Chapter Three

Katherine woke the next morning to the sight of Marie and Celeste looking down into her face. “Good morning, Mademoiselle Katherine,” they chorused. Celeste, the girl with the tiny scar upon her pretty cheek, smiled ever so faintly.

“Good morning,” Katherine replied uncertainly. Remembrance of the way they had masturbated her so lovingly in the bathtub the previous morning made her tremble with a strange mixture of emotions the twenty-year-old could not quite sort out. They had violated her, she knew, just as surely as if they had tied her down and raped her. Yet…her sensitive young body had responded eagerly, with instinctive passion.

The confused girl did not think she was a lesbian…but she could not explain to herself how it had happened. Yesterday morning it had all seemed so natural, so innocent. Surely those shapely Frenchwomen were only Katherine’s age, or perhaps a little older, but they knew things about the arts of love which she had scarcely even guessed at. Though they were her servants, they had in fact manipulated and seduced her.

And yet it had felt so good. Imagining their sly, amorous caresses now made her feel weak inside, and helpless…and beneath the covers, almost unnoticed, her nipples began to stiffen. She tried not to think about it.

This day, however, her bath proceeded without incident. When the girls came into the bathroom to help her bathe, they were impersonally polite. That was good, Katherine supposed uncertainly. Yet she really was not sure what she should think. Although the thought of coming right out and asking these girls to touch her body as they had done before filled Katherine with disgust and with dread, her belly fluttered nonetheless with an unacknowledged sense of anticipation—and then with a nameless disappointment.

She waited, tense and shivering in the warm soothing water, while the girls bathed her gently. The sensation of their soapy hands upon her soft young breasts made her puckered nipples ache, untouched, and yet the girls did no more than wash her. They kneaded her naked flesh casually, cleansing her smooth arms and shoulders, her hips and buttocks, even her rounded calves and trembling thighs. Their fingernails scratched soapsuds through the warm chestnut triangle of her pubic bush.

Yet no matter how thoroughly and even intimately their caressing young hands bathed her responsive flesh, they coyly avoided stimulating their pent-up mistress. The erotic tension was exquisitely torturous.

Quivering with frustration and with shame, Katherine finally stepped out into the large towel which Celeste held out. “A good bath, no?” Marie asked.

“Yes,” Katherine said, feeling uncomfortable. “Thank you.”

“We live for your happiness,” Marie added innocently. “And now we dry you, no?”

The chambermaids had done this the day before, but after the debaucheries of that bath, they had been all business again. Their hands had been innocent once more, chaste while Katherine’s bewildered young body burned with shame.

Yet today was different. The girls began toweling her naked flesh with disconcerting enthusiasm. They dried her thoroughly, smiling prettily into her eyes as they familiarly scrubbed out the damp curls between her rounded thighs. Marie cupped her high young breasts nonchalantly through the thick towel, giving her brazenly stiff nipples a squeeze that made them tingle.

Finally, they finished and led her back into the bedroom to stand before the full-length mirror in its darkly gleaming walnut frame. Marie handed her deodorant, dabbed perfume behind her ears and between her breasts imperturbably, combed her hair, fussed over her. At the same time, unasked, Celeste helped her into clothes the girl had selected. The chambermaid’s cool hands ran casually over her naked body as she stepped Katherine’s legs into a long glowing skirt of dark green linen—no panties—and helped her breasts into a laced bodice. Watching them in the mirror, Katherine trembled.

“Very nice,” Marie said when they were done. “Only—pardon, mademoiselle.” And, looking apologetic, she reached her hand into Katherine’s bodice and adjusted a swelling young breast. She tweaked its thickened pink-brown nipple on her way out, making Katherine shiver.

“I am most sorry, mademoiselle,” Celeste added. “How could I have been so careless in dressing you?” Standing behind Katherine, Celeste looked solemnly at their reflection. She reached into Katherine’s clothing. With the pretense of adjusting her mistress’s bosom, Celeste began squeezing Katherine’s breasts, fondling them deliciously. Katherine’s breath sucked in sharply as quivering jolts of raw erotic energy ran straight to her moistening crotch.

“Oh, no, Celeste,” Marie reprovingly said. “You have disarranged the mademoiselle’s bosom. Observe.” The girl pushed her sister’s hands away, and now she took a turn playing with Katherine’s tender breasts. Whereas Celeste had grabbed handfuls of those yielding mounds in almost-boyish eagerness, Marie focused her attention directly on the puckered nipples. The girl was delightfully skillful, knowledgeable in ways no woman should be. She seemed to know exactly what another girl would want done to her body. Despite her wavering inhibitions, Katherine found herself sighing.

