Dr. Tolliver's Bosom Balm Ch. 04

'So, if anything, I'm sorry to say that you look more desirable now than you did in the dress. Eggs?'

They sat at the wooden table on deck, an awning shading them from the late morning sun, the river breeze in their hair, the forests passing slowly to either side.

'What manner of vessel is The Areola precisely, Doctor Tolliver?' said Bronagh, picking at her hash and trying to find her appetite again after the emotional travails of the past twenty-four hours.

'To the casual onlooker, unaware of her amphibious duality,' Tolliver replied, 'The Areola is a simple steam-powered tugboat.'

'I suspect, though, that not a great deal of tugging takes place?' said Bronagh.

Tolliver cleared his throat and dipped a spoon in some beans. 'Anyway,' he said, changing the subject, 'I have a proposition for you, Miss Kelly.'

'You have made your sinful feelings for my body perfectly clear, Doctor Tolliver,' said Bronagh, mixed emotions surfacing, 'But I must remind you that I am already betrothed to another.'

'A proposition, Miss Kelly,' Tolliver said with a polite smile. 'Not a proposal. Although, perhaps it is none of my business, but I cannot help but note the absence of a wedding band from that pretty pink ring-finger.'

Bronagh realised that, in her misapprehension, she had held aloft her now unadorned left hand by way of proof. She quickly stowed it back under the table and looked away. 'You are correct, Doctor Tolliver. It is none of your business. Now, to your proposition.'

Tolliver gave a wry chuckle, and reached into his jacket pocket and produced from it a cork-stoppered medicine bottle. He passed it over the table to Bronagh.

Bronagh studied the label adhered to the bottle's green glass surface, and read aloud. '"Doctor Thornton Ignatius Tolliver's Miracle Bosom Balm."' She looked quizzically back up at the smiling scientist.

'My new product,' he said. 'As you are by now aware, Miss Kelly, I specialise in the formulation, manufacture and purveyance of medication that serves a... sexual purpose.'

'You don't say,' Bronagh remarked, deadpan.

'My formulations have for the most part been for the immediate benefit of men and their ability to perform. Rise to the occasion, so to speak.'

Bronagh rolled her eyes at the tiresome innuendo.

'But despite the target consumer being men,' Tolliver continued, 'I have over time found that those purchasing the products are, in fact, the women. Women, it appears, have more interest in male bedroom performance than men do themselves.'

'I saw the excitement myself in the old church hall,' said Bronagh, ushering Tolliver to his point with mild impatience.

'Women want a man to exhibit enthusiastic levels of arousal, but they don't want that arousal to be attributed solely to my stamina tonic. They want to take some credit themselves. So they come to resent the erection-inducing aphrodysiac, and consequently I am seeing little repeat business when I return to any given town.'

'Perhaps the real reason for the decline in sales,' Bronagh said, 'Is that your tonic simply doesn't work.'

Tolliver smiled in a slightly annoyed way. 'Miss Kelly, you saw for yourself...' He gestured at his groin, safely out of view beneath the breakfast table.

'What I saw, Doctor Tolliver,' Bronagh said, 'Was a man so sex-crazed, so depraved, that the tonic would have served as a mere chaser.'

'You may surmise that, Miss Kelly, but I am living, empirical proof. And I offer as a scientific control experiment all of the limp-membered men who do not drink my formulation.'

Bronagh shrugged. 'Anyway. You were saying.'

'My solution to this marketing conundrum,' Tolliver said, warming to his theme anew, 'Is to create a complementary product for the woman to use, to restore or enhance her youthful femininity and thus to give herself the feeling that she is in some way contributing to the priapic glory between her husband's legs. Men love bosoms. And so I have formulated an ointment to firm and enlarge them. You are holding the resulting new product in your hand. Not that you have any need for it yourself, of course.'

'How do you know that it works?' asked Bronagh, eyeing the bottle in her hand with scepticism.

'That's the problem,' he said. 'I don't. The stamina tonic I can, of course, test on myself. I can demonstrate its efficacy in front of huge crowds of women, who all throw money at me to buy it. But the bosom balm. It is, I will be quite honest with you, snake oil. On paper I dare say it might bring a healthy glow to the skin, but the claims I make on the label of size and firmness are bogus.'

