Chapter Two

Katherine woke in the morning to the sight of the two chambermaids, Marie and Celeste, looking down into her face. “Good morning, Mademoiselle Katherine,” they chorused sweetly. Their French accent was beautiful, almost seductive in the way their pretty lips seemed to caress the vowels. It made them seem worldly and sophisticated…and yet somehow vulnerable at the same time, too. Sensing it subconsciously, Katherine suddenly wanted to protect these dear servants of hers, even though they were probably no younger—or less capable of looking out for themselves—than Katherine herself. And yet the strange feeling also made her wonder.

One of the girls—Celeste, Katherine remembered, the one with the faint scar on her left cheek—smiled faintly. Had they wakened her—or had they simply been standing there, staring?

Belatedly she pulled the covers up around her neck. She had slept soundly after having masturbated herself to sleep the night before, and she had not changed into her pajamas or even taken off her clothing. Her soiled clothes were exactly as she had left them, white cotton blouse unbuttoned, bra straps off her rounded shoulders and cups below her bare breasts…jeans unzipped and half off, panties stiff with dried lubrication.

Katherine’s nose crinkled self-consciously. She could smell herself, she realized, a strong musky scent. Surely the other girls could smell it, too. She blushed fiercely.

“Time to get up now, Mademoiselle Katherine.” Marie pulled back the blankets to reveal Katherine’s rumpled clothes and half-naked body. Katherine sat up awkwardly, trying to cover herself somehow, but Marie seemed to find nothing amiss. The girl’s dark eyes swept Katherine’s nude flesh matter-of-factly, then looked away politely.

Celeste smiled again, ever so faintly, and handed Katherine a big, soft robe of rose-colored terry cloth. She watched disinterested as Katherine stepped quickly into it. “I have prepared your bath, mademoiselle.”

“Uh, thank you, Celeste,” she managed, wrapping the robe around her exposed body. A great silky K was embroidered upon the garment’s left breast in elegant cursive. The tie which nestled about her slim waist was detailed most delicately along its edges with a rosebud motif, and for a moment she ran the feminine, almost-Braille like needlework between her appreciative fingertips and thumb. How touching, Katherine thought, that the castle staff had spared no effort to help make her feel at home.

Marie saw her and smiled. “Inge is a most accomplished seamstress, no?”

“It’s lovely,” said Katherine. Then she wriggled her hips out of the jeans and musky panties and headed uncertainly toward the adjoining bathroom. The two girls busied themselves changing her bed, and she shut the door self-consciously.

After she had used the toilet and brushed her teeth, Katherine slipped gingerly into the great claw-footed bathtub. This was no mass-produced modern plastic device, but a veritable pool constructed of cast iron and covered with gleaming porcelain. It was longer and wider than any other tub she had ever seen, and consequently more comfortable.

The water was warm and deep. She had just settled in when, to her great surprise, the door opened and Marie and Celeste stepped in quietly. Her hands flew reflexively to her breasts, sending water splashing all about. She tried to say something, but Marie anticipated her.

“Why, mademoiselle,” the pretty girl said disarmingly, “this is but one of our duties.”

“Yes, mademoiselle,” her sister agreed. “There is no need for the mistress of Castle Rohmenstadt to worry herself about such as this.” Celeste’s slim white hand indicated the tub. “We shall take care of your needs, no?”

Katherine bit her lip uncertainly.

“Here, now. I will scrub your back.” Marie removed the back brush from its hook and wet and soaped it. Before Katherine could even think to protest, Marie began scrubbing the brush gently across Katherine’s back, from her shoulders down to her hips, opening the pores, stimulating the skin. Soon she began to use her hands also, wet palms rubbing out a tightened muscle, nails scratching deliciously beneath Katherine’s shoulder blades. Katherine had to admit to herself that it did feel good.

She knew she should be embarrassed to have someone see her like this, to have them help her with her bath…but the situation really was harmless enough. It was only the two girls. They were her servants, after all, and apparently this was their job. And they were as calm and polite as could be. She tried to ignore them.

