The Great Architect

Toscano didn't just fall silent. He lowered his eyes to gaze into his empty dinner plate as though it were a crystal ball. The self proclaimed egoist suddenly looked a bit like a sheepish little boy; a hungry lamb that had lost its ewe.

After a short uncomfortable silence he said: "I'm afraid Len Chesney will never accept my work, Catrina. It's more than a disagreement over architecture and philosophy. It's personal between us."

The room fell silent again, and Catrina considered whether she should pursue the matter. She had herself detected Chesney's dislike for Toscano, and perhaps if pressed the radical architect might reveal the reason for the rift between himself and her publisher. Despite her curiosity, however, she decided to leave that conversation for another time. It was Kate Black who detected her host's discomfort and shattered the new layer of ice.

"We were planning a little get together later, as a matter of fact," said the actress as she sipped an after dinner liqueur, "you're more than welcome to join us."

"I have no wish to put a damper on that," Andreas interjected, "but I must warn you Catrina, sensual hedonism is a normal way of life in Tosca City. Chesney probably wouldn't approve."

Catrina waged a small war within herself, between the exciting prospect of group sex with some of the world's most famous living sex idols, and her loyalty to her employer who would certainly disapprove of her participating in sex orgies on her expense account. The healthy woman within her longed to jump at this new opportunity, but the staid academic journalist cautioned her to stay an arm's length away from the things she had seen in Len Chesney's office. Directly across the table, Sal watched her with a deadpan expression. Only his eyes betrayed his curiosity, leading her to suspect he was more interested in her answer than he wanted anyone to suspect.

"I'm sure it would be a lot of fun," she explained, "but I had planned on taking the more standard guided tour of Tosca City, as offered to me earlier by Sal. I think I'll let Sal decide what I should see first."

Sal's eyes widened and a pleased smile darted briefly across his face.

"Well, that settles the question," Andreas remarked to Swenson and Black, "my son is tolerant of our ways, but as yet unconvinced of any natural connection between humane architecture and sexual pleasure."

Sal and Catrina locked gazes for a few quiet moments across the table, then Sal spoke up for himself.

"Perhaps it's time I reconsidered that position," he said, then turning to Kate Black he added, "if you don't mind, that is."

"Of course not," Kate Black gushed, "you know you are always welcome at our gatherings, Salvatore. You require no more invitation that your father, which means none at all."

Catrina peered at Sal with a coy smile, as he smirked at her lasciviously. The others were grinning too, and firing savvy glances at each other. In any other company, Catrina would have been mildly embarrassed. The rapidly growing attraction between herself and Sal Toscano was as conspicuous as their physical nudity. So obvious was this mutual attraction, they might as well have been fucking in the middle of the dining table at that very moment. That they would almost certainly enjoy sex with each other before the night was over was the instant conclusion of everyone present.

Andreas put a cap on the scenario. Lifting his brandy glass in a toasting gesture toward Catrina, he said, "Welcome to paradise by night, Ms. Balieu."

Shops weren't open at night, so it was too late to buy an evening outfit in keeping with local sartorial customs, but Andreas anticipated her problem and offered Catrina a suitable ensemble. He said it belonged to an old friend who would never return for it, so she could keep it if she wished. It consisted of a small halter top fashioned from polished stone beads, and a knee length swing vest with dark green batik patterns on a pale background. A jade belt completed the set, but was purely for ornamental purposes as the outfit had no bottom portion. It was designed to be worn with the pudenda fully exposed at the front. Trying it on in front of a closet mirror in her room, Catrina was surprised at how elegant the sexy number looked on her, especially after she added a thick gold necklace from her own travel wardrobe.

Sal called for her shortly before eight. He too had changed into the local equivalent of semi-formal attire. Like Catrina, his sex was left open to view, without cover from the grey tailcoat that was the only component of his suit. It had silver satin trim on the collars and cuffs, complimented by a chrome belt worn against the skin.

