Paradise - Part Two (The Erotic Adventures of Sophia Durant) (8 page)

I stand in silence a moment before knocking. Closing my eyes, I tell myself I will not say anything dramatic. I’ll keep calm. I will not cry. I open my eyes and knock. A few moments later Stafford opens the door. He’s holding a Blackberry in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. To my dismay two porters are packing suitcases in his room. As he walks away, I get a look at the spacious room for the first time. It is elegant, if spare, in décor. Large bay windows give way to an exquisite view, the most exquisite I’ve seen from the villa, of Anse Lazio and the surrounding hills and trees. The room is on the top floor of the villa. This is the highest vantage point in the villa, perhaps apart from what you might see from the roof. I find the beauty and peace of the room in extreme contrast to the grim emotional pallor now enveloping the whole of this mighty Xanadu. The sepulchral feel of the place seems to smile at me in tremendous mocking evil. I realize I’m getting carried away, and quickly return to my senses.

Stafford waves at me, having set down his coffee though still on the phone, as if to usher me back to reality. He is a picture of serenity. But why? Was the torpid appearance of Anna at my door last night simply a dream? The porters leave and I examine the boisterous Anse Lazio as Stafford finishes his call.

“Yes…yes…I understand…well how deeply considerate of you…outstanding, spectacular…I don’t know what else to say. No, my mother passed away in my youth.”

I glance at him, he has his back to me.

“No, really…I understand. I must be going now, Arthur…business will go on…one day, one day…bye, bye.” His voice trails off.

There is a chill at the back of my neck as though a ghost has just entered the room. I hear him set the phone down on a table behind me. Goosebumps break out all over my body. I don’t know why. I snap my head round, look at him. His diaphanous eyes burn into my soul. It feels searing. I haven’t slept enough. This is all in my imagination, I realize. I will say as little as possible, I tell myself—avoid trouble that way.

“Have you heard the news?” he asks after what seems like an eternity.

“About Isabella.”

This was a statement, eyes downcast.

“It’s horrible. There are no words.”
So why did you call me here?

I immediately curse myself for such selfish thinking.

“You don’t have to say anything…”

“I have no words,” I say, eyes still downward.

I feel two such contradictory emotions, I didn’t know my brain was capable of accessing two such diametric points simultaneously. I am the definition of dichotomy. The outward expression I bear is the result of one of these feelings, the other feeling is pure joy and I am deeply ashamed of it.

“I have always had a way of looking forward. Of moving on. My parents died in my youth…after some time passed I forced myself—programmed myself to just move forward, to do everything as I always had, as I always dreamed of, without any feeling. I had no feelings left. I just went on, never expecting to feel happiness again.”

This explains a lot, I think. You’re marriage to Isabella for one. I curse myself. Tears swell in my eyes.

He looks at me tenderly. Looking at the floor I can’t see it, but I can feel it. I don’t want to love him, especially not now, but I do. I love him more than ever. The sensation it causes is overwhelming. My heart overflows, spills out on the floor, like it has in so many visions.

His even keel speaking, almost inhuman, continues: “The funeral is in three days in St. Augustine. We’re leaving this afternoon. I can’t bear to be here any longer. Not for a good while.”

He coughs. There is no feeling in his voice.

“I want you to be at the funeral. For Savannah, but for me too.”

I don’t really understand the meaning of these last words. In fact, all of the events of the past few days are just washing over the periphery like some distant, incomprehensible dream. A thunder and lightning storm over a distant desert plain, an annoyance I’m almost not conscious of, a storm in a tea cup. And where am I in all this mess? Lost in a haze, a ghost without a face, a gray blur, the quintessence of stoic. Stafford and I are too alike. But where is
he
since clearly the rain isn’t touching him?

To discern the answer to my thoughts I look up at him. He’s looking back at me with an expression of curiosity on his face, as if to say—
I need to know where we stand
. Or is this just another figment of my imagination? His questioning look could be about anything at all.

“You’re not wearing any makeup,” he says.

“No, I’m not.”

