Tremble (54 page)

The archaeologist woke the next day to a room flooded by a mauve luminosity. His head wasn’t as cloudy as he had expected after the sleeping draught. Before he could climb out of the high bed a pretty maid hurried in and pulled open the curtains. She was dressed in a tight pinafore, a crisp white apron stretched over her voluptuous hips. Was this his test, he wondered, as she instructed him to strip entirely while she ran a hot bath for him in the adjoining bathroom.

She emerged ten minutes later, her face flushed from the steam. Alistair stood there shivering, his dressing gown clutched to his groin. The maid, smiling mischievously, walked across the room and pulled the gown away from him.

“My lady was right,” she murmured, glancing at his quivering yard.

In the bath he lay like a child while she washed him, running the sponge over every curve, into every crevice. Alistair shut his eyes and concentrated on declining every irregular Latin verb he could think of. He must not spill his seed, he must not—the phrase ran like a chant through his head as the maid’s hand tracked its seductive path across his skin.

Afterward he stood, legs apart, while she dried him, running the towel between his buttocks, patting him dry under the scrotum, exquisitely encircling his erect organ. He caught sight of himself in the looking glass. There was something sacrificial about his nudity: his pale body with the golden hair running down between his nipples to his groin, his yard maintaining its proud stance as the maid delicately continued her task.

When he stepped out of the bathroom a saffron silk robe lay on the bed. The maid slipped it over his shoulders. It fell in pleats to the ground, loose around his naked torso. She fastened it with a cord of plaited silk, then, standing on tiptoe, blindfolded him.

Despite the daylight outside, the temple had been transformed into twilight by three blazing oil lamps, held by glinting bronzes of male nudes. The flickering flames illuminated the painted walls and the heady scent of smoldering spikenard, myrrh, and ambergris filled the
air. Alistair was led to the center of the dome. Fingertips brushed his face as the blindfold was pulled off.

He stood in the center of a circle of twelve people, each masked, each one’s body oiled and adorned with a girdle of leather. The men’s shoulders were draped in purple silk—the royal color. There were, as promised, six men and six women; he was the seventh man. Through the glow of the flames he saw that the men varied in age. Three seemed of middle years, their torsos solid and covered in the body hair of the mature man. One, over six foot in height, looked as if he might be an athlete, his muscled belly and chest a progression of cambers, his penis lolling heavily under a short fringe of goatskin.

Another Alistair recognized as Toby; he was wearing the halfhead of a goat’s mask and his oiled flesh was nude except for two anklets of gold chain. His body was as beautiful as his face; his tumescent yard, delicate in shape, a stark contrast to the rest of him, which still held the physique of a youth with narrow shoulders, smooth buttocks, and slim hips.

But it was the women toward whom Alistair’s eye was naturally most drawn. Three of them were young, very young, no more than eighteen he guessed—one was a petite blond, her long hair cascading over the mask of a lioness, her breasts small and round with large pink nipples, her hips wide and full, her sex a golden bush. Beside her stood a tall brunette with olive skin, older, her physique a stark contrast to the girl, with full high breasts and impossibly slender hips. Her sex appeared naked, without hair at all. On the other side of the circle stood a Negress, her skin a glistening polished ebony over abundant curves. It was as if her flesh cascaded down from her neck, breasts trumbling down onto an ample belly and full hips. Her eroticism lay in the very bountifulness of her.

Lady Whistle herself wore a silk robe of gold, naked underneath except for a single gold chain that looped around the top of both thighs then encircled her waist, there breaking into a fine lace mesh that ran across her upper torso, encircling but not covering her breasts, to finish at a choker around her neck.

She was crowned by a wreath of vine leaves and a feathered mask covered her eyes. Athene, the owl, Alistair thought, the goddess of wisdom. She held two goblets of wine: golden vessels in the shape of a goat’s horn. It was then that Alistair noticed that the eleven other participants held such a goblet in their hands.

A servant slipped through the circle, her nude body glistening with
reddish ochre. She held out a wreath of vine leaves intertwined with live, writhing snakes. Horrified, Alistair stepped back.

