“Remember,” the Sheikh continued, “that you will not be given the description of the next girl until you have fulfilled the current assignment. This will apply right down the line. Thus the terms of each assignment won’t be known to you until the one before is accomplished. Is that clear?”
We all nodded and murmured assent.
“Now, to get back to the rules by which the contest will be judged.” Ali Khat paused to stress that this was important, and then continued. “The contest will end on December thirty-first. This is mid-August, so you have about four and a half months. At that time the first disqualifications will be made on the basis of quantity. It three of you have obtained five girls and three of you have obtained only four, then the second three will be out of the competition. Or if two of you obtain five, and the four others supply less, then those four will be out of the running. Is that clear to everybody?”
“Suppose we all come up with the same number of girls?” Hauksho, the Japanese, spoke for the first time.
“I hope that you all do. I hope that you all come up with five. Then we come to the matter of judging. First, each girl will be appraised to ascertain if she really lives up to the terms of her selection. If there is a discrepancy, the girl may be disqualified, and that would mean that the firm who procured her would also be disqualified. The next standard will be beauty. The girls in each category will be matched against each other and each will be given a rating on a one-to-a-hundred scale. Thus the firm which accumulates the most points will win the contract.”
“Who will make this judgment?” Natasha Jambonski wanted to know.
“In the last analysis, I will,” the Sheikh told her. “My staff will help, of course, but the final scoring will be mine. So will the final judgment. And it will be final!”
“How much manpower can we put to work on this?” Larry Rustwater wanted to know.
“Only those of you who are present here may actually participate in the contest,” Ali Khat told him firmly. “This means that each manufacturer and his designated representative may take part and no one else. If others are used in any way, that manufacturer will be rendered ineligible by the rules of the contest.” The Sheikh looked at each of us with what amounted to a twinkle in his eye. “And now I wish you all good luck and good night.” Abruptly, he was gone.
By ones and twos we drifted out of the library and back to our rooms. Austin bid me good night outside my door. I had just gotten out of my clothes and was reaching for my pajamas when the door opened again and Leila entered.
The gauzy veil was still over the lower half of her face. The rest of her outfit was just as gauzy. Even in the shadows cast by the lamp beside my bed, I could see that she was little more covered than I was myself -- and I was nude.
“I have something for Mr. Victor.” She held up a sealed envelope. “Does Mr. Victor have something for me?” she added coyly, staring at where the buttons of my pajama pants should have been if I was wearing pajamas.
I was aware that biology had taken over without waiting for instructions from my brain. Still, I wasn’t embarrassed. If Leila was going to make a habit of dropping in on me when I was in the nude, I was damned if I was going to apologize for the results.
“Call me Steve,” I suggested democratically.
“Etiquette forbids.” It was interesting how Leila could manage to be both demure and provocative at the same time. “In matters of sex,” she added, “does Mr. Victor have a preference?”
“Mr. Victor prefers girls,” I acknowledged.
“That’s not what your fortunate servant meant. The reference was to matters of technique, position, variation, et cetera.”
“When Mr. Victor goes into a good restaurant for the first time, he prefers to let the headwaiter choose.”
“So be it.” Leila came up to me and stood so close that the tips of her large gauze-covered breasts grazed my chest. “It is hoped that Mr. Victor will not be disappointed with the meal.”
“With such delicacies to arouse Mr. Victor’s appetite, he could never be disappointed.” I was about a head taller than she was, and I had to bend over to kiss her. This hors d’oeuvre was superb, every bit as delicious as I’d anticipated, with just one slight flaw.
“Perhaps Mr. Victor would prefer to open this later,” Leila murmured. She set the sealed envelope down on the night table; she set herself down on the bed.
“About that kiss . . .” There was something bothering me and I decided there was no sense repressing it; that way lies dyspepsia.
“Mr. Victor was displeased?”
“Not exactly. It’s just that the veil gets in the way a little bit. It sort of cuts down the contact area, if you see what I mean. Couldn’t you remove it?”
“I am most abjectly sorry, but I cannot. It is forbidden for an unmarried girl to discard her face-veil. Everything else is removable, but not that.”
Well, half a loaf . . . And a most succulent half at that. I decided not to quibble. I stretched out beside Leila on the bed and kissed her again. Adjusting to the situation, the veil seemed to make the kiss even more interesting.
The liquid warmth of her full lips responding was lent an added tactile fillip by the tickle of the thin veil. Darting behind it, her knowing tongue was even more teasing. Nor did the veil blunt the insinuating love bites of her small, sharp teeth.
I blew the excess gauze out of my mouth and went on to explore other areas. The terrain of Leila’s body insured that my explorations would be pleasurable. It was a delightful fleshscape of velvety curves and mounds and hollows.
My lips tasted the large, firm, up-thrusting breasts. They were softer than they looked, but the nipples were hard and long and sweet-—two red buds set in the flowers of her pink roseates against the dusky background of golden-tanned Arabian flesh. The breasts rippled and the tips moved under my lips as if independent of their setting.
I proceeded to the hollows inland of each of her hips. They were semi-mysterious, shadowed female crevices on either side of the slight rise of her belly and falling away to the lustrous black curls which marked her womanhood. Leila tensed as I moved lower, and her slightly heavy thighs quivered with anticipation.
I stroked their inner surfaces, and they separated. Her small, round bottom rose from the bed and rotated like a spinning wheel in motion. The action brought her taut scarlet clitoris into prominence, and I strummed it between two fingers.
Throughout all of this, although I hadn’t been aware of it, Leila had completely divested herself of the light garments she was wearing. Her sensitive timing had kept me from noticing. As I proceeded from one erogenous part of her body to another, it would be bared to my caress as if by magic. Now she was completely naked-except for the face-veil -- and her body was like an expertly tuned violin moving in time to its own fiery and exquisite rhythms.
But Leila was an instrument designed to give pleasure as well as to receive it. Now, pushing me gently away, she reminded me of that fact. “Does Mr. Victor still wish the maitre d’ to select the piece de résistance?” she inquired.
I nodded.
“Then please lie back and relax,” she suggested.
I did that, and her long ebony hair fanned out over my shoulders. She kissed my neck and ears thoroughly, the veil’s tickling adding to the erotic arousal prompted by the expert lavings of her lips and tongue. The mane of hair tingled over my chest as she moved lower to bestow a series of butterfly kisses on my belly. She paused for one long, deep oral caress at my navel; the thrill of it made my very groin vibrate.
Her hands were under me now, the nails digging into my rear, the fingers gently kneading, pinching, probing. Then the face-veil was grinding into my thighs and the heat of her mouth mingled with the heat of the love-swollen sac of my genitals. She took my straining manhood between her two hands and then swooped down with her mouth forming a large O. It was all pure sensation for a little while, but she removed her lips before I released my passion.