Celeste dropped wordlessly to her knees at the front of the bathtub. She favored Katherine with a reassuring smile as she slipped her pale hands, her slim wrists, her smooth-muscled forearms into the water. She found the soap and began bathing Katherine’s feet.

At first it tickled, and Katherine could not help squirming. Yet as her embarrassment gradually ebbed away, the gentle pressure of Celeste’s hands began to soothe her. Katherine found herself relaxing, accepting the deft fingers which now stroked and massaged the sensitive bottoms of her feet, her tingling toes, her ankles and calves. Sighing, she let her half-lidded eyes slide closed. She leaned back, luxuriating in the liquid warmth of the antique bathtub.

Then Marie began to wash her hair, tapering white fingers twining sensuously in rich auburn tresses. Eyes contentedly closed, Katherine gave herself up to the cleansing caresses of the beautiful duo. Marie’s hands worked at her scalp, her neck and shoulders, while Celeste diligently stroked her soapy feet, her rounded calves, her knees…even higher.

“Mmm…” Katherine murmured. “Very nice…”

“Thank you, mademoiselle,” Marie whispered, softly, her full lips so close that her warm breath tickled Katherine’s earlobe. “You see, we do know just how to take care of our mistress.”

“Yes…” Katherine sighed.

Katherine floated serenely, sightless, only half-aware of the girlish hands which laved her naked body so gently. She reveled silently while her faithful servants soothed her tired muscles, stroked her silken skin unabashedly. Their smooth hands explored her ready flesh slowly.

Hands worked at her back and shoulders, her neck and collarbones. She scarcely seemed to notice as those careful, bathing hands cupped and released her buoyant young breasts tenderly. But what she did notice made her shiver. She tried not to think about it, for if she had not known better, she almost would have imagined that those unseen hands— But, no, that could not be.

Her stiffening nipples were rolled casually between soap-slicked thumbs and forefingers. The sensation was delicious, and as cloyingly familiar as the scent of her own body beneath the covers at night. Yet somehow everything seemed remote and dreamlike, as if it were happening to someone else entirely. Nothing made any sense.

But it felt so comfortable, so natural. Her mind wandered. She felt good, all over.

Hands glided over her calves, the sensitive skin behind her trembling knees, her loosening thighs. Competent fingers stroked her slim waist and swelling hips, massaged the flesh of her rounded buttocks. Her breath coming slow and deep, Katherine felt loving hands scrubbing her fluttering belly.

Her breasts felt strange—distant and yet so full and warm—as fingernails scratched relentlessly through her tangled pubic bush. Soft digits worked out snarls, thoroughly washed the fur and massaged the skin underneath. The caresses seemed to work deep into her body.

Then those disembodied fingers drifted unconcernedly down. They glided across tender open thighs, brushed faintly against lips which quivered at their touch.

Of its own volition, Katherine’s back arched as she floated there unashamedly in the rich darkness, and her secret places seemed to rise up toward the exploring hands. Innocent fingertips continued, silently. They played gently across open pink flesh, her lightly furred lips parted instinctively to expose a pulsing button that longed for attention. Katherine floated, eyes closed, mind contentedly adrift.

Katherine’s breath came faster as loving caresses seemed to cover her whole body. Her young breasts were aflame, and her sensitive ears and throat tingled to soft wet pressures whose source she neither knew nor cared. Her hips churned slowly.

And all the while the very core of her womanhood trembled with sensations she had never before experienced in the presence of another. She could not acknowledge the source of the subtly familiar feelings, could not understand. She could only dimly realize that they felt good…very good.

Despite the readiness of her healthy young body, still her mind hesitated. Katherine knew not why, for her brain seemed incapable of forming any rational thought. For awhile she muddled along, attempting to think without words, forgetting what she was trying to debate in the first place. And all the while those underlying sensations spread.

