The Bombay Gentleman’s Club was in a massive stone building that made Remington feel the weight of the British Empire’s history. He handed the doorman his hat as Colonel Caruthers came forward to greet him. The colonel sported an impressive mustache as white as the doorman’s gloves and a jaunty, pink countenance. He could have passed for a character in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.
“Remington. I say, nice of you to abandon your proclivity for a few moments and accept my invitation,” the mouth somewhere beneath the whiskers said.
“I could hardly refuse a chance to see what colonization looks like from the upper rung,” he answered.
“Come, come. None of your Yankee holier-than-thou. Look here, I didn’t ask you here to debate power or politics,” Caruthers said. “It’s a matter concerning my wife.”
Remington had met the alluring Mrs Caruthers at a recent lecture. Imagining that beautiful creature polishing the colonel’s knob was somewhat of a stretch, not to mention the image of her delicate features under the weight of the huffing and puffing Caruthers.
“You see, she was recently presented with an unusual piece of jewelry by one of the local servants,” the colonel continued. “She’s been told the necklace possesses magical powers. It’s all poppycock of course, but I believe someone with your knowledge may help solve the riddle.”
“How so?”
“Your background with gemology and metallurgy. The servant has convinced her that it’s a necklace once owned by the goddess Shiva.”
“But surely she knows Shiva is a mythological figure?”
“She’s a woman of high breeding and intelligence, I can assure you. At least, she was until she came under the spell of this native woman.”
“Sounds like a medical doctor might be more suited to the task than I.”
“Here’s the crux of the matter, good fellow. I believe a man of science might be able to clear Constance’s head. If you could meet with her and catalog the origin of the piece, she might give up her foolish notions.”
“What powers does she believe the necklace to possess?”
“When she wears the necklace, she believes she is the goddess of passion and desire. To put it bluntly, she wants to shag me to death.”
Remington blushed a bit. “I’d consider you a lucky man.”
Caruthers harrumphed. “I have a duty to my command, sir. I cannot tolerate a woman to whom I’ve been married some twenty years suddenly becoming a creature who drops her knickers like a common tart and grabs at my privates incessantly. For the past few nights I’ve billeted at the barracks on the pretext that a campaign is in the works just to escape her constant wanton desires.”
“But couldn’t you simply take the necklace from her, or hide it?” Remington queried.
“I tried to pull it from her neck, but she threatened to take me into the next life in some appalling fashion should I try such a foolish act again – if I should, in fact, betray Shiva.”
“This is a sticky wicket,” Remington said, to use the colonel’s term, but he was thinking that the woman apparently needed an asylum’s restrictive jacket.
As if reading his mind, Caruthers said, “Though she sounds to be completely off her tether, I believe someone outside our social environs could convince her that her present infatuation with, ah, hmm, sexual obsession, has nothing to do with this piece of jewelry and everything to do with a fanciful divergence placed in her mind by a persuasive servant girl.”
“Why me?”
“Constance caught your lecture at the museum. She raved for days about the Yank who was working with the gemstone curator. I’d go so far as to say that your interest in native decorations may have set her on this gullible path.”
“Surely you’re not blaming me for your wife’s malady?”
Caruthers sighed. “I’m only asking that you speak with her in hopes that a comment might provide a breakthrough to her delusion.”
“How shall I approach her?”
“Go to our house tomorrow morning and say the Garden Club has requested your attendance for the purpose of speaking about your work here and that Constance could arrange it.”
“And what of the necklace? What if? I mean?”
“Constance is still a creature of habit. She doesn’t put on the beastly thing until she’s had her late morning eggs and kippers. That is the time frame in which she’s been willing to give my family jewels some respite.”
Remington was reticent until Caruthers added, “I don’t expect you to do this merely out of the kindness of your heart. I will happily give you £100 now to go see her, and another £200 if you can find the words to restore her. A man doing research is always in need of funding, is he not?”
There was no arguing that logic.
Remington made his way to the Caruthers residence the following morning at nine sharp. An Indian woman greeted him at the door. She wore a traditional emerald green and gold sari and possessed deep-set, piercing eyes as black as a moonless night. He wondered if this was the woman who peddled magic necklaces.
