Balustrade (8 page)

He sucked at her, plunged his fingers in and out until Hilary was riding both his hand and his face, snuggling up close until she worried that he wouldn’t be able to breathe, and then, seconds later forgetting the concern as her desire exploded into crashing waves of sensation. Her orgasm tore through all her niggling assessments of their relationship. Settling the issue in one fantastic ripple after the next.

Hilary had become her sex. She tossed her head back, screamed and gripped the headboard, the muscles of her thighs quivering, threatening to give out. Jack seemed to recognize the effect of his pussy eating and he supported her ass in his strong hands.

He lay beneath her slack, his jaw shifting as though determin
ing whether he had injured it in his mad and forceful lovemaking.

Afterword, and in keeping with his roll of surprising her, Jack wanted to talk.

“What got into you there?”

“
I’ve come to the realization that there are certain things that I won’t deny myself anymore.” She paused. “Did it make you uncomfortable, since you…”

“
Since I what?”

“
You normally take that role in the bedroom.”

“
It wasn’t always like that. You used to be ravenous when we were younger.”

“
And sloppy.”

“
I like it sloppy.”

She debated on whether to tell Jack about the scene in Ludovic’s office and decided that if what they were doing here at Balustrade was working on their relationship then keeping secrets probably wasn’t the best course of action.

“I was already horny by the time I came back.”

“
No shit.” He laughed, propping the pillows up behind him and shifting up to sit, the sheet draped across his lap comfortably and his arm stretched out across the top of the headboard. His chest and abs still glistened with sweat and the scent rising from him was undeniably sexy.

Like he’d taken a class.
The thought came back to her for no discernible reason. Had Glynnis been providing extramarital tutelage?

“
Ludovic called me into his office and then, well, Chantal came in and gave him head.”

“
Wait. What?” Jack’s eyes widened in confusion.

“
Yeah, I know.” Hilary took to her feet, pacing the room naked as she talked. “It was astounding. I was both horrified and soaking wet. It was quite possibly the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. They acted out this scenario completely without shame and that’s probably what I reacted to. And then, when Ludo came…” her words drifted away.

“
Yes?” Jack asked, his stare somewhere between a question and an accusation.

“
Chantal spit his semen back into his mouth. And he, well, he ate it.”

Jack shrugged, but his lips curled into a scowl.
“I’m glad you didn’t opt for that move.”

“
It was this astonishing moment. As though Chantal had complete dominion over him, but then the final act seemed, well, wasteful as though giving back didn’t complete the domination, you know?”

“
So, you were dominating me, just now?”

“
I guess. Yes, I was.”

His eyes fell on his hands, open in his lap and he frowned, mulling over what she said. Finally he looked up, nodding, resolute.
“Okay. I’m okay with that.”

“
Good. Because that felt right.”

“
It absolutely did.”

Hilary smiled and left him for the privacy of the bathroom. She had
surprised herself in those frenzied moments, not shocked that she'd enjoyed it, not embarrassed that she had no regrets—though that was something she certainly would never voice—but rather shocked she'd wished there was a third person in their bed, thrusting his big Montenegrin cock into her pussy.

Ludovic.

The flush was instantaneous at the thought, not just in her cheeks but also across her chest. Embarrassment at letting herself think about the surrogate like that. She supposed it shouldn't be shocking; she had, after all, certainly coveted Chantal's mastery of the man, making him her dominion with little more than a swizzle and a spit. Thinking back on the act, it was both filthy and genius. Glorious. Hilary couldn't stop thinking about it and began to assess her performance with Jack in relation to this new gold standard.

Had she been Chantal's equal?

She didn't think so. Jack, on the other hand, laying passed out on the bed a rictus of pleasure on his smug face, he might have given her higher marks than she would herself. But there'd still been something missing.

Ludovic.

Hilary told Jack about the events in Ludovic’s office the
following morning over coffee and croissants in the courtyard. She figured he had it coming considering his active participation in the indoctrination orgy. He stared at her across the table, mouth struggling for words.

“
It was…symphonic,” she said, finally.

Jack’s face screwed up in confusion.
“What?”

She played him not like an instrument, but an entire orchestra.

A smile blossomed on his lips. “That’s how it was for us last night. I’m surprised I can even walk.”

“
Next time we’ll get you a cane.”

She refrained from mentioning the strange happenings on the second floor, though the floating red eyes and that single sinister statement,
“This is the wrong meat,” clung to her memory like a tumor.

Despite
that and the previous night's dream, she was feeling almost optimistic about Balustrade as though her newfound grasp of her controlling sexuality might actually save her marriage...or at the very least serve to ensure some damn fine orgasms.

