Pandora's Panties

He moved the material and I felt his cockhead rubbing against my dripping lips, dragging the moisture around to my clit and back down.

"Oh god, dearling. This brings back so many memories of how we used to be together."

Soon the head breached my labia and I felt him push in, his delicious girth sliding into me, the fit tight and sinfully perfect. As he moved back and forth inside me, that other disembodied finger slid around my tight little hole, and again breached my forbidden channel. Just then what seemed like yet another finger, or perhaps a tongue, materialized on my clit. It too began to slide around and flick that swollen flesh in time with Jack's shaft and the finger in my anus. The pressure had been mounting in my pussy like a pressure cooker, all these sensations melding together into some irresistible volcanic eruption or a dam bursting and flooding, and I couldn't contain myself any longer. My cunt squirted long streams of fluid just as Jack's cock began to throb and spurt rhythmically.

Eventually we both collapsed sideways on the bed, Jack's head propped up on my shoulder. He must have been eyeing what my own eyes were riveted on, the prominent wet spots sinking into the sheet-covered comforter on my bed.

"I didn't know you were a squirter, dearling."

"I didn't either. This is my first time. What a mess!"

"That was amazing. How did you do that?"

"Squirt? I have no idea!"

"No, no! I felt like your fingers were reaching back and fondling and pulling on my balls. And then you seemed to reach even farther back, pressing on my taint. I know you've done that in the past, but...both your arms were on the bed! Then finally what pushed me over was a finger just breaching my asshole! I just couldn't hold back any longer!"

"Wow," I said, exhausted. I tugged on his arm wrapped around me and squirmed a bit into his crotch, "I never knew how talented I was. Jack, I'm dead tired. Why don't you stay here?"

"I thought you'd never ask."

"But Jack, it wasn't my fingers. It must have been the panties."

"The panties? What are you talking about?"

"My panties... They're magic," I mumbled, and fell asleep.

I don't remember when we finally crawled under the covers. Luckily the wet spots were on the edge of the bed, and we had plenty of room to avoid them. Later that night I got up and, reluctantly, took off the panties to hand-wash them. As I did I felt the material again, thin satin like that of many other panties, but noticed thin black threads woven into to crotch, blending in beautifully with the dark brown-maroon color. I wrung them out gently and hung them up to dry. I had no clue what they were all about, but I loved them. I vaguely wondered where I could get more, so I would always be able to wear a pair.

The next day the meeting started with people milling around the coffee pot, helping themselves to breakfast pastries and fruit from a side table set up by the hotel staff. Hello's and chit-chat all around, oiling the gears before we got down to work. The start was a bit slow but the meeting picked up its pace as folks went through their progress reports. The discussions got livelier and the sharing of ideas became easier. It was not unlike when the two partners in a couple are separated for a long time: you need to get reacquainted, push aside the veils of self-consciousness that build up over the time spent apart. The longer the separation, the thicker and heavier the veils, the harder it is to take them down. I felt that way about Jack, too - what was last night leading to, if anything?

He was seated across the conference table from me and a few seats down. We occasionally threw glances at each other, both of us trying to be very casual and professional and not attract attention. The meeting went on and on; most of my colleagues had little new and nothing surprising to say. I breathed a sigh of relief when my own presentation was over. Not that there was anything difficult about it; I just could not focus my attention on it, or my audience. My thoughts were on Jack, and what was building up again between us. At last he got up to give his spiel, and I had a good excuse to give him my undivided attention.

He was questioned at length about trivial details, and as he tried to put one or another of our colleagues' worries to rest, I found myself focusing on his long, elegant fingers as he leaned on the table, propping himself on his hands. And when he stretched himself to his full height, some six feet tall, my eyes were drawn to his crotch. I had to mentally slap myself and drag my eyes away lest I give him a complex or anyone else noticed. At one point, I saw the corner of his mouth slip upwards as he gazed my way obliquely. That smile of his was truly devilish.

Without thinking about it, I crossed my thighs and shifted my weight forward in my chair, leaning my elbows on the table and trying to look fascinated at his answers to questions rather than at his tall slim build and green eyes, somewhat obscured behind his metal framed glasses. The glare of the room lights off the lenses made it difficult to read what was in them.

