Wisdom

Mb*, Mgg, Fg*, Fmf, bb, bf, inc, ws

This story contains depictions and/or descriptions of sexual activity between adults and minors. If it is not legal to read this sort of material in your locality, you object to this sort of material and/or you are under 18 years of age, please stop reading now and exit this story. This story is a work of fiction. No character within bears any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, and no scenario within is intended to depict any actual event and neither should the same be inferred. This story remains the sole property of the author. Comments are welcome and may be sent to the author at edward_sellon@protonmail.com. Disagreeable comments will be ignored. This story may be downloaded for the personal enjoyment of readers but those wishing to re-post and/or re-print the same must first obtain the permission of the author.

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Chapter I - The Investigation

It was the crack of dawn when the message arrived. My months of investigation had brought me to an expensive and lavish hotel suite in a sunbaked tropical tourist town, the bill paid by some offshore corporation, the origin of which disappeared into an impenetrable trail of holding companies scattered all over the world. After months of trying, I was supposed to finally meet the so-called Master, a figure of mystery and yet seeming reverence in the dark corner of the underworld I was hoping to bring to light.

My ambition had been marked from the start. I'd been insufferable in high school: stratospherically high grade-point average, debate society, honor roll, Key Club, editor of the school newspaper, editor of the yearbook, etcetera, etcetera. I was no better in college and people thought I'd aim for business or law school, big piles of cash, anything that in their eyes would reify the years of hard work and achievement. Most were surprised when I chose to go to journalism school. I wasn't surprised they were surprised. No one knew me, not really, not even the people closest to me – and there weren't many of those. I'd always loved stories and knew I had a knack for telling them. Moreover, the avarice, hypocrisy and venality I saw every day of my life – in my own family, in school, at my jobs – gave me a deep appreciation for what a shithole the world truly was – and those were the stories I wanted to tell. I wanted to lift the lid off the dark holes of humanity, rip the scabs off the wounds of the species, talk about stuff no one else wanted to talk about, see the lies collapse and the powerful fall, let the shit hit the fan until there was no escape, and everyone was covered by the stink. I wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein on Special K; wanted my words to bludgeon, pummel and shatter everyone around me – and if a Pulitzer came in the bargain, well, so be it.

I graduated at the top of my class in journalism school but that meant dick at a big city newspaper. I was assigned stories about firemen rescuing kittens in trees and tango classes at retirement homes, my byline appearing in the local news section or, when I got lucky, the Sunday supplement. I was so fucking bored and frustrated I could scream, and I let off steam by drinking like a fish, snorting coke like Tony Montana and fucking nearly every guy (and some of the girls) in the newsroom as well as losing myself in piles of flesh at an endless parade of sex parties. A promotion to the police beat didn't make things much better. The stories were more interesting, of course, but, after a while, every beating, robbery, shooting, stabbing; every cop on the take; every slob beating on his wife and kids; every crackslinger found shot full of holes in the streets or mysteriously stomped to death in his jail cell pretty much all looked all the same. I was writing by the numbers; it was all rote.

I hardly noticed it at the time but the stories that brought out my inner Studs Terkel, that really got me going, were the stories about kids getting fucked over – figuratively and literally. I loved hearing about kids living in fear and filth; kids in the foster system who had gone from the frying pan into the fire; kids in juvie who still watched cartoons but were far older than their years and would gut you as soon as look at you. I looked for stories like that, even if it was the usual bullshit about teachers balling with teenagers in motel rooms or on the back seats of their cars. I haunted juvenile court and the dingy cubicles of social workers. I told myself I was hot for those stories because they were so emblematic of what I already believed about this shitpile of a planet but what I couldn't admit to myself, at least not then, was that the stories were getting me hot more than I was hot for them.

The capper was a story about a local rabbi who was the biggest noise since Moses. His upscale congregation treated him like he had brought the tablets down from the mount and then it was revealed he had dicked dozens of preteen and teen girls over the years, the whole can of worms pried open when one of his bubbleheaded young girlfriends left her phone lying around and the texts she had exchanged with the Reform Romeo were discovered by her snoop of a mother. When the cops went to the rabbi's house, they found thousands of kiddy porn pics and vids. The poor sap was hauled off and the local papers and TV stations screamed about the scandal for nearly a week. Everyone was a fucking hypocrite. The rabbi's holier-than-thou congregants condemned sex offenders as the worst of the worst, but they wrote letters to the judge saying the rabbi was a great guy, a man of God, and pleaded for a light sentence. While the parents went apeshit and hired lawyers to sue the synagogue, I didn't hear one of the rabbi's supposed victims complain. Meanwhile, the rabbinical conference and police athletic league dove for cover and everybody, but everybody, seemed to be riding their high horse while getting off on the story.

I was no exception. My editor assigned someone else to the story, but I just bulled my way in. What struck me, besides all the young ditzes the sick fuck had fucked, was the sheer volume of kiddy porn he had in his house. It blew me away they found stuff not only he had made and collected but also stuff made decades before by other sick fucks. This shit had been going on all that time? Where had it all come from? Who was making it back then? Who was making it now? Did the profusion of the stuff indicate there were more like this guy, maybe many, many more? Someone had to be looking at all that shit. I'd cream my panties as those questions popped up in my head – and I suddenly knew how what I wrote could rub the world's face in shit.

I quit the paper not long after, getting free-lance assignments with big-time magazines that paid the bills. I got to travel all over, reporting on bloodshed here and massacres there, I got to meet celebrities but, after writing about the latest romantic crack-up and redemptory stay in rehab for the umpteenth time, I wanted to puke. I pitched editors my idea and all of them took a dump on it; one damn well threw me out of his office, saying no one wanted to read about such filth. I begged to differ, retorting that many people loved hearing and reading about this freaky shit, and that's when he booted me, telling me not to come back again. Well, I guess I should've known better than to pitch the idea at a magazine that focused on homes and gardens, but I was desperate by then. I was down to my last tampon when I finally got a grant from a journalism foundation and then I was off to the races.

The people I had encountered – child pornographers, pedophiles and pimps – spoke of the Master with a considered awe, saying that, at the very least, he was among the most prolific and certainly the greatest producer of kiddy porn who had ever lived, crafting not just pictures and videos but bona fide art, works that had the power, like holy writ, to transform the mind and soul. Others were even more reverent, saying the Master had had sex with thousands of children and lived in a fabulous house teeming with naked boys and girls, all of them worshipping him like a god, at his constant beck and call, especially sexually. Yet others were more agnostic, some even atheistic, doubting he existed at all, saying that he was some sort of urban legend, maintaining the kiddy porn attributed to him was the work of several "artists" – all of them talented, to be sure – but none who could be called a sage or even a prophet, as some of the Master's admirers had implied.

At first, it struck me his would-be acolytes hoped, like supplicants at Lourdes, for the touch of a savior, the promise of deliverance from the long Calvary pedophiles everywhere were suffering, and then the power that flowed from being a part of a winning team. Like demonic watchdogs guarding a musty tomb while the light of day reigned, they hoped for the unholy kiss, the fangs sinking into their necks, which would bring them into the inner circle, the vanguard of a movement that would transform existence and endow them, finally, with the deliverance of justice rather than its sufferance. Yet I too began to believe the Master was a myth – or at least a wild exaggeration, that the work spoken of in such whispered acclaim was the product of several of the sinister studios I had discovered existed in various parts of the world.

But then I saw for myself. I met people who assiduously collected the works of the Master, and they weren't what one might expect. They weren't slobbering pervs, at least not on the surface. Not one went in for raincoats or hanging out at parks and playgrounds or leaping out from behind trees and bushes to brandish their willies at uniformed schoolgirls, thinking that would somehow lead to blissful orgies with children. Oh, freaks like that existed, but their desperate, pathetic bumbles was what made it to the top of local evening newscasts and almost always led to arrests. No, the people I met, after many false starts and roundabout conversations to build trust, were far more conventional and insidious than that. They were the bland, minor pillars of the community: accountants, bankers, cops, doctors, lawyers, ministers, teachers. They worked in churches and day care centers and schools and coached little league. They were seemingly altogether mundane, typical and unsuspected. One saw them every day and reposed enormous trust in them, even when their charge was other people's children.

When I had cultivated enough trust to actually visit with them, we'd talk about their conquests like other people talked about the weather. I could sense their desire, their need, to share themselves with me, to at last reveal to someone, even in the context of a supposed interview, not just their lusts but their innermost selves, particularly their often-unspoken conviction that they were lovers and not exploiters of children. They told me, in exquisite detail, about all the fresh young bodies they had known and tasted, that they, it was almost always insisted, had loved. I'd sit there, listening to them relate their exploits, my cunt creaming, laser-focused on my notes to ward off the instinctual compulsion to rub my pussy raw. Was the world full of pedophiles? I couldn't help but wonder. Their stories were horribly fascinating enough, but, when I felt the time was right, I always steered the conversation toward what I had really come after.

Invariably, they'd smile over my inquiry and, like the acolytes of a deity giddily revealing ancient secrets, they'd bring out from unseen hiding places the Master's pics and vids to share with me. Stored on floppy disks and Zip drives, they treated their collections in the lustfully covetous manner a miser ogles his jewels when drawing them out of the darkness of a safe deposit box, and, in spite of their patinas of mundaneness, they displayed a depth of knowledge of their collections that rivaled a connoisseur's pontifications over the frescoes to be found in the salons of a Renaissance cathedral. I had to admit that, despite the content, the work they so obviously loved was indeed impressive, possessed of an almost tangible power of creativity and artistry that was obviously the work of one mind, albeit a sick and twisted one. Yet I couldn't deny the beauty of the images, a beauty I found odd and disturbingly compelling, and stayed in my head long after the images had been taken away and once again stored in the nooks of one house and crannies of another.

Most of the collectors I unearthed bought my story that I was writing the expose to end all exposes. But some were more perceptive, divining the passion I struggled to hide amidst the scribbling of my notes. Having caught me out, they would grow bold, whipping out their cocks (almost all of the pedos I encountered during this time were men) and openly masturbating in front of me while we rapturously gazed at the computer monitor and scrolled through their thousands of images and dozens, sometimes hundreds, of videos. My pussy always flowed as we watched. Those perceptive ones often proved to have acute senses in other respects, more than one of them telling me they could smell my juices. I guessed they all thought my arousal might lead to sex, and I'd be lying if I said the notion didn't occur to me at least once or twice. Okay, more than once or twice.

As we viewed the kiddy porn, the forbidden sexual energy was always palpable, so thick it seemed we could reach out and claw it out of the air. There were no preliminaries, no pretense, just pure hunger, which seemed at once innocent and also outrageously compelling. They wanted to fuck me, and I wanted their cocks inside me, wanted to lift my skirt and wallow in animalistic copulation as the images flitted across the screen. Some of those pervs were rather articulate (I've always been a sucker, figuratively and literally, for men with brains) and even handsome, presenting, amidst all their ordinariness, dignified, sophisticated and well-spoken miens to the world while harboring their secret depraved passions. One private school teacher I met sported a pair of evilly glittering eyes behind a pair of spectacles as well as a wicked smile that I found particularly enthralling. His cock must have at least eight inches in length, which was also rather alluring. But I, ersatz prude that I was, didn't give in, not to him, not to any of them, not once – at least not then.

Still, those encounters set me to wondering. I was well and truly fucked up; I knew that much about myself. I had long ago discounted the possibility that I would ever meet a nice guy and settle down and push out a platoon of rug rats. No, a life behind a white picket fence in the suburbs, piloting an SUV to ball games and barbeques was not for me. I was too into rogues and roues, too hypersexual, to ever be satisfied by one cock or one pussy. I got twitchy if I went for more than a few days without a multitude of tongues on or dicks in my cunt. But I had never thought – or hadn't wanted to think – that, in addition to all the hedonists with whom I was usually naked, the sort of person who might really get me raging, that would compel my devotion and even my love, would be someone who loved fucking kids. In other words, I was a hypocrite.

Despite my reticence, however, those closet pedos were also usually generous, offering to make copies of all they had for my own possession and delectation. Every time the offer was made, I was tempted to accept – desperately, even achingly, so – but, the sudden smugness of my interlocutors be damned, I always managed to keep my cool and turn them down. Besides, I reasoned, with all the traveling I was undertaking in pursuit of the story, sometimes across international boundaries, it wouldn't do to have some snoop of a customs agent wonder about my laptop and/or a stack of floppies. I was out to clock the world in the mush – or so I told myself – not end up consigned to some hellish cell block where I'd have to secure my safety by having my face smothered by the dank and smelly twat of a criminal she-devil.

For a time, the memory of what I had seen seemed to be enough, invariably sending my hands down to my genitals, which I rubbed for hours on end, coming over and over until the counterpanes and sheets of my hotel room beds were soaked from my flowing juices and viscous white pussy cream. The orgasms elicited by my memory of those images and videos were truly amazing, like nothing I had ever felt before, as if my own body was leading to me a shattering revelation.

Was I becoming a pedophile myself? I wondered. Or had I always been one and simply never wanted to know? Rather than rattle the chains of the past and being too much of a coward to consider the possible answers, I pushed those questions away.

Whatever voyage of self-discovery I might have been on, my not-so-iron will finally collapsed one morning when, on the strength of an introduction arranged by one of the pervs I had already gotten to know, I met a couple who, in addition to their two children, also happened to be foster parents to a gaggle of other tykes. They were well-off, living in a rambling Tudor-style house on a large and secluded swath of greenery in a largely rural county of my home state, not too far from New York City, which is where I lived. The house was packed with about a dozen children, boys and girls as young as toddlers but none yet in their teens.

When I arrived, the couple made a point of introducing me to all the children, including their natural ones, who were the oldest of the bunch. Their son was twelve and their daughter was eleven. All the kids seemed happy and healthy. The wife, a buxom brunette, excused herself while her husband, a distinguished-looking older gentleman with small daubs of white in his dark hair, took me into a spacious living room, one wall of which was dominated by a gargantuan TV monitor.

Our conversation was brief; the husband seemed to want to get on with things. He switched on the TV monitor, and, as he pressed the buttons on a remote while regarding me with a leering smile, I was suddenly assaulted by a flood of child pornography, some of which I had seen before. As we watched, he opened up his pants and hauled out his impressive cock, leisurely and then more intensely pumping the thickening shaft, his breath quickening as his midsection undulated.

To this day, I don't know how long I sat with him on the vast sectional sofa, the images and videos playing across my eyes. What I do remember is that, when I finally looked away, to my right, the light coming in through the windows of the room told me the morning had lengthened and noon was drawing near. My eyes fell on the husband, sitting just a few inches from me. He hadn't yet orgasmed and his hard cock, purple with need, throbbed in his hand. Then, looking to my left, I saw, standing just beyond the end of the sofa, the wife and the couple's natural children, their son and daughter, the three of them completely naked. They had to have been standing there for at least a while, since the heads of the two children were turned toward the TV monitor, which was still displaying a seemingly endless array of kiddy porn. The boy's cock was erect, jutting out from his smooth body, while the girl had the fingers of one of her hands buried deep in her juvenile pussy, a sparse tangle of light brown hairs just above her little clit. The wife, standing just behind them, was running her hands up and down their chests and abdomens, occasionally tweaking the erect nipples on their flat chests.

I was transfixed by the sight of such youthful pulchritude. But my fascination was soon catapulted to a higher level as the father of the children stood, quickly shed his few articles of clothing, and, his cock rampant, approached his daughter. The girl walked toward her father, extended her arms, which soon encircled his neck, and then, with a hop, she launched herself into his arms as her coltish legs wrapped around his torso. The lips and tongues of father and daughter smashed together in a fashion that was anything but conventionally familial as his cock slid into his daughter's young cunt with a slight squelch. As the adult penis speared into the preteen pussy, the girl's mouth came away from that of her father as she released a gasp from the undeniably sharp sensation. Her mouth soon returned to the lips of her father, though, and, with his hands on her trim little ass, he began fucking her with hard strokes. As they fucked, father and daughter grunted their pleasure.

While this transpired, the mother and son weren't idle. The boy turned, his cock flattened against his body by his mother's belly as she lowered her head to bring her lips to bear on his. The boy fondled his mother's large breasts and thick erect nipples while she reached down to stroke his penis with both her hands. After a few moments, she pulled away, breaking their deep kiss, and, with her hands still on his prick, pulled him toward the sofa. She fell back on the plush white cushions, spread her legs and, with a smile on her face, wordlessly invited her son to fuck her. The boy didn't hesitate. A smile of his own bowing his lips, he positioned his slender body between her legs, slid his rod into her moist snatch, and began fucking his mother's oozing twat, his ass pumping like a piston. Mother and son threw their heads back in forbidden delight as both were overtaken by the unrestrained pleasures of their incestuous coupling.

I sat there on the sofa, stunned, momentarily immobilized by my waxing arousal, my attention shifting from father and daughter, fucking just a foot or two away, to mother and son, closer to me still, as they rutted. Unable to light for long, my gaze shifted back and forth, my eyes not wanting to miss an iota of the depravity unfolding before me. At one point, the mother, as her son lengthened his strokes in and out of her pussy, turned to me, and, through gasps but with a grin on her face, declared: "He's only twelve, but he fucks so good!" Watching the boy go at it, I had no doubt she was telling the truth.

The cries and moans of the incestuous parents and their children seemed to set something off in the house. Suddenly, all the other children poured into the room, all of them completely naked, a parade of little hard cocks and pristinely smooth slits. With delighted whoops and yells, the carpeted floor of the sunken living room was suddenly covered by a tangle of young arms and legs, children moving against one another with all the abandon I had become accustomed to seeing in all the orgies in which I had partaken. But those partouses had consisted solely of adults; what I saw in that house was something that, despite all my experiences, I had never dared to even imagine. The sight, so thoroughly debased and yet also so overwhelmingly provocative, had me poleaxed.

Yet, I couldn't stand any more. Before any notion of what I increasingly regarded as a silly morality could lead to the formation of concrete thought, I shook off my stupefied torpor and rose to my feet. In two swift motions, I hitched up my pencil skirt to my flanks, pushed down my panties and hose, and then fell back on the sofa, gritting my teeth as I savagely clawed at my cunt. A river flowed from the hole between my legs as my fingers brought forth one, two, three and more orgasms, my body shuddering from the seemingly ceaseless pleasure sparked by the debauchery transpiring before me. The screams of joyous immorality waxed within me. I love it! I shouted to myself. I do love it so!

As I came and came, a great part of me admitted to myself that I wanted to dive in, to find myself in the midst of those young limbs, my hands and mouth exploring as little hands and mouths explored me. The admission of such truths caused me to frig myself even harder, though, as if exhausting myself with successive orgasms would prevent me from again lifting myself from the sofa and completely surrendering to my darkest desires. I ultimately lost track of how many times I came, my fingers cramping, my hands slackening, and my eyes finally drooping.

When I woke, the afternoon had come and nearly gone. The father and most of the children, all of them still naked, were smiling down at me, their bodies glowing from the sheens of sweat that had gathered in the wake of their cavorting. To my right, at the far end of the sofa, the mother and one of the girls, who couldn't have been any older than nine or ten, were still going at it, licking each other's cunts in a vigorous sixty-nine. Lying back on the sofa, I noticed my skirt was still hiked up and my panties and hose were around my ankles. My short-heeled pumps were lying on their sides on the carpeted floor. The smell of sex, having so often filled my nostrils at every orgy I had ever attended, was heavy in the air, and my nose detected the distinctive odor of my own moist pussy. I could tell from their smiles that all of them harbored the hope that, now that I was awake (perhaps in more ways than one), I would strip the rest of the way and join the family orgy.

The father, his cock still shiny from the pussy juices of his daughter and who knows how many of the other girls, regarded me with a grin. "When we first heard about you," he said, "when we knew what you were after, we knew you were one of us. And then, when we decided as a family" – he looked around indulgently at all the children and finally at the coupling of his wife and the foster daughter at the far end of the sofa – "to let you come visit us, we decided you should see how natural and beautiful the love can be for a family that believes in holy incest, just as the Master teaches."

I didn't necessarily disagree with what he had said, but his mention of the Master took me aback – in a big way. What have I gotten myself into here? I thought. These freaks weren't just collectors of the Master's works, but somehow also his devotees. How? Why? Who and what was the Master?

Before anything else could coalesce in my mind, though, a sudden powerful wave of guilty revulsion overcame me. I instinctively pulled up my panties and hose, stood up to push down my skirt, and then sat back down to pull on my shoes. I damn near threw up then, steadying myself before daring to stand up again. I hurriedly excused myself, ran to a bathroom and hacked up my breakfast. When I was done heaving, I washed out my mouth, straightened myself up as best I could, and emerged from the bathroom to collect my purse and make my goodbyes.

The mother had pulled herself away from the sixty-nine, her face smeared by cunny juice and saliva, which she appeared to wear proudly. She and her husband seemed to understand, my sudden departure bringing sympathetic expressions to their faces. As I made my escape, she kissed my cheek with her moistened lips, my nose picking up the scent of the tangy juices on her mouth.

She drew away and patted my arm. "It was hard for me too, at the beginning," she whispered, "until I accepted the truth of it all." She then slipped something into my purse. I was too distracted to pay much attention. I should have at least been posing a million questions but, for reasons I couldn't or wouldn't bring to the fore at that moment, I just had to get out of there. She and her husband then kindly said I was welcome back any time, the naked children waving goodbye as I drove down their long driveway and out to the country road.

On the Thruway back to the city, I had to pull over. Feeling nauseous again, I opened the driver's door and leaned out of the car, dry heaves wracking my body. Jagged sobbing followed, my tears falling to the ground. As I eased back into the car, my chest hurting, I wiped my eyes. Where was this story taking me? I wondered. Who and what would I be whenever I got where I wanted to go? And yet, despite my sudden fears, never once, not even as I cried, did I consider giving up, just dropping the whole thing and going back to the newspaper or free-lancing. I had come this far, I reasoned. I might as well go all the way, still not wanting to think whatever I discovered might end up transforming me far more than the evil old world.

I drove back to the city, showered, slept, and, wearing nothing but a bathrobe and socks, holed up in my apartment for a week. I suffered pangs of guilt for a day or two but scarfing sixty dollars' worth of Chinese take-out and smoking joint after joint lessened those pesky feelings. It was only then I looked in my purse and found what the wife had put there: a Zip drive stuffed with kiddy porn, thousands of images and hundreds of videos, not just of the Master's unmistakably beautiful work but also of what the couple had created on their own. The guilt went poof, and I was suddenly like a kid at Christmas. Determined to revel in a legendary bout of onanism, I, before plowing through the whole drive, went out, bought a bigger computer monitor, hooked it up, and then sat back in my desk chair. With my feet propped up on the edge of the chair, I spent the next five days minutely reviewing every photo and vid on the drive and simply jerking off.

A call from a source finally brought me out of my cave. As I showered, primped, dressed and headed out, it occurred to me I had traveled all over in search of the story, but it was there in the city of my birth I met a man, a silver-haired rogue of an investment banker, who would lead me to the first great breakthrough of my investigation. He had once been a client of my father, who was a prominent, even somewhat famous, attorney. But the banker was a high-flying jetsetter, not exactly a celebrity but an associate of the famous, the wealthy and the powerful all over the globe. He was a regular invitee to the most exclusive events and so sometimes appeared in the gossip pages. Amid pretensions to intellectual heft, his life was a lavish miasma of private jets and palatial homes on two continents. He had an attractive, raven-haired British socialite girlfriend, herself a scion of a media mogul father and a pal of the royals, but rumors abounded about his true passion, which was having sex with young girls. His spicily scandalous predilection an open secret, I had actually thought of trying to make contact with him at the outset of my quest, but, at the time, the only person I knew who knew him was my father. I didn't talk to my father.

When we first met, at a charity event held at a museum, I was mindful of my prey. My source, a bigwig at the museum who had cut me in on the reporting of a minor scandal over fakes masquerading as masterpieces, had never before met me wearing anything but my usual uniform of a bolero jacket, white blouse, pencil skirt and low-heeled pumps. His eyes went wide when he saw what I wore that night: a gold diamante mesh mini dress that displayed a good portion of my breasts and the back of which plunged down to the top of my ass. A pair of light taupe Jimmy Choo stiletto-heeled strap sandal pumps were on my feet. There was no way to wear a bra with that dress so my nipples, stiffened from the chill night air, were like bullets pressing against the shiny aureate material. The slits at either side of the dress would allow the wearing of nothing more than a micro, G-string thong but, despite the wintry weather, I decided to go commando. It was a slutty dress to don for a function peopled by such a ritzy crowd, I knew, but I didn't care. Or, more accurately, I did care: cared about being brazenly sexy in front of such a tony throng, feeling so deliciously and thrillingly wicked in the marble confines of a museum I had often visited as a girl, and, most tellingly of all, cared about my curvaceous figure being irresistibly alluring to the man I had come to meet, a man who preferred younger flesh.

My plan worked – perhaps too well. Grasping my little gold clutch in both hands, I could feel every eye on me as I was escorted across the floor by the museum executive, his hand light on my naked back as we moved through the herd of tycoons. The men were appreciative; the women (at least most of them) stared daggers.

The banker wore a tuxedo. He was alone that night. His girlfriend was away in Europe, thank God; one less obstacle with which to contend. The banker and I were introduced, a slight smile on his face as his eyes ran up and down my body. The museum poo-bah made himself scarce, leaving the banker and I sipping champagne from Waterford flutes. The banker made the connection between me and my father. He asked after my father, and I responded with barely more than grunts. He mentioned he had not seen my father for a few years, but I didn't say the same was true of me.

