ernest greene

Everything in the enormous hotel bar was bright and blonde: the gleaming veneers of the square, modern furnishings, the pin-spots studding the ceiling, the leather upholstery on the stool where Steven Diamond was parked with his shoulders squared – even the bartender, golden hair spilling down the back of her snug, black uniform jacket. The bar crowned a glass and steel tower so high stray wisps of marine layer drifted by the vast expanse of surrounding windows. The sun had almost dropped into the sub-coastal murk and the streetlights of downtown Los Angeles had begun blinking on far, far below.
Alone at the end of a pale, varnished expanse of wood as long as a bowling lane, Steven surveyed his city in the quiet before the corner office crowd would rush in to drink away the day’s frustrations.
Steven had none. The deposition had gone well. As usual, he’d scheduled it for the end of the day when both the prosecutor and the material witness were eager to get home. It might have cost Steven a billable hour but he was not one to roll the meter. With the retainers he commanded, there was no need.
But then there had been the call from Ray. Ray, Ray, Ray. While his work was as free of frustrations as only that of an extremely competent mercenary can be, his personal life had some stubborn complications. At one time he had resented his younger half brother fiercely, not only for the easier road he’d traveled, but also for the delight he’d brought their mother through what seemed to Steven fairly modest accomplishments. But though he didn’t share Ray’s last name (Raymond Vincenzo, – not a lot of obvious similarity to Steven Diamond), Ray was all that remained of Steven’s bloodline.
Like most confidence men, confidence was the one thing Ray lacked, having never been tested in the world without Steven to pluck him out of its tiger pits and dry wells. He couldn’t help trying to convince others, hoping to convince himself.
Earlier today, he’d been typically insistent on the phone. He had something wonderful for Steven. He couldn’t describe it. Steven had to see for himself. In the first three minutes Steven added up three good reasons to be suspicious. Ray’s wonderful discoveries had often turned out to be expensive in unexpected ways. Some were worth it.
Curiosity alone, inspired by the excitement in Ray’s voice, would have gotten him to the end of that bar. If Ray ended up bringing Steven a problem, he’d just solve it like all the others.
From the paneled offices of Bunker Hill to the marble corridors of city hall to the sweaty, institutional-green antechambers of the 110 Hill Street Courthouse to Men’s Central off Santa Fe, Steven knew every back room where a fix could be put in. If ever a city could appreciate a resourceful criminal attorney, this was it. No one worked the system’s levers more smoothly. For those who could afford him, he was the best legal mechanic in town. And for those who couldn’t, he was occasionally inclined to do a bit of fixing anyway. Sometimes an owed favor was as bankable as a fat cashier’s check.
Morgan, the tall, lean, part-time actress who brought him his club soda with a twist was one of those for whom he had put in a pro bono fix. It was just a simple DUI with no priors and a good bartender in a place frequented by Steven’s clients and competitors was useful. Like so many, Morgan had come out here for the movies and made a few, her athletic frame strategically draped with scraps of animal skins. On camera, she’d usually died heroically, but even the stunt players agreed she could probably have eviscerated most them without spilling a drink. A trim and tanned forty, she still did some theater now and then but had stopped going to open calls.
“You think Sheriff Delgado will resign?” she asked, setting Steven’s drink dead center on the black napkin. Steven swirled the ice cubes and took a swig.
“Not this time. Already indicted and with his friends on the Board of Supervisor’s termed out, he’s finished.”
Steven’s was the smooth baritone of a radio announcer selling something expensive. He’d polished it over many hours persuading judges and juries to believe the patently ridiculous.
On the West Side they gossiped about film stars. Down here the inside talk was politics.
“Even with all he’s got on the D.A.’s office.?”
Morgan had hung onto her tough-girl delivery as well as her taut physique. Steven liked that about her. She was a pretty good saber fencer too, a legacy of her reign as sword-and-sandal queen. The two of them occasionally clanged steel on the planks of The Downtown Athletic Club.
“It’s an election year. Our new mayor will bring in his own tin for the sheriff’s office. Delgado will go quietly to avoid the hospitality of his own jail.”
Morgan glanced toward the host station where Julian, the thin, elegant host, greeted a young couple with impersonal cordiality.
“I think your party has arrived,” Morgan said.
“I hope it turns into a party. Anything involving my brother is suspect.”
“Let me know how it works out.”
Morgan turned to the barback just as Julian led the couple to Steven. Steven stood to greet them, exchanging a back-thumping embrace with the younger man in the blue leather jacket. Steven wasn’t just taller than Ray. The vast span of his back and his tree trunk legs made him seem of an altogether more massive species. Ray had always been a rather delicate boy though with his hipster goatee and his expensive, skinny, blue- tinted shades he remained conveniently ageless. He may not have been a rock star, but he knew how to play one on TV.