Slowly, slowly her pleasure intensified. From their coiled nest somewhere beneath her taut belly, those secret joys began to ripple up and down her spasming nerves. Suddenly she felt she was falling, but it was a welcome fall into a nirvana of indescribably pure and satisfying sensations, and she fell with a joyous innocence. The feelings reverberated through her trembling limbs, glowing red at the base of her brain, pulsing at the very core of her being. Gradually they grew to become a pleasure so exquisitely torturous that soon she was gasping in uncontrollable delight.

She writhed ecstatically in the liquid darkness, eyes tightly closed, on and on, wave after wave of the most intense sensations filling her helpless body, shaking her…until, breathless and spent, she lay back exhausted. She floated there, gloriously fulfilled. Her orgasm died away slowly.

Gradually Katherine realized the shocking enormity of what had happened. She hid behind her closed eyelids, so hideously embarrassed that she had no idea of what to do next. Her beautiful flush of pleasure became the burning blush of shame. What could she possibly say? How could she dare to open her eyes?

Never, never had anyone touched her like that – no one, neither boy nor girl. Her fertile imagination had often led her to dream of shameless debaucheries, and perhaps once or twice she even had dallied with wicked fantasies of lesbian sex. Yet to have actually allowed such things to be done to herself was unthinkable. How could she ever look her chambermaids in the face again, after what had happened—after what they had done to her? Finally, she mustered up the courage to force her heavy-lidded eyes open.

Katherine looked around uncertainly, but the sensuous dark-eyed duo acted as though nothing unusual had happened. Marie pulled the thick rubber plug from the brass drain between Katherine’s feet, and Celeste held out a large towel. “A good bath, no?” Marie asked.

Her face hot, Katherine hesitantly stood and stepped her nude young body out into the towel Celeste offered. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Thank you.”

“Oh, mademoiselle,” Celeste exclaimed with a smile, “think nothing of it! It is what we love to do.”

They walked back into the bedroom. The maids dried and dressed her imperturbably while she stood in silence, nerves jangling in panic and confusion. She hardly even noticed what the girls did.

“Thank you,” Katherine murmured, and they left.

Her chest felt tight as she tried to breathe. Suddenly the room was too small. The polished antique furniture looked dark and brooding, somehow oppressive. The intricately patterned red wallpaper, which had seemed so quaint and cozy the previous night, was now cloyingly repugnant. Nothing looked right. Try as she might to relax, everything reminded her of—

She had to get out. Heart hammering wildly beneath her breasts, she ran out of the door and through the hall and went breathlessly down the wide curving staircase three steps at a time.

Vaclav was coming out of the broad double doorway between the stairs as she reached the bottom. “May I help you, miss?” he asked blandly.

“Uh, no—thank you,” she gasped, stopping. Her face felt hot. “I—I just feel like a walk.”

“Very well, miss,” the butler replied. “I shall have Inge postpone breakfast until after you return.”

“Thank you, Vaclav.” Somewhat more composed, Katherine headed for the door. Vaclav slipped ahead of her unobtrusively and opened the great mass of weathered oak with a bow. And she stepped out onto the manicured lawn.

The lightening sky overhead shone a rich azure, strung with soft wisps of cloud orange-tinted by the rising sun. A slight fog had already begun to burn off. Beyond the grass lay the extensive gardens which she barely had had a chance to glimpse the previous evening. Richly colored with wildly varying types of shrubs and flowers, the gardens looked as if they might circle the castle. Katherine could not imagine how much time it would take Gregor to maintain such a splendid display. Behind towered the proud, centuries-old evergreens of the great forest.

She stepped through grass still faintly dewy, into the soothing privacy of the deep gardens. Grand flora of brilliant hues rose up around her in the golden morning light, many growths shoulder-high or more. Yet as Katherine meandered abstractedly through the winding paths, she could not keep her nervous eyes on the beauty around her. Try as she might, her mind kept returning to the terrible events of her bath. She could not analyze her own role in the shocking scene, let alone the motivation of the two shameful chambermaids.

How could she have allowed it? Her face burning with bitter remorse, Katherine asked herself the question again and again. How could she have allowed someone to do those awful things to her? Were they lesbians? she wondered disgustedly. Despite the harmless little fantasies which she knew all girls must have at least sometimes, she had never, never considered actually doing such things. It was unthinkable.