He followed her past a series of comfortable rooms. The British certainly knew how to live like kings in faraway lands. Remington couldn’t help but wonder how many bushels of wheat a single Ming vase might purchase.
Beyond the boudoir, the servant girl pointed to another door and gestured him to enter. He walked into a grand privy containing porcelain bowls for washing and bodily functions. The grandest piece of all was a marble bathing tub that contained none other than Constance Caruthers.
Remington was in no way prepared for what he saw. Constance’s head was wrapped in a white towel revealing a slender neck. Tendrils of dark curls crept around her ears. A second towel rested across her bosom providing a modicum of modesty. At least twenty years her husband’s junior, her beauty was more obvious than at the lecture. Remington stood at the doorway, his heels frozen to the spot.
“You must forgive my indisposition. I’m not used to early morning visitations.”
“I’ll just wait in another room, ma’am.”
“Nonsense. Do have a seat on my dressing stool. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have visit than a handsome lad from the colonies,” she said with a noticeable sparkle.
Remington sat. “We haven’t been colonies for more than a century, madam, but I appreciate the sentiment.”
“And I appreciate everything I’ve heard you say.”
Fighting an erection to accompany his longing stare, he noticed something besides the bathing Mrs Caruthers.
The necklace.
It rested on a velvet cushion next to the tub. Her hand teased a large centerpiece stone.
“What a lovely necklace,” he said.
“Yes, isn’t it,” she replied and proceeded to pick it up and put the thing around her neck.
“You mustn’t do that,” Remington protested.
“And why not? Have you come to examine my necklace or is it another matter?”
The necklace was in place on her swan-like neck. She removed the towel from her chest and stood in the tub. An airy froth covered sections of her. Her pubis hid behind a sudsy beard, almost denying her nudity in all its frothy wonder.
Taken aback at her boldness, Remington stood. “Pardon me, Mrs Caruthers, but it doesn’t seem proper for me to be in your privy and it is the necklace I’m here to discuss.”
A pleasing smile curved the corners of her mouth. “Yes, the necklace. It is a wondrous thing. It has revealed my true mission here in India.” She stepped from the tub, one slender leg at a time.
Remington looked for a towel he might offer, but that was apparently the domain of the servant who was nowhere in sight. “Really, Mrs Caruthers, we must talk about the effect of the necklace when you wear it.”
One willowy hand rubbed the necklace’s surface as she slowly walked toward the visitor, flakes of bubble bath shimmering as they fell from her legs and hips like pieces of gossamer accentuating her steps.
Remington stood like a cigar store West Indian statue as she came close enough for him to feel her breath. He blanched at the wickedness of the thoughts that glided so smoothly into his mind. A blameless life is difficult to navigate through tides of temptation.
“You are a learned man I greatly admire. The treasure I wear has taught me how to provide pleasure. Did you ever think how India’s predicament of malnutrition and over-population could be curbed while providing protein and nutrients to the women? It’s such a simple thing. I will show you.”
She tilted her head and offered her open mouth as if it were a sexual flower. Remington was absorbed by her kiss as if it were a Venus flytrap. The sudden bulge in his trousers bore against her sudsy thighs. The siren in her called to him. His hands responded and squeezed her willing, upturned breasts.
He lost all thought of the additional £200. A sexual rush obliterated common sense and tilted all purpose toward desire. He bent from her kisses and took a nipple into his mouth. The scent of perfumed water filled his nostrils while he suckled. She found the woolen flap of his trousers and unbuttoned it. Her slender hand skillfully worked through layers of cloth until his bulbous cock sprang free to further engage in their folly.
Constance broke free from his eager mouth and fell to her knees. She grasped hold of his cock-shaft protruding from the curly undergrowth and held it firmly. She spread a liquid tear from its guppy lips over its helmet and around the ridge, causing Remington to shudder with the deliciously sinful nature of it all.
“Quite the royal crown your cock doth wear, my ribald gemologist. I am obliged to see if it is as delightful to the taste as to the eye.”
Her educated tongue teased the crown and the rim. It circled the grateful tip as she bathed his cock with her saliva. Then she swallowed him while humming exotic music for the cock-feast, sending the vibration through his entire being.
Remington removed the head towel so her hair could fall unfettered. His eyes began to glaze over at the sight of her bobbing head. He knew he would do anything she wanted, the colonel be damned. He began to thrust his hips up toward her face. He felt the gathering that precedes a dizzying burst. She sensed it and held tightly as his cock exploded with astounding power.
