The Courts Of Pleasure

But had Coverly really understood when he had seen 'The Passion-Flower'? This canvas was the most powerful evocation yet of this erotic sensuality that lay within her and a total rejection of these times in which they now lived. Did he realize what she was really showing the world, or did he think it was just a beautiful flower?

He had sat back then his eyes studying 'The Passion-Flower' behind her and her face, a contemplative smile lighting his features. "You are an exceptionally beautiful woman Miss Moore and your work compliments your beauty. Tell me, would it interest you if you could arrive at the reality of your painting? If you could see your vision come to life before your eyes. If you could actually live that vision in a way that you never imagined possible. That is the possibility that I am offering you."

"My name is Sarah Murdock now. I'm married," she'd answered in the event his proposal had been something other than an invitation to just visit.

"And I presume your husband shares your world-view?" Coverly had replied.

"Oh yes! Cliff and I see very much eye to eye," she had laughed. But Coverly's words had more than touched her, they had unleashed a flood of desire and an undercurrent of incredulity. Through the welter of emotions rising in her she had heard herself say, "If what you say is true, how can I not accept your invitation?"

If he had said 'Trust me' she would have retreated. Instead he said, "You must see for yourself." Now she couldn't wait. Curiosity and anticipation had consumed her as she had waited for this weekend. Could this sensuousness be lived? Is that what Coverly was hinting at, and in these times now that 'The Veil' had wiped out all such utterances?

Dull drab shapeless clothes and colors marked the women all around her. Appearance, age, personality had all been submerged into a uniform monotony, a monotony that had slowly overtaken the female world in her lifetime. There was no such thing as fashion any longer. The only look that was 'in' was the western version of the Moslem veil, which had all the charm of a limp bathrobe or an oversize jumpsuit with a sloppy vest over it.

The Emergency of exploding population threatening everything had spawned 'The Measures' as they were called. Thousands of years of evidence were finally accepted. Women were so incredibly attractive that men couldn't resist themselves. Not just the models and actresses and anchorwomen, but all women. Whether it was pheromones or flirting wherever there was a woman there was a man who wanted her and the result was all around them, an explosion of population.

It had all happened in the wake of the genomic advances in medicine that had wiped out the fear of AIDS and all STDs. These diseases had simply vanished and were no longer a barrier to uninhibited indulgence in sex. The restraint of unwanted pregnancy had long since also disappeared, along with the mess of menstruation, as women were now able to safely turn their reproductive cycles on and off with ease.

The woman who chose to make her body the receptacle of nothing but unrestrained sexual pleasure could now indulge herself with all the enthusiasm that men had enjoyed forever. Inevitably the result had been the population explosion that threatened civilization itself because most women sooner or later simply chose to have babies despite the laws that now made sex for procreation illegal without permission.

The train was passing over an elevated track and from its height Sarah could look down upon the unwholesome sprawl of the shantytown encircling Plainfield. The slum seemed unending, spreading out from the great city at its center in concentric waves of huts, shacks and shelters covering the destitute and desperate poor. S

She had watched it grow, marking its expansion in the twenty-five years of her own life. She remembered it as a youngster as a mere ripple around New Town but now it stretched half way to Southshore, pushed outward not only by the growth of the affluent sprawl at its center but also by the incredible explosion of humanity breeding within it. Its appetite was enormous for every scrap of nourishment. The garbage and trash spewed into it from the homes, high-rises, and factories of the city fed, clothed, and covered a misery growing beyond sustenance.

Of course everyone was conscious of 'The Emergency'. Everyone wanted to do something about it. And the most obvious thing was the dress code. Dressing-down was what they called it. Sensuousness and eroticism were out and had vanished from public consciousness in the media, entertainment, and everywhere else. Covering up and the humdrum were in. The Sex-police had been all too successful and the result had been to drive sexual pleasure totally underground.

Sarah heaved a weary sigh at the very thought and her nature was in rebellion. If there was anything her marriage to Cliff had revealed to her it was the depths of her own instinctively libidinous person, depths that she had only begun to plumb in five years of marriage, depths that they had to explore in secret but that were made even more tantalizing by The Blue Laws and efforts of the Sex-police.