Julian started to pull a stack of menus from under his arm.
“Would you like to be seated now, or have a drink first, Mr. Diamond?”
“We’ll take the drink, but just one.”
Julian flashed his professional smile as he pulled out the two adjacent barstools.
“I’ll hold you to that Mr. Diamond. We’re slammed from 8:30 on.”
“I have a feeling this will be an early dinner.”
Turning from Ray, Steven looked at his younger brother’s companion for the first time. In a city full of beautiful women, most in some kind of trouble, Steven had met many. He never lost his appreciation for the exceptional few. He’d seen a picture or two of this one in Forbidden, Ray’s magazine, but there was much that pictures did not convey: her surprisingly small stature and formal bearing, the dark luster of her shoulder-length bobbed hair; the yielding warmth of her brown eyes emphasized by luxuriant, expertly applied theatrical lashes; the extravagant fullness of her slightly parted lips (lacquered a subtly wicked red). A black jet choker accentuated the slender grace of her neck. She stayed out of the sun: her complexion fair, almost porcelain. She couldn’t have been much over thirty.
A short silk-satin jacket, closed at the neck with lingerie hooks, fell straight from breasts all the more ample on her petite frame. The top of a full, corset-waisted circle-skirt rose barely to the hem of the jacket. Where her skirt ended just below her knees, Steven noted the black, seamed stockings, the patent pumps with very high, slender heels and the red soles that every woman in L.A. coveted. Elbow-length leather gloves with buttoned wrists and turned back cuffs were rather retro and a bit wicked also. She carried a small deco clutch beaded in silver and black.
If this was Ray’s surprise, it was one of his best. Were Dodger Stadium filled with young women in big hats, sunglasses and black trench coats Steven could stand on the pitcher’s mound and know with absolute certainty which of them would come down and kneel in front of him. The straightness of O’s spine and her quiet, deferential manner, among other subtle cues, suggested she’d be the one.
Ray took her by the gloved hand and brought her forward.
“Steven, this is O. O, my brother Steven.”
Ray placed O’s hand in Steven’s. Her squeeze was firm, but fleeting. Steven’s look was long, leisurely and appraising.
“Your brother’s told me a lot about you,” O said, glancing just once into his eyes before averting hers, the effect simultaneously bold and demure. Her voice was soft, a bit deeper than expected, but her enunciation quite clear.
“He’s told me absolutely nothing about you,” Steven replied. “What is O short for?”
Ray laughed.
“Even I don’t know.”
“How refreshing. Someone who can keep a secret. If more people did that, I’d be out of business. A pleasure to meet you, O.”
Steven held onto O’s long, slender, gloved hand as he helped her onto the adjoining barstool. How effortlessly she swept the skirt aside with her free hand so it fell around her when she sat down, revealing nothing in the smooth movement, though she did take in a short, sharp breath when her backside made contact with the leather seat. Not much under that skirt, Steven surmised. And under the draped blouse, perhaps a hint of hardware, though he couldn’t be sure.
Steven waved Morgan over. Morgan actually blinked and looked twice at O, a major display of interest for one accustomed to seeing some of the world’s most tempting arm-candy.
“What can I bring you fine-looking folks?” she asked cheerfully, cocking an eyebrow at Steven.
Steven tilted his head toward his brother.
“He’ll have a G and T, Bombay Sapphire.”
He turned his attention to O.
“For you?”
O seemed tentative, almost hesitant. She glanced over at Ray.
“May I get a Campari and soda?”
Ray pondered a beat, as if pronouncing on something important. Steven knew gestures of authority were far more common than authority itself.
“Why not?”
Morgan’s other eyebrow went up.
“And you, Mr. Diamond?”
“What do I usually have here, and do I like it?”
“Right then. Compari and soda, Bombay Sapphire gin and tonic and a Stella with a glass.”
She turned back toward the bottles.
“They know you pretty well at this place,” Ray said with a laugh.
“I prefer taking my mysterious encounters on friendly turf. If you can’t afford one, I can buy you a tie.”
Steven reached across O to tug on the open collar of Ray’s dark blue shirt. Ray’s face exploded into the bright, boyish smile no one ever tired of seeing.
“Unlike lawyers, magazine publishers are not required to cinch their necks with remnants of ancient heraldry.“
Ray turned to O.
“Steven became a lawyer so he’d have an excuse to dress up every day.”
O took a photographer’s inventory of significant details. Steven’s flamboyant style provided plenty of those, anchored by a bespoke double-breasted black wool-crepe suit with important roped shoulders. It was accented with a black-silk rose stick-pinned through the left lapel, a rather daring red shirt, a black tie embroidered in red with the “Death or Glory” skull-and-bones motto of the British 17th/21st Lancers, a black pocket square with rolled red edges and mirror-polished, wing-tip paddock boots O was sure had come off the benches at John Lobb. He was, without a doubt the most elegant man she’d seen on this coast. And he wasn’t even gay. No gay man had ever looked at her the way Steven did.
Though she knew Steven and Ray were only half siblings, she had expected at least a superficial resemblance. There was no hint at all of Ray’s even features in Steven’s hard mug. His was a fighter’s face, all weathered angles and small scars. His close-cropped hair had gone almost entirely white, his merry blue eyes hooded by up-angled brows. He had a dreadnought of a chin and a grin so dazzlingly white and even, she half-wondered if he concealed a second row of teeth behind it. He looked to be somewhere north of fifty, but his lightness of movement belonged to a much younger man.
“Actually,” she pronounced, “he looks like a friendly devil.”
“And so I am,” Steven said, raising the glass Morgan had just filled for him.
“To friendly devils and beautiful women in black,” he said. The three of them clinked crystal. Steven’s hands were strong, immaculately manicured, a silver signet ring with a plain, black onyx shield instead of a cipher on the third finger of his right. On his left wrist he wore a big moon-phase watch with so many complications O wondered how anyone could actually tell time with it.
O was a bit too careful in her movements. Steven suspected he frightened her at least a bit. It was a common reaction among certain women and not necessarily unpleasant for either party. He imagined she felt it right where she liked to and had to restrain herself from rubbing her bare thighs together under the skirt. Steven mercifully suggested they take a table.
It was right next to one of the giant panes through which the tower’s looming height was more apparent. It looked down on the machinery-cluttered roofs of other very tall structures nearby in which lights had also begun to come on. Dusk is a swift affair in the basin and darkness closed in fast.
That O sat up very straight, heels planted firmly on the floor, knees slightly parted so the full skirt fell between her thighs, did not escape Steven’s notice as Julian drifted a black napkin over her lap. O’s lips remained slightly parted as well. Someone whether herself or another, had gone to a lot of trouble training this woman to broadcast the right signals on the frequency to which his libido was permanently tuned.
Steven waved off the wine list, pulled a slender leather envelope from an inside pocket and put on a pair of large, perfectly round, black-rimmed spectacles. With O seated between them, menu unopened, Steven and Ray caught up on each other’s respective enterprises while surveying the narrow strips of cream-colored paper between the leather covers.
O remained silent. Her mouth had gone parched and she was afraid to call attention to her dilated pupils. It was a telling effect whenever she got excited. She took a sip through the red straw of her aperitif.
“What’s good here?” Ray asked.
“The lack of music” Steven replied, “But I’ll probably have the salmon tartar and the lobster ravioli.”
Ray laughed.
“What, no Wagyu filet?”
Steven was a dedicated carnivore who drank beer, smoked cigars, kept late hours and still had a B.P. of one hundred over sixty-five and a resting pulse of fifty-eight.
“Next time. You have it and I’ll take a bite. What does O like?”
Talking about her in the third person was part of the curtain raiser for the act to follow. Any session – and this situation had all the hallmarks of one in the making – begins at first meeting. How it goes after depends greatly on the opening moves.
Glancing over at O, her elegant, gloved hands folded on the white tablecloth, Steven already looked toward dessert. It wasn’t just O’s beauty that stirred interest somewhere further south than his stomach. Her muted theatricality seemed full of promise. All Steven knew know about O was that she was the star photographer for Ray’s magazine, or rather the magazine with Ray’s name on the masthead and Steven’s signature on the articles of incorporation.
“My guess would be the frisee salad and the Dungeness crab cakes,” Ray suggested.
Steven smiled at O, flashing those predator’s teeth.
“Was he right?”
She shrugged, causing a mild disturbance under the black satin jacket.
“Ray always orders for me. It’s a luxury, not having to decide something once in a while.”
“Every time she looks through the viewfinder she has to make a choices,” Ray explained. “Fortunately, she makes most of them right.”
The waiter, a tall, young man with an affable manner no doubt cultivated for auditions, was next to the table in his starched whites as soon as the men’s menus touched the linen.
“Good to have you back, Mr. Diamond,” he said, certainly sounding sincere.
“Nice to be back.”
“Until the craziness starts,” the waiter confided in a stage whisper.
“You’ll get us out in time I’m sure,” Steven replied, proceeding to rattle off their selections, which the waiter repeated, withdrawing after a quick bow.
Ray told O that Steven knew everyone in town.
“Only the important people, “ Steven clarified. “Parking valets, waiters, executive assistants, sales associates, you know, the ones with the real power.”
They all laughed. O’s laugh was light and musical and, Steven suspected, not often heard. He could do with more of it.
Latin kitchen messengers wearing black aprons brought over small cups of mushroom consommé and big, flaky popovers to keep them busy during the wait for the first course. Ray juggled one of the hot popovers onto O’s bread plate.
“You’ve got to try these. They’re evil.”
He tore one apart, buttered a section and offered it to O. O unbuttoned her gloves and slid them off, neither hurrying nor making a burlesque act of it, and draped them over the arm of her chair. She took Ray’s offering whole, with no affected delicacy. For the first time, Steven saw the silver shackle ring on O’s hand. He’d seen many versions of the standard door-knocker design, but this was the most elegant – clean and simple, big enough to catch the watchful eye but not out of proportion to O’s slender fingers. O’s nails were short and perfectly buffed a medium pink as carefully chosen as everything she wore.
The ring was definitive. O was someone’s slave. Ray undoubtedly thought she was his, but Steven had doubts.
“Definitely evil,” she pronounced, neatly dismantling the pastry, allotting half a pat of butter to each side.
“She can eat anything and never gains an ounce, just like you,” Ray told Steven.
“Shooting burns a lot of calories.” O swallowed a second bite.
“I’ve seen your work” Steven said, “You go for the strenuous angles.”
“She’s got a lot more stamina than I do,” Ray interjected. “And she’s not afraid of getting messy.”
“I just look like I would be,” O said. There was that laugh again.
Steven fixed his cool, blue sharpshooter’s gaze directly on O’s face.
“More importantly, you understand the content. It shows in every frame.”
O shifted uncomfortably in her seat. This conversation was no longer about photography.
The rest of dinner was occupied with the current state of the magazine business, which was hurting, and criminal practice, which wasn’t. No one seemed to be hurrying through the meal, but the air was heavy with expectation. All agreed, or rather the men decided, to take a nightcap at Steven’s place, which was nearby. Steven called for the check. Ray made a feint toward his inside jacket pocket. Steven stopped him cold with an upraised hand.
“You’re money’s no good here,” Steven said, taking out a long, sliver-edged wallet and an ornate black-resin fountain pen as big as a cigar and encircled with silver Art Nouveau scrollwork. Steven barely glanced at the check before tossing a black charge card into the folder. The slip came back in about ten seconds and Steven signed off on it with a flamboyant flourish. Lawyers signed their names to lots of things. Steven wanted his clients to feel they got their money’s worth of his trademark purple ink.
Collecting O’s vintage fur shoulder wrap and exchanging farewell handshakes with Julian, Steven, O and Ray shouldered through the grumbling throng waiting to be seated, O safely between them. They rode the heart-stopping glass elevator down forty floors to the garage. Steven presented his claim check and a crisp twenty, exchanging a few jolly words in fluent Spanish with the valet captain. Steven had meant what he said regarding whom it really counted to know well – those left alone with either one’s food or one’s car.
O stood at the curb, Steven and Ray a few steps behind, studying her carefully. Even the roomy circle skirt couldn’t entirely obscure O’s high, hard handful of an ass.
Ray elbowed Steven, grinning.
“Just your kind of view,” he said quietly.
“Quite scenic. “
Steven’s mind wandered back to a weekend in a double suite at Principe di Savoia in Milan with a couple of splendid French whores they’d picked up at a café in The Galleria after a surprisingly unexceptional performance at La Scala. Choosing partners for the first round, Ray had made both girls bend over in front of Steven to spur a quick decision. They had all been laughing back then. Tonight’s engagement, Steven suspected, would be no laughing matter.
