He had gotten her to smile and she poked him in the ribs. René and Monique had come to the table to see her more closely. Monique seemed pleased both because she’d had her way with Claire and because she thought Claire looked good - now far more European and less American clean-cut, which was what she’d set out to do once she’d won the forfeit. René, on the other hand, was obviously quite taken by her new appearance. He remarked over and over again on how marvelous Claire looked, finally giving her a fervent, passionate kiss in front of everyone. Not a bad kisser, Claire thought as she sat back down. She was now satisfied that, although she looked very different, she was still attractive. She tried out a thought on herself: maybe I’m more attractive in some ways. Hmm … we’ll see tonight.

  During the early afternoon, the fashion photographers, Claude and Helen, insisted on a photography shoot with Claire as the only subject. They photographed her in every imaginable pose, with and without clothes, dry and wet, sultry and sexy, childish and innocent. For once, Claire loved having her picture taken, and the attention was helping her recover from the shock of her make-over.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon sunbathing and swimming in the yacht’s pool and then danced on the deck of the yacht all night. Elliot taught Claire to tango. As it turned out, she was a fast learner.

  She had just enough energy left to manage to strip naked and fall into bed, exhausted, about three in the morning. Elliot was also tired but before he’d let her sleep, he proved that her thought about that night had been on-target.

  Lying facing her, he grabbed the short hair on top of her head in a firm but painless grip and pulled her head back gently. He began to kiss her down her neck and onto her lovely, enlarged breasts. He toyed with her nipples, which quickly became hard nubs. The feeling was sensational and Claire moaned with drowsy contentment. His other hand slid down to just below her pierced navel and flicked at the top of her pussy, just above her clit hood.

  His fingers slid between her inner and outer lips and circled her pleasure center, pressing firmly as they moved around her. He knew she preferred the lightest of touches on her clit, so, when her moans became more urgent and he was ready to move on to her awaiting, impatient clitoris, his fingers, wet with her juices, floated repeatedly over it, barely touching her.

  Finally, when he knew she was very close, Elliot rolled her onto her back, his fingers never stopping their action. Then he shifted and his mouth covered her clit such that his teeth were able to carefully put pressure on the lips enfolding it, pushing with just the right force against the sensitive nerves emanating from the little, engorged nub and plunging into her body to find their way to her mind’s pleasure center. At the same time, the tip of his tongue continued the attention to her stiffly-erect clit, which his fingers had begun.

  His tongue brought her ever closer to the top. The pressure of his teeth allowed him to hold her there, slowing or stopping the climb, which his tongue would then cause to resume. Claire felt she would soon burst from the sexual tension expanding within her. Her entire being was focused on his servicing her.

  Finally, when he realized that the tension in her muscles could last no longer, he took her over the top in a blazing orgasm that drained all of her depleted energy reserve, as waves of pulsing pleasure rolled over her for several minutes. When it ended, she fell immediately to sleep.

  Overnight, the yacht completed its circle and returned to Saint-Tropez.

  Chapter 4: Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

  It’d been three days since they’d returned to the hotel. They’d spent the time shopping and lounging lazily at the beach. Their lunches were simple and dinners were delicious but not lavish. Claire had started to adjust a little to her dramatic appearance changes. At least, by now, she wasn’t shocked and bewildered every time she glimpsed her reflection in a window or mirror.

  She found it too tedious to try to duplicate Jean-Pierre’s makeup every morning, although she did take the time before dinner in the evenings. Elliot had suggested that she skip most of it, including the penciled brows. She thought that not having eyebrows made her face look formless. He’d disagreed so strongly the day before that she’d gone without them all day. Much to her surprise she hadn’t even gotten a brief stare in the cosmopolitan crowd of Saint-Tropez. When they returned to the hotel, she’d looked at herself in the mirror, and, to her surprise, realized that she didn’t look all that bad without them. This morning, though, she would do all of the makeup, because it would be their last full day in Saint-Tropez.

  She had first showered and then spent half an hour in the whirlpool. She hadn’t needed to shave at all since she’d had her legs and pussy waxed two days ago, and had used Jean-Pierre’s cream afterwards. No more fussing with those areas for three months, she thought. Not bad!

  Claire was drying off in front of a full-length mirror in the bathroom. She tousled her short, black hair, flicking it into place with her fingers. She turned to look straight at her image, examining herself.

  The ebony hair drew her attention first, because it was the newest of her altered features. She liked the style but missed the sexy bob Elliot had selected for her. She wasn’t sure of the color yet. She certainly wouldn’t have chosen it for herself. Elliot seemed to like it, though. Her face was pretty and her eyes were bright and interestingly accented with the permanent liner. They drew her attention enough that she didn’t think much about the missing brows. Maybe I’ll get used to no eyebrows by the time they start to grow back, she reflected. Wouldn’t that be a gas?

  I have a knock-out figure, she admitted to herself, although from the waist down, I look like a six-year-old. I kinda like the feel of that soft, hair-free smoothness though, especially when Elliot is pressed against me. I’m pretty sure I’ll keep it that way.