The train lurched jolting her out of her reverie and Cliff moved restlessly beside her. She glanced at his familiar profile feeling his restlessness within her as much as seeing it in his face. She had pushed him to come with her for the simple reason that she didn't know where she was going. Coverly was to meet them and take them to some place that he referred to as "The Court". All he would say was that it was in Old Town.

Old Town was huge, an ill-lit gloomy maze of twisting streets and decaying neighborhoods into which one might walk and never come out. Coverly had paid a sizable sum for 'The Passion Flower'. His manner and appearance were worldly, cultured, and refined. Clearly he was an esthete. But was he also on the make? He had invited her for an overnight visit and was not at all open about the arrangements. The possibility that there might be some other way of life than that of the unbearably stultifying world around her had thrust her into this journey, but she had a good measure of caution as well and Cliff was simply necessary insurance.

When they pulled into the station the train eased along the platform and she glimpsed Coverly, recognizing his tall, slim figure strolling easily in spite of his years. The angular rugged clean shaven face, sharp and quizzical of expression, the clear keen blue eyes, the forehead high and freckled under abundant long dark hair touched with gray that swept back over the ears in smooth waves on either side. Impulsively she lowered the window and Coverly returned her greeting with an enthusiastic wave. The train glided to a stop, the travelers roused themselves, Cliff wrestled their overnighter off the shelf and they joined the press of passengers streaming off the coach.

Greetings, introductions; Cliff short, remote, stiff. Coverly relaxed, open, courteous, and then he left them to fetch his car. Sarah took in her surroundings, the commuter stop unfamiliar but somewhere on that verge between the New City and Old Town. The train moved silently away, the rails gleaming in its wake dividing the New City wall of high-rises on one side from the forested canopy of Old Town on the other.

The wave of passengers washed over the platform and ebbed into the parking lot leaving her to the hum and roar of the city traffic. And then a different note sounded in her ears. Sarah turned to the hail of the car's horn and saw the roadster beside the platform. It was a marvel, an antique from another time, easily a hundred and fifty years old, an ancient touring car and the top was down!

What a delight! She glanced at Cliff. He was awed. Antique cars were his passion not hers. His Pontiac, a 2037 was built the year she was born and that's all she cared to know about it. Cliff thawed, melted into the front seat with Coverly, and she had the back seat to herself as they drifted silently away from the platform. Solar-battery-propulsion? She knew that much, but the body itself was genuine. It carried the patina of time in its every part and she gave herself over to the cruise.

A wonderful summer day! They were soon out of the traffic and into the old neighborhoods, all unfamiliar to her. In this setting even her hated duster was the perfect touch. Women wore dusters a hundred and fifty years ago in cars just like this to keep the dust off their clothes she reflected, now they were wearing them to keep men's minds off their bodies.

Dressing-down to obey the Blue-Laws was an abomination. She sighed, pushed the hood back from her face and looked up through the spreading branches to the brilliant patches of light interlacing the leaves.

Where were they headed she wondered? She would chart their way with the sun. For a time it was in front of her, and then to the right, and then in front, and then to the left and after while it was behind them. And then she lost it altogether in the opaqueness of the shade, and when she found it again it wasn't at all where she expected it to be. And then there was nothing but dappled light and dark and marvelously luminous colors of every hue, reflections and shifting shapes, spaces and depths.

They were going down. She could feel the descent and for a time she caught glimpses of the ever distancing horizon. And after while they were so deep that there was nothing but the streets, and the houses, and the trees, and everything was getting older and older, and denser and darker. She kept looking up into the light and dark flickering over her head, at the world up there that she was leaving. And the space into which she was descending was opening to receive her. It was immense, breathing, heaving.

She wanted to go to it...to let go of what held her and to go to....what? Sarah closed her eyes and looked at the shimmering shapes behind her lids, incandescent, iridescent colors that pulsed and shimmered and shifted into petals, petals that lifted and opened and bloomed into her Passion- Flower.

