Laura sighed, and looked around her, post orgasm. La petit mort was also la petit renaissance, and post climax everything looks different from the moment before. She distinguished more features in the women who had been pleasuring her, and wondered how many centuries they had been around. The fingers vanished beyond the grill, as their owners observed that they had done their magic.

The disembodied voice spoke up again.

“Laura Lioness. Recompense.”

That was all the voice said. As if on command, all the six women who had pleasured her stepped back to the grill. The woman with the piercing blue eyes who had fingered her to climax gestured her to kneel. Laura did as she was bid. All six women dropped their pants, dresses and gowns, depending on what they were wearing. Six women in different stages of undress, with masks on their faces, were surrounding her. She felt heat flush through her loins again. She realized at that moment that she was incredibly turned on by these women, almost as much as those stormy gray eyes had turned her on. She realized she was bisexual then.

The masked woman who had fingered her had flowing blonde hair that was wavy and fell almost upto her waist. She had dropped every item of clothing except for her long, black stockings that rode halfway up her thighs. Her neatly trimmed pubic bush glistened golden. Her cunt was dripping wet, as was only to be expected. She had phenomenal breasts, round and conical in artful proportions. She had sharp nipples that were appeared rock hard in her state of arousal. The black mask on her face only sexed her up further, although that was hardly necessary.

A familiar sensation colored her mind briefly, and she wondered if she knew this woman somehow. She dismissed it out of hand. Someone fingers you to orgasm, you know them plenty, in the most private way one human being can know another. It is not intimate like lovers or old couples growing old together are intimate, and yet it is intimate in a very special way.

It was her turn now. She had a lot more orgasms to facilitate than these women had. She took to her task with gusto. Somehow the idea that she would have to demonstrate some level of competence when fingering and probing their most private spaces, while finding out the secret passageway to hearing them scream out in climax, excited Laura. She was lusting after the fact that these women were going to be pleasured by her. She was enjoying this way too much. I am bisexual, she repeated to herself, as though mentally sounding it out somehow made it easier to digest. One cock all her life, and then a whole sisterhood of cunts.

She pushed three fingers into the blonde woman’s dripping sex. The woman’s blue eyes met hers as she did it, and glowed with a little more lust as they plunged in there. She worked her fingers around there, and moved them one way, then another. She crooked all three fingers inside the woman, and pulled against the tight muscles of her cunt. The woman’s cunt responded, and gave her a powerful yet reassuring squeeze.

She looked at her eyes again. They were inviting, asking her not to hold back. She had tossed her head back an inch, and her lips were parted through the mask. Laura reached up with her other hand and placed a finger on her lower lip. The woman took it in her mouth and sucked it, giving her another look that could be described as making love with the eyes.

She returned her attention to the woman’s blonde pubic region, and inserted a fourth finger in there, and felt up the inside of her vagina. Her tunnel was responding readily, each time Laura probed one way or another. She pushed them inside, and felt the woman’s cunt tighten, pushing her fingers away.

She pushed her fingers back in there, pushing against the walls of her cunt, while the woman moaned. Laura placed a finger of her other hand in the woman’s mouth, and she sucked it, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to do.

The other women were fingering themselves, awaiting Laura’s attention. She decided to ‘service’ them according to how they had serviced her. So the lovely masked blonde was at the head of the line, where they put the yellow tape that you had to stand at.

Laura reached through the marble grill. Her nose was against it, but her lips were straining, barely outside. She felt the blonde strangers lips coming to meet her, as though one of them were in prison and the other was visiting, and the prison warden had turned his back for a moment. Were visitors allowed to kiss a prisoner, Laura wondered. Then her thought was sucked out of her mouth, as the blonde stranger kissed her lips as though she was furious about Laura’s mind being on anything else.

Laura crooked her fingers again, insider her tight cunt, and noticed that the blonde girl reached through the grill and grabbed her buttocks. One finger of hers slipped inside Laura's anus, and she gasped into her angry mouth.