  The diamond in her navel - now hardly sore at all but not yet fully healed - was gorgeous. There was no denying it. She liked it the best of all her gifts, although the breasts ran a close second. A gold loop and two diamond studs gleamed in each delicate ear. She looked down at her hands and feet. Elliot is an excellent manicurist, she admitted. It’s amazing that a man of his wealth, depth, and experience would take the time to personally do my nails. The very-short nails looked sexy and she decided that she liked them. The downside, of course, was her loss of dexterity; it was much more difficult to pick up small things with blunt fingertips.

  She twisted to see the sea horse on her left shoulder. Also not what I would have chosen, but I like it because Elliot had it put there.

  Claire, Claire, she mused. You certainly have changed over these couple of weeks. But underneath, even with the physical changes, the experiences, and the new financial independence that’s yours, there’s still so much of you that’s the same. She realized that was the part that most interested Elliot – the essence of her that grounded their relationship. She smiled, her lovely face lighting up. She took another forty-five minutes to complete her makeup, including brows exactly like Jean-Pierre had created for her. She dressed in tight shorts and a halter top. She’d just finished when Elliot called to her.

  “I’m ready,” she said, walking into the bedroom.

  “That outfit will cause quite a stir. But now, Claire, lie down on the bed, please.”

  She did, pulling him to her. As he kissed her softly, she closed her eyes.

  “Now open your eyes and look up at the top of your head.”

  “No.” She started to sit up, saw the dropper in his hand. Half sitting up, she looked pleadingly into his eyes. She saw sympathetic understanding and determination there, with a hint of erotic desire burning from deep within them. Submissively, she lay back down.

  “For how long?” Not that it mattered. She felt herself getting aroused, her panties damp along the hairless area between her legs.

  “For quite a while this time.”

  “A week?”

  “Longer.”

  “A month?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “More than a month?” That thought was truly frightening.

  “Perhaps. I don’t want you to see again until you’ve forgotten what seeing is, until it’s no longer important to you.”

  “Why?”

  “I want you to reach within and find your inner self, get firmly in touch with it. To do that, I want you to separate from the world outside yourself. I want you to see within. I want you to forget what it’s like to see, forget color, forget light. I want your mind to know color by my breath on your neck, by my fingers brushing your lips. I want your light to be the sound of my voice, your darkness to be my silence.

  “I want you to know me through how I smell, through the way your skin feels when I touch you. I want you to know the sound of my breathing, of my heart beating in counterpoint to your own. When all of that becomes your sight, you will no longer have need of color and light.”

  Her heart was pounding in erotic anticipation and dread at the same time. She knew she would let him do it; she was incapable of saying no to him. The adventure was too deliciously terrifying to avoid.

  She let out a long, hard sigh. Her words came almost breathlessly. “Then make me as you wish … give me the darkness so that I can try and please you by seeing, without vision, everything you described.”

  And he did. Three drops in each eye. Her eyes went silent and she found that she welcomed the darkness like an old friend.

  They returned to the bed early, after a light dinner. Vollenweider’s New Age Classical music trickled on them from the ceiling speakers. Claire lay on her back, perfectly still, as he explored every inch of her skin with his fingers. She reached out for him and touched his shoulder. She let her hands follow his muscles to his neck, then up his neck to his jaw and settled on his face, cupping it in her hands. He bent from her left as she drew his face to hers. She found herself trying fervently to see his face, her eyes darting around where she thought it might be. There was nothing, of course, only the purple-black darkness.

  She forced herself to stop trying to see and, instead, traced his face with her fingers, taking the first step to truly learning its contours. She focused her strength, finding it augmented by the no-longer-needed visual energies, on a single kiss, forcing all of her thoughts to focus on his lips against hers. She knew only the gentle, then firm, then probing pressure of his mouth, the impression unencumbered by needless signals from her eyes. Her entire being was focused at the point where his mouth met hers. He rolled and was above her. She found herself falling, falling into him as he entered her.

  By the time she awoke in the morning, he’d packed their bags and a driver had loaded them into a limousine. With Elliot’s help – she wasn’t yet re-accustomed to blindness – she bathed. He gently washed her breasts, back, legs, and private area. After her bath, he carefully applied antiseptic to her ears and navel after irrigating behind the diamond gemstone with a bulb syringe, as she would always have to do once or twice daily.

  Elliot did her nails carefully, trimming them as short as possible, and applying a lavender polish. He’d discovered that he liked them either long and squarish-oval or very short and blunt. For some reason, he really didn’t like them in-between. Claire didn’t seem to have a preference, although he suspected that she didn’t like artificial nails. That might be the way to go though, if he ever wanted her to have them long again – so she could avoid the in-between length.

  With her clothes laid out on the bed, she was able to dress herself in a lavender cropped-top, a short purple skirt, and lavender socks and tennis shoes. She sat patiently while he did her makeup, in what they’d come to call “full Jean-Pierre style.”

  As they left the hotel in Saint-Tropez, her arm in his, she could smell the oranges and lemons on the trees in the garden. In all the days there, she’d never noticed the sweet-tangy, citrus aroma before. The air beyond the garden hung lightly with the salty scent of the mid-morning breeze from the Mediterranean. She could feel intermittent warmth on her bare, tan arms so she guessed that the day must be partly cloudy. Someone opened a car door for her and Elliot helped her into the limo’s roomy compartment. Though it mattered not at all to Claire, they faced forward. He put his arm around her and she leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. A smile found its way onto her delicate features.

