Retreat Treat

* * * *

Kenneth Blaine was the only man Caroline fucked until later that summer—until the Retreat Treat artists' conclave in the mountains south of Asheville.

Caroline did know that the Brazilian abstract artist Luiz Cabrera, all the rage of Charleston that year, and not only for his art, was going to fuck her in Asheville before she accepted his invitation to attend the artists' conclave with him. Profoundly assured of himself, Luiz also knew he was going to fuck the tall, buxom, blonde beauty before he invited her. He could have invited any number of women, all knowing he would fuck their lights out during the conclave.

It was all Charles Sullivan's fault, really, although Caroline reasoned that he probably was clueless about that. He had wanted a portrait done of Caroline, he claimed, although she was up to her neck with wrapping up follow-up business in the late spring from the Spoleto festival and had difficulty clearing time for the sittings. But Sullivan had booked himself for a cruise from Florida all around South American and back to Florida through the Panama Canal from the Pacific end. He said it was business, that he'd won the trip, and that he knew Caroline didn't have time to go with him.

Caroline, of course, knew that Nicolette in Savannah, who she had discovered owned a restaurant and, indeed, was one-quarter black, with enough of the race in her for anyone in Charleston society to sniff her out immediately, would be able to clear her time to make the cruise.

Charles had no sense of art. He had gone on trends alone and had commissioned the abstract artist, Luiz Cabrera, to do the portrait rather than the more fitting portraitist of the moment in the city, Jorell Jackson. Caroline suspected that also influencing this choice was the fact that Jackson was black and Charles was an entrenched son of the wealthy South. It was quite all right for him to have a women with black in her as his mistress, but something entirely different to have a full-blooded black man painting a portrait of his wife in private.

The clincher for Caroline's downfall was that Kenneth was on the West Coast at back-to-back medical conventions during this time as well.

Luiz' Brazilian heat and sensuality came out starting from the first sitting, for which he had Caroline draped in a diaphanous silky drape—with nothing underneath it. His smile was glorious, his voice was deep, his hands were sensuous. And he kept touching her with them, increasingly so, and increasingly more intimate, working her slowly but surely.

In the third setting he cupped her breasts from behind and underneath the drape, flicked the puffed-up nipples, and kissed her on the lips when, breathing raggedly, she lifted her face to him. During the fourth and final sitting, he slid his hand down her belly and entered her between her folds with a searching finger while they kissed. Caroline, hungry for him, for any hot-blooded man at that point with a thought to what Charles and Nicolette probably were doing on the cruise ship, spread her legs for him and rolled her hips up to give his finger deeper access.

When he unzipped himself—he was only wearing shorts and she had trouble keeping her eyes off his bronze skin and sensuously hirsute muscled torso—she turned her face to him and sucked his cock while he brought her off with the finger he rubbed over her clit and slipped between her labia and worked inside her. She hadn't sucked a man off since her victorious Miss South Carolina pageant. Charles wasn't that inventive.

Caroline would have let Luiz fuck her then. She expected Luiz to fuck her then. But, knowing that, thus prepared, she would accept his invitation, he asked her, instead, to go to the Retreat Treat artists' conclave. She accepted, knowing that they would fuck, having heard from her girlfriends, through which Luiz had plowed a wide furrow, not only that he would fuck her but that he'd do it almost insatiably, with the demands and roughness of a very naughty boy.

She hadn't been fucked roughly since before she was married.

Charles went around South America with Nicolette; Kenneth went to LA; and Caroline went to the mountains south of Asheville with Luiz Cabrera and more than a half dozen other male Charleston artists.

The retreat was held in a large Lindal log house, all windows and angles, turned into a conference center at the top of a mountain looking down into Glenville Lake near Cashiers, southwest of Asheville, North Carolina. Luiz and Caroline were assigned to the same bedroom, with bath, and Luiz wasted no time getting down to business with Caroline. They barely had placed their suitcases on racks, when Luiz grabbed Caroline from behind.

