Gabrielle and the Devil

"What, that one? Are you kidding?"

Yet the ensemble was so dainty, so exquisitely sexy, that she knew she was going to wear it to the party. It was a thrilling, scary thought. The tape-measure was stretched taut across her naked breasts, squeezing cold on her nipples, and a knowing smile hovered on Pandora's lips.

"What was her dumb-ass ex thinking?" the dark-haired Fox mused aloud. "Doesn't she look fabulous?" The pretty young assistant could only agree. Fitting complete, adjustments to the garment began.

There were other appointments, the afternoon at the hairdresser's being key. "Can't I wear a wig for the evening?" Gabrielle inquired, but Pandora would not hear of it.

"Properly or not at all, girlfriend," Gabrielle was told, prior to their joint salon visit. So an ash-blonde rinse it was.

She met the same insistence over her first ever bikini wax. There was an undeniable naughty thrill―Pandora squeezing her hand every time a strip was torn away by the beautician from her delicately virginal pubic zone and laughing with her in the heat of the ensuing rush. Remembering the reason for the treatment made her moist, regardless of the pain and the attendant's proximity. She wondered what was overcoming her and if the beautician caught a scent of her arousal.

At home Pandora surrounded herself with her craftwork and devised some touches of her own. Together she and Gabrielle upped their gym sessions, each one helping tighten and tone. The end of October loomed. It was all Gabrielle could do to keep her concentration when teaching class.

English literature had always absorbed her, but now her focus was shot. And discussing Milton's angelic and diabolical imagery from Paradise Lost with her seniors―that had never been quite the same since dream-night. The bizarre nightmare kept burning in the forefront of her mind, due at least partially to Pandora's costume inspiration. At night her sleep was troubled. And during the day she fixated ever more on the forthcoming party. It felt like a particularly naughty date with destiny and the thought made her shudder.

Pandora drove them down to Santa Barbara the day before the grand event. Stella and her husband had arranged for the girls to stay in a guest bedroom to avoid any rush and let them relax into the festive occasion. Just a party, Gabrielle repeated to herself, but as the car wound its path into Santa Barbara Heights, she could not shake the sense that she was embarking on some great illicit adventure. She gasped at the immense wrought-iron gates outside Hartland Lodge and at the high spiked fencing which seemed to surround the house's acres. There would be no easy gate-crashing at this party. Pandora having been granted the security code, the gates swung apart and they rolled up the curving gravel drive between immaculately clipped lawns interspersed with a variety of topiary creatures. "She really didmarry money," Gabrielle said in awe.

"They have a maze out back," Pandora informed her. "For real."

The Lodge itself did not disappoint. It was a two-level brownstone manor with a quartet of great white Corinthian columns propping up the porch and elaborate keystone arches spanning each of the massive windows. "Straight out of The Great Gatsby," Gabrielle marveled. "Maybe that's what gave them the idea for the decadent parties."

They were greeted immediately, as they crunched to a halt, by Stella Hartland, an elegant, dark-haired woman in her late thirties. "Delighted," the hostess said coolly, on Pandora's introduction. The polite reserve of the welcome made Gabrielle feel something of an interloper.

"It's okay," Pandora would reassure her later, "they normally only invite people they know. These events are a well-kept secret. She'll be fine once she gets to know you."

Mac Hartland, Gabrielle observed, was much more profuse in his greeting. A handsome and robust forty-something with silvering hair, he seemed delighted by the arrival of his cousin-by-marriage and her attractive friend for the forthcoming frivolities. Ostentatiously he ushered them inside his luxurious abode, then plied them with drinks, as Gabrielle absorbed the Neo-classical design with its intricate friezes and its cherub-laden ceiling murals. An angel, it occurred to her, might grace this place better than the ghouls and witches.

"I can't believe I'm here," she trilled excitedly to Pandora that night, while they sipped champagne in their room at their two-girl pyjama party. "I was expecting something―well―tacky. I can't imagine what tomorrow night'll be like!"

"I know you can't," Pandora said with cheerful wickedness. "Gabby girl, this will be one Halloween you'll never forget."

There was something in her tone and in the way she eyed Gabrielle over her champagne flute that alerted the English grad to danger. "Dora, you are telling me everything here, right? You've got me spooked already and it's still October 30th."

