Appraising
The late-afternoon sun cuts through the penthouse windows in thick amber slabs, as Randy Peacock lifts another stack of yellowed newspapers from Aunt Mavis's credenza.
He's been at this for three days now, sorting through ninety-two years of accumulated life, and the smell of old paper and lavender sachets has started to cling to his skin like an out-of-season shirt.
Randy sets the newspapers down and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. The apartment breathes around him—high ceilings, harbour views, the kind of old money silence that makes every footstep feel like an intrusion.
He's twenty-five, dressed in jeans and a trendy faded university t-shirt, and he keeps finding himself staring at the water instead of the task at hand.
The intercom buzzes. He jogs to answer it, his sneakers squeaking against the parquet floor.
"Randi Mentone, Auctioneer, Australiana," a woman's voice crackles through the speaker, smooth as poured honey with something underneath it, something that makes Randy straighten his posture without thinking.
He buzzes her up.
When the elevator opens, Randy understands immediately why his throat has gone dry.
Randi Mentone steps into the foyer like she owns the building, not like she's been summoned to value dead women's possessions.
She's somewhere north of forty, with the kind of body that suggests she never stopped moving through rooms exactly like this one—hips that sway beneath a charcoal pencil skirt, breasts that strain against silk the colour of clotted cream.
Her hair is dark, swept up in a twist that shows the elegant column of her neck, and her eyes are pale, assessing; light blue like harbour water on a fresh morning.
"Mr Peacock," she says, extending a hand.
Her grip is cool and brief, professional.
The edge of tight.
"My condolences on your aunt."
"Randy, please."
He takes her coat, catches the scent of something expensive and musky, oud and amber and the faint trace of cigarette smoke that clings to her hair.
"Everyone called her Mavis the Menace. She'd have hated the condolences."
Randi's mouth twitches. It's not quite a smile, but it's close enough that Randy feels something shift in his chest, a small loosening.
"Show me what we're working with," she says.
They move through the apartment together, Randy pointing out the obvious pieces—the Waterford crystal, the Victorian sideboard, the collection of opera glasses that Mavis never used at the opera.
Randi makes notes on a leather-bound pad, her pen scratching with precise efficiency. She doesn't touch anything without asking permission. She doesn't waste words.
But Randy notices how she pauses at certain doorways, how her head tilts when she catches a glimpse of something unexpected. She's cataloguing constantly, he realises.
Even him.
"In here," he says, pushing open the door to Mavis's study.
The room smells different.
Pipe tobacco, though Mavis never smoked.
Something sharper underneath, chemical and permanent.
Randi steps past him, and he watches her pause in the doorway—not dramatically, nothing so uncomposed as that, but he sees her shoulders rise and fall once, deeply, before she moves toward the far wall.
"Oh," she breathes, and it's the first unguarded sound she's made.
Framed behind glass, row after row of them: Aubrey Beardsley originals, pen and ink, the decadent lines unmistakable even from across the room.
Salome's severed head. The Peacock Skirt. Women with eyes like knives and mouths like wounds, all black ink on cream paper, the negative space as eloquent as the lines themselves.
"She had good taste, your aunt," Randi says, and her voice has dropped, gone throaty with appreciation.
"These are museum quality. Do you know what she paid?"
Randy shakes his head.
He's moved closer without meaning to, close enough to see the fine lines at the corners of Randi's eyes as she studies the frames, the way her lower lip has gone slightly slack with concentration.
"Conservatively?" Randi turns to face him, and her professional mask has slipped, revealing something hungrier underneath.
"Two hundred fifty thousand each. Perhaps more at auction. The market for Beardsley has—" she laughs, a low sound in her throat, "—has come back into fashion."
Randy's mouth opens, closes. He's thinking about student loans, about the cramped apartment in Newtown, about how he was going to sell everything and buy a used car.
"There's more," he manages. "In the folio. Under the desk."
Randi's eyes sharpen.
She moves to the mahogany desk, kneels with practised grace, and pulls out a leather portfolio the size of a briefcase. Randy watches the way her skirt rides up her thighs, the flash of lace at the stocking tops, and forces his gaze to the harbour beyond the window.