  She thought they must have driven for four or five hours. At various times the road twisted sharply and the limo’s engine growled louder. She assumed they were climbing the hills above the Riviera and were heading toward the Alps. They stopped once for a cold lunch outside. The air was warmer than in Saint-Tropez, so she was sure they were further inland. She wouldn’t ask him; expectation of the unknown was more fun. When they finally arrived at their destination, she was surprised to find the air almost chilly.

  “We’re in the mountains, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, you can feel the difference in the air.”

  “Better than you can,” she chided, laughing. I can feel everything better than you now.”

  “Okay, smarty-pants, if you’re so good, what’s about 50 feet in front of you?”

  “Must be something like a 2000-foot drop off the side of a mountain?”

  “Nope.”

  A statue of you?”

  “Hmm … a good idea, but that’s not it either.” He guided her along a path, up a few stairs, and placed her hands against a door.

  “Home?”

  “That’s it – for the next month or two or three – our little chalet in the Alps.”

  “Sounds wonderful.”

  His response was boyishly jubilant. “It does, doesn’t it?!”

  Over the next several hours, he led her around the chalet, so that she could map it in her mind, but he actively discouraged her from trying to visualize it. He tested her over and over again until she knew where all of the rooms were in relation to each other by distance and movement between them, where the important cabinets and drawers were by learning the spaces that separated them, how to get to the doors and open the windows, and the myriad other things that the sighted do mostly using vision. Later that evening, he cooked dinner for them. They sat down to eat on the rear upper balcony, wrapped together in a blanket, naked underneath.

  “Is it very beautiful here?” Claire asked.

  “Does it smell beautiful? Does it taste beautiful? Does it feel beautiful?”

  “Yes, I guess it does.”

  “Then it must be beautiful.”

  “You know what I mean. Does it look beautiful?”

  “Claire, that’s irrelevant to you.”

  “I was just curious.” She couldn’t decide if he’d hurt her feelings.

  “You need to trust in your own senses.”

  “I’m missing one.”

  “Then it’s particularly important that you learn not to measure beauty via a sense you don’t have anymore.”

  So that was it; he was trying to teach her, to expand her horizons, she surmised. “I suppose you’re right,” she sighed unconvincingly. Did everything have to be a lesson?

  “Alright, I’ll describe the view just this once. But I encourage you to experience it with the abilities you have. If you like mountains, and I do, you would find it awe-inspiring. There are high peaks rising on both the far right and far left. Climbing them would be an exerting challenge because of their sharp jaggedness and steep slopes. You’d surely feel the increased chill of the summits and the crunch of snow beneath your boots. The mountains straight out from us are lower. Walking along them would require caution in order to make progress within the dense tree cover. If you were to walk down from them, your bare feet would feel the blades of grass on the slopes below and your face would feel the warmth of the afternoon sun. You’d probably feel the sun go down as the warmth vanished when the sun descends behind the high mountain to the left, so back here we’re facing north and slightly west.

  “You could climb the jagged peak that’s sort of right-center. I know that because there’s a hang-glider about to jump off of it. If you launched from there, you’d feel the rush of wind on your face, but barely feel the pull of gravity at all. You’d notice the updraft lift you for the first part of your flight. The pilot of the huge parasail that’s there now has got to be a few miles away at least. This will probably be his last jump of the day; I can feel the afternoon begin to chill, which means that the sun will start to set in less than an hour.

  Elliot’s descriptions created connections in her mind. Following his suggestion, she consciously tried to avoid forming a picture to go with the sensory impressions she had. She realized that his viewpoint was intriguing to her, and the erotic nature of him making her both more and less than before caused her to become damp between her legs yet again. Once more, her body proved that it liked what Elliot had done and was doing to her.

  “I’m beginning to understand,” she told him. “But I’m certainly not totally there yet. Since this is what you want, I promise I’ll try.”

  “I have no doubt that you’ll try and succeed, Claire. Now I hope you enjoy my dinner.”

  Claire was eating carefully. She knew she’d be embarrassed if she made a mess of things. She had cautiously probed her plate so she knew where everything was. She was already beginning to gain the techniques to deal with her blindness.

  Because her other senses had a bigger slice of her consciousness, she was far more aware of and attentive to the flavors and aromas of the dinner, and feeling his body pulled tightly to her by the blanket that surrounded them. Elliot’s skin was warm, smooth and his muscles hard beneath it. She cuddled even tighter against him, wanting somehow to merge with him just by touching her leg against his, her shoulder against his.

  Claire totally relished the dependence on him that her lack of vision ensured. She wanted him to be the dominant center around which her life orbited. She wanted, no, she had the need from deep within her psyche, to depend on him. It was comforting, satisfyingly submissive, and erotic. The near-constant arousal that her situation caused her easily compensated for the absence of sight in her overall state-of-being. She admitted it to herself; she liked being blind when she was with Elliot.