Despite having been told I had worked for the biggest paper in town, the banker seemed amiable enough – at least until I started asking questions. We were making idle chitchat about the upcoming election when I abruptly plunged right in. What the hell, I thought. His passion for young girls was well known and, like the revels enjoyed by Tiberius on Capri, an island he owned in the Caribbean had a certain infamy as the scene of many debauches between him, his girlfriend, and platoons of young girls (as well as other nabobs he flew down there). In response to my questions, the banker was at first cagey and then grew a bit hostile. I didn't let up, though, and, despite his repeated glances at my breasts and legs, it was plain he was tiring of me. It seemed he might step away, but then something happened. Only later did I get an idea of what had trundled through his head.

An expression resembling contemplation settled on the banker's face for a few moments, followed by a wolfish smile. He told me he had to go, and, despite the recent sparks of acrimony, I shamelessly asked if we might meet again. He recited a private number, which I instantly memorized, and then he took off, shaking hands and slapping backs as he went. I didn't learn much that night, it's true, but, an evil smile of satisfaction crossed my face and an iniquitous thrill coursed through my body as I watched him go. I felt the juices in my cunt begin to gather and was glad I had decided not to wear panties.

I didn't lust after him. I wasn't attracted to him at all, in fact. There was simply something off-putting about him to me. He was somewhat handsome and, yes, he was loaded, but money had never moved me – at least not much. Besides, when one comes from money, like me, money is never much of a concern. Even before I finished school and got my job at the paper, my trust fund met all my needs and caprices. Intellectually, he was no great shakes and, as I said, brains always got me wet. No, I saw through him right away. He was just another merchant prince who thought a lot of himself because he had managed to rake up a big pile of cash, and I had met plenty of those just from moving through my father's world. But what did intrigue me were the subterranean recesses of his diseased mind. How had he become a pedophile? Was it something natural to him, to most or all men? (Despite myself and the people I had met up to that time, I didn't yet appreciate that women could be just as passionate about sex with children. I was still telling myself I was on some great revelatory crusade and nothing more.) When had he decided to use his wealth to facilitate his twisted passions? What had he seen and done since? What great corruptions had he perpetrated? Would he confide in me, allow me to witness the depravity that was now old hat to him?

I drained my champagne flute with one gulp and moved to the bar to get something stronger. I ordered a Cosmo and, while the bartender was mixing the drink, a man stepped up to me. Topped by a thick made of white hair, he was tall, barrel-chested, resplendent in white tie and tails, altogether distinguished. His cold eyes and seamed face were weighed by years of crushing multitudes underfoot. He introduced himself and I instantly knew who he was, having heard my father mention him and seen his name in the papers. I allowed him my given name. We made small talk. My drink arrived. He asked me my rates and whether I would be interested in spending an upcoming long weekend with him at his private ski lodge in Vail. I raised the cocktail glass to my lips, turned to him, smiled and said: "I fuck, but I don't ski." And then I tossed the cranberry-hued vodka into his face.

While he spluttered, I set down the glass, collected my clutch and, with a smile still on my face and head held high, strode out of the affair, hoping everyone's eyes were fixed on my great ass. In the cab back to my apartment, I wondered if my father would hear about what I had done. I was sure he would.

Over the course of the next few weeks, the banker arranged to have me invited to events I'd have never had a chance to access otherwise. We'd see each other and talk, our conversations waxing in length and detail. He wasn't a complete dunderhead, so he eventually divined what it was about my hunt that really got my motor running. The bit of craftiness given to him kept him from revealing too much at first, but we came to understand one another in a way, so he'd seed the ground between us with tales of the pleasures he had enjoyed with one or two or more girls, who had often first been brought to him by his globetrotting bawd of a girlfriend.

After about a half dozen encounters, I finally met the girlfriend at a show at the Fashion Institute of Technology. That meeting wasn't as awkward as I had feared. She was an aristocratically polished Englishwoman, but she wasn't at all a bitch about it, employing a well-practiced bonhomie that put me at ease. Our conversation made it clear the banker had had me checked out and had told her all he could about me. Slightly taller than I, her athletic figure looked smashing in a sexy black evening dress that fell to the floor but showed off a lot of leg through a thigh-high slit. I wore a backless black lace sleeve midi bandage dress that ended just above my knees. She and I talked about sex with children the way we might have discussed the quality of the champagne or the flavor of the canapes. A silly, tight-lipped smile on his face, the banker mostly stayed quiet.

I knew right away she was into me, and I was into her. In the limo on the way to the banker's mansion on East 71st Street, she and I began making out, fondling each other through and under the material of our dresses. Her cool exterior was belied by the heat my hand felt radiating from her cunt through the silk of her black panties. I had once again eschewed underwear, so her fingers easily found their way into my moistened pussy, and I keened while she softly cooed. Upon arriving at the mansion, we passed through tall oak doors, scattering our clothes from the foyer to the bedroom, and, save for the sheer black hose on our legs, we were naked by the time we fell on the mattress. She and I ate and drank from one another for what seemed like blissful hours while the banker, naked at the head of the bed, grasped his cock and masturbated while watching us grind and quiver and writhe.

However long we were buried in each other, we, amid cries and mewls and whispers, made each other come several times, and I finally rolled off her, lying on my back, our heavy breaths the only sound in the vast bedroom as the sheens of sweat and juices cooled on our bodies. Only then did the banker dispense with his voyeuristic patience. He slid across the bed toward me. No contribution was made by his fingers or his tongue; there was no foreplay whatever. He simply mounted me, his cock sliding into my slickened twat. Accepting the price I had to pay to get what I wanted, I spread my legs and raised them, wrapping them around his flanks as he fucked me.

The girlfriend came alive from her post orgasmic stupor, rolling over onto her side and resting her head on the hand of a bent arm as she watched us, a blandly contemplative look on her face. After a bit, she slid over as well and her mouth enclosed the areola of one of my breasts, her tongue flicking against the nipple while one of her hands caressed the flesh. I enjoyed her touch far more than his fuck. I don't know what the matter was; I simply couldn't get into him. The fuck didn't last long in any case. His dick was average, and when he came, he simply fell over and almost immediately surrendered to sleep. While he caught forty winks, the girlfriend and I went at it again, each of us coming several more times before he woke up and took the time to fuck my ass. But it was the girlfriend who sucked his cum out of my asshole and shared it with me in deep kisses.

When I woke, they were both gone. The girlfriend left me a note that said she hoped to see me again. There was nothing from the banker. A servant appeared, seemingly indifferent to my nudity, and said his master had left instructions that all my wants were to be seen to. I was offered breakfast, but I simply took a shower, got dressed and went home.

The banker kept in touch. For several months, we'd see each other every few days or so, and not just at events where he dropped big checks on this or that charity. I didn't meet the girlfriend again until a while later; her social obligations often kept her traveling. But the banker and I met at his office in Manhattan or sometimes have lunch together at restaurants where I could have easily blown my whole newspaper paycheck. It seemed he wanted to be seen with me and I wondered what his game was. When my phone started blowing up with calls from my father, which I never answered, I finally knew why. But I said nothing, simply chalking up the banker's juvenile machinations to what I had always suspected was the pettiness of his character.

A few times we met at an upscale apartment building on East 66th Street. He gave me to believe he owned numerous spaces within the building, which was an easy enough claim to verify. He used the apartments to stash his underage fuck toys. He called the girls "models" and I met some of them. A few could barely speak English, but I asked all the ones I met their ages in his presence (he never left me alone with them) and not one of them told me she was older than fourteen. I knew he actually owned a modeling agency, but I never saw any evidence that any of those girls were being splashed across the pages of any magazine.

The apartments also accommodated other bankers, doctors, lawyers, bigshots of every sort, even his private pilots, seemingly every man in his wide orbit, and I came to understand the building was a fifteen-story kiddy whorehouse. On one occasion, as we were talking in one of the apartments, he got a call. Whatever it was he heard from the other end left him shaken. He handed me to one of his minions to hustle me out of the building. As I hit the street, a line of armored limos was parked at the building entrance, and I saw a deadly serious security detail escort a man the few feet from one of the cars to the doorway. I could have sworn the man was a former Israeli prime minister.

Like the girlfriend, the banker flew around too, a small fleet of private planes and a squadron of pilots constantly kept at the ready to take him at a moment's notice wherever he wanted to go. We began meeting on his jets. I'd accompany him on flights to his island in the Caribbean or a ranch he owned in New Mexico. By this time, his amiability toward me had grown. He was often brutal and condescending, but it was kind of an amiability, nonetheless. He realized my interest was less in his own exploits, to which he constantly alluded, than what he knew about the dark, fetid swamp that bubbled beneath the blindingly shiny carapace of civilization. There was nothing resembling friendship or even slight affection between us. Rather, he got sadistic thrills from his attempts to beguile, humiliate and shame me while telling me as little as possible and I told myself he was a means to an end and also a source of twisted amusement. So, he used me while I used him. But there was more to it than that, I knew.

Despite the obscene opulence of his life, the liberating transgressions his wealth allowed, there was nothing remarkable about him, and, his pretensions to magisterial accomplishments notwithstanding, he knew it. I was the daughter of a semi-legendary attorney, and I, not even thirty, had made a bit of a name for myself writing for an august newspaper and respected magazines, a budding woman of letters. What was he compared to that? Nothing. He was just a multimillionaire in a town lousy with them, all of them craving the worship they felt was their due for simply piling a mountain of cash.

The banker resented that I wasn't fascinated by him, so he'd punish me by displaying the surface of his gaudy life but offered little more. Oh, it wasn't that his adventures bored me; I was curious about his revels. I simply wanted to see the roisters for myself, without him around, and so I flew with him here and there a few times, but whenever we landed somewhere he'd have his goons keep me on the plane while he, with a malefic smile, went off to enjoy God knows what perversions, and I was flown back to New York on my own, mightily frustrated that my pussy and asshole hadn't been able to secure more. He made promises and always broke them, delighting in my irritated vexation. I let that happen a few times before finally telling him to shove the limos and the lunches and the planes up his ass.

But then the banker upped the ante. He persuaded me to take one more limo ride out to the jetport in Teterboro, where he met me on the plane. He seemed set on making it all a big mystery, but I played along. Sex was often a part of our meetings, and, by the time we were aloft, we were naked, and his cock was pounding my cunt. Once he had squirted, we talked, and things became clearer. He wanted to own me. He offered me a king's ransom to become his in-house flack, to use my skill with the written word and my connections to plant stories in periodicals and online that would trumpet his good works and mitigate any embarrassments that might arise. What those embarrassments might be he didn't exactly say, only that there were some nosy reporters in Florida he was trying to corral. He sweetened the deal by saying that my acceptance would allow me access to every aspect of his life: the apartments in Manhattan, the island in the Caribbean, the ranch in New Mexico, and all the pleasures to be had in each locale. I would have to sign a severely binding NDA, of course, but I would work and play with the girlfriend, whom he made clear acted as his roving major-domo. She and I would travel the world on the hunt for choice young flesh and enjoy first crack at every girl we brought to his bedrooms.

What can I say? I was tempted, yes. A life of such sumptuous unmitigated depravity had a certain appeal, and I had fond memories of being naked with the girlfriend. To be naked with her and beautiful young girls from all over the world was an even more alluring prospect. But it would mean giving up my crusade, forever trashing the reputation I'd worked so hard to build, and, if things somehow went wrong, winding up out in the cold – or worse. I had no illusions about the banker. I could never trust him; he'd throw me overboard at the first sign of trouble. Regarding him, I also knew he wasn't very smart, so things were bound to go wrong someday. I felt a bit more charitable about the girlfriend. I genuinely liked her, but I knew she, despite having come from money, was his creature. She wouldn't stand by me if things got rough. Whatever forbidden pleasures I indulged, I'd constantly have to be looking over my shoulder.

I turned him down. He was equable about my refusal – or so it seemed. He even smiled, saying he wouldn't stop trying to persuade me. We got dressed and the plane landed. I found myself in Morocco. A limo took us from the airport not to an orgy teeming with young girls but to a fancy restaurant in Rabat that overlooked the Atlantic. I guessed the place had to be outrageously expensive because the menu did not list prices. At lunch, I proved to have the heavier fork. I had a salad, lamb tajine with steamed vegetables and for dessert a passtilla suffused with milk and stuffed with almonds, all topped off by tea with mint. The banker had a salad and some couscous. It was an excellent meal, but its descent into my innards was somewhat upset during the flight back.

The banker started working me over as soon as we were in the air, telling me I should take the job. His sudden insistence set off alarm bells, which brought the pieces together in my mind. He didn't want me, at least not too greatly. He wanted a lock on my father, and what better way to do that than to have me thoroughly enmeshed in his schemes. In that moment, I could only guess why he harbored such a goal. But I didn't say anything. I just let him ramble on, until, during a breather, I posed a question sure to set him off. While I didn't talk to my father, I remained his daughter, and what I had learned from him about cross-examination had proved an immense boon to my own career.

I asked after the girlfriend, wondering aloud when she might return to New York. Abruptly abandoning his clumsy patience, the banker exploded. "You fucking bitch!" he sneered. "You and your father, fucking hypocrites both! So high and mighty! Should I tell you about your father, huh? Do you wanna hear about him?"

Calmly sipping from a glass of Coca-Cola, I didn't say a word, merely staring at him over the rim of the tumbler, which only made him angrier. So, in a fit of frustration and rage, he surrendered his power over me, spilling his guts in a great rush, telling me all about his association with my father. He told me about all the cases my father had fixed for him, about all the cases he had sent my father's way, about all the real estate deals he had cut my father in on, and about all their illicit capers together, the copious array of tender flesh they had sampled over the course of years. And, finally, he spit out the kicker, the big kahuna, the hint of what I had come after.

Before the banker had undertaken the creation of his own harem, installing the girlfriend as the valide-sultan of his collection of young odalisques, he and my father, he claimed, regularly patronized a place called Serenus, an upscale sex club that catered solely to very wealthy pedophiles and was reputed to be owned by the Master, the location of which, in all the cities where it existed, shifted every few nights. The banker remained a member of an exclusive fraternity in the city, informed every day of where he had to go to be collected. Once at the secret spot, he, along with a few dozen other male (and also female) plutocrats in the know, were taken to that night's location of Club Serenus. He added he hadn't gone to the club in quite some time and so didn't know if my father was still a regular visitor. But it wouldn't surprise him, the banker smugly said, and, as I listened to him, it wouldn't have surprised me either.

Club Serenus was expensive, the banker said, very expensive. But my father's practice had made him a rather wealthy man. Not as wealthy as the banker, to be sure, but wealthy enough. The banker delighted in telling me that in years past he had visited Serenus at least three nights out of every week and he saw my father every one of those nights. Indeed, they sometimes partied together, each of them cavorting with three or more girls at a time and always emerging supremely satisfied. It was during a visit to Serenus that the banker had hatched his plan of assembling his own collection of young doxies and my father, he said, was one of the first of the local luminaries he cut in on the deal. My father roped in people from his world: other lawyers, judges, bigshot clients he had defended over the years. Unlike the Master, the banker didn't charge a cent. Influence and the hovering threat of blackmail were his game.

I regarded him then, marveling that he was obviously too stupid to realize he was a dead man. When his schemes inevitably turned to shit, there was no way he would be allowed to live. But who was I to talk? I naively assumed my membership in the Fourth Estate would protect me when whatever I ended up writing tossed the shit at the fan. I didn't live in some hellhole where reporters suddenly disappeared, got blown up or simply got shot on street, after all. Or did I? I thought about it once or twice, and wondered if my crusade was in some way a death wish. Other than sex, it was vengeance that kept me going.

I kept quiet, setting down the glass of coke and picking up a bowl of honey-roasted peanuts. While I idly munched, things got serious. The banker told me of the small army of private detectives he had at his disposal, that I was being watched, that my computers were hacked, my apartment and phones were tapped. He knew all about me, about the life of dissipation that underlay my respectable life of journalism. He knew about the booze and the drugs, my visits to the sex clubs, the swinging. He threatened to get the jump on me if I didn't agree. He knew other reporters. For a few hundred dollars, they'd splash my life all over the tabloids, destroying me and embarrassing my father. But none of that was necessary if I simply agreed to come work for him. How could he trust me otherwise?

I had to think fast now. Outwardly, I remained defiantly equanimous, but I was actually a roiling mess. How had things come this? I dared to wonder. The banker called me a slut, a whore, all the old standbys men employed to smear a woman who had an unabashed passion for sex. "You can never get enough cock, can you?" he husked, his eyes slitted. "You were like a bitch in heat when I fucked you here earlier." He gestured at the floor of the plane's cabin.

I set down the bowl, moving my tongue around my mouth to collect the stray bits of peanuts, savoring the salt and sugar. "Don't forget I'm into pussy too," I replied. "And don't flatter yourself. In the space of one night with your girlfriend, I came a dozen times. With you, I've never come once."

The banker's eyes narrowed and the thin lips of his mouth set. He grabbed his drink and flung it at me. I moved my head and easily avoided the missile, ice and tonic water splashing all over the wall of the cabin.

"Are you fucking crazy?" I yelled. "Calm the fuck down!"

"Bitch!" he screamed. "Do you realize what I can do to you? I can have you killed – in more ways than one! You and your fucking father! The holes are already dug!"

I quickly punctured the balloon of his anger by saying: "Don't go ape. Let me think about it. You'll have to make it worth my while. I don't just mean the travel and the girls. I'm talking salary. You'll have to pay me a lot of money."

The banker smiled then, thinking he had me, and, truth be told, he did. I had to play what cards I had, though, and my ace in the hole was my cunt. I knew he loved my body, and he loved fucking me. (I suppose it didn't hurt that, even though I have ample breasts, my otherwise slender figure allowed him to pretend I was far younger than I was.) I had to do whatever I could before he tired of me and ultimately tried to hogtie my father. Strangely, no thought crossed my mind of going to my father myself. Hell would freeze over before I did that.

The plane landed. Night had fallen on New York. Back in the limo, I looked at my wristwatch. Nine hours had changed my life.

During the following weeks, the banker and I continued to see each other. I pretended the situation he wanted to force on me was a done deal, that all that was left was haggling over salary and benefits. I even got my own lawyer involved to dicker over the details. Naturally, all this got back to my father and my phone blew up again, but I still didn't answer his calls. I had no fear he would show up at my apartment. He knew better. In the meantime, I informally advised him on various publicity issues while going through the motions of pursuing my story.

Convinced of his impending ownership, the banker's trust in me waxed. He told me more and more and one morning while I was at his place, he felt the need to show off by sharing the day's collection point for and location of Club Serenus, which arrived via text to a phone he kept only for that purpose. He forwarded the text to me, but he somehow fucked up because instead of just forwarding the text he included the automated sender and me in a group chat, so the texts kept coming to my phone from then on. Sitting at the breakfast table, I looked at that first text and my eyes went wide. It impressed me for sure because the location was a Gold Coast mansion on East 79th Street, just a few blocks north of where we sat.

Over coffee, croissants and fruit, I asked him if he would ever take me there, but he was noncommittal, saying he and I would have to endure a whole rigmarole to secure a membership, and no salary he would pay me would make it easy for me to afford the annual fee, not to mention the usual expenses demanded by a single visit. Only the rich and powerful were allowed, it seemed. Still, I kept quiet about the texts that popped up on my phone every morning.

The girlfriend returned from some ski slope in Europe. The first night the three of us got together, she and I went at it, devouring each other. There was an agreeable, overpowering lust between us. When the banker tried to horn in, our entwined bodies silently made it clear he was not welcome. "Goddamn lezzies!" he snarled, retreating to a corner of the bed to watch us and masturbate.

The banker made sure to pay us back, though. He owned her, after all, and was certain he now owned me. When he fucked us, his innate cruelty rose to the surface in a manner that surprised even me. Rather than paddles and whips, he flogged us with our fathers. The girlfriend's father had been a mogul whose media empire had collapsed from financial chicanery, leading to the man's suicide – or murder. The truth of his death depended on who you asked. The girlfriend hadn't been left destitute, far from it, but the weight of the scandalous past still bore down on her, inevitably mentioned every time her name appeared in the gossip pages. While the banker fucked her, he would ruthlessly go on about her father's gargantuan duplicities, which had taken in the cream of British society, and, in a way, the whole nation. As for me, the denunciations were nothing unexpected. My father was masqueraded as a defender of the Constitution, of the First Amendment, a pillar of the law, universally respected, even revered, but was actually a fucking phony, a fucking perv, and I, his daughter, was no different. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Anyway, I took it all in stride, but the girlfriend was often reduced to tears,

I'm not the most solicitous person in the world, but I tried to comfort her as best I could. While the tears ran down her face, I'd caress her, kiss her, lick her in the midst of the fucks, hoping to inject a bit of womanly gentleness as he tormented her. But she and I never actually talked about any of that. I like to think, though, that she knew what I was doing and appreciated it because she often returned the favor. The banker liked fucking me doggy, maybe because that position allowed him a view of my ass, and, while he rutted and held forth about my father, she would sidle under me to caress and lick my breasts, suckling my nipples, and sometimes silently bid me to kiss her, our lips joining softly, tenderly exploring to counter the calumnies of our would-be master.

Those episodes were illuminating, however, and ultimately proved valuable. One night, after he had fucked us both, once again delighting in the infliction of emotional violence, he and I laid naked in bed, my body propped up against a column of large pillows. The girlfriend slumbered beside him. I rolled a joint and toked in the darkness, an ashtray on my lap. The banker didn't approve of smoking of any kind, much less recreational drugs, but I never had any trouble telling him to fuck off. Besides, in the dark of the room, I couldn't see him glower.

His silhouette moved beside me, and he said: "It's too bad you'll never finish that article or that book, whatever it was you were going to write."

"I thought you were dead set against me finishing it," I replied, my voice strained as I inhaled a puff.

"Yeah," he said. "I mean, yes and no. A part of me wishes you could. I mean, something like that would make a lot of noise, so I wouldn't want you writing about me or my friends. But the Master and his people, that's okay. He deserves to go down."

I pricked up my ears. This is an intriguing tidbit, I thought. "Why are you so worried about him?" I asked. "You know every bigshot and every hood in town; on the planet, as near as I can figure. Besides, some people say he doesn't even exist."

"Oh, he exists all right," the banker insisted. "It's true I know a lot of people, some of them very bad people. Very scary people. But he's the worst. And it's not just me. A lot of people want him taken out. Big people. He'd trash the world if he could."

I was quiet for a few moments, considering what he had said. "How so?" I finally asked.

He turned to me in the dark. "I'll tell you someday," he replied, then gestured at his crotch. "Suck my dick."

I sighed, placed the joint in the ashtray, set the ashtray on a night table, then shifted over to take his cock in my mouth. He grew to hardness, and I went to work. His hands pressed my head down to the base of his prick, but I had swallowed tools much larger than his. My throat worked against the glans and my tongue swirled around its thickness. He came after just a few minutes. I swallowed and he quickly drifted into sleep. I got up from the bed, padded to a bathroom and filled my mouth with Listerine, gargling for a minute or two before returning to slide under the covers. The joint had shrunk to a glowing nub. What a waste of good weed, I thought. I fished out a pair of tweezers from my bag and smoked the rest down.

I looked over at the sleeping banker. Who was he to judge? I thought. Other than hearing whispered rumors and viewing his art, I hadn't found out much about the Master, and my association with the banker had kept me distracted for months. But I couldn't believe this Master guy was any worse than the banker or his many friends, including my father. Besides, the banker was in many ways an open book to me. Our brief exchange made clear that whatever secrets he was still reluctant to share, his stated contempt for the Master, his desire to see the man come to grief, feebly concealed a grudging admiration and envy – and a fair measure of fear. I wondered why. Wherever the Master was, it seemed he was far removed from the banker's world.

Sick, smug, arrogant rich fuck, I thought, looking down at him. God, how I hate you! And then I slid down under the counterpane and fell asleep.

At breakfast the following morning, the conversation was at the front of my mind, and I asked the banker to elaborate, to tell me what he knew of the Master and his supposedly ominous plans as well as those who were determined to resist the realization of those plans. But he went back to being cagey and we bickered. He insulted me. I was a bitch, a slut, a whore, you get the idea. Usually, his insults made no impression on me. He simply never understood I was secretly proud of being a libertine. But that morning he got my goat, and I flicked a lit cigarette at his face. I grabbed my bag, got up and walked out, his hubristic laughter following me out the doors of his French neoclassical manse. That would be the last time I'd see the banker for several years, and, when we did meet again, the situation would be drastically altered, the shoe firmly on another foot.

I spent the next few days turning the questions over in my mind, wondering how I could find out more about the Master without the banker getting wise. The banker flew to Florida, to his mansion in Palm Beach, where he stored yet another collection of young doxies. It was there disaster struck, and I finally understood why he was so hot to put the lock on my father. The banker was arrested on state charges of procuring a minor for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution. He was booked at the county jail and released on a three-thousand-dollar bond. Everything else shrank to insignificance while the case raged, including my pending enslavement. It was salvation of a sort.

While the banker was in the shit, I went on with my work. I was still getting the texts, so on the very night of the day I heard about what had happened in Florida, I went to Club Serenus. That night's location was a four-story French-Gothic pile, a castle in the city. I tried my best to seem like a nonchalant pedestrian as I walked beside the black metal fence surrounding the building. The fence parted at a short flight of stone steps that led to the wide entryway of the building. I stopped, a glance at brass plaque affixed to the side of the entryway telling me the building housed the Cortoguayan Institute of America. I studied the exterior of the building: the limestone pinnacles lancing up into the night sky, the drip moldings, the gargoyles, thinking that if this was indeed the place, the medieval setting, like something out of The Masque of the Red Death, couldn't be more apropos. Every window was ablaze with light; something was going on in there.

