Beggar's Night

Beggar's Night

Angela Talbert has hosted salacious parties with an erotic theme for a decade by the time we intrude on the goings on at Round Top on Beggar's Night. Angela is an enabler. She brings men and women of like minds together in the safety of her gated residence together. Bondage, S&M, and an orgy or two are on the menu. All those in attendance are privy to the rules. All are asked to choose a safe word that will get them out of situations that exceed the limits of their wants or their endurance. Of course there are usually individuals or couples who decide to go the affair without a safe word. The prime example is Ursula Diehl and her husband, Donny. Both wore the golden amulet that advised there was no safe word in their immediate future. It was common knowledge that Ursula loved to hurt and be hurt and Donny loved to watch his wife brutalized. All, man or woman, were encouraged to lay a lash on Ursula's robust body.

Jonathan Edwards and Rita Cerrone are the two new-bee at this year's pagan celebration. Angela hopes to get Jonathan and Rita together before the sun rises on Halloween.

Rita Cerrone, the lady in latex caused a stir when Kara, Ms. Talbert's live-in housekeeper, took her coat. There was a lot to be said for that reaction considering the attire that circulated about the living room. Only Kathy Jorgenson's costume was greeted with greater enthusiasm. Kathy's outfit consisted of a blindfold which she wore on her forehead for safety sake and low heeled open-toed slippers. The blindfold would come into play once Angela advises she has picked Kathy a partner for at least a part of Beggar's Night. There was nothing else to hinder one's view of Ms. Jorgenson. The dark nipples which topped her heavy breasts stood slightly below the perpendicular.

"Who is she?" Jerry Hollingsworth had asked when he saw Kathy standing naked at the top of the stairs. Once he was privy to the woman's identity he left well enough alone for the paralegal was purported to be Angela Talbert's full-time lover and part time party favor. Jerry understood it would be Angela's decision which one of her guest would be the first to enjoy Kathy's trim young body. Jerry Hollingsworth, adventurous as he was did not dare cross Angela no matter how desirable the circumstance.

Jonathan Edwards noted Rita had an older woman's mouth with a few wrinkles he'd ignore if things went as well as Angela had said. Her mouth was mismatched to that hard youthful shape that drew him across the living room crowded with costumed guests. She smelled of a flower the name of which eluded Jonathan.

The woman wore a small black latex dress just as Ms. Talbert had promised. Her legs were bare, athletically sculpted as was the rest of what Jonathan was able to perceive through the fabric that clung to her flesh. When she turned toward the sound of his voice, tiny bells hanging from the rings fastened to the backs of her black strapped sandals and from her ears tolled a dissonant harmony.

The woman stood taller than the five-two printed on the front of her driver's license, high on five inch heels. The tapered silver spikes clicked on the flagstone in the foyer. It was then that Jonathan first noticed those beautiful feet.

Jonathan was at Rita's elbow sudden-like. He made little of the lines that formed around her mouth when she frowned at his impetuosity. But cruel words cut to the bone and sent him scurrying back from where he came red faced. And so it was that their initial encounter was inconsequential, just short of a total bust.

Perhaps Ms. Talbert was wrong he thought as he settled himself taking in the sights. Had he been able to reach out with his eyes Ursula Diehl might have felt his warmth on the soft insides of her thighs. One long look at her pale flesh and the black curls that bristled out along the edges of the thong she wore was all he chanced. He was quick to withdraw his gaze once the woman's blue eyes found him searching. Had he been brave he thought he'd whisper a sweet nothing into her ear for Ursula wore the golden amulet that signaled anything goes. While he was aroused by the sight of Ursula's bare belly the older lady in latex had squashed his bravado with unkind words.

It took a formal introduction by Ms. Talbert to smooth his ruffled sensibilities. Angela had made things right with Rita, a renewal of her original offer whispered into Rita's ear to soothe the woman's feigned indignation.

"He's yours, Rita, the one we talked about."

Angela Talbert wanted them together on that black night; another unusual pairing that she was so fond of perpetuating. Like many of her guests that night, Angela found pleasure observing others going about practicing their various perversions in plain sight.

