TWENTY
On Monday, Sophia was just returning to the office after lunch with a new member of her team who she wanted to bring up to speed on a number of matters when she bumped into Seth near the water cooler. She exchanged pleasantries and was about to move on when he winked at her conspiratorially and wondered if she had a minute to spare. Although another liaison with Abdelrahman was the last thing she wanted at the moment, she understood she wasn’t in any position to say no and ushered the Egyptian into her office.
‘I take it you have a message for me, Seth,’ she said.
‘Indeed. His Eminence wishes you to honour him with your presence once more. Only this time he suggests a tweak.’
‘A tweak?’ said Sophia, praying that his brother-in-law or cousin was not in town.
‘Yes, His Eminence is a man who is very interested in cross-cultural communication, in the development of harmonious relationships between races, and this passion has led him to make a proposal to you.’
‘Go on,’ said Sophia.
‘Recently, His Eminence has made the acquaintance of a young lady who exchanged the mysteries of Manchuria for the fleshpots of San Francisco. He feels that the two of you might find that you have much in common and he would like to be the one who enables you to break down man-made boundaries and, well, develop the type of harmonious relationship which he sees as essential to building bridges in an often fragmented political landscape.’
‘God,’ thought Sophia, ‘the old lech wants to get off watching us putting on a lesbian show for him.’
‘I see,’ she replied. ‘And has he indicated whether this arrangement, if I am willing to accede to it, would bring about any adjustment in the agreement that he and I have struck?’
‘Oh, Miss Sophia, he told me that you would show your customary business-like approach to this matter. Indeed, he has authorised me to relate to you that, in return for your assent to his proposal, he would be happy to waive the requirement for a third dining experience. He appreciates how busy you are and desires above all that your work-life balance is not jeopardised by overwork.’
‘Seth, please to tell His Eminence that he need only name the day and I will move heaven and earth to comply with his wishes. For I too have a passion for world peace and harmonious relations between all races.’
‘How about Saturday?’
‘No problem. I’ll pop the date in my dairy.’
Saturday proved a bit more difficult to sell to Peter than Sophia thought, as he was planning to spend the day playing golf with his university mates. Sophia made a late appeal to Myška, who agreed, if a bit reluctantly, to look after the children. Piri was involved in an art exhibition on the same day, but was okay with her flatmate helping Sophia out. All in all, it wasn’t a very propitious way to get things rolling and by the time Saturday came round Sophia was not looking forward to her ‘meeting with important clients from Kazakhstan’ at all. She dressed in a pin-striped trouser suit that she had recently bought and left the children and Myška at around seven o’clock, receiving a knowing look from the nanny, which she found rather disconcerting. Did they have a mole in the office? Was Seth playing both ends against the middle? Was it a woman’s intuition? Did Piri have a network of spies? Anyway, a few hours and it would all be over. She had put a change of clothes in her car earlier – after some debate, she had plumped for the dress she had worn to the wedding. For old time’s sake, as she told herself.
When she got to the penthouse, Ali showed her to a spare room, where she changed into her dress and applied some make-up. She took the opportunity to ask him if the other guest had arrived and he told her that she had. Her name was Mingzhu and she was currently with Abdelrahman. Sophia rang a bell as arranged when she was ready, and Ali escorted her through to the living room, where her host awaited her. As she entered the room her eyes were drawn to the exquisite form of the Chinese girl, dressed in a tropical print mini cheongsam with gold-coloured heels. She was drop dead gorgeous and the evening had suddenly got a whole lot better. Her hair was tied up above her neck, which like the rest of her was flawless – as if formed out of alabaster. She turned to Sophia, took her hand, smiled and told her she had heard so much about her. She spoke American English with a discernible Chinese accent.
