Stephanie's Trial (4 page)

As the plane
decelerated and sunk lower through the thick cloud the memory of
that first trip was very distinct. Though the last six months had
produced a series of bizarre and extraordinary events in her life,
from her introduction to Devlin and the strange painting that hung
in his bedroom, to being drugged and kidnapped by one of Devlin's
business associates who had become obsessed with her, to her
revenge on him with the help of the beautiful and black Jasmina,
let alone all that had happened in the cellars at the castle with
the guests, Stephanie remembered everything that had happened in
graphic detail. She remembered the way Devlin had fingered and
fucked her for the first time, with his banana-sized fingers and
his monstrous and gnarled cock, while he stared at the painting
that was dominated by a crimson vulva that seemed to be alive. She
remembered Venetia and their first experience together, the first
time she had been alone with a woman, and the way they had made
love since with such passion. But here, on the plane, was the start
of an even bigger adventure, her first hint of what lay ahead for
her as it had flown her to the castle for the first time. She had
wandered into the cargo hold in the rear cabin to find a masked man
there, gagged and tied securely to the bulkhead wall.

She could not
suppress a grin as she thought about it. Even then, she thought,
before she knew anything about the cellars and the slaves, before
she had more than scratched the surface of her sexuality, her first
response to this bizarre spectacle had not been shock but lust, a
surge of lust stronger than anything she'd experienced before.

The double
clunk of the landing-gear being lowered snapped her out of her
reverie. She checked that her seatbelt was securely fastened and
looked down into her lap. The skirt of the black suit revealed an
inch or two of slim thigh sheathed in sheer smoke-coloured nylon.
Out of curiosity she pulled her skirt up further to reveal the
black suspenders that held her stockings and her little black
panties. She ran a finger down between her legs over the silky
nylon of the panties. As she thought they would be, her
reminiscences had made them distinctly damp.

Fifteen
minutes later, with no customs or immigration formalities to
complete, Stephanie was striding towards the black Mercedes coupé
that waited by the Portakabin that served for an arrival hall at
the private airfield. Venetia stood by the waiting car, her face
breaking into a smile as Stephanie appeared.

It had been
some weeks since Stephanie had seen Venetia. She was struck, as
always, by her beauty. Venetia was tall, her long fair hair pinned
tightly to the back of her head in a French pleat, her figure
displayed to perfection by a tight red jersey dress that hugged her
large, full breasts, clung to her waspy waist and was filled again
by the long rich curves of her buttocks. Stephanie felt an
immediate pulse of desire, a desire born of knowledge, knowledge of
the way the contours of this magnificent body felt against her own,
knowledge of Venetia's expertise in womanly love.

'Darling...'
Stephanie said, kissing Venetia on both cheeks as she held her by
the arms.

'You look
wonderful,' Venetia said, stepping back to admire Stephanie.

'And so do
you.'

'Do you want
to drive?'

'No. You
drive.' Stephanie liked to drive the big powerful car but she was
not in the mood this afternoon.

Venetia opened
the boot for the porter who had arrived with the luggage from the
plane while Stephanie climbed into the passenger seat. The car was
warm and it needed to be. The autumn weather had more than a hint
of winter, especially to Stephanie's sun-warmed body.

They drove
into London in near silence though not an uncomfortable one. The
truth was that the silence was one of anticipation. Both women knew
what was going to happen when they got to the house, or to be more
accurate Stephanie knew and Venetia hoped.

Venetia's
position in Devlin's life was ambiguous. She acted as his roving
personal assistant and an expert in computers but, though she had
her freedom, she was in the end like any of the other slaves in the
castle. She had been caught embezzling from one of Devlin's
companies, extracting a large sum of money by virtue of her skill
with a computer. The risk of prosecution still hung over her head
though now she had become so invaluable to him it was unlikely it
would ever be invoked. Nevertheless her position was very different
from Stephanie's. And Venetia knew perfectly well it was not her
place to make assumptions about what Stephanie might want to do.
Devlin had delegated his authority to Stephanie. And it was
absolute. There were no exceptions or exclusions.