Two big men guarded the entrance; they gazed down at me, their hard eyes filling me with a sudden chill. I moved on, walking to the corner and then up Fifth Avenue. Having seen all of the building I could see, I turned around and walked back, crossing the street and then heading east a few feet until I stood across from the building entrance. I had no hope of gaining entrance, I knew, and, not yet knowing the routine, had no way of knowing who was inside and what was going on. I looked at my wristwatch; it was only a little past eight. Was I early; was I late? Had the revels already started?

I took a little Olympus out of my bag and started snapping away. The two men saw me before long and one of them crossed the street, his bulk ultimately overwhelming the work of the camera's viewfinder. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least a little afraid, but I took hold of myself, trying to seem unconcerned. "You're blocking my shot," I said simply.

"What are you doing, lady?" he asked me, his voice low but not at all friendly.

I lowered the camera and assumed the mien of a snotty New Yorker. "Isn't it obvious?" I said. "I'm taking pictures." I smiled. "I love architecture."

He regarded me for a moment, wondering what I was about. "Yeah, well, that's enough with the pictures," he eventually said and gestured down the street. "Get a move on."

"You can't tell me what to do," I protested. "This is a public street. I can take pictures if I want to."

"Not of this building, lady," he retorted, gesturing down the street again. "Now, c'mon, be a good girl and take off."

"I'm not your girl, goon. Why don't you fuck off and leave me alone?"

A short laugh escaped him, and he shook his head. For a moment, it seemed he was debating with himself, maybe wondering if he should slug me into the street. His massive hands could have easily smashed me to pulp. "That's some mouth you got on you," he said and then pulled a walkie-talkie out of a coat pocket. "C, this is the gate."

"Go ahead," a voice crackled from the radio.

"We got a situation here."

"What is it?" the voice said in irritation.

"We got a broad down here taking pictures and she won't go away."

"I'll be right down."

Suddenly, I was afraid. "I got someplace to be," I said.

The goon looked at me. "No," he said, gesturing with the walkie-talkie, "now you stay."

Within a few minutes, his boss appeared at the entrance and crossed the street. Like his minions, he was all in black: black suit coat, black long-sleeved polo shirt, black slacks and black shoes. Unlike them, he was thinner, tall but wiry with hard muscles. His eyes were dead. He stopped in front of me, regarded me, and said: "What are you doing here, miss?"

I gestured at the goon. "I told your man here I was just taking pictures. I'm a student of architecture."

"Oh, yeah?" the boss said, gesturing at the camera, which was still in one of my hands. "With this?"

I nodded. He calmly reached over, took the camera from my hand, looked at it for a moment, and then swung his arm to fling it down onto the pavement, where it was smashed apart into dozens of pieces.

In that moment, I got my moxie back. "You fucker!" I yelled. "You're gonna pay me for that!"

He looked at me. "I'm not gonna pay shit," he said placidly. "Now listen to me. Don't come back here. Don't take pictures here."

I should have cut my losses right there, but I hated being pushed around. "And what if I do?" I sneered. "What are you going to do about it?"

He looked at me again for just a moment, his eyes unblinking, then turned slightly and gestured at the goon, who picked me up and flung me over his shoulder. I yelled at him to put me down, slamming my balled fists into his wide back, but I might as well have been punching the air. I doubt he felt any of my blows. He walked west, across Fifth Avenue, cars and buses coming to a halt. People regarded the spectacle, but none lifted a finger to help. At the edge of Central Park, he unceremoniously tossed me over the wall, and I fell ass first into a spiny green bush.

Bit by bit, I gingerly pulled myself out of the bush and managed to make my way back home. The cuts and bruises I suffered didn't deter me. I'm back after this story hard, I told myself, and I mean to go back. But when no text came the following morning, I confess I was somewhat relieved. I took a day to rest and heal. I checked out the ornate building. It was owned by a non-profit foundation, the origins of which disappeared into black hole after black hole throughout the world. In the evening, I made a visit to 42nd Street Photo and bought a big Nikon and various lenses.

A text arrived the next morning. The location was in Brooklyn. I looked into the address and dug up the same story: holding companies from the Caymans to Florida to Oklahoma to Utah and points beyond. I can't say I was surprised.

I went to my bedroom closet and pulled an old trunk out of the closet. Within were the relics of a youthful adventure. I had read Che Guevara's The Motorcycle Diaries in college and the transformative impact of the future revolutionary's expedition throughout Latin America had moved me. I determined to do the same, though my choice of continent was far more sedate. During the summer between college and journalism school, I cruised through Europe, my body armored by a black helmet, black jacket, black riding pants, black chaps and black boots. I set out to be a latter-day Marianne Faithfull, but the change I underwent was not choosing between two men but meeting a host of roues who introduced me to various swinging scenes. I raced from one orgy to the next, finally ending up on a Sicilian beach near Catania, where I met a handsome young American sailor on leave. We stuffed ourselves with steak and sushi, got drunk on beer, and sucked and fucked for two days before I sold him the motorcycle and flew home. The helmet was lost somewhere, but the black leather togs were still in fine shape. I wiped them down, slipped them on, and they still fit me like a shiny black glove.

I took a cab out to Queens, where I rented a motorcycle, a black Harley-Davidson Iron 883, bought a new helmet, and headed down to Brooklyn. It was the middle of morning by the time I arrived at the location, which was a massive three-story red brick warehouse on Water Street. Obviously built in the nineteenth century, it overlooked the East River and was situated close to the span of the Brooklyn Bridge. Another red brick structure lay across a narrow cobblestone street. It was quiet. I looked around, but there seemed to be no place to conceal myself. I finally spotted a grassy patch down the street, across a side street, a tiny corner of Brooklyn Bridge Park that was dotted by shrubbery and small trees.

I parked the motorcycle nearby, stepped over a small fence that was only ankle high and crawled on my belly until I had burrowed into a clump of bushes. I doffed the helmet, pulled out the camera, attached a 400mm lens and looked through the viewfinder. I had an excellent view of the area in front of the warehouse, so I laid down to wait. I smoked and smoked, littering the grass with stubs, and eventually lowered my head to sleep. The rumble of engines woke me. The day had lengthened. I looked at my wristwatch; it was late afternoon. Food supply trucks pulled up, were unloaded, and pulled away. I took a few shots.

The sky began to dim. Around six, a long black bus arrived, and a platoon of boys and girls of various ages alighted, followed by a squadron of women. The children were dressed in unremarkable clothing, but the women were all in black, much like the men I had met uptown: black coats, black blouses, black slacks, black bootie shoes. The kids were organized into a line and then were briskly escorted into the warehouse. I snapped away like mad.

Nothing more happened for the next two hours, so I spent some of my time looking at the pics on the monitor at the back of the camera. Good, clear shots of the children and the women. The kids seemed normal enough, but I noted something about the women. One or two had shepherded the kids while the rest surrounded the line, scanning up and down the street. All of the women had hard faces and steely eyes. Just by looking at them, I instinctively understood they were all highly dangerous. I tried to see if any of them were armed, if there were weapons beneath those coats, but none of the shots were that revealing.

My body began to ache. I rolled onto my back and stretched my arms and flexed my legs, the leather creaking. I rolled back onto my front and got into cobra position and then child's pose. My asanas were interrupted when I heard the noise of engines echoing down the street. I plopped back down onto my belly, put the camera to my eye, and saw four large black SUVs glide up to the sidewalk in front of the warehouse. I began pressing the shutter release.

Twelve people stepped out of the SUVs, all wearing the ubiquitous black uniform. Some were women, most were men. The drivers remained at the wheels, and the vehicles rolled away. Through the lens, I saw the goons from two nights before and their boss, the tall, athletically muscular man. It seemed he was the boss of all of them because he wielded a walkie-talkie, presumably talking to the women inside. He seemed to order the rest about. Some entered the building while others walked up and down the street, disappearing into the encroaching darkness to take up positions around the building. He eventually retreated into the building, leaving the same two goons guarding the door.

Night fell. The street was plunged into darkness. There were no streetlights, at least none that seemed to work anyway. My eyes adjusted.

Around eight, another long black bus appeared and came to a stop in front of the warehouse. The front doors of the warehouse opened, and some people stepped out and approached the bus, the door of which suddenly popped out and slid right with a mild hiss. These people didn't seem threatening at all. I guessed they were staff. A man at the front of the group, dressed in a suit, greeted the guests as they alighted from the bus. Some were women, most were men. His minions offered their greetings as well. I knew the people getting off the bus were the guests simply from the way they were dressed and walked. They all, even from a distance, possessed the assured ease, the palpable command, of the wealthy and powerful, which I had seen so many times among the clients of my father or trust fund babies I had known at university.

I snapped away, but I wasn't hopeful the shots would be of any use. It was dark and there was no moon, and I certainly couldn't use a flash. I dared not even use the camera monitor to get an idea of the quality of the pictures. What I could see was that there was much bowing and scraping as the fat cats were led into the warehouse.

I lay there for a few hours. The neighborhood was still. I heard the goons talking to one another a few times or their radios hiss, but I couldn't make out any words. No sound came from within the warehouse so outside of my imagination I had no solid idea of what was going on inside. I guessed kids were being fucked, but I was also aware that so far I had no evidence of anything untoward other than getting tossed into a bush.

My body began to ache again, but I had to keep as still as possible. The goons weren't far away and would surely see me if I clambered down the small rise of grass leading to the street and mounted my motorcycle. I couldn't even smoke. I resigned myself to spending the night in the grass. It wasn't long, though, when the decision of whether I stayed or whether I fled was made for me.

Around nine, two of the female colleagues of the goons at the door stepped out of the warehouse. The four of them talked for a moment or two, and, as they talked, the goons seemed to tense, their heads swiveling to take in the entirety of their surroundings. The women stepped away from the men, one of them openly carrying a walkie-talkie. They walked down the sidewalk in the direction of my hiding place. Stopping at a corner, the one with the walkie-talkie raised the radio and used the antenna to point down the street. I was certain she was pointing at the motorcycle, which I had parked over a block away.

What the fuck? I thought. How can she see the bike in this darkness?

I broke out in a sweat, feeling the perspiration running down my face and gathering in the recesses of my body within the leather. I tried to still my breathing even more than I already had. Fuck, I thought. Do they know someone's here? Do they know it's me?

The women scanned the length of the street yet again. The woman with the walkie-talkie raised it to her lips, said something into the radio and it hissed in reply. She slowly turned her head, and her companion did the same until they were both gazing directly at the corner of the park where I was hiding.

That was enough for me. I grabbed the helmet, pulled it onto my head and leapt up. I ran down the rise and into the street. Out of the corner of the visor, I saw the women move. They began to reach into their coats, but I didn't stop to see what they might pull out. I turned and ran for all I was worth. "Hey!" I heard a voice behind me yell. As I ran, I thought those two bitches had to be in shape. I was not – at least not much. I was puffing by the time I got to the motorcycle.

I heard the stomp of their boots behind me. I didn't look back. The cobblestones beside me popped and it took me a second to realize the pops were bullets striking the street. These fuckers are fucking shooting at me! I thought in panic. I jumped on the bike, hit the fork lock, flipped up the side stand, pulled the clutch, smashed the starter, and roared away. Only when I had gone a few hundred feet did I turn my head to see if I had made good my escape. No one seemed to be following, which I thought strange. But I breathed a sigh of relief, nonetheless. I toed into second gear and sped home.

Thirty minutes later, I was sitting on the end of my bed while pulling off the helmet. I was breathing like I had just run a marathon. I pulled the camera off my shoulder and studied the pics. As I suspected, the shots taken at night were useless: just a bunch of shadows and silhouettes. I cursed, tossed the camera aside, peeled off the leather, leaving the gear on the carpeted floor and took a shower. I pulled a terrycloth bathrobe onto my dripping body and too tired to do anything more simply collapsed into bed.

There was no text the following morning. I got dressed and collected the leather togs from the floor. They smelled. So, I took them to the dry cleaner, and visited a photographer buddy of mine at the paper. I explained as much as I could about my predicament. He didn't ask questions, bless him. He simply recommended a color film stock which he said was the fastest on the market. It was sold only in Japan, but he had a few dozen boxes lying around. He gave me two of the boxes as well as let me borrow an old Nikon F2 SLR. I returned to the dry cleaner, and then went home.

Like clockwork, my phone buzzed the next morning when the text arrived. I was ready to go, but morning traffic yawned the trip out to a half hour. The location was in West Harlem, specifically Hamilton Heights, which seemed odd to me. When I motored up to the structure, I understood. If the Brooklyn warehouse was massive, this place was gargantuan, four stories of Italian Renaissance Revival constructed in an H-shape. The base of the building was weathered white limestone topped by three stories of windows set in a brick façade. The entrance of the building, three glass-topped arched doorways, was set back from the street in the center of the horizontal bar of the H. A small flight of steps led to a concrete pathway that bisected a swath of grass and ended at the doors. This rectangle of gray and green was guarded by a low limestone wall, which bore a spine of spiked black metal. At its center, the wall was divided by a black metal gate.

It was past nine o'clock and the neighborhood was quiet. Everyone was at work and kids were in school. I circled the block once and then twice, looking around. At the west end of the block, down the street from the building, was an elementary school. What a joke, I thought. A kiddy whorehouse just up the street from an elementary school. On the second pass, I parked the bike at the east end of the block and just sat on it, turning my head this way and that. As in Brooklyn, the street was narrow, lined by small stores and refurbished tenements. I saw nowhere where I might hide myself, even after the fall of night. I thought of returning the motorcycle and coming back in a rented car, but it would be murder to leave in a rush if I was again detected.

Having nothing better to do, I dismounted and walked up to the black metal gate. A rectangular black metal plaque on the gatepost bore the address of the building. Directly below was another black metal plaque commemorating the building's history as a public school. I laughed in spite of myself. An elementary school down the street and a kiddy whorehouse in a building that had once been a high school. I briefly indulged a perverse admiration for the Master's audacity.

I lifted the visor of the helmet and snapped a few shots of the plaques on the gatepost and then the front of the building. Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned around to face the goon that had confronted me just a few nights before. He was smiling. I didn't have the time to feel or do anything because his right fist rocketed out and smashed in the left side of my helmet. I went down like a sack of potatoes and knew no more.

When I woke, I was tied to a chair, a brown leather club chair to be exact. My head was pounding. The chair was comfortable enough, but the slamming disco beat in my melon blocked out everything else. My arms were stretched back at either side of the chair, ropes binding me to its squat rear legs while other ropes attached my legs to the front legs. I tried to lift my head, but sudden pain forced my noggin back down.

Out of the corner of an eye, I saw, on a nearby table, my helmet, its left side caved in, and its visor cracked. Next to it was the camera, also smashed, its innards spilling out of the socket where a lens was usually attached. Fuck, I thought. That fucking camera was an antique. My friend was going to kill me, not to mention charge me an arm and a leg to pay him back. Who are you kidding? I then thought. There's no way I'm going to make it out of here alive. Strangely, the prospect of imminent death wasn't troubling. Maybe death was what I had sought all along.

I finally found the strength to look around. It was a well-appointed room: leather club chairs, a matching sofa and a mahogany coffee table were all set on an expensive Persian rug. There was a white stone fireplace, chair rail wall moulding made from rich brown wood topped by dark green wallpaper, and, across from where I was tied, what looked to be an antique double pedestal desk. On the desk were a computer monitor and keyboard, a lamp and a phone. The only light in the room came from the desk lamp. I thought of somehow making it to the phone, but every feeble effort to break my bonds only seemed to make them tighter.

The door to the room opened and I heard plates and glasses clinking, scattered voices, soft music and peals of laughter. In stepped the athletically muscular man I had met a few nights before, again dressed all in black. He closed the door behind him and the sounds from without were abruptly cut off. He approached, taking a seat on an arm of the sofa while regarding me with what seemed like an indulgent smile.

"You don't listen too good, do you?" he said, then leaned forward, an arm reaching out to touch my left temple. His mere touch allowed the throbbing pain to make a comeback. "Ahh, you'll be all right."

I winced. "Your fucking goon really clocked me," I rasped. "He probably gave me a fucking embolism here."

The man laughed. "Don't be a fucking baby," he said. "He gave you a love tap. If he had really hit you, you'd be dead now." He was silent for a few moments, then asked: "Who are you, lady? What are you doing here? What is it that you want?"

I dared him to kill me. "I'm not going to tell you a fucking thing," I said.

"Who are you working for?" he asked. "Who is it that's talking to you?"

"I told you. I'm not gonna tell you a fucking thing. So, let me go and I won't go to the cops."

He looked like he felt sorry for me. "Oh, you'll tell me," he said and pulled a pistol out of his coat. In one swift motion, he pointed the pistol at me, leaned forward again to jam the barrel into my head. The pain shot through me, white hot, before he pulled the trigger.

"No, fuck, no!" I managed to yell while the hammer creaked back and then slammed home on an empty chamber.

The man laughed and drew back, resting the pistol in his lap.

"You fucker!" I yelled at him, straining against the ropes. Had I been able to get to him, I would have surely done my best to kill him. But my nascent ferocity was suddenly dialed back when my bladder opened, and I felt warm urine flood my leather trousers. "Shit, I pissed myself." It wasn't just the urine that washed over me, though. A wave of relief came from the sudden certainty that he didn't mean to kill me.

The man laughed again. "You're hardheaded," he said. "I like that." He scanned me up and down, his cold eyes appreciative. "And you look good."

I was still in the chair now but breathing hard. "I promise," I said, "it won't be good for you."

He laughed a third time. "That's okay," he said. "I know all about you. I know what you're doing here. I know who's been talking to you." He reached into his coat with his free hand, but instead of another weapon pulled out a wallet. It was my wallet, I instantly knew, and he tossed it at me. It fell open on my lap, displaying my driver's license and the pockets stuffed with credit cards.

I looked up at him. "I wanna talk to the Master," I declared, boldness suddenly seizing me.

He smiled. "Now, isn't that strange?" he said. "You wanna talk to him and he wants to talk to you. But all in good time."

He did? He fucking did? Jackpot!

The man put his pistol away, but then lifted a leg and pulled a switchblade from his boot. The blade snapped into view, and he held it up to emphasize his next words. "Now listen to me," he said, "and for once listen good. Go back to your place and wait there. Just wait there. Somebody will call you and then you'll be taken to the Master. Don't tell anybody about this because if you do, I'll know and then this" – he used his free hand to pat the patch of his coat under which lay the pistol in its shoulder holster – "will be loaded. You understand?"

I nodded.

"Good," he said, sliding off the arm of the sofa to use the switchblade to cut the ropes around my ankles and then moved around the chair to cut the ropes securing my arms. I breathed a sigh of relief as I brought my arms into my body and the ache in my muscles began to ease. I stretched my legs.

Four of his minions entered: two men and two women. The men were the ones I had encountered that night at the castle on 79th Street, including the goon who had tossed me into the park and slugged me earlier that day. I recognized the women as the ones who had discovered my hiding place at the warehouse in Brooklyn. Before I could rise from the chair, one of the women dropped a black bag on my head and secured it with a belt that looped around its opening. Now I couldn't see shit, but I was lifted from the chair and strong hands on my arms led me from the room, down what I presume were corridors, into an elevator and then through another space. As we walked, I dimly heard sounds like the ones I had heard before: people eating and drinking, talking, laughing, music playing, but also moaning and sighing and high-pitched keening.

I suddenly felt the chill of the night air and the black bag flew off my head. We were at the front of the building, just inside the gate. We passed through the gate. Parked at the curb was a large black pickup, on the bed of which my motorcycle had been secured. I took a seat in the back of the pickup's cab. Three of the black-clad myrmidons joined me: a man and a woman in the front and a woman sitting next to me in the back. We rolled in silence through the city and arrived at my apartment building before midnight. The motorcycle was unfastened, gingerly placed by the curb, and then the Master's disciples piled back into the pickup and disappeared. As I watched them go, I mused over that word. Disciples. Only later did I realize how apropos that was.

I turned to see my overnight doorman staring at me, his eyes wide. He had seen me dressed for nights on the town, particularly during the months spent in the banker's orbit, but he had never before seen me in black leather from neck to toe, covered in street grime. I looked down to see my riding togs were a mess, covered in a dusty gray integument, scuffed and torn at the knees, presumably from my fall to the pavement. I smelled too, the faint odor of piss creeping up to my nostrils. All I could do was smile weakly and rush past him, heading for the elevator.

In my apartment, I shucked the leather and went into the bathroom. Staring into the mirror, I saw a slight bruise on the crown of my left cheek. I touched it; it was still tender but the pounding in my head was gone. I looked down to see my knees were torn, bleeding. I sighed and showered. Dripping, I stepped from the shower, looked for the bathrobe and, not finding it, moved into the bedroom. The robe was on the bed. I fell onto it, my hair still soaked and my naked body still wet. I crashed.

The bedside phone rang in the early afternoon, waking me from a sleep filled with dreams of drowning in murky water, the alabaster bodies of naked children reaching, reaching to pull me up to the surface. It was only when I woke that I saw the bloodstains on the bed sheets from the lacerations on my knees I'd been too tired to deal with the night before.

I fumbled for the receiver, a voice telling me to pack a bag, that a limousine was waiting for me downstairs to take me to the airport. I was told not to rush; the driver would wait. Before I could deliver a smart retort, the line clicked dead. I ran to the windows of my apartment and there, on the street, a limousine was indeed idling, a chauffeur's cap obscuring the head of the driver standing alongside. I rushed about, stuffing a carry-on, garment bag and suitcase with everything I thought I would need. I then got dressed in a flash in my usual uniform of jacket, blouse, hose, pencil skirt and pumps, grabbed my purse and, rather than wait for the elevator, sped down the stairs to the vestibule of my building, where, just outside, I saw the look of recognition on the driver's face. My daytime doorman gave me a sly smile as I took my seat in the car, as if the limo was taking me to a weekend in the Hamptons with the smart set.

The driver was polite but uncommunicative, relieving me of my bags, sealing them in the trunk and driving me to Kennedy Airport, where a first-class reservation was waiting for me on a flight bound for Miami. I was deposited in a first-class lounge, where I was treated like the Queen of Sheba. Admittedly nervous over this sudden turn of events, I scarfed caviar and oysters and quaffed champagne to calm myself down. During the flight, my tummy started doing the Mexican hat dance, so I swallowed some Tums and slept the rest of the way. Another limo took me to a fancy oceanside hotel where, by the evening, I was installed in a suite so opulent I could only begin to guess at its nightly rate. I had a view of a vast pool deck, the broiling half-naked bodies adorning its many chaises, and the beach and sea beyond. Despite my rarefied surroundings, I went to work.

I'd made a note of the limo plate numbers, which were registered to companies in other parts of New York and Florida, which were, in turn, owned by shell corporations in the British Virgin Islands and Panama, and on and on until the trails of ownership disappeared into black holes on the other side of the globe. I found out my bill at this hotel was being paid by another company and the trail there also disappeared after a few hops to various offshore banking centers.

So, I waited, enjoying, while my body healed, the hotel amenities: the best food and drink the bars, the restaurants and room service had to offer, pampering at the spa, and, when I got the munchies, pricey liquor and snacks from the mini fridge, not to mention the incomparable sun and surf. I hadn't thought to bring a swimsuit, so, after checking in, the first thing I did was go to a tony boutique in the lobby and pick out a few skimpy bikinis. When I offered the salesgirl my credit card, she happily informed me all was paid by my seemingly limitless expense account. I did my best to act as if that was old news, but I was secretly delighted. Whoever the Master was, I was going to make him pay, the bastard, for causing me to spend so much of the free time I suddenly had rubbing my pussy. I'd left the Zip disk behind, of course, hidden in an AC vent above the entrance to my apartment bathroom. The porn available at the hotel paled in comparison, though, so his undeniably beautiful work still filled my mind: children sexy and naked, children having sex with each other and adults. I was going to make him pay, the sick fuck, for the crime of forcing me to discover my true self, for the privilege of being interviewed by me.

Rested from the flight, my pussy began making its usual demands, so I decided to spend that first night at the hotel exploring my surroundings to see what sort of trouble I could find. In addition to the bikinis, I had bought a red satin minidress that, when I slipped it on in my room, very satisfactorily hugged my breasts and showed off my ass and legs. I smiled at my own pulchritude, grabbed my clutch purse, and went down to the bar of a swanky surf and turf restaurant in the lobby of the hotel. I ordered a Cosmopolitan and was promptly hit on by a few bronzed Latin lounge lizards, but, for some reason, none of them caught my fancy. I was undeniably a quietly proud slut, but perhaps because of the luxury I was then enjoying, I felt choosy that night. After an hour or two, I gave up, had a steak dinner and a pricey bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon brought up to my room, and jerked off to hotel porn before falling asleep.

The next day, lying in the sun on the pool deck, a few guys offered to buy me drinks, but I simply smiled through my sunglasses and brandished the drink I already had, quietly dismissing them. I was beginning to think I would never get laid and was about to go back up to my room to take a nap when I was approached by a tanned brunette beauty wearing a bikini as skimpy as mine. She had a fabulously voluptuous body, ridges of muscle on her abdomen and arms. It turned out she was a Mexican TV star, in town to shoot some episodes of a telenovela. I later found out she was a very big noise, adored and lusted after by millions throughout Latin America, words about and photos of her life routinely splashed across the pages of Spanish-language magazines and newspapers, but, upon meeting her, I had no idea who she was, which she found simultaneously charming and annoying, especially after I told her I was a journalist.

Whatever. We ended up in her suite, which was larger and more lavish than mine. I was envious but hid it well. There were few preliminaries, no conversation to speak of. She pulled a bottle of champagne from a wine cooler at the side of an acacia wood cabinet, and, after the cork had flown across the room, she filled two flutes. While she poured, I saw the label. My father had taught me about wine, and I knew the 1969 Dom Perignon we were about to drink cost something around two grand. Rien que le meilleur, I thought. She handed me one of the flutes, raised her own to her lips, taking a small sip as she regarded me with a smoky expression over the rim. My lust triumphed over my reverence for the wine. I downed the bubbly in one gulp, threw aside the empty flute, which shattered on the Calacatta marble floor, and attacked her.