“Fear not, they are drugged and harmless,” Lady Whistle whispered. Tentatively Alistair allowed the wreath to be placed upon his head.

Lady Whistle stepped forward ceremoniously and handed one of the goblets to Alistair, indicating that he should drink. Heart pounding, his cock thickened already, Alistair gulped the liquid—it was a sweetish mead overlaid with spices, with another, unknown flavor that resonated on his palate.

“Let the ceremonies begin,” Lady Whistle announced in Latin. As the others drained their goblets, music began playing—a strange cacophony of lute and drums with a thin reed instrument dancing over the top. Alistair strained his eyes to see a quartet standing in the shadowy corner of the room, dressed as musicians of the era would have been.

Lady Whistle clapped suddenly. The brunette began to run; two of the men followed her and caught her roughly by each arm. She struggled—oversized dramatic gestures that Alistair realized were deliberately theatrical. With a jolt he recognized the scenario: the rape of the Titian representing the formation of Rome. The men carried her back to Lady Whistle who was still standing beside Alistair in the center of the circle. Taking an arm and a leg each they hoisted her up and parted her so that her sex was raised up in midair.

Alistair was transfixed: he had never seen a woman’s sex thus displayed. The labia and clitoris were a glistening ruby, beyond which lay the hills and furrows of her body. Lady Whistle lifted her goblet and poured the rest of her wine over the woman, who wriggled and gasped in the men’s strong hands. Toby then stepped from the circle and, with the woman still held high, took her sex into his mouth, pleasuring her with his tongue, fingers, and lips. The others followed, turning upon each other as they slowly caressed breast, buttock, oiled flesh under fingers, lip upon lip. It was not the impersonal physical taking Alistair had imagined it would be; instead there was a deep sensuality as bodies merged, man and woman, man and man, woman and woman, kissing deeply with tongues lingering, backs arched, arms encircling waists and shoulders. Dreamily he wondered whether they had known each other before to inspire such intimacy.

Lady Whistle herself had two men pleasuring her, one kneeling behind her and one before. The first buried his face between her ample
buttocks; the other—in clear view of Alistair—used his fingers to stretch wide her labia, his tongue a flickering lizard between her legs. Two women faced one another, each sucking the other’s nipple as they were both taken from behind, their buttocks held high. One of the men towered over his female companion as his large yard slid in and out of her; the other man, topped with the mask of a bull, was a lot shorter, his fingers pressed into the flesh of the girl’s buttocks.

The music grew louder, the drumming an ancient thumping beat that resounded off the walls. The revelry that encircled him was a gleaming mass of limb wrapped around limb. Overwhelmed, Alistair sank to the ground, his head spinning. One man’s legs and buttocks transformed into the form of a hairy goat; another’s feet split into the cloven hoof of a ram. Hair ridged along the spine of one young girl and a lion’s tail sprouted between her buttocks, shaking wildly into the air. Had he been drugged, the archaeologist wondered as a liquid fire coursed through his veins, drawing all sensations to one point: his loins.

As his vision blurred and then refocused he dimly realized that the orgy had arranged itself into the formation of the second illustration. Lady Whistle was in the center, her thighs held open by the man whose yard she sucked while another thrust into her as he himself was being taken by a half-bull, half-man. Was it Toby, Alistair wondered foggily. The negress caressed the valet while the man beneath her buried his head between her massive breasts. Twelve bodies forming a single connection through lip on lip, hand on breast, organ buried in organ.

Alistair lay on his side untouched, delirious with desire, each glistening nipple, cock, and labia dancing like delicious fruit before his own mouth. He reached out but no sooner had his fingers achieved a caress than the object of his desire evaporated like a mirage as each participant deliberately moved away.

A drumroll and the orgy metamorphosed into the third stanza, moving closer to the diagram of the stars embedded in the mosaic floor. Around the nucleus of Lady Whistle and her two partners, three other couples arranged themselves to make up the tail and hooves of the ram.

Out of the corner of his eye Alistair could see the brunette on her knees, sucking the yard of one man while another took her from behind, both their legs spread. Another woman, her head between both sets of buttocks, licked wildly at the brunette’s clitoris while she herself was being taken from the front.