When Jack had left my room that morning, after another rather acrobatic and sweaty gymnastics session, I had taken a lengthy shower. The panties had dried and were ready to don again. I couldn't resist. I had no idea what hold they had on me, but whatever it was, I liked it.

My thoughts now were only on relieving the pressure that had built up deep in my pussy, that pressure that only a cock or a climax, ideally both, could possibly relieve. As I pressed my thighs closed and down on the edge of my chair, I felt the now-familiar fingers begin circling and probing. Delicately at first, almost tentative. Then, deeper and deeper, abrading the inside of my channel. A thumb now joined the fingers, massaging my clit exquisitely, finally pushing me over the brink. The gasp that escaped my lips was loud enough that several of my neighbors at the table looked at me.

Jack, eyes narrowed, said, "Gesundheit! Do you need a tissue or maybe a glass of water, Dr. Novack?"

I glared back at him, fully aware that, like the old days, he'd read my face and knew what had just happened. "Thank you, no. I just have something stuck in my throat. I'm OK."

"Let me know. It's no trouble at all."

The woman on my left pushed a full glass of water towards me. I smiled as graciously as I could muster and looked down at my notepad, scribbling some random note to make it look as if I'd been deep in thought and had just had an important idea. But the panties weren't done with me. The crotch bunched up and squeezed my labia, massaging me again and again, scraping in and out. It felt like four fingers bunched together, their knuckles bowed outwards, were filling me and stretching me and reaching for my cervix, pushing me up that roller coaster all over again, shoving in and out with increasing speed until...

"Amy? What do you think?" my counterpart from one of the other groups piped up, lobbing his question at me.

I couldn't think what to answer him. What were they talking about?

"Why don't we address all the financial details of the projects at once, tomorrow, after we've finished defining their scope. I think it will be more efficient than doing it piecemeal," Jack said, ever considerate and helpful.

At that moment I wondered if he actually knew what the panties were doing to me between my legs, and had had anything to do with my sexually very obliging undergarment with the inopportune timing. Lucky for me, the others around the table nodded their assent and bowed to Jack's wisdom, and I could relax, my indiscretion undetected.

At the end of our work session, I managed to slip away after feigning a headache to excuse myself from the group dinner. It wasn't until a couple of hours later that I heard the phone buzz, alerting me to the text coming in. I knew it had to be Jack.

You OK?

Yes. Just tired.

Not like you.

It happens.

You had that "look."

What look? I was feigning innocence, not very successfully. My phone rang, and I picked it up.

"THAT look," Jack said, emphatically. "The look you get when you cross and squeeze your thighs together and masturbate in public."

"Mmmm, and what look is that?"

"A bit slack-jawed. Eyes very focused, on nothing at all. I've never run across another woman who could do that."

"Do what? Focus on nothing at all?"

"Masturbate like you do."

"Ever thought that you're not getting out enough?" I laughed.

"Ha! You sound tired."

"I am, Jack. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Meet me downstairs for breakfast tomorrow morning. I'll text you about 8 am."

For expediency I said, "K," then rolled over and fell asleep.

Jack texted me about 7:30 in the morning, but didn't wait to meet me at breakfast. He knocked on my door and gently pushed into my room when I answered.

"I'm still not dressed. Just got out of the shower. Why don't you take a seat, I'll be right out."

My morning routine would normally be very brief, but I paid some attention to adding a bit of make-up in deference to my colleagues. When I came out of the bathroom, dressed only in panties, bra, and thigh high stockings, Jack was seated in the desk chair. He'd found the box that had held the magic panties, as I'd come to think of them, had come in, and was turning it over and over in his hands, taking in its every minute detail.

"Where did you get this?" he asked.

"Don't know, actually. It was here on my doorstep when I arrived, with a note." He looked at me, eyes a bit narrowed in thought, then turned his attention back to the box.

"I've seen this kind of wrapping before. Livvie got some of her lingerie from this shop. Swore by it."

I had just pulled up my skirt and was in the middle of zipping up the side zipper when what he said struck me full force. "Livvie?"

He nodded.

"Why would Livvie make me a present of panties?"

