Chapter 5 - Earthly Delights
As Margery had told Bianca, on Wednesday night in the suite at The Plaza Grand Mohandas had experienced things that he hadn't read about in the Kama Sutra. This wasn't surprising as he's never read it. He'd never been with an older woman. And Kat, as Margery had called herself, had been amazingly sexually aggressive, taking the lead. He was used to twenty-something women who, in his culture, were or pretended to be shy - mildly flirtatious at best - waiting for a proposal of marriage.
There was none of that with Kat. And he was suddenly 'superstud'. So, between bouts of athletic sex, followed by both falling back to recover, he'd claimed to be the best developer and code-smith on the team; one of the best in the entire world. When she doubted him he said he could prove it. Then she said she an idea that would test his skills. And he said: "just show it to me, I'll do it now."
"OK I'll show you. But it might take you hours, or days, even if you're as good as you claim," she said. "You'd have to take time off, what about a sickie tomorrow?"
That was when he agreed to call in sick and spend the day proving how good he was at writing code.
After that they went at it again and he sort of forgot about it. Kat was quite different to the only other girl that he had been intimate with. This was a real woman. She was unshaven 'down there'. He found that he particularly liked her luxuriant pubic bush, which seemed so mature.
"There's nothing as unnatural as a hairless pussy," she told him smiling. "That's why I don't shave. It's unnatural. I'm a hairy Kat, just as nature made me."
"It's lovely," he'd said, running his fingers through the silky forest in wonder, 'hirsute' he remembered the word. He'd never experienced a real woman like this so intimately. "Her suit - suits her," he thought to himself, smiling.
"Would you like to play with Kat's pussy again tonight?" she asked flirtatiously; seeing his smile.
She was suggesting that she would be happy to see him again after work. He felt a thrill run through his body. He'd feared that this had been a one-night stand.
"Yes of course," he said, not believing his luck. He was already thinking about sending flowers to her at work. He gave her his home address.
But after she'd showered and was getting dressed, she seemed hesitant; concerned.
"I don't want you to risk your job over staying home sick to write code for me."
He'd completely forgotten his challenge and having agreed to take the day off to prove himself.
"So, I'll only come if I can visit your apartment completely unseen, perhaps using a rear entrance?" Kat said as she let him zip up her black party dress, pleased at his fumbles.
He was yet to shower and was still naked. His growing excitement at the prospect was all too evident. She backed into him and her now tightly encased bottom collided with his erection, underlining the double entendre.
Of course, she would allow no such thing tonight. But she knew, from long experience, that the suggestion would fuel his Rabelaisian fantasies that would keep him fixated on her for the remainder of the day. And then...
"So, this will be your first test. I need you to use your vaunted uber-skills to make some sort of Widget or Bot that will help me come and then leave undetected," she said, her ribald innuendos increasing his delight; before turning and kissing him.
"If you can finish my widget before I leave work today, I'll visit you at home tonight. Now I have to go home and change for work. Perhaps I'll see you later?" With that she opened the door and disappeared.
It was still early. He had an idea for a perfect widget. He had a quick shower; made some initial design notes; placed some orders; got dressed; went down and checked out; then dropped in on an antique store on his way home.
***
When Margery reached home this morning to change after her night at the Plaza Grand, she'd been tingling with excitement and anticipation. Kat was to be let out of her bag once more.
Then things got even better. After Margery got back late from her enjoyable lunch with Bianca there in her in-tray was a small parcel marked to the attention of Kat. The mail robot had long ago been instructed that 'Kat' was Margery's pet name for friends and family and to direct anything labelled 'Kat', particularly flowers or chocolates, to her.
Mohandas was proving to be well chosen in many ways. She had to give that much credit to Bianca. The parcel contained a gold ladies' powder compact with a fold up mirror. A loose piece of paper inside, over the powder puff, said: ‘Press Here - when the mirror glows green - it's safe to enter’. She had her VPA, Circe, confirm this to be sure. Her reading can be a little unreliable at times.
***
That evening she tried her new widget out and it was brilliant. It unlocked the fire doors and his back door was unlocked too. As she entered, she whispered her concern about possible cameras out there. But he laughed proudly and assured her that her widget had all that in hand. The cameras and body heat sensors; as well as the ultrasonic and microwave motion detectors had all been disabled.
She was dressed for the occasion. She shed her jacket revealing her thin-silk, light-peach coloured blouse, over her otherwise bare breasts. Unlike her party dress last night, her charcoal silk skirt was full and she did a little spin so that it flew up Marylyn style so that he caught a glimpse of suspenders. Then she stopped and smiled coquettishly as it wrapped itself around her.
