Chapter Four

Katherine woke with the faintest bit of trepidation the next morning, blinking up at the smiling faces of Marie and Celeste. “Good morning, mademoiselle,” they chorused.

“Good morning,” Katherine replied uneasily. Though she longed to be awakened by her pretty little chambermaids, she cursed her weakness. She knew she should put her foot down, assert her authority and make sure nothing out of the ordinary might happen—yet she could not. Though her mind told her to stop while she was still able to, some nameless impulse within her would not be stilled.

As Katherine stretched herself slowly under their polite gaze, she almost thought that she had dreamed about the girls in the night. That thought made her tremble a little, uncertainly.

What would they do for her today she could not guess, but the sight of their shapely bodies made her feel…strange inside. These wickedly seductive Frenchwomen, all innocence and solicitousness, seemed to know just what another girl really needed. Although the shadows of inhibition still worried at the back of her mind, she could not help but recognize how much her body had begun to crave their forbidden caresses.

This morning that body was already aroused, and Katherine scarcely tried to hide it. Perhaps she let herself sigh a little more deeply than was seemly when the girls bathed her, their smooth white hands running deliciously over her trembling flesh. Her nipples ached with an erectness which the warm water could not banish. Yet the maids appeared not to notice.

Katherine could not help herself. Perhaps she possessed a hidden exhibitionistic streak. Perhaps it was only natural playfulness. Certainly it was an exquisite delight to be on display like this, to lie exposed in the warm, water-filled porcelain while eyes and hands alike traveled over her nakedness. She cupped her breasts as if by accident, waiting for a response. Before coming to Castle Rohmenstadt she never would have dreamed of letting another see her like this. But now she felt pretty and pampered…and desired.

Katherine could not explain it, but somehow she was bound to these young women, and they to her. After all, they would not do the things they did unless they really cared for her. No girl would touch another girl like that unless she really wanted to. The thought was strangely arousing, and when the two women pretended not to be looking, she found herself stroking absently at the slick flesh of puffy lips fringed with tight auburn curls, yet her bath went without incident. The girls’ laving hands were intimate, yet impersonal.

Their teasing continued while they silently dried her. Though they patted and rubbed her damp flesh dry, it was nothing like the previous morning. Feminine hands wrapped in thick towels worked diligently at her neck and shoulders, her back and waist and hips, her breasts and buttocks and thighs—but their touches were chaste. They pretended not to notice when she ran her fingernails innocently through the tangles of her pubic hair.

She pinched her stiffened nipples while they dressed her, trying to make them desire her, but the girls merely pursed their lips enigmatically. Their soft fingers slid delicately over her naked body as they worked at her clothing, but their half-lidded eyes were coy.

Finally, she was dressed, and though her body quivered with an unnamable desire, her maids began to leave.

“I am most sorry, mademoiselle,” Marie said suddenly. She stopped and looked closely at Katherine’s hair, affecting to smooth down a disarrayed auburn lock. “How could Celeste have been so careless in dressing you?” Celeste looked solemnly at the floor. “Now you must discipline her.”

“Discipline her?” Katherine asked in amazement. “Why, that’s not really necessary, is it?” At first she was slow to understand.

“Oh, I am afraid it is, mademoiselle,” replied Marie. “If you do not discipline us, how can we ever learn to be good girls?” Her sister nodded silently.

“Well, what do I have to do?”

“You must spank her.”

Katherine blushed fiercely. She had not expected this.

“Perhaps mademoiselle is unfamiliar with the custom,” Marie continued gravely, “but it is what must be done.”

“You can’t be serious!” Katherine breathed. Yes, as she spoke, Celeste went quietly to the canopied bed. The girl stepped close to the edge of the bed and bent over, laying her torso across the covers and elevating her round bottom. She tucked her hands beneath her full, ripe bosom.

“I am ready, mademoiselle,” Celeste said.

Slowly Katherine moved over to her. “A paddle…?” she asked Marie dubiously, half-expecting the answer.