“You see?” Marie asked Celeste, pretending not to notice Katherine’s arousal. “This is how the mademoiselle must be. Not as you had her, but so.” As the knowing fingers plucked deftly at those deliciously throbbing nubs of flesh, Katherine found herself playing along with the shameless game.

Helpless under their tender caresses, Katherine knew not what else to do. Perhaps they resented their young mistress and this was simply a great awful joke to the wicked pair, a way of shaming Katherine. Perhaps the cruel girls would laugh about their helpless mistress all day long, whispering about her weakness behind her back.

Though Katherine knew she must stop them, she could not force her voice to speak the words. And though her body craved more, that was a terrible secret she felt she could never say aloud. She did not dare. Instead, she merely watched in the mirror, staring into the smiling eyes of the girls who looked back at her so innocently. Could they really be so cruel?

“Yes, Marie,” Celeste agreed, “you are right about the mademoiselle’s bosom. But notice how the mistress’s skirt needs to be smoothed down as well.” She ran her hands tantalizingly along Katherine’s slim waist and swelling hips, reaching behind to squeeze the round cheeks of her bottom. Her naughty hands slipped up under Katherine’s skirt, making her shiver.

Eyes half-lidded, Katherine watched Celeste’s playful face in the mirror, felt the girl’s hands sliding purposefully across the naked flesh beneath her flowing skirt. She was bare under there, and the thought that someone would want to touch her was…strange—and enormously arousing. And the fact that it was only another girl almost made it all right somehow. She shuddered as wicked fingers danced over her taut belly, the smooth skin of her sensitive upper thighs.

“Oh, mademoiselle,” purred Celeste, watching Katherine’s flushed face, “this must be uncomfortable!” Her wanton hands toyed with wiry strands of her blushing mistress’s tangled pubic hair. “Celeste shall comb this out, no?” Her smiling dark eyes never left Katherine’s.

“Thank you,” Katherine breathed softly.

“Oh, think nothing of it,” Celeste replied slyly. “We would be remiss if we did not care properly for your needs.” Her fingernails scratched seductively through Katherine’s moistening thatch. Perhaps, Katherine dared to let herself believe, they really did like doing this to her. Maybe there was no malice at all.

“Celeste”—Marie, unacknowledged, still toyed with Katherine’s nipples to distraction— “you know that massaging ones scalp often does wonders for the hair…” Her face in the beveled mirror smiled crookedly at Katherine.

“Why, of course!” Celeste exclaimed delightedly. To Katherine she said coyly, “If I might…?”

“Please,” Katherine replied huskily.

So the saucy chambermaid unabashedly slipped her deft fingertips right into Katherine’s willing labia. Silently she began to fondle the tremulous bud of wet feminine flesh which waited so expectantly, and Katherine had to bite her full lower lip to keep herself from crying out in pleasure. Celeste stroked mercilessly between sticky folds of pink while her sister placidly pinched the agonized buds of rosy-brown erectile tissue crowning their mistress’s high swelling chest.

Katherine shifted her weight from one foot to the other as her wild pleasure mounted higher. Staring into the kittenish eyes of her voyeuristic tormentors, she finally could no longer keep herself from gasping. Honey-sweet sensations rippled from the pit of her belly, through sleek limbs whose supple muscles jumped restlessly. Her fists clenched themselves as the spasms of an exquisitely rich orgasm engulfed her, filled her, and made her fevered body shake under the knowing caresses of the two dark-eyed sisters who watched so intently all the while.

And when Katherine, sweaty and breathless and trembling, finally was done, the two maids withdrew their hands and smiled innocently at her reflection in the mirror.

“Yes,” Marie said guilelessly to Celeste, “now mademoiselle is ready for the day.” Then the girls curtsied, and they left.

***

After lunch Katherine headed out for a long walk in the gardens. The day was warm, with fluffy sunlit clouds creeping across a European fairy tale sky.

Gradually she drew farther from the castle, deeper into the beautiful maze of rich foliage. Suddenly she thought she caught a glimpse of someone else at a distance, much closer to the great forest. Was it Inge, the cook? she wondered. Yes, that striking blonde hair could be no one else. She almost called out, but soon thought better of it. It seemed unbecoming for the mistress of the castle to bellow out across the countryside. She would reach the woman, and she would greet her then. It would be nice to walk with someone, and to chat.