I pressed my mouth to hers while grabbing her breasts through the metallic black spandex of her bikini top, feeling her nipples come to life under my fingers. She gasped in surprise, unused to anyone but her taking charge, but returned my kiss, her flute slipping from her fingers and crashing to the floor as my hands snaked around her and deftly untied her bikini top and then her bottoms. Our lips barely parting, I pulled her away from the glass-strewn puddle of champagne and the discarded triangles of her bikini as she wrenched my own top away from my breasts. My mouth fell to one of her perfect tits as we moved, closing around an erect nipple, and, as my tongue went to work, her head fell back, a plaintive keen rising from her throat while she gripped the tops of my arms. She was surprisingly strong, her fingers digging into my flesh. Suddenly detaching herself, she took one of my arms and laughed as she led me to a huge bedroom, pulling me along behind her. Her bronzed ass was a work of art. A broad grin on my face, I laughed too as a massive bed came into view. She let me go and dove into the sheets, flipping over and spreading her legs to display a small, manicured tuft of dark brown hair above pulpy pussy lips that were already oozing fragrant juice. Gazing at her glorious body, I shucked off my bikini bottoms, and, delirious over our finally being naked together, I plunged in after her, finding myself exactly where I wanted to be, with my head between her legs.

We spent the rest of the day licking and eating each other. Her nipples and clit were like bullets in my mouth, and her pussy and asshole were delicious, both spicy sweet, made even more so by the bottles of champagne we frequently poured all over each other, thousands of dollars soaking us and the Egyptian cotton sateen sheets, which our rolling bodies and outstretched limbs quickly reduced to a tangled mess.

I was a hound for booze and coke, but my jones for sex had always topped all other cravings, even my passion for setting words down on paper. Chief among what I cavalierly regarded as my talents, sex was, admittedly, the great salve to the emotional desolation of my life. The state of simply being naked, the innumerable sensations given by the flesh of others against my own, the eruptions of ejaculate and the flow of juices, the flavors, sights, smells and sounds of pure wanton debauchery had a hook in me like nothing else. Fucking made me into a superhero of limitless energy and indomitable power. I was good in bed, and I knew it, and, after hours of bumping pussies with that Mexican bombshell, I was hungry for more. I think my sexual stamina surprised her.

As the afternoon waned into the evening, I was lying on my front, my head again between her spread legs and my arms around her muscled thighs while my tongue delved deep in her cunt for the umpteenth time. She was lying back on her elbows, her head thrown back and mouth agape, mewling with pleasure when her bespectacled personal assistant, another Latina siren, walked in. The actress took one look at me, and I instantly knew what she was about. The sudden smile on my face made it clear I had no objections and so she invited – or, more accurately, commanded – her assistant onto the bed. The assistant, seemingly accustomed to such a scene and such an order, quickly stripped, revealing a mouth-watering athletic figure that sported pert breasts and shaved quim. She climbed onto the bed, swung a leg over the body of her boss, and positioned herself above the woman's head before lowering her pussy to the celebrity's eager mouth. As the television goddess began licking, I took a moment or two to admire the assistant's trim but shapely ass before lowering my mouth back to the star's delicious twat.

Our twosome having become a threesome, we licked and ate until night fell. The assistant was almost as tasty as her employer, but, despite her youth, a bit more depraved. She was into golden showers, so the actress and I, our bladders bursting with champagne, peed on her several times. I could tell this was a regular game between the actress and her assistant, and that the former, hardened by years of opulence and long accustomed to the servility of others, got off on what she regarded as the infliction of dominance and humiliation. A devotee of golden showers myself, I didn't look at it that way, so, to the actress's surprise and the assistant's delight, I invited the assistant to piss on me and, as I was bathed in the warm spray, swallowed mouthfuls of her piss. The actress, in a somewhat abashed tone, said she wasn't into that, but she frigged herself silly while she watched me quaff the salty flaxen liquid, and, when I, my mouth full of piss, moved over to her, she put up only a bit of resistance as I roughly grabbed her hair, pulled her head back and fused my lips onto hers, the urine flowing from my mouth into hers. I kept my grip on her hair, jerking her head back again and again until I saw the undulation of her throat, certain she had swallowed every drop. I had shown that beautiful but haughty bitch who was boss, and, when every bit was gone, I kissed her again – hard, and she, with a sudden burst of passion, threw her arms around me and returned my kiss with equal fervor while the assistant, her eyes alight as she sat back on a remote corner of the bed, spread her legs and furiously masturbated.

As the sky darkened, the actress and I adjourned to a whirlpool bath to finally cool off. The assistant had disappeared, but I didn't ask why. While we soaked in the bubbling water, the actress told me she had an event that night and I unfortunately couldn't tag along because her husband, a Latin heartthrob singing star who was secretly gay, was going to be there and the gala would be choked with photographers. My experiences writing celebrity puff pieces had cured me of any fascination with the glamorous life of the stars, but I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. Knowing nothing about her before that day, I was curious to see her in her element, her perfect legs emerging from the back of a limousine before she stood on a red carpet to smile and preen before an adoring crowd as flashbulbs burst all around her. I had also looked forward to spending the night with her, to not only enjoy more of the great sex we had shared but also put her in place a time more or two.

She ordered a light dinner and then it was time for me to go. But, as I was taking my leave amidst the arrival of a hair stylist and makeup artist, she wrote her personal cell number on a piece of paper and pressed it into my hand, telling me I was welcome to call her any time, especially when we happened to be in the same city. I went back to my room and crashed.

After a day or two more, I got lonely and was tempted to call that Mexican goddess but resisted, knowing she had moved on to do publicity in another city. Besides, I wholly believed I was being watched all the while. But on the fourth night, I couldn't stand my own company anymore, so, not caring about any surveillance, I talked to the concierge, who told me about a sex club called Miami Velvet. I pulled on a black version of the same satin minidress, whistled up a limo and went from the beach into the city, where, within a half hour, the dress had come off and I lost myself for a night in a pile of naked bodies. By the fifth day, bikini tops as rare as hen's teeth on the beach and pool deck, I had a good all-over tan going.

On the morning of my sixth day at the elite hotel, I collected the newspapers left outside my door and saw an unsealed envelope drop from the folds of one of the dailies. Within the envelope, on a sheet of expensive white vellum, were printed directions to a meeting that was to take place at seven sharp the following morning. I was to be at a certain spot on a certain floor of the parking garage of a nearby office building, from where I would be taken to the Master. A map guiding me to the location of the building had been provided. No limo would ferry me there; it would be up to me to keep the meeting. If I missed the rendezvous, I was told, no second chance would be offered.

That night, I hardly slept. When morning approached, I showered, donned a blouse and skirt, checked out of the hotel and, my luggage slung over my shoulder and rolling along behind me, made sure to be at the appointed spot an hour early. They had to have been watching me because, despite the specified time of seven, a huge black SUV like the ones I had seen in Brooklyn suddenly appeared only a few minutes after I arrived at the spot. The vehicle came to a halt beside me and, with a click, a side door, as if by magic, slowly slid backward to reveal an empty interior.

I peered inside the automobile and saw the driver's compartment was separated from the rest of the automobile by a thoroughly opaque pane of glass similar to the windows of the vehicle. My journalistic fearlessness suddenly deserted me, and I wondered whether I should step inside the vehicle when a disembodied voice abruptly announced: "Please get in the car."

At that moment, the blackness of the glass divider faded, and the resulting transparency revealed a young man and young boy occupying the front compartment. The young man sitting at the driver's side had glossy curly black hair flowing down past his shoulders. Amidst his long locks, though, the hair on the side of his head facing me had recently been shaved away and a large patch of thick dark stubble covered the expanse from his temple to the area above and behind his ear. The juxtaposition of his long tresses and the curved quadrant of close-cropped hair were quite striking. He turned his head to look at me with a friendly smile and I saw he had a face so pretty it would have been worthy of any young female beauty. Small platinum rings looped through his left nostril and septum. A charm bracelet and platinum band adorned his left wrist, and, as I glanced at the hand on the steering wheel, I noted his lustrous manicured fingernails had been honed to fine tapers. He was shirtless and, though I couldn't gauge the entirety of his body from my vantage point on the floor of the parking garage, I could see his shoulders and arms were well muscled in the fashion of a runner or swimmer. A platinum chain around his neck sported a plenitude of white diamonds and, in the lobe of the ear I could see, a stud rested.

The boy, who appeared to be about ten or eleven years old, had shoulder-length dark brown hair. He had a bright, handsome face and was also shirtless. He was on his knees in the front passenger seat, his naked chest resting against the back of the seat as he looked at me. He was also smiling. From what I could see, he was slender but had the beginnings of a fine physique, nascent muscles ridging his deltoids, biceps and upper chest. His olive-tinged flesh seemed to be covered with a fine dusting of silver glitter. Since the boy was facing me, I saw around his neck a bronze chain which bore a small pendant with engraved lettering. I couldn't immediately decipher the lettering, but the chain also carried its own row of a few white diamonds as well as some blue stones my inexpert eye told me were sapphires.

"Hello," the young man said. "My name is Yanni." Cocking his head to a side, he indicated the boy. "And this is Sweet." The boy greeted me with a wave. Yanni detected my trepidation and said: "Please don't be afraid. No one's going to hurt you. We only want you to visit with us and see how we live."

I somehow knew – don't ask me how – Yanni was being completely sincere. My fear melted away and I moved toward the automobile. As I stepped up and into the vehicle, I looked down into the front compartment and saw Yanni and Sweet were both completely naked. Platinum rings dangled from each of Yanni's prominently thick nipples, which were set in pectorals that curved enticingly above sloping muscles that surrounded a rippled abdomen. Looking down, I saw another charm bracelet encircling the ankle of his left foot, which was resting next to the pedals on the floor of the automobile. What most immediately drew my attention, however, was the erect cock at the center of his glabrous crotch. He had one hand on the steering wheel and the other on his hardened organ, which he was slowly stroking. Like his body, his penis was long and slender but compellingly sinewed. Its glans, a lavender-shaded fleshy knob from which already flowed a steady stream of juice, capped a throbbing shaft threaded by coursing veins that branched like the limbs of a tree shorn of its leaves. I estimated the length of his penis had to be at least seven or eight inches. His scrotum, as thoroughly depilated as his crotch, hung low between his muscled legs, the testicles at least two or more inches in size. Above his prick, tattooed on his bare crotch, were letters in fancy script, which a quick glance didn't allow me to read.

I glanced over at Sweet, still on his knees on the passenger seat, and saw his young cock was also hard. For a boy so young, he sported an impressive penis, hovering above a set of balls that hung and gently swayed between his legs. Like Yanni, he was also leisurely stroking while his other arm rested on the back of the front seat.

I didn't know what to make of this sight and, as if reading my mind, Yanni suddenly broke into my thoughts, saying: "I hope you don't mind but, in our world, we're almost always naked – or at least sexy. It makes sharing the love that much easier – and better." He paused for a moment, as if considering something, then added: "And, as soon as I saw you, my cock got hard. You're even more attractive that the photographs I've seen of you."

The day before, once I knew my quest to meet the Master would come to fruition, I had told myself to be prepared for anything but what I was seeing now left me momentarily flustered, not completely understanding what Yanni was telling me. I made no reply and tried to be as nonchalant as possible, as if the sight of a naked young man and naked young boy, both their cocks hard, was something I saw every day. As for his opinion of my attractiveness, that barely registered at that moment. While standing in a crouch on the edge of the SUV's deck, gazing down at their naked bodies, I suppose I was still in a daze from this decidedly unexpected start to a journey I had sought but suddenly filled me with a barely contained apprehension.

Yanni turned to Sweet. "Sweet," he said, "where are your manners? Help the lady with her luggage."

Sweet was apologetic. "Oh, I'm sorry," he exclaimed. "I forgot. She's just so pretty."

In spite of myself, I blushed at the boy's words. Before I could thank him for the compliment, he opened the passenger door and bounded down from the vehicle, on the concrete floor of the parking garage in less than a moment. In that instant, I saw the pendant on his chain was engraved with his name. He took my suitcase, collapsed the handle and lifted it onto the back seat of the SUV. He took the carry-on from my hand and my garment bag from my shoulder and set those next to the suitcase. I kept my purse with me.

As Sweet handled my luggage, I couldn't help studying his lovely body, the silver glitter on his flesh shining in the glare of the fluorescent lighting above. Like Yanni, he was thin but well-muscled. Completely naked but for the bronze chain around his neck and a pair of red sneakers on his feet, he seemed to suffer no hesitation gamboling around nude. There was an ease to his manner and certain gracefulness to the way he moved. My eyes fixed on his round but trim ass and then his cock. His erection had flagged a bit and he was now semi-hard, but I estimated his organ had to be at least a healthy five inches in length and rather thick, which was considerable for a boy who looked to be around ten or eleven years of age.

An image of Sweet and I naked together and having sex, his torso pumping between my splayed legs, flashed through my mind and I cast my eyes down. Irresistibly ashamed by what had momentarily occurred to me, I then glanced over at Yanni and saw him looking at me, still smiling, as if he was again reading my thoughts, reminding me of the couple I had met in upstate New York. Choosing silence, I brought myself all the way into the SUV and settled into the first of the bench seats while Sweet climbed back into the front compartment.

As I took a seat, I noticed a very skimpy electric red micro-bikini neatly laid out beside me as well as a pair of new sandals on the floor. I glanced up and saw Yanni looking at me from the rear-view mirror. "Please take off your clothes and change into the swimsuit," he instructed. "I understand if you don't want to be naked right away but, in our world, at the very least, you'll have to be sexy. I'm afraid that's non-negotiable. If you feel uncomfortable about it, you can step out of the car now and we'll leave you here."

My intrepidity assumed command and I nodded, indicating I would willingly don the bikini.

Yanni smiled. "Great," he exclaimed. "Let's get going then." The side door slowly closed, and I heard its lock click. I looked back into Yanni's eyes in the rear-view mirror and heard him say: "Don't worry. We won't look – as much as we'd like to. Just relax and enjoy the ride. There are refreshments and, if you want, videos to watch."

I saw Yanni's eyes, still looking at me, sparkling with mirth as Sweet opened his mouth and lowered his head into Yanni's lap. The pane of glass between me and the front compartment slowly blackened, completely cutting off my view of any part of the outside world as the vehicle began moving. My ears still worked, however, and, as we got underway, I could clearly hear, echoing in the emptiness of the parking garage, the sounds of a number of other automobile engines come to life, and then Sweet's mouth as it moved over Yanni's cock as well as Yanni's low moans as the boy gave him pleasure.

I changed very quickly, stuffing my own clothing in the suitcase. In the blackness of the windows, I could see my reflection and it was obvious the swimsuit barely covered my breasts and hardly covered my pussy mound. It was even skimpier, if that was possible, than the suits I had bought at the hotel. The rear of the bikini bottom was nothing more than a string, leaving my ass completely exposed. I admit I admired my own body in the dim reflection of the windows, how good it looked in the bikini. The Pilates, spinning classes and yoga had definitely paid off. Still, outside of what I then regarded as my considerable sexual escapades, I had never worn anything so revealing, not on European beaches, not even during the last few days spent sunning myself. Not being at all bashful, though, I shrugged then, thinking if this is what it took to get the story, it was a small price to pay. After all, Yanni and Sweet were driving around stark naked while having sex. What did it matter if I showed off a little skin?

I skipped the drinks and snacks and went straight to the videos, activating the monitor. The videos resided in what was obviously a huge database, grouped by year of production and then sub-grouped by date of production, further identified by titles which indicated the subject of and/or activity within the video.

The years went back to the 1940s, which astonished and confused me. Surely the Master hasn't been around that long, I thought. From the 1940s, however, there were gaps, some years missing, but, beginning in the mid-1970s, every year up to the present was represented. Not then knowing what was most significant amid that plethora of recorded depravity and suspecting I didn't have much time to explore, I concentrated on the folders representing the most recent years, which were chock-a-block with photo sets and videos.

I stared transfixed at what seemed an endless selection of kiddy porn videos, all presumably made by the Master. So many beautiful boys and girls, shot alone, in couples or in groups, and in various locations and settings. Some scenes took place in the rooms and environs of an obviously large house or in woodlands or on a long white-sand beach. The children wore clothes of various sorts or wore leather or lingerie or swimsuits as revealing as the one I had on before they inevitably shed the garments and walked, skipped or ran about naked, long gossamer wraps lifted by the ocean breeze sometimes trailing them. They would recline on beds or chaise longues, against the edge of a swimming pool, on a soft bed of leaves in a sylvan bower or against a beach dune spiked with goldenrod, closing their eyes while they masturbated. So many beautiful boys and girls having sex with each other, having sex with adults, with dogs and horses, young arms and legs tangled in indoor and outdoor orgies.

I found myself glancing over at the hidden front compartment, wondering if I was being watched even now, and yet not caring if I was, only knowing I wanted to see it all and lamenting there might not be enough time to do that before the car stopped. I didn't touch myself, as much I wanted to, but my pussy began flowing, of course, and, within a few minutes, the tiny triangular crotch of the bikini bottom was soaked, as was the leather upholstery on which I was sitting.

A little over a half hour had passed when we slowed and came to a halt. The side door unlocked and slid open and there stood Yanni and Sweet, still naked and still hard, though Yanni's cock glistened with a coating of what had to be Sweet's saliva. I got a good look at him then: the feminine beauty of his face, his brilliant smile, the glossy waves of black hair that fell to his back, his slender but athletic build, the hairless crotch that featured his impressive cock and low-hanging balls. At the center of a line of what had to be thirty or more diamonds on his necklace, the dangling pendant bore his engraved name and the earrings set in both his lobes by little prongs of white gold each sported a coal-black onyx stud surrounded by halos of smaller white topazes. The tattoo above his cock, etched into his flesh in fancy black script, read: "Milk `n Honey."

Like a gentleman, Yanni took my hand as I alighted from the vehicle while Sweet again took command of my luggage. The both of them were smiling at me as I stepped down onto polished concrete and looked around, seeing we were in a large aircraft hangar. Just a few feet away from the parked car sat a black jet airplane, a Bombardier Challenger 600, its main hatch open, a gangway extending to the ground. I could hear a low whine coming from its engines as they began to spin awake.

"I hope you had a pleasant ride," Yanni said. "It smells like you did."

I turned to Yanni with a confused expression. "Huh?"

"Your pussy juices," Yanni explained. "I can smell them."

While tugging on his cock, Sweet took a deep breath of the air around him. "Mmm," he said with a light moan, "they smell so good."

Yanni smiled at Sweet and then turned back to me. "We hope you enjoy the rest of what we have to share with you just as much – and hopefully more so."

I couldn't help blushing again but Yanni and Sweet seemed not to care, simply leading the way to the plane. Walking ahead of me, I saw Yanni had another black-lettered tattoo, applied in the same fancy script, set just above the crack of his womanly ass, which read: "Sugar 'n Spice."

As we approached the aircraft, a beautiful and slender but very well-muscled young woman appeared at the hatch and stepped down to the bottom of the gangway. Her face was all sharp angles, somehow reminding me of the women I had espied in Brooklyn and was surrounded by a thick mane of long dark brown curly hair that stretched down to the middle of her back. Fastened into the lobes of her ears were earrings identical to the ones Yanni wore. She wore a gleaming full-sleeved black leather crop top that molded itself to her breasts, her thick erect nipples and the rims and small bumps of her areolas plainly visible through the shiny casing. The crop top left exposed her chiseled abdomen, six hillocks of hard muscle, around which there was a platinum belly chain bearing a small, engraved pendant of her own. The thin links on either side of the pendant were adorned, like Yanni's necklace, by rows of many white diamonds. Below the belly chain she wore a pair of skimpy black leather briefs that barely covered her pussy mound and left her flanks and presumably also her ass completely exposed. Her legs, which were as finely sculpted as her midriff, were sheathed in a pair of thigh-high boots fastened by black leather laces that threaded their way from the top of her feet to the base of her thighs. Both her briefs and her boots were made of the same glossy leather as her top, seeming more like a second skin than garments she had donned. Between the leather integument of the briefs and the boots, I could see the ridges and valleys of the powerful muscles of her inner and outer thighs. Despite her outrageously alluring uniform, though, the attention of my eyes was more immediately compelled by the black leather shoulder holsters from which, in the spaces under her arms, dangled two large pistols as well as the black leather gun belt around her torso, two more menacing pistols secured to her sides by black leather bands cinched around her upper thighs.

The woman was soon joined by two similarly attired honey blonde-haired children, a boy and girl who both appeared to be in their early teens and whose strong resemblance to one another immediately had me guessing they must be siblings. Despite their youth, the boy and girl also sported impressive physiques, putting one in mind of acrobats or gymnasts who had undergone long years of training, the muscles in their arms, torsos and legs like marmoreal sculpture come to life. I noted, with a brief moment of wonder, that both had hair that fell past their shoulders and were tied back into ponytails. Indeed, to a casual observer, it might have taken a few glances to see that what distinguished the boy from the girl was that he was slightly taller, his muscles were a bit more prominent and there was a noticeable bulge at the front of his skimpy leather briefs. As beautiful as the young woman and the two kids were, though, my eyes were drawn to the sight of the pistols with which the children were armed. I didn't know much about guns, but I could hardly believe either of them had the capacity to operate the weapons.

As the children approached, stationing themselves at either side of the woman, she lowered her head slightly and pressed the fingers of her left hand to her ear. It was only then I noticed that a tactical comms headset was laced through her rich tresses and the two formidable youngsters were similarly equipped. Though a throat mike was tucked at the rear of the woman's tapered jaw, she suddenly raised her right hand to her mouth and spoke into a compact two-way radio gripped in her fingers. "All units, report," she crisply commanded and then listened to the rapid responses that came over her headset. "Copy that," she replied after a few moments. "Maintain the perimeter. No one gets in or goes out. We'll be wheels up within fifteen minutes."

At least several inches taller than I, the woman turned to me, her dark brown eyes bored down and through, gutting me where I stood, and the kids were staring at me just as intently. Yanni introduced us. "This is my sister Lina," he announced happily. "She's the Master's chief of security. And this is" – he indicated the two children – "Emma and Martin. They're brother and sister too."

Bingo! I thought. So, they are brother and sister. But the kids said nothing; simply kept staring at me with unsettling attention. I noted that the boy named Martin, in addition to his intimidating regalia, was wearing a necklace with a pendant much like the one I had seen on Sweet, save his necklace was silver and, as well as some diamonds, sported more of the blue sapphires. The girl named Emma wore a belly chain like the one Lina was wearing but, like her brother, hers was silver as well and was gilded by diamonds and brilliant red stones I guessed were rubies. Only then did I realize the color of the chains signified an age classification system. But I was still in the dark as to what the gemstones indicated, guessing they had to be freaky merit badges of some sort.

Turning to Yanni, Lina fixed him with a cold stare. "You talk too much, Yanni."

Yanni seemed unconcerned. "Lina is always in a mood," he said airily. He favored me with a smile and added: "We'll see you inside." Then he and Sweet made their way up the gangway, Yanni's naked ass swaying as Sweet, his shoulders burdened by my carry-on and garment bag while one of his hands grasped the top handle of my suitcase, playfully grabbed at Yanni's buttocks with his free hand before they disappeared into the plane.

Lina watched them go and turned back to me. She handed the two-way radio to Martin, then politely offered me her hand and I shook it. As we shook, I felt a metal band around her ring finger and, as her hand fell away from mine, I noticed on that digit a ring bearing a large white diamond situated next to a silver band. Promises from the Master? I wondered.

In the moment before Lina spoke, I studied her compellingly lovely face as closely as I could while trying, unlike her and her two minions, not to drift into an impolite stare. She was beautiful, to be sure, but what was more instantly arresting than her beauty was the force of her personality, so powerfully evident in the first moments of our acquaintance that I had to mentally take hold of myself to resist being overwhelmed. Whatever is going on here, I thought, she's a true believer: a fanatic, a zealot, someone so possessed by certitude she was willing to drown heaping piles of infidel defilers in lakes of blood. She reminded me of the gimlet-eyed and very dangerous young men I had met and interviewed in the wilder parts of the planet, holy rollers who could barely read but would gladly strap vests to their chests that, when detonated, would turn open-air markets or hotel wedding celebrations into slaughterhouses. And yet, in the next instant, it occurred to me my snap judgment might be severely unfair. She was undeniably a woman, perhaps possessed of the compassion, delicacy and kindness that were often the hallmarks of our gender. A minute shift of my eyes allowed me to see, set in her earlobes, earrings identical to the ones I had seen on her brother Yanni. So, in spite of whatever fires raged within her, I thought hopefully, there has to be some appreciation for beauty, some capacity for contemplation, some regard for familial bonds.

Ahh, fuck all that shit, I suddenly thought with a great mental shrug. Good fucking God, I nearly breathed out loud, she is so fucking blazing hot!

"Like Yanni said," Lina declared, "I'm Lina. The Master told me to do everything I can to make you feel welcome and I will but, for both our sakes, I'll be honest with you. I advised against letting you come visit us. My people and I are going to be watching you all the time and if you fuck up just once, I'll take care of you myself. And, after you go back, if you do anything that hurts us, hurts our family, I'll take care of you myself."