She was determined to be the one giving an orgasm, not taking one. She was all for more sex, but this appeared to be a move to dominate through the grill, a challenge. The blonde woman was telling her this - either you finger me so powerfully that I don’t have any brain matter left to think about getting you off, or else I will take over and make you lose yourself in your loins, and then you will cum again, but you will have lost more than just your loins. It will mean you will have lost at digital manipulation.

Laura’s four fingers stayed inside the blonde, and their lips stayed parted, playing with the others. Someone was pinching Laura’s nipples, but she didn’t have enough attention and awareness to inquire who it was. She felt two fingers inside her anus now, wriggling, and she tightened her four fingers, and reached further in, exploring the stranger’s sex. Her fingers went one way, and then another.

She felt a nub inside the blonde’s cunt, and fingered it delicately, and then savagely. She felt the blonde’s tongue pressing hers down, and then she pushed it back, and then placed her tongue on top, and dominated her. The blonde’s fingers touched something deep within her anus, and her body shuddered in excitement. In response she rotated her fingers inside the blonde, and felt her body tense, and she felt a warm flush of wetness against her fingers. The blonde’s pussy was heating up by the moment.

Someone started sucking her nipples and Laura gasped at how good it felt. She looked away from her blonde lover for a moment and saw a caramel colored hand squeezing her tit, while its owner sucked the nipple with enormous passion. She returned her attention to the blonde, and fingered her some more, and felt her tense even more, approaching her climax.

The blonde woman’s fingers went slack in Laura’s anus, as the woman succumbed to the pleasures of an orgasm, while Laura pressed down her clitoris with a finger and played with the rest of her tunnel with the others. She even allowed Laura top berth in their kissing. Laura smiled to herself. Nobody can retain their sense of individual control during the little death. It consumes you, even if you are part of an immortal sisterhood.

As if she had been mocking Laura, the woman took back control, even while her body spasmed. The fire flamed on in her eyes again, and her tongue crushed Laura’s. She moved her fingers from Laura’s anus back to her pussy, and started fingering her faster. It was epic recovery from an orgasmic high, even as the orgasm progressed. Laura hadn’t expected this and struggled to reassert her dominance.

It didn’t work though. The second time around her cunt was ready to climax, given all the action it had been privy to. She felt her own vaginal muscles clench around the fingers of the blonde stranger, and then she lost herself again to the throes of another delicious conflagration that radiated out from her loins and swept every nerve and every fiber of her being in its path. The blonde woman winked at her when it was done.

The six women who had come up to her, lead by the blonde woman who had expertly made her cum twice, disappeared into the crowd. Laura had expected that she would have to finger all of them to orgasm, but it was not so. It appeared that her stint in the little marble enclosure had come to an end.

Madame Juliette emerged from the crowd, with her quaint pearl encrusted black mask furthering her aura of mystery. She whispered through the grill of the enclosure, telling Laura to get fully dressed again, and handed her a towel. Julia came into the enclosure and placed a bowl next to Laura. It contained warm water. She placed a bar of soap next to it.

“We are short of time, Madame,” Madame Juliette whispered. “Usually the initiate has time to go and have a bath before dinner, but the first part of your initiation took longer than is the norm. That is why I’ve asked Julia to get you water to wash yourself the best you can.”

Laura detected a hint of disapproval in the formidable madame’s voice, and trembled. She wanted the good graces of Madame Juliette, although she wasn’t sure why that was so important to her. She was also horrified that she would be cleaning up right here, in the enclosure, in the plain view of everyone. Post orgasm one realizes that modesty is something that actually means something.

She washed up, cleaning her face and her sex. Julia stood by, while Madame Juliette vanished for a few minutes. When she was done, as she toweled herself dry, Madame Juliette peeped into the enclosure again.

“Madame, make haste,” she said in a sharp tone, as though Laura should have known that the schedule was this tight.

