Back at the McLeod-Slaughter Mansion, Fareed Gouyannou peacocked around the ballroom, deigning, every so often, to speak to subordinates or to single out one member of his entourage for some small dignity. Officer Bruce Sealing had been so honoured, when he was asked (or perhaps it was closer to ordered) to walk with him briefly.
‘Your information was most helpful, young man,’ Gouyannou said, an innocuous statement that was spoken very softly, Gouyannou’s face close to Sealing’s ear. It was clear that at this point he simply wanted to elevate his protégé in the eyes of the assembled gang members. By seeming to confide in him, the gangland chief was demonstrating the former policeman’s value to and potential in the clan.
But Gouyannou had other reasons for singling out Sealing. He well understood that this action would begin a new round of infighting among his underlings, because, as he wished, those in whom he had been confiding, and those who sought to become Gouyannou’s confidantes, would see this interloper as a new threat, perhaps a rising power in the gang.
Sealing would become a target.
And if Sealing was a target, then Gouyannou himself assuredly was not.
In this way, Gouyannou protected himself and Mitropoulos would see continuous gang violence.
He put his arm around the young man’s shoulder, and the former policeman stood up fully erect and smiled. He was very pleased about his new role.
Thank god for Louis XIV, Fareed Gouyannou thought.
‘Take your clothes off,’ Lynn ordered.
‘What?’ the young criminal certainly understood the order. Staring unabashedly at the glorious figure lying before him on the bed, he already felt the stirrings that marked the beginnings of an erection.
But Lynn’s order was so curt, so threatening, that he felt himself cut off.
‘What?’ he said again.
‘You heard me. You’re going to fuck her.’
‘That’s Crimson Flare,’ he stammered, belabouring the obvious. ‘Nobody fucks her.’
Lynn smiled a small half-smile. ‘Well, it looks like you’re in for a unique experience.’ She jabbed him gently with the baton.
A small jolt gripped the small of his back. He immediately pulled off his jacket and started unbuttoning his shirt.
Lynn admired his physique. As soon as he took off his t-shirt, his time in the gym was evident. Well-rounded pecs and six-pack abs showed that Fareed Gouyannou didn’t give an IQ test to his henchmen. He was a small man, barely as tall as Lynn herself, probably reaching Karen’s 5’4” in height. He looked like an archetypical USC tailback from the days of John McKay.
Shoes and socks followed, and then his pants. Obviously his workouts were well-rounded, Lynn thought. He doesn’t have Ruskin’s saintly ‘skinny legs’. He wore black briefs, which disguised his package until she pulled them off.
Lynn was astounded when he revealed himself. Oh, dear god, she reflected looking at the discarded underwear, how did he ever hide that in those?
It was a good question. The young man was remarkably endowed. Flaccid, his manhood must have shown six inches. Engorged, Lynn speculated, he must be close to a foot. She smiled at the pun.
‘All right, get yourself up.’
He looked at the slowly coiling, contorting form of Crimson Flare. The young man, whose name, Lynn would learn, was Ted, stared down at the sensually roiling figure. The perspiration that glistened on her body made it all the more provocative. He gazed longingly at her hips and legs, so perfect, so muscular, and at the taut orbs on her chest. He wanted to grasp those small oh-so-perfectly formed hemispheres, to plunge madly into her.
He looked into her contorted face and…
‘Her mask,’ he offered tentatively. ‘Could you put her mask back on?’
At this moment, Karen gave out with a soft moan of the deepest sensuality.
Ted’s member began to stiffen and rise at the sound.
‘It seems you won’t need the mask,’ Lynn said.
He pursued, still tentative, ‘Would you? It would help keep me up.’
Lynn obliged, pacing the shiny black mask onto Karen’s distorted features. The effect of the disguise was immediate, as a girl whose features were distorted in pain became Mitropoulos’ famed Champion, and Ted’s member stiffened immediately.
Lynn knew that Crimson Flare’s mask was one of the most sexually enticing elements of her costume. Many times she and Karen had discussed how Stacy had created the character for maximum psycho-sexual impact, to disarm criminals, to make them see the petite heroine as an easy mark, so that any thinking they did was largely confined to between their legs. The mask was a large part of that, creating an air of mystery, hiding her identity, and appealing to a criminal’s sense of conquering an anonymous adversary, and thus, without guilt.
