In the Garden of Sin (30 page)

Inigo, in flamboyant lord’s attire and his favorite vintage top hat, had even found a use for the “toy cart.” This was a two-wheeled wooden drinks cart, its shelves loaded with playthings that weren’t always true to the the Renaissance period: handcuffs, blindfolds, gags, harnesses, butt plugs, dildos, an assortment of crops, whips, and paddles, and about a dozen different brands of lube on a silver tray. The fun-loving satyr had strapped a redheaded wench who called herself Isolde facedown over the top of the cart with her skirts thrown up and the tray of lube on her back. Isolde was a bisexual super-sub with a deep love of pain, degradation, and bondage. With that in mind, Inigo had been wheeling her around the courtyard for the past hour, offering her body as a “test dummy” for comparing the qualities of the different lubes.

Everyone turned to watch as Blaine shoved Elle onto the Correction Table, which somewhat resembled an eight-foot picnic table, the kind with a long attached seat on either side. The main differences were that the seats were actually for kneeling on, and the whole thing was upholstered in scarred,
well-worn red leather. Unlike the smaller whipping stools and spanking benches, the Correction Table could accommodate a number of subs at once, if need be.

Blaine positioned Elle not facedown, as was more usual, but on her back with her bottom at the table’s edge and her slippered feet on the kneeler. Having chosen by the flip of a coin to play the sub this year, she was dressed, like the other wenches, in a provocative variation on classic Renaissance fair maidservant attire.

The foundation of the D and D wench uniform was an ankle-length, ruffle-sleeved chemise of gauzy linen, its off-the-shoulder neckline gathered loosely with a drawstring. Laced over this was a boned velvet bodice with narrow straps and an under-the-bust neckline meant to frame the breasts beneath their film of sheer gauze. The color of the bodice indicated the wench’s sexual availability: green for barons only, gold for baronesses, or striped, like Elle’s, if she would submit to either. There was a buff-colored overskirt, but it was tucked so as to drape over the hips while exposing the rest of the lower body, front and back, through the filmy linen chemise; undergarments were, of course, forbidden. The only other items that could be worn were leather slippers and a hair ribbon.

Waving over a pair of footmen, one a hard-cut Asian gymnast whose D and D name was Ailwin and the other a brawny American cop called Fulk, Blaine said, “You two, get over here and make yourselves useful.”

He had Ailwin stand across the table from him to pin Elle’s wrists over her head, while Fulk, positioned next to him, was charged with lifting her legs straight up by the ankles, exposing her beautiful bare ass and that sweet, pink little pussy. It was the only pussy that had ever turned Lili on,
really
turned her on, in the thousands of years of her existence.

It undoubtedly turned Blaine on, too, but it was hard to tell
with his oversized bondage codpiece of quilted black leather accessorized with zippers and buckles.

Fulk’s arousal was much more obvious, as the footmen’s codpieces were, in true early Renaissance style, triangular panels of the same knitted material as the buff-colored hose they wore with their short boots. At first blush, it looked as if they were wearing seamed cotton hip-hugger tights, but, in fact, they were separate leggings that were tied to each other in back and to the codpiece in front. Naturally, this was worn sans undershorts, the stretchable fabric conforming so snugly to the wearer’s male anatomy as to betray the slightest hint of tumescence. On top, the footmen wore color-coded jerkins half buttoned over puffy-sleeved shirts of the same transparent gauze as the wenches’ chemises. The shirts were kept as short as the jerkins so as not to interfere with the all-important esthetics of the groin and posterior areas.

Blaine instructed Fulk to move aside while maintaining a grip on Elle’s ankles, and then he hauled back and smacked her. He spanked her hard and fast, his expression fierce, his face growing as red as her ass. Elle let out a breathy little cry with each blow, her eyes glittering. It wasn’t that she found pain or humiliation sexually exciting in and of itself; she could just as easily have gotten off on being the spanker as the spankee. Like Lili and Inigo, Elle was aroused by that which aroused her human sex partner. The more stimulating the encounter for the human, the more stimulating—and revitalizing—it would be for an incubus; or, in Elle’s case, for an incubus in the form of a succubus.