She devoured his release in apparent ecstasy. “Mmmm,” she murmured. Then she said, “This could be India’s solution, you see.”
Remington stood flabbergasted by the incident, but did not back away or care for her hands to leave his quivering manhood.
“Roman women bathed in slave semen. Did you know that?”
“I’ve studied ancient history,” he said shakily.
“Then you know how this elixir was prized by the ancients. It can be life-giving without procreating.” She pulled his trousers down to his boots. “Let us glory in unexpected opportunity. Give Shiva your cock now free of its seed.” She turned from him and bent over her dressing stool. “Come now, professor. Don’t be coy. Surely there’s a bit of pluck left for Shiva’s tunnel of desire.”
With his garments still around his ankles, Remington positioned himself behind Constance. His cock had retained the length and girth necessary to do her bidding. He fancied himself a stallion about to mount the most salacious of mares. He glanced around her rump to admire the underside of her shapely breasts and the necklace that swayed from her neck and wondered if the necklace truly affected her, or if it was merely a ploy to fulfill some new-found sexuality unleashed after twenty years with the colonel.
Remington guided his prick into her secret place and laid his hands upon the crooks between belly and thighs. Her stomach jumped and tightened with the tactile connection, and the lips of her sex were warm and welcoming, closing upon his stalk like a velvet glove upon a hand. They both sighed as he plunged into the abyss of carnal knowledge.
Her sighs became words that were in praise of the great goddess. She could have sung praises to Genghis Khan for all Remington cared for he was by now shagging her in a heated frenzy and called on a deity or two from his own culture to keep his penis as hard as one of his museum gemstones.
At that moment, his well-ordered life did not care for jewelry, or money, but only for the moment. Her magnificent ass came back toward him, moving to his rhythm, matching his energy stroke for stroke. He thrust again and again into her place of refuge while Constance raised her head to watch what they were doing in the reflection of a mirror. Her smile was that of an eager child’s. Her mouth then formed an O as if his cock still resided there. His face reflected a man in the throes of stimulated good fortune, rocking to and fro in an orgy of delight. And in a strange way, there was an innocence about it all. Shiva or no Shiva, saints by praised.
But everything changed in a flash when a shout fell on their ears like the roar of cannon fire.
“AH-HA!”
In the doorway, the red-faced, mustachioed Colonel Caruthers stood. The couple looked like a frieze on the wall of a Pompeian brothel. The colonel was decked out in his red tunic covered with gold braid and metals, his white riding togs and his shiny black boots. And there was one more impressive thing about him: in his hand he clutched his pistol.
“Caught red-handed, by Jove. The gemologist shagging away at my lovely jewel’s cunt,” the colonel blustered.
Remington’s cock pulled free of the aforementioned cunt and pointed itself in a neutral direction, erect and floundering. With his appendage no longer restricting Mrs Caruthers’s posture, she straightened up. An extraordinary expression crossed her face – not shock or surprise, but complete mystification, for she was under the spell of the necklace.
Remington stared at the colonel like someone who might glimpse an old acquaintance in a busy street, knowing that friend to have died years ago. If he had been able to quickly gain his senses, he might have said, “Don’t worry, old man, she’s not herself. It’s that bloody necklace.”
Lady Caruthers exhibited no shame or remorse. “John, you know I’m a new woman now,” she told her husband. “Had you been home, you could have performed your duties as adroitly as this young man. In the celebration of honest desire, there should be no blame.”
“I’ll show you blame, my dear. I have witnessed your betrayal and you will consider yourself lucky to be packed up, bag and baggage, and sent on your way back to England, where I will arrange for examination concerning you mental state.”
Constance smiled oddly as if this was a reward rather than a punishment.
“And as for you, my good professor,” Caruthers said, pointing the revolver frighteningly in his direction, “you proved one thing – that the smell of quim wins out over British crowns when marketed properly. I shan’t be known as a cuckold. Ridicule would never do.”
Caruthers took dead aim at Remington’s family jewels. Remington was still shackled to his trousers lying in a puddle around his bootstraps with his dong covered in Constance’s vaginal lubricant.