Katherine lost Inge for a few moments, but she sped up her pace, and soon she regained sight of her. Slowly she began to catch up. She was rather close now, with only one layer of plants obstructing her view. Yet Katherine’s line of sight through the carefully tended growth was oblique, and still she could see little. Inge was one row closer to the forest, walking no more than thirty or forty meters ahead of Katherine. Again Katherine almost called out, but then decided to wait another minute longer. Soon she would reach her.

To her surprise, Inge stopped suddenly. Peering, Katherine saw why, for Vaclav stood on the path ahead of her, smiling wordlessly. Yet Inge did not seem in the least surprised. Katherine slowed.

As Katherine watched in silence, the two began to kiss passionately. Clearly this was no chance encounter, but a tryst. The lovers’ hands explored each other’s bodies familiarly. Katherine knew she should leave…but she could not. Curious, she kept looking.

Inge hiked her skirt up above her knees and knelt down before Vaclav. Slowly the cook unbuttoned his trousers, and Katherine’s hand flew reflexively to her mouth—she watched in disbelief as the older man’s erection sprang out. His organ was big and thick, engorged with blood. It seemed to tremble with his pulse.

Inge fondled him, teasingly. The woman smiled coyly as she stroked her fingertips along Vaclav’s darkened manhood, scratched her red nails beneath his heavy testicles, wrapped her digits around his shaft and began to pump him. Vaclav groaned as Inge worked at his turgid cock.

Then she smiled wantonly and let the great tumescent shaft slide between her lips. She leaned forward and engulfed him, her lips sliding across the bulbous head of his penis, along the sensitive loose skin behind and beneath, down the veiny pillar of meat toward the dark-furred reaches of the man’s lower belly. Katherine spared a quick glance at Vaclav’s flushed, entranced face, then looked back down to Inge.

From where Katherine knelt she could see it all too clearly now—Inge’s wicked mouth lunging again and again on Vaclav’s swollen organ. Sometimes the woman pulled her mouth back, and Katherine watched her tongue, swift and agile as it traveled lovingly over trembling masculine flesh. There was no hesitance, only a hungry eagerness. Katherine gradually came to realize that Inge was enjoying the act almost as much as Vaclav. That seemed strange at first, but it was no little bit exciting, too. Something stirred between Katherine’s own thighs. She could not take her eyes from the scene.

Katherine’s hands, almost unnoticed, slid slowly down her quivering belly as she watched Inge suck wantonly at her lover’s enormous erection. Fingers plucked unthinking at the hem of her skirt while she watched Inge fondle the full, heaving breasts out of her own top. Still mouthing rhythmically onto Vaclav’s throbbing meat, Inge began to cup her great mammaries. Vaclav shuddered as he looked down at her.

Almost of their own accord, Katherine’s smooth white hands began to stroke the soft, sweating lips between her own pale thighs. Her trim fingers slipped through damp auburn curls, probing for the familiar sweet slickness that beckoned irresistibly. Entranced, she stared longingly at Inge as she manipulated her breasts for the man, sucking him all the while.

The cook palmed her rippling flesh playfully, letting her fingers find great dark nubs of delight which were already shamelessly erect. Those digits gathered the flesh of her crinkled areolas, pulled and twisted at the thickened nipples in a way that Katherine knew must make the woman drip inside. She stroked herself while she watched the other clutch the yielding flesh of her own breasts in ecstasy.

Katherine’s fingers flew feverishly through sticky pink flesh as Inge let Vaclav slip from her mouth, then pushed her heavy mammaries up to her panting lips and began sucking roughly at the great buds. Her nipples were big and thick, with wide areolas puckered into delicious mouthfuls that full lips and naughty teeth shamelessly tortured. The dark nodules of flesh, wet with saliva, stretched as Inge worked them over. It was beautiful.

Katherine knew how good it felt to do that to herself, how delightfully naughty it was. Yet how much more exciting it must be, she realized dizzily, to do that while someone watched. She panted as she masturbated, watching her servant ravish herself, watching Inge gasp as her thighs ground together purposefully.

Vaclav’s hand began pulling hurriedly at his own flesh. In but a few desperate strokes, the tremendous rod in his hand twitched, and Inge turned her mouth up lovingly to catch the thick whitish streams of fluid which spurted again and again from the tip of his darkened organ. His ejaculate spattered richly within her open mouth, and as Inge swallowed it, smiling, more sticky globules sprayed across her joyous face.