Lina's words shook me; it was plainly obvious she meant everything she had said. Though I shouldn't have been, I was flabbergasted, having no doubt this woman would mercilessly kill me if I transgressed in any way. Still, I managed to control myself, instinctively knowing any display of fear would elicit her contempt as well as her minatory wariness. "I've only come to see for myself what I've heard so many talk about," I replied slowly and evenly. "To see if the Master is as great an artist as I've heard and if he somehow truly means to change the world with his art. What I report later on will be the truth as I see it. If you want to kill me then, come at me. I'm sure I won't be able to resist you."

Lina smiled wryly then. "What a load of bullshit," she stated. "You've come here because your pussy drips just from hearing about the way we live but you're too chickenshit to admit it to yourself. I know; I can smell your juices. And you've come here to make a name for yourself. Well, Brenda Starr, scribble away." She shook her head slightly. "Nobody's gonna stop you from writing anything. But if whatever you write causes us any trouble, I've already got a bullet with your name on it."

"Yeah, you said that," I replied flatly.

Lina smiled, looking me up and down. "Welcome!" she said mockingly and waved me up the steps, she and her myrmidons following closely as I made my way up the gangway. Behind me, I heard Martin say into the radio: "Ida Tarbell is aboard. I repeat, Ida Tarbell is aboard." The radio emitted dull hisses as his unseen comrades reported their acknowledgements and I presumed Ida Tarbell was the code name they had assigned me. It wasn't an unwelcome designation, I thought with another mental shrug. But my vanity was pricked, nonetheless. If they were going to pick a female luminary of investigative journalism, couldn't they have picked someone hot like Diane Sawyer or Lara Logan?

As we entered the well-appointed main cabin, which resembled a lounge of the sort found in the gentlemen's clubs of the toniest precincts of London, I saw Yanni and Sweet on a plush black quilted leather sofa set against a bulkhead, engaging in an energetic sixty-nine, the sounds of their slurping tongues filling the compartment. Sweet was on top and Yanni's head was bolstered by an arm of the sofa to compensate for the difference in their heights. Yanni's hands held either side of the Sweet's torso, raising up the boy's body to ease Yanni's access to the set of young genitals. Yanni's tongue was dancing over Sweet's cock and balls and ass crack. I could hardly believe my eyes but, to Lina and Emma and Martin, the sight seemed perfectly natural. Lina's two young killers maintained their masks of impassivity but, out of the corner of my eyes, I could see Martin's hardening cock tenting the front of his shiny black leather briefs.

I sat in a club chair and two girls entered the cabin, neither a day over twelve. It was immediately obvious they were the flight attendants for this trip, and both were pretty, one blond and one raven-haired. Both were half naked, wearing black skin-tight lycra/spandex crop tops over their budding breasts, sheer black silk garter belts, sheer panties and hose as well as dully glowing black ballet slippers on their feet that laced up to their knobby knees. They came to me first and I got a good look at the bronze chains around their waists and the dangling pendants engraved with their names. One was named Lisa and the other Susan, and, despite the vast difference in hair color, their facial resemblance told me they were sisters, perhaps fraternal twins. As I looked up at them, I noted they wore earrings like the ones worn by Yanni and Lina but there were subtle differences. The earrings worn by Lisa and Susan bore black onyx studs set in yellow rather than white gold prongs and were bereft of the halos of white topazes. Only then did my eyes flick to the ears of Sweet and then to Martin and Emma, neither of whom wore earrings of any kind. There was some significance to all this, obviously, but as yet I couldn't begin to guess at what that was.

Lisa and Susan asked if I wanted some refreshment. Feeling a bit parched from the already eventful day, I was tempted to ask for a Sex on the Beach but didn't know how such a request would go over with this crowd, especially Lina. So, I settled on a Cosmopolitan, wondering if these young girls knew how to make such a drink. I wasn't disappointed. Susan mixed the drink at a small bar in a corner of the cabin and Lisa came back with the drink on a silver salver and it was the best I had ever tasted, the Absolut Citron caressing my taste buds as well as relaxing me a bit.

Over the rim of the glass, I saw a slight smile creep across Lina's lips but, before I could even think to ask what had suddenly cracked her icy exterior, Martin handed her the radio and she ordered: "Okay, all units, be advised: start bringing it in. Lock down the cars and the hangar and begin boarding, unit by unit." The radio hissed some more as a series of young voices announced the receipt of her instructions.

As I began to sip my drink, Yanni and Sweet entered the throes of orgasm, their bodies moving together on the sofa. Sweet exploded first, his young cock visibly throbbing as his cum flowed into Yanni's mouth. The boy moaned deeply but his mouth never left Yanni's cock. He was soon rewarded with a sudden eruption of jism that filled his mouth, some escaping through his lips and flowing down the shaft of Yanni's prick. The man and boy licked each other for a while, slurping up every available dollop of cream they each had to offer until Sweet rose, shifted around and lay on top of Yanni. Sweet's cum-laden mouth met Yanni's, and the two lovers leisurely snowballed as the plane's engines began to roar to life.

After a few minutes, Yanni and Sweet sat up and buckled their safety belts. "Mmm," Yanni grunted and then declared: "There's nothing like sharing love to take the edge off flying." Sitting next to one another, Yanni and Sweet absentmindedly tugged on each other's moistened cocks as our journey began. Lina, Emma, Martin, Lisa and Susan sat down in club chairs like mine and buckled themselves in.

I felt a hatch at the rear of the aircraft thud shut and then the plane began to move, the light coming in through the windows changing as we left the hangar and headed out onto the tarmac and then the runway. Still sipping my drink, I looked around and fixed my gaze on Lina. "May I pose some questions?" I asked.

Amused, Lina smiled. "You can ask," she replied. "That doesn't mean you'll get any answers."

I smiled back at her. "Well, I'll ask anyway." I regarded her but then turned to Sweet. "How did you get the name Sweet?" I asked him. "I don't suppose that's the name you were given when you were born."

Sweet considered for a moment and then answered: "No, but the Master says when we come live with him, when we become a part of his family, we're entering a new life so we can pick a new name if we want."

"Sounds like a cult," I said aloud before I could stop myself.

Lina scoffed. "You would say that."

I ignored her and focused on the naked boy. "May I ask your given name?" I said.

"Marco," the boy replied simply, a smile on his handsome face. "I turned eleven two months ago."

Marco, I mused. I wondered if the name indicated he might be of Hispanic or Italian origin. Still, he seemed to speak English perfectly and without accent, which one might not expect from a child brought from a foreign country. But who knew? As yet, I knew nothing about the boy's past or how he had come to live amongst this gaggle of pedophiles. His name could simply be a name and he seemed happy enough, though my mind rebelled at seriously considering that last thought. I was tempted to ask where he had come from but immediately decided against posing such questions, at least for now. I somehow sensed Lina or Yanni might quickly bring the hammer down on such a line of inquiry and I didn't want to waste time.

"So why did you pick the name Sweet?" I asked.

Sweet smiled again and replied: "Everyone, including the Master, said my cum was sweet so that's the name I picked for myself."

Well, the Master isn't around, I thought. I turned to Yanni. "Is his cum sweet?"

Yanni mouth bowed as he quietly chuckled. "It's some of the sweetest I've ever tasted – and I've eaten a lot of boy cum."

Hearing that, Sweet smiled at Yanni and Yanni smiled back at him. They kissed, displaying a love and tenderness that was surprising to me. As their kiss broke, Yanni turned to me and asked: "Would you like to taste for yourself? Trust me. You won't be disappointed. And I know Sweet is eager to give you as many tastes as you want."

The boy's eagerness was indeed apparent as he smiled at me and his cock began to harden again, He brazenly stroked himself in front of me. In spite of myself, I so wanted to say yes. Sweet was a lovely boy, handsome in face and figure. His cock was beautifully shaped and impressively thick for one so young, and his balls, which I had already seen produce a copious amount of cum, hung low and hairless and inviting. His manner also appealed to me. His easy nudity made plain he was completely untroubled by shame and had no inhibitions about sexual displays. Having sucked what I thought were a lot of adult cocks, I couldn't help but wonder how that silky young organ would feel in my mouth and how sweet his seed truly was. I restrained myself, though, a swallow the only sign of the conflict raging within.

"Aren't you two together?" I asked, avoiding Yanni's invitation.

"Yes, we are," Yanni answered. "But we share our bodies, our love, with whoever else we want. Sometimes we're together when we share love with other people and sometimes we're not. But when we do share love with others, we still share those experiences with each other." He reached over to lovingly tousle Sweet's hair. "Sweet's my lover but I don't own him. He owns himself – and he can share his body, his love, with whoever he wants whenever he wants."

Gazing up at Yanni, Sweet said: "Love. Always love."

The rest of them, including Lina, repeated the phrase in unison, obviously reciting a well-worn mantra. "Love. Always love."

"Still, the two of you are obviously very close," I said to Yanni.

Yanni turned to me. "Sweet is one of my chief boy lovers. We're as close as two people can be."

"One of? Chief boy lovers?"

Sweet piped up and said: "Yanni's other chief boy lover is Pop. Pop's real name is Colin, but he's called Pop because he almost always pops when he comes so that's the name he picked for himself. The two of us came to the compound together and we've been with Yanni ever since." They smiled at each other and kissed again.

Far out, I thought with a mental shake of my head. Boys assuming names based on their ejaculatory qualities! Was that the case with everyone in this wacked-out cult? I guessed not, since Lina and Yanni and the other kids seemed to bear common enough names. My mind still reeled at the seeming nonchalance with which all this was being discussed, though. I marveled at my own equanimity, but my mind was still swirling with questions. I decided against probing further, though, not because I didn't want to pose the questions but simply was unsure I could absorb all the answers. I had to take a figurative deep breath, sort out all I had so far learned and then steel myself for the answers to come.

I turned to Lina and asked: "So where are we going?"

"That's none of your business," Lina answered simply.

I nodded. "Okay, so you're the Master's chief of security?"

Lina nodded. "You already know that."

"So, what does that entail?"

"That, too, is none of your business."

Yanni laughed. "God, Lina. Ease up just a bit. You don't have to be hard as nails every second."

Lina turned to her brother and said: "Shut up, Yanni."

Yanni laughed again, obviously used to Lina's curtness.

"What's the big secret?" I said to Lina. "I can guess what you do based on what I know other chiefs of security do. I mean, I imagine you're responsible for operational security, which stands to reason when you consider the Master's business. I guess you're also responsible for protecting where the Master lives and protecting him as well." I paused a moment. "Am I getting warm?"

Lina regarded me for a moment and then said: "Let's just say it's my job to identify threats – and neutralize them. No harm must ever come to the Master – and none will, not as long as I'm around."

"It sounds like you're very devoted to him."

Lina looked at me with a deadly serious expression. "Everyone in this room would give their life for him," she said with a sudden fierceness.

I looked around and saw everyone else, even Lisa and Susan, nodding in agreement with Lina's statement.

"If not for the Master," Lina continued, "me, my brother, the rest of us here, wouldn't have lives, much less be able to willingly give those lives up for him. In a world that claims to care for children, he was the only one who was ever completely honest with us, ever loved us. He---" She abruptly fell silent and closed her mouth, an expression of annoyed uncertainty settling on her face, as if she was cursing herself for revealing too much. She sat back, retreating into the club chair, looking out a window as the plane gathered its strength to hurtle down the runway. "That's enough with the fucking questions," she muttered.

I was suddenly suffused with a powerful drowsiness. I could hardly keep my eyes open, and my body was tipping forward of its own accord. "But there's so much more I want to know," I heard myself say, though Lina and the others seemed not to register I was speaking.

A smile on her face, Lina leaned forward and plucked the half-empty cocktail glass from my hand before it slipped through my fingers and fell to the carpeted floor. The drink! I suddenly realized. I had been slipped a mickey and it was taking hold with a vengeance.

"I've said over and over," Lina declared, still smiling as she sat back in her chair, "that we must start using a more powerful sleeping draught."

As if from a great distance, I heard Yanni, a note of regret in his voice, say: "Oh, Lina." My head fell forward, and I dimly realized the plane was lifting itself into the air – and then everything went black, and I knew no more.

When I awoke, all was quiet. I was still buckled into the chair, but the plane was at rest somewhere. Some kind person had inserted a comfortable pillow between the back of my head and the chair. A glance outside the nearest window told me the aircraft was parked in a hangar, presumably a different one than before. As I took a deep breath, Lina entered the cabin and sat across from me. She regarded me, in a way seeming a bit softer than before.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

I took another deep breath. "Fine," I replied. "Rested, actually – and a bit groggy."

Lina nodded. "It wasn't a very powerful sedative," she asserted. "You should feel all right in a few minutes."

I tasted my own mouth and smacked my lips. "My mouth is dry," I said.

Lina reached over to a small table, on which there was a pitcher of water and some tumblers. She poured water into one of the tumblers and handed it to me.

"Thanks," I said. I took a deep drink, lowered the glass and looked at her. Something, I don't exactly know what, passed between us in that moment, maybe a remote ancestor of understanding, and, emboldened, I said: "You never really answered my question."

"What question was that?"

"The one about how you're so devoted to the Master."

"Oh, that," Lina said with a brief breath of amusement. She regarded me for a moment, then sat forward in her chair and was suddenly all business. Grasping her throat mike with the forefinger and thumb of her right hand, she said: "Going silent." She flipped a switch on her headset close to her ear and I presumed there was now no one else listening.

"This world is full of lies," Lina said flatly. "People say they care for children, but they really don't." She paused a moment, obviously considering her words carefully. "I hardly knew my dad. He was in and out until he was all the way out and we never saw him again. My mom was a crackhead. She didn't give a shit about anything except getting high. My brother, my sister and I went hungry because there was no food. We were filthy because the water got turned off. We didn't go to school because we were hungry and filthy, and our clothes were falling apart. And nobody gave a shit, certainly not my mother. I'm hard with Yanni but he was the toughest one of us. He went out into the streets and sold his body so my sister and I could have food to eat, and, when he couldn't do that, he stole for us. And what was his reward? He got locked up in juvie."

My heart ached for her, the murderous bitch. "I'm sorry," I said feebly.

Lina shook her head. "Don't be sorry. I'm just telling you how things were." She took a deep breath and went on. "When I was ten, my mom sold me and my sister to the Master. He wasn't the Master then. He was just a drug dealer and a pedophile. But he took us in. He fed us and clothed us, made sure we were clean. He sent us to school. But he never once touched us. Did he groom us? Yes. From the start, he was honest about who he was and what he wanted. Not that he said it in words. But there was always porn on at least one of the TVs: regular porn, piss, scat, bestiality, kiddy porn, a lot of kiddy porn. And he was naked pretty much all the time, his cock hard, and his place was always full of naked kids – of all ages, some of them his own. When he wasn't videotaping or taking pics of the kids wearing sexy clothes or naked or having sex with each other, he was fucking them. I mean, that was like a routine thing; we were always walking into a room and seeing him sucking and fucking: with women and men, with the other kids; all over the place: in his bedroom, all the other bedrooms, in the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, by the pool, in the pool. You name the room; I saw him fucking in it."

"So, one night, I finally called him on it. I remember it was late and we were alone in the TV room, sitting on this big sectional sofa. He was naked but I was wearing something. I forget what; probably something like a blouse and shorts. He started playing a kiddy porn tape on the big TV and stroking his cock in front of me like it was the most natural thing in the world. I watched with him for a while. I remember the video was of a blonde Russian boy and two girls, the three of them making it on a couch and then in a bathtub. Then I turned to him and just flat out told him he was a child molester and I asked him if he had brought me and my sister to his place because he wanted to have sex with us. And do you know what he said?"

I shook my head. "No," I whispered.

"He said yes. That's it. He just said yes. He was the first person, the first adult, who was ever honest with me – with us. But he left it up to me. He was a child molester, yes, but he made it clear that, no matter what my choice, he would respect it and would always be there to take care of me, that I would never again go hungry or be dirty or have to hit the streets like my brother did, and that whatever choice I made about my life, he would be there to help me and support me, even if I decided I wanted to get away from him. Do you understand?"

I sighed. "I guess I do – in a way."

Lina regarded me again for a moment or two and then continued. "And after he told me that, he didn't say anything else, and he watched the video for a few more minutes and he kept on stroking his cock. He didn't come but then he just got up and went to bed. He didn't touch me or try to convince me; he just went to bed. And I sat there and thought for a long time, and I cried, the last time I ever fucking cried. And then I stood up, took off all my clothes and I went into his bedroom. He was alone, waiting for me. And I remember being surprised because pretty much every time I walked into his bedroom, especially at night, he was in there having sex with somebody. But that night he was waiting for me, just for me; he knew what my choice would be even before I made it. I remember how he smiled when he saw me walk in naked; such a kind, loving smile, something no adult had ever really given me before, and any doubts I still had just disappeared right then and there, and, in that moment, I knew he loved me and wanted to share his love with me in the way he knew best. I remember him pulling back the sheets and seeing his cock, sticking straight up from his body, how hard it was." She paused a moment, remembering and thinking. "I'd seen his cock hard every day I'd lived in his house. But that night, at that moment, his cock was hard for me!"

I was taken aback by the almost plaintive tone that Lina allowed to enter her voice as she uttered the last, the dark brown marbles of her eyes fixed on me, glistening with barely restrained tears. As disturbing as I might find the episode she was recounting, I could not help but be moved by the depth of emotion obviously stirred within her by the memory. Her young life had been a horror show and she had finally found a sort of security as well as love and comfort in the abode of a pedophile. To her, that stiffened penis she had seen so long ago represented all she had been seeking, and was the font, if such a word could be used, of all that had since flowed to make her into the formidable and passionate and twisted woman she had become.

"So, I climbed onto the bed," Lina continued, "and I sat next to him and took his cock in my hands. I remember how hard and heavy and thick it felt in my hands. And I started jacking him. I knew how to do it because I had seen so many other kids do it to him. He was so fucking hard in my hands, and I felt such a power, knowing I was giving him pleasure. And I felt him caress me: my arm, my back, my ass. And then I just got on top of him, and I guided his cock into my pussy. I was juicing and he popped my cherry with his first stroke, and I hardly felt it. We started fucking, just looking at each other while we fucked, his hands on my ass, his fingers in my asshole. And I just looked at him, feeling his cock inside me, filling me up so much, and I remember saying, not even knowing why I said it: I'm a woman now and my life is my own.' And he nodded and said: Yes, you are. But you belong to me now and I belong to you too.' And I knew it was true, that we belonged to each other. And then we had sex all that night. I was ten years old and feeling his cock inside me, inside all my holes, was the most tremendous thing I had ever experienced. I can't even remember how many times we fucked, how many times we came, how much of his jizz I swallowed and how much we shared in kisses. But I felt his love; he made it real for me."

Lina paused again and took a deep breath. "In the morning, we woke up, we fucked some more and then, without him or me saying a word, I climbed down from his bed, went into the room I shared with my little sister, woke her up, stripped off the nightie and panties she was wearing, took her into his bedroom and he fucked her too. She was eight. Her body rested against mine the first time he fucked her, and I used my fingers to spread her pussy lips to help his cock get inside her. We spent the rest of that day, the three of us, just sucking and fucking. He taught us to love each other the way sisters should, and my sister and I have been lovers ever since."

Lina halted yet again, looking down at the carpeted deck of the airplane cabin but actually gazing into the past. She sighed, her muscular frame rising and receding before, with a click of her tongue, she added: "After that, he was everything to me, just like he is to this day, and I was everything to him. He was my father, my teacher, my lover, my man. And I was his daughter, his student, his lover, his model, his woman. Except when I was at school or had to leave the house for whatever reason, I didn't wear a stitch of clothing for the next four years. We fucked like crazy, a bunch of times a day every day. Just a few months after we fucked that first time, I became his Chief Girl Lover, the youngest he's ever had. I brought him so many other girls and every time I saw him get his cock in them for the first time, he would look at me, silently thanking me for the gift I had given him, and I would fall in love with him all over again." She smiled then and, with evident pride, declared: "He made me the star of a bunch of kiddy porn photo sets that are legendary now."

I was staggered, unable to resist thinking Lina's life and the world she inhabited was nothing less than an alternate universe, a living horror comic, a Bizarro world to end all Bizarro worlds. The mirror world in which she dwelled wasn't merely dark but thoroughly opaque.

Lina took another deep breath, squared herself in the seat and fixed me with a stare that would have melted steel. "I would kill the whole world for him."

I was silent, awed by the complete ferocity of her devotion.

"And everyone you're going to meet feels exactly the same way. I just happen to be a bitch about it. But that's my job." She flipped the switch near her ear and again took hold of her throat mike. "Back online," she said. "All units, report." She listened for a few moments and then said: "Copy that. Ida Tarbell is disembarking. I repeat, Ida Tarbell is disembarking. Start engines; we roll in two minutes." From the open hatch of the aircraft, I heard distant automobile engines coming to life, echoing in the confines of a vast space.

Lina rose and offered me her hand. I set the tumbler down, unbuckled the safety belt, took her hand and rose to stand in front of her.

Lina flipped the switch again, stared at me and asked: "Does that answer your question?"

I nodded dumbly.

Lina took one last deep breath and said: "It took me a long time to realize it but he's not what you think he is. As much as I love him, I thought the same thing too – for a long time. Not that any of that mattered to me. I killed for him then and I would kill for him now. But he's more than that, so much more. I don't know exactly what. I'm not smart enough to know. Others know better than I. And yet it all makes a sort of sense to me. Everything he's been to me, everything I've been to him, everything we've seen and done together over the years; it all makes a lot more sense now." She momentarily fell into a well of deep thought, considering her own words, and then abruptly returned to me. "C'mon. Everybody's waiting." She flipped the switch yet again and simply said: "Disembarking now."

Lina closely followed as I descended from the plane into another aircraft hangar. The hangar doors were shut so I couldn't divine anything – not the time of day or the weather – about the place to which we had flown. Since I had no idea about how long I had been asleep (and knew no one would tell me), I might have thought we hadn't gone anywhere, simply flown in circles and returned to the same city, but various differences told me this was a different hangar, presumably in a different city.

I saw Yanni and Sweet, still naked, waiting for me beside a large black SUV identical to the one in which I'd ridden before. In front of and behind that vehicle were two other black SUVs, each one accompanied by a small squad of long-haired, hard-bodied and heavily armed teens, all of them talking to one another through their headsets. I saw Emma and Martin standing by the first vehicle in the line along with two other kids, another teen boy and girl who were garbed and armed as they were. Four other teens, two boys and two girls, stood by the last vehicle in the line, armed not only with pistols but also brandishing automatic rifles.

"All this for me?" I said to Lina as we stepped onto the floor of the hangar. "I feel like I'm the president."

"Don't get a big head," Lina replied. "This is just standard operating procedure. If you were the Master coming home from one of his trips, the security detail would be twice as large."

"One of his trips?" I asked with mock innocence.

Lina smiled at me wryly. "Fuck off."

"Still, it looks like you guys are ready for a war."

"Let's just say my people can handle any situation that might come up. Don't let their age fool you. All of them are trained within an inch of their lives."

"I believe it," I said sincerely.

"Let's get going," Lina said and, with nods of her head, set her young killers into motion. They boarded their vehicles and the closing of the car doors echoed through the cavernous hangar. Lina escorted me to where Yanni and Sweet were waiting and then boarded the first vehicle. Yanni and Sweet smiled at me. It seemed like nothing could ruin their mood.

"It won't be long now," Yanni said. "Soon, you'll be at the compound."

"How long?" I asked.

Yanni merely smiled and waved me into the SUV, which, like the one I'd ridden in before, was equipped with windows that prevented any view of the outside world. As I boarded the vehicle, I saw another red micro-bikini laid out on the front bench seat.

"I thought you might want a change of clothes," Yanni said. "After all, the bottoms of the pair you're wearing now are pretty well soaked."

I tried to fight off the blush, largely failing. As I sat, Yanni regarded me, his smile fading slightly but his expression radiating a concerned kindness. "Don't let Lina scare you," he said.

"I'm not scared," I said, lying. "Is her bark worse than her bite?"

Yanni's smile dimmed a bit more as he shook his head. "Oh, no," he breathed. "No, no, no, no, no. She's got a lot of bite. But I know my sister: she's hard but she's not a hothead. She won't hurt you without a good reason, and, even then, only if the Master tells her to. But I know there'll be no reason to hurt you."

"Oh, really?" I said, slightly amused. "How do you know that?"

Yanni shrugged. "I don't know. I just know. I think when you see our world, the way we live, you'll come to see the truth of it all – and you'll accept it." His smile broadened. "I have an instinct for these things."

"Well, I disagree with you."

"Oh, I know you do – now," he replied happily. "But you won't later on."

That statement decidedly unsettled me. What the fuck instinct did he have? I thought. What did he detect about me that caused him to say such a thing? Before I could ask what he meant, Yanni slid the side door shut and I heard him and Sweet entering the front compartment. The engine came alive, and I heard the keening metallic groan of the hangar doors opening just before the convoy began to move.

Seeing that this vehicle was equipped with the same sort of video display, I shed the bikini, activated the monitor and spent the trip watching more of the kiddy porn videos, furiously playing with my pussy as we rolled along, not caring if I was being watched or not. I lost track of how many times I came, my juices soaking my hand and occasionally spraying out to shower the leather upholstery and carpeted floor.

As I scrolled through the selection of the most recent videos, I came across one entitled Summerfinding Orgy 2004 (First Edit). Intrigued, I clicked on it and saw that it featured, without much preamble, a nighttime orgy at a huge and lavish outdoor swimming pool. It was beautifully shot, its colors bright and vivid, the flesh of the players glowing, the action set against a backdrop of heavy rain, the falling drops like gleaming crystals sewn into the fabric of the night. The editing was superb as well, the video smoothly moving, with gentle cuts and languid dissolves, from one depraved scene to another.