Bronagh regarded Doctor Tolliver's calmly smiling moustachioed face with disgust. 'You seem positively brimming with pride of the fact that you intend to gull your customers. Have you no shame?'

'Miss Kelly, it is what we scientists call a placebo. Fake medicine, designed to cure ailments that exist only in the mind. An entirely legitimate form of medical treatment, I assure you, but its efficacy relies entirely on the appearance of such. The women who will buy my bosom balm need it as a crutch to their ailing self-confidence, not as the pharmaceutical corrective for some physiological defect.' Doctor Tolliver tapped the side of his head. 'It's all in the mind.'

'I see,' said Bronagh. She didn't want to be taken in by the debonair science-pervert's silver tongue, but she was beginning to understand his point, even if she still found it difficult not to disapprove in ethical terms. 'But people aren't stupid. Even sex-obsessed women. They will still need proof of some kind in order to convince them that this bosom balm of yours does what you claim.'

Tolliver grinned broadly, his moustache curling up even more tightly at the ends. 'That, my dear, buxom Miss Kelly, is where you come in.'

The proposition was dawning on Bronagh now. 'Oh no no no...' she began, raising her hands.

'I saw your fellow townsfolk,' Tolliver interjected. 'And do you know what I saw in their reaction to the way you siphoned all that seed from me? I saw jealousy!'

Bronagh's lip trembled and colour rushed to her cheeks.

'Miss Kelly, you have quite simply the most perfect bosoms I have ever seen. I could not even have imagined bosoms quite so flawless, so erotically enticing. Everything about them, their proportions, their consistency, the tightness of the cleft between them, the pigmentation of those adorable, suckable nipples, everything seems purpose-designed to drain a man dry. And other women hate you for it. Whereas they cannot even inspire an erection from their jaded husbands without recourse to my tonic, you had me spending my entire load just exposing yourself to me! And I had taken a dose of tonic far higher than the prescribed amount!'

'What are you suggesting?' said Bronagh quietly, heart pounding within that perfect, ample breast.

'Come with me! Tour the West! I will present you on stage to the female audience, and show your bosoms as living proof that my balm works! We will split the profits fifty fifty. We will both make a fortune! Of course, we will have to spend a great deal of time together in sexual congress of some kind...'

'It's not the congress. I would be living a lie!' Bronagh protested. 'I couldn't do it!'

'Remember the placebo effect, Miss Kelly,' Tolliver said. 'The balm will work, but by indirect means. The deceit is part of the treatment. We wouldn't be doing anything wrong.'

'I... I can't, Doctor Tolliver.'

Tolliver leaned back, his smile fading. 'Then,' he said. 'I shall take you home.'

Bronagh froze in silence.

'Is there a problem there?' Tolliver said. 'Something perhaps connected to the mystery of your missing wedding band?'

Bronagh looked at her breakfast hash, which had by now turned cold. 'I cannot go home,' she said. She thought of Donald. If he had resented her up until now, he would despise her now. She would fear for her safety, out there alone in the little farmhouse.

'Then see this as an opportunity,' Tolliver said, more kindly.

Bronagh looked from her breakfast plate to her bosom which extended above the edge of the table. A strange recklessness began to surge through her.

'Well?' said the Doctor.

'I'll do it.' Bronagh looked up and eyed her new partner with solemn defiance. 'I'll present my bosoms to your potential customers and pass my buxomness off as the result of your bogus treatment. Fifty fifty profit share. One further condition, however.'

'Name it,' said Tolliver, beaming with excitement.

'Concerning the inevitable regular relief that you will require after prolonged exposure to my bare breasts, I must impress upon you that there will be no full intercourse, neither from the front or from the rear.'

'I accept that.'

'I will not pleasure you with my mouth. I will not lick, suck or swallow your manhood or its issuance.'

'Understood.'

'Strictly no manual relief. I refuse to touch your member with my hand.'

'Whatever you say.'

'The only part of my body that will ever come into contact with your penis is my bosoms. It seems to be the most efficient way of purging your desires, and so whenever you feel completely overcome, you may undress my bosoms, look at them, touch them, insert yourself between them, and do whatever you have to do to them in order to reach a climax that is as swift and comprehensive as possible. Is that clear?'

Doctor Tolliver stood, groin bulging. He extended his hand across the table. 'I think, Miss Kelly,' he grinned, 'that we have a deal.'