Laura nodded, and followed her, cursing to herself. She would have words with the madame at some point, when she felt up to it. Just then she knew she couldn't confront her. A lot of the masked members of the sisterhood were headed in the general direction that they were walking, but apparently the initiate had some designated sitting place. So Madame Juliette was leading them at as much of a breakneck pace as could be managed within the milling crowd, with rapid volley of excusez-mois and pardonnez-mois to warn people.

They were moving along the length of the large hall, with the warm yellow glow in it, and the smell of freshly baked brownies got stronger, and started getting admixed with the smell of oak trees. Laura saw ornate chandelier shapes whiz by overhead, and more painting of the Rococo style flash by on distant walls. Masked women were all walking rapidly in the same direction that Madame Juliette was speed walking them in. Laura wondered whether competitive walking contests were like this. She felt a burn in her shins and in her ankles, even in her newfangled superwoman youthful body. Surprisingly porky Julia was holding her own, waddling away as though it didn’t bother her, with her plump breasts and buttocks jiggling along the way. Laura smiled. She appeared to be Madame Juliette’s personal maid in some sense. Laura made a mental note to get some one on one Julia time so she could grill her. The girl had been rude earlier, but Laura decided that she must know a lot of the madame’s secrets. That was worth enduring her silly manners.

Her thoughts were interrupted by her senses. The great hall did have a finite length after all. They had entered a great dining room that appeared just as large, with the same chandeliers overhead with bronze and gold castings. The same warm yellow glow pervaded the place. The carpet was a black velvet one, and the walls had more mirrors on them than they had paintings. Laura wondered whether having mirrors in a dining room meant that everyone would watch their own figures, and do better portion control. Perhaps. Or maybe the interior designers of this place had some serious issues.

The dining table sat at the center of the room, and it went on forever. It took them a minute to hurry to the center of the room, walking widthwise. The rush here was a lot crazier, since the ladies were vying for the few select seats. Most seats were assigned, but they had some special seats left open on a first come basis. They did not have to worry though. The initiate was seated in a specific place.

Laura saw that she would be seated somewhere along the table. She wondered whether it was the center of the table, or whether they were to one side. It was impossible to tell though, since she couldn’t see where the table ended, looking either direction lengthwise. The table itself was made from a rich, dark oak, and she realized that this was the oak smell that hit her nose.

She was seated right next to Madame Juliette. Across from her on the table was the powerful woman with the red hair and the piercing green eyes, who wore the black and gold mask. Seeing her mask made Laura realize that nobody had taken their masks off yet. She was the only person whose face was available for complete inspection, and somehow that made her feel very disadvantaged.

The green eyes studied her, but vouchsafed nothing. They were reservoirs of power, as though this woman spent centuries accumulating power in her eyes. Laura was forced to acknowledge her, as though some invisible force compelled her to. She nodded in her direction, desperately wanting to be acknowledged. It is a very human thing to do. The kind of thing that an employee with an underdeveloped personality would do in the presence of her company CEO. It was the kind of nod that said ‘you own me’, not because the person saying it would say so if they had their wits about them, but because in the presence of a far more powerful personality, that person’s wits had taken a long vacation.

The woman nodded, but very slightly, and Laura was glad for it. Then she felt stupid that she felt so grateful for being acknowledged by this stranger, and thought of a quote by Benjamin Franklin.

‘A nod from a lord is breakfast for a fool.’ Or perhaps in her case ‘A nod from that lady is dinner for this fool.’

She resolved silently to have a little more courage, but looking in the direction of the flame red hair and the green eyes made her forget her courage again.

She wondered where porky Julia had gone. She would have been glad for her less demanding company. Julia was nowhere within sight. Perhaps the help didn’t dine with the mistresses? Perhaps it was some sort of class thing like that. Or perhaps she wanted to socialize with a different crowd, given that she worked with madame Juliette all day long. It was difficult to tell.

Laura felt very alone sitting there across from the red haired lady. As if in response to her mental appeals for support, Madame Juliette warmed up.

“You have met the distinguished Madame Richelieu,” Madame Juliette told her, smiling. The sharpness was gone from her voice, and she was doing the compassionate thing with her eyes again.