Pandora's innocence seemed rather too assumed. "Absolutely, Gab, I don't know what you're thinking. You're going to one totally insane party, that's all. Hang on, gotta take a call." Gabrielle eyed Pandora's retreat to the ensuite bathroom and wondered who was on the other end of that vibrating iPhone. She knew her friend too well and wondered what schemes might be afoot.

Suspicion had settled to the back of Gabrielle's mind by the time she and Pandora were breakfasting with the Hartlands next morning. Their hostess had thawed somewhat in her attitude toward the newcomer, while not entirely shedding her upwardly-mobile hauteur.

After breakfast Pandora provided her with a guided tour of the Lodge's extensive grounds, including a brief interlude in the outskirts of the maze. Its thick yew-tree hedges towered above them imposingly. Even at noon it succeeded in blotting out much of the daylight. "Damn...This is 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'," Gabrielle commented, "or something from 'Harry Potter'." The hedging seemed to lower down upon her a touch grimly. "Halloween night this place is going to be seriously spooky." She shivered right to her toes.

Pandora smirked. "Halloween night, there's going to be all kinds of fun and games going in here. None of it spooky, believe me. You want to keep away from the maze, Gab, if you want to hold onto your halo."

Gabrielle smiled weakly at her friend's innuendo. A figurative shadow had fallen across her, to match that cast by the hedge. It was a sensation she couldn't shake. "Let's go," she told her friend hastily. "Time to see the town."

The whole afternoon was taken up with light lunching and window-shopping along the palm-lined streets of Santa Barbara, while the house's elaborated party preparations were carried out. At six the pair returned to the house, to find huge jack-o-lanterns already strewn across the porch, ready to be lit. Inside, the hallway and adjacent rooms were strewn with Stella's tasteful Halloween decorations―further pumpkins and Fall flowers, carefully placed broomsticks and black-gauze webs with jewel-eyed hand-crafted spiders. Thick church candles were set in sturdy holders about the walls. Whatever the party's reputation, Gabrielle could not fault her hostess on creating ambience. Having soaked it all in, she and Pandora retired to their suite to prepare―for what her friend was referring to as 'a grand entrance'.

"We start from the bottom up," Pandora said in a sprightly tone. She slapped her lissome friend jauntily on the ass as she said it. "Hit the shower, girl."

It was a regimen on which Pandora had insisted. Having soaped and rinsed before surrendering the shower stall to her friend, Gabrielle moisturized every inch of her skin's surface. She applied a clear lacquer to her nails and sat robed at the armoire, curling her eye-lashes. It provided a curious erotic charge, knowing that her partner in this enterprise was sponging down her saucy body next door, as though they were co-adventurers about to embark on some sexy mission. It's a fancy-dress party, that's all, she told herself with ever-waning conviction.

She was still preening her lashes when Pandora burst into the room from the shower, chattering and butt naked, her breasts bouncing freely on her neat, curvy frame. Even now Gabrielle was embarrassed by and envious of how freely the girl could put herself on display. Exactly how would Gabrielle cope in front of a houseful of strangers?

"Go on, Gabby, put the costume on," Pandora said eagerly, jumping on to the bed and perching her nude self cross-legged. Gabrielle glanced at her meaningfully in the mirror. "I won't peek," the dark-haired girl lied, dropping her eyes, but stealing covert glances throughout. She watched in admiration as her friend arose and slid the robe from off her slim shoulders, letting it puddle around her feet. Gabrielle's smooth, limber body had a rich honey tone to it. Some six inches taller than Pandora, she had the graceful curves of a gymnast and rose-nippled breasts like swollen teardrops. And she doesn't think the guys are interested? God, if I could sprout a length for a day...

Pandora observed, quietly avid, as Gabrielle padded across to the chair where lay her costume.

The English teacher hesitated, before tentatively picking up the first item. She stepped her feet nervously inside the pantyhose as a bather into ice-cold shallows. Pandora watched as the white fishnets glided up over Gabrielle's taut calves and thighs, then expanded around the firm ovals of her ass. The remaining pubic strip, dyed cheekily the same ash-blonde as her shoulder-length locks, peeked through the netting. Damn, a thorough job had been done in primping―'pimping'? ―this girl out.