Finally, breathless, Katherine could stand it no more. Rubbing her fingers across a clitoris spasming wildly with forbidden voyeuristic delights, she orgasmed suddenly, almost simultaneously with the wanton Inge. Barely able to keep herself quiet enough to escape detection, Katherine sighed blissfully as the sweet pleasure welled dizzyingly through her body—eyes locked all the while on the face of the big-breasted blonde.

Her gaze still lingering on the woman whose bucking body only slowly, slowly began to regain its composure, Katherine stood. Still the cook caressed herself absently, fingering her thick nipples as Vaclav stroked his big hands tenderly through her glowing hair. Her face was flushed and beautiful.

Katherine’s soft fingertips were slippery with her own lubrication. She could smell the musk. Katherine hesitated for a moment. Then she crept away silently.

On her way back inside, Katherine chanced to pass the garage, a rough old building of fieldstone and timber which in a previous century must have been a stable. For all she knew, the outbuilding had been standing for a lifetime or even two before her ancestors had first come to America. At Castle Rohmenstadt, she suspected, such a thing was just possible.

As she looked closer Katherine saw that at least some concession had been made to the modern world, for electric lines ran from the castle proper to the garage. The castle must possess a generator, she realized. Though she had not realized it the night before, there was no other habitation within a hundred kilometers or more, and certainly none of the ubiquitous high-tension power cables whose great skeletal steel towers marched across the countryside of her upbringing. How curious to think that this deep in the great woods no storm could cause downed power lines or blackouts.

Slowly her ears began to pick up the faint sounds of metal upon metal, and despite her exertions of but an hour earlier, Katherine felt her face growing warm. Karl must be working. She stepped quietly toward the wide entrance of the garage and peered in.

Yes, it was Karl, she saw with pleasure. Above his dark chauffeur’s pants a muscular torso clad only in a thin white cotton undershirt bent into the engine compartment of the estate’s roomy old sedan. The flesh of the young man’s chest and sides was solid, sculpted by discipline and hard work, she was sure. His broad, honest shoulders gleamed with a faint sheen of perspiration as his big hands, unseen, adjusted something within the tangle of machinery. The great contoured steel mass of the hood concealed his head and arms.

Katherine cleared her throat, and he stood with a start. “Miss Katherine!” he exclaimed, quickly wiping his oily hands on a towel. His thin, almost overly expressive lips pursed with surprise and…embarrassment?

“Oh, I’m sorry, Karl,” Katherine said as easily as she could. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I was out for a walk in the gardens, and when I came by and heard you working, I thought I should stop in.”

“Why, thank you, miss. That was most kind of you.” He seemed to mean it, but still he seemed somewhat ill at ease. Perhaps, Katherine reflected, he was uncomfortable about being alone with her. Certainly the situation was a little strange for her, too…but pleasant nevertheless. “Is there anything I can show you, Miss Katherine?” he asked hopefully. “As you can see, your garage is fully equipped to—”

“Katherine,” she corrected him softly. She looked up at him from beneath her lashes. He was so handsome.

“Katherine…” Karl said hesitantly. He wiped his hands again nervously, then began putting on his great heavy jacket. “Herr Ernst always wanted the maintenance facilities to be able to take care of any problems which might arise. He liked Castle Rohmenstadt to be as self-sufficient as possible.” His fingers worked quickly at the double row of gleaming brass buttons as Katherine shifted her hips.

“Karl, what can you tell me about my Uncle Ernst?” She met his surprised look with a disarming smile and added, “Remember, I met him only once.” Truly, she did want to hear the answer…but still her pulse beat heavily between her moist thighs. It was good to watch him talk.

“Oh, miss— Uh, Katherine,” Karl corrected himself awkwardly, “your uncle was a wonderful man. Perhaps you knew that he was a great scientist?” His heavy shoulders shrugged at her headshake, and he continued, “No matter. Few in the outside world knew of his genius, but someday all will know—” He stopped abruptly and looked at the floor, as if he had said something wrong.