They walked half the length of Tosca City's shoreline to the party. Along the way they exchanged life histories. He discovered she had started out on a farm in Ohio. A natural talent for art earned her enough bursaries and scholarships to enter art school in New York. Working part time as a dancer and set designer, she paid the rest of her way to degrees in engineering and architecture, only to discover in the end that it was writing she really loved. Catrina learned that Sal was still very uncertain about his father's mission to build paradise on Earth. The quest had been too much for his mother. She had turned into a lush, prompting Andreas to divorce her when Sal was still young. Sal didn't like his stepfather, so he seldom visited his mother. He chose to live in Tosca City instead, studying architecture under a man he suspected was a mad genius, but knew to be a decent father.

"So your mother never liked this lifestyle?"

"She loved it too much, I'm afraid. She over indulged and it virtually destroyed her. That's one of her old outfits you're wearing, but it looks better on you than it ever did on her."

"I'm having trouble thinking of this as an outfit," she chuckled. "I keep feeling I've forgotten to finish dressing, and I'm afraid someone will point it out to me at any moment."

"You get used to it, but whether you can get used to this is another question," remarked Sal as they climbed the front steps of Bret Swenson's villa.

Catrina had been on the fringes of sex orgies in New York a few times, and expected something similar here: sexy little cliques forming from an array of preened and painted night owls, mostly consisting of married couples who were into swapping, and who slithered away into side rooms with their newfound friends, to pursue whatever common fetish drew them together, leaving single women like herself to field awkward passes, from the desperately lonely bourbon soaked men left hanging in the meat market. Aside from the novelty of cavorting naked with the rich and famous, she was not looking forward to repeating such an experience. Only Salvatore's company made the thought bearable. She knew if it all became too much for her, he would whisk her out of the flesh binge, and almost certainly banish her self doubts with a night of good old fashioned love making. In this open but cautiously guarded frame of mind, Catrina ventured into the grand hall of the villa.

The sight that greeted her caused her to gasp, not with fear or apprehension, but with a sense of wonder. It was like an animated monument to eroticism, and merely by entering the room she had become another part of the living masterpiece.

Kate and Bret had instructed that their villa's floor plan should reflect the great hall of an ancient castle or mansion house, adapted to the sensual imperative of the new millennium. Andreas Toscano had responded with an interior that fit his thespian clients like a velvet glove. Like all the buildings in the town, the villa was smaller than any outsider might have imagined, but what it lacked in size it made up for with maximum use of every inch. It was a four story home, the ground floor of which was one large square room. It's four walls of glass and chrome rose on angles, creating a pyramid shaped dome over the chamber, rising from the floor to the roof of the villa. From almost any point in this main room, one could look up into a glazed gallery of smaller independent rooms, something like the minstrel's galleries of old. In this case, however, instead of seeing musicians with lutes, violins and harpsichords, a onlooker could see whatever was going on in the other rooms of the house.

In the great hall an eight piece acoustic combo was serenading the guests with some Strauss. A few dozen people, many of them instantly recognisable from their considerable mass media exposure, were dancing, sampling a buffet of finger foods, or engaging in relaxed conversation over drinks. At floor level, aside from some playful antics among the dancing couples, there was no blatant sex play. Famous tits, bums, cocks and pussies caught the eye wherever one glanced, all decked in sparse finery like Catrina's own borrowed garb, their nudity was a testament to fashionable sensuality rather than a shocking display of wanton lust. Meanwhile, a slightly different story was unfolding overhead.

In some of the rooms above, Catrina could make out the shapes of people enjoying various kinds of group sex. Lighting had been carefully installed to reduce the detail of these scenes, so they projected a sensual mood into the main hall, rather than an obtrusive voyeuristic attraction. For true sexual cabaret, however, one only needed to look directly up toward the pinnacle of the pyramid. There were four of them, each dangling from a large chrome pulley mounted on a separate side of the pyramid at the fourth floor level. They were strange contraptions that looked as though they had fallen out of a Da Vinci sketchbook; made of leather straps, padded and hinged panels, on flexible rubber frames. Only one of the swings was in use at that moment. A naked couple occupied it. They were humping in mid air to the rhythm of the Artist's Life Waltz. Catrina gazed at them like a child peering up to the crown of an ancient redwood forest.