“Oh, no, mademoiselle,” Marie said reproachfully. “Your hand.” And she pulled back the short, flouncy black taffeta skirt of her sister’s old-fashioned maid’s uniform to reveal a firm, bare white bottom.

Katherine licked her lips nervously. Suddenly unsure of herself, she stared at the shapely rear of the pretty girl before her. The full, rounded cheeks of Celeste’s bottom were smooth and naked—she wore no panties. Lacy garters held up her seamed black stockings. A tuft of shockingly dense black hair—shiny and moist—protruded from between the girl’s soft thighs.

Katherine turned again to Marie, who was watching her closely. “Go ahead, Mademoiselle Katherine,” she urged. “I shall tell you when to stop.”

“Well, if I must…” Katherine’s heart fluttered beneath her breasts.

“Yes, mademoiselle,” Marie said regretfully. “I am afraid you must.”

“All right, then,” Katherine agreed. Slowly she drew back her hand—and let it fly forward to slap the beautiful bottom before her with a resounding thwack. Her hand felt warm. The girl’s flesh jiggled under the stinging blow.

“Oh, it must be harder than that, mademoiselle, if Celeste is ever to learn,” Marie observed.

Katherine spanked the girl harder. It was strange…yet not altogether unpleasant. She never would have thought she could inflict pain on anyone, but somehow this seemed different. This was not really hurting the girl, she realized slowly—not much, anyway. It was almost like some kind of game.

Katherine spanked Celeste lovingly, again and again, smiling secretly. She knew somewhere in the back of her mind that this was the only way she could really touch the girl. Katherine could not do the dirty things that she longed to try, the things those girls had done to her. But she could do this. Her face was hot.

Celeste began to whimper, but Marie nodded for Katherine to continue. Relentlessly, she punished the alluring nakedness of the pretty girl bent submissively over her bed, the girl who now cried out with each blow. Katherine hit her again, and again, her palm smarting. The girl’s reddened bottom was warm under her hand.

Katherine struck her again. The girl was shaking now, she realized—not just quivering as her mistress’s savage hand slapped her bare bottom, but wriggling rhythmically throughout the ordeal. Katherine spanked her again. The muscles of Celeste’s forearms rippled, she saw, and she gradually understood that the whimpering girl was fingering her nipples frantically.

Katherine stared at Celeste’s bottom as she spanked her, watching the succulent cheeks wriggle with each hit. Yes, Katherine realized, exulting—though these delectable chambermaids might tease mercilessly, they, too, had their secret desires, desires which only Katherine could fulfill. She shuddered at the thought.

The girl’s hips ground spasmodically, sending her smooth thighs rubbing irresistibly against each other. Katherine’s eyes narrowed as she watched shiny beads of liquid traveling slowly down the dense mass of the girl’s fragrant pubic fur, collecting on already damp curls, shaking off to wet the backs of Celeste’s shapely young legs. Unconsciously, perhaps, Katherine herself had craved this. After what they had done to her, how could she not want to make them feel as she had? How could she not want to see one of the wicked girls…like this?

Smiling with a perverse—yet pleasurable—feeling of complete power, Katherine watched her servant lubricate freely. The girl was masturbating. That was something so personal, so private…and it was intensely arousing to know that she was affecting Celeste that way. The girl tried not to show her passions, but her body betrayed her. Katherine watched her secretly clutch at her heaving breasts, watched her sensual thighs grind against a hidden, slippery bud. She relished the sight of the girl straining toward orgasm as she disciplined her.

Celeste gasped ecstatically and, entranced, Katherine watched her climax. She never blinked. She had not seen anything like this before—except Inge the previous day, and she had been nowhere near this close. Yet now Katherine was so near that she could smell the wet pink nestled between the girl’s grinding thighs.

It was beautiful. Celeste’s face was flushed, her eyes tightly closed in pleasure. Her luxuriant ebony hair gleamed as she writhed under her mistress’s stern hand. The muscles in her shapely forearms rippled as she tugged at her own nipples. Katherine kept her eyes on the sight…and Marie studied her mistress.

