Oskar had begun to change Michette, slowly, into a creature of his own design. The changes had been so subtle even she hadn’t noticed her own greenness, her own virescent ripening like a sort of pungent fruit—red-green-gold in the afternoon light, translucent, and softening.

She gazed into the immense stoneware bowl of fruit and her eyes swept over all the colors like a painter’s. The waves crashed just outside the open windows of the villa and the light curled itself slowly into afternoon, resplendent and shining. She ran her hands over the mangoes tinged rouge-gold, and the long yellow bananas and the vermillion plums that looked like little hearts. It was a beautiful arrangement, altogether.

Oskar’s fingers open me like this, she thought, as she pulled a peach apart and looked at the red veins streaking into the creamwhite flesh. He can be savage, sometimes. She shivered thinking about the sorts of things Oskar had made her do, the things she had not thought herself capable of, ever before.

But that was another life…long ago…

Michette gazed down at her freed breasts moving gently against the shimmering satin of her gown, her nipples stiffening at once as she thought about his hands there, and the night he had bared them in front of Severin. He had wanted to display her like a kind of object to his friend. Oskar wanted to see the look in Severin’s eyes as they swept across the opalescent moons of her flesh, to her rose nipples.

Her lips had parted slightly that evening—as he had pulled the straps of her gown down very slowly and between her thighs she had trembled, feeling herself grow instantly wet in the suspense—and at the look in Severin’s eyes roving over her like some kind of dark animal from the jungle that lay just outside the villa’s walls. His eyes had shone in the candlelight and he had smiled in a way that both frightened and excited Michette.

Oskar had stood behind her that night, hands at her shoulders, and he had kissed her neck, tracing his tongue over and over it, making tiny little strokes with his fingertips at her shoulders and watching her nipples stiffen and stiffen, thrusting themselves towards Severin’s awaiting gaze. He had lifted her gown with one hand, sliding all the trembling rose-peach silk-satin up and up until her mound was nakedly exposed. The fabric had trailed, spilling away in softly undulating waves from her quivering hips like a whisper in the amber light. Michette had hardly been able to breathe she was so uncertain and so full of trepidation about what might happen next. Never had she…

“Open your thighs, my darling,” Oskar had said. “I want Severin to watch me touch you.”

He had pressed her forward, holding both her wrists behind her back, until her feet reached the edge of the plump sofa where Severin awaited them, serenely and eerily smiling that dark smile and Michette had trembled against Oskar as Severin reached forward suddenly and adjusted her thighs and her high-heel-encased feet to the maximum distance she could stand without falling. She leaned back into Oskar like her last hope, in that moment. She couldn’t have let out a sound if she had tried, but her lips had parted further and her breath came faster, in tiny inaudible pants. She was flushing uncontrollably as an animal desire for Severin overtook her senses. It didn’t escape her that he was rigid against the thin gabardine fabric of his trousers.

“Fix this little pearl of mine a Framboise, will you Severin?” Oskar had said. “I think she could use a drink, her mouth seems to have gone so dry, suddenly.”

“The Segovia might be nice I think…”

When Severin returned he pressed the tiny glass to her lips and tipped it so quickly that some of the liqueur ran from the corner of her lips and traced a rosy rivulet down toward one of her flushed nipples.

“Tsk, tsk. Whatever shall we do about that, Severin?” Oskar had said.

But Severin had begun to lick her, very softly at first, tracing all along her lips and chin and down her neck and across her breasts, leaving a trail of small intense kisses along the way. He stopped just short of her nipples and began to blow currents of warm air across her flushed décolletage.

“Wouldn’t you love to see him take you in his mouth, Michette, my darling?”

And then Oskar had described in great detail whispering at her ear how he would like to see Severin suck her and suck her in front of him. How he wanted to watch Severin penetrate her everyplace while he held her in his arms, and perhaps there were some other things he wished as well, but suddenly his voice trailed off and he clasped her hands tighter behind her as Severin began to blow the warm air across and across her nipples as if he were going to suddenly take them up first one and then the other between his lips. The scent of his hair and his cologne flooded the air around her as it was so strange, and not like Oskar’s at all. She shuddered into this new fragrance and subtly felt herself arch towards him, but he would only come very close and then retract again, to lick and blow all around her nipples but not take them into his mouth.