Ted began to feel his erection as well nigh painful. His massive prick was fully engorged as he crept onto the bed, crawling between the spread legs of the supine, naked Crimson Flare. Lynn saw that her estimate of his size was almost exact. In addition to the conspicuous length, she saw that its circumference was also nothing short of remarkable.
The hapless Maid of Mitropoulos moaned again and her hand reached toward her sex, her gloved fingers entering and circling. A frustrated, angry sigh followed.
‘Get yourself inside her,’ Lynn ordered, and passed the baton before Ted’s eyes, which saw nothing of the weapon. He gazed into the disguised face of the powerful girl who lay on the bed. Sliding forward, the deep pink tip of his manhood already tickled Crimson Flare’s slowly unveiling organ. Her surprised response was to move herself toward the stimulus.
As he pushed himself into the Champion of Women, the excitement that seized him would only be described as sensational. It was like a thousand separate electrical currents were racing through all parts of his body, up his spine, tingling nerve ends all over.
‘Uhh, aaAAHH-HHAAAGGGHHH!’ Ted shrieked. And he came almost immediately.
But he remained hard, and Crimson Flare’s body did not release him. He fell forward onto her waiting form, and the heroine wrapped her powerful arms around his chest. Her masked face rose up to meet his own descending countenance and her lips pressed hard against his. Deep within his mouth, her tongue sought his and entwined, wrestling, lapping against the cheeks and roof of his mouth.
His arms enveloped her rock-hard torso and the two figures pulled one toward the other. Her nipples pressed against his powerful chest and she now began to move up and down on him, regularly, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Each downward thrust of her body pressed his manhood deeper into her, raising her ecstasy higher. She grunted each time she settled down on him, the sensations pushing her mouth ever more tightly against his. The gloved hand of Crimson Flare embraced the back of his head, pushing his face tight against hers. Her powerful fingers wrapped themselves in his long hair, as she seemed to take control of the act.
This time she cried out. She pulled her mouth from his and her head fell all the way back so that Lynn, standing behind the bed, could see the whites of eyes that had rolled up in her head. Through gritted teeth, Crimson Flare’s guttural sound was almost a growl.
Ted’s vocalisation followed soon after, but his animal grunt was only a preparation for a lunge toward her neck and shoulder as he took that flawless skin into his mouth, sucking at the sweet-tasting sweat that was pouring off the girl. His tongue followed the whole line of her neck and shoulder, as he seemed to be trying to ingest every part of the beautiful, idealised form that he now held. This woman was the purest sexual, sensual being he had ever encountered, and she was now driven by unknown forces to suck every drop of his bestial instinct from him. He was determined to respond in kind and that she not be disappointed in that quest.
This was Crimson Flare, he thought, the fulfillment of the fantasy of every man in Mitropoulos. Ted’s mouth crept down from her shoulder as he sought to take her breast in his mouth. Leading with his tongue, he sought, and found, the object of his quest. It circled the small pink aureole and then he seemed to try to envelop the organ from beneath and pull it up toward his maw. As his teeth pinched the marble-hard nipple, she sucked in a sudden harsh breath, and then seemed to giggle at the sensation.
He felt the soft leather of her boots wrap themselves around the backs of his thighs, pulling his hips toward her, upward, and pressing him ever further into the Champion of Women. Now deep inside her, a tide of sheer ecstasy first flowed and then roared through him, beginning at the tip of his manhood and finally sweeping over every part of his body. He cried out again, and the two entities which, coupled, now locked in an embrace that created between them a single organism, rolled onto their side. They moved as one, he pressing to enter her even further, seeking to heighten the glorious electricity that he felt flowing out of her; she seeking to press his hard rod up, up, into her most sensitive and responsive regions, where no one had penetrated previously, regions that would give rise to the highest ecstasy.
Her legs moved upward so that the black leather sat underneath his cheeks, and as she pushed upward, driving him ever further into her, the cheeks spread ever so slightly. Sweat poured off of the two bodies, filling the room with aroma of copulation, a musky, even fetid, smell.
Her face returned to his, as, her eyes now closed, she used her mouth and lips to seek out all its distinguishing features, kissing each with a violence that had until now been restrained by her own strong will. That will collapsed in an onrushing orgy of desire, a desire to experience all of this man, every feature, every element of his physical self, with an immediacy previously unknown.
Their two bodies continued to rock in unison, and their vocalisations became joined in an antiphony reminiscent of Gabrielli’s Canzonae. First her alto, each exertion rising in volume and pitch; then, his strong baritone, the tones constant, like a drone. Together, the two mating beasts experienced a single fulfillment of sexual desire such as neither had ever achieved.