"Now let me have a look at you," she said, undoing Mohandas' shirt buttons and pulling the cream fabric free of his pants to reveal his fit brown torso beneath. Then she stepped back exclaimed: "Oh yes, I wasn't imagining it! Very nice! And thank you so much for my widget. You are as smart as you claimed!"
She embraced him and that redolent perfume again enveloped him. Despite his early morning shower, he'd been smelling her on his hands and arms all day. She felt his excitement growing and gave his bulging trousers a nice rub. He was an easy one. Margery knew he would be entirely Kat's, to do with as she liked, before her alter-ego had finished with him.
Margery was impressed by his apartment and a wave of jealousy swept over her. Here was old money. The apartment occupied a full floor of a multistorey block and had balconies on three sides overlooking the surrounding parkland. It was sumptuously decorated in the style of a maharajah's palace, with bronze statues of multi-armed gods and goddesses in niches. The floors were polished hardwood partly covered with hand-woven rugs and the furnishings were low settees and some very large cushions.
There was a state-of-the-art, scented and air zoned, Vidicube, a multidimensional Virtual Reality viewing cube with 3D screens on all six surfaces and full surround audio to recreate any virtual environment. Wearing a haptic-body-stocking she saw that it had wonderful potential for reliving some of her more erotic recordings from Kat's past conquests. She imagined leaving Mohandas tied-up in his bedroom while she came in here and enjoyed herself. And tonight, she would have some new recordings to add to her collection.
The kitchen was also large and well equipped but it was obvious that most of his meals came pre-cooked delivered into the servery by drone. Margery particularly liked his state-of-the-art espresso coffee machine. There were several toilets but only two bathrooms, one opening off his bedroom and one off the large guest bedroom that seemed to be seldom used, perhaps by visiting relatives? One of the biggest rooms in this vast apartment was his dedicated workroom where the air was filtered. There were several large screens above a long bench on one wall and opposite there was another bench with various incomprehensible pieces of equipment, several housed in their own cabinets. This must be where he'd designed and assembled her widget.
Mohandas was very proud of this room and went on about its technical features enthusiastically. The only part of this she understood was how he could scoot around the room on his old-fashioned work chair over the glistening hardwood floor. And that was only because he gave her a demonstration.
***
He'd saved his greatest pride to last. It's his private art gallery at the heart of the apartment, a central space behind the lift-well with no natural lighting. He opened the wide doors at one end to reveal a long room with a thick dark red carpet beautifully papered in subtly striped red silk a shade lighter. The entire ceiling glowed with a soft sunrise light, casting no shadows, yet could be raised to a pure white light centred on a particular painting simply by walking in front of it. Rather incongruously in an Indian themed apartment, it was hung with European oil paintings. The largest of these, with all three panels it's big, over two metres high and nearly four metres wide, was on the far wall: Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights.
The Garden of Earthly Delights: Museo del Prado Madrid, attributed to Hieronymus Bosch c. 1495–1505 - Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Margery gasped. She was like a sailor unexpectedly confronted with a blow-up of a habitual illicit pin-up. As a teenager she would unfold her ancient paper print of The Garden of Earthly Delights and view it as a self-abusing sailor might, under the covers. Now here was the actual work. Naked Marilyn Munroe writ large. When she went up close it was evidently genuine, down to the texture of the finest brush strokes. But surely it should be in the Prado in Madrid?
Her love for The Garden of Earthly Delights is visceral. There's a delicious progress from left to right. The thought of Kat taking someone on that journey, from one panel to the next, is enough to make her swoon. She imagines leading an innocent out of the idyllic, left Garden; to large central, worldly panel, introducing them to each of its increasingly perverted erotic debaucheries in turn. Even now, if she's alone and craves arousal, she brings the central panel up on her screen; zooming in on each of the debauched characters; imagining how her Kat would toy with her companion, introducing them to each perversion. Having, in her imagination, degraded her victims and, like their God, tempted them then led them to sins sufficiently debauched to justify their destruction, Kat casts them into to the satanic dark right-hand panel of weird punishments, biological experiments and fires falling from the sky; a broken clock symbolising eternity.
Margery looked away, lest the excitement of being so close to her familiar hunting ground 'in the flesh' overwhelmed her. She was trembling as if freezing yet hot as a furnace. She needed a distraction.
There were dozens of other apparently genuine paintings to look at, by Klimt and Munch and Balthus and Courbet and Renoir and Matisse and Monet and Manet and Picasso even Rembrandt and Van Gogh. Each seemed to be the originals.
Her jealousy mounted. This was totally unfair. All these famous paintings. Mohandas must be a billionaire.