Abdelrahman got up to greet Sophia from the chair where he had been sitting. He was wearing a light grey mohair and wool lounge suit with a white shirt and a dark grey tie. Sophia had to admit he looked rather dapper and she told him so. He formally introduced the two women and expressed the hope that they would find the evening educational and edifying as well as enjoyable. They made the right sort of noises and then proceeded to get to know each other, with Abdelrahman largely an observer – a role that he seemed to enjoy. Mingzhu talked about her life in San Francisco, where she worked as a public relations consultant and part-time model. Sophia told her a little about her work at the bank, concentrating on her legal responsibilities. Abdelrahman was clearly delighted that they seemed to get along so well, launching upon a rambling sermon on his topic of the moment – the need for greater understanding and cross-cultural pollination (as he put it) in an increasingly globalised world. Dinner was once again distinctly Middle Eastern in flavour and beautifully presented. Sophia declined alcohol, saying that she wanted to stay fully alert the whole evening, while Mingzhu merely sipped at her glass of white wine. Impressed by what he took to be the seriousness with which the women were playing their parts, Abdelrahman was abstemious too, ordering Ali to take the bottle away while they were still eating the main course. He was clearly more than excited about the prospects that lay in store in respect of the entertainment part of the evening.
After they had finished their dessert, Abdelrahman announced somewhat theatrically that he would be leaving the room for a few minutes to give the women the chance to finetune their plans for the evening. Once he had left the room, Sophia and Mingzhu burst into laughter and found themselves holding each other’s hands. Sophia asked the Chinese girl if Abdelrahman had given any hint as to what he was expecting from them. Mingzhu told Sophia that he had told her that Sophia was a married woman who was quite traditional and rather conservative. He was relying on her (Mingzhu) to help bring Sophia put of her shell, to, as he put it, ‘introduce her to the Sapphic delights of the Orient.’
‘So I need to play the ingenue, basically,’ Sophia said.
‘I think that would work best, if you’re okay with that.’
‘Sure. Have you had any experience with other women?’
‘Yes, although I am engaged to a Chinese man, I experimented with girls at college. What about you?’
‘I have had experience with women too, but I think for the purpose of this exercise he wants me to let you initiate me into the joys of Sapphic love and all that sort of thing.’
‘So, how about we start with some kissing, then I will undress you, kiss your breasts, maybe a little foot worship, and then the main event? That should get him in the mood.’
‘That sounds fine. And then I suggest, since he’s already had me and will be crazy about having you, I sit back and watch while you two do the business.’
‘Sure. I can’t imagine he’ll be able to get it up twice, anyway.’
‘Oh, and by the way he loves it if you compare his thingie to something ludicrous, like the Golden Gate Bridge or something.’
‘Loves a bit of chat, does he?’
‘Absolutely. You noticed, did you?’
And they both dissolved in laughter again. Right on cue, Abdelrahman re-entered the room and asked them if they required anything before the entertainment began. The women told him they were good and then Mingzhu approached a little closer to Sophia and remarked on her beautiful hair.
‘I always wanted to be blonde when I was young,’ she said.
‘But your hair is so beautiful. May I touch it?’
Mingzhu withdrew the pins from her hair and the tresses fell almost to her waist.
‘My God!’ Sophia exclaimed.
She stepped closer and ran her fingers through the younger woman’s hair, purring at the soft, velvety touch.
‘May I touch yours?’ said the Chinese woman, with a hint of eagerness in her voice.
‘I’m all yours,’ replied Sophia.
Placing her hands on Sophia’s bare shoulders, Mingzhu tentatively planted a kiss on Sophia’s lips, drawing back after a few seconds as if to survey her handiwork. Keeping her hands on her shoulders, she returned to Sophia’s mouth, running her tongue along her lips as if searching for a way in. Sophia parted her lips and invited the other girl’s tongue into her mouth. She needed no second invitation.
‘This girl’s tongue is so soft,’ Sophia thought. ‘So she’s “experimented with girls”, has she? I believe she may well be selling herself short.’
The Asian girl’s tongue probed Sophia’s mouth urgently but gently, as if it was on a scouting mission and wished to avoid detection. Resisting the temptation to take over, Sophia removed her hands from the position they had found for themselves on the zipper of the tiny cheongsam and placed them on the beauty’s tiny waist. They must nearly be joining, Sophia realised. Mingzhu was more circumspect – whether from innate modesty, lack of experience or a desire to tease, Sophia couldn’t yet tell – her hands still perched on the taller woman’s shoulders. A slight adjustment to the angle of her approach and Mingzhu had captured Sophia’s tongue in her slender mouth. She sucked expertly on it while moving her hands down Sophia’s back towards her shapely posterior – stopping tantalising at the small of her back. Both women heard the groan escaping their spectator’s lips.