Standing in the middle of the room, he embraced her from the back, one hand cupping a breast and the other reaching down and clutching her muff brutally. She turned her face to his and they kissed. As he worked her mouth hard with his, he got the buttons of her dress top open. She wasn't wearing a brassiere, and he kneaded her breasts and twisted her nipples, while he sucked hard on her tongue. His other hand bunched up the skirt of her light cotton dress, and he glided his hand under the waistband of her panties and entered her with his fingers.

He was working her cunt so hard with his fingers that he lifted her body off the floor with the strength of his hand clutching her muff. His free arm went under her belly and she was bent over, her back to his front, her arms and head dangling to the floor, her blonde hair cascading around on the carpet as he pulled her panties down and, having managed to unzip himself and crowned his cock with a condom, thrust inside her and began to pump.

He wasn't abnormally large, but he was vigorous. She made some half-hearted complaints melting into passionate cries of walking on the clouds with minor fireworks that became more plaintive and vocal when he pulled his cock out of her cunt and started moving it into her ass.

After several minutes, he pulled her off his cock, turned her, and sat her down on the edge of the bed. With the movement of one hand, he pulled the condom off, and with the other, grabbed the back of Caroline's head and brought it to his cock, forcing her to finish him off.

He left her moaning but strangely satisfied, never having been taken that fully before, and went off to his conclave meetings. Of the rest of the time she spent at the retreat, Caroline remembered little other than the sex.

The next day he took her down to Cashiers, found a tattoo parlor, and had a stylized gecko of his own design tattooed on her lower-left abdomen, saying that it was for her to remember him by forever. She didn't object, In truth, she was somewhat groggy. Part of it was because he had fucked her hard again before bringing her down to the village—after having taken her several times in the night—and part of it was, she suspected, because there was a sedative or something stirred into her morning coffee.

That evening Luiz informed Caroline that she would be posing for the conclave. Part of exercises they performed while on their retreats was all to work in their own mediums from the same subject. For the several years they had gone on retreat together they had then exhibited their work for a weekend down in Charleston during the Spoleto festival.

She was posed, nude, her sex on pronounced display, on a blue-velvet-covered ottoman on a raised platform. The nearly dozen artists, all men, positioned themselves in a circle around her. These included not only Luiz, working in abstract acrylics, but also the Italian, Drago DeRege, working with clay; the black giant, Jorell Jackson, working in oils; and Pierce Worrell, working in charcoal. Another young black man, whose name Caroline never caught, was moving around clicking off photographs. All except the photographer were men Caroline had worked with through their gallery exhibits in Charleston for years, and, if she weren't at least slightly out of it on sedatives and cowed by the power and demanding nature of Luiz, she might have been too embarrassed to pose for the men.

There was in her, though, more than a bit of the pride of having been Miss South Caroline and having kept her beauty and her body toned that felt flattered at the attention.

To get just the glow from her that he wanted in her pose, Luiz posed her with her legs open and her cunt, still rosy and the labia puffy from Luiz' earlier attentions to her. After he posed her, he unzipped himself—while all of the other authors were standing around, their sketch pads at the ready—and ran the head of his cock up between her labia, up to her clit, which he worked until she was moaning and sighing and had arched her back on the ottoman, her torso propped up on his elbows. Her breasts where shimmering, as Luiz moved inside her just to the rim of his glans. He gave her a couple of more inches, and she let her head flop back, the tips of her blonde hair caressing the surface of the ottoman.

"Yes, just like that," Luiz murmured. "Hold that pose." He stepped back and, with a deep sigh moving about the room, the artists began to concentrate on their sketch pads.

The attention became more than she had imagined or bargained for on the third evening when she was posing. They had had a barbecue for dinner out on the patio looking down the side of the mountain onto Lake Glenville. The wine had been flowing and the mood had turned playful. They watched the sun set and the tiki torch light take over. Caroline was the only woman in attendance. She was sitting in Luiz' lap, and he began feeling her up. His hands went under her blouse and played with her breasts until she was humming and sighing. Then the blouse came off and all of the artists watched Luiz working her—kissing the breasts and her lips and her belly—and the tattoo of the gecko. As he did the latter, she was stretched across his lap, with her shoulder blades on the table top and her torso arched. He unbuttoned her shorts and his hand moved down to cup her V, with fingers gliding between her labia, one moving to her clit and two others into her cunt.