Laura clutched at her, as though she were her oldest friend. The powerful dame across from her started a rapid fire conversation in French with madame Juliette, and they looked at her in between a couple of times and nodded, as though they were satisfied. Then the red haired woman spoke to her.

“Have you heard of the Comte de St Germain?” she demanded.

Her voice was even, soft and there was nothing in it that overtly connoted power or threat. But there was something hidden, something subtle and subliminal, that indicated an ocean of menacing power behind it. She shivered, and hastened to respond.

“I don’t, madame,” she said, quick, eager, wanting approval.

There was no approval waiting for her. The red haired lady nodded to a dark woman seated to her right, as though they had done this a thousand times before, and dismissed Laura from her attention. She resumed her conversation with madame Juliette in French, and Laura was now presumably going to be enlightened by the dark woman.

The dark woman wore a pearl white mask, with gold horses studding it all over. Her skin suggested that she was probably Latina or South Asian. She had shining black hair that was braided into a complicated plait that fell down her breasts. Calling her eyes limpid pools of seductive brown wouldn’t be a stretch. Laura loved her right away.

Her voice was equally seductive.

“You don’t speak French, do you?” she said, in a completely British accent.

“Unfortunately I don’t,” Laura said.

“Good, I’m glad,” the woman whispered, slyly glancing at the two women having their rapid fire French discussion. “Back in the old days they wanted all of us to learn it, so I had to. But I hated having to do it. I hate having to do anything.”

Laura nodded, but she nodded imperceptibly, worried that the flame haired woman would notice her acknowledgment of the denigration of the French language.

“It’s not the language that’s an issue,” the woman went on, “it’s that one has to learn it. They squashed that rule at the turn of the century.”

At the turn of the century. Laura wondered how old this dark, seductive woman was. She didn’t ask her though. Just then they were interrupted for a few moments, as dinner was served. She wondered if Madame Juliette had been ‘managing’ her, just to make sure they made good time, given that food wasn’t waiting there for them. Presently masked women, dressed in black suits that resembled diver’s outfits, except for the absence of aqualungs and flippers, functioned as their waitresses and serving staff.

They all looked very similar to one another, as though one single family had been contracted to waitress for the sisterhood for all eternity. They brought some welcome and delicious food along with them though, for all their mysterious appearance, wheeling them in on what appeared to be little rectangular food carts that were silver and black in color, that moved along in an eerily silent fashion. Laura wondered whether the sisterhood always splurged on all of their occasions. Even the food carts appeared ridiculously expensive.

Dinner included Bisque and French onion soup, and Pot Au Feu, baguettes, a whole family of quiches, basil salmon terrine, an assortment of cheeses, Andouillette, Coq Au Vin, Escargots, Ratatouille, along with too many desserts. Desserts included regular favorites such as Creme Brulee, Mousse Au Chocolat and Mille-Feuille and the entire contents of your classic French Patisserie. Then there was a whole wine bar, Champagne, Bordeaux, Burgundy - all provinces of France were represented in the wines available. Laura also some unmarked bottles that reminded her of that delicious mind fuck wine she’d had right after her conversion into a pretty young woman. Fruit, oak and earth in equal proportions. The wine chose her before she could choose a wine.

Laura wondered whether porky Julia would try out everything on the menu, chuckled to herself, and then chided herself for the uncharitable thought. She asked for the unmarked wine to sip through the meal, and then had some Bisque to start out, and then some terrine. She wasn’t very surprised at her voracious appetite, given her recent activity at the initiation. The Bisque contained lobster, from what Laura could tell, and was simply too flavorful to describe.

“I am Iratze,” the dark beauty volunteered, while enjoying some onion soup. “Hello Laura Lioness.”

“Hello,” Laura said, wondering what sort of name Iratze was and whether the sisterhood media people distributed fliers with her own name on it to all those that attended her initiation.

“Aren’t you going to ask?”

