Fur

by Vanessa de Sade

  “Oh, that’s so wonderful, Reece,” she had said, clasping his hands. “And I’ve always wanted to live in the West End. This is going to be so much fun...”

  But the words dried in her mouth like a feeble stream in a drought-ridden landscape as she saw his expression change and realised with a jolt that that the proposed move to London was not going to be à deux and that her usefulness to him had just passed its expiration date.

  She had been unable to come into work the next day, and, powerless to face him again while he completed his final sold-out run of Arms and the Man before heading up to the smoke, she volunteered to go on tour with the youth company instead and threw her rucksack into the back of their old minibus to head off into the maze of Cornwall’s B-roads for a month of punishing repertory performances in obscure village halls and haphazard community centres.

  ***

  The budget was low and they shared motel rooms at night, and Nicola found herself invariably paired with Pearl, the company dramaturge, a tall, very thin woman in her mid thirties with eyes like scorched almonds and skin so black it was almost Prussian blue, thick curly hair close-cropped down to her skull.

  “You’re well rid of him, girl,” Pearl whispered across the dark space between their beds that first night as they were drifting off to sleep, Nicola in a long cotton nightie, Pearl as naked as the day she was born. “That one was nothing but trouble, you’re lucky to have got out when you did...” And when Nicola didn’t reply she added softly: “There’s better out there, girl, and it’s got your name on it.”

  ***

  The days turned into a week, and gradually Nicola began to relax and let down her guard, talking softly to Pearl in the velvet dark, finding something reassuring in the other’s soft blues-singer’s voice as they discussed Life and where it was taking them. “I was going to be on the West End Stage and then go to Hollywood,” Pearl laughed into the darkness. “Write all my own musical shows, make it really big...”

  “It could still happen,” Nicola reassured. “There’s still time...”

  But Pearl cut her short with a wry laugh. “You don’t understand, Babe,” she said quietly. “That’s what I thought I wanted but this is my life. Writing about community issues and taking my shows to ordinary people far away from political correctness and snobby London theatres. Shacking up with pretty ladies on cold November nights...”

  And, under the cover of the all-enveloping darkness, Nicola felt herself blush. Though it was not an altogether unpleasant sensation...

  ***

  Their schedule over the next four days was punishing, two or three shows a day, bumping fast from town to town, hall to hall, and they finally ended up in a tiny cliff-top village late on a Sunday night, a place so small there was no motel and only a scattering of guest houses, the two girls finding themselves sharing a minuscule room with an old fashioned mahogany double bed and a bathroom the size of a cupboard.

  “Well, we’re going to have to sleep together tonight, like it or not,” Pearl teased as she undressed, standing only inches away from where Nicola was perilously perched on the side of the big double bed, and, for the first time in their enforced room-sharing, Nicola actually looked as her companion denuded herself.

  Pearl favoured easy-to-kick-off ballet pumps and faded three-quarter-length denims topped with blue & white striped Gaultier matelow shirts, and her braless breasts, when she wriggled her tee-shirt off, were small and pert with neat gold rings through each glossy black-olive nipple.

  “Did that hurt?” Nicola asked as she eyed them tentatively and Pearl laughed.

  “Like hell,” she admitted as she stepped out of her jeans and panties simultaneously and left them in a heap on the floor, her cunt a jungle of short-curly hair like fine moss. “Has it taken you all this time to pluck up the courage to ask me that?”

  “No,” Nicola said, blushing. “I never looked before.”

  “Ah, you are a strange one,” Pearl laughed, walking, naked, through to the tiny bathroom, her ample hips swaying and her beautiful, almost spherical, butt a piece of poetry in motion. “Oh, I don’t believe this. The shower in here has a coin meter on it. Have you any single pounds, Nicola? I’ve only got a fiver.”

  “Just two,” Nicola called back, rifling through her purse. “We can have one each. Will that do?”

  “Not a chance if you want to even get half clean,” Pearl replied, clicking her tongue in annoyance. “There’s nothing else for it, we’ll have to share...”

  “Share?”