But then a miracle. The servant girl came from nowhere and crowned the colonel with a bust of Michelangelo’s David. The gun discharged as Caruthers fell to the floor in a heap, but the shot had not found flesh. The servant girl ran to her mistress and embraced her.
Remington pulled up his trousers and made do with one hooked button to hold them temporarily in place. Fearing the colonel might suddenly regain his faculties, he feasted on one final glance of the freshly fucked goddess in the arms of his savior, the mysterious Indian girl. He bid the two women adieu, stepped over the unconscious Caruthers and found his way out of the house.
“Another time, another place,” Constance called out as Remington beat a hasty retreat to the street and on to the train station.
He booked passage to the coast and eventually sailed home. The £100 acquired from the colonel somewhat soothed his loss of commission from the museum. But, more importantly, once out of the colonel’s jurisdiction, he felt relatively safe that he would die with all his appendages intact.
Remington thought about the Bombay Gentleman’s Club as he traveled to America. For a fleeting moment, his imperialistic cock had taken something that wasn’t rightfully his, as nations had done since the dawn of civilization. Did it matter that his conquest had been so willing? Moreover, was it not he who’d been conquered?
In any case, he never forgot Bombay or the bathwater fandango with Constance Caruthers, or Shiva, or whoever the hell he had coupled with. Moreover, his thoughts of that day in Constance’s tub room were so strong that he was determined the incident was not to be the final chapter. Constance was like a sliver under his skin. Some months later, he tracked her down in England and began to correspond. He was told the colonel had recovered quickly from his knock on the head and had even allowed Constance to bring her native girl to England.
Shortly thereafter, an opportunity to travel to Europe presented itself. He was to attend a gemological conference in Rome and beseeched her to meet him there. It didn’t seem to take much coaxing and, as he traveled across the ocean, he was stirred by the memory of their brief coupling. The journey’s possibilities bore a luster beyond the study of rare gems. Did she still possess the mysterious necklace? Would she have her equally mysterious native handmaiden in tow? He had much to contemplate as he sailed toward the rising sun.
Although Constance was one-third of the world away from the concerned colonel, she confided that he still dutifully supported her. “Appearances are important to the English even with thousands of miles between us,” she informed Remington, so she would travel incognito, leaving even her loyal Indian servant behind in London.
Rome, the Eternal City, where business was supposed to come first, but romance always flutters in the recesses of the mind. Remington held the fantasy of again mounting Constance from behind, grasping her long shimmering hair like a charioteer might hold on to the reins of a mighty horse as he races it around the oval of the Circus Maximus.
After a day-long meeting at the museum, Remington took an evening stroll down narrow streets sized for seventeenth-century carriages to the splendid Piazza Navona. He sat on a stone bench and listened to the burbling from Bernini’s spectacular fountains, gaudily depicting personifications of Neptune and sea serpents. It was this designated spot where Constance and he had agreed to meet. He could almost picture her, adorned in Shiva’s necklace, taking a late-night swim in the fountain.
“Yoo-hoo,” he heard a voice call.
It was Constance as he had never seen her – fully clothed in a smart outfit from Regent Street in London, no doubt. He took her dainty hands and kissed them. She had changed little. The high color and dark curls surrounding her heart-shaped face were all as he remembered. They strolled and talked at length, avoiding the subject of current love interests or financial statuses, murmuring nothing more than trivialities.
“I have arranged for a special place to go,” she told him suddenly, and flagged a carriage. They listened to the clip-clop of horse hooves as they passed the gas-lit monuments to Rome’s ancient glories. She stopped the driver in front of the greatest symbol of past decadence, the Coliseum. It was aglow with soft light and looked a bit like the world’s largest golden bracelet. Constance led Remington to a small entrance at the base of the colossal structure where they sneaked inside. Seeming familiar with the surroundings, she led him below ground level and along corridors to a much older Rome than the one of piazzas and palazzos. Guided by torch lights, she led him further along to the cells where both men and beasts had, once upon a time, awaited their fate.
“Late at night, without the noise of tourists and carriages above, you can feel what it must have been like for slaves and soldiers 2,000 years ago,” Constance whispered as if someone might hear them. “They say that women were brought here to service the guards and the gladiators. The ghosts of those people are here. If you listen hard enough, they say you can hear them, or even feel their presence. Can you feel them, Remington?”