Venetia drove
the big powerful car skilfully. Stephanie watched her long slim
legs; the right moved quickly from accelerator to brake while the
left remained passive, resting against the transmission tunnel. The
skirt of the red dress was too short for Venetia to wear stockings
so her legs were encased in tights, their nylon woven with Lycra to
give their black colouring a slippery sheen, as though they were
wet. Most of her thighs were on view, the skirt only veiling the
two inches below the plane of her sex.

'You're a
beautiful woman,' Stephanie said, almost to herself.

'So are you.'
Venetia's eyes did not leave the road.

'I've missed
your body.' It was true. Stephanie only realised how much now she
was seeing Venetia again. There was an electricity between them, a
tension that was entirely sexual. Stephanie's whole body seemed to
be melting with desire. She could hardly control her feelings. And,
she reminded herself, she had no need to. She put her hand on
Venetia's thigh and squeezed it hard. Venetia moaned. Stephanie
moved her hand down between her legs, up to where the nylon covered
Venetia's sex. It felt damp. Venetia wore no knickers.

They had come
off the motorway and the car was threading its way along suburban
streets. At a traffic-light Venetia took the opportunity to steal a
look at Stephanie. Their eyes met but neither smiled.

They arrived
at the house, a large double-fronted Georgian building, impeccably
restored with a circular gravel drive behind a bank of mature cedar
trees. It was just beginning to get dark as Venetia brought the car
to a halt, its big tyres crunching on the gravel of the
driveway.

Stephanie's
hand was still resting between her legs. She made no attempt to get
out of the car. For a moment the two women sat completely still.
Stephanie thought she felt Venetia's labia pulse under her
fingers.

'Come on,'
Stephanie said, pulling her hand away reluctantly and opening the
car door. She strode to the little columned portico where the front
door was already being opened by one of the three servants who kept
the house permanently available for visitors. He hurried to collect
the luggage from the boot.

The heating in
the house was on and it felt warm. Stephanie walked straight up to
the main bedroom, Devlin's bedroom, the bedroom where the picture
of the woman with the extraordinary crimson vulva hung, its colour
so vivid it seemed to throb with life. At one time Devlin had only
been able to get an erection if he were looking at the picture.
Stephanie had changed all that. As her cases were brought into the
adjoining dressing-room, Stephanie took a bottle of champagne from
the fridge that was set in the wall, carefully concealed by painted
panelling, and two crystal champagne flutes which immediately
frosted with condensation on contact with the warm air.

Venetia stood
in the doorway of the bedroom as Stephanie put the glasses down.
She looked uncertain, as though not sure what was expected of her,
despite Stephanie's advances in the car.

'Do you want
me?' She would like to have put it more subtly but couldn't think
of the words.

'Open this,'
Stephanie said, handing her the bottle.

While Venetia
unwrapped the foil and wound the cage off the cork Stephanie went
over to the beautifully made chest of drawers that was the only
item of furniture in the room beside the large bed, bedside tables
and the black television mounted on the wall opposite the bed. The
chest was made of yew inlaid with satinwood. Each of its seventy or
so small drawers was fitted with an inset brass pull ring.

'Did you know
about this?' Stephanie said, indicating the chest.

'Yes,' Venetia
said as she eased the cork out of the bottle with hardly a sound.
'I arranged it.'

'Oh, I
wondered who had. He could hardly have got his secretary to do
it.'

'Do you know
how it works?'

'I found out
last time by trial and error.' Stephanie pulled out one of the
drawers at random. It was arranged like a miniature filing cabinet
with divisions marked with alphabetically arranged capital letters.
The drawer she had opened was divided from SA to TR. Between each
card division was a series of envelopes in heavy vellum. Each
envelope contained a white index card on which was typed a name and
a four-figure number; behind this card was a set of photographs.
Stephanie picked out four envelopes, again at random. She threw the
envelopes on the bed and picked up the champagne flute which
Venetia had filled with wine.