  “Yes, you know. Share. Get under the water together and wash. Come on, girl, I’m knackered and I want to go to bed tonight. Get yourself undressed and get through here...”

  She had come to stand in the doorway and was resting one hand lazily on each side of the narrow frame, her little breasts like glossy cupcakes in a confectioner’s window, a faint shadow of fur under each armpit like shy maiden hair ferns in the cool shadow of rocks, a little trickle of curls running from her taut belly button to the unruly thicket on her pussy. And, if Nicola was not mistaken, her lustrous black nipples were fat and erect.

  And so Nicola reluctantly began to disrobe, her dressing gown far away in her rucksack on the other side of the big bed, aware that Pearl’s hungry eyes were watching her every move like the witch in Hansel and Gretel weighing her up for the pot. Though Nicola imagined that the kind of eating that Pearl had in mind had very little to do with her culinary hungers. And yet, though she was blushing fiercely, she felt oddly comfortable stripping for this enigmatic woman, and she found herself thinking, not for the first time, that she hadn’t really been all that keen on sex with Reece. Had preferred it when he used his fingers or tongue on her hot, hard little bud instead of just sliding his cock carelessly inside her. And had really hated it when he wanted to come on her face or, worse, in her mouth.

  And here was Pearl, standing there all naked and thrusting out her hips to show off what was probably the most beautiful pussy Nicola had ever seen, watching intently as Nicola tugged her old fleece up over her head and unfastened the stud of her jeans, letting her creamy white belly flop out and muffin-top over the waistband with a soft sigh.

  “Nice...” Pearl murmured as Nicola took her trousers off and stood up self-consciously in big white her bra and knickers, Marks & Sparks best poly-cotton rather than the dainty little silk thong that Peal had slipped out of when she so casually disrobed. And would there be more piercings to be discovered if you slipped a curious finger into the wet and slippery petals of that delicious little cunt, Nicola caught herself wondering. Nicola! What the hell is wrong with you?

  Pearl grinned as if she’d heard and turned into the doorway and walked towards the shower, her perfectly round ass swaying with a life of its own, and Nicola quickly slid her own panties down and unfastened her bra, letting her big cushiony breasts tumble out and rest on her belly. Aware that her own black-cherry-coloured nipples were stiff as posts and aching to be kissed. Stop this, Nicola!

  Pearl gave a low whistle from the shower cubicle door. “Hell, girl, you are stacked. Where was I in the queue when they were handing out boobs like those?”

  “Oh, yours are beautiful too,” Nicola said, blushing again as she squeezed into the tiny stall and Pearl turned on the water, aware that their naked bodies were brushing against each other in the confined space, that both their nipples were nut-hard, and, if her own moist pussy was anything to go by, both their cunts were wet.

  Pearl was washing her hair, arms above her head and her little breasts so pert and kissable and just a breath away. And she brushed Nicola’s big white melons as she handed her the shampoo, let her fingers trail over the convex dome of the fat girl’s belly before starting to soap herself like an old nineteen-sixties porn star, the lather like clotted cream on the dark obsidian of her flawless skin.

  “She is only inches away,” Nicola thought as Pearl brushed against her again as she rinsed the lather from herself like blossom floating on a dark stream. “She
is inches away and I can just take her into my arms and kiss her...”

  But as she lifted her arms the shower gave a loud clunk and the powerful water jet immediately faded to a dribble.

  “Oh, bad luck, time’s up,” Pearl smiled as she brushed past her and wrapped herself, untouchable, in a thick white towel.

  ***

  Nicola lay in the dark in the big bed, trembling, Pearl’s virile body, smelling beguilingly of fresh shampoo and Oil of Olay, only a hair’s breadth away and yet miles apart from her. She had even left off her nightdress, she hoped, enticingly, and climbed between the sheets deliciously naked - and Pearl had definitely looked - but the other girl’s earlier flirtatiousness seemed to have evaporated and she turned quickly on her side and went to sleep, her likewise naked bosom rising and falling as her breathing deepened.