“Ask what?” Laura said.

“What my name means, and where I’m from?”

“I was going to,” she said.

“Sure you were. I am Basque, and my name refers to the Virgin Mary, the mom, you know.”

Laura was going to ask her about her British accent. Did all Basque people speak with British accents? The only thing she knew for sure about the Basque people was that they were in Spain, and that something called the ETA was connected to them, but she didn’t know what it was. She didn’t get a chance to ask further questions on that topic though. Iratze was on a roll.

“Right, so I am supposed to tell you about some tidbits from the history of the sisterhood. You don’t know who the Comte de St Germain is, so let’s start with him.”

She captured Laura’s attention when she said ‘history of the sisterhood’. She nodded, and knew that Iratze didn’t need her to talk to keep a conversation going.

“He’s fairly popular amongst conspiracy theorists of a certain bent,” she said. “Let’s not even travel in that direction. I’ll stick to the Count’s story. He achieved his heyday in the 1700s. He had some grandiose claims, such as being 500 years old, being immortal, the sort of stuff a boy says when people aren’t impressed with the size of his cock.”

Laura laughed. She was getting the SNL version or the Monty Python version of the Count’s life it seemed.

“Voltaire found his tall tales annoying, and called him ‘The Wonderman’. Whatever the truth of his life, he had a dubious date of birth, possibly 1712, and he claimed to be descended from Transylvanian royalty. His claim was that he was the son of a certain prince Rakoczi of Transylvania. Not everyone bought his claims though. We really won’t ever know the truth. The fact is that the Hapsburgs were being persecuted in those times, so they may well have hidden the identity of one of their princes to keep him alive and kicking.”

Laura wondered what this information was worth. This was a little over three centuries ago. If her guess was correct, the Count was somehow going to cross paths with the sisterhood. She bit into her terrine, and wondered at how rich it tasted. It had both salmon and pork in it, and a higher fat content than Laura imagined it would. She wondered whether she could toss the rest, even though the taste was divine, and then decided against it, having glimpsed the fiery redheaded lady across the table from her.

“Don’t sweat it, girlie, just pay attention,” the Basque beauty advised her, having caught the look on Laura’s face that she got when she was playing detective. “The Count had splendid education and great training and all of that, so a lot of people had no reason to dispute his claims of royal descent. That and the persecution of the Hapsburgs made for a semi compelling argument back in the day. Of course being royalty brings with it all sorts of benefits, so skeptics such as you and I should dispute those claims. In any case it all started with people prying into where he came from and when he was born.”

Laura nodded, unconsciously placing her hand under her chin was support. She was hooked on the story, and her unconscious gesture was her oldest telltale sign that a story had won her over.

“He made a ton of grandiose claims before he started claiming to be a royal. When asked about his origin, he claimed he was an immortal sometimes, he claimed he was 500 years old sometimes. It varied, probably based on whether he was drinking red wine or white wine.”

Laura looked at her quizzically. The last part sounded like embellishment. It sounded like a lot of dusky lip.

“Okay, ha ha, you caught me,” Iratze said. “I don’t know why he made the claims that he made. The fact was that nobody knew. What was clear, and these documents are maintained under strict secrecy, was that he didn’t age for the longest time. This is something that conspiracy theorists talk about, but historians are likely call it bunkum.”

Laura didn’t really know what to say. She stole a glance at the red haired reservoir of latent power, and saw that she was quietly saying something to Madame Juliette, but something in her manner gave her the impression of suppressed fury. She turned back to Iratze, worried that she’d be caught looking.

“Here’s what’s infuriating about the Count’s history though,” Iratze continued, “we really don’t know whether the records refer to the same individual or to different individuals. There was this guy called Mi’lord Gower. He was a mime and a comedian, which was a perfectly respectable job title in those days. This Gower guy pretended to be the Count often, and he went really overboard with the tales that he told of himself. Everything is available for public inspection, but everything is so maddeningly tangled.”