Steven’s car was parked right up front and when the runner kicked it over, the high-pitched whine of the turbocharger whistled through the tiled cavern. The sedan was the only one of its kind, a two-tone black-over-silver Jaguar of an older body style with a strong retro feeling. But there was nothing retro under the sheet metal. It was one of a handful of street-modified S-Type-R racing models that had been imported to the U.S. and it was terrifyingly fast. Ray’s anthracite-gray BMW came right up behind it. O started toward its passenger door, but Ray blocked her way.
“I want you to ride with Steven.“ It wasn’t a suggestion. O did not hesitate, going straight to the passenger side of the Jaguar and waited for Steven to assist her by her gloved hand into the low, body-contoured leather seat. She got her skirt under her with just a flash of a stockinged leg that would have raised the dead.
Steven slid in behind the wheel and popped the shift lever into gear. The dashboard lit up red around clusters of old-fashioned white-faced gauges. The burl wood and stitched leather cockpit still smelled like it had just rolled off the showroom floor. O sat still and straight, knees and lips never touching.
Steven slid back the cover of the glass moon roof as they eased out into the street.
“Look up,” he said, “it’s almost like being in Manhattan.” O gazed upward at the glistening office towers forming a canyon around them, baring her tender throat in the process.
“It’s a lovely view,” she agreed, “but it’s not Manhattan.”
Steven sighed. No it wasn’t. Were it not for Ray, he might be practicing there instead. Though both Steven and Ray had grown up entirely in California Steven had lived all over the world. He’d moved back to Los Angeles after their mother died, only to be reminded daily why he left in the first place.
The car was tight and silent except for the high note of the turbo. It didn’t ride like a luxury car, the tightly sprung suspension translating the bumps and dips of L.A.’s neglected streets up through the frame. O looked over at Steven’s chiseled features. How must it feel to be so comfortable in one’s body? Again, O experienced that strange hot-and-cold feeling deep down. Ray had hurt her, and seen her hurt, many times, but she wasn’t scared of him. In some way, he was a boy, and boys had never frightened O. Boys were easy. This elegant monster was most definitely not a boy. Beyond that, she wasn’t sure what he was.
“Ray’s very happy since you’ve been together,” Steven said. O hesitated to talk about Ray, even with his brother. Especially with his brother.
“He’s told you that?”
“He doesn’t have to. He’s an expert at looking like he’s having a good time, but I used to watch him stare out the window on rainy days, back when we still had them here, and wonder what was bothering him.”
“Did you ever find out?”
She clearly expected a more complete answer than he was prepared to give.
“Yes. But I haven’t seen him like that since you came along.”
Crossing Figueroa, skyscrapers gave way to low, grimy commercial buildings with signs in Spanish, bright lights pouring from open doorways. Knots of dark-skinned people clustered under the street-lamps and around the big boxes and tents on the dirty sidewalks here and there.
“Welcome to the nicer part of Skid Row,” Steven said, aware of O staring out the window. “They’ve cleaned it up a lot. Most of the dealers have moved over to Sixth Street.”
“You know this area rather well, Mr. Diamond,” O said, a bit archly.
“It’s convenient to the places I visit my clients. I can be at The Federal Detention Center in seven minutes.”
“Quick service.”
“Not if you’re sitting in The Federal Detention Center.”
The dingy gray landscape of taquerias and murder motels gave way to the patchy greenery of MacArthur Park. The dirty lake in the park’s panhandle reflected the lights from a tall square building, buttressed in concrete X-frames, at the far end. It still looked like the Late International-Style office tower it had once been. When Steven pulled up to the massive steel gate of the parking structure they caught the headlights of Ray’s car behind them in the mirror. Ray had his stereo turned up so loud they could both hear it.
Ray was in high spirits. Since The Plan first came into his mind, he’d thought of little else, working through the fine points, making all the arrangements, carefully rehearsing his lines in the mirror at home during O’s stay in Pasadena. Now it would all play out just as he intended. Ray never stopped expecting his endless procession of schemes to do so, no matter how rarely that happened.
The steel-mesh gate rattled open and the cars descended the spiral ramp into a cavernous automotive museum. The floor was covered in spotless black and white flagging. Rows of overhead fluorescent lights popped on as they passed a sensor to reveal the most lavish garage O had ever seen, complete with an hydraulic lift, walls of diamond-plate cabinets, a huge chromed compressor and a cart full of Facom pit-stop tools. Steven parked at the end of a row of exotic, ruinously expensive, spotlessly shiny vehicles. Ray pulled in next to him, speakers still booming through his open windows.
Getting out, O had a quick look at the other cars, ranging from a meticulously restored Auburn boat-tail speedster to a Mercedes SUV. In between, she inventoried a Mercedes gullwing coupe, a new Morgan Plus Four in BRG and a totally anonymous blacked-out Lincoln Town Car. The fleet’s flagship was a spectacular Rolls fitted with suicide doors and a brushed aluminum hood. She didn’t have to ask to know they were all Steven’s. All but the Morgan were black.
The lobby was as austere as the exterior, its spare furnishings carefully chosen to match the architecture. A bulky, shaven-headed black man in a blue blazer looked up from the tiny TV on his desk as they entered.
“Evening Mr. Diamond, Mr. Vincenzo” the security guard said with a nod.
“Quiet shift, Mr. Ambrose?” Steven replied with the burnished amiability he showed toward the city’s human infrastructure.
“Dead as heaven on a Saturday night.”
“Just how we like it.”
O had already formed a mental picture of what she’d see when the elevator opened on the top floor and it was entirely inaccurate. She’d spent a lot of time in the homes of the rich and influential, finding most bland and impersonal. What she saw when she entered was anything but.
Steven certainly had The Big Guy’s view. Through sweeping windows twelve feet high O took in the night cityscape from the glittering skyline of downtown across the park to the few remaining terra cotta facades of the old hotels (their aging neon signs missing letters like gaps in a row of teeth) and all along the backdrop of Silver Lake hillsides to the distant brilliance of The Griffith Park Observatory. This was how Steven saw the world – from above. Massive sliding doors led to a broad deck outside of the building. On one corner of the deck, a massive pair of I.D.F binoculars had been mounted on a pier so Steven could have a closer look at whatever. He used them a lot during the summer to watch the mating and fledging of a pair of red-tailed hawks and their offspring that nested in the neo-Babylonian effigies ringing the roofline of the one-grand, now derelict hostelry directly across the park from him.
The interior was vast to be sure and grandly eccentric. Steven slowly powered up the overhanging low-voltage lamps on the cables draped overhead. Their illumination was supplemented by up lighting from a pair of tall torcheres with wide chrome heads flanking a massive silver-painted leather sofa with a built-in chaise at one end. The three of them could easily have slept on the thing head-to-foot.
The walls were finished in matte faux aluminum and every piece of furniture, from the impressive row of tall bookshelves covering the far wall to the sides of the black-felted pool table not far from the open kitchen, was faced in some kind of metal. Even the long dining table had a steel top surrounded by aluminum Emeco chairs. The sealed concrete flooring, however, was greatly warmed by the biggest Tibetan dragon rug O had ever seen – black with the huge mythical beast hooked in red and green.
Three big-screen monitors were bolted into one wall, but otherwise there was framed artwork everywhere, floor to ceiling, most of it shockingly unsuitable for public viewing. Clearly, access to Steven’s private quarters was tightly controlled.
“Welcome to my brother’s cabin in the sky” Ray said,
“Look around” Steven said. “I’ll pour us a real drink.”
He flashed a grin at O’s obvious wonderment as she made her way around the huge space, checking out the museum-grade, large-scale aircraft models strung on monofilament from the cement I-beams of the ceiling, the rows of foreign military hats under glass domes atop the bookshelves, the case of erotic netsuke, the drawings and paintings – lewd, cruel and exquisite beyond anything she’d ever seen in person. She stopped with a small gasp in front of a John Willie watercolor of a tall redhead whipping a near-naked brunette tied to a tree.
“It’s real,” Steven said. “There are only about a dozen in circulation. The dealer wept when he let it go.”
“Steven collects all kinds of things,” Ray sighed, settling in on the couch. “He had to take the whole top floor to hold them all. Then he had to buy the whole building to keep everyone away from them.”
On a shiny hook next to the watercolor hung the most exquisite riding crop O had ever seen, its heavy sterling handle fitted with a large ring at the top and a smaller one down at the ferule where the tightly-woven leather shaft attached, as if it were intended for wearing on a sword frog. The leather tapered cleanly, then flared into a broad head. O shuddered at the sight of it, wanting to touch it, or be touched by it, but not daring to ask permission for either.
“It’s a Betony Vernon,” Steven said of the silver-hilted crop, “like your ring.”
Steven missed nothing. Though she’d painstakingly assembled herself to the exacting specifications Ray had laid out, she wondered if there was some detail she’d omitted. She was relieved when the conversation shifted back to the construction of Steven’s quarters.
“I drew the floor plan and did most of the build-out myself,” Steven said, pouring amber streams from a black cut-crystal decanter (ornamented with the same skull and bones woven through Steven’s tie) into three matching black highball glasses. “Working with my hands relaxes me.”
Beneath all his external polish, Steven was nothing if not physical. He could have been just as happy, maybe happier, as a painter or sculptor, but somebody in the family had to make a living.
“I find it hard to picture you bringing clients here,” O observed coolly, taking her glass from the black leather tray on which Steven offered it, her gaze still fixed on the whip.
“He keeps a vanilla office for them,” Ray reassured her. “He doesn’t want them distracted while he’s explaining his fee structure.”
Ray patted the silver cushion next to him. O came straight over and sat down, her straight spine never touching the back of the couch, her heels planted firmly on the rug a few inches apart, her lips still slightly ajar.
Again, Steven noticed the precision of O’s protocol. Ray was fairly haphazard at training partners. When not directly involved in something sexual, he wasn’t terribly strict with them. As a disciplinarian, he was less indulgent than inattentive. But O was always tightly focused. It was in her pictures. It was in her whole demeanor. She didn’t even take off her wrap or gloves until Steven requested it. She kept the deco clutch nearby. The more Steven saw of O and Ray together, the less likely a pairing they made.
“I don’t worry much about my public image,” Steven said, putting the tray on the floor before settling deep into a matching metallic-leather club chair and resting his glossy boots on the ottoman. “When you see me on TV, I’m usually dragging some gangster through the perp walk with his coat over his face. No one expects me to be a Boy Scout.”
“And you find that convenient,” O concluded for him.
“Not as convenient as what I do,” Ray said, swirling his glass.
“I suppose not,” Steven conceded. “The bar association takes a dim view of having sex with one’s professional contacts.”
“In my business, it’s considered suspicious if you don’t. O, would you mind preparing something for us? It’s in the black box on the table.”
Ray pointed to a richly lacquered humidor inlaid with gold medallions on a nearby glass table. O opened it to reveal stacks of pungent Cohibas, mostly figurados and splendidos, and took out a Mylar bag. Closing the lid, she spotted a narrow, oblong silver tray next to the humidor with an engraved rolling box and a steel grinder at either end. O extracted a perfect, spicy, sticky bud from the bag, took the lid off the grinder and tossed it in. Twisting the lid three times, she tapped its shredded contents onto the wooden surface inside the rolling box, scooped them into a paper from a green packet and formed a perfect joint.
Both men watched as she licked the gummed edge with the pointed, pink tip of her tongue. Twirling one end, she snipped the other with a pair of cigar scissors from the tray. Bringing the finished joint over to Ray, O dropped to her knees so smoothly her circle skirt spread out around her like a halo. Ray passed the joint deferentially to his big brother, who fired it with an enormous engine-turned lift-arm lighter that flared in front of his face for just an instant. He was sure he caught O glancing over at him in the fleeting illumination as the spicy, green cloud spiraled upward. O gracefully folded her hands behind her in silence. Inhaling deeply first, Steven slipped Ray the burning reefer. Ray took a long drag, coughing it back out almost immediately
“Man, I don’t know where you get this stuff,” he rasped. It goes straight to the medulla.”
“Okay Ray,” Steven said, white plumes boiling out through his nostrils, “why are we here?”
“I was starting to wonder if you’d ever get to that one, counselor.”
Ray looked back and forth between them, face lit up, rubbing his hands.
“This was so meant to happen,” he said gleefully.
Ray looked down into O’s averted eyes. His satisfied grin went momentarily slack, as if he’d just heard last call when he was about to order another round. He took her face in his hands and turned it up toward him, leaning over to kiss her hard and long. She gave herself to it, keeping her crossed wrists behind her back. Her breasts rose and fell a bit more rapidly under the shiny jacket, again showing a hint of concealed hardware, but she remained otherwise perfectly still until he withdrew, instructing her to turn around. She pivoted gracefully, folding her legs under her and lifting her hair in the back without being told.