  But Nicola was much too wired and aroused for sleep, and she lay quietly in the dark with every nerve-ending in her body on fire, desperate to be touched, and cursing Pearl for lighting this fire inside her and then not acting on it. She had masturbated frequently as a teenager, of course, often two or three times a night, biting hard on the duvet as she came, back arched as she bucked and kicked, stifling any stray cries lest they wake her parents who were, even then, snoring in the next room. And she had liked doing it solo, liked the feeling of control that it gave her, the option to go hard and fast and tip herself over the brink in a minute or less, or take it long and slow, torture herself and stay on the boil for ages before finally succumbing and letting orgasm after orgasm wash over her, feel the hot slipperiness of her own spendings on her fingers as she manipulated her hot hard clit to new heights of pleasure.

  Sex with boys, however, she had found less satisfying, and though many of them could make her come, and, in Reece’s case, very skilfully and with a practiced tongue, there was always a slight feeling of disinterest with them, as if all this pussy-playing was all very well, but only as an appetiser to the main course of cock worship that she was supposed to now embrace with a sense of gratitude. And, though she had not yet done it with a girl, she had thought about it often, happy when Reece had suggested that they subscribe to an adult channel, secretly watching the lithe bronzed women on screen as she slowly dragged the foreskin on her ex’s big cock up and down, wondering about their scent, their taste, about what it would really be like to be gently coaxed to orgasm by those soft nimble fingers.

  And she hadn’t even realised that she was masturbating now, her fingers already caressing her thick silky bush, impatient to get inside the hot wetness of her slit, and she slowly, agonisingly, pulled herself open like a wet oyster and began to stroke, inhaling Pearl’s scent as she began to pleasure herself. Would Pearl wank her like this, she wondered, those long slender fingers tracing the contours of her inner crack as if it were an intricate seashell; or was she a tongues-only girl, impatient to go mouth to cunt with her lovers, her own pussy musky and sweet, like fresh lobster, puffed up with excitement and a deep strawberry pink inside as she spread her long legs wide, holding Nicola’s head to her hips as she came and came and came...

  “Oh fuck, I’m going to come in this bed alongside her,” Nicola wailed internally as she felt all the familiar tightening sensations in her fanny, and as Pearl turned over in her sleep and draped an arm across Nicola’s naked belly she could contain herself no longer and let her climax wash over her. Again and again and again...

  2

  She found the first book on a market stall in Penzance when they got back from their tour, a battered paperback with cover art that looked, at first glance, as if it might have come from the golden age of nineteen-fifties pulp fiction, a tall muscular woman almost naked save for some leather straps and silver armour. Just a run-of-the-mill sword and sorcery novel, her good sense told her, yet there was something compelling, almost magical, about this book and she bought it without further ado, clutching it to her bosom on the long bus ride to her cottage that smoky November night, and it wasn’t until she was safely upstairs and in bed - and no longer wearing her tent-like nightdress - that she took it from its bag and opened the first page.

  “The Halloween Witch by Elvira de Havilland, a tale of magic, mystery and emotional empowerment,” it read. “Come with us, reader, to the netherworlds of sensual satisfaction where every woman is a Sister of the Coven and all things are made possible...”

  And, slowly, deliciously, she let her self become immersed in the captivating prose of the enigmatic Elvira, a writer who possessed a style so lyrical that it was almost poetry and yet wrote a narrative so strong that Nicola was constantly on the edge of her seat as she turned over page after exciting page of the adventure. But what really made her pulse pound and her heart sing was the book’s cast of female characters, tall strong intelligent warrior women who cared little for the authority of men and were completely in touch with their own bodies and carnal appetites. Love scenes were abundant, strong and dominant with muscular males fresh from the battlefields, but what really took Nicola’s breath away were the Sapphic encounters when the Women of the Coven bonded with their sister witches and pleased each other in ways which no man could ever dream, and for the first time in her life Nicola found herself so aroused as she read that she had to pause and masturbate time and time again as the book progressed. Her whole body on fire as she quickly, desperately, circled her own nut-hard clit, desperate to get back to the story but unable to proceed until her physical urges had been satisfied, licking her own pussy juices from her fingers as she fervently devoured chapter after chapter, finishing the book in the small hours and falling back exhausted, as if she’d just been fucked.