“I almost hate to do this,” Blaine said breathlessly as he unbuckled his codpiece, “’cause it’s just what you want, isn’t it? It’s what all you little sluts want, especially after a good, hard spanking. But I’m not about to end up with blue balls on your account.”

Ordering Fulk to keep Elle’s legs together and angled toward her head, Blaine knelt on the lower bench, grabbed her hips, and started fucking her with sharp, punishing strokes.

“Fuck
, your ass is hot from that spanking,” he rasped. “Oh, yeah, like a fuckin’ oven. And you are
so
fuckin’ wet. You liked that, didn’t you, whore? Didn’t you? Answer me.” He gave her hip a stinging slap.
“Answer me.”

“Aye, m-my lord. Oh… Oh…
Mon dieu.”
She arched her back, pulling her breasts upward and exposing her nipples, erect and flushed, above the gathered neckline of her chemise. Her face darkened, that telltale vein rising on her forehead. She groaned ecstatically as she came; Lili’s pussy throbbed in response.

To hold Elle’s legs in the required position, Fulk had to lean over the Correction Table, one knee on the lower bench. His erection reared high, pulling at the ties of the codpiece. It was a good-size cock with a nice, thick head; there was a spot of dampness on the tip.

“Can you hold her ankles like that with just one hand?” Lili asked Fulk.

“I believe so, my lady.”

“Take that out, then,” she said, nodding toward his erection, “and put it to use.”

“As you wish, my lady.” He untied the codpiece as Lili squeezed between him and the table, kneeling over it next to Elle. She whipped up the skirts of her blue and gold satin gown and spread her legs. With his free hand, the footman pressed his cock into her, gripped her waist, and pushed. She moaned in gratification as he filled her, sliding in easily because she was so slick and ready.

Lili took Elle’s face in her hands and kissed her deeply. “You’re so beautiful when you come.” Looking over her shoulder at Fulk, she said, with as much authority as she could
manage, “Make me come first, footman. If you don’t, you’ll spend the next twenty-four hours in a chastity belt.”

“Aye, my lady”

Bracing one foot on the bench, he reached around and fluttered a fingertip right next to her clit as he ground his hips. He really knew what he was doing. It felt like one of those dual-action rabbit vibrators with a rotating shaft attached to a clitoral stimulator. Lili came almost instantly.

Fulk slammed himself into her with a shout, his fingers digging painfully into her hip. She felt him ejaculate, felt his pleasure shooting into her, speeding her heart, pumping her lungs…

“Oh, God, don’t stop, don’t stop,” Lili begged as another climax gathered on the heels of the first. She sucked one of Elle’s nipples into her mouth, groaning helplessly. The two women came together, and Blaine, as well, amid a chorus of ecstatic moans.

Lili slumped down with her head on Elle’s sweat-dampened breast, listening to the wild hammering of her lover’s heart as the stranger’s cock inside her slowly softened.

“God, how I wish it was you inside me,” Lili murmured. “I love you so much. I wish…I just wish we could—”

“Shh, don’t, love,” Elle whispered as she brushed her fingers through Lili’s hair, not because someone might hear— humans hardly ever put two and two together—but because there was no point in yearning for the impossible.

“That guy’s staring at you again,” Elle said as she opened the arched door leading from the courtyard to the chapel withdrawing room. The uniforms for the wenches and footmen were stored there, since they had no bedrooms of their own, and she’d asked Lili to keep her company while she changed.

Lili tracked Elle’s gaze across the courtyard to a bench under a tree, where a good-looking young blond guy, one of the doms—a Brit, judging from his accent—sat hunched over with his elbows on his knees, a cigarette in one hand and a pair of handcuffs dangling from the other. His elegant fifteenth-century court attire was gorgeously made and historically accurate right down to the most minor detail—except for the Ray-Ban Aviators.

“With those shades, how can you tell
who
he’s staring at?” Lili asked. But as soon as he saw her look his way, he dropped his gaze to fiddle with the handcuffs.

