There was another change, too, and when Greta had first entered the shop it was several moments before she realised that soft music was issuing from speakers set up on the shelf behind the counter, and there was a stack of CDs next to a brand new stereo. It wasn’t long before the bell was chiming and people were dancing across the burgundy carpet, slipping into new shoes and waltzing out with a distinctive red bag on rope handles swinging from their shoulders, the name of the store in gold lettering letting everyone know they were blessed with good taste.
‘Sex and Strauss, it always works,’ Madame Dubarry whispered during a brief lull, and then the bell was ringing again.
Greta heard Madame Dubarry laughing on several occasions and watched her become coquettish when a tall, elegant man made his way through the pattern of sunlight piercing the windows like a matador crossing the sol y sombra of the bullring. They spoke Spanish. The bullfighter bought two pairs of shoes and took Madame Dubarry off to lunch... and it was only 10.30 a.m.
‘You’ll be all right on your own,’ she said.
Madame Dubarry skipped along on tiny steps and Greta didn’t get her break until four o’clock, when her boss returned with puffy eyes and a faraway expression.
‘You look like you’ve fallen in love,’ Greta teased.
‘In lust, my dear, in lust,’ she replied, and Greta understood exactly what she meant.
Madame Dubarry was aware that Greta had an appointment with Count Ruspoli, and as it was so late she gave her the rest of the day off.
Greta didn’t want to be too early. Wasn’t it a lady’s prerogative to be late? She grinned and wondered what Richard thought of the old cliché. She was strolling along on her way to Pret, oblivious to the men taking note of her presence, but changed her mind and set off in the opposite direction. She made her way towards Soho and in Golden Square there was an internet café where she ordered sparkling water and went online.
She tapped in the word Pegasus and googled down the list. The flying horse had quite a history and was even a constellation with eight major stars; more than Titanic! Medusa with her snake hair and mesmerizing gaze was the creature’s mother, born from her blood when she was slain by Perseus, which wasn’t very nice but to be expected when you hang out with Gods. Poseidon was probably the father, which meant Medusa must have been playing the field, but Poseidon chose to ignore his equestrian progeny. It was said that one kick from Pegasus’s hoof caused the spring of Hippocrene to gush from the earth and its flow was famous for inspiring poets. ‘A muse. How lovely,’ she whispered. Zeus lured the winged horse into a golden bridle and, once tamed and disciplined, Pegasus carried thunderbolts across the night sky.
Well, well, well.
Greta typed Count Leonardo Ruspoli in Google and was disappointed that there were so few references. She did learn that he came from a long line of Italian nobility with three Popes in the family and a wayward branch related to Machiavelli. Villa Mangia Baldini, his estate in Tuscany, produced Chianti and the count had business interests in the Far East. There was nothing personal, nothing to say what he was really like.
She finally put Greta May in the search engine and nothing came up at all.
Greta walked slowly back through Soho and made her way to the hotel, which was just around the corner from the shoe shop. The doorman turned the card she gave him through his fingers for several moments. He studied her legs and her cleavage, looking her up and down with the same louche impudence as the builders in their white van, and it occurred to Greta that someone should write a book or open a school to teach men how to behave in the company of desirable women. I am a desirable woman, she thought with sudden pleasure, and let the thought slip away in order to pursue her thesis. Men like Richard and Gustav, like Count Ruspoli, know exactly what a woman wants and needs and for those men women will literally bend over and give everything in the knowledge that what they receive will make them truly thankful.
‘I have an appointment,’ Greta said crisply, pointing at the pale grey card, and the man awoke as if from a deep sleep. He led her to an elevator set in a lushly-carpeted passage. He pressed a button, she stepped inside, and the doorman stood back as the doors whispered to a close.
The lift rose without haste and opened on the top floor. She stepped out into a vestibule filled with flowers and tall mirrors. The solitary door was large, highly polished and half open. Greta heard foreign voices as she poked her head into the room.