Certainly at first it had seemed strange for them to offer to help her bathe, but she had thought that maybe that was just the way people did things around here. They treated her like nobility, after all—which in a way, she supposed, she actually was, however distant the relation. When they had claimed that helping her in the bath was merely one of their normal duties, Katherine naively had believed them. She had trusted the two, exposed herself. And then they—they had violated her. Her skin crawled as she remembered the sensation of their hands upon her naked white flesh. It was almost as if they had raped her.

Katherine slowly began to wonder if they had—had done things for her great-great uncle Ernst. She felt revulsion at the thought: an old man making those beautiful young Frenchwomen…touch him. Or worse.

Shuddering, she pushed the idea from her mind. Perhaps he had been a dirty old man. But at least, she admitted reluctantly, that was better than—than what had happened this morning. A man was supposed to like women, and Marie and Celeste were very pretty. There was no denying it. If the girls had been willing…maybe, just maybe that might have been all right. That would have been between them and her uncle, Katherine supposed reluctantly, no concern of hers.

But what those perverted twins had done to Katherine was unforgivable. Girls were not supposed to do those kinds of things to other girls. It was unnatural. It was wrong.

She had never been attracted to another girl, never. Perhaps once or twice, fantasizing beneath the safety of her covers, Katherine had wondered how it would feel to have a pretty girl touch her…all over…and perhaps she had tried to imagine what it would be like to do the same for that other girl. But those were just innocent fantasies. Katherine never really would have done anything like that, not willingly. Never. The forbidden thought was too terrible. It was repugnant.

And yet, eyes closed in the floating darkness of her warm bathtub, she had felt so—so good.

Katherine could hardly admit the shameful truth to herself. She wondered fearfully what it meant. She was no lesbian, of that she was certain. But her body had responded to their caresses, responded eagerly as they had stroked her soft skin so knowingly, so naturally. She had known it was wrong, but she had not been able to help herself. The pleasure had been too gloriously intense, and though an unheeded voice somewhere deep within her mind had called out, she had suppressed the inhibition.

Yes, she realized dazedly, shaking her head, somehow she had given herself up to the heady sensations, exposing some of the darkest, half-acknowledged recesses of her innermost being. She had revealed some private facets of her sexuality which she had scarcely known herself.

She would never let that happen again, she vowed. Katherine squared her shoulders.

Just then she noticed what seemed to be gigantic footprints crossing the soft grass of the path ahead of her. Almost like the impressions of great feet, the faint tracks—two meters apart, certainly—ran from between tall bushes on her left and disappeared into the bushes on her right. Despite their size, they were somewhat indistinct, and soon they vanished altogether in the undergrowth at the edge of the adjacent forest.

Katherine puzzled at the prints. They must have been Gregor’s, yet somehow they almost did not even look human. There was something just the slightest bit odd about their shape, something she could not quite place. Were they a little bit too narrow about the arch, almost like the prints of bare feet? Perhaps it was simply her imagination. Probably the wind had disturbed the groundskeeper’s footprints, making them look strange.

She remembered how the yeti tracks supposedly found in the pristine snow high in the Himalayas had been shown to be merely the tracks of some smaller animal distorted by the sun’s rays. Though this was not snow, surely the random effects of the wind could do a similar thing to the easily bent blades of grass. Yet the tracks were so far apart, much farther than little Gregor’s stride could have put them. Perhaps, she supposed, the breezes somehow had smoothed out and erased some prints while apparently magnifying others.

She continued walking.

***

When Katherine finally returned from her walk, it was closer to lunch than breakfast, but Inge had a sumptuous meal ready for her mistress. Vaclav served her rolls, salad, and colorfully delicious little sandwiches of sliced meats and subtle spices in a dining hall which could easily have seated thirty—for that was how many tall wooden chairs flanked the long table.

Her own chair, at the head of the table, was the largest and most ornately carved. The woodwork seemed to depict the frolicking of dolphins or perhaps of mermaids, though on that day she paid little attention.