Constance had his attention. He wanted to hear and feel, and studied her dark eyes to see if he saw seriousness, or if he saw mirth. What he saw was desire. “I want to feel them,” he told her.
“Go ahead, Remington. Rome will not burn unless you fiddle like Nero.”
Remington’s world shifted on its axis as he knew they were about to take up where they had left off in Bombay. He leaned forward and kissed her lips. She kissed back.
“Now do you hear?” she asked. “The voices of lovers through the ages stealing away to secret places? If you try hard enough, you may even hear the music that goes with amore.” Then she unhooked the collar of her blouse and undid the buttons behind a froth of lacy frills. And behold, Shiva’s necklace resided around her still beautiful neck. “See the colors of the stones even in this dim light. They burn with an inner light that a gemologist such as you could not have forgotten.”
“Yes, yes, I see.” There did seem to be a glow about the necklace, and about Constance.
“I want you to have me,” Constance murmured, her voice low and smooth. “I have no excuse except to say I am entranced by my patron pagan goddess of whom you are aware.”
Remington had harbored a carnal curiosity about Constance and her magical necklace for a year’s time and now, a significant event was about to take place –lovemaking at a historical site in an area which few had access, a secret place which had led back to her treasure – Constance the Merciful.
He started to make his own speech, but Constance placed her finger against his lips then kissed them for the second time. Their third kiss involved tongues. He unbuttoned the rest of her blouse and reached into her bustier. She reached behind and unhooked the device. Her breasts were soft and unfettered. Her nipples hardened against his palms and her fingers sought the buttons on his trousers. Both inhaled sharply as her hand found its way inside his clothes and grabbed hold of his burgeoning shaft. A wicked little smile crept across her smooth face. Both of her hands were now at work. She fondled his gonads and liberated his cock, her gaze never straying from his.
“Those of us in tune with higher powers have our own special way of sharing earthly knowledge. Sex is a most joyous thing, do you not think, Remington?”
“The most fulfilling act I have ever known,” he agreed.
Constance made a noise as he pulled her bustier free and bit her nipples. She kicked out of the skirt as he began an exploration inside her knickers. No barriers this time, not even the thin film of soap suds, and she seemed as wantonly robust as before. Remington thought he could imagine an oiled and muscled gladiator pressing a beautiful concubine against a prison wall while the voices of a howling mob filtered down through the floor to the slave quarters, screaming for carnage.
The feel of Constance’s moist canal was all the encouragement his swarthy cock required. Her pale thighs wrapped around his equally pale hips while his prick slid easily inside her. Pinned between his hips and the wall, Constance’s body undulated. Her arms locked around his neck and her whispers came closer to his ear. She spoke soft words in rudimentary Italian. They rolled off her tongue as smoothly as melted chocolate poured into a fudge pan, her soul expressed in words – the gospel of St Constance.
Their bodies provided sexual sustenance in a place where centuries of feet had trod. Maybe it was the novelty and excitement of someone oft dreamed about, or the warm breath against Remington’s face, but he thought he could hear some Italian melody sung by Enrico Caruso. His cock drilled into Constance’s love tunnel as if it was pursuing buried treasure – several thrusts then a swirl or two, then more thrusts. He was as committed to the moment as a seeker of the truth is to the mystery of life.
Chocolaty words that night flowed from Constance’s tongue. “Si,” she breathed. “Si, si, mio maschile.”
Cats roamed all over the Coliseum. They had replaced the African beasts that once performed for the blood-lusting crowds. On this night Remington felt like a tomcat himself. He was a lion and Constance was the tigress.
“Am I too much for you, Remington?” she panted. “Perhaps you want me to bend over and have me in the manner of our last meeting?”
“Yes, yes. I’d like that.” Remington thrust upward, deep inside her one last time before her ankles unlocked.
She didn’t turn from him right away. She took his fully blossomed penis in her hand and smiled. “We followers of Shiva love to talk with our hands. What do my hands tell you?” She teased the crown-head between her thumb and forefinger.
“That you are as ready for more as I am?”
“You have made me very hot, me amore. You need to finish me.”
She turned from him and lifted the tail of her blouse above her rump, as eager as he to direct their passions to a climax. The fissure that split her into halves was dark, but anything besides foreboding. “I’ll finish you with my friendly weapon, my slave girl.”