“Smell her sex, Severin,” Oskar said suddenly, interrupting the reverie. “What aromas can you discern there, I wonder?”

Oskar began licking and whispering at her ear again, tracing just the tip of his tongue around and around it, hotly. Michette felt herself go weak in the knees, standing helplessly in her high heels as Severin’s face inched closer and closer toward her quivering, swelling lips. Her legs trembled visibly and Severin stroked up and down them gently with his fingertips. She tried to bring her knees together but Severin held them apart firmly.

“Just your nose tonight, my friend. Just the aromas, nothing more…there will be other evenings, Severin.”

Michette’s eyes closed involuntarily at that remark. She was trembling and yet the arousal was unmistakable between her parted thighs. Oskar knew this. As he knew almost everything about Michette. One of his palms began to stroke gently along the curve of her bottom, circling and circling the soft flesh and slipping periodically into her increasingly dampening silken cleft from behind. He slipped the rest of the fabric of her gown up and quickly inserted a finger into that heat, slipping it in and out and in and out before Severin’s jealous eyes.

“Smell her, Severin.”

The heat from Severin’s breath at her sex caused Michette’s breath to falter. She felt that she might faint up against Oskar, so strongly did desire flood through her. Oscar swiftly moved his sugared and slick finger to the rosebud of her ass, and circled the little opening while he whispered over and over about wanting to take her there, later in the evening.

“One day I shall have Severin watch us, my darling, when I fuck you here,” he said as he plunged his finger inside of her, impaling her.

“How is it, my friend? She is made of framboise isn’t she?

Severin’s nose brushed against the tip of her sex and inhaled deeply.

“I must taste her, Oskar, this is impossible for me,” he said, hoarsely.

Severin’s tongue slipped between her folds in soft licks up and down her labia and he seemed to bury his head between her thighs. Michette heard warm, dark sounds begin to emerge from Severin’s throat in low rumbles that an animal might make. His hands traced up and down the length of her legs from the arches of her feet to the depths of her inner thighs as he continued his tongue caresses. Oskar plunged a second finger inside of her heated cunt this time and one of Severin’s joined his there. Over and over the three fingers penetrated her moving in and out and in and out in a rhythmic fashion while faint strains of classical guitar tinkled in the distance. Michette felt herself melting between the two of them. With her eyes closed she became an instrument of pure sensation, a simple lyre reduced to its essence and nothing more.

When she came it was with a swift tumble out into stars, cosmos, universe, and their fingers continued to dance inside her as she buckled and folded at the waist, crying out against the evening while the wild parrots shrieked against the night sky, as if they were echoing her in unison…as if the entire jungle was aware of her cries…It had been impossible for her to forget that evening, since…

Michette gazed at the delicately succulent white split peach in her hands. She brought it to her nose and inhaled deeply. Severin would be coming again tonight. Oskar had whispered it into her ear this very morning, while he watched her nipples stiffen visibly as he spoke. She had shivered a bit, at his words, and yet all day she found herself falling into a daydream about what might happen between the three of them.

She brought the peach to her lips and traced its center. Each movement of her tongue recalled Severin against her, inhaling her, touching her, tracing her. And Oskar. Oskar opening her as if she had been a sort of succulent exotic fruit he would serve on a gilded platter to his closest friend. Michette closed her eyes against the scent of this peach, so fragrant, so delicate and resonant of summer and as she let the juice trip gently across her tongue she wondered if this was what Severin had tasted, between her already opening, already fragranced thighs.

© 2004 Valentina Bonnaire. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.

Bio: Valentine Bonnaire’s work has appeared at The Erotica Readers and Writers Association, Clean Sheets, and Slow Trains Literary Journal under various noms de plume. She is a contributing editor at Clean Sheets magazine, and this year hopes to write “that novel.” Visit Valentine at www.velvetbabe.com