Of more immediate interest was the great chair’s seat itself. Strangely enough, the velvet-cushioned seat was split at the front, being U-shaped rather than fully solid. She had sat in it with some trepidation, but was pleasantly surprised to find it quite comfortable. With her weight supported adequately by her buttocks and the backs of her thighs, the open space between her legs was hardly noticeable.

What was strange was eating alone in such a large room. Yet she would have to get used to it. Sunlight streaming through the great mullioned windows brought out the subtle colors in the ancient tapestries lining the dark stone walls, making the enormous room look somewhat more comfortable and less foreboding. The subtle patterns seemed to tease her eyes as she ate.

When she had finished and Vaclav was clearing the table, Katherine made her way to the library. Since, as Karl had told her, the servants ran the estate themselves, there was little for her to do except simply live as the mistress of Castle Rohmenstadt. The grounds were lush, she had discovered on the morning’s walk, and she knew that if she chose to remain, in years to come she would spend countless hours there. She suspected that the library would be her other main place of recreation.

The castle library was a large-high-ceilinged room whose walls were lined with books far higher than she could reach unaided. An ingenious wheeled ladder whose upper end was connected to a continuous track running around the room allowed access to those distant shelves near the ceiling. There were thousands and thousands of books here, enough to entertain and educate for years. The chamber was redolent with the cloying, wonderfully aged scent of books.

Apparently, Uncle Ernst’s tastes had been wide and varied. Katherine found not only old books but new ones as well. There were texts on history, art, science, religion, anthropology—some ancient and leather-bound, but some printed very recently—along with a surprising amount of fiction, from general literature to westerns, mysteries to science fiction. On this day she could barely begin even to browse through a sampling of the titles.

As Katherine let her eyes scan across a crowded shelf near the floor, she was suddenly shocked to see—pornography. She straightened with a start…then, curious, bent down slowly to look again. Hundreds of big, glossy magazines filled the shelf. She picked one at random and pulled it out.

The title on the cover was in German, or perhaps one of the Scandinavian languages. Beneath the bold red-lettered words lounged a gorgeous black-haired woman, lips pouting, eyes beckoning over the tops of circular wire-rimmed spectacles. The brunette was dressed in an old-fashioned schoolmistress’s outfit: a high-collared ivory blouse and a long skirt of dark gray twill.

The prim blouse was unbuttoned halfway to the waist and the woman’s creamy white breasts thrust out brazenly. She tried to cover the generous mounds with one arm and hand in a parody of shocked modesty more inflammatory than innocent. The teacher’s skirt was slit high up along her hip, and though she sat with her smooth naked thighs apart wantonly, her other hand tried to hide her crotch. Dense black hair, shiny with moisture, curled out from between her slim white fingers.

Katherine took a deep breath. She never had seen anything like this before, not up close, anyway. Certainly she had noticed similar magazines in the bookstores in America, but they had always been somewhere toward the back of the establishments, discreetly half-hidden. Never had she dared to venture close enough to actually open their bright, forbidden pages. She had hardly even thought about it, but she was a little curious.

Uncertainly Katherine began thumbing through the magazine, seeing beautiful girls—naked. There were girls in black leather, girls in frilly lace, each kittenish model an erotic temptress to the carnal lusts of the reader. They touched their own bodies intimately, pleasing themselves shamelessly in ways that made Katherine blush.

The pictures were in full color, many of them close-up – very close-up. Some girls stroked the naked pink flesh of their bared womanhood with slippery, glistening fingers. Some teased themselves with what must have been vibrators or dildos. Some held open their puffy labia while a big man sank the swollen dark head of his veiny penis right down into a willing vagina. Some even made love with other girls, fondling their breasts, kissing them—everywhere.

Her first reaction was one of shock and disbelief, disgust that her great-great uncle had indulged in such smut. The magazine was almost unbelievable, far more graphic than she had ever imagined any might be. What kind of woman would pose for such photographs? she wondered dizzily. And what kind of man would want to see them…do those things? Were not their own wives or girlfriends—or their own secret thoughts—enough?