As the video progressed, a wide shot revealed a massive canvas canopy had been mounted over the pool, shielding the revelers from the downpour, their cries and moans merging with the sounds of the storm. Children of various ages, seemingly hundreds of them, were having sex in and around the pool. Some were alone, masturbating with their hands or with sex toys. There were couples and groups of varying sizes. A considerable number of adults participated. I saw Lina, naked, standing in the water of the shallow end of the gargantuan pool, her head thrown back in pleasure as one young girl crouched before her and ate her pussy while another crouched behind her, spread her ass cheeks and tongued her asshole. I fell in lust with that sequence, replaying it several times, my eyes fixed on Lina's beautiful breasts, her large brown nipples and adamantine athletic build. There was a slow dissolve and I then saw Yanni on his knees on a chaise longue by the pool, fucking a young boy in the ass while Sweet was behind him, vigorously fucking Yanni in his ass. At the top of the longue, a third boy was lowering his cock into the eager and open mouth of the boy Yanni was fucking. I wondered if one of those two boys was Pop, Yanni's other boy lover who Sweet had mentioned before.

The video eventually settled on the action transpiring within a loggia at the head of the pool. On a massive chaise longue within the loggia, the oiled and shiny bodies of boys and girls moved together, fingers and tongues exploring, young cocks and pussies joining in rapturous pleasure. At the center of the longue, however, I saw the muscled body of an adult male. I couldn't see his face because a young girl with jet-black hair was riding his mouth while another young girl, a honey blonde, rode his cock. Neither of the girls had yet grown breasts; both appeared to be no older than ten or eleven years old. As the girls undulated atop the man, they embraced one another, their mouths locked in a passionate kiss, their tongues swirling. Close-ups allowed excellent views of the man's tongue, busy against the clit of the girl sitting on his face, and his thick cock as it moved in and out of the bald pussy of the girl straddling his torso. The girl's pink asshole seemed to wink at the camera as the man's large balls, tightly attached to his body, jiggled with each stroke of his cock.

I was fascinated. Was this the Master? I wondered. I let that sequence run, hoping to get a good look at the face of the man but his tongue, seemingly tireless, continued to flick at the clitty of the one girl while his cock continued pumping into the cunt of the second girl. The youthful moans of the orgy encircled them, joined by my own moans as I continued playing with my pussy and soaking my surroundings, hoping the action would shift in a way that allowed me to get a look at the man's face.

The side door of the SUV suddenly opened, jerking me back into reality. Seeing Yanni and Sweet standing there, naked and smiling, caused me to instinctively and immediately pull my hand away from my pussy. Blushing violently amid my deep embarrassment, I felt silly in the bargain because there was obviously no concealing what I had been doing – and what caused me to do what I had been doing. As I gathered myself, I also felt angry, not at Yanni or Sweet, but at myself for allowing such a lapse into depravity that I was not only caught in a compromising situation but had also, unlike the good reporter I prided myself on being, lost all track of the time spent on the journey from the hanger to wherever we now happened to be.

None of that seemed to matter to Yanni or Sweet, though. I could see their cocks hardening at the sight of my naked body and thoroughly moistened genitals. Their eyes fell on the many dark stains I had left on the upholstery and carpeted floor and then Yanni looked over at the monitor, momentarily appraising the video I had been watching.

"I can see why you got so excited," Yanni said. "That's the first version of the video of the last Summerfinding Orgy. The final version has been a great seller since it was released – and you can see why. Everyone had such a good time; so much love was shared."

"We fucked all night that night," Sweet added, smiling up at Yanni.

Yanni turned to Sweet and nodded, caressing the boy's face. "And into the morning," he said before returning his attention to the video.

I had to give Yanni credit. As he had said when we had first encountered one another just a few hours before, being naked or sexy made sharing the love easier and better, and his easy manner about such things allowed me to almost completely forget about the embarrassment I had just suffered. I was perhaps beginning to understand how the Master's people thought and, as much I told myself I didn't want to, beginning to see the merits in at least some of the ways they lived and the way they viewed things.

"Summerfinding Orgy?" I asked.

Yanni nodded again. "Mhm-hm," he grunted softly. "The Summerfinding Orgy, sometimes called the Yggdrasil Orgy, happens every April twenty-second and signals the coming of summer. We hold twelve Grand Orgies every year, everyone just loving and being loved." He paused a moment. "It's so beautiful," he whispered heavily, his voice indicating how much he believed what he was saying. He fell silent again but then perked up. "In fact, you're in luck. The Midsummer Orgy is coming up pretty soon and that lasts a whole week. If you stick around long enough, you'll be able to see it and" – a mockingly lewd tone entered his voice – "maybe participate as well."

I regarded Yanni, wondering if he was serious – and realizing he was. I somehow didn't mind it coming from him. Thinking about all he had just said, I marveled yet again. An orgy lasting a whole week? I thought in wonder. How was it possible? I'd been in orgies that lasted through a night and ended up wiped out.

I caught his mention of Yggdrasil, the great cosmic ash tree that joined the nine worlds of Norse mythology. It was obvious the Master, like a latter-day Joseph Smith, was using ancient tropes to bolster his nascent religion. `Twas ever thus with prophets, I thought.

Sweet piped up. "Don't forget the Gay Days," he said to Yanni.

I turned to Sweet. "Gay Days?" I asked him.

Sweet nodded. "Yeah," he answered eagerly. "The Gay Days are when everyone shares love only with others of their own sex. Those happen right before every Grand Orgy. The Master picks the date but it's almost always on the last weekend day before the orgy. I love the Gay Days because the chances are good I'll be sharing love not just with Yanni but with the Master too."

Now it was Yanni's turn to nod. "Yeah," he said in agreement. "The Master has a beach house and when the Gay Days come around, he often goes there with me and a bunch of boys and all of us spend a night and the whole day afterward just loving. It's super-hot."

"Really?" I paused the video, the frozen image of the two girls on top of the man filling the monitor. "Is that the Master?" I asked, gesturing at the monitor.

"Yes, that's him," Yanni answered as he looked at the monitor, an expression of loving reverence on his pretty face. "With Gem and Bella." He turned back to me. "You'll meet them."

"Who are Gem and Bella?"

"Gem, that's the girl on his face," Yanni answered, "is one of the Master's natural daughters and now also his Chief Girl Lover. Bella is one of the Master's regular lovers and one of the elite models."

I could hardly believe my ears. So many fucking questions. "Gem," I began haltingly, "is his daughter?!"

"That's right," Yanni said. "The Master teaches love can be shared with anyone, even your own family. In fact, incest makes the love better. Two or more people who are one thing to one another, like father and daughter" – he nodded toward the monitor – "can become more, so much more. They can become lovers, and the family connection makes the love more intense. And that's certainly the case with the Master and Gem. They've been lovers since she was born. From the start, it's like they were meant to be together." He gestured at the monitor again. "It's natural – and beautiful." He paused a moment, then intoned: "Incest. Holy and pure. Pure and holy."

It was obviously another mantra of their world, for Sweet quickly repeated the same. "Incest," he said reverently. "Holy and pure. Pure and holy."

I ignored their display of depraved devotion and returned my attention to the frozen monitor. Since she was born? I thought. The sick fuck. Yet, in a far distant corner of my mind and being, I cursed myself for a hypocrite – and not for the first time. Questions were exploding in my head like shells landing on a battlefield but seeing Yanni before me threw me onto a tangent. "Are you a lover to your sisters, to Lina?" I whispered, knowing what Yanni would say and yet wanting to hear him say it.

Yanni nodded. "The Master taught us to love each other, really love each other. I mean, I was always close to my sisters, Lina – and Rola too. But the fact that we have sex makes us so much closer, makes our love real. And the fact that it's incest just makes the love holy, purifies it, makes it so much hotter."

I was about to pose more questions when Lina appeared. "What the fuck is going on here?" she demanded. "We're on a fucking clock, remember?" She noticed the suspended image on the monitor and then took in the rest of what was to be seen in the compartment: my naked body and the stains left by my spendings. "Never mind," she said in a low and slightly exasperated voice. "I can see for myself."

I was about to say something sharp to her when Yanni turned to his sister and said in an oddly soothing voice: "Calm the fuck down, Lina. She's just getting ready. And there's really no rush."

I was surprised to see Lina slightly chastened. "Okay," she said. "But let's get going. I've got shit to do back at the compound." She turned and walked away.

Yanni turned back to me. "Are you going to be naked now or do you want to wear the fresh swimsuit?"

"I think I'll wear the swimsuit," I replied absently, my mind filled by Lina and the thought that Yanni's lovely cock had been inside her pussy, likely thousands of times since they had been children. When was the last time he had fucked her? I wondered. Was any residue of her flavor still left on his organ? Suddenly, inexplicably, I felt a pang of sharp jealousy, jealous of Lina for knowing the sensations given by her brother's cock and, more intensely, jealous of Yanni for knowing so well the sensation of his sister's cunt surrounding his manhood.

Yanni seemed not to notice my moment of depraved envy. "Okay, put it on," he said in a comforting tone, referring to the swimsuit. "Sweet will handle your luggage."

As Sweet once again collected my gear, I donned the new micro-bikini and took Yanni's hand as I stepped down from the SUV, the chill of the air hitting me suddenly, causing my nipples to stiffen and raising goosebumps on my flesh. I momentarily wondered how the naked Yanni and Sweet as well as Lina and her people, all of whom were so scantily clad, could stand the cold. I quickly concluded all of them had to be accustomed to such temperatures but that led me to another thought. Summer was only a few weeks away – or at least that was the case in the city we had left, where the sun was already blazing merrily. Had we flown into the southern hemisphere, where winter rather than summer was approaching?

Shivering slightly as I looked about, I found myself in a vast boathouse. There were watercrafts of various sizes and types tied to stations of a long dock, including, at the end of the boathouse farthest away, a mid-sized flybridge yacht. The line of vehicles was parked before a slot in the dock occupied by an antique wood-sheathed motorboat, the sides of its hull and its fittings so thoroughly polished it seemed to glow. Lina and her young killers stood about, forming a perimeter that led to the boat.

As we approached, Lina produced a black hood similar to the one I had been forced to wear on the night I was abducted. "Put this on," she said.

I looked at the hood and then at Lina. "Fuck that," I said flatly.

Lina looked at me. "Put this on or it's no deal," she said evenly. "I'll put you back on the plane and you'll be back where we started."

I looked at the hood again, thinking of colleagues who had disappeared in the shitholes of the world, coming back decapitated. The honor of journalism scholarships in their name had rained down on their headless shoulders when, I knew, they would have preferred the honor of simply remaining alive.

Yanni nudged me. "No one is going to hurt you," he said soothingly. "It's just a precaution."

I thought a moment more and took the hood from Lina's hand and placed it on my head, the blackness of the material plunging me into darkness, completely obscuring the outside world. Lina stepped forward and tightened a belt at the bottom of the hood, thus preventing me from easily removing it. As she did so, I pictured her in my mind, hoping there might be an expression of mild regret on her face as she tightened the belt. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I felt her give me a slight pat of reassurance on a shoulder as she secured the hood.

Yanni and Sweet took my hands and gently led me to the boat, guiding me as I stepped from the dock. I felt hands on my ankles and then on my torso and arms – presumably those of Lina's people – as I stepped onto the rim of the motorboat and then descended into its compartment. I was guided to the rear of the craft and then sat down on a comfortable bench at the stern. I felt a jacket of downy softness descend onto my shoulders and wrap around my upper body while another pair of hands spread a blanket on my lap and over my legs.

"Here," I heard Yanni say in a gentle whisper as he helped maneuver my arms into the sleeves of the jacket, "these will keep you from getting too cold."

I heard some movement as others boarded the boat and started a bit as its triple Seven Marines came to life. I felt us begin to move, backward and then forward, and then heard the groan of the boathouse's seaward doors as they parted. As opaque as the hood was, I could detect a slight change in the surrounding light as we emerged from the boathouse and headed out into whatever body of water we were on. I felt the spray of the water as the boat sliced through its surface and the salted scent in my nostrils told me we were on an ocean. But which ocean? How far had we come? I had no way of knowing.

Conversation was largely impossible over the noise of the motors, and, since I was bereft of light and sight, I had nothing to do but count the passing seconds. I estimated roughly that about two hours passed before the roar of the motors waned into a low rumble as we slowed and then quieted altogether as we stopped, the boat bumping against something, presumably another dock. I heard movement, rubber soles squeaking over the wet deck, and then, suddenly, the belt was loosened, and the hood was pulled off my head.

We were in another boathouse, smaller than the one before but still rather large. The motorboat had been parked at the last slot in a dock crowded by dinghies, sailboats, skiffs, motorized rafts and other motorboats. The slot at the farthest end of the boathouse was occupied by what appeared to be a sort of tour boat topped by a glass canopy, the panes of the canopy tinted an opaque black like the windows of the SUVs in which I had ridden.

As someone pulled away the blanket, Lina stood before me and silently took my hand. I stood and she led me to where the side of the motorboat met the dock. Two of her male myrmidons were there, standing on the dock, their cocks bulging against their leather briefs as they helped pull me up onto the dock. I could feel the surprising strength in their hands and arms as they lifted me.

I was led from the boathouse and emerged into the gloaming. There was still light in the sky, but the sun was well into its descent, streaks of orange and red from the west striping the overarching blue. The onrush of evening told me we had been traveling for something approaching ten or more hours. If that was the case, if we hadn't simply been flying around in circles, we had come quite a long way from the city where we had started. I looked around and could see, hear and smell the ocean, heard the cries of seabirds. But I as yet had no way of knowing if we were on a distant shore of a continent other than the one where the journey had begun or on an even more distant island.

The chill of the encroaching evening overwhelmed me for a moment and, though I still wore the jacket, I shivered and brought my arms close, wrapping them around me as I turned away from the view of the ocean. I saw, in the direction of the setting sun and just a few feet from the boathouse, the eaves of a forest of great oaks. A paved road led into the woods. Closer still, parked on a small lot adjacent to the boathouse, was a black stretch limo golf cart. Yanni was already behind the wheel, looking over at me and smiling, as usual. Sweet was seated on the second bench, directly behind Yanni, and Martin and Emma were seated on the third bench, my luggage secured in a small bed at the vehicle's rear. Lina led the way, taking the seat beside Sweet.

Yanni patted the seat next to him. "Your seat of honor awaits," he said.

I laughed as I settled into the front passenger seat. "I surely can't be so important I merit the seat of honor," I replied as Yanni spread another blanket over the lower half of my body.

"I wouldn't say that," Yanni said. "But any seat next to me is a seat of honor."

I laughed again. Despite all I had so far learned and seen, particularly about Yanni, I couldn't help liking him. He smiled at me, turned the key in the ignition, his sandaled foot pressing down on the accelerator, and, with a slight jerk, we were off, the motor of the cart whirring softly as we set out on the road.

The overhanging branches of the wizened oaks formed a canopy so impenetrable that the remains of the day hardly shone through; small, dull patches of orange light dappling our flesh as we sped along. The murkiness of the wood might have given others pause but I found it oddly comforting, as if the trees were watchful sentinels rather than the abode of something dark and wicked.

In a few minutes, as the clumps of the thickly trunked trees thinned, there was more light and space, the asphalt road bracketed by carpets of leaves that had fallen over the course of decades. I looked about, breathing deeply, filling my lungs with the sweet mixture produced by the ocean breeze as it, with a gentle rustle, wafted through the branches overhead. Wherever we are, I thought, it's very beautiful.

The corner of an eye suddenly caught something that brought me out of my reverie, reminding me where I actually happened to be. To my right, I caught a glimpse of two boys, neither of them older than ten years of age, completely naked but for the bronze chains around their necks and the sandals on their feet, walking through the trees hand-in-hand, their long hair gently lifted by the steady breeze. A minute or so after that, we sped by a naked boy and girl fucking at the base of a large oak about twenty feet from the road. They appeared to be about eleven or twelve years old and were fucking on a bed of grass, the girl's head thrown back in obvious pleasure, her coltish legs splayed as the boy, his trim ass pumping, vigorously applied his strokes. We passed them just as they seemed to be entering the throes of orgasm, all of us distinctly hearing her cries of ecstasy and his grunts of effort.

I could hardly believe my eyes. I had tried to prepare myself for what to expect in this place but actually seeing it left me momentarily flabbergasted. I turned to Yanni and once again caught him smiling, his eyes alternating between me and the path. "I suppose you'll tell me they were sharing love," I said.

Yanni nodded. "That's exactly right," he replied. "It was beautiful. Here, love is as natural as breathing. No one has to be ashamed; no one has to be shy. Love is freely given and received. No one here goes unloved. They can be alone whenever they want. But when they go looking for love, they'll always find it."

Before I could retort or pose a question, we slowed, arriving at a large black metal gate set into a thick and high wall made of large, weathered bricks. I looked to my left and to my right and it seemed there was no end to the lateritious barrier. Yanni pressed a button on the console of the golf cart and the two panels of the great gate began to swing apart. We passed through and the gate closed behind us.

"Ida Tarbell is on the compound," I heard Lina say. "I repeat, Ida Tarbell is on the compound."

"Welcome to Philo-Sophia, the Master's compound," Yanni said, a note of triumph in his voice.

I was momentarily awestruck, realizing with a slight start the legends I had heard during my months of investigation, hardly believing any of them at the time, were all true. I had arrived at the heart of the beast and, like Luthien at Thangorodrim, wondered if I would emerge, and, if I did, what I would emerge as.

We were only a few minutes past the gate when a pair of young but sinewy teen girls on motorcycles roared up to our starboard. Both were dressed (or hardly dressed) like Lina and Martin and Emma, pistols hanging from their naked flanks and what looked like sniper rifles slung over their shoulders. Despite their youth, they handled the motorcycles with surprising skill and, upon seeing Lina, smiled and waved. Lina smiled and waved back, joined by Martin and Emma, which was the first time I had seen a crack in the disciplined reserve of those siblings.

"That's Brittany and Thessaly, more of Lina's people," Yanni said, answering my unspoken question. "They guard the perimeter of the compound, and they rush to the gate whenever it opens, just to make sure whoever is entering is a friendly."

"And if they're not friendly?" I asked.

"The perimeter guards have standing orders to neutralize anyone who hasn't been cleared," Yanni said.

"Neutralize? You mean kill."

"You'd be surprised how skilled they are," Yanni said, avoiding my question. "The ones that don't ride motorcycles are all around us; you just can't see them. They'd be on top of you before you ever heard them or saw them."

I glanced back at Lina in the seat directly behind me and was genuinely surprised to see how happy she was. She was smiling and waving at her speeding minions and there was an expression of barely concealed joyous and loving pride on her face. The girls waved again. The one closest to us popped a wheelie, was immediately imitated by her companion, and then both accelerated and sped off.

I turned back to Yanni and, as usual, he read my mind. "Lina loves her people," he said simply, "and they love her back. She looks after them. Don't ever fuck with Lina's people."

We approached a paved branch stemming from the main road and, as we passed it, I saw to our right, through the limbs of a surrounding copse, a large three-story house that seemed like something one might find in the English countryside. I spotted some youngsters, both boys and girls, moving about the environs of the house. It took me a moment to realize that at least some of them weren't naked or semi-naked but were actually wearing clothes: nothing too modest – a variety of t-shirts and shorts, it seemed – but nothing out of the ordinary either. Others wore barely anything more than skimpy bikini bottoms while others were completely nude. I noticed others, though, who wore what seemed to be a variety of the uniform for this place: a skin-tight crop top coupled with a revealing bottom garment. I saw, as I peered through the gaps in the leaves, that the crop tops on all those children were white and their thong bottoms were all varying shades of red. I turned to Yanni and, as always, he was ready with an answer.

"That's the Guest House," he said. "That's where newcomers stay until they're ready to become part of the Master's family and live on the compound."

"How many make the move from the Guest House to the compound?" I asked.

"Nearly all of them decide to stay," Yanni replied with unconcealed pride. "Over the last year, only two have gone back. But the ones that stay, they join our family; they join the life and love of the compound."

"Who decides whether they get to stay or whether they go?"

"They do," Yanni said with some emphasis. "No one here is ever forced to do anything. Everything that happens is by choice."

"How do they make the choice?"

"They're assigned a---" – he considered the best word to use – "a companion. Someone who already lives here, who has freely chosen to be a member of our family, becomes their friend, their lover, and shows them all the beauty, all the love that's to be had here. But there's never any pressure. They can take as much time as they want and, in the end, if they decide they want to stay, the choice is theirs alone. And if that's what they decide to do, then they leave the Guest House and move into one of the residence halls at the Academy."

"A companion? Someone to brainwash them?"

"No!" Yanni said firmly, startling me a bit, since it was the first time I'd seen him dispense with his usually sunny exterior. "I'm telling you, they have a friend, a true friend, come into their lives. Someone who'll listen, listen to whatever they have to say. Someone who'll love and cherish them, which is the first time a lot of these kids have ever had anything like that. Someone who'll show them all they can have and all they can be if they truly want it. Someone who'll help them make the choice, yes, but that's all."

"Are those companions the ones I saw wearing the white crop tops?"

Yanni nodded. "Those are the assistant lovers. They love and teach the new kids and they report on their progress to the Chief Boy Lover and Chief Girl Lover. Their work is very important."

"Chief Boy Lover? Chief Girl Lover?"

Yanni nodded again. "They're two of the most important people here," he said. "Both of them report directly to the Master. They help the Master select his lovers every night, they help arrange his daily orgies as well as the Grand Orgies, they help pick who's going to appear in all the photo and video shoots, and they supervise the process that brings the newcomers into the family. Right now, the Chief Boy Lover is Chad, who's the Master's son, and the Chief Girl Lover is Gem, who's the Master's daughter. You saw her in that video you were watching." His eyes twinkled with a lewd mirth as he glanced over at me.

I ignored Yanni's amusement and, almost casually, said: "His son and daughter? So, nepotism reigns?"

Yanni's eyes narrowed, and his lips pursed in annoyance. "They were picked because they were the best qualified," he said. "The Master's had several chief boy and girl lovers over the years. When they reach a certain age, they give up the post and someone else takes their place. I was his Chief Boy Lover not too long ago and Lina" – his head gestured in the direction of his sister – "was his Chief Girl Lover back then too." He paused a moment and added, a detectable bit of pride in his voice: "In fact, Lina was his Chief Girl Lover longer than anyone else who's ever had the job." His face then scrunched up a bit as he mulled what he had just said. "Well," he added, "at least officially. She was there the longest if you don't count Peaches and Dawn. They were his first Chief Girl Lovers, and they did the job for about ten years but, in those days, especially at the beginning, the title didn't exist, and the job wasn't as well-defined. They did a lot of other stuff too."

My mind was swirling with questions. I literally didn't know what to ask. I was obviously probing not just some criminal gang or far-out sex cult but something approaching a society in its own right. At that moment, I felt unequal to the task. I had to get away somewhere to be alone and think, marshal my personal resources so nothing would faze me, nothing I might see or hear deter me from my investigation. I couldn't help thinking, though, that this place didn't need a reporter; it needed a whole team of anthropologists and sociologists.

I decided to change tack for the time being. "Residence halls?" I asked. "Academy?"

Yanni nodded. "There are three," he said. "Kids five to eight years old live in Stripling Hall. Kids eight to thirteen years old live in Page Hall and kids thirteen to eighteen years old live in Squire Hall. They're all on the grounds of the Academy, which is the school we have here. Its official name is Philo-Sophia Academy but most of the kids just call it the Academy or the school."

I looked over at Yanni with wide eyes. "School?" I exclaimed. "There's a school here?"

Yanni was surprised I was surprised. "Yes, of course there is," he said. "We're not savages, whatever you may think. The Master believes in knowledge – that's what Philo-Sophia means, after all, love of wisdom – and he's very serious about every child on the compound getting the best education possible, which is something a lot of them wouldn't even have a chance at in the outside world, the world that claims to care for them so much."

I marveled. "Amazing," I muttered.

I was about to ask a slew of further questions when we arrived at a three-pronged fork in the road. One road led to our left while the other led to our right. I looked at the mouth of each, seeing how both disappeared into the trees and then turned to Yanni as he proceeded onto the road in the center.

"The road to our right leads to the Academy," Yanni said. "The road to the left leads to the Studio."

"The Studio? Is that where the Master makes his kiddy porn?" I allowed the entry of a slightly accusatory tone as I said the last two words.

Only gently did Yanni rise to my challenge. "Yes," he said with a slight smile. "That's where he makes his art. But he and his people shoot all over the island too."

"His people? I thought all of you were his people."

"I meant his studio people, brainless," Yanni said teasingly. "He can't do it all himself. We put out dozens of photo sets and vids every year now so there are other photographers and videographers. But the Master oversees all of it. Nothing goes out that he hasn't personally approved."

The ground began to rise a bit and the motor of the golf cart emitted a low whine as we ascended a hill. Within a minute or so, the entirety of the road ahead hove into view, lined on both sides by tall and hefty cypress trees and ending at a massive dark gray granite mansion that was still some distance away. I marveled at the size of the house, a veritable palace, making no attempt to conceal my fascination as I peered at the structure from underneath the canopy of the golf cart.

"That's the Main House," Yanni said, again displaying some pride. "The Master lives there with the Holy Family."

I turned from looking at the house. "The Holy Family?" I declared, a note of mocking incredulity in my voice. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. This collection of kid fuckers had the temerity, the arrogance, to call themselves holy and this so-called Master fuck obviously styled himself some sort of pedophile god.

Detecting the dubiousness in my voice, the corners of Yanni's mouth edged up but he simply nodded and said: "The Holy Family are the people that are closest to the Master and help him run the compound. Some are blood relatives, and some are people who have simply been with him for a long time. There's his wife Maya, his consorts, his children: the ones he's had naturally and the ones he's adopted. Lina and me and our sister Rola, for example, are kids he adopted, but we're part of the Holy Family. We've been with him for nearly twenty years, ever since we were kids."