Finally, when Celeste’s movements began to slow, Katherine knew the shameless girl was done. Yet she waited a moment, her hand still drawn back as if deciding whether to strike again, until Marie said judiciously, “I believe she has had enough, mademoiselle.”

“Very well,” Katherine replied tonelessly. She smoothed her hands over the girl’s delicious round bottom, letting her fingertips stray low enough to brush the slick pussy fur back up between trembling thighs. She rustled the short black taffeta skirt back over the girl’s hips with a slow, caressing gesture.

“Thank you, mademoiselle,” Celeste said breathlessly, her face flushed and beautiful. “I will try to be better.”

“I’m sure you will,” Katherine murmured. Almost absently, she placed the fingertips slicked with Celeste’s wanton lubrication just under her nose and stroked it slowly across her dilated nostril, her upper lip. She breathed deep, shuddering. She seemed to inhale the very essence of the girl’s sexuality, an intoxicating fragrance so strong she could taste it even now on the back of her tongue.

She saw Marie watching her silently.

“You may leave now,” Katherine whispered.

“Thank you, mademoiselle,” they chorused, and left.

***

Taking a deep breath, Katherine opened her heavy door and stepped out into the hallway. The day was already dark and threatening rain, so she had decided to take a walk in the castle. If she were to be mistress of Castle Rohmenstadt, she must learn the layout of her great ancestral home. It might take days to explore fully, but at least she might start today.

She picked a direction and began walking.

Although the castle had a generator and plenty of electric lighting, its interior walls were nevertheless studded with black iron torch holders. Many of these held torches which the servants occasionally must have freshened, for often she could smell the strange tarry scent of the pitch. She smiled to herself as she passed these, feeling like a character out of an old movie.

But though the castle, while ancient and age-worn, was beginning to seem to her now almost homey, today it was more than a little bit drafty. Perhaps the ill-used passages she now walked were not kept up quite as assiduously as the rest of the castle. Certainly there was no heating in these outlying parts. Whatever the combination of circumstances, after hardly more than half an hour of walking the smooth stone floors, Katherine was chilled.

The mistress of Castle Rohmenstadt shivered faintly as she climbed the steep winding steps of the northeast turret, past tall pointed windows whose wavy old panes of glass revealed icy rain slanting down out of a leaden sky. Her flesh prickled with goose pimples. Her stiff nipples ached beneath the crisp cotton of her blouse. She vowed that once she reached the top, she would head back down to the great hearth of the entrance hall, or perhaps to the warm firelit library to curl up in a deep-cushioned armchair with something to read. Her face felt warm again.

The view was certainly worth the climb, she realized as she reached the top. The stone here was cold and rough, torch holders empty—but the arched windows showed a beautiful scene, mile after mile of rich forest stretching luxuriantly to the horizon. Katherine saw the grassy grounds of the estate dizzyingly far below, saw the great gardens, saw the proud old canopy of the mysterious woods shuddering under a foggy bombardment of rain. She looked out at the verdant panorama with pride and with wonder, knowing that it was hers—hers—almost as far as the eye could see.

She found that the rusted hinges of the tall, mullioned windows would not open, but there was enough of a draft in the turret so that she could still take in the damp, loamy smell of the outdoors. She breathed deeply, letting the strong piney odor of the ancient forest fill her lungs. This was the kind of forest fairy tales had been told about, when stories were told by smoky firelight and the unknown reaches of the sparsely populated world seemed vast and threatening. Yet the sight of this wild, miraculously untouched land thrilled her. If only the day were not so cold and wet.

After a few moments, she made her way cautiously down the hard stone steps, hugging herself against the chill. Finally, she reached the bottom and was about to turn back to the inhabited sections of the castle—when something caught her eye.

There was another door, one she had not noticed earlier. Massive wood banded with studded iron, it could lead nowhere but below ground. She tried it, but though the ancient hinges did not seem nearly as rusty as those of the window so far above, it would not budge. Perhaps it was locked.

Curious, Katherine knelt down to try to peer through the keyhole, but her head blocked the little light there was, and she could see nothing. Frowning, she stood up. She wondered where the door led. Was it simply some underground storeroom? Yet, if so…why would it be locked? Well, perhaps she would find out on a warmer day.

