Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (28 page)

Off to the right another avenue lead to the
“pile”; a humongous aggregation of dirty laundry that arrived from
the higher levels of the Tent by countless sleeves. A distant
shriek told him an adventurous slipper had thrown herself down one
of the fabric chutes, landing on its lofty peak to tumble down the
steep slope of clothing. The real fun lay in hurtling end-over-end
off the higher reaches of the pile till the declination was gentle
enough to sprint the rest of the way. The Merkin had known this
reckless pleasure many times when the area was deserted—it was the
fastest route down from the top of the Tent, for one thing—but
several sex of women were presently crowding the base of the little
mountain, hauling its substance away in bales to maintain a vague
equilibrium of total mass.

Turning onto a
busily-trafficked avenue spanning countless neighborhoods of
popular clothing, h
e scented the distant
soap depot,
its proximity estimable by the
number of bubbles floating about. Some were sturdy enough to
survive at great length, wandering against seemingly hopeless odds
into distant, rarely visited territories of clothing.

The auditioners were still in his mind, legs
working lustily to feed the need between, and he was aroused enough
from the affairs of the theater to want the comfort of his flower
garden, a personal harem located at a higher level of the Tent.

But he was too tired, and the overpowering
fragrance of soap lured him on to a gentler pleasure. He would
enhance his next garden rendezvous by picking a new flower
instead.

To his right a sinuously winding depression
in the canvas flooring was flooded to its lip with soapy water.
Within it slippers cavorted in scandalously brief apparel—happily
required for the efficient execution of their duties. Their
physicality and the playfully random concealment of the sudsy
waterline wrought a perfectly sensual tableau.

“
Lingerie in transit! Two
bundles.”

“
Get the net. Soap is on the
way!”

“
Where’s Melanie? It’s her
turn…”

Their brisk, functional exchanges filled the
air with a simple cheer. Stepping unhurriedly along the veering
bank the Merkin followed the channel around a choking hinterland of
patterned skirts, eventually reaching a wider basin lit by a
bright-eyed gnome hanging high, arrayed in nothing but green swim
trunks. He found a relatively discreet vantage from which to
observe the scene and tucked his script under one arm to watch.

The essence of a good flower was in the lower
territory of her body, for this was the region that would be
visible when she was formally displayed in his garden. He favored
women who offered a certain physiological partnership of rondure
and linearity; long-legged creatures with elegantly tapered calves
and thighs, and pertly pronounced rumps. Within that preference it
was all about the genitalia. He picked all kinds of flowers for
various personalities of vagina, but tonight he wanted a nice full
set of lips.

As sometimes happened, his eye found in an
instant what would have been its inevitable destination no matter
how protracted the surveillance. He settled back to watch a cute
slipper with fair hair and a sleekly proportioned body. She exerted
herself to the needs of the laundry with such a vibrant, graceful
energy that he completely lost himself in the rhythm of her
activity; standing chest deep in the flooded canvas sink as a
bundle of soft underthings floated in from a tributary; hauling
sideways to draw it up the slope and out of the water; the
stomping, fitful revelation of her body that allowed him to savor
each progressively lower increment of her flesh as it emerged to
view.

“
That’s the green load!” she
called in a light tone to another slipper.

“
Where’s the
rest?”

They sorted things out as watched.

The Merkin indulged his infatuation with the
slipper, knowing it was partly due to the way she filled out her
two-piece; he had personally designed the intimate apparel worn by
his women and was inevitably fascinated with its use. But it was
not just that. It was the way her whole being seemed to proceed
from her lovingly cupped vagina. His eyes fixed on this delicately
split bulge as it flexed and whirled at the epicenter of a
mesmerizing, feminine dance. Even from a distance the Merkin could
feel the intrinsic potency of that tiny site, operating subtly in
advance of rationality, leading her to each new moment.

He wondered what her clitoris looked like,
guessed that many of her friends already knew. Was it big? Pert?
The kind you rubbed or licked? Pinched or pampered? Was her vagina
deep and accommodating or tautly challenging? Did she masturbate
late at night when the Tent was quiet, indulging stimulation
without fulfillment? Small matters they might seem, but the
Merkin’s world was dominated by them.

“
Load in!” called a
diminutive slipper balanced atop a pitching bundle of dresses,
waiting for transport to the drying lines and blow gnomes. The
Merkin’s present inamorata waded over and hauled hard enough to
topple the other woman into the sink. She surfaced with a
shout.

“
Bitch!”

There was a ripple of easygoing laughter, but
it was quickly smothered by the solemn regard of several mannermen
close by. The Merkin stood and signaled to them, hiding an erection
with his script.

“
Her,” he pointed. “Promoted
to calyx dormitory,” he ordained.

They nodded deferentially, moved to confront
the flower he had chosen as the slippers nearby fell silent. She
was alarmed for a moment at their approach but it was soon clear
that her life had taken a marvelous turn—she had secured the
Merkin’s personal interest and could forget the labors of the
laundry as long as that was true.

He watched them surround her, five formally
dressed men lurking about a slipper in dripping swimwear. They
proceeded to march off toward her new destiny.

But there it was again, he marveled; despite
all the burly pageantry to suggest otherwise, the woman’s unseen
femininity was the animating aspect of the group, silently
conferring purpose on them all.

The Merkin knew he was right to be cautious
before this force, directly confronted the female sexuality only in
his flower garden, where he was protected by the extreme leverage
of its context.

Tired from his various responsibilities and
interests, he undertook an elaborate journey to a disheveled
neighborhood of clothing no one ever visited, somewhere near the
center of the laundry.

