Chapter 9

The glittering mobile palace of Istvan's bus rolled along Rome's Via Veneto. The ever-present scooting hordes of Lambrettas and Vespas scattered before it, parted, and joined, once more, their gay and noisy parade in its wake. Pedestrians gaped at it, in their gaze the envy of the local inhabitant for another new and invading tourist band.

Magnificently, importantly, ignoring the vulgar interest it was creating, the green-and-cream bus rolled along, individual and aloof. Up the winding Via Vencto it went, through the Old Wall, and onwards.

Several kilometres out of Rome itself, along the Via Appia, was the villa of Dino Carotti.

Carotti was a cinema cameraman. He was, at that very moment, riding the crest of the wave of popularity that comes to people in show business once they have been pronounced "fashionable."

Three years previously, he had filmed his first hit movie, moving him up from the obscure periphery of Cinecitta into the glittering limelight of fame. A second even more superb film followed. The mantle "photographic genius" settled even more firmly over his wide, elegant shoulders.

Then came his epic in black-and-white. It was a documentary called "Eye In the City"-which needed no story-sequence whatever to proclaim the miracle his camera-artistry.

Carotti was acclaimed universally. He was lionised at Cannes. His genius was applauded in Hollywood, London, Tokyo-wherever films arc made, or spoken about.

Wealth came to him. For ten years ahead, Dino Carotti could now command his studios-and his price.

Dino Carotti stood three inches over six feet in height, tapering down to the slender hips of a Gary Cooper. Tailored, invariably in silver-grey, he was that typical to type of black-and-grey Roman over whom a million shop-assistants were prepared to swoon; a man beautifully barbered, beautifully groomed, charming, vivacious, elegant.

The villa in which he lived, with Italy's reigning and most voluptuous actress, was not his own. He rented it.

"Why buy the place?" he had said, once, to Felicity Velda, the svelte and sinuous film beauty for whom, alone, he had rented it. "From Carotti, today, they could ask any price. And they would get it-I'm let Carotti make one bum movie, hey? Just one! After that? Pouf! Carotti is out-on his ear. Out-and in the gutter, for all they would ever care. And then, when Carotti wants to sell? Their price-again! Just half of what the house would be worth. And Carotti would have to accept it!"

It was to Carotti's villa that the baroness's party was going.

Awaiting them, nude in the sunshine of a lazy summer afternoon, were Felicity Velda, Dino, and Felicity's dose friends, Elaine and Hildegarde.

Elaine and Hildegarde were lesbians-members of that strange cult which is the perfect love of a woman for another woman.

They were an oddly-assorted pair.

For, Whereas Hildegarde was a powerfully-built Amazon, muscled and fleshed and hipped like a man except for her pendulous, powerful tits, Elaine was almost exactly the opposite. Perite and boyish, she scaled hardly a hundred and ten pounds to Hildegarde's robust and carelessly-carried hundred and sixty.

Elaine's hair was boyishly cropped. She had the pale body and figure of a stripling. Her pelvis was narrow and boyish so that when she walked she seemed to progress as men do, moving from the waist. And she possessed only the tiniest pair of titties-mere mounds thrust up from her torso, velvety and pointed only the least little bit towards her small, pink nipples. She boasted almost no hair at all over her cunt. Her nudity was like the nudity of a pre-adolescent little girl.

"I think I'm for a dip," she announced suddenly. Her body a white flash, she dived into the pool, creating scarcely a ripple over the surface.

"I'm damned if I know how she takes you," observed Felicity Velda to Hildegarde. "I mean, you're so-so overpowering, next to her."

Hildegarde chuckled. "Physique? It means nothing, Felicity. It is the heart of that girl that counts. Her heart's bigger than your pool, there."

That, indeed, was precisely the impression created by Elaine. For all her petite little body, she had the flashing eyes of inner strength.

"How long have you two been in love now?" asked Carotti, lazily.

"Three years," exulted Hildegarde. "Three wonderful, glorious years." A shudder gripped her as she thrilled to the thought of her beloved.

"That's longer than a whole lot of marriages last, these days," observed Carotti.

"And why not? We lesbians know a togetherness that is more, much more than marriage!"

"See, Felicity? I always told you-marriage is out!" quipped Dino to his mistress.

"Bastard I You know I want you!" she flashed back.

"And when you've got me? What then?"

"I hate you, Dino Carotti!"

"Not now, you don't. But you would."

"Your trouble, Felicity, is you're too complex to marry Dino," observed Hildegarde.