Sophia wanted so badly to take control, she was nearly going out of her mind. The realisation suddenly came to her that if she channelled that energy into a resolution to not yield to her impulses, on the one hand, and to continue her overt resistance to the Oriental, on the other, then she would have a defined role to play in the drama and her innate competitiveness would kick in to see to it that she performed that part to the utmost of her ability. She emitted a low moan and anchored her hands – so prone to wandering – on that shapely waist. Mingzhu broke the kiss, gazed up at Sophia with lust real or faked and started to kiss her below the collar bone with featherlight butterfly kisses. She zipped across her upper chest from left to right and back again for a minute or so, gradually losing altitude as if her engine was failing. The opposite, of course, was very much the case.
It wasn’t long before she came to the barrier presented by Sophia’s dress. Rather than continuing her labial reconnaissance, she took in the entire hemline with her tongue in one sweep from left to right. Sophia shuddered but otherwise remained stock still, bracing herself for what she prayed was coming. Her petitions were answered, as the delicate fingers of the porcelain beauty simply pulled down her dress revealing the perfect orbs. A nervous cough from stage right indicated that their audience was paying close attention to the performance. Sophia closed her eyes and waited for the next move. Would the girl proceed immediately to feast on her boobs or would she unzip her first? Neither was the answer, as she returned to Sophia’s mouth and speared her tongue through the loosely parted lips. At the same time her hands moved onto her breasts and began massaging them gently, avoiding the nipples.
Sophia let her partner take possession of her mouth, playing very much a supporting role as she virtually forced her whole mouth into Sophia’s. At the same time, she felt her zipper racing to its terminus as if under its own steam. With nothing to support it, Sophia’s dress fell to the elegant Persian carpet. Keeping Sophia under lock and key with her lips, Mingzhu’s hands returned to Sophia’s breasts, where they clearly felt they still had unfinished business to attend to. This time after a couple of circuits, they moved in to pay special attention to Sophia’s broad areoles and the twin peaks that crowned them. Sophia sighed as the manicured fingers massaged the brown discs with a very light pressure before climbing to her dark pink buds. Still with her eyes closed and her mouth under siege from the Chinese doll, Sophia’s heart somersaulted as she felt the invader’s fingernails rasp across the surface of her nipples. ‘My God! How they must have grown!’ thought Sophia, images of Alice in a different kind of Wonderland flooding her mind.
Now little more then a statue, Sophia remained unmoving as Mingzhu finally broke the kiss and moved her head without haste to Sophia’s chest and started licking the underside of her breasts. In an unexpected twist, her hands raced down her back, located her panties and pulled them down in one unbroken movement. A murmur of appreciation arose from the front row of the stalls. The panties sat atop Sophia’s dress in an untidy heap on the floor. Sophia waited for those beautiful fingers to probe her already moist pussy but her wait was in vain. At least for now. Her seductress had still much work to do in the upper zones before she could devote her attention to her nether regions. Cupping Sophia’s generous breasts with her petite hands, she homed in on her nipples, eliciting a gurgle from her prey. The time, she felt, was ripe. Ratchetting up her tongue-lashing of Sophia’s nipples to almost superhuman levels, she drove the middle finger of her right hand into Sophia’s sex. She was about to add another, and perhaps another, when Sophia’s response made such reinforcement unnecessary, a piercing cry announcing to partner, spectator, the rest of the household and very probably the apartments on the floor below that one woman had received satisfaction – and some – at the very capable hands of another.
Such was the level of entertainment that the Egyptian gave a round of applause, punctuated by several cries of ‘Brava!’ There was to be no intermission, however, as the performers seemed oblivious to everything going on around them. Not content with playing the subsidiary role, Sophia unzipped the cheongsam and taking hold of the short sleeves, pulled it carefully but with serious intent off the body of the Chinese. She cannot have stood more than five foot three inches in her four-inch heels. Sophia kept those heels on for now and also the black bikini thong, which scarcely covered her much coveted valuables. The blonde woman stood for a moment admiring the generous breasts of her supposed teacher.
‘God, they are so ripe!’ Sophia thought, excited by the thought of feasting on the already large light-brown nipples that appeared to be increasing in size before her eyes.