Something that felt almost like a memory tickled the hairs on Lili’s nape and evaporated, leaving a slight chill in its wake.

“We should give Archer a call and ask who he is,” Elle said. Emmett Archer,
administrateur
to Adrien Morel, Seigneur des Ombres, coordinated the invitations and guest lists for these types of events. He had an apartment in the castle, but for the next few weeks, until Morel and his new bride returned from their honeymoon, he would be living in the hunting lodge that was their home, dog-sitting the pair of mastiff pups he’d given them as a wedding gift.

“He introduced himself to me as Anthony Prazak,” Lili said, “but Blaine called him—”

“Blaine?”

“The guy who had his cock inside you fifteen minutes ago,” Lili said. “The spanker.”

“Blaine, huh?” Elle said with a grin as she held the door open for Lili. “He fucks like a Blaine.” She followed Lili into the little vestibule and through a second door, locking it carefully behind them lest one of the wenches or footmen walk in right in the middle of The Change. Although the subs weren’t allowed to go wandering about on their own, they had been
known to break the rules from time to time—usually in the hope of being punished for it.

The chapel withdrawing room had originally been intended for the use of priests celebrating Mass in the adjacent chapel, but since the chapel had never been consecrated, its sizable but homey antechamber had been put to a variety of other uses over the centuries. Currently, it was serving the purpose it did every year during D and D Week, that of a dressing room for the subs. The robing alcove, where vestments should have hung, was occupied instead by rolling garment racks, shoe racks, and plastic stacking bins filled with the components of wenches’ and footmen’s uniforms, arranged by size. There were also four three-way mirrors set up around the room, and a bank of lockers for the subs’ street clothes and other belongings.

Lili wasn’t sure which of the castle’s many rooms would serve as the subs’ dressing room in the future. At Inigo’s urging, this one was being converted into a screening room, which was why there was lumber and plywood leaning against one wall and eighteen brand-new home theater recliners, still wrapped in plastic from the factory, pushed against another. Correction: Lili saw that the plastic had been pulled off one of them, and its charcoal gray leather looked as if it had been sat in. There was a wineglass in the cup-holder with a little red wine residue in it, and on the carpeted floor, a half-empty bottle of a local vintage alongside a stack of old-looking books.

Lili homed in on the wine label. “I thought so. That’s Darius’s poison of choice.” The shape-shifting djinn didn’t have many places he liked to hang out aside from his cozy little home in the cave, but he’d always been fond of the chapel withdrawing room. In the normal course of events, no one,
including the castle servants, had much reason to go there, so it tended to be quiet during the day, an ideal location for relaxing with a book or two … or ten. Darius was an obsessive reader, always had been. His library in the cave held uncountable books and scrolls dating back thousands of years.

Elle sniffed the air. “He’s still here somewhere. Probably napping.”

Crouching down, Lili checked out the volumes du jour. “This is so Darius. While we’re playing out our little fetishistic costume drama, he’s steeping himself in Renaissance culture.
Paradise Lost, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, Six Sermons
by John Donne,
The Roaring Girl
by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker,
Selected Poems
by Christopher Marlowe,
The Madrigals of Hannah Vitturi, Una Durata di Piacere
by Domenico Vitturi…Wait.” She stood up, the latter two books in her hands. “Two Vitturis?”

“Husband and wife,” Elle said. “He was the Venetian poet who used to bring young women here to learn how to be courtesans.”

“Right, right.” When Lili arrived at Grotte Cachée with the Hellfires in 1749, more than a century had passed since Vitturi’s visits, but Elle had spoken of him and his wife with great fondness. She used to visit the couple in Venice until it became too noticeable that she wasn’t aging in the slightest. It was always sad for Follets, having to relinquish their friendships with their favorite humans at that point.

A cat mewed a groggy hello. Following the sound, Lili and Elle found Darius, in his feline incarnation, squeezed into the narrow space between the first and second rows of recliners. His dusky gray fur blended so perfectly with the recliners that he was virtually invisible except for his eyes and a flash of teeth when he yawned.