Mohandas laughed at Kat's amazement. He found this level of technical naivety odd for someone like her in the industry. Obviously, all the necessary data was in the Public Domain and readily available in The Cloud. He explained that they're all reproductions. They look so real because their surface and any underlying image is identical to the originals. They have been digitised in 3D from hundreds of images, scanned by archivists using high-definition cameras moving side to and top to bottom. Why taking more than one image was important Margery had no idea, don't you just hold up your hand-held in the gallery? Then he'd somehow, created them in ancient oil paint or something, from the data, using one of his 3D printing thingies. Some technical gobbledygook about extruding multiple threads of different oil colours. But she understood that he'd created their frames too, using a different 3D thingy of which he seemed to have a number.
Apparently, he'd also made the Indian miniatures elsewhere in the apartment.
"I don't care if they are the original or not," he told her, "I have them because I like them, not for their resale value. And I like a lot of the classics."
Margery decided that Mohandas was like an audiophile Kat had once toyed with as she introduced him to some heavenly delights. He'd dwelt on 'the classics' too. Margery was still enjoying the fruits of his estate. Among his vulnerabilities was that he delighted in the exact reproduction of his favourite music, even more than the music itself. He wanted to be able to close his eyes and actually be in the concert hall.
Kat had suggested that in virtual reality he could be transported there. It was in this virtual world that Kat had been able to progressively introduce him to the perverse central panel, exposing his vulnerabilities and previously unrealised desires in the process. The recordings Margery had made when Kat had led him to the virtual world of Ken Russell's The Music Lovers were among the most exciting and perverse in her collection. After fully exploring the depths of his depravity Kat had eventually tired of the game and cast him into the inevitable final degradation: the metaphorical right-hand panel. Like Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Russell's film, he'd ended his own life in confusion and in despair.
***
Margery had been lost during all Mohandas' technical talk but felt better when it became evident that his pictures, although physically identical to the originals, were not terribly valuable.
"That's odd, isn't it?" Kat told him, as she caressed his torso. "It's like all those exact replicas of Michelangelo's David. But only the original in Florence is worth much more than the marble and the cost of carving it." Kat's fingernails were sensuously carving his chest as she spoke. Then she pushed his shirt off his shoulders and it lay, spread out, fleshy, like a cast-off skin, on the red carpet. Now he was Kat's David in cream cotton pants.
After a few subtle questions Margery learnt that he'd been given this apartment by his parents who'd gone to take up royal responsibilities in what had once been the country of India. His workroom was in what had once been his mother's private sitting room. And no, he was the younger son and wasn't enormously wealthy. To make ends meet and to make his changes he'd sold off most of his mother's original artworks, which had once hung in this art gallery. That was when he'd perfected his art copying techniques. Even the Indian bronzes of Ganesh, Parvathi, Shiva, Lakshmi, Durga, Kali and so on, were now reproductions of his mother's originals, somehow, scanned and then made from real bronze in a great big green boxy thingy with a window, that he proudly took her to see in his services area.
All the credit he'd got from the art sales, and almost everything he earned now, went to buying more equipment for his hobbies: like building the electronics for his flying robots and writing their software. Again, Margery was annoyed. It didn't seem appropriate that a young code writer, well over twenty years her junior, should live comfortably in such a palace, invisibly consuming past family assets, when her apartment was smaller and much more Spartan.
Margery determined that Kat will rectify this imbalance, as she's already done to so many in the past.
Like that past lover's selection in music, Mohandas' art collection reveals several of his vulnerabilities. It's a collection that the notorious twentieth century playboy, Hugh Heffner, might have chosen. Somewhere in this apartment she would find a silk dressing gown and maybe even a tobacco pipe. There may even be a collection of ancient 'Bunny of the Month' centrefolds stored in memory in his Vidicube or on his bedroom screen. There will certainly be some concealed pornography there somewhere. Yes, he's vulnerable to Kat in all sorts of ways.
The tour had become boring, coming down from her extreme arousal earlier. So, Kat took his hand; and led him back to his bedroom. The moment they were through the door she shut it, as if they needed a special degree of privacy for what she had in mind. Next, she went about his room touching various surfaces in an odd way, as if she was looking at some feature they had in common.
Kat's movements then became fluid and she begun to dance in that Indian way, raising her arms and moving her hips, like the girls who had entertained the courts of the olden maharajas. Mohandas didn't know how to react. Was she mocking his heritage or trying to seduce him? A minute later this was clarified when she entwined his body with her legs and arms like a carving on a Jain temple, then turned him to release his belt; dropping his trousers. Her breasts were pressed against his back, her nipples erect. Her hands caressed his chest and pinched his nipples then descended to confirm his arousal.
"Now I want you to take hold of yourself and do as you do when you watch porn in your Vidicube as I undress for you," she instructed.
He was about to object to her accusation that the masturbated to porn in his Vidicube when her VPA began to play 'that stripper tune' while Kat slowly unbuttoned her blouse. They were no longer in India.