How sweet it would have been had Alice Gavin accepted, Angela thought as she left Rita and Jonathan to themselves in the living room. She believed Alice and Rita would have made an interesting couple given the proper situation. But Doctor Gavin took ill that Saturday afternoon and Alice called with their apology.

After the ruffled feathers were smoothed, Rita Cerrone took some time to learn more about the young man Angela had picked as her partner for the evening. With one leg crossed over the other and Rita's libido piqued by the man's size and his scent, Jonathan was having a difficult time with the view Rita provided. A gentleman does not stare like a school boy. But how can I do otherwise he asked of himself. Rita's cunt was right there; a lovely pink gash.

Jonathan worked for his father's construction company and by the looks of him, he worked hard. He was unattached and strong and twenty-nine, the same age Andrew Lynch had been when Rita first met him seven years ago. Unlike Andrew, Jonathan was somewhat shy though attentive to her every move.

Rita had had a miserable time of it since Andrew's death. She slipped into seclusion of her own choosing shunning everyone except her daughters. Before she realized, Holly and Colleen were off on their own unable to answer why Mom was the way she was for they were not privy to the details of Andrew's disappearance.

There on the love seat with Jonathan Rita sensed hope; possibly an end to the loneliness basking in the warm glow of Jonathan's green eyes.

"This arrangement I am proposing need not be not long term," Angela had reminded Rita when they spoke by phone that morning.

Later that evening, they happened to be apart from the others at the kitchen counter working Italian dressing through the greens.

Jonathan turned to find Rita inches away from his face. The kiss was inevitable, returned fiercely, unrelentingly, requited until Diana Givens murmured her disapproval from the doorway. Diana came on them in search of the salad for the buffet silently on stocking feet, having relinquished her shoes and her bra to Jerry Hollingsworth and Angela in the master bedroom soon after arriving at Round Top.

Rita dropped her right hand away from the front of Jonathan's woolen robe before acknowledging the other woman's displeasure.

"This just won't do," Diana warned. "You don't begin without Angela's direction. You don't know how she gets."

After Diana took her leave and the salad from the table, Rita and Jonathan could not think of a logical reason to remain concealed.

"Kiss me like you die, Jon," Rita said.

Rita was feverish. Jonathan breathless by the time the commotion in the hallway separated them.

""I've heard Angela gets off watching," Jonathan said. "It's all part of the rituals." The coarse surface of the burnoose hanging from his broad shoulder scratched at Rita's cheek as she sought the warmth of his body through the layers of wool with her busy hands.

"Have you ever been punished willingly?" Jon asked with some apprehension.

"I don't enjoy pain," Rita answered. "Never have... not in years," she corrected. "Seven to be exact."

"Would you find any pleasure or have an interest punishing me?" Jonathan asked.

Rita stepped away from the young man shaking her head in disbelief, not sure if he was being serious or toying with her sensibilities. She recalled a cold November night when another young man offered her his body.

Rita was without a stitch beneath the tight black dress. The latex was taut over her beautifully rounded bottom. Her bottom quivered with the feminine sway of her boyishly narrow hips.

Rita's girlish enthusiasm and her pleasingly small features had Jonathan wondering. But he had the good sense not to question the candles on her cake.

The truth be known, never if Rita had her way, she had been born five years to the day before his own mother's birth. Years earlier, Rita Cerrone had advantaged her cause by ten years with a sweep of her pen on the reapplication for a 'lost' New York State driver's license. The examiner looked up from the paper then ignored the error and a decade vanished from the calendar. Four mornings at the Y and evening dance class twice a week competed her deception.

If the truth were revealed, Jonathan would hold the lie fast to his heart for he was not concerned with the differences in their ages, only the outcome of this hallowed night. She had been promised to him on the occasion of his acceptance of Angela's invitation.

"Someone to teach you a thing or two," Angela had said to him as he stood fixated by the watercolors hanging in the foyer where he'd just finished grouting the stone floor.

The denim cutoffs Jonathan wore were short and tight across his backside. Rita will enjoy him, Angela told herself silently while she admired the choice she made; someone to fulfill the promise she'd made to her newest client.