Ray unhooked O’s jet choker, kissed the nape of her neck. Opening O’s handbag, he dropped her necklace inside, bringing out a slender, white gold collar with a ring on the front and a small locking latch to the back. Circling her throat with the metal band, he secured it with a quiet click. O came smoothly back around to face them again, her posture as before.
This was the unmistakable signal. O, or at least her body, would soon be at Steven’s disposal, as he expected. Ray confirmed the expectation with crude practicality.
“Her test report is in the bag if you want to look,” Ray said matter-of-factly. “They gave her a full panel at The Mansion before I brought her home.“
“I’ll take your word for it. Want to see mine?”
“Already have. You’re in The Mansion’s database, remember?”
“You always were a snoopy little shit. I assume you told her about the vasectomy as well.”
“No worries. She had her tubes tied last year. Like I said, it was beschert.”
They both laughed, getting O’s attention, adrift since the collar went on. The first few minutes were always like that. She’d be fine once she was naked. Then they wouldn’t just be talking about her as an object. She would be one.
Steven leaned forward for a closer look. Ray took the joint while Steven hooked a finger through the ring on O’s collar, lifting her eyes to his.
“She’s quite a prize,” he said evenly.
“You have no idea,” Ray replied in a hoarse whisper, contrails billowing from the corners of his mouth. He reached around to hold the joint in front of O, but she shook her head just enough to toss her hair.
“No thank you, Sir.”
He passed it on to Steven, who continued to lean forward as they smoked, studying O’s face.
“How long was she up at The Mansion?”
Ray guessed it had been about a month.
“She probably taught them more than they taught her.”
Ray laughed.
“No doubt. O is the best slave I’ve ever had. She’s the best slave any Master ever had.”
O looked down at the floor now, her spine stiffening uncomfortably. It was her job to please and that of her Masters to judge.
“Evidently she hasn’t been trained to properly take a compliment.”
“Thank you, Sir,” O whispered in desperate haste.
O was acutely aware of her accessibility under the skirt. She had assumed they would use her together. The prospect was the opposite of frightening, and yet the fear was there, as it had been since she first set eyes on Steven. She didn’t doubt that Steven could make her cry and scream in ways good and bad, but the fear this knowledge inspired was just a familiar, juicy tingle at the promise of some expert woman handling.
The weed taking effect, Steven’s eyelids dropped a bit, reducing his gaze to a narrow, penetrating gleam.
Ray shifted uncomfortably on the couch.
“She’s the first one I’ve been with I thought might be good enough for you.”
Steven leaned back, taking a sip of the blonde whisky in the black glass.
“You’re awfully generous. What, precisely, do you have in mind?”
“Suppose you had something you loved but knew should rightly belong to someone else,” he asked, standing to circle O. “Something too perfect to own just for yourself. I think I have something here we might enjoy in common for a long time to come.”
“Sort of like a timeshare?” Steven suggested with half a laugh.
“More like transferring the deed.”
Steven stood next to Ray. They both looked down at O. She composed her face to conceal the rising turmoil within. The room suddenly felt very hot. O, whose demure bearing was entirely false, unhooked her blouse with trembling fingers, revealing the closely spaced, perfectly convex inner curves of her breasts above the corset-top of the skirt.
“You’ve got my attention,” Steven said.
There’s still something you need and I have it,” Ray said flatly, “and that’s not right, after all you’ve given me.”
Contemplating Ray’s implications, Steven raised an eyebrow.
“If I wanted a slave, don’t you think I’d have one? Playmates are lower maintenance.”
Ray shook his head ruefully.
“You’ll want this one.”
“What if she doesn’t want me?”
Steven squatted face-to-face with O, tugging up his wide trouser cuffs as if intending to stay a while.
“What about it O? Do you want me?”
O looked long and hard at Steven’s weathered features.
“Yes,” she said at last. “I do… Sir.”
“I might take yes for an answer,” Steven said, standing back up, “once I know the exact terms of the offer.”
“She’ll be yours whenever you please,” Ray told him, “She has a house in Los Feliz, so she’s not far away. You’ll have the keys and a special cell phone number. For whatever purpose, when you call or come over, she’ll offer herself. In between, she’ll still be mine, but O has to understand that’s not a real distinction. Whatever I have, I owe to you.”
Steven sat on the arm of the couch facing O, who continued to kneel, frozen in place, relieved that the protocols she’d learned did not require her to move unless ordered. She wasn’t sure she could have.
“Our mother was married twice,” Steven explained. “She had me with Husband Number One. Times were tough then. She was an aspiring opera singer and my father thought he might make it as a writer, at least until he was blacklisted. He was eventually rehabilitated, but it took too long. She left him and married Ray’s father, who was younger and seemed to have better prospects. “
“Our mother wasn’t really cut out for motherhood. Steven’s taken care of me most of my life.”
“Cleaned up after him, to be more precise.”
O couldn’t stop herself from looking up. What did she see in Ray’s face? Bitterness? Disappointment? She wasn’t sure, but it was not a look she’d seen before or wanted to again.
“It’s true,” Ray conceded. “I’ve got a knack for finding trouble and Steven’s always been there to drag me out of it. He’s the main backer of Forbidden. Whatever belongs to me I owe to him.”
O looked over at Steven, amused.
“Then you already own me, or at least the part of me that shoots for the magazine.”
“We’re talking about other parts now,” Ray said, harshness creeping into his tone. He nudged her in the ribs with the toe of an alligator boot.
“Present yourself.”
Languidly, O leaned forward until her breasts touched the floor. She swept the skirt up, composing it across her back, then stretched her arms out in front of her and touched her forehead to the floor. Her pelvis was rotated up, her knees apart. As Steven had assumed, the smoky Wolford stay-ups were all she wore underneath the full skirt and old-fashioned tulle petticoat. He looked lingeringly at what he was meant to see.
It was, he had to admit, a lovely view. O’s muscular backside, like her breasts, was all the more obvious for her delicate frame, as were her hemispherical hips. Her thighs perfectly smooth above the triple velvet bands at the tops of her luxury stockings, emphasizing the triangular space between her thighs that left her unusually exposed from almost any angle. This was a feature Steven always appreciated in women. O’s legs were long for someone of such diminutive proportions, and well defined beneath the seamed nylons. Photography, like fencing, was as much in the legs as in the hands.
O opened wider to show more. She was completely bare, front to back. Her plump, pink girly bits were perfectly symmetrical, with just enough padding to assure a comfortable ride.
“Did you ever see such lovely dimples?”
Ray pressed down on the small of O’s back, rotating her pelvis even further upward.
“Reach back and show him the rest,” Ray ordered.
O took a firm grip on each buttock and parted them. O’s puckered rosebud looked almost virginal, but after a stay a The Mansion that was impossible.
You like getting it back there, don’t you?” Ray asked, reading Steven’s mind.
“Yes, Sir. I do.”
“She’s quite perverse,” Ray continued. “Maybe even enough for you.”
Unbidden, O turned on her knees, lowered her head and kissed the top of each of Steven’s boots lightly before settling back onto her heels.
“Very nice, but I think I’d rather continue this discussion with us all standing up if you don’t mind.”
O rose nimbly between them, smoothing her skirt before lacing her fingers behind her neck like a prisoner. She looked down at her high heels automatically, but Steven casually scooped a strong, smooth hand under her hair. The back of her skull felt like a bird’s in his grip, as though he could easily crush it. He made her meet both their gazes directly.
“Was any of this negotiated in advance?”
She suspected this was the voice Steven used in court.
“Not specifically, Sir.”
Ray laid out the general compact under which O served anyone he designated.
Steven pressed, cross-examining.
“I assume that confers very limited use rights.”
“It’s usually a one-time thing,” Ray said with a shrug.
“They don’t get the house key or the secret cell phone number, I don’t imagine, or the privilege of summoning O whenever they sprout boners.”
O stifled a laugh. Steven went so easily from prince of the city to coarse commoner and back.
“Why are you fucking with me?” Ray demanded, clearly annoyed. “I’m trying to do something nice for you.”
“Nice, yes. But for me or for yourself? My questions go to motive. And in any case, I think O gets a vote on such a broad mandate.”
She looked back and forth between them, such as Steven’s unwavering hand around the rear of her cranium allowed. Disappointment edged with scorn crept into her voice.
“You’re really not asking me for a decision, are you?”
“I’m sure it would be easier for all of us if I simply embraced my good fortune, but there’s something I need first.”
Ray sounded exasperated. Why could Steven never let anything just happen?
“I’ve said she’s yours for the taking. What more do you need?”
“Express and specific consent.”
“O’s perfectly capable of walking out at any time. Neither of us would try to stop her.”
Steven’s laughter startled them.
“I doubt we could if we tried. But consent is more than just the absence of ‘no.’ It’s an expression of mutual intent.”
Ray scowled at his brother.
“Spoken like a true lawyer.”
Steven released his hold on the back of O’s head.
“You don’t know anything about me,” he told her in a warning tone. “You have no idea what submitting to me would be like. We’ve spent less than three hours together and your Master is offering me full possession of you. Doesn’t that raise some concerns?”
“It frightens the shit out of me, Sir.”
The signs were there: the wide-open pupils, the heaving chest, the slight trembling of the knees.
“I suppose that’s part of the appeal. But you might be quite surprised and, perhaps, unprepared for what serving me really means.”
“I have few hard limits,” O declared. “I’m sure you’d respect them.”
O felt challenged in a way she didn’t like.
Steven could see as much.
“That’s never the problem. The arrangement my brother proposes carries obligations beyond the merely physical. The surrender I require is absolute and unsentimental. You love Ray, right?”
O’s lashes fluttered down.
“Of course.”
“But you don’t love me. Can you give me everything you give him anyway? Please don’t answer without thinking.”
O thought, hard but not long. She felt a tenderness for Ray she couldn’t imagine this tempered-steel paladin would ever inspire. Most men found her submission so compelling they would do anything to secure it, making them all ultimately unsuitable to her own desires. This one might be different.
O had to be wanted, not needed, and there was absolutely nothing needy about Steven. The gradual erosion of boundaries between O and Ray had required him to farm her out to an institution where she could be at the beck and call of strangers, and it was strangers she craved. A wave of profound sadness swept through her at the realization that Ray would never be a stranger to her again.
Could Steven be the stranger who would always want her but never need her? She’d seen Ray cry more than once and awkwardly attempted to comfort him. She couldn’t imagine Steven in need of comforting.
She looked up at him, jaw set, eyes implacably determined.
“I want to do this thing. I consent to it without reservation. A person cannot give away what he doesn’t own. If I refuse I was never Ray’s slave and everything between us was a lie.”
The men exchanged a look of surprise.
“I told you she was different from the others,” Ray said, a touch triumphantly. He pulled a red, woven-silk monkey’s fist key shackle from his pocket and handed it to Steven. There were only two keys on it – one small, wrought like a piece of jewelry, the other a conventional brass door key.
“The little one is for her collar. The other goes to her house.”
Steven stood there a long moment. It was so silent the air seemed to have gone out of the room. They couldn’t know what he was thinking and he wasn’t about to tell them. There had been many attempts and many failures, starting with his marriage to Marie, to integrate his desires with his affections. Sooner or later, everything had hit the wall, sometimes shatteringly hard. He stared at the keys in his open hand until Ray reached over and closed it around them.
“Please, Steven. We all want it. Let it happen.”
“When have I ever said no to you?” Steven replied, with a shrug of resignation.
Steven turned his friendly devil smile on O.
“And how could I say no to you?”
Ray’s face lit up as he threw his arms around Steven.
“You won’t regret this.”
Steven made no reply. He was quite sure he would, though not yet how.
Ray pulled O close with an intensity she’d never felt from him before.
“I love you so,” he said. Then he kissed her – long, hard and deep – before pushing her away to arm’s length.
“I’m outta here. You’ll stay. I’ll be waiting at your place when he’s done with you.”
With a final, traditionally fraternal embrace for Steven, Ray turned and walked out the wide steel front door, his steps receding toward the elevator. They could hear him singing to himself out in the hall until the elevator bell dinged.
For an instant, O considered chasing after the man she knew with all his weaknesses to avoid the man whose strengths were the most obvious things about him. But O did not flee. She was alone with the Minotaur in his labyrinth, the way she had sometimes fantasized as a girl. Cold in the gut, nevertheless, she could not turn her back on this fabulous beast.
Steven looked into the dark pools of O’s yearning eyes and decided on the spot to let the beast off its leash.