Then, choosing his words carefully, “Herr Ernst was a most generous and kindhearted man. He was always good to us, so that serving him really was our pleasure.” Katherine looked up sharply, but Karl seemed to mean nothing untoward by it. “He took in Inge after her husband died, almost thirty years ago. Of the present staff, she has been here the longest. The rest of us the master collected over the years. Vaclav, then Gregor and me, finally Marie and Celeste just a year ago. He sensed our unique talents and knew how we would come to work together almost as a family.” Katherine tried to decipher Karl’s expression, but it was distant, unreadable.

“It all sounds very nice,” Katherine said at length. She herself was not sure of what she had been expecting, but this was not it. She almost wished to stay and talk longer, yet it seemed, for the moment at least, that there was nothing more to say. “Thank you, Karl.” She smiled briefly and took her leave.

When she stepped through the great arched stone portal of the castle, Vaclav was there inside, polishing one of the ancient suits of armor. She stopped guiltily, her hands on the iron door handle behind her back. She tried quickly to stop the massive oaken door, but its momentum was too great, and it closed solidly, with a sound that made the butler turn. She tried to reassure herself—surely, after all, they could not have seen her watching in the gardens.

Vaclav smiled blandly at her. “May I help you with anything, miss?”

“Um, yes,” Katherine said quickly. She could hardly look him in the face, and she needed to say something to mask her discomfort. “Vaclav—do we get television from very many countries here? That might be a way for me to learn more about this part of Europe.”

“Well, miss,” Vaclav replied with reluctance, “rather little of the local programming would be in English.” He frowned. “In any event, I am afraid that Castle Rohmenstadt has never had a television. You see, Master Ernst was in some respects quite austere.”

Katherine lifted her eyebrow and looked significantly about the ancient castle’s sumptuous entryway—and she thought suddenly of Marie and Celeste and found herself blushing. Had he selected them, as Karl had said, for their unique talents?

“As I said, miss,” chuckled the butler indulgently, “in some respects. By now I am sure you are aware that your great-great uncle did believe in living comfortably.”

“Yes…” Katherine admitted slowly. She found the courage to meet his eyes, and for a disconcerting split second she imagined he was looking right through her. She felt like a little girl trying to fool her grandfather.

Katherine swallowed as he continued, “Master Ernst, for example, did not believe in alcohol. Good food, fine clothes, comfortable surroundings—yes, yes! But Master Ernst always felt that there were enough pleasures in the world that the artificial deliriums of drugs were quite unnecessary. Indeed,” he explained patiently, “though from your exploration of the library you may have seen that your uncle enjoyed a good stimulating novel just as much as a historical or scientific text, he regarded television as being closer to a drug than a good book.”

“Really?” Katherine did not feel like talking about the library or its contents. “So he never liked it?”

“Of course, Master Ernst saw its uses, but for him the crass commercialism and general mindlessness of television outweighed the positives. Yet we certainly are not cut off from the outside world,” he hastened to add. “If you are interested in any kind of news, it can be accessed from the new computer in the rear alcove of the castle library. Your uncle had recently subscribed to a host of on-line news services. We have no telephone lines this far out, naturally, but the information comes straight down from an orbiting satellite—the receiving dish is atop one of the towers.”

Katherine nodded slowly. “I had no idea.”

“Oh, yes, miss.” Vaclav smiled. “You need not feel as if we are isolated in the woods here like some peasants of the Middle Ages. Everything is most up-to-date. And of course, Miss Katherine,” Vaclav assured her, “if you feel the need for television or anything else, you have but to tell us, and it shall be.”

“Thank you, Vaclav,” Katherine said. “I’m sure this way is fine.”

During dinner on that second night in Castle Rohmenstadt, Katherine first really began to notice the tapestries. The warm glow of the setting sun slanted luxuriantly through the arched, mullioned windows, bringing out subtleties of color and texture in the sumptuous old wall hangings. The ancient works were amazingly rich and varied in their colors and tones.

Katherine let her eyes travel slowly over the tapestries of the dining hall as she spooned the dessert of chocolate mousse absently into her mouth. The hanging fabric portrayed scenes which might have occurred in the times when the castle was first constructed centuries ago—sturdy, smiling peasants sowing and reaping, dancing in celebration, bowing and curtsying to the lord who rode past serenely on his great steed. Yet subtle undertones of color, vague patterns seemed to lurk just beneath the limits of conscious perception.

Her cool green eyes seemed to pick out something strange in one of the scenes. Beside a haystack where crows scavenged for gleanings…a couple was making love in plain view. Surprised, Katherine looked more carefully. Yes, that was it, she realized slowly. The low angle of the sunlight was bringing out something she had not seen at lunch, perhaps pigments in the fabric not so readily noticeable. The tableau was very detailed, very graphic. Peering, Katherine set her spoon down.