‘aaAAAAHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!’ He came again. The earlier orgasm had been a release, a relaxation of his body allowing the pent-up desire to be thrust in great spasms into the receptacle. This time the contractions of his muscular and well-formed physique pushed the seed violently from him; each convulsion seemed to begin deep within him and he pressed himself as far into this fantasy woman as he could. The rock-hard prick ached even as it erupted in a fresh frenzy of sexual bliss. He no longer was aware of where he was, as his head swirled in a paroxysm of images and colour, now bright, now dark. He saw nothing but those flashes of colour; he heard only the rushing of his blood in his ears. He felt the satin-soft flesh of his partner, soaked, dripping, with sweat. He smelled her sweet aroma. And almost before his second climax was completed, he, now in genuine pain, gave voice to his anguish. For the third time in so few moments, he came again. Exhaustion crept over him following this orgasm and he knew it was the last time.
When she came, it gushed from her. Crimson Flare barely heard the cry as it came from her partner, though Lynn had been startled by its volume and ferocity. The masked woman only knew that she was as close to being fulfilled as she had ever been. In all of her sexual experience, her mind told her, never had such heights as she now approached been scaled. This, she understood, was what ultimate bliss for the human female was. She was aware of the satin gloves that enveloped her hands and arms; the hard composite material of the mask that lay across her face; even the soft leather of her boots that encompassed her calves and ankles; she also felt the hard muscles of his chest; and always, always, there was his engorged prick inside her, pressing upward, ever upward toward the center if her sensuality.
Never had she felt like such a fully sexual being. She pulled her legs further up her partner, drawing him to her and into her. She felt him come the third time and his relaxation told her that his part in the coupling was completed. But she wanted more. She continued to kiss his face, his hair, his lips, and he reciprocated, returning the signs of affection with an exultation that moved her. Her calves now encompassed his hips and she locked her leather-covered ankles against the small of his back. As she pulled him into her, she felt his hard prick begin to collapse within her. No, her mind said, no, you must continue!
Ted knew he was spent, that he would shrivel and drop from her. He did not want that to happen any more than she did, so he pulled himself tighter to her, pressing his diminishing manhood as far into his lover as its reduced form could reach. He was aware of everything now: the smell of their coupling, the softness of her soaked flesh, the faint roar of the elevated train in the distance, even the soft creaking of the bed. He felt the soft leather of her boots pressing against the small of his back, as she did her best to keep him inside her.
Her dry mouth continued to survey his face, the soft lips kissing his cheeks, her tongue probing his ears, first one, then the other. As her searching mouth moved from one portion of his countenance to another, there was no rush, no frenzy; her movements were deliberate, as if she were sampling first one delicacy and then, having tasted, moved on. Not the smallest feature was spared her smothering pursuit of sensation. It was like she was trying to sample every bit of him. As Crimson Flare kissed and licked and nibbled her way across his face, she gave voice to the gratification she felt.
‘MMMMmmmmmmmmnnnn!’ she cooed. Then louder, ‘MMMMMMMMMNNNN!!’ as if she were trying to pull in an experience or discover some piquancy of his essence that was being denied her.
Ted replied in kind. In his mind, he begged her to keep him inside her, to hold on to what seemed an almost unreal throbbing that she conveyed to him and through him, in their conjoined organs. Ted felt her tightness as she gripped his prick and seemed to hold on for dear life. He even felt the heroine’s boots press still more firmly against his back. The resilient softness of the leather raised high his sensuality to the pressure and the moment. It flashed through his brain, These are Crimson Flare’s boots! And suddenly the small of his back became hypersensitive to every tactile aspect of the famed footwear.
But the thought was only a transient one. Next he felt her hard nipples against his smooth, powerful chest and his mind thrashed about, searching for any stimulation that would awaken his flaccid member. He sensed the pressure gripping and holding his member within her; the soft satin gloves pressing consecutively and simultaneously against his back, neck, shoulders, and head; the hard muscled thighs firmly holding his hips in place against her; the sweet-smelling sweat running down her face and neck; the salty taste of those globules as his dry-but-oh-so-receptive tongue searched them out and took them in. All these things he became aware of, and each of them frustrated his one desire: to get just one more erection for one more orgasm.