“Appropriate.”

“Now you get to see the real me; plain, pale skin, big bug-like eyes, like a reptile.”

“You are more beautiful without makeup. One can’t honestly say that about most women. Your skin is has a nice, somewhat faded tan. The face is porcelain. The eyes are large, hypnotic. The hair is lustrous, so smooth. You have the appearance of one who is very much in control. A woman who knows her own mind.”

“You must forgive me.”

“For what?”

He smiles.

“Blushing.”

He laughs.

There’s a long silence that follows.

“Shall I be going?” I ask.

“Only if you want to.”

“Is there nothing else?”

He pauses to consider.

“What are your duties with Savannah today?”

“I have to go look after her till this evening.”

“If I gave you something to wear this evening with me, would you wear it?”

I find the idea at once seductive and monstrous, considering the circumstances.

“Yes, I would,” flows naturally over my lips.

It sickens me as I say it with so much ease.

“Good. Let me get it.”

Stafford leaves and returns with a box.

“Take it with you. Look at it on your own time.”

As I take the box, he pulls me into him. Kissing my cheek, he gropes my breasts. I pull down my low-cut shirt. No bra, my large breasts loom before him. He kisses down my neck, handling one of my breasts. He grips the other and presses them together. A sense of ecstasy comes over me. I roll my head back and close my eyes. He lowers me slowly to the floor. My eyes still closed, he guides my hands down into his pants where I grip his bulging member. I curl my fingers around the skin at the base of the large penis and glide them upward, over his smoothness. I tickle the tip. He pushes up my skirt. I’m not wearing any underwear and I’m dripping wet. I want his cock inside me badly. I want it moving all around, jostling from side to side, my gyrating hips causing him to make a circular motion inside. I can feel my wetness flowing down my legs as I spread them for him. He fondles my tits, pressing them up against my chest. I remove his pants and grab his balls—smooth like a peach. He leans me back against the wall. Propping up my vagina with a pillow under my backside, which he gets from I know not where. The pillow must be silk, for it is extremely comfortable. I feel the vagina juices flowing in a stream onto the silk fabric. His legs interlock with mine and I feel the tip of his fully erect member teasing me, tickling the outside of my wet lower lips.

Suddenly he stops. I open my eyes. His head is down now. I look down at his throbbing penis. Instinctively I grab it, stroking it lightly. He raises his head, looks into my eyes, and begins making out with me. His soft lips press against mine, our tongues intermingle. He moves his face next to my ear and whispers: “Tonight—we’ll finish this tonight,” before he stands up and puts his pants on. I get to my feet, pull my skirt down, put away my breasts and look at his smile.

“Don’t forget the dress,” he says with that ineffable smile.

Later—before the mirror in my room I tried on what he gave me. It was a Gorean
camisk
garment. A belted, sideless silk poncho in red to be worn without underwear. The attire of a
kajira
, a Gorean sex-slave from the novels of John Norman. The Gorean ideal had spawned its own subculture I had once come across on the internet while doing searches on ancient goddesses. If you go to Google images and type in Gorean sex-slave you will see many computer-generated images of female sex-slaves, wearing anything from silk, to nipple clamps, to outfits like Princess Leia wore while in the captivity of Jaba the Hut in
Return of the Jedi
. If Stafford thought he was making me his
kajira
he was sadly mistaken, but this was not the impression I got from him. I felt he could take a dominant role with some women, certain types of the lower cast of intellect, but with me he seemed to want to be dominated. Or at least he wanted the balance of mutual respect. I always felt with him I was treated as his equal. He probably makes most people he comes into contact with feel this way, which I’m sure is part of the source of his charm. I would wear the
camisk
for him, mostly out of sympathy for his grieving. I believed what he intended with me was part of his fucked up way of dealing with it.

