Llona was appalled. She’d forgotten all about Olivia. It had never occurred to her that Olivia would go ahead on her own and arrange Archer’s punishment without consulting her further. Llona had been too busy changing her mind, deciding she didn’t want revenge on Archer, figuring out ways of finding a suitable mate for him to take her place after she was gone. And certainly she’d never have okayed the heinous punishment Marguerita was going to inflict on Archer.
Llona tried to tell Olivia all this. But Olivia wasn’t receptive. Llona might have changed her mind, but Olivia hadn’t. She owed something to the Castrators’ Defense League. She owed loyalty to Marguerita. Nothing had changed. Archer was still the same guilty devil he’d been before. Olivia refused to intervene. All Llona’s pleas were to no avail. Archer’s punishment would take place as scheduled.
It had been contrived so that Llona might view the finale of it. But there was no way she could stop it. She didn’t even know Marguerita’s name, or what she looked like. There was no way she could save Archer.
The “innocent” victim arrived at Marguerita’s hotel on schedule. The lobby was pandemonium. It was filled with well-dressed, shrill-voiced, cackling, elbowing women.
“Archer! What are you doing here?”
The voice at his elbow brought him up short. He turned around to find Shirley Simpell looking up at him. “I have a business appointment,” he improvised. “What’s going on? Where did all these women come from?”
“It’s an all-state DAR convention. All these ladies are Daughters of the American Revolution.”
“They look more like relics of the American Revolution. Present company excepted, of course.”
“That’s just what I’d expected from a Red dupe like you!” Shirley turned on her heel and walked away from him.
Archer elbowed his way through the crowd of women to the wide staircase. He walked up the one flight to the mezzanine floor where Marguerita’s room was located. As he waited for her to answer his knock, he wondered why the devil she'd chosen to stay at a hotel where a convention was in progress and why she’d taken a room on one of the lower floors where the noise level would be so great. He decided she probably just didn’t know any better. He was wrong, of course. Marguerita had selected both the hotel and the room very carefully. She had known exactly what she was doing. And she had known why she was doing it -- which was something Archer didn't know.
“Mr. Hornsby. Please come in.” She opened the door wide and received him with a flourish of hospitality.
Archer entered and turned to face her as she closed the door behind him. The curtains were drawn and the room was lit by a couple of small lamps. As Marguerita crossed between Archer and one of the lamps, he gasped.
She was wearing a low-cut white peasant blouse and a multi-colored skirt which reached to her knees. The skirt flared out even with the few steps she took to cross over to him. It was made of the very thin silken material favored by flamenco dancers. The lamplight rendered both blouse and skirt transparent and revealed that Marguerita was wearing absolutely nothing beneath them. Thus Archer’s gasp.
“It’s so very kind of you to come here and help me with my problem, ” she told Archer.
“I think maybe you’re going to be able to help me with a little problem of my own,” Archer replied.
“Oh? And what would that be, Mr. Hornsby?”
“It’s not important . . . And why don’t you call me Archer, Marguerita?”
“All right, Archer.” Marguerita went over to a small, portable record player and turned it on. The record was already in place. “I remember you said you’d never seen a real flamenco dancer.”
She smiled at him. “And so I thought that to show my appreciation for the favor you’re doing me, I’d give you a demonstration of the art.” Slow and soft, the strains of a flamenco guitar became audible. Only the strum, the strong beat behind the melody, hinted at the extent to which the tempo would eventually build. “Sit down and relax.” Marguerita motioned him to an armchair. When he complied, she raised her hands over her head and clapped them together very slowly, picking up the beat.
At first Marguerita’s hands were the only part of her body that moved. The arms stretched over her head, however, pulled the material of her blouse tight over her breasts and Archer found himself staring at the outline of the wide roseates and pointy nipples and missing the artistry of her hand-clapping. But when she lowered her arms slightly and started snapping her fingers instead of clapping her hands together, he refocused to take in her entire figure.
Calculatedly, Marguerita used the lamplight to teasing advantage. She stayed in front of it for only a split second at a time, but she crossed often enough for Archer to become excited by the glimpses of the luxurious ebony triangle seen through the skirt at the juncture of her rip- pling thighs. Still her movements remained quite slow. The skirt flared slightly. Her hips and breasts and derriere moved subtly under the material of blouse and skirt, promising much, but as yet revealing only a little.
The tempo of the guitar speeded up and Marguerita’s movements began to flow more freely. Balanced firmly on one leg, she stamped the other one, bending the knee and sliding forward toward Archer, her hands sliding the material of the skirt up her thigh so that it flared out from one cheek of her buttocks, revealing the tantalizing vibrations of the firm flesh. Slowly, she pirouetted in this fashion, her outstretched leg almost parallel to the floor, her head thrown back, long black hair cascading over her shoulders, breasts expanding more noticeably now with the controlled energy she expended.
Archer licked his lips and continued staring. Momentarily she returned his stare, a hostile look, almost a snarl, half the traditional sexual aggression of the flamenco dancer—-the erotic contempt of the participant for the non-participant—and half the hatred for men which Marguerita felt. Archer, however, took the expression as part of the performance. He reacted to its sexuality without comprehending its very real hostility.
His reaction became so manifest that Marguerita could see it. The noticeable bulge spurred her on to greater activity. The music was quite fast now, wild and abandoned as only a flamenco guitar can be.
She straightened up and threw her head back. Her hands traveled insinuatingly up and down the length of her body. That she enjoyed this erotic maneuver was obvious. Her hands moved faster and faster, nails digging into her thighs and hips, palms clutching her breasts, kneading the nipples, pushing them up until they were almost—but never quite-—free of the low-cut peasant blouse.
Both her hands fastened on the hem of the skirt and she spun about several times, very quickly. Archer gasped at the revelation of her naked buttocks as the skirt flared out from them. He bit his lip as she raised and lowered the skirt in front to reveal and conceal the lush growth of her pubic mane.
The music slowed abruptly. The melody all but faded away. The strong bass beat took precedence, loud, insistent, pounding almost like a drum, basic in its sensual thrum. Marguerita stood in one spot and responded to it. Her whole body moved and rippled sensually. The peasant blouse slipped from one shoulder, and then from the breast itself, leaving it bare. She seemed not to notice. The ivory globe seemed to ripple and move with a life of its own. The cherry roseate widened and almost seemed to roughen in texture as though the pores were opening to breathe. The purplish nipple arched toward the ceiling and seemed almost to be straining to escape the flesh of the hard-panting breast. Archer’s hands began to sweat with the effort of restraining himself from reaching out to grab the naked breast.
Still standing in one spot, Marguerita’s feet began to move like castanets. The skirt billowed up and down. The blouse worked free from where it was tucked into the skirt and hung loose. The waistband of the skirt hiked up on one side and slid down on the other, revealing a naked hip moving frenziedly, and then the rounded top of one buttock, which looked as if it had been caught in a mid-orgasm all its own.