The paintings in the foyer were of a woman whose facial feature were Angela's clad in harnesses of leather and silver trussed up and covered with long welts over the whole of her torsos. The fiery colors and the liberal application of the lash wet Jonathan's appetite and enflamed more that his imagination. The swelling of his member behind a layer of denim was a sight that Angela appreciated with a sinister smile that he failed to see.

"A pressing appointment prevents me from giving you a preview of what you might expect if you're brave enough to show." The air around Angela was scented with her powder, the shampoo she used that morning, and her perfume. The fragrances disrupted his senses as did her bold remark.

"But if you can make it on Saturday..."

Her hands were carelessly on Jonathan and her touch backed him toward the door.

By the time Jonathan Edwards reached the end of the long winding driveway, he decided he was sufficiently interested to accept Ms. Talbert's offer.

The black dress had been delivered by messenger to Rita Cerrone's home on the Thursday morning before the Halloween weekend along with Ms. Talbert's note.

"The path not taken is forever lost. Come walk with me."

The single line on the enclosed note was meant to taunt and entice Rita, to amplify poetically the suggestions Angela made at their last meeting on the previous Friday.

There were a number of emotional intimacies that bound Rita and the attorney together that afternoon. Rita spoke directly and to the point, providing details she had withheld on the day of her initial consultation.

"He was young and beautiful and always ready to please me. My own inhibitions kept me frustrated. But having him was better than not.

"After several months things began to change. It happened so slowly that I wasn't aware. Andrew exploited my neediness. I exploited his body." The thought stuck in her throat for a moment.

"Would you like some water...a drink?" Angela asked.

Rita shook off the offer and the recrimination before going on.

"The thing about our relationship... I couldn't say no. Mondays were our day together at the start. By January we were together three and four afternoons a week. Our desires intruded on weekends and holidays and family.

"One afternoon in April, he called me from Wainfleet. I was sitting for my grandson, Robert. He was home sick from school.

"I went anyway. I took the sick child and hurried across the border.

"I remember watching Robert through the window of our bedroom. I was on my stomach, Andrew on top of me, inside me while I kept watch over my grandson asleep on a cot on the screened porch."

"Rita, I'm sorry, but I have to ask. Was the man that good that you chanced losing everything?" Angela stared at Rita's lips while Rita composed her answer.

"He adored me. I didn't want for anything when I was with Andrew. And it was good even when I didn't appreciate him fully," she added. The two women shared a voyeuristic moment imaging the scene unfolded before them with Rita's description.

"I saw him as a threat to my marriage and my sanity. I was able to accept that. My love for Carlos had faded and I realized long before Andrew became a part of my life that crazy is just a state of mind. But when Andrew started with my daughters, I felt the end was close at hand. I had to protect Colleen and Holly from Andrew."

Rita confessed the evil she had done. Andrew Lynch had died by her hand but it was the icy Ontario night that actually took the life from his body.

"I left him drunk in the barn suspended from a bean. When I went back to Andrew the next morning, he was dead. His skin was as blue as his eyes had been.

"The fire was accidental, I think. A panic set in.

"The gasoline and three hundred bales of straw...

"The OPP investigators found nothing but the burned out hulk of Carlos' old Mustang in the remains of the barn. They weren't looking for a body."

"So why come to me now, Rita? After seven years?"

"Andrew's sister is asking around. Looking into his last days. She's found out about us and the cottage at Wainfleet. A lot of inquisitive folks in Wainfleet with excellent memories it seems."

The three room bungalow had been their rendezvous for the eighteen months Rita had kept him, eighteen months of burning passion the likes of which Rita had never known.

"I don't expect to find such love a second time," she sighed. There no tears with the mention of Andrew's name or her acknowledgement of the loss she had suffered.

"It's always out there, Rita," Angela said. "Just open your eyes and your heart and let it happen."

After some thought and a reread of the notes on her yellow pad, Angela assured Rita and accepted a retainer to represent her should an investigation make her involvement necessary.

"I wouldn't worry about the sister. After seven years evidence will be hard to come by. Unless you decide to turn yourself in, there'll be no prosecution."

Rita was initially perplexed by the note and the contents of the package. With the first of many fittings, Rita saw she wore the dress as it was intended to be. It fit over her body like a glove. She stood before the mirror tall on the heels that came with the dress. She found she liked what she saw.