He shook his head from side to side. "I don't know. Are those them?" he tipped his chin in the direction of the maroon panties, which were casually draped over the arm of a chair where I'd stripped them off before my shower. I wasn't the most orderly or modest of people, but then, Jack might remember that from our former days together.

He picked up the panties, turned them over slowly, even more carefully than he'd checked out the box, then brought them up to his nose and sniffed the crotch.

"What are you doing?" I asked him, incensed. The sight of him doing that had just ratcheted up my libido from 0 to 60 in less than a second. There was something rather lewd about his picking up such an intimate clothing item and treating it as he would a fetish object. As if to underscore that last thought, he inhaled deeply and rubbed them against his nose and mouth. He tried to hide it but I saw his tongue flick out and taste the satin fabric, then again, scrunching his face as if at a very unpleasant taste.

"What? It can't be that bad!" I said, reaching out for the panties, vaguely insulted. He closed his eyes, sighed and handed them over without explaining further.

"Are you going on that sight-seeing trip today?" he asked. He was referring to the outing that our meeting's hosts had arranged for those for whom this was the first trip to New Orleans.

"No. I don't need another trip to the depths of tourist hell. I was going to go to Frenchmen Street, find some live music in one of the clubs."

He nodded. "I'll go with you, but before we go to one of your clubs, we're going to take a little side trip."

"To where?"

"A botanica in Bywater. We're going to find out more about who sent you those panties. Why don't you wrap them up?"

"But they're not clean!"

"It's OK, even better for what we need."

"What's a botanica?"

"You'll see."

After the day's meeting, we returned quickly to our rooms, changed into more casual clothing. Jack picked me up from my room and watched me pack the panties into the layers of deep green tissue paper in their box. We grabbed a cab to the Bywater neighborhood, part of the what had been the upper 9th Ward, and saved from a lot of Hurricane Katrina's devastation by its privileged location on higher ground. The cab dropped us off on St. Claude Ave, in front of a low wood-sided building, colorfully painted with various folk art images and skeletons. A sign above the double door read Heaven's Breath Botanica. Jack paid the cab driver and we crossed the street and entered, and we were immediately barraged with color, sounds, and scents assailing our eyes and ears.

The shelves of the Botanica were filled with glass vials, colorful feathers, some synthetic, others natural, and candles of all sizes and shapes, some free-standing, others poured in glass with the colorful images of saints on their sides. Bottles, embroidered flags, and altar cloths or tapestries hung on the walls amidst iconic-looking pictures of strange looking saints and African-style masks. At one end of the room was a table covered in all manner of items, a mish-mash of offerings, bottles of wine or other dark-colored liquids. A split counter ran parallel to one of the walls, the shelves packed tightly with racks of drawers. It was as if we had stepped into a different world entirely, one which I had never encountered except in pictures.

The music playing completed the tableau - somewhat similar to the sounds of Mardi Gras, yet its own. I was overwhelmed, but Jack strode to a dark chocolate-skinned saleswoman standing behind the counter as if nothing was more natural in the world than this cacophony. She was sporting thin braids decorated intricately with metal beads that clinked softly whenever she moved her head.

"Good evening. Is Manbo Celine here?"

"She is out on an errand right now, but I expect her back any minute now. May I be of help?"

Jack turned to me and took the box containing the panties from me, handing it to the lady behind the counter.

"Does this box look familiar? Is this something that may have been bought or... modified... here?"

The saleswoman took the box and placed it on the counter carefully, then took off its top and placed it next to the box. She looked at the contents, fingered the tissue paper and opened its folds, revealing the panties, their color more maroon in the light of the shop. She did not touch them.

"As far as I know, we don't sell anything like this, but Sallie Anne and Celine, they would be the ones to ask."

"Does it look like a...?" Jack asked.

"A gris-gris? Truly, I don't know. It's possible. A rather unconventional one, though I've run across much stranger ones. But really, Sallie Anne or Celine are the ones to ask," she repeated.

Jack nodded. "OK, we'll wait for Celine." He re-packed the box and, taking my hand, led us away from the counter.

