Chapter 1

 

Steven Bullmer was a genius. There is no doubt about that at all. From his very earliest moments of sentience, his eyes and his actions indicated this was one very different little boy. His father, Steven Bullmer II, was one of the world's richest men but few had even heard of his name. He liked his privacy and his estate, in the back woods of New York State, in a very private valley to which only he had access, had very few visitors. Once it became apparent that little Steven III was a very bright child, his father decided that he would have a private education with only the very best tutors and trainers to nurture and develop the boy's mind and body.

As he grew and acquired knowledge at an incredible rate, another trait emerged: Whatever he did, he did with a single-minded application. Only the best was ever a good enough result for him and he applied his mind and his body to it until he knew he could do no better. This applied to his physical pursuits as much as those that required his brain. The dictum, a healthy mind in a healthy body was a very real principle in the Bullmer household and young Steven became as good an athlete as he was a scholar. He was of Olympic class in fencing, gymnastics and equestrian events. He was very fast on the track and skilful on the tennis court. He was also an accomplished dancer and, if he had pursued that line, could have made a top-class male ballet star.

He was very good-looking. He had fine, silvery hair and very clear and bright blue eyes. His skin was perfect and his physique that of an athlete. There wasn't an ounce of fat on his supremely fit body.

The first eighteen years of his life were devoted to his education and physical development. There was no time for play or parties or social intercourse of any kind except that with his parents and his tutors. He left the estate rarely, preferring to remain at home and apply himself to some new exercise his tutors had set for him. This was his own choice although his parents didn't really make a serious effort to round his education by making him mix with people of his own age. They were inordinately proud of him and his achievements although seldom spoke of them-such was the nature of his father's almost paranoiac obsession with privacy.

At eighteen, his father began to involve him in his business affairs. These were not in the nature of board meetings and management strategies. Steven Bullmer's fortune was in other people's companies. There was no Bullmer Inc and the family name figured nowhere in the stocks and share listings in the big exchanges of the nation. His genius had been to know what to buy and what to sell-and when, and he had built the modest fortune his father had left him into a portfolio whose worth rivalled that of Bill Gates. Not quite as much perhaps, but not far short. He could buy and sell small countries-if he wished. He didn't. He treasured his privacy above all else and the few secretaries who worked in the small suite of offices in his mansion at the head of the valley was all he required. Now, he began to teach his son those same skills he had been blessed with or acquired.

Young Steven was as quick in this regard as he was in everything else and his quick appreciation of what his father was teaching him made the older man very proud. The family fortune began to grow at an even faster rate but still they kept to themselves. Neither Steven II, his wife or son were very interested in the outside world. Keeping fit, making money and enjoying their beautiful home was enough. It was thus a double tragedy when, six years later, the helicopter that was taking Steven II and his wife to New York City for some medical tests for Mrs Bullmer, developed engine trouble and crashed, killing all occupants outright.

Steven grieved but then he picked up his life and went on as before, now the sole owner of an enormous portfolio of stocks and shares. He was happy enough in his own company and that of his servants and secretaries but then he thought of the future. There had to be an heir. He would need a wife.

With this, as with every other pursuit, he attacked the problem with his customary dedication. He wasn't a snob. The word had no meaning for one as rich as he was and even more particularly, for one who had lived a virtual solitary existence all his young life. Family background was therefore not a consideration. Intelligence, good appearance and genes were. He didn't delegate this task. He went looking himself.

That's precisely what he did... Went looking. To him it was quite logical. He needed a wife so he went looking for one. The concept of love was quite foreign to him. He had loved his mother and his father and he liked their servants but the idea of physical, sexual love was quite alien to him. It had never figured in his education-he had been far too busy studying economics, physics, literature, et al, to waste time on such frippery. Of course as he approached and passed through puberty, his body changed. He knew the physical reasons behind this but he buried the emotional changes under an even harder workload. He never actively masturbated and the involuntary night-time emissions he passed off as an unwelcome but inevitable by-product of his body's development. The idea that he might derive pleasure-physical pleasure-from a woman's body was as far from his mind as, say, attending a party.