'Cheers,' she
said, sipping the Louis Roederer Cristal champagne. She sat on the
edge of the bed and flicked open each of the envelopes in turn.
Then she chose one and took out the white card and the top
photograph. It was of a rather young blonde. The white card
identified her as Patsy Francis. Stephanie flicked through the rest
of the pictures, first the enlargements of her facial features,
nose, eyes, ears, followed by a series of enlargements of her
breasts and labia. After these were twelve photographs of her in
various sexual positions. Stephanie moved to the second envelope.
The white card was neatly typed with the name Katherine Connors who
the photographs revealed to be a thirty-five-year-old woman with
rather large features and sagging breasts. The third envelope
contained Doreen Palmer, a woman whose face was so stunning she
could easily have been a professional model and who had a slim
willowy body to match. The last envelope was of a woman called
Maureen Daniels. She was a black girl, no more than twenty,
Stephanie guessed, with a rather podgy overweight body but a very
high and proud bust.

Venetia stood
watching nervously as Stephanie searched through the envelopes. She
was not sure what Stephanie's attitude was to all this. Devlin had
ordered her to arrange all the envelopes, get all the enlargements
developed and see that the cameras that took the pictures were
maintained, though she had had nothing to do with installing them.
They had been installed long before she had joined Devlin's
household. Some of the photographs went back years. Others were
more recent although none had been taken, as far as she knew, since
Stephanie had arrived on the scene. Some were women Devlin had had
here in the house. Some were slaves from the castle. Still others
had been guests at the castle. Not all the photographs involved
Devlin; there were couples - carefully cross-indexed - who had
stayed at the house or castle, heterosexual and, rarely, homosexual
women. All had been photographed - without their knowledge - for
Devlin's entertainment and perverse pleasure. Before Stephanie had
arrived Devlin had, Venetia knew, spent hours alone in this room,
which she had heard Stephanie call his wanking pit.

'Her,'
Stephanie said. On the top right-hand corner of the envelope were
the letters CD followed by the numbers 640. It was Doreen Palmer.
'Put her on,' Stephanie ordered as she stood up and unzipped the
black wool skirt. She let it fall to the floor and then pulled the
cream sweater over her head. The black satin bra pushed her breasts
together and up into a full cleavage. The tiny matching black satin
panties were no more than a frilly triangle of material covering
the base of her navel at the front, and a similarly small
triangular area at the back. The suspender belt, a wide band of
material with very narrow suspenders, was black satin too.

Venetia pulled
out the drawer of the right-hand bedside table where the controls
for the system were housed. Stephanie had found all this for
herself on the last visit to the house. As she unpinned her long
black hair and brushed it out Venetia punched the code into the
sophisticated computer and the CD-ROM player it controlled. The
television flicked to life.

'Take your
things off,' Stephanie ordered, her voice not at all friendly. For
the moment the tenderness she had felt for Venetia in the car had
gone and she was content to treat Venetia as she would any of the
female slaves at the castle. She enjoyed Venetia's uncertainty; it
amused her. She was playing the mistress again, and it was a role
that gave her more than a frisson of pleasure.

Without a word
Venetia pulled the red jersey over her head. She wore a white
underwired bra and the shiny black tights. She reached behind her
back and unclipped the bra, leaning forward to shuck herself out of
it, then straightening up again, her breasts quivering at their
freedom. Stephanie was always amazed at her breasts. Though each
was the size of a large round melon, almost three quarters of a
sphere, they seemed to be suspended on her chest as if by some
invisible support. Her nipples actually pointed upwards, so high
and firm was her bust.

Under the
tights Stephanie could see the outline of her sex, her sparse,
wispy pubic hair hiding nothing. As she pulled the tights down over
her long legs Stephanie watched the heaviness of her breasts
bouncing against each other. She remembered now how they had felt
pressed against her own, their nipples hard as stone... She stopped
that train of thought. First things first.