Crimson Flare was cumming. Ted could feel her honey rolling out of her, down his penis, onto his balls and, from there, to the bed. It seemed to flow from her, each spasm sending more and more of her essence along that rambling itinerary in an unending flood. He felt the heroine buck in his arms, each throe accompanied by a gentle sigh in his ear.
At that same time, the Maid of Mitropoulos felt her body racing out of her control. And she didn’t want to control it. When she had previously been raped, or when Chan and she had had sex during their few days before his death, each of these times she had felt the impulse to maintain control, for fear of what might happen if she surrendered to indiscipline, or gave herself over to the urges that she felt burning, roiling within her.
Well, this time she would allow her body to run amuck. And the wild animal inside her was doing just that. Now grunting each time she pressed herself down on Ted’s now-shrunken manhood, a whine of disappointment swiftly followed, until the two sounds combined in a frustrated growl. Searching for fulfillment, she pulled him in toward her, holding him tighter with her arms; at the same time, with her powerful legs she pulled his hips taut against her own.
For his part, her criminal lover facilitated and reciprocated her efforts to become one with the masked girl. With all his strength he embraced her naked torso. He inhaled the sweet globules of sweat rolling down her neck, until he felt almost as if he were drowning. But he pressed on, determined to one last time gain his erection, to come inside the Champion of Women one more time, gripping her silken skin in his fists, scratching her shoulders and back with his long nails.
She never noticed the pain. All she could feel was the rush of ecstasy as her juices flowed from her. She could feel them on her thighs, before they passed on to form a large discolouration on the bedspread. And she could still feel him inside her, though now withdrawing from her innermost recesses, discouraging her. His large prick, no longer engorged, still filled her antechamber and as she moved, it stimulated the walls of that mysterious region. She moved up and down, the friction sending chills up her spine, and she remembered how his enlarged probe had previously filled her with dread and sensuality.
She hugged him tighter, pulling him to her with her arms and her legs.
He grunted suddenly.
Pain was in the sound, but Crimson Flare didn’t notice it. All she noticed was that his erection was returning inside her. His prick pushed suddenly into her, and she was on the verge of cumming again. She knew she must do so.
‘Oh, dear god,’ Lynn shouted as she rushed to the bed. ‘Karen, let him go! You’re killing him!’
Pressing her strong athlete’s hands between the compressed forms of the lovers, Lynn knew that she would never be able to overcome Crimson Flare’s great strength in separating the entwined figures. At her first touch she felt the limp, unresisting body of the male, and she knew that it was already too late.
Crimson Flare, filled one last time with the rapture of fulfillment, cried out, and she suddenly released him. She was cumming again. Satisfaction comforted her.
Ted, his back snapped like a twig in two places by the strength of Crimson Flare’s arms and legs, fell to the bedspread. His open eyes stared up at Lynn, questioning—what? the meaning of his death? the meaning of his life? His mouth was open and his tongue, what seemed to be an unnatural purple colour, protruded slightly. There was no movement in his body. His erect prick, the object of Crimson Flare’s desperate desire, slowly slipped from inside his partner.
‘God, Karen,’ Lynn whispered. She turned to her friend, who was grunting, over and over again, her body plunging as she expelled her nectar onto the bed. The Champion of Women seemed utterly unable to staunch the flow, and the heroine’s great strength allowed her to buck and seize time after time without respite or fatigue.
She cried out again and again, but, unlike other times, these were not cries of frustration. It seems that she had, at long last, been fulfilled. Her gloved hands caressed the entrance to her sex, her fingers expertly playing her organ. The crimson gloves turned dark red as she came and came again. Her body shone with perspiration as it rolled down her torso. Her perfectly hemispherical orbs glistened, rock-hard, in the glare of the room’s electric bulbs. Her nipples stood out like rock outcrops.
At last, she collapsed, face down, onto the soft bed, her essence spent.
Lynn marveled at the sight.
The naked form of the powerful Crimson Flare lay on its side, curled, with her hands lying alongside her soaking sex. Her entire body shone with perspiration, highlighting the powerful muscles even more in evidence. Her face was peaceful behind her mask, and her short, dark brown hair seemed styled in punk spikes. Her eyes were closed behind the black of her mask, though it was clear that she was awake, though perhaps not entirely conscious of her surroundings.
Lynn gently pulled her friend onto her back, revealing her still-hard, perfectly formed breasts. Her stomach moved gently, slowly, as she breathed, each exhalation exposing the lower portion of her rib cage. She breathed in easily now, the sounds of the struggle a thing of the past. Below the perfect isosceles of her pubic hair, the residue of the honey that was expelled clung to her entrance and the insides of her thighs.