Now Gabrielle was climbing inside the teddy, the sequined ivory one which followed the plunging line of her hips to where it fastened cunningly, secretly, at her crotch. The teddy with the corseted bra, which thrust her bosom upwards, resulting in an expanse of deliciously soft cleavage.

She slid her feet inside the white-leather pumps Pandora had helped her pick out and donned the sheer white peignoir robe, which flowed nearly the length of her body, emphasizing rather than disguising her contours. God, Pandora thought, eyes feasting discretely on the result, if you're not speared on some devil's big dick before the evening's out, then I've failed in my work. Tonight's the night, girl.

"This does not constitute 'dressed'," Gabrielle moaned, staring at herself in the mirror.

"I know. It's fun, isn't it? Give me a moment and I'll finish you." Pandora bounced jauntily off the bed to slip into her own costume, the one Gabrielle had monikered Little Red Riding Slut. "I want to pick me up a wolf this year."

The brunette had positively salivated on assembling her outfit. The lacy white bra with its matching panties raised and squeezed, accentuating the fullness of the petite girl's tits. Atop this went a transparent white blouse and micro-skirt in red, flesh peeping out between the hem of the latter and the tops of her black, lace-up, thigh-high boots; the heels propped her up a few additional inches. The red gabardine cape and hood, tied around her neck with satin ribbon, was the only real concession to tradition. "There. Think I'll make it into the woods and back intact? Don't answer that. Here, let me fix you."

She helped blow-dry and brush Gabrielle's hair, then used the tongs to tease out loose curls. Mascara was applied―"to make the most of those angelic baby-blues"―along with a touch of pale-pink lipstick. Pandora perfected her own look―hair bobbed around her shoulders, crimson lipstick matching the cape. Then to her friend she added the results of her own late-night labors, wings and a halo. The wings were gauze stretched over wire, adorned with myriad crepe feathers and the whole thing tied at her shoulders with white-satin ribbons, the halo a disc of silver-white silk clipped into her hair so that it stood up behind as in a medieval artwork.

"Perfect." Pandora surveyed her work, an adorable picture of eroticized innocence. "They won't be able to get enough of you, girl." Gabrielle looked terrified. Somehow it increased the effect. "Check us out, Gab," Pandora said as they stared at their joint, impressively sexy reflection in the mirror. "Naughty and nice. Maybe you can keep Little Red on the path of virtue."

Gabrielle knew that Pandora was endeavoring to lead her off that particular thoroughfare. She was also aware of her own pangs of erotic excitement. But she resolved, suddenly, not to stray. There was fun to be had, music and dancing and a whole new social mileau through which to wander. She could flirt with it all and then float with her angel wings high above it―not succumbing to the world, the flesh and the... Well anyway, it would take more than a suggestive costume and her friend's best efforts to lure her away from the practice and beliefs of a lifetime.

"Come on," Pandora said with a sparkle-eyed smile. "Our public awaits."

Away from the safety of their room, however, Gabrielle's anxieties rioted within her. The music from the downstairs ballroom thrummed along with her drumming heartbeat. On nearing the grand mahogany stairway to the lower floor she heard the babble of party-going voices and the inadequacy of what she was wearing made her tremble. Angel? She was about to parade herself at something akin to an up-market bordello. But her progress with Pandora was inexorable. She was gliding down the sweeping stairs into the Manor's candle-lit entrance hall, crowded as it was with guests.

And what guests they were. An attractive professional crowd, certainly, but transformed into a ghoulishly sexy carnival. The women were felines in curve-clinging cat suits and whiskers, corpse brides with tracts of flesh showing between what patches of material clung miraculously to their bodies and sultry vampires in velvet or latex, luring unsuspecting males with red-painted talons and extravagant cleavage. The men meanwhile had decked themselves as cinematic blood-suckers and serial killers, as well as ghost pirates, ghouls and at least one shambling, Romero-style zombie. A trim red-haired girl appeared to have arrived in nothing more than a few scraps of mummifying white linen, which looked likely to unravel at any moment; her muscular boyfriend wore the elaborate golden collar and skirt of a young Pharaoh. The two were laughing and stroking each other's exposed areas like they might fuck at the merest prompting on the nearest available surface. It seemed, thought an awestruck Gabrielle, to encapsulate the mood of the whole unfolding party.