She was moaning and stretching on the table and arching her back to the feel of him working her cunt and clit. Between the wine and the continued used of the sedative, she was lost to anything he did to her, no matter who was watching.

The young black guy started firing off shots with his camera. This sent most of the rest of the artists scrambling for their own mode of preliminary sketching. Someone came back with a hand full of condom packets.

Ten minutes later, Luiz was stretched out on his back, naked, on the table top, with Caroline stretched out, on her back, on top of Luiz. He had his cock buried in her anal canal. The rest of the artists were gathered around, either sketching or stroking themselves off. A few were braver than that. Pierce Worrell was the first to move between Caroline's legs, to raise and spread her legs. Jorell Jackson grabbed one of her ankles; Drago DeRege grabbed the other. Worrell's fly was open and his cock out. He rolled a condom on the stiff member. Luiz cupped Caroline's breast from behind her and kneaded them as Worell worked his sheathed cock inside her and began to pump. When he was done, he leaned down and kissed her gecko tattoo and was replaced between her legs by the sculptor DeRege, who went through the same ritual. The last was the black portraitist, Jackson. And it was good that he was last because he was the biggest and thickest of those who had fucked her. He too, leaned down and kissed the gecko when he was done.

When the session was finished, Luiz took her up to bed.

Early in the morning, the sedative had worn off enough for Caroline to have some sense—but not a complete memory—of what had happened. What she could remember of it, though, wasn't exactly unpleasant. She had been on a high, despite the wine and drug, with the sex from five different men in succession and combined. She'd never felt so alive. And being manhandled by Luiz was a thrill and a half in itself.

Luiz was zoned out in a drunken stooper. She quickly and carefully packed, lifted his car keys from the bureau, and drove herself back to Charleston, driving his car. She left the car parked in front of the Atrium Art Gallery, the keys under the floor mat on the passenger side, flagged down a taxi, and went back to the Tradd Street house. She soaked in the tub for hours.

When she got out of the tub, she called Ricky Fenton, one of the owners of the gallery, to tell him that Luiz Cabrera's Mustang was parked outside his gallery. Then she did what she could to forget all about what had happened—or at least to suppress how much of it had been arousing and sexually satisfying for her. This just wouldn't suit her new role as proper Charleston matron and patron of the arts.

Much of the blame was hers, she knew. She had overstepped the bounds and put herself in the position she wound up in. All of her friends had told her how dangerous and demanding Luiz was. Part of her, though, glowed in the experience.

Dangerous and demanding weren't all that unattractive to her.

Charles was no help. He came home one day with the painting Luiz had done of her on commission and hung it above the mantle in his study. It was too sexy, he said, to hang it in one of the living rooms, but he declared that he liked it and wanted to look at it every day. Luiz had accentuated the diaphanous nature of the scarf she was swathed in for the sitting, letting the hint of her dark and large aureoles peek through the material. Also, down on her lower belly, there was the hint of the gecko tattoo, painted in, obviously, after Luiz had come back from his artists' retreat.

She didn't see Luiz again that summer, fall, or winter, but each time she entered the study she felt him whispering to her, "My mark is on you," from the painting. It was an abstract painting, but it clearly was her. Luiz was an excellent artist. And each time she entered the study when Charles was in there, he was looking up at the painting with a little smile on his face. She wondered if he ever thought about the gecko tattoo. He probably—and least she hoped—thought she'd always had it. He preferred fucking in the dark and had never had his face down that far on her torso in his life.

* * * *

Charles had returned to the Tradd Street mansion from Savannah late Sunday evening after the Retreat Treat exhibition of the previous Friday. They had vigorous sex that night, with Caroline enjoying it despite almost being able now to smell that Nicolette woman's perfume on his body. She made sure they had sex in the dark, though.

The next morning, after Charles had gone, whistling happily, off to work, Caroline called Kenneth Blaine.

"Can you break away? I need some comfort, but I need to stop someplace first."