At 9:55
a.m. Hilary led Jack down the long hallway off the courtyard to Ludovic's office, she rapped on the frame of the door and when no one responded, crept in and then, finally took her seat on the couch.

Jack made the mistake of sitting in Ludovic's chair, flipping his leg casually over the arm.
“So this is where it happened,” he said glancing around, taking in the furnishings, the pain. He kicked his dangling leg playfully.

“
Yeah. It happened right there, actually,” Hilary gestured to the chair. “You're sitting where he was when...”

“
When Chantal took my big cock right into the back of her throat.”

Ludovic's booming voice and laughter startled them both, Jack standing bolt upright and Hilary nearly choking on her words.
“I …didn't see you there,” she stuttered.

“
Not to worry, there are no secrets here. Clarity is the key to insight. Insight is the lock that once opened allows a personality to grow and flourish like a rose.”

“
Not to mix metaphors,” Hilary joked.

Ludovic merely blinked and then waved off her comment.
“Anyways, what were we discussing?”

“
Your cock, apparently.” Jack dropped onto the couch beside her, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table.

“
Make yourself comfortable,” Ludovic threw in, his tone oddly adversarial.

He sat back in his chair and produced a chart he’d apparently been holding before he burst in on them at exactly the wrong time, or the right time if his point was to cause Hilary to blush uncontrollably.

Probably the latter.

“
Today, as you may be aware, is the first official day of our treatment. Although, clearly in many cases, we’ve begun to lay the groundwork.”

“
So to speak,” Jack said.

Hilary assessed Ludovic with some scrutiny. Something was different. For a man who only hours before and since their meeting seemed large in every way a man can be, Ludovic appeared smaller, if that were possible. It was as though his chair had been replaced with a larger version, like a doll thrown on for atmosphere.

“Do you have something to say, Hilary?” His voice still rippled with thunder.

And yet it didn’t have the same effect as it would have before Chantal had dominated him so completely.

Chantal.

And then it dawned on her. Ludovic hadn’t changed at all, she had. To anyone else, and even herself removed from this place, this would have been evident far sooner. She usually caught on to things quickly when other people were involved, but insight was one of those things you struggle against. It’s a protective skill. It’s best not to know yourself too well, lest you start taking sides with the people who call you a controlling bitch.

“I’m seeing through different eyes, I suppose.”

Jack reached for her hand and held it reflexively. She shook her head and his hand free.

“That’s good,” Ludovic said. “A welcome shift in your paradigm. For your evening session, you'll engage in a fantasy you've shared with Chantal. Involving a third sexual partner joining the two of you.”

Hilary’s hand fell against her chest, suddenly winded. Chantal certainly worked fast. She tried to push away the humiliation. Just to accept that she wanted certain things. That if Jack could have his cake, she could eat it, too.

“Wait,” Jack said. “That wasn't my fantasy.”

“
No,” Hilary said, biting her lip. “It was mine.”

Jack grimaced.
“Why did you never tell me? I probably would have been open to that. In fact, I've always fantasized about watching you and another woman.”

“
It's a common fantasy,” Ludovic offered.

“
My fantasy involves another man.”

Jack’s cheeks flushed.
“Oh.”

“
But don't worry, he doesn't have to touch you if you don't want that.”

“
I'm not certain what to even think about this, I mean, it never even occurred to me.”

“
I want you both at the same time.”

Jack’s mouth fell open, shocked at the abrupt shift in her personality.
“Fucking you?”

She nodded.

“Like one in the mouth, one in the vagina?” he ventured.

“
No.” She swallowed wondering how to put this delicately, but deciding that would be completely against the new leaf she'd turned. “Both of you flat on your backs, nuts pressed together”

“
One in your ass?”

“
Both in my ass,” her voice sounded stony, even to her.

Jack's gulp was audible.

“I'm just kidding.” She laughed.

Ludovic joined in.
“You really had him going there. That was beautiful.”

Jack giggled uncomfortably.
“Yeah, you really did.”

She let her hand drift back to his and she gripped it pleasantly.
“No, I want one of you inside my pussy and the other in my ass. You can have my ass, since you've always wanted to try that but I've been so ridiculously protective.”

Jack’s blanched.

“Possibly this is too much for Jack, just yet,” Ludovic said, chuckling. “Perhaps the two of you can do some preparatory work.”

Ludovic reached beside his chair, fingers flitting within what must have been a box and then
retrieving a paper-wrapped parcel, tied up in twine, he placed it between them on the coffee table. “A gift,” he said.