"They're called Love Hammocks. I wasn't sure they were a good idea when Andreas told us about them, but now I'm glad we went along with him." Kate Black's voice jolted Catrina from the airborne spectacle. "Sometimes I wish we could share all this with the world, but of course, the Calvinistic gossip rags would just make it sordid."

"This isn't at all what I expected," Catrina felt obliged to confess.

"Are you disappointed?"

"Not at all. I'm fascinated. Are the Love Hammocks off-the-rack sex toys, or an original Andreas Toscano design?"

"They were designed especially for this house," said Kate, "but not by Andreas, my dear. They were the brainchild of your charming escort."

Catrina's gaze turned to Sal. He shrugged a little bashfully. They shared the same silent communication initiated over dinner: demure glances and lusty grins, but this time they weren't just saying, "I want you." This time the message was, "I want you right now, in one of these crazy swings."

It didn't happen right away, however, because there were social obligations to be met, and other considerations to address between them. Before the subject of the swings came up again, they'd been an hour at the party, mingling with film stars and other jet setters. They refused a few invitations to join the swapping crowd for group sex in the upper rooms, and were instead enjoying polite but spicy conversation in the great hall. Mid way through one such conversation, a couple in one of the Love Hammocks overhead reached orgasm, and were particularly loud in their resulting vocal celebration. The event broke the chain of conversation below.

"Sounds like my ex has received her monthly alimony cheque," quipped a well known screenwriter and director, while another theatrical wag flipped a handkerchief from his breast pocket and pretended to wipe cum from his bald head. Both delivered their impromptu comedy with expert timing, causing a round of unrestrained laughter.

"I just can't get used to those silly things," one woman in the group revealed. "They bring catapults to mind, like trying to have sex while you're Bungy jumping."

"Not to me," said Catrina, "I think it's sexy science fiction coming to life, like that old Woody Allen movie with the sex machine."

"Sleeper?" the director asked.

"Yes, that was it. Sex with interesting contraptions in a futuristic scenario, that's what this whole experience is like to me."

"Perhaps you should pursue that thought a little further," suggested the director, "have you considered swinging from a star yourself?"

"Nudity among like-minded people is one thing," Catrina chuckled, "but I'm not sure I'm ready to take my orgasms public."

A starlet who arrived with the director and was hanging on his every word, waiting for any opportunity to turn the conversation to casting, injected her own take on Catrina's touch of shyness.

"I've done lots of sex scenes," she said thoughtfully, "and I've found the best way to act out sex is to actually have it, right there on the set. You can simulate it for the camera, but just doing it gets better results, and helps you forget about the crew. It's hard to think about onlookers when you have an orgasm building. I bet that's what it's like up there, too. Once you start making love you would forget about all the people down here."

"For some of us that might depend who our partner is," remarked Sal.

Catrina and Sal exchanged prophetic glances yet again. Her hand reached for his in an involuntary body motion, as if she was merely blinking her eyes. Aware of the warmth of his skin against hers, and of the energy pulsing between them, she slipped her forefinger into his loose fist and scratched his palm. Silence fell over the group for a few moments, broken by the bald headed comic: "Oh dear, I should have brought an umbrella?"

More laughter resounded through the group, but it was not enjoined this time by Catrina or Salvatore. They were busy, again, talking with their eyes. The intensity of passion growing between them was rising to boiling point with each titillating incident they shared. Yet questions of propriety continued to hamper them, making it difficult to openly declare the extent of their burning desire for each other. The inviting fashion of their highly provocative attire, and the joy of securing each other's company in this Earthly heaven of hedonism, only made things more difficult. Both wanted desperately to start their relationship right. They wanted to be romanced by each other, not simply seduced by Andreas Toscano's sensual temptations.

Then Catrina noticed Sal's erection. Mother Nature had entered the moral battle, eloquently siding with the forces of pleasure. Sal's penis was a truncheon; a quivering high pressure mass of blood and tissue screaming for relief that only she could offer. She felt a surge of fluid ooze from her pussy and trickle between legs to her anus. Catrina released his hand and gave Sal's dick a quick tour through her fingers. Sal stood and she followed him.