Had Coverly recognized 'The Passion Flower' for what it really was, a self portrait? But a rendition that would raise havoc in her life if it was known that she had shown the world the blossom that bloomed within her own loins. It was all there on the canvas, the anatomy of her sex disguised as a flower: the petals of her labia, her clitoral hood with its pearly bud, the aperture of her vagina, all bedewed with the glistening drops of her juices summoned by her fingers.

The painting was large, her biggest and boldest yet. She had filled it with the simultaneous sensations of her self-pleasuring as she worked, her fingers summoning those delicious surges of excitement just short of orgasm until that day when she had brought herself to climax and the work was finished. Now it was all there for anyone to see who could recognize and appreciate what she was offering for their delight.

Those sensations evoked by her efforts filled her again but at this moment her duster lay over her like a shroud. Beneath it her body pulsed with warmth and feeling. Her hands slipped through the side slits and rested on her thighs, the 'touch' so familiar and so satisfying. I

It would be cool to indulge herself now in the openness of the roadster with the two men in front of her unaware and the rest of the world passing by, unknowing. A world demanding an obedience to which she would never submit since she had discovered the true essence of her nature: sensuous and adventurous and expanding in every creation blooming under her hands. Hands busy now beneath her skirts to summon that most forbidden of pleasures to the blossom that was blooming now in her loins with that familiar ache and urge that insisted on satisfaction.

Her fingers found her flower again so utterly ready to respond to her touch and the wild delight of this new adventure filled her with its pleasure and excitement roused to a fever pitch of clitoral fingering and vaginal invasions.

The car jolted. The smoothness underneath yielded to a jarring patterned roughness that broke the regular rhythm of her self-pleasuring. Sarah opened her eyes and slipped a moist hand from under her duster. They were in a forest, a park actually, but overgrown and unkempt with huge spreading trees to the left and a dense impenetrable hedge towering on the right.

She and Cliff and Coverly joggled in unison, the car jolting over the rough cobbled lane leading through the shrubs and un-mowed grass. Sarah felt a surge of suspense and caught and held her breath, her free hand gripped the edge of the door beside her, fixing her to the moment, to the sensations rising within her.

The sensations that she had just evoked with those intimate caresses were cresting again. She was riding the car up to the summit, poising on edge, clinging to that incredible moment before the giddy plunge that had almost been there a moment before, and then abruptly they turned into the hedge, into a flickering tunnel of light.

Leaves glistened all about them. She saw their dark bluish green grayish cast, their agitation as they flashed beside her and she recognized them as laurel laced with blooms of pink white Passion Flower vines! The thicket was ancient and huge, and the blooms surrounded her with their beckoning luxuriant vaginal beauty.

And then they were through and into the light beyond and birthing out into the space opening before her, an emotion, insistent, spontaneous, unstoppable, rose in her being at the sight. A radiant peal of sympathy sounded in her soul and the sudden climax of her orgasm shuddered ecstatically upon her fingers at the sight of the phallic splendor lifting before her.

Ahead, rising from a smoothly domed mound of greensward, the robust shaft of a tall ivory tinted tower rose into the light of the late afternoon sun. Its phallic radiance gleamed from the curved faceted walls and the balusters of its balconies, glanced brilliantly from the glass of its windows and the rounded dome of golden roof tiles.

The Tower stood in the midst of a broad scattering of cottages harmonized by their Victorian rusticity. A generous drive of red brick in front of them rose to the tower topping the mound, the whole encircled by gardens, coppices of shrubs, and a dense backdrop of tall trees. The little houses were lush with clapboards, gingerbread, peaks and gables, they dripped with curves, spindles, and balls; glowed with muted harmonious colors; peered from behind lattices, pierced balustrades, and arched windows. Carpets of rich green lawn, studded with magnificent gardens of flowering plants and shrubs, unified the scene into a balanced and harmonious whole.

Sarah stared breathlessly at the sight when Coverly stopped the car, and turned to her. In his smile she saw that he understood her emotion. "Welcome to The Court, Sarah, and this is The Tower House," he said, softly gesturing at the phallic facade lifting before them.