Shivering, Katherine headed to the beckoning warmth of the library.

Katherine found the little alcove hidden in a rear corner of the library. It was the one narrow section of wall which was not covered in bookshelves. She had not seen it the day before, but she had not been looking for it then.

The little nook contained an old wooden swivel chair and a heavy desk upon which rested a very modern personal computer. Katherine browsed through its functions, rather impressed, really. She even checked some of the on-line news services which Vaclav had mentioned and found them quite satisfactory. Soon, however, she tired of the machine and shut it off. She decided to do some reading, perhaps history, perhaps fiction or…something else.

Yet, as she stood, Katherine slipped and had to reach out to steady herself on the wall.

It moved.

Curious, Katherine pushed again on the dark stone. The wall was indeed solid, but here instead of being constructed of heavy blocks, it apparently was made of wood and simply finished with a thin layer of stone. A rectangular opening swung into the wall like a small door.

Katherine peered cautiously inside. On the other side of the hidden doorway lay a dark space which seemed about the size of a small closet. She felt for a light switch along the wall and found nothing, until she chanced upon a chain of metal beads which hung from the ceiling. She pulled it, and an unshaded incandescent bulb lit the tiny chamber. Curving stairs led below ground.

She found the light switch she had not been able to see before and turned it on. Electric illumination glowed from somewhere at the unseen bottom of the stairs.

Katherine looked back to the library, but no one else was around. No matter, she decided silently. She made certain there was no way the door could close and lock behind her accidentally, then ducked through and headed slowly down the narrow stone stairway. The walls were dark and cold, but the light below grew brighter and brighter. Finally, she reached the bottom.

The narrow stone walls opened up onto a small cozy chamber perhaps three meters square. Track lighting hung from the dark ceiling. The bare stone walls were lined with shelves, and the floor was richly carpeted. Near the bottom of the stairs sat a broad, comfortable-looking couch of black leather, while the other end of the room was dominated by the largest big-screen television Katherine had ever seen.

Puzzled, Katherine moved forward. How did this fit in with her great-great-uncle’s disdain for television? She turned to the nearest shelf, which was filled with videotapes. Well, perhaps this made sense, she supposed. The old man had not liked broadcast television with its sitcoms and commercials, but he apparently had liked movies. She tried to check some of the titles, but she could not recognize the language. It certainly was not English. Shrugging, she pulled one out at random and plugged it into the cassette player, then sat down on the couch with the remote control in her right hand.

The film began with the swelling music of strings, elegant and almost classical, and the scene opened in a wealthy lady’s sumptuous dressing room. Pieces of rich, dark wood furniture stood between pale creamy walls detailed in faint flowery patterns. The lighting emanated from a sparkling chandelier of elaborately cut crystal. The camera tracked in on the woman’s face as she applied cosmetics.

Katherine had taken a film course at college, and though she saw that the cinematography was beautiful, she almost stopped the tape. If the movie were not in English, it would be of little interest to her, no matter how visually intriguing it was. She let her thumb brush upon the button which would halt the videotape.

Yet the woman was so lovely, the camera work so adoring that it was hard to stop. The face of the actress was squarish yet most attractive, with a firm rounded jaw, and wide cheeks any man would crave to hold in his hands. Clearly this woman knew just how beautiful she was. Almost despite herself, Katherine decided to watch for a little while longer.

She sat back in the deep leather couch as the camera pulled in to show the actress applying her mascara. The process was banal, but Katherine had to admire the skill with which it had been filmed, for now it was almost a work of art in itself. In the rosy glow of the chandelier, the woman’s exotic olive-complexioned face gleamed sensuously. A swath of her sable hair fell seductively across her cheek as she tilted her head this way and that to stroke the soft mascara brush through her thick lashes. When she put on her lipstick, the great screen filled with her luscious, kissable mouth.