This was where his bed floated; a giant round
affair with a raised perimeter on which three voluptuous, back-bent
women stood to hoist a red linen canopy. Their heads gazed down
from under its gently tented peak and their lithe arms swept back
to clasp a circular rim that draped a plunging skirt. Its lacy,
wavelike hem demurely concealed the women’s magnificent rumps, but
their powerfully carved legs were bared to mid-thigh. The bed had
three wide drawers built into its base, only one of which opened,
and a circumferential step that rode just above the water.

This bulky furniture could accommodate a six
of people on its round mattress—radially arranged with their heads
near the cushion-clad perimeter, feet near the center—but the
Merkin slept alone. It meandered about a small, dimly lit pool
bounded by a dense barrier of clothing piled up to the canvas
ceiling.

The Merkin stripped and dove in, soothed by a
water unlike any other in the laundry; it was always warm, and
sometimes soothingly hot, as was presently the case. A caddy
bobbling about yielded soaps and washcloths, and he put them
thoroughly to use as the bed drifted about the sink with somnolent
deliberation, calling ever more persuasively.

When he was done he poured fruit tea into an
ornately carved wooden flask, added a slippery little white cube
and allowed himself to muse on the nature of reality as the pool
steamed about him. Chaos slowly frayed his mind, took him to the
limit of rational thought and beyond, surpassing any system of
prediction. When the effect retreated after a while his breathing
slowed and his hands unclenched to disclose a deep tracery of
fingernails. Venting a hollow sigh he floated over to the bed,
pulled himself up onto its step, absently plucking a drenched
article of clothing from his back.

It was a pair of panties. He almost flung the
garment to the bank, then halted mid-motion to inspect its low-cut
geometry. He thumbed the fine pink linen from which it was
fashioned and the hair-fine stitching at the seams, abruptly
realized he had never seen the exact style. That was impossible as
far as he knew; neither the Gnomon or Dowser designed or
manufactured clothing, and the Merkin had an infallible memory for
his own art.

He mounted the bed, reclined against its
soft, circumferential boundary of cushions with the panties in
hand, distractedly thumbing their fabric. The voluptuous women
bearing the canopy stared down on the round plain of his cloud-soft
mattress, a mute but arousing audience for his lonely affairs. The
water began to bubble softly after a while, inducing his place of
repose to a restive traversation of the lonely sink it occupied. A
few soap bubbles were liberated by the turbulence, and the Merkin
thoughtfully regarded the dark gradient from which they emerged far
into the night…

Wet and Dry

They were happy.

Ione
woke to the
quiet ambience of the
Lap
, blinking languidly in the afterglow of
a pleasant dream
; a carnal pageant
unfolding before a rapt audience. Gnome glow rained down on her
elegantly dressed flesh as she performed, cynosure of a lusty,
circumscribing eye. Her body moved with unconscious perfection,
ardently loosening a carefully guarded credulity…

Emma
snuggled closer
, reflexively brought
warm
lips in
to
proximity
with
her right nipple, dispelling the
phantom scene
. Ione let
one arm
roll
over
her lover in leisurely
capitulation to gravity,
squeez
ed
the
luxurious eminence of her
posterior.

“
I love you,” Emma
whispered.

“
I love
you
,” she murmured, holding her
close.

Outside, a sex or more of boisterous slippers
were already splashing about the hot pool, loudly enough to be
heard in the doyenne’s residence.

“
You wanna stay
in
?
” Ione
whispered. Emma
issued a softly contented
sound. Their society was secure and functioning smoothly, and they
lay without moving for a time, wanting nothing. Women swam in from
the various neighborhoods of the Lap to steadily swell the ranks
frolicking in the hot pool.

“
Who’s around?”
Ione
finally
inquired
, unable to sensibly resolve the
ardent sounds welling through the arch.

“
The usuals,”
Emma
yawned, lazily
sorting it out. “Buncha couples from the avenues right around our
island. Annie and her gang are in there, of course. And Astrid and
Val from the dark shallows, with those noisy blonds they like to
finger. Celestia and Raye and Thessaly, and those slips from the
red beds. Some of the low grotto crowd, too.”

Ione listened carefully. “Manassa?”

“
She’s there. At the center
of it all, naturally,” Emma reported, unable to conceal her furtive
infatuation. Ione once felt challenged by her lover’s interest in
the other doyenne, but had eventually decided it was too much fun
watching Emma’s endless little solicitations scatter on her
moment-by-moment unpredictability.

“
She get off with
anyone?”

Emma paused. “Not that I
know for sure.
”

Manassa kept her own schedule and had her own
friends. She was secretive about her sexual interests, which unlike
the other women of the Lap only indirectly included Mark. Ione had
caught her staring at his beautiful form from a distance, but her
body language seemed aggressive rather than adoring. She was more
influential than Ione or Emma among the least socialized slippers,
who barely acknowledged orders—or even language sometimes—but
readily deferred to Manassa’s dominating scale. Ione maintained a
strategic interest in her activities for these reasons. She did not
like to engage Manassa directly, though she was always friendly,
and usually manipulated Emma into approaching the other doyenne
when her cooperation was required.

Ione had spent more time with Mark now,
trusted him better than anyone but Emma. This was to some extent
due to their peculiar sexual relationship. Ione and Emma whipped
his bound form to climax as required, then piled into his bed for
their own pleasure. Whatever bed that was; servicing Mark was a
tricky proposition as he was not a willing participant in the
process. He had to be trapped wherever he was sleeping to receive
their conditioning. Compounding their difficulties, these affairs
had to kept secret from the Lap women, who had no idea their macho
champion was brought forcibly to orgasm by the whip somewhere out
of sight.

“
Anything new with
Mark?”