She opens the folio on the desk. Randy moves to stand beside her, close enough to feel the heat coming off her skin.
Not the famous pieces. These are private commissions, studies, the kind of work Beardsley produced for cloistered collectors with particular appetites.
Men with women's faces, women with men's bodies, every possible permutation of flesh and desire rendered in those obsessive, elegant lines.
A woman kneeling before another, her tongue extended toward the shadow between spread thighs.
A man held open by gloved hands, his hole exposed and eager.
Every image throbbing with the same aesthetic: beauty and filth, indistinguishable from each other.
"Your aunt was a woman of surprises," Randi murmurs.
Randy can see her pulse in her throat, quick and visible.
He can smell her perfume more strongly now, warmed by her skin, and underneath it something else, something raw and female.
He doesn't move. He doesn't trust himself to move.
Randi turns her head. Her mouth is very close to his. He can see the texture of her lipstick, the slight dryness at the centre of her lower lip where she's been pressing them together.
"How old are you, Randy?"
"Twenty-five."
Her tongue touches her upper lip, then disappears.
"Mavis and I had an arrangement, you know. I advised her on acquisitions. She advised me on—" she laughs again, softer this time, "—on appreciating the finer things."
"I didn't know."
"No." Randi's hand lifts, hovers near his jaw, doesn't quite touch. "You wouldn't have. She was discreet. As am I."
The hand drops to his chest, palm flat over his heart.
"But you're not here for discretion, are you? You've been watching me since I walked in. The way I walk. The way I handle things."
Randy's breath catches. He can feel himself hardening, helpless against it, against the way she's looking at him now like he's something to be appraised, valued, acquired.
"You're young," she continues, her thumb finding his nipple through the thin cotton, pressing until he gasps.
"Young enough to still believe this matters. To still believe wanting something badly enough means you should have it."
"I want—"
"What?"
She leans closer, her mouth at his ear, her breath hot and smelling of the mint she's been sucking.
"Say it, Randy. Mavis left you this apartment, these beautiful, filthy things. She left you me, whether she knew it or not. So tell me what you want."
He turns his head. His mouth brushes her cheek, her jaw, the corner of her smile.
"I want you to show me what she saw. What you saw in these."
Randi pulls back just far enough to meet his eyes. Her hand has drifted lower, cupping him through his jeans, and her fingers squeeze with deliberate pressure.
"These," she says, "are about appetite. About taking what you want without apology."
She releases him, steps back, and begins unbuttoning her blouse with steady hands.
"Mavis understood that. I understand that." The blouse falls open, revealing a bra the same cream as her skirt, her breasts heavy and real, the skin soft with age.
"The question is whether you can keep up, young cock."
Randy reaches for her. She lets him, his hands clumsy on her waist, her hips, pulling her against him.
She tastes like mint and smoke when he finally kisses her, her tongue sliding into his mouth with practised confidence, teaching him the rhythm she wants.
She breaks away first, her hand at his belt.
"The bedroom," she says. "Mavis kept a very good bed."
They move through the apartment again, but differently now, Randi leading him backward through doorways, her mouth on his throat, his hands under her skirt finding the wet heat of her through lace that's already soaked.
By the time they reach the master bedroom, Randy's shirt is gone, her bra is unhooked, and she's laughing against his collarbone at the eagerness of his fingers.
"Slow," she murmurs, pushing him onto the bed.
"Mavis would insist on slow. Appreciation of the art form."
Form! Randi had massive hooters.
Frickin an all-points, bulletin, chest headlights.
She climbs over him, her skirt finally discarded, her stockings still on, held by garters that Randy stares at with something like reverence.
She takes his wrists, presses them to the mattress above his head, and lowers herself onto his face.
"Show me you can appreciate detail," she says, and her thighs spread across his cheeks, the weight of her settling, the scent of her filling his nostrils until he can't breathe anything else.
Randy opens his mouth.
He finds her with his tongue, the slick folds parting for him, and she groans above him, her hips beginning to move in small, controlled rotation.
She shaved.
She puffy.
She understands how to share womanly goodies.
He learns her—the raised pearl of her clit, the softer flesh below, the tight entrance that sweeps against his chin when he presses close.