As she flipped slowly through the lurid pages, she gradually came to realize that perhaps it was not quite so bad. After all, everyone fantasized—even an old man. Very few days had gone by in the last two years when Katherine herself had not masturbated at least once, or maybe two or three times. If Uncle Ernst had done it as well—so be it. Just perhaps she could understand how such erotica might help relieve someone’s sexual tensions.

Really, Katherine thought, lowering herself into a big chair covered in red leather studded with brass, some of the pictures were almost…arousing. She would not have thought it possible, but—she was getting turned on. Her breath came a little faster as she pulled her heels up into the big old chair and eased her thighs apart. With a quick look over her shoulder to make sure no one else was coming into the library, she lifted her loose skirt up over her abdomen and pushed aside the damp crotch of her white cotton panties.

For a moment she looked down at the familiar sight—soft furry lips parted to reveal the moist pink entrance of her wanton, virginal womanhood. She slid her fingers lightly across the silky wet flesh, feeling her body respond inside. Deliberately placing her fingertips against the protruding clitoris that ached to be touched, she turned back to the deliciously dirty magazine balanced upon her raised thighs.

Eyes upon the bright, naughty pictures, Katherine began to masturbate in earnest. While her hungry eyes moved across the sweating, naked flesh of the beautiful models who explored themselves and each other so delightfully, her quick fingers drew blissful circles around the quivering morsel of pink which drove her onward. She stroked herself skillfully, hips bucking to the prodding of her wicked, self-pleasuring fingertips.

Heavy-lidded eyes eagerly scanned the glossy photographs as her hand worked swiftly at the tender, open blossom of her womanhood. She found herself looking at the naughtiest pictures, the most graphic shots. Here a luscious little redhead in kinky thigh-high leather boots writhed on a bearskin rug before a blazing fireplace. Her flesh was shapely and alluring, sleek thighs opened invitingly. It was a strange thing to look upon another girl’s naked body like that—but Katherine found herself doing it.

She stared intently at the photograph of this woman who fondled the erect nipples of her pert girlish breasts roughly. To think that she had done that while someone filmed it all! Then there was a series of close-ups. The bulbous head of a massive penis nuzzled the auburn curls between her leather-clad thighs—the great glans inched forward, stretching her labia—the turgid shaft of meat slammed home, heavy balls pounding against the girl’s buttocks. Katherine’s eyes scanned the layout feverishly.

She flipped the page hurriedly, sighing as she saw the blonde approaching in the background of the photograph. The redhead’s mouth opened in a cry of ecstasy as the rugged sailor strove between her thighs, and in the next shot the blonde bent down to French-kiss her. There was a close-up of their soft wet lips locked in passion, and it was beautiful. They held each other’s faces tenderly in their hands. Their eyes were closed.

In the next picture, the big blonde squatted over the redhead’s face, pulling and twisting her own crinkled nipples. Her breasts were heavy, solid handfuls. The fingers of Katherine’s right hand moved instinctively, speeding their pace. Her tendons rippled.

Katherine turned the page quickly, and her eyes fell upon the exquisite close-ups of a loving tongue moving languidly through slippery pink, swirling, prodding… The blonde’s labia writhed under the oral caresses, wet folds deliciously indented by the redhead’s shameless licking. Those heavenly photographs were life-sized—or bigger—and the sight was entrancing.

Though Katherine tried to stop the thought, her mind traveled back to the morning’s wicked sexual encounter, and soon her body reverberated to the well-remembered sensations of soft feminine hands running insistently over her willing young flesh. She could not help recalling it, reveling in the memory with a secret joy she hardly dared acknowledge.

Those were the thoughts that pushed her over the delirious brink. The forbidden remembrance engulfed her, and something blissful and serene twitched deep within her belly. Katherine cried out as she climaxed, sudden waves of pleasure rolling thickly through her body, rolling inexorably outward from the spasming bud tortured so sweetly within her clenching nether lips—rich waves shaking and shaking her supple limbs until, deliriously exhausted, she finally let her satiated body rest.