I stood before the mirror and pulled the
camisk
over my otherwise nude body and buckled the belt. The silk garment came down over my shoulders and met in a V-shape below the navel, trailing down in one piece to a point between the knees. I turned around and looked in the mirror over my shoulder. The shape of the back was exactly the same, the V came together at the top of my rear and draped down to a point between the knees. Of course it was see-through, nothing was hidden, but somehow I found it empowering and incredibly sexy. I put my hair up in a ponytail to see how it would look with the hair off the shoulders. I thought the hair looked better down with this particular outfit—hide some of the face to add mystery as not much of anything else was kept hidden.

I took my trench coat out of the closet and tried it on over the
camisk
. It worked.

Sophia Durant’s Diary

August 13, Eleuthera Island, Bahamas

Evening—the door to his room is open a crack. The corridor is beset with gray light. The dull gray sky and silent rain reflects the mood that has come over me. I don’t know quite how to shake it, but decide to go in anyway, good mood or no. The heavens are hung with black…the master poet wrote. As these words come into my head on entering the room, so does an image emerge from the depths of my soul: deep underwater, in a dark grave of broken metal and smashed glass, the body of Isabella Gardner rolls in my direction—eyes falling upon me. Suddenly the eyes dissolve, leaving in their place two eye sockets teeming with squirming maggots. Uncontrollably I gasp, cupping my hands to my mouth. Realizing where I am, I try to regain composure. I am in the woman’s room, having visions of her ghost, playing to the demented fantasies of a sick man reeling from her death. I see my soul splintered into a
kaleidoscopic image like seeing several reflections of myself in a shattered mirror. I am doing this for him, and for her. I am submitting my soul, just tonight. I will pick up the pieces tomorrow.

I round the corner in his room to find Stafford sitting in a wicker chair, pointing at the floor. He is naked except for a leather loin cloth with a golden belt. The posture would be laughable if I wasn’t in such a sullen mood. He is reminiscent of the god Apollo with his toned body and dominant expression. He smiles that indescribable smile, perhaps recognizing the strange humor of the scene. I remove the trench coat, exposing the
camisk
, and toss it aside. Perhaps due to the cold air of the overly air-conditioned house my skin is in goosebumps and my nipples stand out like bullets. Humoring him, I kneel before him, extending my arms to touch his feet. I wait for a moment, half-thinking I will feel the sting of a whip on my back, but there is no such sting. “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails plays in my head to the tempo of my heartbeat. I am filled with fear and lust, a strange state to be in. Half-disgusted with myself and feeling semi-divine, I raise my head up to see him. His head is tilted back, eyes closed, as though he is channeling some supernatural power. The fear I feel is not of him, but of the woman I try hard to block out of my head. Though the harder I try, the more she is there. I see her stern image in every reflection about the room, her lips barely cracked in a devilishly mocking half-smile, like she is some demon returned from the nethermost hell. The visions become too real and I have to bring myself back to reality, striving to see what actually appears before my eyes and not in the hollowed vision of an overactive imagination.

He looks down at me and points to a small stand covered in a purple cloth next to him. On it is a small, silver chalice next to a silver pitcher on a silver plate with dark grapes. He pours a crimson drink from the pitcher into the chalice and hands it to me. Kneeling before him, I take the cup. It’s filled with wine.

“You are drinking the blood, the grapes are the body. Eat them too and transcend.”

“Whose body and blood?”

“The goddess Isis.”

He said
Isis
, but the pronunciation was closer to
Aset
, which is apparently the way the Egyptians pronounced it. I only know it to be Isis that he said because I’m somewhat familiar with the ancient gods and goddesses of Egyptian lore, to include the pronunciation of their names. Partaking of the blood and body of a deity in the form of wine and a bit of food goes back at least as far as recorded history, and was adopted into Christianity from the pagan religions as was the fictitious birth date of December twenty-fifth. It was for the Egyptians, as it is for the Christians, one of the best means of communion. I believe this communion to be more real than symbolic, a joiner of the human spirit to some unimaginable realm of Pure Consciousness that allows us to explore the higher powers as well as to get a greater sense of ourselves. Also communion is believed to be better achieved at certain times of day; midnight, dawn, noon, and dusk. Each connoting a different aspect of spiritual experience.