About the Author:
Ernest Greene has been the Executive Editor of Hustler’s flagship BDSM magazine Taboo since 1999 and of Taboo Illustrated since . He has performed in, written, produced, or directed over 500 adult titles, including the Nina Hartley’s Guide series, starring his wife and producing partner, noted porn star and sex educator Nina Hartley. Master of O may be purchased here.

About the Illustrator:
Fernando is a self-taught illustrator inspired by American comic books and European fetish art. One of the preeminent creators of graphic novels in the explicit BDSM genre, his work includes the Cheerleaders series, Confiscated Twins, Dark Vengeance, and many more.

This week we are thrilled to be featuring an excerpt from Ernest Greene’s Master of O entitles Four Play. The full book includes illustrations as well. We’ve included a few for your enjoyment.

The blue Suburban waited outside, young men dashing to assist the ladies into the back seat. Ray got in with them, as usual, and the old guy rode up front, as usual. The heat was blasting, there was music playing and Steven was glad he hadn’t bothered with an overcoat, though as a native Angeleno he considered anything north of Santa Barbara The Arctic.

Mina’s new space was airy and bright. They all agreed the old location had been a bit funereal. Here the friendly but correct staff of young people who didn’t want to be actors seemed more at home. Brandt welcomed them at the door and showed them to their usual table where they settled into the mid-century modern seats with enough implements on the table in front of them to perform orthopedic surgery. Thoughtfully, the napkins were black, as lint was a constant menace to all the darkly attired men and women in the spacious room.

Big windows gave out onto the street where people walked by under the lights in pairs and groups, a mix of tourists and locals taking in the gentrified zone around Front and Battery. Steven was struck once again by how heterosexual the center of town had become since his time at The Presedio. This was a whiter, straighter, cleaner city than he remembered but at least it was a city.

Looking over at O he caught a glimpse of some similar nostalgia. For O Manhattan was Paradise Lost. As her father bought up more and more of the places where fashion, which had once been O’s trade, set rules for everywhere else, she felt ever more uncomfortably visible there.

When she showed up in the Style section of The Times at fashion week twice in the same season it was definitely time to move on. Albert, who had spent most of his life in Manhattan, had been delighted to join her.
A round of chilled Absolut shots and a platter of Osetra appeared unbidden to an enthusiastic welcome. Steven remembered some kind of toast in Russian from the Kosovo detail while O piled blini high with tiny grey eggs topped by dollops of sour cream.

“The commander over here’s gotten wasted with the finest officers of many lands,” Ray proclaimed proudly.

“It’s true,” Steven admitted, “and I’m a lightweight by comparison. Everyone thinks the Russkies are bad, but the French are more consistently drunk, the English are more loudly drunk and the Japanese put them all to shame in every category.” O pointed out that Steven forgot the Germans.

“They take it through a rubber tube at each end.”
Everyone laughed.

Ray and Jacqui would have to finish off the fifth of Charles Krug with only a little help from O. Steven and everyone else would be happier if he stuck to a nice Belgian beer.

Jacqui had a great story from her stint as a latex model in Stuttgart but the waiter appeared, pad in hand, and attention turned to the menu. No decisional paralysis in this crowd. There would be the seasonal seafood presentation for O, venison for Jacqui (who had shot and dressed many a deer back in Wyoming), a rare rib eye for Ray and the lobster pot pie the patrons wouldn’t let the proprietor take off the menu for Steven.

All talk of business was forbidden tonight. Ray and Steven knew there would be no escaping it once within the walls of David’s fortress twenty-four hours from now. At the moment Ray and Jacqui were very much preoccupied with one another and Steven and O with the two of them.

Something was happening before their eyes that neither had anticipated. Ray the unavailable chick magnet and Jacqui the unobtainable fetish goddess were doing a pretty good impression of two high school seniors in love. O’s labors had been almost too successful and she felt a slight twinge of regret over it. She enjoyed being able to pull Jacqui’s strings with the skills she’d polished during those boarding school seductions. It wouldn’t be as easy as she’d thought to hand them over to Ray, but that was coming.

Steven was simply amazed at seeing his brother happy. Ray’s neon grin was famous but behind it was the sorrow Steven had seen in Ray’s long, brooding silences as they watched their mother’s decline. Steven did what he could for Ray but the two of them had been wounded in such different ways neither could fix the other.