A man with a fierce moustache, and not dissimilar to Madame Dubarry’s bullfighter, was directing three women in pink gingham uniforms as they carried great platters of fruit from one side of the suite to the other. The count was in an armchair by the window reading Corriere della Sera, the shadowy light falling in stripes across his pale linen suit. He was wearing a dark blue shirt and no tie.
‘Hello.’
He seemed surprised to see her and, as he stood, nodded his head in that old-fashioned way of men with good manners.
‘Ah, you are early, I am so sorry, we have yet to finish.’
‘Should I come back later?’
‘Good heavens, no. Come and see the finishing touches.’
He smiled now, took her hand and led her to a marble bathroom that was totally huge and where, in the sunken jacuzzi, the three women were busy assembling from the platters of fruit the perfect recreation of an Italian villa with its formal gardens and surrounding tree-clad hills. Rings of pineapple formed six columns across a palladium façade that was pale pink as if caught in the setting sun and must have been assembled from a whole market stall of mashed strawberries and cream. There were lawns of kiwis dotted with apple sculptures, sprigs of mint like olive trees, an orangery of orange slices, a lemon grove, beds of dried raisins, banked hills of greengages and cherries, mangoes lined with banana stepping stones, a fruit miracle that could easily have been created by Archimbaldo, another Italian.
The work was almost done. One of the gingham maids added a pond of pale ice cream, ‘Blueberry flavour,’ the count whispered, and the woman slid out behind the man who looked like a matador and was in fact the count’s equerry. Greta stared up at Count Ruspoli and he swept his hand through his leonine hair.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Greta said.
‘You don’t have to say anything.’
‘But it’s so... so big.’
‘It is a family conceit,’ he confessed. ‘An indulgence.’
Greta studied the fruit salad, an architect’s model, moving slightly as the slices of fruit slid from position, and she remembered she hadn’t eaten all day and was just dying to jump in which, she realised, was probably the point.
‘It’s hard to know where to start, I suppose,’ the count said.
‘It seems a shame to mess it up.’
‘But lots of fun.’
He smiled and his whole face came to life. Greta thought Count Ruspoli was probably the most handsome man she had ever seen. His eyes were as blue as the summer sky in Italy and sparkled with little stars of light; his nose was long and forceful and Greta could imagine that nose getting up to all sorts of mischief; he had a square chin that balanced his lush sweep of hair, and faint shadows below prominent cheekbones. It was hard to pinpoint his age. He could have been 50, or much more, or much less. He was ageless, timeless, a figure from another time and place, the renaissance, the Middle Ages, the crusades.
‘I’m going to jump in,’ she said.
‘As one should in all things.’
Greta undressed where she stood and the count held her clothes for her like an assistant in a shop. He folded everything neatly and placed her things on a marble shelf. He stood back to consider her body and Greta had the feeling that she was being appraised by a true connoisseur, an authority, an expert. There was nothing prurient or vulgar in his study. She could have been a painting by Rembrandt, a sculpture by da Vinci, a diamond at Tiffany’s. He took her hand and she turned.
‘Buono, buono, buono,’ he mumbled.
If th
is had been a test, she thought she had probably passed. Greta’s nipples were tingling and she rolled them wantonly through her fingers. The count drew her hair over her shoulders to get a better view and she was overwhelmed with an odd mixture of shame and elation. She felt utterly at ease being naked, being assessed in this way. She liked it. She craved it. In fact, being naked seemed to be more natural than being dressed. Hadn’t homo sapiens run around for millions of years without any clothes on? Had some rebel gene crept through from that time corrupting her hopelessly? A warm feeling ran up her spine and her tummy rumbled. She was starving.
The count took her hand and she stepped down into the hillside of greengages at the edge of the gardens. When she sat, the entire edifice wobbled and the multi-coloured fragments of fruit washed over her thighs. She slid a slice of kiwi into her mouth.
The count left the room and returned with a chair that he placed beside the bath. Greta noticed that he was wearing the brown suede loafers he had bought earlier in the week. ‘Would you like a spoon?’ he asked her. He had settled back comfortably in his chair and it seemed a pity to disturb him.