She rides his face like she's riding something larger, her thighs trembling against his ears, her voice dropping into rudeness that doesn't match her professional polish.
"Good boy," she gasps when he finds the rhythm she wants.
"Just like that. Just— fuck— fuck my pussy with your tongue."
She has the combo, tightness and rewarding space.
His tongue ferrets where it never has in a younger woman.
She comes against his mouth, her body shuddering, her hands gripping the headboard hard enough to tense her knuckles.
Randy keeps licking, softer now, drawing out the aftershocks until she pulls away with an almost tender laugh.
"Eager," she says, looking down at him, his face shining with her.
"I do like eager."
She moves down his body, her mouth leaving wet trails across his chest, his stomach, her hands working his jeans open and down.
His cock springs free, hard and dark and already leaking, and Randy watches her face change, something predatory settling into the lines around her eyes.
"Young cock," she murmurs, wrapping her fingers around him.
"So desperate to please."
She takes him into her mouth without warning, all the way, her throat opening around him like a fist in wet velvet.
Randy's back arches off the bed, a sound tearing from his throat that he doesn't recognise as his own.
"Uh-Uhh! Uhh!"
She holds him there, buried to the root, her nose pressed against his stomach, and swallows around him until his vision holds only her hair.
Fuck! She has him deep.
In a gag-free world at the back of a woman's throat, he has never known.
When she pulls back, gasping, strings of saliva connect her lips to his shaft.
She doesn't wipe them away. She takes him in again, deeper this time, her hands coming up to grip his hips, holding him still for her use.
Impossible deep. No gag.
Randy watches his cock disappear into her mouth, watches the bulge of his shape in her throat, and feels something in him unravelling.
She keeps him on the edge, backing off whenever he gets too close, her fingers playing with his balls, rimming his tailpipe, pressing around with knowing pressure.
When she finally releases him, he's shaking, his cock wet and dark and aching.
"Turn over," she says.
Randy obeys. He pulls his knees under him, presents himself to her, and feels the bed shift as she moves behind him.
Her hands spread his cheeks, thumbs pressing into the muscle, and he hears her make a sound of approval.
"Beautiful," she murmurs, and then her tongue touches him there, hot and wet and shocking, and Randy's forehead drops to the mattress.
She rims him with the same attention she gave his cock—thorough, patient, filthy.
Her tongue circles, presses inside, returns to tease the sensitive rim until he's pushing back against her, begging without words.
"Uh-Uhh! Aahh! Aahh!"
She laughs against him, the vibration travelling through his whole body, and then her finger replaces her tongue, slick with spit, pressing past the resistance until he's opened around her.
Two fingers now, scissoring, stretching, finding the spot inside him that makes his cock leak onto the sheets without a touch.
Randi's free hand reaches under him, grips his shaft, and she works him in counter-rhythm—fingers pressing deep, hand sliding slow—until he's trembling, until his arms have given out and his face is pressed to the mattress, until he's making sounds that might be words or might just be need.
"Orggh! Uhh!"
Randy hears the sound of her stepping out of her remaining clothes.
Spins him over.
Pushes down.
Gathers pecker at her entrance.
Slow, so slow, to her entire tight stretch, holding his pecker.
Snug, secure, close to a cock-choke hold.
She fucks him like she does everything—precisely, thoroughly, without mercy.
Each grinding MILF thrust drives the breath from his lungs; each tug upwards leaves him craving and aching until she drops her weight again.
Her warm, wet pussy holds him unimaginably tight.
The MILF bitch clenches.
Works her internal cunny muscles.
Ripples of delight circle his restrained girth.
Undulations of flesh clutch, grip and embrace.
God, he feels his balls swell.
The building of a massive load.
His boner is suddenly between her gorgeous melons.
Randi doesn't leave any body asset underutilised in sex.
His stiffy points to her chin, encased between her fun bags.
Marshmallow soft, fluffy balloons, cushions of velvet skin.
His first titty fuck, and it's bloody awesome.
So alert is Randi, she catches most of his load in her mouth and swallows.
They lie together, tangled in sheets, in the afternoon light that's turned gold and then rose.
Randy can feel her heartbeat against his back, her breath slowing in his hair.
"Mature," she murmurs, "is definitely back in fashion."