There was nothing like a copper vat of lobster and cream to float away bad memories on a sea of cholesterol. But the best distraction had been saved for after dinner. When the entrees were cleared O and Jacqui excused themselves to the ladies’ room, leaving Ray and Steven to conjecture what would go on in there while waiting for the white chocolate lozenge and the tiramisu that O and Jacqui would be required to feed each other to the last bite.
Steven might have had consent concerns about any kind of public acting out potentially observable by some hapless couple trying to convince the woman’s parents, just in from Salt Lake, that they shouldn’t worry themselves with the things they’d heard about this town. However, as those things were largely true, Steven didn’t feel it was his responsibility to uphold someone else’s idea of what passed for civic virtue in this town.

Returning, both O and Jacqui walked much more carefully, taking smaller steps and holding hands as they descended the short ramp into the dining room. Like the gentlemen their mother had brought them up to be, Steven and Ray stood to pull out the girl’s chairs for them, the better to watch them settle their backsides ever so gingerly. The seating was rearranged with O and Jacqui now separated only by the corner of the table.

Jacqui looked on ruefully as O passed the small black control box over to Ray. O’s impressive posture would be even more rigid for the hard, thick, bulbous plug Jacqui had helped her insert where it would be the most challenging.
Each girl was required to explain precisely what the other had done when they were alone. Jacqui now wore the device Steven had used on O when they’d gone to dinner with his friends. O was already being stretched in anticipation of how she would be made to serve when the got back to the hotel.

Ray slowly ramped up the vibrations under Jacqui’s dress while she swallowed each bite of date cake. O struggled to keep from rubbing her thighs together as Jacqui made her lick the spoon clean after every scoop
of jasmine cremeux. Their flushed faces nearly touched in the soft candlelight.

“You’re evil with that thing,” Jacqui said through gritted teeth, turning her glittering green eyes (fully enhanced with the tinted contacts) toward Ray. “You know I will scream if you make me come,” she warned.

“No she won’t,” O said. “She’ll just make a pathetic face and whimper.”

“Some sister you are,” Jacqui started to say, the last syllable suddenly jumping up a few octaves when Ray maxed out the remote. Steven looked idly around the room. Not a single head had turned. Yes, it would be nice to live where scandalous behavior wasn’t so marketable a franchise.

On the ride back to the hotel Steven again sat up front with the driver, occupying him with tourist bullshit while Ray held Jacqui’s arms behind her so O could extract another orgasm with the remote control.

Up in Steven’s suite clothes came off rapidly, or as rapidly as Ray could undo all the tiny hooks on Jacqui’s dress. O stripped to her heels, corset and stockings, revealing the ruby-red crystal on the base of the ovoid steel plug buried in her bottom when she bent over to retrieve her septum ring from the red kidskin jewelry roll in her valise. Satisfied that it was properly centered with the removable segment hidden, she devoted her attention entirely to undressing her master. O carefully put away each item, lingering over his boots to remind him of his regard for the view she provided from above, all the more enhanced by the glittering jewel between her cheeks and the inked ribbons trailing off toward the sides of her haunches.

Ray capriciously left the stimulation belt locked around Jacqui’s hips once he got the dress off her and played idly with the remote control while tossing his clothes here and there around the room. Jacqui squealed and doubled over, shaking from the shoulders down as she sank to her knees.

Ray had learned to accept Jacqui’s need for pain. He held in the shock button longer than he would have on his own before switching to the vibe and bending down to kiss her. Jacqui begged him to pinch her nipples really hard before letting her suck his cock. He practically lifted her off the floor, smothering her yelp with his hard-on. After that, the humming of the vibrating belt and Jacqui’s slurps and sighs were the only noises from that side of the room.

O draped Ray’s red shirt over the top of a lamp to soften the light on her way to fetch the purple silk robe with which Steven traveled and an outrageous pair of Tom Ford brothel slippers embroidered with naked odalisques. She held the robe for him while he slipped into it, knelt to keep the slippers in place so he could step in.

“May I bring us something to smoke, Sir?” she asked as he settled into one of the round deco chairs in the seating area. Steven watched the red crystal flash from between O’s rear cheeks while she went to the desk to fetch a joint from Steven’s engine-turned silver cigarette case and a matching vintage Dunhill Rolagas.

Returning to the chair O lit the joint and took a deep drag before passing it to Steven. He slipped the lighter into the breast pocket of the robe and pulled O carefully onto his lap so she could sit without being jabbed by the jeweled stopper plugging her piping. He tenderly hooked a finger through her nose ring and pulled her close for a lingering kiss.

Together they enjoyed the show Jacqui and Ray staged for them. O knew that Ray had stopped paying attention to them but she caught Jacqui’s eye long enough to exchange a wink, cut short on Jacqui’s side by Ray’s sudden tap on the shock button. Jacqui squeaked and twitched but kept on sliding Ray’s shaft in and out of her face in a steady rhythm. Jacqui loved an audience and Ray wasn’t exactly shy himself.

“They make a very handsome couple, Sir,” O observed.

Steven agreed. Noticing a fresh set of slender pink marks neatly laddered over Jacqui’s torso, Steven noted that Ray had upped his game for his new partner. Why not? Steven considered himself a product of all the women who had ever given themselves to him. He had learned from each, at least as much as they had learned from him. O was the most enlightening yet.

Pulling out of Jacqui’s mouth and lifting her off the floor, Ray scooped her up, her arms, legs and head dangling, and carried her to the wide tufted-leather bench opposite Steven’s chair. He dropped her on her back none too lightly. Jacqui bounced nicely, giggling and squirming when Ray turned the vibrating prods back on.

He left her to it while he searched out the tiny key to Jacqui’s steel belt from the pocket of his discarded trousers, tossing it over to O who neatly plucked it out of the air. Jacqui moaned in frustration when Ray suddenly switched off the vibes.

“Would you mind getting that thing off her, please?”

“My pleasure, Sir,” O replied, cautiously lifting off Steven’s lap. Key in hand, she crawled onto the bench with Jacqui who looked over at her suspiciously.

“You’ve got that twinkle in your eye,” Jacqui said warily. “You’re going to do something mean to me, aren’t you?”

“Who, me?” O asked innocently. She slapped Jacqui hard across the face, first to the right, then to the left. Jacqui laughed, reached up and grabbed O by the collar.

“Kiss me, bitch,” she said in the most commanding tone she could muster.
“Gladly.”

O stretched out on top of Jacqui, O’s small body easily enfolded by Jacqui’s long arms and legs. They kissed deeply, rubbing against each other’s flesh in the red-filtered light. Ray came over for a hit from the joint and the two men watched their slaves wrestle playfully while the smoke formed a cloud overhead.

“Aren’t we a couple of lucky bastards?” Ray asked rhetorically.

“You know I don’t believe in luck.”

Eventually, O squirmed from Jacqui’s grasp, reclaimed the key she’d lost in the tangle of limbs and pushed the taller girl down.

“Hold still if you want to get fucked,” O instructed.

“Oh, yes, Ma’am!” Jacqui answered quickly, spreading herself out so O could get in between her legs and unlock the belt from around Jacqui’s middle. The light-gauge spring-steel popped open, revealing the grooves it had temporarily inscribed up Jacqui’s smooth abdomen.

“Be nice,” Jacqui warned, grabbing a handful of O’s hair.

“Don’t you trust me?” O asked, deliberately wiggling the twin probes as she slid them out of Jacqui’s insides. Jacqui clamped her legs around O’s hips and lifted up so O could slide the belt from under her and toss it on the floor.

“Poor thing,” O said, staring at Jacqui’s swollen wetness. “You’ve had such a demanding evening already and we’re just getting started.”

Jacqui stuck out her lower lip.

“You’re all a bunch of cruel perverts taking advantage of a defenseless slave.”

“Let me make it up to you,” O said with a wicked grin. She lowered her face between Jacqui’s legs and went right to work. Jacqui rolled her eyes, grabbed O’s head and ground her crotch against O’s mouth.

“Damn, girl, you don’t play fair at all!” She exclaimed. Ray and Steven enjoyed the spectacle of Jacqui squirming and thrashing and beating the padded bench with clenched fists, waiting for the desperate cry for permission to come yet again. Jacqui had an endless supply of real orgasms stored up from all those she’d had to fake for the camera. Jacqui lay gasping her entire body flushed bright pink, while O tormented her with the occasional lick to her most hyper-sensitized spots.

Ray sat down next to Jacqui on the floor so he could shotgun her a hit. Jacqui inhaled deeply, stroking Ray’s big granite-hard cock as she looked up at him.

“Glazed like a jelly donut,” he observed, smiling down at her glittering green eyes.

“Oh yeah. Give me a minute and I’ll show you some serious payback.”

Jacqui sat up with some assistance from Ray, O rocking back onto her heels to get out of the way. Jacqui pointed at her.

“Now it’s your turn to scream.”

O wasn’t given to screaming but was perfectly pleased to let Jacqui try and make her do it. Clearly the girls had planned something in advance.

O rose from the bench and offered Jacqui a hand. Jacqui took it, standing up woozily as if she might topple off her heels. Ray and Steven shrugged at each other while O led Jacqui over to O’s open epi leather suitcase. O’s intentions became clear when she brought out a small zippered leather bag from which she removed a black bulb syringe, a couple of pairs of short black-latex gloves and a clear-plastic bottle of viscous liquid. But that wasn’t all she’d brought along. Next she took out and carefully unrolled an exquisitely stitched single-glove made of soft red kidskin. It seemed impossibly small for any girl to actually wear but O was more limber than most of the bondage models she shot and could easily touch her elbows together in back. She turned to Steven.