‘I think I can manage,’ she replied and popped a strawberry between her lips.
While Greta stuffed herself on fruit salad, the count watched with a delighted expression on his carved features.
Count Ruspoli was a man who had come to appreciate women of a certain kind, he told her, after a lifetime amusing women of every kind. He paused for a moment’s reflection and Greta’s green eyes were filled with wonder. She adored his voice and was content to listen as he unfolded the curious tale of his peripatetic and curious existence.
It had all started, he said, lowering his voice, at the age of 12 when the housekeeper’s daughter hopped into his bed at the Villa Mangia Baldini to verify the legend that, like his father and grandfather, like Ruspolis through time, he was endowed as few men are endowed with a penis worthy of the epithet Il Duce. It is, he said modestly, as a tower, a lighthouse, a beacon in the dark ages, a wonder of the modern world.
As he was about to change after breakfast that day, the housekeeper came to his room in the tower and stripped him of his nightshirt as she had done many times when he was a child. Unlike her daughter, who had shown the natural reserve of a girl just turned 13, the mother was there that bright spring morning to pay homage to Il Duce, this genetic quirk, as he put it, this rose headed, marble column that, like a secret or an heirloom, had been passed down the generations. The housekeeper fell to her knees, took his growing erection into her mouth and sucked at the firm flesh until, the second time that day, his essence overflowed from a hungry orifice. Had she once serviced his father in the same manner? Undoubtedly. It was like the quest for the Holy Grail. Like being inducted into a clandestine sect.
The scullery maids and under-maids, the cook and her assistants, women from the village and distant villages, their sisters and cousins and nieces from neighbouring towns, their daughters, mothers and wives, grandmothers in black and girls in pigtails from near and far found justification day after day to make a pilgrimage to the villa to worship at this unending fount of elixir. It was believed among those simple people of Southern Italy that the count’s sperm warded off the evil eye, cured infertility, soothed melancholia and restored youth. He was privileged that long summer to spread joy and jism among the womenfolk in the boot of Italy and was relieved at the age of 13 to be sent to the military academy in Rome.
Greta slid a piece of ripe mango between her lips during his brief pause and the count then continued in a softer tone. The legend of Il Duce was soon to follow him to the capital. Young girls would scale the academy walls to warm his bed with their perfumed flesh. Generals’ wives and daughters, the titled ladies of the aristocracy, the matrons of the haute bourgeoisie and the female staff in every grand house were eager to pay their respects and, being a man of noble birth, he was obliged to acquiesce to their caprices.
‘Noblesse oblige,’ said Greta.
He nodded sadly. The count was pursued across Italy. He went to France to complete his studies, and on to Belgium, Holland, Germany and Hungary. He found no peace among the strict Catholic girls of Southern Spain and, once in a convent in Cadiz, the Mother Superior shed her habit and, bald as an egg, begged him to take her cursed virginity. He stayed at the convent of Our Lady of the Southern Cross for three long days and serviced 47 celibate nuns, the Mother Superior on six separate occasions. The last he heard, she had left the calling and was working behind a bar in La Calle de Los Pecados in Cadaqués, a fishing hamlet in Catalonia.
Upon sailing to America, like the Statue of Liberty, his reputation preceded him. Driven by the limp failings of their husbands, by that new world craving for old world debauchery, those Mayflower princesses and Southampton socialites cast off their bible belts and chastity belts to pay homage to his legendary appendage. Like the idol the carpenter carves from wood then bends down to worship, one touch of a woman’s hand and Il Duce would rise like a deity to receive due veneration.
The count had left his DNA in 10,000 women and sired many of the sons of the noble families across the continent. In the next generation, he said with a dark smile, there will truly be a European Union. ‘When you are born with great wealth and position, you can either devote yourself to gossip or set out to leave your mark on the world.’
His voice brightened as he explained that it was on this fair isle of England with its seaside vulgarity and a fear of the foreigner that he was given the respite that allowed him to keep his vow and never again enter the orifices of another woman.