"And you all live in the Main House?"

"Well, some of us do and some of us don't. Maya lives there. Gem lives there, at least most of the time. But some of us live in Elysium."

"What's Elysium?" I asked.

"It's the town within the compound," Yanni replied. "Most of the people that live here live in Elysium."

"A town?" I retorted with unrestrained incredulity. "A whole town?"

Yanni simply nodded.

Still seized by a reeling comprehension, I blurted: "How many people live here that there's a whole fucking town?"

Yanni seemed momentarily unsure how to reply, but then cast a small sidelong smile at me. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," he said.

"Try me!"

"Well, I can't say for certain. My sister Rola would know, that's for sure, down to the last person. But the best I can say for now is the number is something over twenty thousand."

My mouth fell open. Twenty fucking thousand! I thought. No, more than twenty fucking thousand! he said. I regarded Yanni with an expression of disbelief. He had to be lying. That was it! For some unknown reason, he was lying to me; to fill me with an undue awe, perhaps. But all those thoughts were just so much mental snorting on my part. I instantly knew he wasn't lying; there was no reason for him to lie. And I already knew he was the farthest thing from a liar in any case. I once again struggled to gain my bearings.

Yanni divined the melee within me and was silent for a moment or two while I, largely unsuccessfully, attempted to sort all I was thinking. "In a lot of ways," he eventually said, "it's a town like any other. There are houses and stores and streets. There are doctors and merchants and teachers, all sorts of people, families and their kids. There's a community center and a park, and even a town hall."

Simply unable to keep my amazement under wraps, my usual professional cool rose to a low boil. "A town hall?" I said with a flabbergasted snort and a gesture of my hands, my head trembling with a summoned incredulity. "You mean there's a mayor, a town council?"

Yanni nodded again. "Yeah," he said. "The people that live in Elysium run Elysium. There's a town mayor, all right, and a town council, and they draw up a budget and they do everything that needs doing to run the town."

"And the Master has nothing to say?"

"Well, not exactly," Yanni admitted. "The mayor reports to Maya; she's the Master's wife and she runs the compound in its entirety on a day-to-day basis, and she reports to the Master. But the Master pretty much stays out of town business. There's really no reason for him to be involved anyway. One of the reasons he's always been so successful at whatever he's done is because he's always picked good people and trusts them to do their jobs. He only gets involved when his people screw up and don't get their jobs done."

"And that arrangement works?" I asked. "I mean, with regard to Elysium?"

"Sure," Yanni replied, briefly turning to me while driving down the road. "Elysium takes care of its own business but leaves everything else to the Master and Maya, like the businesses that support all this" – one of his hands rose from the steering wheel to gesture at the totality of the depraved realm – "and our religion."

I continued to turn over in my mind all that Yanni had just revealed, how the protectorate of the Master and his inner circle watched over an entire town of pedophiles while guarding their dominion over the sources of that town's creation. I had regarded the Master for what he obviously was: a criminal, a deviant, a pornographer, and known his far-flung operations required a team of people, as would have been the case with any villainous organization, however small or large. But to hear there existed in this place not just a cult of malefactors who dressed up their depredations with a skein of religion, but a genuine community of co-religionist perverts drawn from all walks of life (and perhaps from all corners of the world) was a staggering realization. The whispered legends I had heard during the course of my investigation, the stories of nothing less than an attempt to redefine the parameters of human civilization, to spark a re-enchantment of the world, were far truer than I had allowed my hard-bitten self to believe. Who was this man, the Master? Was his title more than a vastly presumptuous appellation or was it somehow actually deserved?

I turned my eyes back to the road and took a deep breath. It occurred to me then that this "religion" Yanni had mentioned, this aborning faith might indeed be more significant to the story I had set out to tell than I had assumed, and thus more dangerous to boot. I should pose more questions about it than I had planned, I thought, the nascent faith that sustained this seemingly thriving body of degenerates, but Yanni's explanation continued and quickly chased my next set of questions from my mind – at least for the time being.

"Anyway," Yanni said, "I live in a house in Elysium, and Lina" – he gestured with a shoulder at the bench behind us – "and my other sister Rola live in their own houses. You'll be staying at a house there too. You'll see it soon; it's nice." He gestured up the road toward the great house. "You can't see the town now; it's on this road but behind the Main House. But you'll see it soon enough."

I was about to inquire further when Lina spoke up from the seat behind us. "Yanni," she said, "pull over. I have to pee."

As if hearing such a statement was the height of normality, Yanni's face betrayed nothing as he pulled over by a stand of the cypresses. As Lina alighted from the vehicle, Martin and Emma, sitting in the rearmost seat, asked in unison: "May we share in your pee, commandant?"

Lina turned to them and smiled. "Come, babies," she said simply.

The young teen siblings stepped down from the vehicle and followed their mistress. Barely guessing at what was about to happen, I did my best to keep my composure as I watched Lina walk a few feet away from the vehicle. Previously cowed by her humorless and intimidating manner, I hadn't before credited the athletic grace with which she moved. Her slender but powerful frame moved across the earth with the purposeful elegance of an expert swimmer slicing through water. My eyes fixed on her ass, and I couldn't help but admire the beautiful symmetry of those muscled twin globes. Her back to me, I scanned her from top to bottom, her beauty striking me afresh. Unbidden but irresistible, I wondered what it would be like to see her completely naked, not just on video but in the flesh, to feel her lips on mine, have her body next to mine, to breathe her in, to taste her.

In that moment, I realized, with a very real shock, I was in lust with Lina, that very dangerous, child-abusing, cult-besotted bitch. It wasn't just her beauty or her body that was getting to me, I knew, but also the fact she believed in something, however terrible. Her devotion, her murderous loyalty, had largely disappeared from the modern world, and, whether or not that was a good thing, the fact, as she had said, she would kill me, do the job on the whole world in defense of what she believed, made my pussy drip.

Lina stopped before one of the great cypress trees and turned, Martin and Emma standing in front of her. Lina reached down to the crotch of her leather briefs and pulled them aside, revealing a lovely, pink-lipped pussy that was completely shaved but for a small patch of dark brown hair just above her clitoral hood. The outer lips of her cunt were thin, tight against her gash, and, as her fingers spread apart the borders of her sex, I saw the small bulbous dome of her clit. I longed to go to her and press my tongue against it. The dying light of the day twinkled through the few drops of moisture to be seen on her twat, and, as she revealed more of her folds, she bent her legs slightly, endowing some prominence to the corded muscles of her thighs.

Martin and Emma dropped to their knees like worshippers before Lina and what happened next was astonishing to me, though I think I did a good job of concealing my amazement. Martin and Emma both opened their mouths wide, and Lina, with obviously practiced expert aim, began urinating, first into Martin's mouth and then into Emma's. Her stream of piss flowed for what seemed quite a while and she moved her torso from side to side, alternating the flow of her urine between the mouths of her two heavily armed acolytes.

The juices of my own pussy began flowing again as I watched Martin and Emma, both obviously eager, keep their mouths open in the face of the stream, swallowing and occasionally savoring the piss emanating from their mistress. I could hear their lips smacking as they tasted Lina's urine and saw tiny shavings of the flow spatter their faces and upper bodies.

The stream at last began to slacken and the siblings closed their mouths, some of the piss running down their chins and onto their chests. They rose to their booted feet, mouths full of urine, and kissed Lina. Martin went first and then Emma, the liquid flowing into one mouth and then back into the other before they all swallowed their portion, and then continued kissing, droplets of urine on their faces merging as their lips came together.

I was transfixed by this sight of obviously loving depravity and Yanni, leaning over from his seat, whispered in my ear, the sudden sound of his voice causing me to start a little. "They're sharing love," he said. "Martin and Emma asked for Lina's love and Lina gave it to them, freely and joyously. They accepted it, they tasted it, and then they gave it back to her. Lina's piss, the giving of it, the tasting of it, the sharing of it, made the love real."

I turned back to look at him and saw the gently serious expression on his face. I had no words, was still absorbing what I had just seen. It was obvious Yanni wholeheartedly believed what he had just said and, as I turned back to look at Lina and her charges, still exchanging urine-moistened kisses with one another, it was also obvious how much she loved them and how much they loved her.

The kisses finally ended, and Martin and Emma stepped back from their mistress. Lina reached out to caress both their faces. "Blessed be, my babies," she said to them.

"Blessed be, commandant," Martin and Emma said in unison.

Lina reached down to move the crotch of her briefs back into place over her dewy pussy and she and her minions moved back to the cart. As soon as they were settled, we started off again, the great house at the end of the road filling more and more of the immediate horizon.

The road, now studded on either side by rows of large firepits, ended at a plaza dominated by an elaborate fountain. Jets of water rose from the center and rim of the fountain and, as we drew closer, I saw sprays of water also emanating from a ring of statues within the fountain, stone representations of boys and girls pissing from erect cocks and splayed pussies, their streams falling into the water below. My mouth hung open as I gazed at the statues and we circled the fountain, heading toward the massive double-doored entrance of the Main House.

We came to a stop before some stone steps that led to a front verandah and the entrance. I began to descend from the vehicle when a gentle touch of Yanni's hand stopped me. Lina and Martin and Emma alighted from the vehicle. Sweet stayed seated.

Lina came to stand in front of where I sat and said: "There's not much reason for us to see each other from now on but I'll be watching. I'll know everything you do and know about everyone you talk to. You won't have any secrets while you're here." She paused a moment. "That being said, I sincerely hope you keep an open mind, that your time here is at least informative if not enjoyable." She regarded me. "You might be surprised how a lifetime of belief gives way to the truth."

With that, she spun on her heels and walked toward the Main House, closely followed by Martin and Emma. My eyes fixed on Lina's gorgeous ass as she walked away. The great wooden doors opened with a low groan and the three of them disappeared into the house. As the doors closed with a seeming finality, I considered Lina's words, for the moment less concerned about what she had said about this place somehow changing me than I was at hearing we might not again see each other. The sudden jerk of the cart as it started again brought me out of that momentary reverie.

We circled the fountain again, left the plaza and headed down a road leading north that girdled the Main House. As we made our way around the house, I couldn't look away from the structure; it was so large and imposing. I studied its carved granite frieze and high windows even after we turned off and descended onto another road now heading west that led into a thick copse. The Master is probably in there right now, I thought, fucking who knows how many kids. Suddenly, barely visible through the trees, I finally shifted my attention away from the house.

"Where are we going?" I asked Yanni.

"To your house in Elysium," Yanni replied. "It's been a long day and I'm sure you're tired. You can settle in, and I'll come for you in the morning to show you around."

I nodded. I was tired but I couldn't resist being cheeky. As I said, I liked Yanni in spite of myself. "Straight to bed, then, eh? I don't get to meet the Master? I thought he and I would be sharing dinner at least."

Yanni laughed. "You'll meet him – eventually," he said. "And I'm willing to bet money the two of you will be sharing a lot more than dinner."

I regarded Yanni. "If you mean to say I'm going to let him fuck me, you've got another thing coming."

His eyes on the road, Yanni smiled. "Famous last words," he said.

There was no use arguing so I kept quiet. Having come to know Yanni, at least a bit, I wasn't at all angry or offended but I once again thought his certainty was irritating. What makes him think I'm going to let a pedophile fuck me? I thought. Or anyone else here, for that matter? I was certainly hypersexual and might get outrageously horny while I was here, but the remedy for that, I told myself, was to simply jerk off like crazy. I was determined, for once, to keep my pussy shut while I was here. While those thoughts passed through my head, I was actually convinced my willpower would win out.

We emerged from the copse and eventually arrived at an avenue laid between a large cluster of houses that indeed resembled nothing less than a town, just as one might find in some humdrum, peaceful corner of Norman Rockwell's America. By now, darkness had largely fallen but, thanks to the street lanterns that came alive as we puttered down the broad avenue, I could see, on the neatly trimmed grass swales at the corners of the blocks, white stone markers etched with black lettering that indicated the names of the avenues and numbers of the cross-streets. Judging by the look of the place, one might have expected we were coming to the corner of Main and Elm but, as we passed one of the markers, I saw we were actually heading down Mary Kay Letourneau Avenue.

I couldn't help but snort and shake my head. Turning to Yanni, I said ruefully: "Mary Kay Letourneau Avenue?"

Keeping his eyes on the road ahead, Yanni simply nodded. "Why not?" he said with a slight shrug. "We try to name as many streets as possible after child lovers," he replied. "Mary Kay Letourneau was unjustly persecuted for her beautiful and sincere love for a boy who loved her back and even gave her a child. In a sane society, their love would have been just as beautiful but nothing remarkable. They would have been allowed to love and live their lives in peace."

My mouth parted to say something, anything, but I thought better of it and kept quiet, settling back into the bench seat for the last few yards of the journey. What was there to say to that, after all? For once, I detected no mirth or airiness in what Yanni had said but, rather, stone-cold belief and purpose. As if the evidence given my eyes weren't enough, I had gotten yet another taste of what a true zealot this seemingly light-hearted fellow truly was.

Yanni turned the steering wheel and the cart headed south on a side street. "Most of us in the Holy Family who live in Elysium live on this block," he said. The street bordered a quilt of small houses that looked like a village out of some storybook fairyland. I was amazed yet again, looking about at the houses, lights from within most shining out onto the quiet streets. In a typical town, one might think families were settling down to dinner but here I presumed there were goings-on in those hushed cottages that the likes of Thornton Wilder and even Sinclair Lewis would never have dreamed of.

As we glided down this picturesque stretch of the street, Yanni pointed out some of the cottages. "That's where my sister Rola lives," he said, pointing at a small house made of faded red bricks that sported chimneys on both of its sides. Resting on a base of bricks, the house was situated at the center of an emerald lawn surrounded by a gated white picket fence submerged in a green hedge. "She lives there by herself?" I asked.

"No," Yanni replied casually. "She lives there with her son Chad and her lover Francesca, and sometimes Silk."

I did a double take. "Wait a minute," I said. "Is that the same Chad you said was the Master's son, his Chief Boy Lover?"

Yanni nodded. "Rola is Chad's mother," he said simply.

Already aware that anything might be possible in this place, my mind reeled from what I suspected was the implication. "Are Rola and Chad" – I fumbled for the right word – "together?" I asked, my incredulity betraying itself.

Yanni nodded again. "Yes, they're lovers," he said easily. "It's like I told you before. Incest has made them more than mother and son. They're lovers now – and also father and mother."

Try as I might, I couldn't conceal my shock. "You mean they've had children together?"

"Yes," Yanni said, a bit amused at my burgeoning outrage. "A beautiful daughter. She was born a few months ago, in December, right before the Yuletide Orgy, so they named her Winter." He paused a moment, then added: "They plan to have more."

Damn him! I thought, now a little bit angry. My years as a hard-bitten reporter had prepared me for anything, I thought. But this place was throwing me for a loop every time I turned around. "And it came out" – I hesitated a moment – "all right?"

Yanni nodded. "Of course, it did," he said. "All those stories you've heard about incest, about deformed or retarded babies, are just that: a lot of stories. The Master teaches that incest actually makes babies better because any baby born from love is already special, so babies born from loving incest are doubly special."

I hardly knew what to ask next. "When do they plan to have more?" I asked feebly.

"Not for at least a few months. Francesca just gave birth a few weeks ago so they're all waiting until her daughter April is about a year old or older. All three of them have important jobs, after all, so they're always pretty busy."

"So, Chad is having babies with his mother and Francesca?

Yanni nodded.

"Isn't he still a boy? How old is he?"

"Thirteen. He turned thirteen a few weeks ago, not too long after April was born."

"Thirteen?" I exclaimed. "And he's already a father twice over? And planning on having more children?"

"That's okay," Yanni said as if he was talking about the weather. "Rola was thirteen when she gave birth to Chad."

My eyes widened and my mouth gaped open. I was momentarily stunned into silence, at a loss as to what to ask next. "So, the Master impregnated your sister Rola when she was twelve and she gave birth to Chad when she was thirteen?" I finally said. "And her own son Chad impregnated his own mother when he was twelve and became a father twice over even before he was thirteen?"

Yanni nodded. "Yes, that's right."

"And who is Francesca?"

"Francesca was an adult lover of the Master's about ten or more years ago. She was a friend of one of his sex buddies when they met and then she went to work for him as a stripper in one of his clubs. They were sex buddies, like I said, but they also became friends because they found out they had a lot in common. I mean, like their backgrounds and the things they believed in and the ways they thought about a lot of stuff. So, after a while, she came to live with us and became part of our family." He paused a moment and then added: "She was seventeen then, and I guess I must have been in my late teens and early twenties."

"Living with you? She was into kids too?"

"Sort of," Yanni replied with a slight shrug. "Her parents died in an accident when she was little, so she was raised by an uncle and an aunt who had a dairy farm, and they were into incest and were making it with all their kids, so Francesca grew up making it with all of them, her uncle and aunt and all her cousins, and all the animals on the farm. She's heavy into bestiality. Anyway, when she met the Master, he didn't hide being a pedophile from her and, when she came to live us, it wasn't really any kind of an adjustment for her anyway, to get used to the way he lived, the way we all lived, and all that went on at his place."

I, for once, evinced no reaction at the mention of bestiality, and certainly made no comment. Indeed, at that moment, it hardly registered. I had long ago welded shut a heavy metal hatch on that subject. "So, what happened then?" I merely asked.

Yanni shrugged again. "Nothing," he said simply. "As soon as Francesca started spending time at our place, the rest of us knew pretty quickly she was one of us and we accepted her. She and Maya, the Master's wife, were the same age, and they became really good friends, and then she and my sister Rola became lovers. As busy as she was, she helped Rola raise Chad, was like a second mother to him, so it was only natural for holy incest to make them more than mother and son, to make them husband and wife too. Anyway, I've heard Francesca say it's her honor to have Chad's babies, since it was the Master's holy cock that created Chad."

"You said Francesca was busy. What kept her so busy?"

"She had a lot on her plate back then," Yanni said. "She was working as a fetish model and a stripper, and she was going to school too." He chuckled. "I remember a lot of the time back then she was always buried in a pile of books, always studying."

"Francesca went to school? What did she study?"

"She was going to college and then she went to medical school," Yanni replied. "She was already in her first year of college when she met the Master and came to live with us."

"Medical school?" I said, a bit of wonder coloring my voice. "Did she finish? Is she a doctor?"

Yanni nodded. "She's a surgeon," he said. "She's in charge of our hospital. We've got a bunch of other doctors here too."

"You have a hospital here?" I retorted, again unable to restrain my amazement. I turned from him then, staring out over the road. "But, of course, there's a hospital here," I said largely to myself in a tone of cynical sarcasm. "Why shouldn't there be a hospital here?"

Amused by the blows landing on my usual mien of skepticism, Yanni merely smiled.

I turned back to him and asked: "And who is Silk?"

"Silk is Chad's lover," Yanni replied. "His given name is Daniel, but Silk is the name he chose for himself because the Master once said his cock was like silk. He and Chad declared for each other last year, but they've been together since they were five years old. Silk has a room at the Academy, at Squire Hall, but he's almost always with Chad so he usually sleeps here or at Chad's office at the Main House."

"And does Silk have sex with Rola and Francesca as well?"

"If you mean to ask if he shares love with Rola and Francesca, then the answer is yes."

I felt as if I was drunk. I hardly knew what to ask, much less what to do. Yanni's voice broke in on my inebriated befuddlement.

"That's my place," he said, pointing to a wood-sheathed split-level house set on a surrounding wooden terrace that was shaded by a stand of trees.

I hardly dared ask but did so anyway. "And who do you live with?"

"Pop and Sweet," Yanni replied simply.

I turned back to look at Sweet sitting behind us. He was leisurely stroking his cock, drops of pre-cum glistening at the top of his glans. He smiled at me. I couldn't help smiling back.

"But we have guests practically every night," Sweet said to me and then turned to Yanni. "Don't we, Yanni?"

Yanni nodded. "That's right," he affirmed. "There were seven of us last night."

"You, Sweet, Pop and who else?" I asked as I turned from Sweet to look at Yanni.

"Four other boys," Yanni replied. "One of them was Martin." He looked at me a moment and added: "Emma slept with Lina last night."

I blushed yet again, thinking of what it must have been like to see Lina naked in bed with a naked Emma, the two of them making love, and then picturing myself in the mix, naked with the woman and the girl, my fingers and tongue exploring them both. Then, for some reason I yet found unfathomable, I felt an overpowering envy of Emma, who, despite her obvious formidableness, was a girl surely no older than thirteen. The jealousy I felt at that moment was even more intense than what I felt earlier that day, when I had considered Yanni fucking Lina. I found myself wishing I had been in Emma's place the night before, alone and naked with Lina, the two of us, just the two of us, making love all night and into the dawn. I knew what I was feeling – I could admit that much to myself – but could hardly believe it. The onrush of the feeling was so sudden and shattering that I was struck dumb and said nothing in reply to Yanni's comment. All I could do, while trying and failing to process how I felt, was wonder if, consistent with his several displays of seeming telepathy, he had deliberately said what he said. I stared at him to get some sort of idea if he'd had a motive for his utterance but, for once, his usually expressive face was neutral, and I was too afraid of what reaction I might manifest to ask him anything.

We drove on a few more moments and passed another cottage. Constructed of yellowed logs, with a high and sloping clapboard roof from which sprouted a chimney, it was set in a flagstone circle and surrounded by a fence made of logs weathered to a deep shade of gray. At its back was a hillock that led up to the edge of a stand of trees. Flower boxes in a front window and surrounding a small patio at its side made it appear like a picture on an Alpine postcard or a gingerbread construct on the top of an elaborate cake.

Yanni pointed to the cute little house and said: "That cottage belongs to Gem, but she hasn't moved in yet. She probably won't, at least not for a few years."

"Gem," I said. "That's the Master's daughter, his Chief Girl Lover, you said earlier; the girl I saw in the video" – I hesitated a moment, then decided to use the words I guessed Yanni would use – "sharing love with him."

Yanni nodded. "That's right."

"Why do you say she won't move in?" I asked.

"Well, she may, or she may not. But she's his Chief Girl Lover now and she likes to be close to him all the time. Even when he's spending the night with someone else, she likes to sleep nearby. She has a little bed in her office, right in the Master's apartments, and Chad does too. But Gem spends a lot of her nights there instead of her room in the Main House – or here." He gestured at the cottage. "But she's down here nearly every weekend, decorating the place with Leah, so she may move in eventually, when she's older."

"How old is Gem?"

"She's twelve. She'll turn thirteen next year."

"And who is Leah?"

"Leah is one of the Master's adopted daughters. She's been with him since she was four. She was raised with Gem so they're like sisters but they're also lovers now. They made it official a few weeks ago at the start of the Master's Birthday Orgy, sort of as a gift for him. Leah's also the Top Model now – or at least she has been for the last few months."

"Why did you say Gem may move in when she's older?"

Yanni shrugged. "Well, she can't be Chief Girl Lover forever. She'll probably give up the job when she's eighteen or so, just like Chloe and Anna and Lina did. They were all Chief Girl Lovers before Gem. Besides, Gem has always wanted to have the Master's babies and the only thing's that stopped her from doing that already is that she's Chief Girl Lover now."

Nothing shocked me anymore. To hear Yanni nonchalantly say Gem wanted to be impregnated by her own father was like the proverbial water running down a duck's back. I sighed and simply said: "Of course."

Yanni was amused at my attempt to evince a minimal reaction. "Don't be angry," he said cheerily. "It's just the way we live." He paused a moment and added: "I know you don't approve. I know you think it's wrong, all of it, everything you've seen and heard. But it's not. It's the way we were meant to live. And when I say we, I mean all of us, everywhere. I know you'll come to see that in time."

What was there to say to that? It wasn't the first time he had expressed such a sentiment and, quite frankly, his certainty in that regard was beginning to irritate me. But why? It should have been easy enough to discount his opinion, the nutty pronouncements of a true believer, and just get on with my work. I was irked, nonetheless. Where did he get off, this child-abusing fuck? Yet, despite what he believed – about his living deity, this place, and me – despite knowing who and what he was and what I had already seen him do, I couldn't hate him; indeed, I had to admit I liked him a great deal. If we knew each other in the outside world, we'd probably be great friends, maybe even sex buddies; he'd probably be the sort who knew all the bouncers at all the hottest clubs and could get us in anywhere, the one I'd call first when I was angry or sad or troubled, who'd come over at any time of day or night to watch an old movie and scarf ice cream and comfort me when I confessed my loneliness.

And I had to also admit to myself that he was putting a weed up my ass because I feared he might be right. My own spasms of seeing things the way he saw them, the way all the denizens of this place saw things, was scaring the shit out of me. The same fear that had dogged me since the beginning of this odyssey, that I might be a pedophile myself, was always there, just under the surface. Yanni sensed it and even Lina had mentioned it. Were they right? I couldn't face it – not yet anyway. No, I was here to uncover the truth, grab a Pulitzer, and sign a book deal for boatloads of cash. I wondered who would play me in the movie. Then why was my pussy dripping again? Why was the fear of what and who I might be getting me hot? Why was I having visions of Lina and me in a sixty-nine, her tongue between my legs while her juices rained down on my face? I kept quiet.

As if once again reading my mind, Yanni pointed to another cottage. "That's Lina's place," he said, indicating a pretty dark brown thatch-roofed house set deep in a tiny meadow alive with green bushes and colorful flowers. A little path of stone squares led to the Dutch door at the front of the house, which was bracketed by two white-trimmed windows equipped with dark blue shutters.

I was surprised by the sight. "It's not what I pictured," I managed to say.

"My sister's rough and tough," Yanni said. "But she can still be a girly girl. This place makes her happy – at least in some ways."