‘I’m going to give that old man a spectacle he’ll never forget,’ she continued to herself.
‘I want you to lie down on the carpet,’ whispered Sophia in Mingzhu’s ear. ‘I am going to make you want me so bad you will scream if I stop.’
While the Chinese girl silently complied with the older woman’s wishes and lay down on the Persian carpet, Sophia fetched a cushion for her from the divan nearby. Propping it under her head, she went to her feet and took off her shoes. Her feet were small and slender and her toes were painted with rose-coloured polish. Kneeling down beside her, Sophia lifted her right foot, brought it to her mouth and sucked on each toe, starting with the largest and ending with the smallest. She repeated the process with her left foot, reversing the order and lingering over the last couple. Looking at the Asian beauty’s flimsy undergarment, she could clearly make out a damp patch in the bottom part of the triangular patch. She decided to dispense with further preliminaries and get down to the main business of the evening as far as she was concerned.
‘Who wore thongs?’ Sophia thought. ‘Only tarts and porn stars, so what does this make this piece of fluff? Basically, a high-class call girl. A hooker. That was no doubt how she got this gig. All this “I have a nice Chinese boyfriend” bullshit. I wonder if she even has a degree.’
Thus did our heroine work herself up into a state on that evening in the penthouse suite of a sleazy Egyptian who repelled her and amused her (for all the wrong reasons – his hopeless inability to see himself as others saw him taking the biscuit) in equal measure. She was turned on by the girl for sure, but, like a drug addict, she needed more by way of stimulus to derive the same kick in her sexual encounters as she experienced when she was practising chastity, having sex only with Peter. Perhaps that was it? Had she become a sex addict, a female Michael Douglas?
Sophia looked again at the figure lying on the carpet before her and the self doubts and the philosophising went on the back-burner. She was a beautiful creature and Sophia wanted to have her. She didn’t care one way or the other whether she climaxed quickly or not, but climax she certainly would on her watch. She moved up a little so that she could more easily slip her fingers under the elastic of the girl’s thong, which had a little white oblong ornament in the centre, which Sophia thought made the garment even more trashy. She slid her hand under the hem and moved it across the girl’s shaven mons straight to her slit. It was literally running with her juices.
‘Fuck me!’ thought Sophia, ‘This girl must be really turned on by me!’
This thought had a decided aphrodisiac effect on the blonde, quickening her pulse and accelerating her processes. She moved her index and middle fingers into the ultra-receptive Asian box and fucked her rhythmically but gently. The girl whimpered and started to writhe, unable to control herself. Sophia couldn’t believe the effect she was having on the American Chinese. She could do absolutely what she wanted with her: she was little more than a sacrificial lamb.
‘These have to go,’ she said, extracting her fingers so that she could yank down the porno panties.
Mingzhu made balls of her fists and dug them into the carpet. She was clearly fighting a losing battle in an attempt to keep a vestige of control over herself. Sophia loved it. This silly child meant to be teaching her, Sophia, in the ways of lesbian love. What a fucking joke! She remembered the words of Catullus – Odi et amor: I love and I hate. That was exactly how she felt at this moment. Piri had made her come with a mere four strokes of her tongue over her labia, and Sophia was going to make this schoolgirl come in three. Or fewer. She would just need to stoke the fire a little first. She found her clitoris with her fingertip and did no more than press it softly and then withdraw. The girl’s face became contorted and she made a huge effort – largely unsuccessful – to hold back what could only be described as a howl. One more touch on her clitoris and she would have climaxed. But Sophia didn’t want to leave that evening without tasting the girl. She saw it as part of her contribution to more harmonious international relations.
She swept her tongue across the exquisite pink slit from the clitoris to the anal opening. She was halfway on her journey back when the tiny body went into convulsions, her pelvis moving with such force that had Sophia not moved her head away from the girl’s body her nose might have been broken. The girl appeared to be talking gibberish. It was only later that Sophia realised that what was had been doing was speaking in Mandarin. Whether the words were obscenities or sweet nothings, or something else entirely, she would never know, as, soon after polishing off Miss Congeniality, she was out of the door. But not before receiving the heartfelt gratitude of the Egyptian for a ‘most truly unforgettable night’.