The peasants, apparently husband and wife, coupled with gusto. Even from where she sat, Katherine could see the flush of pleasure on the cheeks of the big-bodied woman who lay back eagerly on the ground, knees raised and thighs spread. Her eyes were closed, her pretty mouth open and gasping. Trousers off his taut buttocks, the straining farmer knelt roughly between his wife’s rounded thighs, thrusting a thick penis between the furry lips of her shamelessly exposed womanhood. His coarse hands gripped the fleshy breasts which spilled from her blouse. The detail was fine enough for Katherine to see the distended veins of his darkened organ, the puckering of the thick nipples he pinched in earth-stained fingers.

Shivering faintly, Katherine looked further. The tapestry was filled, she saw, with wild sexual excess and debauchery. A chastely veiled young bride put one foot up on a large rock and raised the flowing white hem of her wedding dress so that her nether lips might enjoy the frenzied lickings of one of the groomsmen—while her new husband sank his glistening member ecstatically into his friend’s inviting rump. A ring of onlookers cheered and clapped, awaiting their turns.

Katherine bit her full lower lip. She felt something stir deep within her.

A tonsured priest with an enormous erection chased naked, laughing maidens who fingered themselves as they ran. Here and there a wanton girl had jumped aside and flung herself to the soft ground, masturbating. One was taken roughly by an unshaven fat man. One groveled joyously on her hands and knees as she was mounted from behind by a scrawny little man who clung to her slim hips and jerked excitedly within her while his red-faced wife lashed his bare bottom with a birch broom. One lay in the midst of a crowd of young bachelors who, standing, worked openly at their stiff flesh, spraying her with their sticky, pearly ejaculate.

The artists who created these tapestries so long ago, Katherine recognized, were wildly creative. The perversions which they wove into the half-seen depths of their work…made her sweat inside. She had not imagined that people so long ago had thought of such things. She knew it was wrong to like what she saw—but she could not help herself. Suddenly she was incredibly aroused.

Katherine knew she should go back to her room…yet she could not bear to leave the tapestries, not yet. They were just so good. She looked quickly over her shoulder. No one else was around. Shuddering with anticipation, she let her hand drift familiarly down between her parted thighs as her eyes scanned the walls. Marie and Celeste had dressed her this morning, and she was naked beneath her skirt, open and wet. Fingertips began to caress warm, receptive flesh.

Her breathing deepened as her gaze roamed the orgies, the masturbation, and the wanton sexuality which lay just beneath the surface of the seemingly placid tapestries. A large group of bare-bottomed men knelt…taking each other from behind, their thrusts bucking the hips of the men in front of them, around and around. Nearby writhed a twisted circle of half-naked women, faces pressed lovingly between one another’s open thighs. She thought she could discern one wench’s tongue as it flicked knowingly across a tender, salty button.

Katherine rolled her pulsing clitoris between expert digits, hips grinding. If felt so good. Yet she needed more, she needed to be filled, and soon she slid her slippery fingers right up into herself. In and out, rhythmically, instinctively her squelching fingers shuddered against a tender, hidden nubbin of bliss. On and on she stroked, feeling the heady sensations of her own lovemaking course deliciously through her body. Her hands worked their magic on smooth skin long accustomed to such intimacies. And as she pleasured herself ever more intensely, she kept her eyes on the shameless scenes in the tapestries.

Her naughty pleasures mounted higher, dizzyingly, closer to the ultimate goal her pulsing womanhood craved. The joy which welled up gloriously from deep within her made her sleek young body shake. Eyelids heavy, she struggled to focus on the beautiful perversions in the tapestries, the wild hedonism whose forbidden delicacies whetted the appetites perhaps just as much as they sated them. Katherine gasped in delight, her body racked with the sweet spasms of her climax. She panted blissfully as the indescribable tremors of ecstasy shook through her tingling flesh.

When finally the last rich waves of her orgasm ebbed from her shapely limbs, Katherine leaned back against the tall chair and let her eyes slide closed, her glowing chestnut mane half-obscuring her face. Her heart hammered beneath her stiff-nippled breasts, slowing by degrees. Her breathing returned gradually to normal. She felt completely fulfilled.

Then, from the doorway, Vaclav cleared his throat politely and came in to clear away the dishes.