On Beggar's Night she checked for flaws and found the panties in her bureau did not wear well with the scooped back of the dress. The naughty thought that came to mind, going without under-things brought a comforting sensation in her belly. There was also a rather dramatic change taking place beneath the bodice of the dress, "Something a man was going to notice," she whispered to herself.

Before six Rita Cerrone wrapped herself tightly in her rose-colored trench coat and made her way down stairs. She was bare foot, with the flamboyant footwear tucked into the pockets of her coat.

Carlos had already gone without a note or a good bye as expected. She sat at the kitchen counter with her final cup of decaf and listened as the remote starter worked its wonder and readied her Lexus parked in the drive.

Rita's acceptance of Angela's absurd invitation and her subsequent attendance at Round Top was predicated by the fear and her own sinful desire to fulfill Angela's promise.

Simply put, she told herself, I want to prove Angela correct, that a man might lust at the sight of my nearly naked body. That warm glow came again while she checked her face in the mirror in her compact.

There had been a longing look as Angela followed the contours of Rita's slacks and her blouse that first afternoon. While Rita enjoyed the impassioned interest in the woman's dark eyes, going so far as to wear a thin cotton tank top and short skirt to their second meeting, Rita had no interest being with another woman that way. She realized that fact immediately after confessing and wished her sin had remained her secret. She cursed herself for her stupidity, that idiotic, screwed up need to share after seven years.

There was nothing in her attorney's suggestion, spoken or implied, that led Rita to believe her participation was necessary to attend other than her own dread.

"Stop this you silly bitch," she shouted at the face in the mirror. "Go and enjoy being with other people." The words sounded odd to her ear in the quiet emptiness of her warm kitchen.

Rita slipped her small feet into the shoes just long enough to cross the court yard then set them on the seat beside her. The brake pedal and the accelerator were cold on her bare feet and the weather threatening. The drive took an hour longer than she'd planned. When Angela pointed Jonathan Edwards in her direction, Rita realized he had been worth the trip.

As it turned out Rita played it a bit too cool once he approached, snapping at the young man. But Angela came to their rescue and set things right.

Treacherous roads and snow drifts were forgotten as Rita stood in the shadow of the young man. His kiss was long and hard. The heat from his strong hands on her back prickled the hairs on her neck and arms.

There was a slight sound, a knock that caused the couple a start.

"I'm serving in the study," Kara called through the door.

They held their respective breaths until the echo of Kara's steps receded as she made her way down the hallway.

Jonathan went ahead of Rita, "To draw fire, should Ms. Talbert be lying in wait."

He almost made it across the living room before she approached from the study where many of the guests gathered.

Angela Talbert was in a fine costume of leather strapping functionally decorated with silver buckles, snaps and studs. He recalled the paintings in the foyer as he struggled to fix his gaze on an appropriate part of Angela's person.

Failed miserably, he said to himself a very pleasant failing indeed.

"I hope it's all you were prepared for," Angela said unconsciously modeling her outfit.

While the young man assumed Ms. Talbert alluded to Rita he was not ready for the woman attired as she was.

"There is no way I could have been prepared for this," he said. "And Rita is also very lovely," he added. His gaze wandered lower as he inspected the openings in the harness covering the full breasts and wide hips.

"You are very kind," Angela said. She pressed her hand to the front of his robe as he stepped up the stairs and out of her grasp.

"He's such a beautiful man," Rita said as she came up behind Angela. Rita was wild with his response to her kiss but choose not to thank Angela too soon for the night had a ways to go.

"Sit with me for a moment, Rita," Angela asked. She took Rita by the elbow over to the love seat near the hearth.

"People will think you greedy if you hide away with him alone the entire night."

"If my manners trouble anyone, understand it's been a long time since a man paid me such praise." Her tone was serious but the smile betrayed the joy she felt.

Jonathan's head was spinning by the time he made his way from the study to the dining room. He had never seen so many lovely women in so little clothing in all his short life.

He looked around searching for Rita but was unable to find her. He took a seat at the dining room table between two other empty chairs hoping she'd find her way back.