  ***

  She made enquires as the local book shop the next day and discovered that there were fifteen books in all, every one of them now out of print and much sought after, and that the author, Elvira de Havilland, was a Cornish woman and occasionally visited the store to give talks.

  “Here, she comes here?” Nicola asked breathlessly. “Elvira de Havilland actually comes to this shop?”

  The assistant smiled and looked heavenwards for a moment and then rooted under her counter for a grubby leaflet printed on scuffed magenta card.

  “There’s a society They run fan Covens for hardcore women like you. There’s one close by. You should join, I think you’ll like it.”

  And it was as though the woman could see every depraved thing Nicola had done the previous night as she handed over that magical piece of paper...

  3

  She had designed and made the costume herself, basing it accurately on the rich impasto cover art of the books and, at home, had felt empowered, even sexy, in the riveted leather thong and low-cut bra top. But now, standing by the mirror in the motel cabin at Devil’s Wood and being faced with the prospect of walking, nearly naked, into a room full of over a hundred equally scantily-clad women and parading her exposed curves publicly, her courage failed her, and she was just contemplating changing back into her jeans and slipping quietly away when there was a firm knock on her hotel room door.

  “Hello, are you Nicola, and can you sew, can you fix a costume, oh my god, say that you are and that you can, because otherwise I am so fucked, sorry, excuse my French, but you are her, aren’t you? Because why else would you be dressed like this?”

  And Nicola stood speechless, her mouth open like a retarded koi carp, as a similarly attired woman with eyes like sky-blue sea-opals breezed into her room. Elvira de Havilland. Elvira de -fucking -Havilland, creator of the Witch Kingdom and head of all Covens, here, in her motel room, and in need of assistance.

  “Hello, you can talk, can’t you?” the woman asked, waving a hand in front of Nicola’s face. “Yes, it is I, Elvira, Mistress of the Enchanted Valleys and Viceroy of the Lands of Perpetual Mist beyond. Now can you take the stars out of your eyes and help me out, girl, or there are going to be a lot of very pissed-off witches out there if I don’t get out and do my welcome speech in thirty minutes time.”

  Nicola shook
herself, like she did when she awoke from those dreams and everything in her universe was knocked skew-wiffy, and tried to get her lips to form words. I mean, this was quite ridiculous, she had made costumes for Benedict Cumberbatch - admittedly before he was famous - and Dame Judy Dench, surely she could hold a conversation with the author she had been cyber-stalking for the last twelve months.

  “Yes,” she finally stammered. “Yes, I am Nicola and, yes, I sew. What’s seems to be amiss, Miss de Havilland? I’m sure I can assist.” Oh my God, I sound like the lady’s maid in that Oscar Wilde play we just did!

  The tall woman laughed. “Well, this is my problem,” she said with a rue smile, lifting her arms and rolling her eyes skyward as her leather bra top wrinkled and slid to her waist, revealing two small perfectly-formed breasts like tiny cherry-kissed cup cakes. “I paid a fortune for this costume and they seem to have neglected to put any elastication into the top...”

  Nicola flushed like a schoolboy at a lingerie counter as she tried to drag her eyes away from those wonderful pink-tipped little marshmallows, like the soft peaks her old cookery teacher was always in search of. And, hell, she’d seen tits before. She was a wardrobe mistress in a theatre, for Christ’s sake, and it’s not like she was virgo intacta or anything. But there was something about this woman, this woman who had created a world so real that Nicola sometimes felt that she had looked into her soul. And here she was, standing almost naked before her...

  “Tonight, could you do something for me tonight?” the woman asked, not unkindly but with a growing hint of impatience in her tone, and Nicola flushed again.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” she muttered, scrabbling frantically for her sewing kit like a dog trying to dig its way into a rabbit burrow. “Have a seat, I’ll have this done in a jiff...” If you stop flustering me with those beautiful snowy white tits that I so want to kiss. Oh no, tell me I didn’t just say that out loud...