting fire to me until finally the ecstasy burst as I came and shrieked and moaned into the cushion.

With two huge thrusts he was juddering to orgasm as well, gripping my hips so as not to slip out of me. His cock stayed stiff as gradually I let him draw out of me. There was another pause, and then he lifted his hands away from my hips, letting me wriggle forwards on my knees, juice running down my thighs, to crumple into a heap by the window

The boys ran off into the darkness, and behind me the waiter pulled aside the curtains. The noise from the other guests spilled into our secret alcove. I sat up, pulled my dress down and turned to face him.

But he had slipped away. I jumped to my feet and hurtled through the curtains after him. Everyone was still milling about as if nothing had happened. More music was playing. I was too confused to make out the individual faces of Mimi or Chrissie in the melee, let alone speak to either of them. I dashed from the room. I didn’t want to speak to anyone.

The silver tray was left on the hall table at the bottom of the stairs, with one solitary glass on it. I picked up the glass to take it up to my bedroom, and then I saw, lying beside it, a tiny earring, in the shape of a horse’s head.