He went to New York as a sufficiently concentrated centre of humanity and there observed people for the first time in his life. He was just twenty-four years old and had never attended a party, gone to the beach for a picnic or a drive through the hills. He had never had to interact with other people on a social level and indeed found the bustling pavements most distasteful. He also thought the vast majority of the bustling people he saw on the streets quite horrible. Very few Americans eat properly or exercise enough and after their middle twenties, it shows. Their skins are no longer clear and their bodies become gross, their carriage ungainly and their minds clouded. How to find a suitable wife in this hotchpotch of people, he wondered. As with everything he did, he approached this problem with his customary single-mindedness.

He wanted someone with intelligence, beauty and athleticism. What better place to look than in the universities? There would be the concentration of the best young minds and, having once established a girl's intelligence, the other requirements were then easy enough to test. He didn't arrive in a limousine. Pomp and show were not the family style. He took a taxi and then wandered the campus, seeking out a girl who fitted his basic criteria. He sat in their cafeterias and listened to conversations; he shamelessly eavesdropped on small groups sitting on the lawns and in the libraries and then, having made appropriate mental notes, went back to his hotel room and, using his highly sophisticated lap-top and his highly developed computer skills, hacked his way into the university records to establish what he already knew about the various targets.

In this way he narrowed his selections down then checked out their sporting and athletic prowess. He already knew they were good looking and possessed of fine bodies; he wouldn't have considered them if they hadn't. It remained to check out their physical achievements. Love, compatibility and even their sexual likes and dislikes didn't occur to him. He scarcely knew these things existed anyway, but even if he had, he would have dismissed them as irrelevant. He wanted a wife. Someone capable of bearing his heir and that was it.

He found a number of girls he deemed suitable and approached them-and was quite shocked to find them not interested. Didn't these girls want to become wives and mothers? He didn't tell them of his wealth, of course. That was quite irrelevant so far as he was concerned. He knew he was one of the world's richest men but his riches were there to be built on, not used or to be considered as a reason to marry someone. For someone as bright as he was, he really was very naïve.

Eventually he found someone who at least evinced an interest. Amanda Brown was perfect physically. She was tall and very athletic, being a track star of some note. She was also very attractive. She was also blonde but her hair was curly and gold to Steven's fine silvery mop. Her skin was as good as his, though, and her body, while curvaceous, was slim, taut and terrific. Her belly was flat and slightly muscular; her thighs showed not the slightest fat and were slim although well-muscled. She had broad shoulders and a slender waist. Her buttocks were trim and also nicely muscled.

He asked her to go out with him and took her to a good, although not top restaurant. There he explained his problem.

She looked at him incredulously. "You mean you've come here to New York seeking a bride?" she expostulated.

He looked back at her, puzzlement very clear on his handsome face. "Is that so strange?"

"It's weird," she said. "People fall in love. They don't go looking for partners."

"Oh. But I haven't had the opportunity..." He went on to explain a little of his background. Not the wealth but the way he had been brought up and she softened, her beautiful face melting into a mixture of pity and incredulity that anyone could be so heartless as his parents had obviously been-particularly towards someone as handsome and as well set-up physically as this young man.

She decided to see what came of this strange encounter and although his conversation was stilted to say the least-he had never had to make small talk in his life, she was expert at bringing people out and she decided this Steven Bullmer was an intriguing person. They didn't make love. Not that first date. She kissed him and he found it a most strange-but enticing act, stirring him in his loins as he had never been stirred before. He decided he wanted to see her body but he knew enough not to try to push that point too far-not yet.

In fact he decided to let her lead the way-for now. She did. Having decided this young man was a catch and a half-without knowing he was one of the richest men in the world, she set out to snare him. It wasn't a good decision. She had no idea of the enormity of his raw intelligence or of his twisted understanding of the world. To him, a wife was a possession much the same as his shares or his house, or perhaps more appropriately one of his secretaries. There might, as he was now discovering, be a modicum of effort required to catch the girl but once in his trap, she was his-to produce his children. She had to do as he wished. Once married to him, she would have no separate existence of her own-just as his mother had been an extension of his father, so now would his new wife be... This was his logic and his understanding of such matters but he didn't bother to discuss them with Amanda. He simply presumed that was the way all marriages were and that she would therefore already know of this.

