Pierre le Valle - The Pleasures of Bankruptcy

Francis-already vibrating to the ardor of her softly drawing lips and caressing tongue-smiled down at her.

“Your adored morsel seems to be scorned. Rose, for the present, at any rate,” he remarked placidly. “Yet I think that even though you have a monopoly I shall request you to consider your punishment over for the time being I shall spend down your throat in a few moments otherwise and I shouldn't want that!”

“Stop and look after this indiscreet lady, who seems not to consider the need for a douche if she is not to add to her family-which might amaze the worthy pastor.”

Frightened. Doris slipped from the couch.

“It never occurred to me.” she admitted. “You seem to have driven everything out of my head and myself out of my mind, today!”

“It's nice to ho crazy occasionally, isn't it?” Francis observed smilingly.

Doris mustered a grave little smile in response to his own. She was eyeing him very thoughtfully.

“Do you know, she said candidly and as if she were surprised, “I could almost forgive you, in your present mood, for the injury you have done me. I could even…”

Her violet eyes widened in amazement-at her unexpected conclusion.

“I could even-be very fond of you,” she ended quite ingeniously.

“That is pleasant,” he said, genuinely pleased by her queer self analysis. “I find it satisfying to be liked by lovely women like yourself and Rose-regardless of my own treatment of you. Rose here actually hated me not go many days ago.”

“I-ohh… I didn't!” denied the stricken Rose. “At least I guess perhaps I did-but I can't see how I could have… felt that way about you!”

Mrs. Tasker was so shaken by her experiences that Francis prescribed a warm bath to sooth her before she returned home. As he wandered freely in and out of the bathroom where she was thus intimately engaged-and as he watched each stage of her subsequent toilet-she expressed quite frankly her reactions to his persistent supervision.

“Even a wife,” she remarked, “has some privacy-before and after intimate relations with her husband. But you are treating me as if I were the merest infant-as if I had no right to any reserves or modesty whatever.”

“It matters very much-to me,” he said. “I should dislike exceedingly to find you losing that delicious modesty and your ability to blush so furiously over any physical and sensual overtures made to you. Yet, only a brief time ago you were raving over an affront far more serious than this we are now discussing.”

“I was not quite sane at the time.” she murmured. “And I don't know that I shall ever be quite sane again. Even though you have ruined me-shamed me in a hundred ways-why should I try to bide my conviction that I shall never be so incredibly happy in the future as I was while you defiled me-and made me unable to hold up my bead again amongst my friends? Now that it is all over and I have served my sentence…”

“You have barely begun your sentence,” he assured her-watching the long silk stocking being carefully put on and drawn upward over a beautiful leg and whitely rounded thigh.

“Hardly begun,” she faltered, pausing in her occupation and raising apprehensive eyes. “Do you mean to tell me that all that has happened hasn't satisfied the… the indignation which you and Mrs. Bolton-justly, I admit, felt against me?”

“You shall not pay a cent,” he said. “You shall carry the thought that you have paid-and arc paying-with your lovely body-and your freedom. You are mine… do you understand? And you will come to me whenever I summon you. You will feel the weight of my authority and my hot desire for your lovely body-even when you are not with me at the time!”

“In evidence whereof,” he continued, with glowing eyes, “1 lay two commands upon you now. Firstly, you will quite inadvertently let your husband observe this very night that your pussy has been shaved!”

“Yon will tell him that you did it yourself-and will explain, when questioned; that you had a strange desire to see once more how you must have looked there when you were ten or twelve years old. You will whisper embarrassedly to him a query as to whether you don't remind him of the way Louise used to look at the time when he was so fond of kissing her between her legs?”

“You will spread yourself out complaisantly to let him look his nil at your nudities. You will see what will happen. He will be so wild with delight that he will not even notice the inflammation still remaining from my own violent embraces…”

“He will hug your thighs and begin to kiss you down here as he was wont to kiss his daughter. You will repulse him. He will plead-and you will succumb bashfully. And you will tell me-tomorrow afternoon in this room… exactly what occurred!”

“It's a changed life-a life of horrible phantasies-with which you threaten me,” stammered Doris. “And it's a dual life too-for how can I avoid the peril that my husband or my innocent daughter may not suspect?”

“It may be best to be somewhat frank with your innocent daughter.” he murmured.

And cynically he laid upon the table before her the photo of a totally naked and exquisitely formed young girl, Doris stared at it for a moment with wild eyes.

“It's Louise-all undressed!” she cried. “How-how did you get… this picture?”

“Not as you perhaps think,” he told the convulsed matron. “Look at the picture. She smiles-although with shy dismay. If she had been trapped thus by any man- or had even had the thought that any man might see the picture, she would never have smiled.”

“I think that this is, beyond doubt, the loveliest bit of photographic art I have ever seen. A lovely girl is your sweet, blonde Louise-in her slender shapely nudity- with those finger tempting young breasts-and that curly triangle below her smooth belly.”

“Please… please!” cried Doris chokingly, trying to atop him.

“Better tell her the source of the picture. Rose,” he suggested.

“Some of the girls who come here for dresses get a bit jolly,” explained Mrs. Bolton embarrassedly. “It's not very unusual for one of the party to have a camera and wish to snapshot the others while they are trying things on-or in a state of undress before trying on their silk or satin underwear!”

“And you deliberately brought this picture to Mr. Freeman accused the indignant Doris Tasker.

Rose shrugged helplessly. “I didn't,” she said. “He-he made me. He does as he likes-you ought to know that- and what could I do?”

“The fact is, of course,” he said calmly, “that your daughter is almost equally culpable with yourself in the bills you have run up here, and which have served to bring Rose to financial disaster.”

“She is paying now for the faults and carelessness of others-amongst whom are your daughter and yourself- by this state of what you term… slavery!”

“But-good heavens-she is little more than a child and it was really my fault that she ran up this account,” cried Doris. “You can't have in mind any personal penalty for her?”

“I have no compunctions in the matter,” he assured her. “I wish to see your daughter in the exact guise of this photo. And I shall see her this way, too, I can assure you. For if you falter in bringing it about-incredible things will happen to you… without your saving Louise in the long run. I should not hesitate to send a copy of this photograph to her father if that was necessary!”

“He would kill her-he would disown her!” wailed the frenzied Doris.

“There are certain things which are quite without any conscience-proverbially so…” he smiled. “You may not have heard of them-but I have one of them when I look at this delightful photograph!”