Garden

The fourth night she took me outside.

We went through a door I had not known existed, at the back of the house, through a stone corridor and down a set of steps and then we were in a garden. It was walled, high stone walls covered in ivy, and the sky above was dark and the air was cool and I could smell rain and earth and growing things and for a moment the smell of the world was so overwhelming that I stopped walking and just stood there and breathed.

She let me. She stood a few steps ahead and she waited and she did not rush me and she watched me breathe the night air and her face was unreadable.

Then she took my hand and she led me deeper into the garden and we came to a clearing with a low stone bench and lanterns that gave a soft gold light and I saw that we were not alone.

There were six of them. Women. Attendants I recognized and women I had never seen, tall and pale and dark eyed, and they stood at the edges of the clearing in the shadows of the ivy walls, still as statues, their eyes on me. Elena walked me to the center of the clearing and she stopped and she turned me to face the bench and she stood behind me and she put her hands on my hips.

"Undress," she said.

I undressed. My hands were steady for the first time in weeks because she was behind me and her hands were on my hips and her body was pressed against my back and the cold of her was the only thing that felt real. I dropped my clothes on the stone and I stood naked in the lantern light in the walled garden with the night air on my skin and six pairs of ancient eyes on my body and Elena's hands on my hips and I was hard and the shame and the heat of it mixed together into something that made my head spin.

Elena walked to the bench. She sat. She crossed her legs. She leaned back. She looked at me standing naked in the lantern light with the six women at the edges of the dark and she tilted her head and she said, in a voice loud enough for the garden to hear, "He is yours. Take what you want. Nowhere is forbidden except what is mine."

They came to me.

Not all at once. Two first. The dark haired one I had seen at the first party and another, taller, her hair pulled back, her mouth already wet. They circled me the way wolves circle, close, brushing against me as they passed, their cold skin against my hot skin, and I stood still and let them circle because I had not been told to move. The dark haired one stopped in front of me and she put her hand flat on my chest and she slid it down, slow, over my stomach, and her eyes followed her hand and she looked at what was between my legs and she smiled and she looked back at Elena on the bench and Elena inclined her head, a fraction, a permission.

The dark haired one took my right hand. She lifted it and she turned my palm up and she pressed it against her, between her legs, over the thin fabric of her dress, and she held my hand there and she moved against it, a slow roll of her hips, and I felt her, cold even through the fabric, and she watched my face while she moved and I watched hers. The tall one stepped behind me and she took my left arm and she raised it to her mouth and her tongue found the soft skin of my inner elbow and her teeth went in and the gold flickered, bright and sharp, and my body jolted, and the dark haired woman pressed my hand harder against her in response to the jolt, and the two of them worked me from either side, one feeding from my left arm while the other ground against my right hand, and the pain and the pleasure braided together into something I could not separate.

More came. A third woman knelt beside me and she found the inside of my right wrist, the one the dark haired woman was using, and she bit there, quick and clean, and the gold sparked. A fourth pressed against my back, her cold chest against my shoulder blades, and her mouth found the curve where my neck met my shoulder and she bit down hard and the gold blazed and my knees buckled and the one behind me held me up. A fifth knelt in front of me and her mouth found my hip, the sharp jut of bone, and she bit and I felt it in my spine. A sixth found the other hip.

I stood in the center of the clearing with mouths on me from every side, my left arm held up and fed from, my right hand pressed between the dark haired woman's legs, my neck and my shoulders and my hips bitten and bleeding gold, and the sounds that came out of me were not sounds I had ever made, raw, broken, continuous, and I could not stop them and no one wanted me to stop them.

The women shifted. They traded places. The one feeding from my inner elbow let go and she took my left hand and she guided it between her legs the way the dark haired one had, and now both my hands were inside two different women, my fingers working, my palms pressed against cold slick skin, and a third woman stepped between them and found the vein in my left wrist, the one stretched taut by the angle, and she bit and the woman on my left hand gasped and clenched around my fingers as the gold flared through me and into her. They were connected through me, the feeding and the pleasure passing through my body like current, and they knew it, and they used it, timing their movements to the bites, riding my hands harder when someone fed.