We wandered about the shop, taking in the myriad objects ranging from unusual or unfamiliar, to downright strange. The scents of candles and incense wafted in and out of her noses, mixing with something sweet-smelling, vaguely reminiscent of rum. I drifted towards the books, my eyes skimming the shelves with paperbacks graced with colorful covers about unfamiliar personages and rites in countries like Haiti and other Caribbean islands where African slaves had brought Vodou rites with them from West Africa and had blended them with the old, musty Catholicism of old Spanish priests.

At some point I sensed that we were being watched, that unsettling feeling of being under someone else's magnifying glass.

"Good afternoon," spoke the warm voice, right over my shoulder.

I jumped, startled. When I recovered, I looked over my shoulders straight into a pair of very intense and seemingly very intelligent eyes. "Uh, yes," I nodded. Why had I just lost my cool?

"Manbo Celine?" Jack asked. "Do you remember me? We met, quite some time ago." He stretched his hand to her and she took it after a few seconds' hesitation, taking his extended hand with both of hers.

"Jack! What a pleasure! It's been such a long time!" The remains of a Brooklyn accent were layered just below a slight lilt.

"Yes, indeed it has. I could use your help, Celine," he said, in a tone that made me wonder if they had ever been intimate.

"Come on back and tell me how I can help you," she answered, leading us through the shop and a doorway curtained with strings of colorful beads. Beyond was a much smaller room, a table in its center, covered in a long, flowing African-patterned cloth with a crystal ball sitting on a stand. On the far side of the table was a large wooden chair, its seat adorned with a large colorful cushion. Celine pointed to a couple of other chairs and gestured for us to sit, while she herself took the throne-like seat.

"Jack, darling. Do tell what brings you here."

"I don't think I ever thought I would need your professional help, but I have a puzzle I think you might be able to help solve for us."

"A puzzle! I love puzzles!" Celine rubbed her hands together, a broad smile on her face. "But first, do tell me how Livvie is doing. And please, introduce me to your friend," she nodded to me, the smile on her lips not reaching her eyes. There was some history between them that I could not yet decipher.

"Oh, I'm sorry. This is Amy Novack, an old friend and colleague of mine. How is your shop doing? I gather well."

"Yes, very well. We help people who need some spiritual support. Katrina devastated so many. We've tried to do our part, however small."

"I think you are being rather modest by the sounds of it, Celine. I hear many look to you for guidance."

"I and the other Voodoo priests and priestesses simply pass on the wisdom and kindness of the spirits. I try to smooth the path of those in despair, the hurt, the dismay. A psychologist of sorts. Tell me how Olivia is doing."

Jack shifted in his seat. "We've separated a while ago now. Getting a divorce."

"Ah," Celine paused a bit. "It's been, what? Fifteen years?"

"Eighteen, nearly nineteen."

"And the girls? Two or three?"

"Two. One's a sophomore in college, the other in her last year in high school. Both doing fine, luckily."

"And Olivia? Restless as always?"

"More so, I suppose. Have you two kept in touch?"

"Now and then, now and then. She calls me occasionally. It's been some time."

"You used to be quite close."

Close, this Voodoo priestess and Jack's wife? I didn't get it, but somewhere in that mystery lay the answer of Jack's bringing me to this shop to find answers about the panties. The walls were almost completely covered in religious images, many of them of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, but other saints as well decorated the walls. Along one wall, a long table was arrayed with candles interspersed with small plates and cups filled with bits of fruits or nuts.

Jack placed the box on the table.

"This is the puzzle," he said.

"Ah." She reached for it and removed the top, then opened the tissue paper folds. In the low light of the room, the dark green tissue looked almost black.

"Not one of mine," Celine said, after examining the contents of the box briefly. "May I? I assume this is what you need my help for?" she asked Jack.

"Yes."

She reached for the folded panties and, after unfolding them carefully, looked at me. "May I?" she asked, this time directing her gaze at me instead of Jack.

I nodded, faintly embarrassed but also very curious. I had trusted Jack so far, wanting to understand what was going on, but having someone I didn't know at all handle such an intimate piece of clothing made me uncomfortable. Still, I was fascinated by how concentrated she was on the garment, how gingerly she handled it. And before I could react, she did what Jack had done earlier in my hotel room. She brought the panties to her nose and sniffed the material deeply, then she too tasted the crotch.