Hilary stared at it, not sure what to do. It was Jack
who reached out and unwrapped the object. Inside was a rather large dildo and some sort of leather belt or harness. The phallus was black as night, long and thick as a coke can with perverse ridges veining its surface, the reverse side was a wide bulb, the handle. It took Hilary a moment to put two and two together. It was a strap-on, to use the vernacular.

“
What the fuck?” she glared at Ludo. “It's a pretty big leap to think that I'd enjoy fucking Jack with that.”

“
Oh?” Ludo's face took on a boyish glee.

“
What about Glynnis? Would you fuck her with it?”

“
Uh...no. I’d beat her in the head with it.”

Ludovic's
brow knitted as he stared pointedly at Jack, waiting for some response.

Hilary
swiveled toward Jack. His expression leaked out of him as though blood from a cut. Clearly nervous, pits staining, his voice quivered with each word. “I don't mind. You can fuck me.”

Hilary chuffed. She pursed her lips
, suspicious.

He nodded slowly, his eyes skyward as though he were playing out the scenario.

“Who the fuck are you?” she demanded of him. “I feel like you've been replaced by a pod person.” And then to Ludovic, “What have you done to him? I've suspected you're drugging everyone, but this is beyond even that. Brainwashing?”

When
the Montenegrin had no response beyond a sigh and a blank stare, Hilary decided she'd had enough and stood without another word, fleeing the room. She stomped through the middle of a circle of guests surrounding a sashed staff member on his knees alternately jerking off the men and fingering the women, all of them laughing hysterically, as though they'd discovered a new party game. If Milton Bradley could box this shit up, Hilary thought, they'd kill their competition. She turned to break out of the back of the group, but was stopped by a surprising presence.

Claire.

Standing there, rubbery kneed and taking three fingers up her snatch and one, possibly two in her ass. The woman’s head was thrown back in a howl of glorious pleasure and two men at her sides held her up by the elbows.
Just to be helpful.

Hilary backed away, bewildered momentarily, and then brought back to perfect clarity when a man’s rough hands, curled around the underside of her breasts. Hilary
slapped his hands away and made a break for the stairs, turning back to see Claire staring at her.

The look was vacant, disembodied.

Horrifying.

Something. That same something that she’d been noticing since they arrived. That eagerness to be led. That total abandon. They seemed possessed by a hunger for sex that was, well, unnatural.

Drugs, Hilary thought. But then the religious fanatics came to mind. The zealot in black. The Mother. It flooded in like insanity. She needed to lie down.

Purge it.

Hilary made a point to keep from glancing into the rooms as she passed lest she see something else that would trigger thoughts of demons hiding on the second floor. The

In the end, she drifted into an uneasy slumber in the steam shower.

***

The writing desk drawer hung open. Empty this time, an antique liner paper curling at the joints. Underneath though, instead of a
wood grain, Hilary spotted a curve of letters. She pinched the scrolling paper, tugging it away, revealing the sentence slowly.

Let…

the…

devil…

fuck you…

HILARY.

The room shook as she staggered away from the desk, flattening against the wall, panting, eyes darting to the opening to the hall, horrified that the fanatical mother, the one that was her would walk in and begin to make her terrible threats.

Stilling her breathing as much as she could, she tried to listen for noise in the hall. The slightest scuffle. Someone hiding. Waiting.

Hilary edged across the room, tiptoeing as she reached the arch. She steeled herself for what she was about to witness and lurched out, eyes clinched shut at first and then peeking into…

Nothing.

The white hall was clinically empty. Sterile.

“
Jesus,” she exhaled. “What a freak. Pull yourself together.”

She made her way to the courtyard only to stop dead at the sight of the balustrade. A blisteringly bright light jutted into the night sky, a searchlight, an announcement. Something was coming. A great scrabbling squelch arose and this time it was clear. Claws were raking on the stair. Something…

The devil.

…
was crawling out of hell. Clawing its way up out of the pit and into the cage, its door open and clanging as the floor rumbled beneath her.

Hilary’s eyes skittered to the four corners of the courtyard, scanning the balconies. She had to tell someone. She had to warn them. But when she looked back at the balustrade a dark figure split the bright column of light in two.

The silhouette was familiar.

At first she mistook it for Ludovic, his strange exotic features seemed fitting subterfuge for a demonic presence, but as the man approached. It was clear that she knew him more intimately.

Jack.

He walked toward her, eyes sleepy and nearly closed. Relief flooded in and she rushed to throw herself into his arms. He wrapped her in a comforting embrace, whispering warmly into her scalp. Something.

She couldn’t quite understand it.

And then she could.

“This is the wrong meat.”

Hilary pushed away, staring at his placid expression, his jagged teeth.

His bright red eyes.

She screamed then.