“May we be excused for a moment please?”

O led Jacqui off through the suite’s bedroom leaving Steven and Ray alone to smoke for a moment.
“Well, I can see where this is leading,” Ray said.

Handing Steven the reefer he went to the open steamer trunk where he poked around a bit and brought out a nasty-looking coiled snake-whip.

“You seem to have found what works for Jacqui,” Steven observed as Ray took a couple of practice flicks in the air, furled the whip and parked it on his shoulder.

“I can be just as mean as you are with the right encouragement.”
Steven glanced over at Ray’s still-stiff spear.

“Jacqui gives good encouragement.”
Ray looked down at himself and laughed.

“It points to her like a compass needle whenever she’s within half a mile.”

“I assumed you were just that way all the time,” Steven said, exhaling a gust of green smoke.
“I think it runs in the family.”

Steven looked down at his own lap where the flag stood at full-mast also.

“Mine’s chemically assisted,” he explained.

“Yeah, right. Tell me you don’t pop a chubby every time O walks by.”
“I never lie,” Steven declared righteously.

“Good thing for us the girls appreciate it.”

“I think we’re about to be shown some appreciation right now.”

O and Jacqui emerged side by side. O’s arms were ruthlessly welded behind her from the shoulders down inside the tightly laced leather sleeve, which was held in place by suspender straps looped through O’s armpits and snapped to the top of the single-glove.

The compression thrust O’s breasts outward even more spectacularly than usual. With her waist cinched by the corset and her hands thrust down into bottom of the sleeve, O looked like one of John Willie’s watercolors come to life. She stood up very straight for maximum effect while Jacqui walked her over to where Steven sat, Jacqui’s gloved fingers in the opening previously occupied by the jeweled plug. They managed to cross the room quite gracefully, stopping in front of Steven and Ray.

“Turn around, Sister,” Jacqui said firmly.

O turned and nuzzled in between Jacqui’s breasts so Steven could see how O was held open from behind by Jacqui’s invading digits.

“I got her all nice and clean back there, Sir. She’s hoping you’ll use her primarily in that way.”
Steven reached forward to trace his mark inscribed in O’s flesh.

“She’s lucky to have such a helpful friend.”

“Sister, Sir,” Jacqui corrected.

“I’m happy to oblige,” Steven said, “but I think we’d like you both on your knees for a bit first.”

O turned around and the two girls knelt smoothly with Jacqui’s fingers still in place. Despite the immobilization of her arms and Jacqui’s distracting penetration, O got to her knees without a wobble. At Marie’s they had learned to work together with the smoothness of oiled ball bearings. While O lowered her face to Steven’s lap, Jacqui lifted her head so Ray could loop the whip around the back of her neck and pull her mouth onto him. The room was silent but for the sounds of heavy breathing and distant traffic out on Geary Street. O’s head bobbed up and down over Steven, her nose ring flashing in the reflected lamplight and her constricted limbs completely straight down her back. Jacqui’s head swung back and forth in front of Ray, who remained standing, using the looped whip to guide Jacqui’s movements. Steven reached under O to roll her thick rings between his fingers through the stippled flesh of her nipples.

Jacqui switched out her ungloved hand for her mouth, continuing her attentions to Ray as she lifted her eyes to meet his.

“I think this would be a good time, Sir. Would you assist me please?”

“No problem.”

Ray put the whip down on the back of the chair. Jacqui finally withdrew her fingers from O’s bottom, peeled off the greased glove and tossed it aside.

“Up you go, princess,” Ray said, gathering O off the floor and swinging her over Steven’s chair. Compared to Jacqui O was practically weightless. He lowered her carefully, holding her by her corset-compressed waist, while Jacqui guided Steven in from below. O threw a stockinged leg over each arm of the chair and slowly impaled herself while Jacqui supported her back.

“You’re all much too good to me,” Steven said huskily.

“I’ll remind you of that the next time I need a check,” Ray shot back.

Steven would have laughed but he was preoccupied with the sensation of O’s sphincters opening to admit him. He reached around her and gripped her breasts, holding her upright in his lap while she acclimated to his substantial girth in her tightest passage.

Using only her strong legs to raise and lower her body O swung her pelvis around in slow circles, drilling herself as deeply as possible. Steven held her leather-bound arms against his chest, grinding up into her from below. Jacqui continued to stroke Ray while putting her mouth to O’s unoccupied and unobstructed anatomy from the front. O gasped, squirming helplessly in her restraints.

A sheen of sweat rose over O’s body. She couldn’t inhale very deeply due to the constriction of the corset. O’s bosom rose and fell with her short rapid breathing. Her head lolled against Steven’s neck, the white-gold circlet in the middle of her face bouncing as she writhed under Jacqui’s practiced attentions. She feared Jacqui would take her over the edge too soon, making it more difficult for her to surrender to Steven’s upward thrusts, which grew harder and more urgent with every stroke.

Finding himself idle, Ray took up the whip and applied it to Jacqui’s stretched back, teasingly at first, then with increasing force until the stripes rose. Jacqui wriggled her spine sinuously and made a happy gurgling noise, but would not be distracted. She intended to get that scream out of O but first there was something she just had to try.

Seemingly undisturbed by Ray’s increasingly hard lashes, Jacqui lifted her head and gave Steven her pained, come-drunk smile. Her face was wet with O’s juices and her own perspiration.

“Want to feel something nice and dirty, Sir?” she asked Steven.

“Always.”

Jacqui slipped two fingers inside O’s unused socket to stroke Steven’s cock through the taut flesh between O’s holes. She was quite skilled at finding just the right spot deep inside where she could simultaneously make O toss her hair and cry out while inspiring Steven to pump even more ferociously from below. By then Jacqui’s back was crosshatched with red streaks from the Ray’s single-tail and her available hand had wandered down to locate her hard, swollen button.

Putting her mouth back to work with one pair of fingers buried deep in O’s most humid terrain and another equally busy with her own, it didn’t take much longer for the inevitable chain reaction to occur. First O went stiff, her insides pumping around Steven’s invading hardness as the long-awaited wail was torn from her lips. Her response triggered his, unleashing a torrent of hot lava up past her tightening internal muscles, his hot breath against her cheek as he let out a low, guttural growl. Jacqui lurched forward flicking madly away at herself, her high whining cry muffled in O’s cleavage.

Ray stopped whipping, folded his arms and stood over them all with a wide grin on his face. He’d often wondered if he’d ever really seen Steven happy, though Steven made sure Ray never saw him unhappy. At that moment, Ray had no doubts about anything. His brother to whom he owed everything was entirely satisfied with the gift Ray had given him.

And Ray was by no means displeased with the devious, sweet, funny and unpredictable girl Steven had used to return the favor. Reaching down, he took a handful of Jacqui’s auburn curls – carefully set for the evening out – and dragged her to her feet so she could scamper off to the bathroom.

Running in heels with her typical lightness afoot, Jacqui was only gone a few seconds, returning as Ray helped O out of the chair. A few dabs at O’s behind, a couple of strokes up and down Steven’s still-stiff ramrod and everything was nice and tidy again. Jacqui unsnapped the shoulder straps of the single-glove and yanked it down off O’s aching arms, undamming a river of sweat down O’s spine. O stretched and shook out her arms. She had been much too involved to notice how intensely they’d begun to tingle in their confinement. Jacqui pointed at her laughing.

“You look like you’ve just been fucked in the ass!” Jacqui proclaimed.

There was no denying it. O’s hair had completely come apart. Her make-up was wrecked, as she’d decided earlier to wear mascara that would run, and her septum ring had shifted to one side.

“And you look like you should be fucked in the ass.” O replied without thinking. Suddenly the room got quiet. Steven shot Ray a puzzled look. Ray shrugged.

“Um, we haven’t done that yet,” Jacqui said, shy and a bit embarrassed. O had been waiting for this moment and now it had arrived. Jacqui was no anal virgin, but neither was she as experienced as O in such things. She hadn’t deliberately withheld that part of herself from Ray but he hadn’t demanded it and she hadn’t thought to offer it for more than a finger or a toy of some kind.

The look in O’s eye sapped Jacqui of all will and resistance whenever she saw it. She had no doubts what would happen next.

“Well Ray,” Steven said, “I think you’re about to take full possession.”

Looking down at himself, Ray seemed a bit worried.

“I don’t know. She’s awfully small back there. I don’t want to hurt her in a bad way, if you know what I mean.”

“O once told me that no woman’s a slave until she’s given up her ass. I suspect that was O’s whole purpose in organizing things as she did, not that she didn’t get something for herself out of it.”

O gave Jacqui a challenging look.
“I fear my anal virtue, such as it is, is in danger here,” Jacqui said.

O took her in hand.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like a few moments with Jacqui.”

“I’m sure we’ll all benefit as a result,” Ray said agreeably. Jacqui gave him a rueful look.

“I hope all of us includes me, Sir.”

“You most of all,” Steven insisted as O led Jacqui off to the bathroom.

“I assume this was your idea,” Ray said, sinking into the unused chair.
Steven shook his head.

“Not guilty this time,” he replied as he got up to find his discarded robe.

“Nice for you, the way O drops girls at your feet.”

“Unlike the way they just fall at yours.”

Neither had ever suffered from a shortage of feminine attention, but Steven had to work a bit harder for it. He’d seen girls in twos and threes physically drag Ray home from some of L.A.’s trendier watering holes.