Alistair rolled over onto his front, every nerve ending tingling with bliss, his senses sharpening with the mounting effect of the Spanish fly lacing the mead. His heart began to pound wildly as he realized his moment was drawing nearer.

Three drumbeats sounded out. Above, he saw the curtain covering the skylight being slowly pulled across, like the lid of a massive eye opening.

The drums stopped suddenly and the shimmering of a thousand bells rang out. Hands pulled Alistair into a spread-eagled position, pinning down his arms and legs. His silk robe was torn away. Every mouth descended upon him—male and female—traveling over his body, sucking, licking, kissing. Struggling to hold himself back, Alistair shut his eyes. Against his lids danced an image—a flushed face of a beautiful man in his midthirties, bearded, a mysterious smile playing across his full mouth.
Burst, burst into leaf
, he whispered in Latin. Recognizing the god Dionysus, Alistair’s eyes flew open.

The mouths left his flesh and Lady Whistle took his yard into her mouth, encircling him slowly with her tongue, cupping his balls in her hand, his arse, penetrating him with her fingers.
Not yet, not yet
, Dionysus whispered into the scholar’s ear as Alistair reached up and drew the plump buttocks of the young blond girl onto his face. The rich scent of her filled his nostrils as his fingers wound their way across her sticky labia and then into her while his tongue flicked across the erect bud of her clitoris. She guided his blind hands to full breasts that he knew must be Lady Whistle’s as the aristocrat lowered herself onto his rock-hard cock.

The blond moved away. Now Alistair could see Lady Whistle riding him, her breasts bouncing gently. Behind her, Toby knelt and eased himself into her nether entrance. An expression of both ecstasy and pain came across her features. Above Alistair’s head another man thrust out his penis, the goat fur on his thighs and his cloven hooves vividly realistic to Alistair’s befuddled mind, which was now entirely transported back to a mythological time of satyrs and fauns.

Lady Whistle leaned forward and took the goat-man’s cock into her mouth, sucking greedily. Alistair squeezed down hard on her nipples. The man being sucked began to caress the breasts of the girl on his left as she parted her legs for another man’s organ. Alistair was dimly aware that the formation was being completed through touch and intercourse—each body linking with the others to form the backbone, flanks, and legs of the Ram.

Alistair felt his spirit rise from his body and float to the roof. It hovered there and he looked down upon the revelry. A couple covered each of the stars, limbs stretched out to complete the outline. He could see himself beneath Lady Whistle, the only unmasked person, his lips pulled back in bliss as she rode him over and over. The figure of the bearded priest on the mural began to glow as a shaft of sunlight traveled across the room, illuminating one by one the figures undulating in their strange dance. Finally it reached the central nucleus of Lady Whistle and Alistair.
Whoosh
: Alistair was sucked straight back into his body. He felt the tight, burning ring of Lady Whistle’s sex sliding up and down his cock and the mounting pressure of orgasm building at the back of his head, deep in his balls, as every nerve ending tensed in preparation to blast forth in a shuddering propulsion of energy.

Now!
Dionysus whispered,
now!

“Now!” screamed Lady Whistle. “Now!” Her vagina began to clench, and, blinded suddenly by the passing sunlight, Alistair exploded, his seed shooting forth in a great shuddering of white-hot pleasure. All around him orgasmed in unison and he felt his life energy ejecting itself away from his body, leaving him suddenly drained.

As the screams and groans subsided, with Lady Whistle still sitting astride him, Alistair opened his eyes and found himself staring at the blank fifth panel. To his horror, it magically began to form a tableau—the missing section he had always suspected existed. He saw the orgy, moments after completion, the spent satyrs lying across their nymphs, emperor across priestess, empress across gladiator, all still masked. In the center, the priest lay spread-eagled as if sacrificed. His face was now a mass of wrinkles, the visage of the old Dionysus, the gnarled vine waiting to be cut down to make way for the new.

Alistair touched his own face. Rough and wrinkled, it did not feel like his skin as he knew it. Lady Whistle slid off her mask. Smiling down at him was the face of a beautiful young woman; herself at twenty-three. Alistair pushed the aristocrat off and began to scream.