The sisterhood. Where does the sisterhood fit in, my Spanish beauty, Laura thought to herself.

“You see, the Count’s real history is absolutely lost, but that is not the most interesting part of it,” she said. “In fact, if you’ll take my word for it, the Count’s claim to being a Hapsburg was probably genuine. He was probably Rakoczi’s boy, and in later life he no longer found the tall tales conscionable. Gower of course was full of manure and all that wonderfully smelly stuff, so let’s not even consider his tales worth the oxygen it takes to recount them.”

“Okay,” Laura said, helping herself to Mille-Feuille, which was basically three layers of puff pastry and two layers of creme patisserie. This version had a layer of white icing with dark chocolate strips on top, with a ton of diced strawberries and blueberries on the side. The chef had taken special care to make it light, and extremely decadent in the same bite. Laura made a mental note to get the recipe. Iratze’s voice took her back from culinary fancies to the seventeenth century.

“There was someone else, behind the scenes,” Iratze said. “Someone whom the sisterhood has a historical record of. This gentleman was of similar height to the Count, and looked remarkably similar in appearance. He didn’t age for the longest time, well over a century, and the sisterhood kept close tabs on him. We just call him Monsieur.”

“Why did the sisterhood keep the tabs on him? Was that how they discovered the unguent?” Laura asked.

She was all excited. A mysterious gent who didn’t age. It fit. The nonsense about rare herbs from the Andes and the Himalayas hadn’t really worked for her. The Basque girl gave her an indulgent but sad look though.

“Girlie, you don’t know the half of it, do you,” she said, shaking her head. “The sisterhood wasn’t looking for the unguent. They were the source of it. No man, before Monsieur, had ever been privy to the secret, and he had done so without the sisterhood’s permission.”

Laura gulped, wondering why she suddenly felt afraid.

“The initial idea was to assassinate Monsieur, but the sisterhood’s ruling council in those days quickly nixed it. They preferred to see how Monsieur would work out, whether he would wear his immortality well. Assassination could wait until he started shooting off his mouth.”

“So did he start shooting off his mouth,” Laura asked.

“Only a little, but the fucking Count and that pesky Gower guy did enough damage, talking about immortality this and fountain of youth that,” she said, looking furious, as though she had personally been affected by those guys. “It became dangerous after two decades. People started asking questions about the gentleman who didn’t age. Monsieur ran with the Count for a bit, and they became fast friends, but as the Count’s circle and influence grew, so did the number of people who encountered Monsieur, and so did the questions. Why does this man not age? Where is this man from? What did this man do so that he stays young always? What can we do so that we can stay young always?“

Laura wondered why those questions were a problem. The sisterhood had had no issues with giving her youth and possible immortality. Iratze seemed to be an expert mind reader. She supplied the desired answer forthwith.

“The sisterhood grows through a very cautious induction of its future members,” she said. “Every one of us has been psychologically profiled prior to being chosen. We need a certain subset of people as members. What is most important though is that this is all about control. Controlling who joins the sisterhood and who doesn’t. Imagine what would happen if the secret of youth was shared with everyone Willy nilly. We only have a finite planet with finite resources. Until we figure out extra terrestrial means of sustaining life, we must assume that we have limited playroom. If we had allowed the fallout from Monsieur’s increasing popularity to go unchecked, we may well have lost our secrecy, and there may well have been a billion immortals on this planet right now, leeching resources at an unsustainable rate.”

Laura nodded tentatively. It seemed unfair in some sense, but she was one of the haves in this case, so she didn’t want to appear ungrateful. She didn’t want to risk becoming old ever again, which is what she supposed was the fixed punitive measure against all ingrates. Something else bothered her though, and it had bothered her earlier. No one had really chosen her. She had chosen to come to the sisterhood, and not the other way around. She didn't really think she would receive the answer to that particular question just yet, so she asked another one.

“So what happened with Monsieur,” she said.

“How is it you say it nowadays- the merde hit the ventilateur,” Iratze replied.

“What?”

“The shit hit the fan.”