"Believe it or not," he said as they walked to a vacant swing, "I've never used one of these things before. Even during the design and testing process, I always had others try out the prototypes."

"Are you sure you want to do it now?"

"It's about the only thing I am sure of right now," he replied.

They left even their scanty clothing behind, clambering naked into one of the Love Hammocks. The swing was built to provide maximum leverage for those muscles absolutely essential for intercourse, while allowing the option of relaxing any muscles not in use. Sal operated the pushbutton controls to lift them almost fifty feet into the air. Strapped into the contraption, Catrina settled back with her lover suspended millimeters above her, bound in his own harness of supporting belts and panels.

"I just remembered what they called that machine in Sleeper," she said. "an Orgasmatron."

"You're really into this science fiction thing aren't you?"

"Science fiction be damned. I'm ready for some real life biology."

Although there was enough flexibility for kissing and fondling, their harnesses made extensive foreplay impossible. It didn't hinder them very much, however. Every time one of them attempted something the Love Hammock would not facilitate, they just laughed and agreed to try it later in a more conventional bed. Abundant foreplay wasn't necessary anyway. They were producing enough crotch oils between them to lubricate a small engine.

They talked as they made love; casually at first, although their conversation became more laboured as their breathing grew heavier. They reviewed the swing contraption for each other, agreeing it was extremely easy sex, and deep too. It was true what the starlet said. They didn't give a damn about the people below; never did, from the moment it began. All that mattered was each other. He told her she was gloriously wet, and it made her laugh, because she thought of the bald comic's handkerchief routine. The Love Hammock swayed gently as their speed increased. Catrina felt a rush, the first gust of an orgasmic hurricane building strength within her.

"I like to hear when you feel good. Tell me. Just say Orgasmatron if you can't manage anything else," he instructed.

"Keep doing what you're doing right now, and you'll be hearing lots of Oragsmatrons," she assured him.

Sal found his stride with the Love Hammock, becoming as one with it's mechanisms, pounding even deeper into her as a result. His penis found her g-spot on every third or fourth stroke, causing her to feel the same impending explosion that he was already anticipating.

"Oooh, Orgasmatron," she cooed, tossing her head back, abandoning herself to his lust.

From their vantage point, Catrina could see directly into the room behind her. Figures obscured from below, were crystal clear from up there. While Salvatore worked to excite every nerve in her vagina, she watched for a minute as a tangle of bodies on a large bed sucked, fucked, kissed, rubbed and licked each other into joyous oblivion. It probably felt good to them, she thought, but it wasn't for her. He was for her, and she was thrilled to have found him.

On the floor below, no one seemed to pay much attention to them. It was that kind of gathering, divinely decadent yet courteously civil. Catrina had noticed it from the moment she arrived. Despite all the open sexuality, only the most obvious voyeurs paid it any real attention, and even they were fairly discreet. Maria's explanation about privacy being a matter of respect was ringing true. Seated at a bar in one corner of the great hall, however, one man watched them with great interest. Andreas Toscano sipped a whiskey sour and watched thoughtfully, as his only son bonded high above, with a woman worthy of a place in his architectural empire.

"Orgasmatron! Orgasmatron!" howled Catrina, so loudly everyone present glanced up. Moments later Sal gasped as he spent himself in her. Most people below returned their attention quickly to whatever they had been doing. Those who were privy to Catrina's science fiction fantasy shared a witty joke and laughed loudly. The great architect wondered what would come of this new relationship, and what would happen once Len Chesney heard the news.

Catrina didn't sleep in Andreas' guest room that night. She and Sal stopped off there so she could pick up a few overnight essentials, then they went on to Sal's flat. It was a modest but comfortable suite of rooms above a bistro in the town's main square. Like every accommodation in Tosca City it had interior walls of clear glass and mirrors, but unlike the others, Sal's walls had been painted. Sal had done everything he could, in fact, to turn the apartment into a more conventional living space.