O came out of the bedroom with a big plug-in vibrator wrapped in coils of extension cord. She found a socket near Ray, stung the vibe and handed it to him.

“If you don’t mind, Sir. Won’t be much longer.”

Ray cheerfully told her to take her time, but she scampered back through the suite anyway.

“I think she’s more excited than I am,” Ray observed.

“Your motives are different.”

It was the kind of cryptic remark from Steven Ray had learned not to question. Any explanations Steven had to make would be heard soon enough or never.

True to her word, O returned shortly leading Jacqui on a leash of smooth, black leather attached to Jacqui’s collar ring. Jacqui crawled alongside her, swaying her hips like a very large and potentially dangerous panther already in heat. Jacqui even rubbed her face against O’s leg when they reached the appointed spot in front the chairs.

O’s hands were now sheathed in the short black-latex gloves again and she held the bottle of thick grease in one of them. The marks had blossomed into red vines all over Jacqui’s back and buttocks. O had pulled the pins from Jacqui’s hair, which now hung in tendrils around the sides of her face. Jacqui was barefoot, giving her a more feral look. The visual effect was as striking as O intended.

O offered up the leash to Ray in return for the vibrator, suggesting they start with something familiar. Ray understood the hint. Giving Jacqui’s leash a sharp tug, he signaled for her to crawl up into his lap facing him. Pausing only to offer a slavish kiss where it mattered most, Jacqui climbed into Ray’s arms while O slipped him into her from below. Settling her knees onto either side of his lap, Jacqui put her arms around Ray’s neck and showed what she could do. She could bounce up and down fast or slow, roll her hips side to side, sit up straight and spear herself to the hilt while rubbing her breasts into his face for easy sucking and licking and lean back so far she could lay her palms on the floor.

That proved dangerous, as O seized the opportunity to slash Jacqui back and forth across her torso with the coiled whip Ray abandoned. O’s aim was true and Jacqui made no attempt to protect herself from it. When Jacqui finally got dizzy and had to right herself, she presented Ray with new scarlet decorations at eye level.

Steven quietly got up and found himself a figurado from his cylindrical alligator-bound travel humidor, clipped the end with a round guillotine cutter he sometimes used as a watch fob and fired up. Normally, he would make O do these things for him but her labors were better invested elsewhere at the moment. While Jacqui and Ray kissed and nuzzled, O knelt under them on the floor, applying her mouth to their point of connection.

Steven watched from the other chair, puffing his cigar and admiring O’s ingenuity. There was no lazy passivity in O’s slavery. She colluded fully in everything Steven did to her and everything he wanted done to others.

Whatever she was doing down there must have felt pretty good, judging from the way Ray threw his head back and stared blankly at the ceiling.

Grabbing Jacqui’s hipbones, Ray hammered fiercely away pounding another climax out of her so quickly she barely had time to stammer a request for it. Neither Ray nor Steven was doctrinaire about such things, but both appreciated a good-faith attempt to obey the rules.

O crawled up Jacqui’s back, hooking an arm around Jacqui’s collar. The moment had arrived for her to show Steven what she’d accomplished.

“If I may suggest, Sir, I think it’s time to get this girl down on her hands and knees.”

Ray lifted Jacqui, who was nicely limp and floppy, out of his lap. She slid to the floor where O positioned her with great precision – face to a pillow Steven tossed them to put over the carpet, hands folded behind her collar, tail raised to what O calculated would be the correct height, given Jacqui’s long legs.

“Now you just keep your head down and your ass up and let him use you as he pleases,” she whispered sternly.

“Yes, Sister,” Jacqui panted. She was a bit afraid in addition to being awash in hormonal bliss, which made it all the better.

Kneeling next to Ray, O parted Jacqui’s rear cheeks to show off the puckered rosebud between.

“Isn’t it darling?” she asked. “It’s like nothing’s ever been in there.”

“You know that’s not true, Sister,” Jacqui insisted, resting her chin on her hands.

They ignored her and she forgot what she was going to say next when she felt the delicate point of O’s tongue teasing a most sensitive spot. A shudder traveled up and down Jacqui’s long spine. O raised her head to kiss Ray’s cock affectionately, found the lube bottle and squeezed a big clear drop onto her gloved fingertips.

“Shall I open her little flower for you, Sir?”

“By all means.”

Ray watched as O gently rubbed in the thick shiny liquid, first one with one finger, then with two. Jacqui sighed and arched up her rump to make it more accessible. She relaxed easily under O’s practiced touch until she’d dilated just enough for O, after applying another squirt of lube to Ray, to ease him into her with excruciating slowness. Ray looked on, fascinated, as if the part O was slipping into Jacqui’s backside belonged to someone else. Ray had never been in hands as skilled as O’s and never expected to be again.

Nevertheless, he was quite happy to find himself inside the warm dark tunnel where O fitted him so deftly despite its tightness. Ray was a gentleman about these things, holding still until his belly lay against Jacqui’s buttocks, allowing her to make tiny movements while she adjusted to the sensation. Only then did Ray begin slowly pistoning in and out of her.

O looked over at Steven, meeting his eyes, the blue of which reminded her of The Mediterranean at Cap Ferrat. Her expression was solemn with expectation. There was something she needed him to understand.

He nodded to her respectfully. Steven knew exactly what O was doing. She was fulfilling her promise to deliver Jacqui to Ray as his slave, approximating what O was to Steven as closely as possible. O favored Steven with one of those rare, brilliant smiles that always lifted his spirits.

“You’re a wicked, little whore,” Steven said affectionately.

“Thank you, Sir. I do my best.”

At O’s request Steven tossed them another pillow from the bed for O to put under Ray’s knees. O found the vibrator and switched it on. Jacqui jumped at the sound of the powerful electric motor but Ray was holding on much too tightly for her to go anywhere. She was quite defenseless against O’s application of the round humming head of the device right where it would be most effective.

Jacqui’s noises changed tone, sinking an octave to some more animal sound arising from deep in her belly. Now Jacqui pounded back against Ray oblivious to what hole he was in. O reminded her by snapping off a glove with her teeth, spitting it to the floor and doing to Jacqui with her clean fingers what Jacqui had done to her when O was staked onto Steven. O was more or less ambidextrous from years of handling camera gear and didn’t miss a useful spot with the vibrator while stirring Jacqui’s internals with a bare hand.

Suddenly inspired, Steven got up, went to the open steamer trunk and came out with the slender rattan cane he and O prized most. Walking around behind Ray, Steven ordered Jacqui to put her bare feet in the air. Jacqui complied, rocking her weight on her knees as she offered up her soles. Steven gave her six good ones on each foot making Jacqui cry out nearly to the point of sobbing.

As expected, the cruel lashing put Jacqui right over the top once more. Not bothering to ask, or caring about the consequences of failing to do so, Jacqui climaxed again with a high-pitched whine and fell forward right off of Ray and onto her face. O turned off the vibrator, set it aside and ruthlessly yanked Jacqui back into position with the leash Ray had dropped when Jacqui lunged forward.

“Get back up here like a good fuck-doll,” O barked. Jacqui responded with the appropriate gasped apologies and promises to hold still. After plugging her backside once more with Ray’s throbbing, purple-headed shaft, O peeled off the other glove, stood up, took the cane from Steven and mercilessly thrashed Jacqui’s tail until Ray was finished pumping it full of every drop he’d held back all evening.

A look passed between Steven and Ray that no one else would have understood.

Jacqui, face still down, didn’t see that look. She wasn’t unaware of Ray’s history with Steven but she didn’t care much about it. What had developed between Jacqui and Ray was a thing of its own. Steven didn’t know much about what people call “falling in love,” but he had seen it before and liked the idea, mystifying though he’d always found it.

Leaving everyone else to get untangled and cleaned up while O circled the room naked, camera in hand, recording more “crime scene” images for that eventual book, Steven went to the glass door of the small, round balcony and took his cigar outside. The night air was cold, but the draft up Steven’s robe was pleasant after the heat of the previous hours. The taste of the cigar made him think of chocolate. The lights of San Francisco’s hills were scrimmed with the fog moving in off the bay.

Not only had O succeeded in making Jacqui Ray’s slave as Ray had used the facilities of The Mansion for O’s training to serve Steven, she had gone further. She had provided Ray with the suitable life partner she herself could never be for him. The formal collaring at The Mansion would proceed in due course, but the union between Jacqui and Ray was already a fact on the ground.

For the first time in their lives as brothers Steven envied Ray.

Through the crack he’d left open in the sliding door Steven heard the three of them laughing inside. It was getting cold. Time to go in. Steven took a last puff. When he turned to the door, O stood waiting, disheveled and sweaty, the portable silver ashtray held in both hands with the lid already opened. She flashed Steven that smile again as he entered. Twice in one night. Things were going very well indeed.

About the Author:
Ernest Greene has been the Executive Editor of Hustler’s flagship BDSM magazine Taboo since 1999 and of Taboo Illustrated since . He has performed in, written, produced, or directed over 500 adult titles, including the Nina Hartley’s Guide series, starring his wife and producing partner, noted porn star and sex educator Nina Hartley. Master of O may be purchased here.

About the Illustrator:
Fernando is a self-taught illustrator inspired by American comic books and European fetish art. One of the preeminent creators of graphic novels in the explicit BDSM genre, his work includes the Cheerleaders series, Confiscated Twins, Dark Vengeance, and many more.