I thought about that one, wondering just how Lina, the killer bitch with the four massive pistols strapped to her rockin' bod, could be a "girly girl." And I wondered about what Yanni had also said: that Lina, living in this paradise for pedophiles, was perhaps not as happy as she might be.

"She should spend more time there," Yanni added. "But she's always working, always running around, so she spends a lot of her nights at the cathedral. She's got a room there too."

"The cathedral?" I asked.

Yanni nodded. "The Cathedral of San Jose," he said. "That's at the north end of the island. You'll probably see it, depending on what the Master and Lina decide. Anyway, that's where the Guardians have their headquarters – at least for now."

"The Guardians?"

"That's what we call Lina's people."

A cathedral? I wondered. To what was Yanni referring? A building with a grand name or an actual fucking cathedral? And if it was an actual cathedral, where in the world could we be that there was a cathedral? Europe? Latin America? There were cathedrals in North America, I knew, even in my hometown, but I seriously doubted we were anywhere near the United States. Despite my curiosity, I decided to leave the issue alone for now, though I couldn't resist asking at least one question.

"What did you mean when you said, `at least for now,'" I asked.

Yanni shrugged, indicating the matter was something approaching the mundane. "The cathedral is huge," he replied. "Eventually, a lot of the administrative stuff that goes on at the Main House will be moved over there and the Guardians will move to a new building that's going up in Elysium, right across the town quad from the town hall. We broke ground on it just a few months ago."

Well, that was interesting, I thought. The Master's interest in his little town of Bedrock was apparently not as benign as Yanni made out. What better way to watch over his flock than to have Lina and her army of young killers live among them and keep an eye on them?

The cart stopped suddenly and Yanni said: "This is where you'll be staying. I hope you like it."

It was a little light gray house with white trim and blue double doors, hugged by a green hedge spiked by yellow flowers. To the side of the doors was a large picture window that looked into a living room. A small tree grew in the grassy gap between the entrance and living room window. It looked like a place one might find near a New England seashore, the sound of ocean waves and cawing seabirds heard through the day and night. I have to admit I fell in love with the place at first sight; it was such a contrast to the gray and tired building that contained the drab but ruinously expensive apartment in which I lived back home.

Home? I suddenly thought. Was it a home? I had never thought of it as a home. I couldn't even say I had ever had a home, even when I was still living with my parents and was doing everything I could to just get out and away, be anywhere in the world other than there. No, my apartment wasn't a home; it was just a place where I dwelt, where I kept my clothes and my computer and my liquor and my sex toys – and me when I wasn't out looking under rocks and scribbling in my notebook or drinking in a bar with the other cigarette-stained denizens of the Fourth Estate. This little house, though, looked like a home, and, within me, I detected a shiver of excitement at living, at least for a time, within a stone's throw away from Lina.

I pushed the blanket aside and we alighted from the cart, Sweet bringing up the rear with my luggage. Yanni let us in, a small living room to our right and, past a small step, a cozy dining room to our left. A kitchen dominated by a massive gas stove and refrigerator, both hulled by gray metal, was beyond the dining room. An open door set into the far end of the living room led into a bedroom. Looking into the bedroom, I could see French doors at its other end that looked out onto an expansive back porch and grassy field beyond. The house had been heated but not oppressively so, a toasty refuge from the cold outside. I let the jacket slip from my body onto a chair in the living room.

Sweet took my luggage into the bedroom while Yanni pointed out the amenities. "The refrigerator's fully stocked." He indicated the range. "You can cook if you want." He pointed to a phone set on a side table by the living room sofa. "But if you ever run low or there's something special you want, just call the kitchen at the Main House and they'll bring it out right away. There's a directory of extensions programmed into the phone." He indicated the big screen TV that dominated one wall of the living room. "You can watch pretty much anything you want. There are five hundred channels and video-on-demand." He picked up a remote from a coffee table, activated the monitor and flipped through channel after channel, then turned to me. "In your case, the local channels are blocked, though. I know you understand why."

Sweet emerged from the bedroom. Yanni shut off the TV and turned back to me. "You can use your laptop while you're here. You can access our intranet, but you won't be able to go on the internet. You won't be allowed to exchange e-mails with anyone not on the island. Still, you can learn a lot just from our intranet. Our newspaper is on there; so is everybody's daily schedules, including the Master's, and social events, mixers and such."

Intranet? I thought. Newspaper? This place is more organized than a military base. Where did that thought come from? I was getting loopy, was suddenly very tired and the king-size bed I could see through the door of the bedroom looked very inviting. I merely nodded and said nothing.

As always, Yanni got the hint. "Okay," he said. "I'll be by tomorrow morning to pick you up and take you on a tour of the place. After that, once you know your way around, what you decide to do is your own business. You can go anywhere, talk to anybody and stay as long as you want. Whenever you want to go, just tell me and I'll arrange it. Nobody's going to stop you from doing whatever you want."

"Okay, thank you," I said simply.

"Okay, goodnight," Yanni said.

Sweet shook his head, his hair flying about his face, and looked up at Yanni. "We're not going to share love?" he asked.

Yanni looked at him and laughed. "You and I are going to share love but she" – he gestured at me – "is going to sleep. It's been a long day for her."

Sweet didn't hide his disappointment, idly tugging on his seemingly perpetually half-hard cock, perhaps as a means to induce me. I have to admit I was flattered the lovely boy so brazenly wanted to have sex with me. I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, having the man and boy in bed with me, both their pretty cocks at my beck and call.

I had been in threesomes before, with two men, two other women and a man and another woman but I had never had sex with a child of either gender – at least not since I'd been a child myself. I suspected that, despite his tender age, Sweet was probably a very skilled lover. He had to have learned much in this welter of depravity and I had already seen him perform impressively on the plane and on video, after all. Having come to know Yanni to some extent over the course of the day, I thought he would likely be a very tender lover. As tempted as a part of me was, though, I still clung to my personal and professional ethics, such as they were. No Gay Talese escapades at Esalen for this girl reporter, I thought. Besides, my exhaustion was winning out over anything else. Still, I marveled a bit over what Yanni had just said.

"After this long day," I said, shaking my head, "you still have the energy to have sex?"

Yanni smiled. "When it comes to sex, I've never had a problem with my energy," he replied.

Hearing that, Sweet's expression changed from disappointment to joy, and he took Yanni's hand in his.

"How many guests will join you and Sweet tonight?" I asked.

"Oh, tonight," Yanni said casually, "it'll probably just be me, Sweet and Pop. In fact, I bet Pop is waiting for us right now. But we'll get in a lot of good fucking before we drop off." He turned to Sweet. "Won't we?"

Sweet nodded vigorously and Yanni turned back to me. "But I can't help agreeing with Sweet. I'd like to share love with you too. And I know it would be a lot of fun: you, me, Sweet and Pop. Three cocks, just for you. And all of us come a lot." He gave his own cock a few strokes and it hardened considerably within just a few seconds.

A small laugh escaped me. It was impossible to get mad at Yanni. "I don't doubt it," I said. "But maybe some other time," I added in a tone that made it clear there would never be another time.

As I expected, Yanni took it good-naturedly. "Okay," he said. "Well, we'll go; let you get some sleep. Like I said, I'll be by in the morning."

Sweet wished me goodnight as well and he and Yanni turned to go. I followed them to the front doors, Sweet leading the way back to the cart. The chill of the evening at my front and the warmth of the house at my back, I watched Yanni walk away but then called to him softly. He turned around and came back to stand before me at the doorway.

"Thank you for everything you've done today," I said and paused a moment, thinking, my depletion making it a bit hard to string words together. "I just can't square everything I've already seen, everything you've told me, with what I know about you. I've been trying to sort it all out, but I haven't done a good job so far."

I could see Yanni smile in the gathering darkness. "I like you too," he said. "But I've told you: I live this way, we all live this way, because it's the truth. I know it's a lot to take in all at once. I know that everything you've been taught tells you that all this is wrong. But that's the lie. Everything you've been taught, everything you believe, is the lie, just the result of a long-ago historical accident. We live the way human beings were meant to live, naked and sexy and sharing love, and we're all happy." He paused a moment, considering his next words. "But no one's going to try to convince you; there's no proselytizing here. Just the truth. And as you get to know the place, get to know everyone here, I know you'll see it too."

"You keep saying that. I admit I was little bit miffed earlier when you said it. Do you think I'm a pedophile? Do you think that's why I really came here? That I'm" – I hesitated a moment – "lying to myself somehow."

"I knew you were irritated but it's hard for me to be dishonest or hold back, especially with people I like." He thought about how best to answer my questions. "I just think you're really, really smart. I can't say why you really came here; only you can know that. But I know you're smart enough to know the truth when you see it and, whether you write about it or not, I just think you'll come to know the truth here."

"And then I'll be happy?"

Yanni shrugged. "I can't answer that either. Knowing the truth – about things, about oneself – doesn't always make everyone happy – at least not at first. I know the truth can sometimes be a hard thing for people to accept so a lot of them turn away. But I do know you're not happy now."

That shut me up – at least for a few moments. He was right, of course. Despite my career accomplishments, I was usually miserable. I drank too much, did too much blow, had meaningless sex with men and women just to forget, at least for an hour or two or more, that life was an empty screaming void and then we all fucking die. What was the point to anything? The names changed but the steaming piles of shit smelled just the same, if not worse. We killed each other in ways small and large every moment of every day and now we were killing off the planet and every living thing on it. Fuck, I thought, let those missiles fly. I gathered up a bit of moxie and asked: "And having sex with children will make me happy?"

"I didn't say that," Yanni replied softly. "All I said was that I thought you'd find the truth here. What you decide to do with it, or not do with it, is up to you – and only you."

"And that's what the Master preaches?"

Yanni regarded me a few moments, a gently beatific expression on his pretty face. "Our creed has the same flaws, faces the same pitfalls, as any other faith made by men," he said. "None of us think the Master is perfect. He's a human being like the rest of us. You might think he's a monster but that doesn't change the fact he knows the truth. And he practices that truth every day – with his cock, yes, but it's still the truth."

Yanni stopped, thinking, then went on. "I've known him since I was, gosh, eleven or twelve years old, when he started fucking my mom. Later, because our mom got on the pipe, my sisters were starving. I sold myself in the streets to get money so they could eat. I stole. I got caught. I sucked cock in juvie – the older boys, the guards – just to survive. When I got out, I found out our crackhead mom had sold Lina and Rola to the Master. He wasn't the Master then. He was just a hood who liked to fuck kids and make kiddy porn. He was a really smart hood but still a hood. When I showed up at his door, I just knew I was going to take my sisters out of there. I didn't know where we were gonna go but I went there to rescue them." He made air quotes with his fingers as he said "rescue." "You know how he greeted me?"

I shook my head.

Yanni smiled, the memory an obviously cherished one. "He came to the door of his place completely naked, his cock hard. He let me in, and the place was full of naked kids, some having sex with each other, some playing video games or watching TV, some just hanging out. And you know what he was doing when I got there?"

I shook my head again.

"He was fucking Lina and Rola. By that time, I was twelve years old, and Lina was ten. While I was in juvie, she had become his lover and then his Chief Girl Lover. The morning I got there, he had been fucking them both for hours, after fucking them both all through the night before. They were happy to see me, yeah, but when I asked them to come with me, they refused. So, you know what he did then? He just got back on the bed and kept on fucking them while I watched. He was just honest from the start. And then – and this really blew my mind – Lina and Rola started having sex with each other – and it was so beautiful, so loving, so natural. I still remember it: he was fucking Lina from behind while Lina ate Rola's pussy. They asked me to join them, and it seemed so much like it was meant to be that I took off my clothes, got on the bed and started sharing love with them, with him and with my own sisters.

"The four of us made it for a while, all of us having so much fun, but then he sort of detached from us and he took my face in his hands and he said: `I want to see the beauty you can share with your sisters. Love them the way a brother should.' And then he just sat back and watched us. The three of us made love while he watched. All he did was stroke his cock while he watched us, and it was all so beautiful." He stopped again, thinking. "While I was sharing love with my sisters, Lina whispered to me he was into boys too so I looked over at him and I could see he wanted me, so, when I got up the courage, I went to him and, without another word being spoken, we kissed, my lips on his, our lips together.

"God, I remember my cock was so hard right then! And, out of the corner of my eyes while we were kissing, I saw his cock getting harder and harder. So, I took his cock in one of my hands and I started to stroke him, feeling him get harder and thicker. I couldn't even close my hand around his shaft, and I remember I was a little afraid then, wondering how I was going to get his cock in my ass. But then I felt his hands on the cheeks of my ass, spreading me. I felt the cool air of the room on my asshole, and, suddenly, I wasn't afraid anymore. I'd never before had a cock as thick as his in my asshole, but I wanted him so bad then, wanted to feel every inch of him inside me, wanted to know his love.

"So, then I looked around and saw we were alone. Lina and Rola had disappeared; he and I were alone to share the love I knew he had for me. Don't ask me how I knew, but I knew. He loved me; I was certain of it. And I was falling in love with him too. I so wanted him. So, I turned around, bent over, spread my ass cheeks with my hands and offered him my ass. I mean, I was used to doing that with other guys, men especially. I waited for his cock to enter me, but then I felt his body not behind me but next to mine on the bed, and his hand was in my hair, caressing my head, and his mouth was next to one of my ears. And you know what he said? And I'll never forget this as long as I live."

"What did he say?"

"He said, `Share your love with me, Yanni.' And then he laid back, spread his legs and offered me his asshole. I didn't have to think twice. I damn near cried but I got on top of him and fucked him. He was the first guy that ever allowed me to do that, the first person that ever allowed me to share all the love that was inside me."

Even in the gathering darkness, I could see the deep emotion Yanni was recalling, that pivotal moment when his life changed forever, and the similarity between what he and his sister Lina had experienced in the company of the Master struck me with a silent but powerful hammer blow. Listening to him, a few tears sprang to my eyes, but I could see that his telling and the encroaching night had him oblivious. He took a swallow and went on.

"It was like he gave me permission to be myself. And, for the first time in my life, I wasn't afraid to do it, wasn't afraid I was going to get hit upside the head just because I was on top instead of being on the bottom. I fucked him for what seemed like hours. I fucked him slow and soft, and then I fucked him fast and hard, as if I was learning about my own body while I was learning about his. And I came so many times, filling his asshole. And I could see that he wasn't putting on some sort of act, that every bit of it was genuine, was sincere, that he was loving it, that he loved me being inside him, that our love was being made real. And then, when I couldn't come anymore, when the throbbing of my cock inside him started to hurt, I pulled out. So much of my cum was dripping out of his asshole and onto the sheets, and that was the sexiest thing I had ever seen up to that time. And then I ate his ass. I sucked my own cum out of his asshole and shared it with him in these beautiful deep kisses. The love was so fucking real. And then, only then, did he fuck me. He took my ass; he fucked me so good – and I never felt anything more wonderful in my life. It was like my asshole had been waiting for his cock all my life.

"And then he told me, when we were lying in each other's arms after those first fucks, he told me he understood what I was feeling. He said that when he was a kid, he didn't have much in common with his father, that, even though they were both part of the same world, they were still different people, and that they didn't talk much. But that they were always great in bed. When he felt his father's cock inside him, inside his asshole, he just knew his dad loved him. They didn't have to talk about loving each other; the fuck was all that mattered. But then he said it wouldn't be that way with us. Oh, we would fuck; we would fuck all the time. But we wouldn't be just lovers; we would be father and son. He would look after me and love me and raise me. And we would share everything, not just our bodies, but our minds and our hearts. And I thought that was so beautiful.

"And I really cried then, because, for once and ever since, I didn't have to be afraid. I didn't have to worry about someone not caring, not understanding. He held me and I cried in his arms, and he kissed me, and I knew I was home." Yanni sighed then; an exhalation heavy with all he had borne until the day he was describing. "And then Lina and Rola came back and all four of us sucked and fucked all the rest of that day and into the night. And in the morning, when I woke up, he was there, lying next to me and his cock was hard, and he put it inside me again. And I just knew. Everything he had said was the truth, the absolute truth. He was my father, and I was his son. And, just as important, I was his lover, just like my sisters were his lovers – and his daughters. And a little while after that, I became his Chief Boy Lover." He paused once more. "And I've known the truth ever since – and it was his cock that gave me that truth. His beautiful, loving pedophile cock."

I shook my head. "You're crazy," I said. "He took advantage of you, of your sisters. You call it love but it was just manipulation and abuse. He's twisted you, all of you. He's like some pedophile Svengali. He's got you believing in this half-baked religion of his when it's all nothing but molestation. On a grand scale, I'll grant you, but still molestation."

Now it was Yanni's turn to shake his head. "No," he said gently. "You're the one who's wrong. I can only tell you how I feel. How you choose to regard that is up to you. But it seems to me you've already made up your mind about all of this – or are trying to convince yourself you've done so; in which case your trip here may really be just a waste of time."

I sighed heavily. "If everyone here knows the truth," I protested, "is so all-fired happy, why is Lina unhappy? You said so."

Now Yanni was flummoxed. He cast his eyes down, thinking how to answer. "Lina's used to being alone," he began. "She's got a tough job and she's always worrying about the Guardians. They all love her, would do anything for her, just like me and Rola and everyone else in the Holy Family. But she doesn't talk about it, except maybe with the Master, because I know she feels it would be weak on her part to share her worries with anyone. She's gotta be so strong, not just for the Guardians, but for everyone else too. So, she knows how to be alone but that doesn't mean she doesn't get lonely."

"She doesn't have anyone?" I asked. "I mean, like you have Sweet and Pop?"

"No, not really. I mean, there's always someone in her bed, usually one or more of her Guardians. But no one steady. She was involved with Tiffany for a lot of years and then she was really involved with Ashley for a while."

"Who are they?"

That question caused a moment of hesitancy on Yanni's part. "Tiffany is one of the Master's natural daughters, though there's a bit of uncertainty about that," he replied. "Anyway, she's been with him since she was a baby, even longer than me and my sisters. When Lina became Chief Girl Lover, she was Deputy Chief Girl Lover and then she helped Lina found the Guardians. She was second-in-command of the Guardians for a long time. But she and Lina broke up about a year or so ago." He regarded me. "Don't ask me why because I can't share that with you."

Understanding his discretion, I nodded. "Okay," I said. "But why do you say there's some uncertainty over whether Tiffany is the Master's daughter."

Obviously more tired than he let on before, Yanni yawned. "That's a really long story," he said. "Remind me about that tomorrow and I'll tell you."

I nodded but ignored his waxing exhaustion. "And who's Ashley?" I asked.

"She's one of the Master's adopted children, just like me and my sisters," Yanni answered. "She's been part of the Master's family since she was five and she's been best friends and lovers with Jessica, one of the Master's natural daughters, since around that time. She's twelve now. She was one of Lina's Guardians for a while. She was Lina's personal assistant and sort of her unofficial lover too."

Yanni's face blanched slightly, as if there were part of this account he was holding back. But weariness was claiming me too. I didn't take note of that jot of hesitancy until the next day, so I simply let him prattle on.

"Anyway," Yanni continued, "a few months ago, after the Master got Jessica pregnant, he got Ashley pregnant too. So, Ashley moved back to the Main House to live with Jessica and Lina hasn't really been with anyone since."

"Doesn't Lina resent the Master for that, getting her lover pregnant?"

"No," Yanni replied in a gentle but still disapproving tone that made it seem he was reproving a child. "That was inevitable. Everyone always knew the Master was going to have children with Jessica and the way Jessica goes is the way Ashley goes. Those two are like sisters and they love each other the way sisters should. Ashley loved being a Guardian and she was one of Lina's best, even if she was very young. But she wanted to have the Master's babies even more." He sighed and then, with a purse of his lips and tilt of his head, said: "That situation was a bit of a mess. A lot of other stuff went on, but I shouldn't talk about that – at least not now." He fell silent for a moment, then added: "By the way, if you haven't figured it out by now, I'm a big blabbermouth. I mean, the Master said we're all supposed to be honest with you and I'm that way anyhow, but I've maybe told you too much about this stuff so please don't tell Lina I told you any of this. She'd be pissed if she knew I told you."

I smiled at Yanni and chuckled softly. "Your secrets are safe with me," I said while crisscrossing an index finger over my chest. "Cross my heart and hope to die." He returned my smile but said nothing more while I regarded him, the blanket of night deepening all around us. "Why did you tell me?" I finally asked. "Whatever the Master said, you could've just shut up the way Lina does whenever I ask her a question."

Yanni shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted. "I like you – and I trust you. I don't know why. I just do."

It was crazy but I was touched. I couldn't remember the last time anyone in my life, outside a drunken stupor, had shared a genuine emotion with me. My eyes grew a bit moist, but I dammed the floodgates, leaned forward and kissed him lightly on a cheek. He smiled and took my hand in his.

"Well, don't worry," I said. "She may be having me watched all the time, but I doubt we'll see or talk to each other much while I'm here. She doesn't like me very much anyway."

Yanni caressed my hand and said: "Don't be too sure. Lina's hard but she's full of love. Trust me. I know my sister."

"I guess you re-discover that every time you fuck her," I teased.

Yanni laughed, amused at my jab. "I like cock better than pussy, but I never refuse my sisters when they offer me love – and they never refuse me when I ask for their love." He looked down at my hand. "But, like I said, don't be afraid of her – or think she hates you. It's her job to be tough. And I actually think she likes you, maybe even envies you."

That really threw me. "Envies me?"

"Sure," Yanni insisted. "You know, Lina's really smart. She reads and she just knows a lot. She never talks about it, but I know she wonders what her life would have been like if we had had a normal upbringing – well, what other people call normal, anyway; what her life would have been like if we had never met the Master. Don't get me wrong. It's not regret she feels. None of us regret how we were raised and what it's led to. But she wonders. Where would her talents have taken her? You may be just as unhappy as she is, but you've done things, seen things, accomplished things that she can only dream about. Just because we live in Paradise doesn't mean we don't sometimes get an urge to step outside the Garden. And because Lina's tough, she's toughest on herself. She built the Guardians up from nothing, all because she loves the Master. She's like a superwoman. She can run farther and faster than anyone, she can beat the shit out of anyone, she can outshoot anyone, but she doesn't think much of herself. I don't know why. That's just the way she is, the way she's always been. Maybe because our mom loved crack more than she loved us."

I took in a deep breath and let it out, considering all Yanni had just said. Well, he's her brother, I thought, and he has to know her better than most. But I still couldn't see it. The impression I'd gotten was that Lina would rather put a bullet through my eye than have me around. I had to admit I was afraid of her but, of course, that fear drew me to her and caused my pussy to flow.

"Okay, I'll say goodnight again," Yanni said.

I wished Yanni goodnight, and he turned and went back to the cart, sitting next to Sweet on the front bench. He deftly turned the cart around and headed back down the road toward his own cottage – and presumably a waiting Pop.

I retreated into the house and then into the bedroom. I stripped off the red swimsuit and took a long hot shower, standing under the steaming spray until I felt my eyelids drooping. I got out, dried myself, leaving my hair swaddled in a towel, and sat, naked, on the edge of the bed.

I closed my eyes, fighting sleep, and felt the tears flowing down my cheeks and falling onto my lap before realizing I was crying. I cried for minutes and told myself I hardly knew why. It was the long trip, I told myself, the deep exhaustion at the end of a long day, grasping at a reason for the unfamiliar tears. But I had traveled all over the world, suffered jet lag on three continents and had never cried after arriving in hotel rooms in Third World shitholes so I knew that was bullshit. I had seen and written about the worst of the worst so what I had seen and heard today wasn't what had me upset. I sniffled deeply, took a deep breath and fiercely wiped the tears away with the back of a hand.

I finally had to admit, if only to myself in the quiet of the bedroom, that Yanni had been right. The search for and discovery of the truth always exacts a price, and I was beginning to pay mine. The deeply set unhappiness that had burdened me my entire life, the perpetual disappointment delivered by the people around me and the world as a whole had led me to my career, my crusade to shove everyone else into the shit I saw and wrote about every day and had finally led me here. Looking for what? I thought. Another awful story to tell? Awards to win? Book and movie deals to sign? Was it only my suffusing cynicism that had brought me here?

I could hardly process any of it at that moment. My body was screaming for sleep and the catharsis of my discovery would have to wait. But I did understand then, as my brain and body began to shut down, why Lina and Yanni had cried when they had given themselves to the Master – and why I was crying now. They had discovered the truth, all right, and they had discovered it in themselves. They had come home at last, home to the cock of a pedophile. In his world, they had, at such tender ages, been transformed and had come, with shattering realizations, to accept that fact, the experience marking them forever.

Would that happen to me? I wondered. Was it happening now? Had it already happened? Was I, the hard-bitten reporter lady, bawling like a kid because, in a very real way, I was being born again?

I laid back on the bed, slipped under the counterpane and supremely soft cotton sheets, pulled the towel off my still-damp tresses and dropped my head onto the pillows, almost immediately sinking into sleep but not before envisioning Lina and Yanni at their moments of truth, climbing naked into bed with a pedophile, their minds and wills completely given over, their young bodies against his; in the wake of their realization, contentedly sleeping in his enfolding muscular arms – safe at last, home at last.

Sleep engulfed me; my thoughts smothered by darkness. In the last moments of my drowning wakefulness, I imagined myself in Yanni or Lina's place, a naked child slipping into bed with a pedophile, only dimly hearing the moans and whimpered cries of other naked children as they shared love in other rooms while I nestled into the body of my adult lover. I willingly sank into those powerful arms, felt the warmth of his body against mine, my tears drying on his muscled chest, his loving cock soft but expectant against my girlish legs, patiently waiting for its next entry into my young and silky tight holes. Safe at last; home at last. Loved at last.