"Complex! Me, complex? He's the complicated one."

"No, honey. You are. You're a star. You're beautiful. Your breasts, your cleavage, your fabulous plunging necklines-there isn't a kid in Italy who doesn't know them. And you know it. You know you're popularand you know you can't be without the adulation of that mob. So poor Dino would have to share that part of you.

"So?"

"So, in marriage-you don't share. You share nothing! You live for one person, one thing only. Like Elaine and I live."

She paused, and Felicity and Dino considered her words. Then, gently, she went on:

"Secondly-your fabulous vices. Look. You're a narcissist-look at your insane love of clothes. And then, those damned whips you're always yakking about. Narcissism, clothes, whips-and that dependence of yours on the doting of a million fans! All this you want-and Dino's expected to share it all." She laughed, merrily. And as she laughed her exuberant tits jounced and jiggled.

Dino lay back, amused to see how Felicity would react to this ruthless analysis.

The actress said: "So? I dress for Dino alone. I undress for him alone. And the whips? For Dino's enjoyment alone."

Hildegarde raised her eyebrows. "You really believe that?" she asked, smiling.

"Of course I do! For whom else, then?"

"For you!"

And Hildegarde indicated, by no more than a swinging of her naked nipples, the voluptuous curves of the equallynude Felicity. The star's tits stood out, high, firm, and more beautiful than any marbelled Florentine statue, unconfined by any brassiere. The rest of Felicity's body was as statuesquely perfect as her incomparable bust.

"What you're trying to say is that I love myself more than I love Dino, then?" asked Felicity.

"Exactly. And it's not a fault-not if you admit it," said Hildegarde, levelly.

"I'm not sure I do admit it," said Felicity.

"No matter. The point is that you and Dino are on the only perfect basis, right now-lover and mistress. As husband and wife, however-you wouldn't last together a year."

"But I want him-so very much," pouted Felicity.

"Don't worry, kitten," said Dino, lazily. "You've got him. Till I find somebody with all you've got-you'll do."

"And that you can depend on," said Hildegarde, with finality.

Felicity was disappointed-but appeased.

The bus had finally arrived, spilling out its vivacious load of vacation-bound humanity amid the foursome around Carotti s pool.

"How splendid!" exclaimed the baroness as she took in the intimacy of the lush nudity of Carotti and his three guests. "Charming-and so utterly natural, Dino! Why not let's all take a swim? It's been such a long drive since Florence 1 What about it?"

"I'm a starter," boomed Berenice. "Theophilus? You for the water?"

"And afterwards a pastis, here in the evening sun? What better?" assented the huge African.

Dino and the baroness took swift care of the introductions. The nakedness of Dino's guests served to dispel any sense of formality. Anaka-Lee was first to strip. Dr. McGarrity needed no urging to follow suit. He dropped his garments where he stood, exposing his lean, tropic-toughened frame to the afternoon sunshine.

Hildegarde, her great bush of cunt-hair a swirling, tangle of hirsute delight, moved rapidly among the new guests, setting out new mattresses and proffering garden chairs around the side of the swimming pool.

Elaine had swum over to join the newcomers. Great globules of water over her slender body, she evoked the ardent admiration of both Reginaldo and Leslie, whose own unclad torsos hers so much resembled.

The baroness, Althea and Istvan undressed as well, plunging into the cool water with happy cries.

A gaiety infused the whole group. Istvan, diving beneath the pair of queers, would tweak a shrunken cock into semi-erection, and then swim happily beneath an established couple like Anaka-Lee and the doctor, darting a finger into a ready-oiled cunt, twanging an already half-turgid cock.

He made one such pass at Althea, and felt his powerful body encompassed into her reaching hungry grasp.

"Not yet," he sang out, happily. "Later, dear. You'll just have to bite on the bullet for a while!" .

"You," said Althea, "are nothing but a pig, Lavoipierre! Cockteaser, that's what you are!"

But, with a froth of bubbles, Istvan, released now from the tension of driving, did not even hear Althea's taunt.

He joyfully jiggled the bounteous tits of Berenice, wiping a disappearing finger beneath her mound of tangled public hair as it sailed by over his hand. He spied die phenomenal length of Shane McGarrity's cock, and gave it a quick, provocative toss-off.

He swam up close to the baroness and flung an arm about her shoulders, encompassing both her floating bubs in his momentary grip. Their nipples hard already, he dangled those two great hillocks in his palms. Then, playfully milking at their nipples as he swam away, he left her to seek her own release in that pool of nubile nudity.