Greta had a lump in her throat.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘that does seem a pity.’
‘If a man cannot keep his word to himself, then he is not truly a man.’
That sounded quite profound and Greta nodded thoughtfully. She couldn’t help feeling a little sulky for she was as eager as those 10,000 women across the world to take a glimpse of Il Duce.
Count Ruspoli was silent now, one foot crossing the other, his long legs stretched out beside the jacuzzi.
‘Why don’t you hop in and join me,’ she said. ‘It really feels nice.’
‘Would you like that?’
‘Very much,’ she replied.
He smiled and came to his feet. When he slipped out of his shoes, Greta told him to put them to one side so they didn’t get splashed.
‘Very wise,’ he said.
He carried his shoes across the room and placed them on a shelf. He removed his clothes with his back to her and Greta admired his tall athletic frame, his wide shoulders and small waist, his round bottom. When he turned she held her breath. The legend was everything she had imagined. Il Duce was in repose, bobbing between his muscular thighs like a lion resting before the chase.
Count Ruspoli stepped in beside her. He slid forward and his big feet crushed the Villa Mangia Baldini, the pineapple slices went flying and a wave of strawberries and cream swept up her legs. Greta gathered up a scoop from the mixture and remembered that although the count had vowed not to enter his women, he didn’t say anything about denying his divine creation from their mouths. She coated Il Duce in pink cream and it grew and grew as it slid down her throat. She stopped for breath, licked it all over like a giant lolly and looked up into his eyes.
‘Delicious,’ she said.
‘You’re very good at it,’ he remarked.
‘I’m still learning.’
The count drew her up closer and ran his fingers over her lips. ‘You have the most generous mouth I have ever seen,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘You didn’t tell me why you made a vow not to enter any more women,’ she said, and he smiled back.
‘It ruins them for the future. Their husbands and lovers will never satisfy them and they spend their lives lost in memory.’
They were quiet for a moment. Greta was dreamily sliding the skin up and down the great rod of his penis. It was like a meditation, oddly comforting. It was like climbing to the top of a
mountain and staring out at the universe. You know you are going to have to go down again, but that moment of being there is worth all the effort of the climb. As Greta studied Il Duce, she noticed around the base lots of scars as if someone had taken an axe to a column of marble and tried to chop it down.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘Women have taken pleasure in leaving their mark with their teeth, some, as you can see, drew blood and left small wounds, a mark of pride, I believe.’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘There is no pleasure without pain, Greta May.’
‘I know,’ she said, and they nodded like two conspirators who have found each other.
She looked closely at the marks. Some had only made it six or seven inches down from the tip. Others were much further, nine and ten, and she dearly wished she had her wooden ruler from geometry for one set of teeth marks she thought was a good 11 inches down the column.
Greta climbed between the count’s legs. The attention had made Il Duce grow and it poked at her like a cannon from a castle wall. She scooped up a handful of cream and coated the beast before taking the head between her lips. She sucked it for a few moments like a sweetie then took a breath before sliding her teeth down the shaft. She stopped again, wetting the mast with her tongue, taking a deep breath and going down, down, the cream easing the prodigy deeper into her throat. She thought she was going to gag, but stopped again and took air through her nose until the feeling passed.
The count remained motionless. This was her crusade, her joust with the eternal. She rocked slowly backwards and forwards, easing the head beyond her tonsils and down to the hollow of her throat. The grip she had on the base of the column told her there was still a lot more to go.
Greta took several deep breaths through her nose. She placed her palms flat on the marble outside the count’s knees, she wedged her feet against the back of the jacuzzi and, spiralling slightly, she lowered Il Duce down to the base. When she could go no further, when there was no further to go, and she had taken it all down her gullet, Greta bit the warm skin as hard as she could. She felt the count wince with pain but he didn’t move. Greta kept her teeth locked down and only when she was sure that she had left her mark did she push back up on her arms in order to slide the sweet creature from her mouth.
A Girl's Adventure - full length erotic novel Page 12