She nodded silently, her hands shielded her parting lips as she gazed up this ornamented shaft rising into the light above her. It was beautiful of course, but it was not its appearance, it was what it meant. It was the 'why' of it that called to her, the mystery of its compelling sympathy that resounded in her with the orgasmic after-glow of her secret satisfaction scented upon her fingers and savored with her tongue.

*****

Within the Tower House a woman waited in the vaulted space they called 'the atrium'. Eva Valiente listened for footsteps in the foyer and for the sound of voices. There was Coverly's familiarly resonate baritone, the young woman's fresh clear alto and another man's heavier voice.

"What a lovely place to live," the young woman exclaimed warmly as they came through the foyer. The sunlight poured through the portal behind them and spread out in a shining path upon the floor. Eva stood in its midst looking into the light, seeing the shape of the young woman before her, a silhouette embodying the mystery of person.

"Eva, this is Sarah Murdock," Coverly announced.

"You sign your paintings 'Moore'," Eva responded holding out her hands.

Sarah took them in hers. "My maiden name," she replied, "This is my husband, Cliff."

Eva extended her hand to Cliff. "I'm Eva Valiente." she offered.

Pleasure," Cliff murmured.

Eva palmed the sensations, his hands large, fleshy, and moist; Sarah's compact, warm, and surprisingly firm for a woman. But of course she's an artist and she works with her hands Eva concluded. "Would you like to shed that duster?" she asked.

"May I?" Sarah responded in relief.

"Heavens, yes. We don't bother with such things here," Eva smiled.

Slipping out of the garment and dropping it on the overnighter Sarah studied the woman with surprise. She didn't know there was any place now where people felt free not to bother with 'such things'.

Eva's face bore in its age the harmonies of her handsome youth; her eyes keen and bright, her hair a nimbus of white about her head. She was tall and un-stooped, her frame draped in a long fitted purple gown with a large black chevron collar. There was an aura of authority about her, a strength, and wisdom of age. "You will find that we live rather differently here than they do out there," Eva went on. "I hope you will find your stay with us rewarding."

Sarah glanced around the room. The large lofty circular space opened upwards into the darkness of the domed ceiling a full story above. Directly across the room from the entrance foyer another set of doors opened out into a second foyer that gave on to the gardens outside. Archways to her right and left opened into rooms off the atrium and the walls between them were bordered with tables and a grand piano.

She saw that this was a room for receptions, for sizable gatherings of people. The walls that curved about her were covered with paintings barely distinguishable in late afternoon light that flooded in from the front foyer, but an easel had been placed to catch the illumination of the lowering sun and it bore her painting of 'The Passion-Flower'. Her canvas struck her with its perfection in this setting and studying it she sensed again the echoes of her after-glow from her climatic orgasm upon entering The Court.

Then there was a movement beyond the easel and a figure entered from the garden foyer moving though the shadows behind the painting. A nubile young maiden with long unbound dark hair that flowed to her waist stepped from behind 'The Passion-Flower' into the light. She wore a white tunic that came to mid thigh and amazingly little else. The mounds of her nipples showed clearly upon her shift, and her body offered the contours of ripe young maidenhood.

"This is my daughter, Vivienne " Eva announced. "Vi this is the artist, Sarah Moore."

Vivienne brought her hands clasped before her bosom in a namaste and bowed to Sarah. Something unaccountable fluttered within Sarah, no one had ever greeted her in just this way. 'I honor your soul' was what the namaste meant and it touched her. Vi's eyes touched Sarah's too when she raised her head and held her in a long silent study.

"So you're the artist..." Vivienne exclaimed nodding at 'The Passion- Flower', her gaze resting upon Sarah a sudden sensation flowing, a connection between them, and an excitement. Vi lifted her hands to Sarah's hands embracing her fingers and drawing them to her mouth for a soft kiss, her eyes widening with awareness of what those fingers carried to her lips. The girl's tongue slipped from her lips and stroked slowly and softly over Sarah's fingers in a warm and sensuous movement, the sensations flowing through Sarah and settling forever within her.

"Your painting is simply marvelous. I love it," Vi offered drawing Sarah into the Russian formal embrace. Her caress a brief soft touching of cheeks in which the floral scent of her hair filled Sarah's nostrils mingling delightfully with her own perfumes.