As the music got louder and louder: voomp something voomp something voomp Kat's gyrations became more and more coarsely provocative. He'd only been in a strip club once, when out on the town with his friend Raj, but now the memory came rushing back.
For her part Margery was recalling that club that she'd worked as a teenager. Drunk men shouting obscenities and fighting as the bouncer threw them out; some coming forward boldly, others timidly, to put a club coupon in her leg garter in return for a smile or perhaps, when she chose to, a little peek under her sequined panties; but many of them sitting back hands active in their laps; waiting. When her set was done she would circulate and, for extra credit, take one upstairs where the club had rooms for the purpose. But unlike the professional girls she never had actual sex with any of these losers. She was still an apprentice witch at the time and this was part of the curriculum - a few weeks basic training. In the event she found controlling men through their libido so exciting and liberating that she stayed for several months perfecting the art until no one could resist her finale; not even the bouncers.
"Come on," Kat insisted, "You've had plenty of practice. You know what to do."
He was initially reluctant, naturally shy, so she re-buttoned; walked over and gave his face a whack.
"Let's start again!" She re-set the music and recommenced several times until he began to comply.
Once he was 'on board' the next part of her strip involved the slow removal of her skirt: first one side; and then the other.
Mohandas was not at all sure about this. This is the most private thing in his life and doing it in front of this older woman he's only just met is not something he wants to do. But she seems to think that it's a normal part of an intimate relationship. And she's quite insistent. And she's so sexy. And she's the only one who'll ever know.
"Oh, what the hell," he thinks, as her movements become more exciting.
Margery's pleased that he's now performing with more enthusiasm.
"Faster! Come on, put some effort in," Kat demanded. "Higher! Stronger!" All Mohandas' reservations evaporated. His mind and his body were hers.
"Her green eyes are so beautiful," he was thinking: "They seem to be boring into mine, right into my brain. And her body is so creamy, like the Venus de Milo made flesh. And she knows how to use her hands; and her tongue and her hips; and her bottom; in the most seductive ways!"
Kat had slipped her thumbs into the waist band of her knickers and was now thrusting her hips faster and faster, reminding him of what she'd done last night. The music was thumping. Mohandas was enthralled. The knickers fell.
"Oh, you naughty boy!" she scolded: "You were supposed to wait until we were in bed! And look what you've done to your beautiful silk rug! What a mess."
"I'm sorry," is all Mohandas could say. But he wasn't. Doing that for her had been so much better; in the open; and in the flesh.
"That's all very well for you to say. But what am I supposed to do now? And after you got me so excited, watching you performing like that for me," she complained.
"Now I'll just have to go into your Vidicube and replay your performance as I look after myself," she whined disappointedly, simultaneously endorsing such behaviour.
Mohandas suddenly realised what she'd been doing earlier: placing little cameras around his bedroom! He was simultaneously appalled that Kat had filmed him doing 'that', yet excited by the idea of her using the recording later for her similar delight.
"Why don't we just have a coffee then try it again," he found himself saying to console her.
As a reward for his thoughtfulness Kat, now dressed only in her stockings and garter belt, took him in her arms and held him in the most delightful way so that very soon he might have been ready to go again, had Margery wanted a 'second take'.
But although it was not Kat's greatest performance, Margery already had what she wanted. So, Kat just walked Mohandas backwards to his bed; pushed him onto his back; then rode him until she was no longer frustrated. The cameras were still rolling.
"I'll see you tomorrow" she said an hour later, when he more or less recovered and she'd collected her things and finished a little job.
"Take another 'sickie' tomorrow. I'll come over again afternoon to explain your coding challenge," she told him.
"Can't you stay for breakfast?" he begged. "Oh no, I never do that," she whispered in mock outrage as she kissed his cheek. "I always have breakfast at home. But I've left you a little present."
It was a little memory cube and when he put it onto the MV system in his bedroom; there was Kat, as if physically recreated in space, doing her strip for him again; demanding that he masturbate for her. He took it to the Vidicube and recreated her in six dimensions just as if she was still with him in his bedroom in flesh and blood. If anything, she was even more seductive and encouraging the second time around. And even though he knew the ending he was unable to resist. Then, exhausted, he went to bed. But an hour later he woke expecting her to be beside him and was desperately disappointed to remember that she'd gone. So, he went back to his bedroom in the Vidicube. Two hours later, after he'd returned to his real bed, he woke again and couldn't get back to sleep. "Just once more," he assured himself.
As a result of yet another viewing in the morning he slept well into Friday afternoon. Then he panicked. Maybe she'd already been and gone or maybe she was never coming back. He didn't have her VPA's contact details and it was too late to call her at work.
Anyway, she forbidden him to ever do that.