They made love of course. She persuaded him that it was perfectly normal these days and was in fact a sort of compatibility test. He was quite agreeable but had no idea how to proceed. She therefore slowly and sensuously undressed him and then herself while he looked on in amazement-and a growing lust as her lovely and so athletic body was slowly revealed to him. After that, nature just took its course and while she tried to make him slow down, he couldn't. Not then. But he was an extraordinarily virile young man and this was his first ever sexual encounter. He hadn't even masturbated himself. Accordingly, he was able to perform three more times-to her astonishment - and the fourth, although requiring a break of some fifteen minutes, was nearly as powerful as the first.

He courted her assiduously after that and it took only another three weeks before they were married. It was not a society affair. Steven had no time for that and Amanda still had no idea she was marrying a billionaire of the first class. There were just her parents and relatives and a few friends. Steven wasn't really into even the wedding breakfast but as soon as he had decided to marry he had researched the customs and went along with it.

Now, he also researched sex-in all its permutations, devoting his whole energies to the theory and practice of the art. As a result, his performance increased geometrically. From the crass tyro of that first encounter, he rapidly became skilled in controlling his own emotions and his bodily reactions to them. Amanda was both astounded-and ecstatic about the change. She had delighted in his body from the first moment she saw him nude. The near-perfect physique; the finely wrought muscles and clear skin; the grace of his movements; and the size of his accoutrements ... Now, as he used his physical and mental attributes to consummate his sexual skills, she found herself even more attracted to him.

For his part, she was still merely a means to an end. A quite attractive female human who gave him some pleasure with her body; but which body was really for one purpose and one purpose only: the means of providing him with an heir. His efforts to make himself a more than competent sexual partner had to do more with his standard procedure of attaining perfection in everything he did that in satisfying her (to him) animal urges. He had that rare (and not attractive) ability of being able to stand apart from himself and observe his actions. He found this new sexual act physically pleasurable but mentally or rather emotionally, quite distasteful. He decided, without informing Amanda of his decision, that once she was pregnant, he would not indulge himself again. She would have been appalled and would have run a mile. Sex, to her, was an essential part of her make-up. She had indulged, not promiscuously, but healthily with her boyfriends, all of whom were athletes like herself and who wanted a lot of sex-as she did. She had found Steven's newfound skill in this area wonderful and assumed he enjoyed it as much as she did.

He had told her he lived alone on an isolated estate but she had just assumed there would be the usual round of dinner parties and the like. She could have had no conception of his way of life-it was truly bizarre. She was at once taken with the house. It was built in an Elizabethan style and was set in acres of sweeping lawns, with trees, shrubberies and flower beds dotted here and there seemingly at random but actually in a carefully planned layout. There were ponds and an artificial stream that babbled down and round and through the shrubberies. She was welcomed by the servants. But even here, she had no idea of the devotion they held towards their master. He was everything to them; she was merely an adjunct to him.

At first all was well. She settled into her new role as mistress of the house unaware, at least for a while, that her orders, while received with perfect courtesy, were not really being followed. When she complained to Steven, he smiled and said the servants knew the way he liked his house to run and she should leave it to them...

Sexually, he was all attention. Every night he was dutiful-and very competent. She still didn't realise he had not even a microgram of love towards her. But when she realised there were going to be no parties; no visits; not even drives around the countryside-at least with him, she began to wonder what she had let herself in for. She took to wandering about the gardens. They were really superb and very extensive. Acres of them. Brilliant green lawns, stately trees, magnificent shrubberies and flower beds that, at least in the spring and summer, were a riot of carefully planned colour.

There were three gardeners to take care of this magnificence. John Dodds was the head gardener and he had been looking after and developing these sweeping lawns and the rest for Steven's father for twenty years. He had two assistants. One, Michael, had been with him for the last five years and there had been another but for family reasons he had left six months ago and another apprentice had been put on. This boy, Peter Williams, was just nineteen years old, had dark curly hair, was good-looking and possessed of a very muscular body. He was proud of it and whenever the weather permitted, went about in only a pair of ultra-brief cut-offs that displayed his lithe athleticism very well. The other garden and house staff liked him for his cheeky humour and actively encouraged his ostentatious exhibitionism since all secretly admired his body and were not at all put out by his extravagant displays of its muscles.