Katherine watched uncertainly as the camera slowly drew back to reveal that the woman wore only her undergarments. Her dark slender body was clad only in a tiny scalloped brassiere of black lace, sheer black gloves reaching far up her shapely forearms, panties cut high to display her long, sleek legs, and seductive garter belt and stockings. The actress stood gracefully and shook out her dense shoulder-length hair. She cocked her head, dark eyes half-lidded, and she put two fingers to her lips as if considering.

Then she turned away from the camera and stepped daintily out of her panties.

Katherine let out her breath. So this film… Suddenly she felt embarrassed. She knew it was dirty, and she knew she should not want to watch such a thing—yet she could not help herself. In the past day or two she had discovered that she was a wanton voyeur. Though she had never consciously understood it before, she now realized that her exposure to the secret delights of Castle Rohmenstadt confirmed her enjoyment of that newfound pleasure beyond any doubt.

A month earlier, even a week earlier—Katherine might have been able to convince herself to stop the film in disgust. Yet the scene was set up so beautifully, the actress so quiet and attractive… She had to keep looking.

And really, Katherine thought, it was all most tasteful. The woman kept her back turned as she slid a clingy read dress over her head and smoothed it down her sides and her alluring hips. The camera cut in close as she pulled the thin material slowly, teasingly across the succulent cheeks of her bare bottom, naked handfuls of flesh crying out to be fondled. The sight was powerfully sensual. Yet, at least so far, it was not as explicit as some of the programs she had seen on cable television back in America. She kept watching.

The woman’s dress was high-collared, but it left her deliciously rounded shoulders bare. The tops of the pert mounds of her breasts were displayed by a generous scooped cutout, and the camera lingered between those ripe, inviting fruits as she dabbed perfume there. Even to another woman, the sight was strangely mesmerizing.

The camera framed her lovingly as she strode, smiling, from the chamber. Her shapely silk-clad thighs rustled provocatively below the tantalizingly short hemline of her slinky red dress.

Then she was entering an expensive restaurant, and a suave waiter led her to a quiet table where a rugged man in formal black evening clothes waited. He was young and darkly handsome—Italian, perhaps—with a manly dusting of coarse stubble upon his cheeks and his strong, commanding chin. The candlelight glowed warm and romantic as the man stood gallantly and helped her into her chair. His fingers slid delicately across her rounded hips, and the camera relished his gestures.

Katherine shivered and allowed her shy hands to glide down her abdomen, allowed them to begin plucking at the loose folds of her skirt. Soon the flowing fabric lay tangled across her naked thighs. She let her knees come apart, exposing something warm and moist, and she began to stroke herself absently. She watched in fascination as she couple spoke quietly—urbanely, it seemed—in some Eastern European language, their eyes locked as they toyed with their appetizers. It was done so sensuously, so beautiful and romantic…but Katherine had to force her wanton fingertips to go slowly. She knew that something must happen soon.

The olive-skinned woman smiled enigmatically as she buttered a plump ear of corn with deliberation. Then she dropped her linen napkin, a feigned expression of surprise upon her pretty face. Her eyes smoldered as her dinner companion got out of his chair and bent down to pick it up. But the silvery-white tablecloth hung low, corners almost brushing the intricately patterned rug—and the man slipped quietly under the table. Katherine’s flesh was responsive beneath her slippery fingers, and her face felt hot. She pulled her feet up into the couch and lay down across the black leather.

Under the tent of the tablecloth, the stubble-cheeked man parted his lover’s dusky thighs and buried his loving mouth in the sopping velvet folds of her hairy cunt. Katherine stroked herself purposefully, sighing as the camera drew in for a glorious close-up of the woman’s naked pink flesh and the man’s hungry tongue as it lapped contentedly at the trembling flesh of his lover’s exposed clitoris. It looked so good, and dizzily Katherine sensed how delightful it must feel to have that done—and, perhaps, to do it also…

On and on the man wallowed so intimately within his lover’s inviting lap. He licked with passion at her sensitive, most secret places—endlessly, it seemed. To Katherine the sight was pure bliss, and her slippery fingertips instinctively copied the movements of the man’s questing tongue. It was all she could do to keep herself from screaming in ecstasy. Writhing wet flesh filed the television’s giant screen.