Two of them pressed together against my back. I felt their hands on my shoulders, my waist, and I felt them against each other, their bodies sliding together behind me, and one of them bit the back of my neck while the other bit her, her mouth on the first one's throat, and I heard the sounds they made against each other, low, hungry, and their hands were on my body but their bodies were on each other and I was the axis they turned around, the pretext, the thing they fed from while they fed on each other. The one being bitten came against the other one's thigh, her cry muffled against my spine, and the one biting her drank and held her and their hands on my back dug in and I felt the marks they left.

The tall one moved from behind me to the front. She knelt on the stone path and she did not bite. She put her hands on my hips and she looked up at me and she looked at what was between my legs, hard and aching and ignored, and she leaned in and I felt her breath against me and she did not touch me. She breathed me in, her face inches away, and she looked up at me with those dark bright eyes and she smiled and she shook her head, slowly, and the denial in it, the proximity, the nearness of her cold mouth to the one place I was not allowed to be touched, was more devastating than any bite. Then she turned her head and she put her mouth on the woman riding my right hand, her lips finding the dark haired one's stomach, trailing down, and the dark haired one arched and gasped and her grip on my hand tightened and the tall one's mouth found her while my fingers were still inside her and I felt the tall one's tongue against my hand and the dark haired one shattered, her whole body convulsing, her teeth in my shoulder, her cry echoing off the garden walls.

On the bench Elena watched.

She had uncrossed her legs. Her hand rested on her thigh, high, and it moved while she watched, slow, and I did not know if she knew I could see or if she had stopped caring. Her face was still composed, still the mask, but her hand moved between her legs with a slow deliberate rhythm and her eyes were on me, on the mouths, on the hands, on the women tangled around my body and each other, and her breathing had changed, shallow, uneven, those breaths she did not need, and her composure was cracking at the edges but she held it, she held it with the hand that was not between her legs gripping the edge of the bench, the knuckles white, and she watched.

She watched the dark haired woman come on my hand. She watched the tall one's mouth between her thighs. She watched the one feeding from my wrist and the one on my neck and the two tangled behind me. She watched all of it and her hand moved faster and her jaw was tight and her eyes burned and I watched her watching me and she watched me watching her and the circuit between us across the lantern lit garden was so charged that I could feel her in my teeth.

She came. I saw it happen. Her back arched and her hand pressed hard between her legs and her eyes squeezed shut for one second and her mouth opened and the sound she made was quiet, controlled, barely there, but I heard it, and when her eyes opened they were wet and raw and she looked at me across the clearing and there was nothing composed about her face for one second, nothing controlled, just naked wanting, and then the mask came back.

She stood. She did not fix her dress. She crossed the clearing with her face hard and her eyes bright and the women parted for her the way they had parted before, falling back, mouths lifting, hands releasing, kneeling in a half circle around me, six of them, their lips red, their chests heaving. I stood naked and bitten and trembling in the center, my arms covered in marks, my hands wet with women I could not count, and Elena stopped in front of me and she looked at me and she was breathing hard.

"Enough," she said, to the garden.

She put her hand on the back of my neck and she turned me toward the bench and she walked me to it and she sat me down and she straddled me, her knees either side of my hips, her hands on my shoulders, and she pressed herself against me and she was wet, soaking, the dress between us useless, and her mouth found my ear and she breathed against it and I felt her shake, actually shake, and she whispered, "I can't, I can't, I can't."

"Elena."

"I can't keep watching them have you."

She said it against my ear and her voice was raw and stripped and nothing like hers and for one second she was not the predator and I was not the prey and we were just two bodies pressed against each other on a stone bench in a garden aching so badly for each other that the ache had become a sound.

Then she pulled back. She stood. She looked down at me and the mask came down and her face closed and her jaw set and her eyes went hard and bright.

"Tomorrow," she said. "One more night. You will come to me tomorrow."

She left me in the garden. She walked away through the dark and she did not look back. The six women were gone, slipped into the shadows, vanished, and I sat alone on the stone bench in the lantern light and I pressed my hands to my face and I could still feel their mouths on me and I could still feel Elena shaking against me and I could still see her hand between her legs on the bench and I could still hear her saying I can't keep watching them have you and I did not understand what she could not do and I was afraid to understand it and I sat in the dark garden and I shook.