“Then do it, maschile.”
The crown of his penis rediscovered her slithery slit and the top of his shaft slid back and forth against the opposite inner wall. He was the Roman charioteer at last.
“Si, si,” Constance repeated as they rapidly pushed against each other, making a slapping sound he thought might be heard all the way to the street.
Light from the torches provided a golden glow reminiscent of a Renaissance oil painting, but their positioning was more apropos to a pose from the Kama Sutra, a book Constance was no doubt familiar with. The bit of Italian she knew captured a fiery passion that English could not. When she looked over her shoulder, the glaze over her candescent dark eyes told Remington she was ready to climax.
“Balduce,” he said as he pumped her. A made-up word, but it sounded like what they were doing in Italian.
Her buttocks quivered. She moaned a long pleasing note of lust. His hands moved from her smooth, flawless hips to her breasts and gave them a firm squeeze as they erupted together like Vesuvius pouring its hot lava down the hillside onto Pompeii. They had reached the pinnacle of passion, holding their position as cats scurried past, perhaps headed for a connection of their own.
Finally, Constance straightened up and backed against Remington, letting him fondle her breasts as his cock cooled against her derrière. “That was very good, Remington. Bellissimo.” She turned her head and kissed his neck. “I should invite you back to England. You could procure a flat and we could rendezvous on a somewhat regular basis with my servant as a lookout. But then, that would be so ordinary. While here, I gave you a history lesson with me as part of it. Mi credi, non è vero?”
Remington had found his own elixir of pleasure once again among the ruins. “La magia femminile.”
“Ahh, the magic of women. Very good, Remington.”
Beyond the sound of their breathing, haunting sounds from an ancient past dwelled in the structure’s shadowy archways.
“Do you hear . . .” he began.
“The sounds of weaponry, of battle,” Constance confirmed. “Strangely seductive, is it not?”
“I guess there really are ghosts here. Maybe the Hindus are correct after all. Time is meaningless. Perhaps we should take our leave.”
“What? Afraid someone like the colonel might appear? A jealous lover, perhaps? Or maybe a Roman centurion with his gladius upraised, ready to separate your instrument from your body for our continued indiscretions? Very well. Although you are safe with Shiva’s disciple, we shall depart. The time for love has passed.”
“Come to my hotel room, Constance. We can still have a nightcap.”
“And you can enjoy my crack until dawn.”
Remington laughed at her humor and couldn’t get her back to his hotel quickly enough.
Remington missed several meetings as eternal lust in the middle of the Eternal City continued for three days after the evening romp with the ancients. But before saying ciao! to Italy, he and Constance got to be friends. She brought a few stolen moments of sunshine and happiness to his life while introducing him to some great out-of-the-way ristorantes and lesser-known palazzos. Their future lovemaking locations were more conventional than the underbelly of the Coliseum where they had played their pagan, hedonistic game amidst the ghost of gladiators and concubines. But the exploration of Constance was always a marvelous adventure. They were able to shout during orgasms and rock the bed until they thought it would collapse. The world Constance’s actions represented contained passion, drama, music, sensuality and impetuous hearts.
She made love con brio and spun her tales of Indian religion with great verve. She usually adorned herself with the necklace but not always, so Remington knew her passion was not completely tied to the hypnosis of the gems. He found them to be of cheap quality and unknown origin, but would never have told her so. Why put a damper on this wonderful celebration of life?
She suggested a future rendezvous in Egypt of all places. She wanted to see what interaction of spirit Shiva might have with the famed goddess, Isis. Remington’s head literally swam at the thought of what might happen if Constance got her hands on a nice piece of jewelry along the Nile. She might become the band of Erinyes, the Loreleis and the Sirens all rolled into one.
She returned to England and he returned to America. Whatever the future may hold, he would never forget Bombay or Rome and what he found there, what he felt there. Years fly by, but the heart can stay in the same place. He could imagine Constance in an ivory tub, naked men squirting their semen into it, surrounding her with the life-giving liquid that goddesses so prize. He wondered if she had been afforded the opportunity to spread her legs and her beliefs with diligence in Victorian England. If she had not been stripped of her miraculous necklace by the colonel, he would wager she had.