"Now? Yes . . . yes, for you . . . for what I hope 'breakaway' means I can have my schedule rearranged. Where are you?"

"The Tradd Street house."

"Where is—?"

"Charles has already left for work."

Outside the Atrium Art Gallery, she asked Kenneth to stay in his BMW and to keep the motor running.

"The gallery won't be open at this hour," he said.

"It will be open for me," she answered, her lips set at grim. "I called Ricky, and he said he'd open up for me."

"Hello, Caroline," Ricky said when he had come to the Meeting Street entrance and unlocked the door of the gallery for her. "What can I do for you?"

"I want to buy some of the paintings from Friday's exhibit and that sculpture over there," she said. As she looked at them today, in the daylight, she still couldn't understand why many of the patrons on Friday night couldn't see that several of the works of art were of her—nude, and some during sex with different men. One of them, in particular, Luiz' abstract, was of the black giant Jorell Jackson fucking her. She hardly had been able to believe it when Luiz told her that she'd asked for a second round with Jackson and only Jackson on that night on the Lake Glenville house terrace. That was when Luiz had taken his opportunity to sketch out his contribution to the conclave's art study of Caroline.

And all of them sported that gecko tattoo. Her hand involuntarily went to cover the tattoo even though she was fully clothed. There was no way that she could let Charles actually study any of these artworks again. It was bad enough to have the hint of the tattoo in the abstract in his study, but some of these were a more literal representation—the one of the sculpture had been emblazoned in black enamel.

"I can't sell them to you," Ricky said.

"And why not? My money's always been good here."

"Because they've already been purchased."

"Purchased? Who bought them?" She could feel her blood running cold.

"Your husband bought them. Charles Sullivan. The whole lot of these studies of this model. Isn't she stunning?"

Caroline was stunned.

That's when she saw the man coming into the gallery through the Church Street door.

Luiz Cabrera laughed when he saw her and bellowed out a loud, "Caroline. There you are. I missed you on Friday."

"These paintings. This sculpture," she managed to blurb out.

"Turned out great, didn't they," Luiz said in a booming voice. "It was all Charles' idea, you know. And I understand from Ricky that Charles has bought the lot."

"Charles?"

"Yes. He suggested I take you to the retreat and that you'd be a splendid model. Told me you liked it rough too and wanted some sexy artwork of yourself. He said he loved what I did with the scarf."

"He suggested it? Everything? And the tattoo too?"

"Yep. That was a nice touch, don't you think? We even used it on the brochures." He was lifting a brochure from the exhibit, one she hadn't bothered to pick up on Friday evening. Her gecko tattoo—Luiz' distinctive artwork—was staring back at her from the cover.

She knew it then—that Charles was doing this to keep her in line. He'd discovered that she'd found out about Savannah. Now he knew something even better about her—to keep her docile and serving. To keep her in line. But when she realized that the most depressing thought she could surface about that was that she'd now have to wear one-piece bathing suits, she realized she didn't care much. She only had a bit more than two years to go to outlast the prenup agreement and she could keep Charles going that long. You had to have brains and cunning to make it to Miss South Carolina.

Well, fuck Charles, she thought. She was somebody too. She'd been Miss South Carolina. She'd anchored the TV news on a major Charleston station.

And she'd fuck whomever she pleased. She turned and looked out at Kenneth's BMW. Suddenly, though, he was just too much the Ken doll. Too vanilla. She'd had dangerous and rough now and knew that's what she preferred.

No one would accuse Luiz of being a Ken doll.

"Tell me, Luiz, did you fuck me like that at the lake because Charles told you to or because you enjoyed fucking me like that?"

"Do you need to ask?" he asked with a grin. "You don't think I was being enthusiastic enough?"

"What are you doing right now. Now and for the next three days?"

"Well, now . . ."

"Because I know what I want to do. I want to take you out to Summerplace and fuck you for three days."

A big grin spread across Luiz' face and he extended his hand. "Well, then what are we waiting for?" he answered, as he turned to the side and pointed to his Mustang waiting out on the curb at the Church Street entrance.