She stared at the outrageous, dazzling scene and wondered who else among the negligibly-clad felt as exposed as she did. None, she suspected, either guests or staff. On reaching the bottom of the stairs she and Pandora were immediately plied with glasses of smoking punch by a voluptuous and smiling young witch, whose ample bosom threatened to burst out of her front-fastened corset. About the hall other such comely serving-witches were carrying similar trays of drinks, as were stripped-to-the-waist tight-breeched satyrs with bulging crotches. All seemed perfectly comfortable regarding their state of semi-undress.

"Remind you of your dream?" Pandora inquired playfully, pointing to one of the satyrs.

"Nothing like." The male serving-staff were certainly eye-candy, but they didn't approach the raw, scary sexuality of her night-demon. There was enough in this very real setting, however, to unnerve her, not least the pairs of eyes―largely but not exclusively male―which had fixed on her as she descended. She accepted the proffered drink and downed half of it at a shot. The fiercely alcoholic beverage nearly choked her as it hit the back of her throat. When she recovered she saw a druid ogling her like she was next on the altar and knocked back the rest.

Pandora was guiding her through the fantastical mob, all but dragging her into the great ballroom with its thumping dance music and swirl of dry-ice fog. The period grandeur of the room was steeped in fluorescent lighting, throwing both their costumes, but especially Gabrielle's, into luminous relief. In the central dance area a glowing phantasmagoria of Halloween characters was writhing sensually together around a grotesque Tim Burtonesque tree. Among them Gabrielle spotted their host and hostess for the weekend. Mac was made over impressively as Nosferatu, from Murnau's classic silent movie, complete with convincing bald wig and curling talons, while Stella played the young, ringletted, nightdress-clad wife the vampire had so terrifyingly menaced.

"They don't do things by halves, do they?" Pandora grinned, snatching two glasses of champagne from a passing tray and handing one to her friend. Gabrielle continued to stare with trepid wonder at the mass of exhibitionism and flirtation going on around her. She found herself emptying this glass even more quickly than the first.

"There goes one sexy angel," the ghost of a blood-spattered Spartan warrior commented, as they progressed. Gabrielle quailed at the lasciviousness in his tone. By putting herself on display like this, she could hardly expect less, could she?

"Not the most original come-on you're likely to have all evening," her friend assured her. Pandora was looking freely about, absorbing all the attention that was thrown their way. "I imagine it'll get much better." There it was again, the brunette's casually knowing tone. Exactly what did that imply?

"Dora..." But before she could call Red Riding Hood on her meaning, her distracted friend was shoving her champagne flute into Gabrielle's grasp.

"Hey Gab, give me a moment. I think I've spotted my wolfman."

With those words Pandora was gone, sucked by instinct into the dance-floor throng, leaving Gabrielle abandoned. The ash-blonde angel sipped further champagne for the sheer protection of the glass before her lips.

The fear she had experienced on so many nights out with her friend was upon her again, only magnified among this extravagantly sexy whirl of half-naked humanity. Part of her wanted to embrace the madness, but that familiar panic was taking over. There were no corners in this room to which she could safely escape; even the shadows might contain creatures with wicked designs upon a pretty angel. As for the ultra-violet, it made her shine like a beacon―not to ward off evil, but to damn well attract it. Her hair, she realized, was a dazzling shock in the darkness. Her fishnets were a strikingly defined criss-cross from hip to ankle and as for her teddy, it was a plunging white arrow-head, pointing dramatically to her crotch.

The sudden influx of alcohol was taking startling effect. Gabrielle had turned to avoid the overtures of a psychotic blood-stained clown and now the floor was lurching beneath her. Why hadn't she hunted out the dining-room buffet before entering here and downing more glassfuls? Everything was moving into a slow spin. The leering faces and hot bodies were merging into an orgy of flesh and she was a part of it, or in danger of becoming so, eyed brazenly each way she looked by men and women alike. They wanted to draw her in, absorb her in their fleshly pursuits, make her one of them.

She was suffocating, she had to get out. But when she turned to look for the entrance, her way was blocked by the green-hued Living Dead from the hallway. He was grinning at her drunkenly―or was that part of his zombie routine?―explaining how it wasn't her brains he wanted to eat. Of all the prospective seducers, she did not want to be monopolized by this guy. She tried to move past him politely, but he took her arm and attempted to draw her towards the dance area, muttering something about showing her his Thriller moves.