It took but three weeks for her to fall pregnant and another month to realise it. When she proudly announced it, Steven congratulated her but then his sexual attentions ceased. "I can still make love, Steven," she said. "Only at the last stages will that be unwise ..."

"We cannot chance you taking the slightest risk, my dear," he said. And that was that. Nothing she could do or say would budge him.

By now of course, she knew he spent hours in his suite of offices and was beginning to understand he controlled vast resources. How big they were, she didn't know but they were big-she understood that. She was thus alone for much of the day without anything to do. He had a well-equipped gymnasium at the back of the house and she spent some hours of every day there, toning her fabulous body. She also spent some hours in the huge library since she had an active mind and the library's contents covered many subjects. She no longer bothered trying to run the house. It was pointless since the servants listened politely, agreed with her-and then went and did their own thing, perhaps following orders long ago laid down by Steven II or his wife.

The rest of the time she spent out in the garden-and this was what led to her undoing. She, as much as everyone else in the house (with the possible exception of her husband) delighted in Peter's body. To this point, she had had no more than a passing admiration for it-and him; but now, as sexual frustration began to set in and her own ministrations gave so little relief, she began to look upon him as a sexual object: as something to figure in her dreams and she began to wonder what sort of sexual equipment he possessed. If the bulge in his too tight, too brief shorts was anything to go by, he was exceedingly well blessed.

She took to seeking out his whereabouts and having a chair brought out so she could sit and (ostensibly) read nearby but her eyes were constantly lifting from the book to watch as the muscles of his arms, shoulders and back rippled as he weeded, dug, raked or whatever. He was at first pleased to have her close for she was a beautiful lady and her body was quite something. But then, as he realised she was perving on him, he began to worry. He mentioned his worries to John.

"I've noticed, Pete. Something's wrong. You better be very careful, boy. Our master is wonderful to us but he doesn't understand women. You watch yourself, eh?"

This advice was of little help to the handsome young man. He knew it himself but when he took to wearing a shirt and jeans to cover more of his body, she looked so disappointed and in fact asked why he had changed his clothing. He was at a loss to answer. Anyway, when she asked him to, he went back to his former attire, now more worried than before.

Things went from bad to worse, however. As the summer came on, she began to shed more and more of her own clothing, revealing her more than sensuous body to his eyes. The bikini tops became smaller as did the tiny triangles at her loins. She took to getting up and removing article after article of her outer clothes in full view of him, piece by piece, as if seeking relief from the heat but in fact trying to tease him into reacting.

He didn't dare mention his worries to her, or now, even to John. He was becoming infatuated with her and even more, with her body. She tanned it lightly in a machine in the gymnasium-all over. And since Steven had asked her to, had had her sex permanently depilated by electrolysis. He had had his own body treated years ago, believing body hair detracted from the perfection of the human form. She was thus tanned a light honey-gold-all over. As her bikinis became briefer and briefer, he stared goggle-eyed at her body in all its magnificent suppleness and perfect shape. Her muscles were apparent, but not too much so. Her waist was very slender and her belly flat. Her breasts were full but not too big and her thighs a perfect shape. Her golden curls set off her lovely face to a tee. In short she was as lovely as Steven was handsome and Peter was stricken.

He gave up resisting her now obvious blandishments sometime in the second month after she laid out her charms to him. Not that he wanted to be disloyal to his employer but just that he no longer had the strength to resist. She looked so forlorn and her body so enticing, he simply couldn't resist any more. And so, when she stood up and moved over to him as he was raking a garden bed, then put her hands up on his muscular shoulders, he turned to her and fell into her arms. They were in a corner of the garden hidden from the house by the shrubberies and in three seconds, her bikini top was off and his hands were feeling her lovely breasts. In another few minutes, she had pushed the pants down off his lean hips and was examining his genitals, very pleasantly surprised by their size and now their virility. Her own tiny scrap of cloth quickly followed his and they were standing together, his hardness inside her and his body thrusting powerfully in and out of her so naked quim.