He swam to the edge of the pool and heaved himself on powerful shoulders over the edge, his own penis as limp and unaroused as if he had been at his first Scout picnic

"Signor Carotti," he gasped, out of breath, "I haven't had so much fun ever since I first found out about little girls!"

"Glad you're enjoying yourself," grinned Carotti, hospitably. "Your first nude swimming party?"

"Absolutely the first," laughed Istvan. "But there've been so many fantastic *first times' on this trip, I seem to have lost count! What fabulous people!"

"There's a point," said Carotti. "You couldn't get just any crowd to cavort around like these people."

"People miss so much," lamented the driver.

"When they allow themselves to become hidebound and hogtied by convention, I agree," said Dino.

Istvan dried himself on a handy towel. From Felicity Velda he accepted a can of iced beer, and sank down into a nylon-strapped garden chair. He raised his glass to Felicity, toasting her. Appreciatively he set down the can after he had taken a long swallow.

"If anybody had told me," he said, "this morning, that I would be sitting, this evening, stark naked with Felicity Velda, also stark naked-I'd have bet my whole damn bus against it. Yet look-here we are, Istvan and Felicity

-and not a stitch of clothes on your entire fabulous body!"

Felicity indicated that the compliment had pleased her. She compressed her incomparable breasts together. Their curves became more prominent-more inconceivably lovely than ever.

"You like them?" she said, archly.

"I've been half in love with you, I think, since I saw your first film," Istvan confessed. "I've lain awake nights, wondering what it'd be like to sleep with you-to see you stripped. And now-look!"

"Look all you like," she said. "I love being undressed. Clothes bother me-except to go out in."

"I've got to admit I'm not quite accustomed yet, to all this," said Istvan gravely. Then he smiled again. "But I'm learning-fast."

Gradually, the party emerged from the pool. Soon all were taking iced drinks from a bar-table that had been hastily set up. Only Dr. McGarrity and Althea were still in the water. And they, the memory of Venice's Lido still with them, were openly engaged in love's oldest activity, oblivious to the others around them.

It had been Althea who had started that brief encounter in the water. Finding herself playfully spurned by Istvan she had deliberately set her cap at the doctor, Istvan had not realised the intensity of her desire at the moment of their encounter. When he had swum away from her, she looked about for somebody to entice into her willing hips-and she had found the doctor. It had taken but a moment of promiscuity for him to rise to full erection, and Althea led him to the deep end where she took advantage of the diving ladder to steady herself in the water.

Her cunt was wet with desire as he came at her. With her titties floating, hard-nippled, high in the water, she was ready for him. As he came at her, she yielded. Up went her limbs in the tepid water-and she arched the hips of Shane McGarrity into her aching, cocklustful cunt. She scissored his body between ardent thighs. He floated with his hips boring deep and delightfully into her slime-wet crotch. It took but the motion of the water to agitate cock within warm, receptive cunt. Her titties floating, swollen and at the peak of randiness into his grasp, it took little to bring her to orgasm.

And as she came, she screamed out her obscenities, gloriously unaware where she was, or who might be within earshot-oblivious even to whom it was who was engashed within her:

"Ooooh-h-h-hl Fuck me, Istvan," she shouted, shivering in ecstasy. "Fuck me-hard! Please-I implore you! Now-now when I'm hot and soo-o-o-o randy! Oooh-h-h-h, but Pm coming, I tell you-and it's loo-oovely! Fuck me-fuck me, deep into my twat, right in the juice of me, Istvan! Ram it into me, give it to me, boy! Never stop! No-o-oo-not now! Don't stop!"

Dr. McGarrity merely grinned-and redoubled his efforts to bring on his own approaching orgasm simultaneously with hers.

And then her coming, a writhing and spasmodic bodyjerking affair beneath the surface of the water, was over. Wearily, she dragged herself up the steel ladder, and it was Istvan, grinning with vicarious delight at having caught his name uttered by her in her spasm, who went to help her in her flop-titted exit from the water.

The sight of her, and of the already droop-pricked doctor was enough to provoke everybody into varying degrees of sexual readiness.

But the baroness intervened. Seeing the turn that was imminent, she put up an imperious hand.

"Not now," she said. "Save it up, people. Later is still time enough. Let's not rush this thing-it'll be just as exciting if we all hold off a while. Till after dinner tonight, perhaps? I think well all be the better then for just a little abstinence right now."