The camera cut to the woman’s face, angelic with wanton pleasure. Her eyelids and cheeks were flushed, her full sensual lips parted in trembling joy. Despite the presence of the others in the crowded restaurant, she did little to try to hide her delight, but no one else had noticed yet. Her heavy-lidded eyes swept the table feverishly. They lit upon the buttered ear of corn.

Panting, Katherine watched in rapture as the woman reached quickly onto her plate and thrust the dripping ear beneath the table. The man sucked one last time at the salty flesh of his lover’s center of pleasure, then pushed apart her thick labia with his big fingers. He smiled as he placed the tapering end of the great golden object at the pouting entrance to her womanhood. He teased her lips playfully.

Then the man pushed the ear of corn forward while Katherine’s fingers flew faster, prodding herself with practiced care. The man began a rhythmic pumping motion, hesitantly at first, but soon growing bolder. The warm, penetrating object slipped a comfortable centimeter or two into the welcoming flower of delight, then eased back, then slid forward again. With each stroke the corn dildo sank deeper into her wet, hairy mound.

The shaft began stretching the woman’s shamelessly slick walls, filling her as it grew thicker, and her flesh wrapped itself tightly about the welcome intruder. Yet she craved ever more. She cried out now as the plump kernels strummed with agonizing slowness against her taut clit. The man fondled her yielding buttocks as he sank his surrogate manhood ever deeper into his lover’s receptive body.

Katherine shuddered helplessly as she watched the crowd gather about the moaning woman, watched as strangers began to handle her flesh. One diner thrust his throbbing erection between the woman’s lips and pumped himself within her pretty face, while a pair of attractive waitresses fondled the soft little breasts out of her dress and commenced sucking on the stiffened pink-brown nodules of her erect nipples. She gasped, and sank her grasping fingers into the flowing russet tresses of their hair. Men masturbated openly.

One short-haired vixen slipped beneath the table and unzipped the trousers of the handsome man who impaled his lover deeper and deeper with the heavily lubricated ear of corn. His darkened penis sprang out, and she engulfed it with sluttish eagerness, sucking him skillfully from tip to base and back again, taking him deep within her silky throat, scratching her polished red nails through the wiry hair of his semen-filled balls.

The glossy little blonde reached up to caress the man’s muscular chest and tug at his nipples. She snaked her narrow hand lower to toy with the tight, puckered flesh between his buttocks, smiling as his eyes rolled back in his head. The girl groaned blissfully while a young waiter slithered under the table, pulled apart the shapely cheeks of her bottom, and thrust himself gratefully into the inviting depths of her willing pussy.

Katherine moaned unabashedly as she sprawled, writhing, upon the black leather couch. Her tender young body felt light, yet filled with a heavy joy which welled up insistently from the trembling pit of her belly. She cried out as she stroked herself the way her femininity craved to be stroked, gasped as her eyes traveled hungrily through the sweaty orgiastic delights on the great screen before her.

She watched it happen, she heard it happen—every sigh, every gasp, every slippery sound she could not ignore—and she made it happen to herself. Her whole being pulsed with the tremors of an endless ecstasy as she let her knowing finger play instinctively across the naked pink flesh of her open womanhood. Higher and higher her reckless pleasures mounted, until she finally could not help allowing her tortured body its release. All the while she struggled desperately to keep her heavy-lidded eyes upon the television screen.

Katherine’s glorious chestnut mane spilled richly across the warm dark leather as her flesh was consumed with heavenly spasms. The slippery wet bud between her loving fingertips throbbed with a familiar nectared sweetness, and she fondled it dreamily. Yet this was different than anything she had ever experienced before—never had she been able to watch something like…like this. It was so wickedly forbidden, so wildly arousing… The dirtiness of the beautiful orgy raging before her wondering eyes made her fevered climax that much more intense.

The mistress of Castle Rohmenstadt threw back her head and abandoned herself to the all-consuming passions of her own frenzied lovemaking. Katherine shrieked uncontrollably in delight, and her cries rang triumphantly between the dark stone walls.