Her legs were spread, exposing her. The pink of her female organ was now only barely visible, as it seemed to try to creep, unobserved, back into her recesses. Her body no longer demanded satisfaction from the male who had been her partner. It had climbed to peaks of ecstasy such as no woman had ever attained. For the strength and power of Crimson Flare required that her powerful mate spend his all in her satisfaction.
Ted had indeed done so.
He had died satisfying Crimson Flare.
And in doing so, as Lynn and Karen would shortly discover, he had freed the Maiden of Mitropoulos from her demons.
Ted’s body would have to be disposed of, Lynn knew. And something would have to be done about the other man, injured, in the living room. But, right now, there was nothing more important than the condition of her friend.
Her body had stopped convulsing; the grunts and cries had been replaced by a soft moan; the sweaty sheen on her smooth skin was dissipating; and the flood of her juices was abated. Lynn sat on the bed, holding Karen’s head in her lap, gently brushing her cheek and jaw with her fingers. The blonde girl whispered soft cooings, trying to calm her friend. Finally, after a few moments, she reached down and plucked the mask from Crimson Flare’s face, revealing the familiar, now-sedate face of her friend. Lynn leaned toward her friend and softly kissed Karen’s forehead.
She sat and rocked until all was silent in the bedroom.
Finally, Karen’s green eyes fluttered open. Her throat was dry, her voice raspy as she tried to speak. Lynn tipped the clear plastic bottle to her lips and the brunette drank greedily.
‘What happened?’
‘You went through hell.’
She took another swallow from the plastic bottle. ‘Did I survive?’
‘Evidently.’ Lynn smiled a sad smile.
Karen looked around the room, taking some comfort from its familiarity. Her eyes eventually found Ted’s contorted body, which Lynn had slid from the bed and placed next to the overstuffed chair across the room. ‘Did I do that?’
‘Don’t be sorry. He worked for Gouyannou. He came here to kill Maria and me.’
‘Where is Maria?’
‘Gouyannou’s got her.’ Lynn knew what Karen’s response to this information was going to be, so she anticipated her friend’s next comment. ‘You’ve got to stay here for a while. You’ll have to get your strength back.’
‘From the looks of him, I’d say I already reached that point.’
‘How do you feel?’
Karen paused a long moment, as if trying to get a sense of herself. Her eyes stared out, as if seeking a great inner truth, and after almost a full minute of silence, she replied, ‘Cleansed… I think.’ She took another swallow from the water bottle.
Karen pulled herself from Lynn’s lap and sat up. She looked from Ted’s mangled corpse to the huge stain covering the bedspread. She glanced at her friend, and an unasked question passed between them.
‘Yes,’ said Lynn. ‘All of that.’
Her nursing training came through at this point, as Karen commented softly, ‘I don’t think that’s possible.’
‘I saw you.’
‘You were watching?’ Her eyes wide, Karen’s shocked face began to edge toward anger at her friend.
‘If I hadn’t been here, who knows whether that…’ here she nodded toward Ted, ‘would have been all you would have done.
‘You said you felt cleansed. What do you mean exactly?’
Again, Karen took a long pause. ‘For months, I’ve felt as though there was something inside me, something that needed to be filled… or maybe released. It ached; it burned. For months, I couldn’t quench this demand. Now, it’s… it’s just gone. Whatever it was that I felt, it’s gone.’
‘We’ll talk more in a bit,’ the athletic blonde said softly, worried about her friend. ‘Why don’t you get in the tub? Sweat was pouring off of you during your ordeal, and, for a while, you and I were sharing the something less-than-sterling accommodations of Gouyannou’s basement.’
‘Is that where Maria is?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have to go get her.’
‘Wait, Karen. Just wait a minute. You and I have talked a lot about how Stacy made you the smartest heroine around, about how important it was to have all the information necessary, before you went riding off in all directions at once. We need to know what’s happened to you. And you need to know about what’s waiting for you at the McLeod-Slaughter mansion. So, shut up and go take a soaking in the tub.’ When she was finished, Lynn smiled to herself. I’ve never said anything like that to anyone before, she thought. And now I’m saying it to someone who could take my head off, literally, if she didn’t like my tone.
There was another very long pause. Karen slid off the bed. ‘All right,’ she said.
End of Chapter Seven