Author: Akiko

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I took a breath. “Yes. All of us. Right now.”

Gary whooped. Lou kissed me. Ana took my hand, and Mateo, laughing, got up and grabbed the bottle. We tore through the resort gardens like teenagers and fell into Villa Nine’s hot tub, in a cloud of steam and shrieking and strawberries.

Clothes landed in the palms. Lou’s mouth was on my neck. Ana’s hand slid down my belly to my clit, slow and sure, and I came apart against her palm with a cry that startled a bird. Mateo knelt on the edge, and I took him in my mouth while Ana kissed my shoulders and Lou pulled Gary in by the hair and kissed him till he groaned.

Then it all went gloriously to chaos. Ana pushed her face between my thighs on the hot tub steps. Lou rode Mateo on a sun lounger, Gary stood behind her, kissing her spine, and I was somehow kissing all three of them at once. I sucked Gary while Ana’s fingers curled inside me. I got fucked in the shallows by Mateo, from behind, one leg up, while Lou and Ana kissed over my head. A condom wrapper hit Gary in the eye. Mateo got a cramp. Someone lost a flip-flop in the filter.

We finished at four in the morning, boneless and giggling, all five of us in a pile on the villa floor.

“Ten out of ten,” said Ana. “Would stretch again.”

At breakfast the waiter asked if we’d all like the usual.

I had never loved a wristband more.

Ending 3 of 16: All Inclusive. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I let go of him and put my hand on his chest, over his heart. “More than one night,” I said. “If that’s all right.”

His face did something complicated and then lit up like a Christmas tree. “More. Yes. Absolutely more.”

So we took it slowly. He took off the last of my clothes like he was unwrapping something he planned to keep. I undressed him. We lay on our sides, facing one another, and I put him inside me with my leg over his hip, his hand cupped round my cheek, his eyes never leaving mine. It was unhurried and glorious. Every roll of his hips pressed him deep and found a place inside me that made me gasp. I came softly, then again, my forehead on his, whispering his name. He held on until I begged him to let go, and then he shook and came inside the condom with a groan that sounded almost like a laugh.

We slept tangled. At dawn he left for his shift and kissed me goodbye with proper, wonderful, daylight tenderness.

The rest of the week was a blur of beach and bed. He took me to the market in Playa. I met his sister. He taught me to curse in Spanish. At the airport he said, “You come back at Christmas, I’ll have the bar quiet.”

I rebooked my flight on the plane home.

And I’m already deciding what to wear.

Ending 2 of 16: Something More. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I tightened my fingers round him and said it straight. “Tonight. All of it. Tomorrow I’m a tourist again.”

“Understood,” Mateo said, and kissed me like a man who’d been given a deadline and a gift.

He rolled on a condom from his pocket, and I pushed him onto his back and straddled him. I held his cock upright and sank down onto it an inch at a time, slow, feeling every thick, hot inch stretch me open. We both groaned. His hands gripped my hips. I started to ride him, rolling my hips, my breasts bouncing in the moonlight, and he watched with his lips parted like he couldn’t believe his luck.

“Mierda, Sophie. Look at you.”

“Shut up and fuck me.”

He did. He flipped me over and drove into me from behind, one hand fisted in my hair, the other under me rubbing my clit in tight little circles. The bed slammed against the cabana post. I bit the pillow and came, clenching round him, and he followed with a shout and a long shuddering thrust that went on and on.

We did it twice more. Once against the wall, once in the outdoor shower with the water running cold and my leg hooked round his waist.

At five-thirty he kissed my shoulder and dressed in the dark. “Best night shift of my life,” he whispered.

At the bar at noon he made me a margarita, no salt, extra lime, and winked. I tipped him a hundred pesos and an excellent view of my cleavage. We never spoke of it again. We never had to.

Ending 1 of 16: One Night Only. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I pocketed the key and went to find a drink, because that is what I always do when something frightening and exciting happens at the same time.

The ballroom was roaring. A swing band, chandeliers, a Napoleon dancing with a skeleton, Tom himself as Dracula by the punch bowl, bellowing at somebody about the cloak. I fought my way to the bar and found the only gap, beside a woman in a scarlet silk dress and a red domino mask, with dark curls pinned up and lips painted the colour of a fire engine.

“Vampires,” she said to nobody, watching Tom. “The word came into English from German, via Serbian. Not Transylvanian. Somebody should tell him.”

“I’ll tell him,” I said. “Right after I’ve been told I’m wrong.”

“You’re not wrong, you’re just not me.” She turned. Behind the red mask her eyes were dark and quick and amused, and they dropped to my left wrist. To the black ribbon. To the pocket where the key sat heavy against my thigh.

“Ah,” she said softly. “She’s picked you.”

She leaned in until her mouth was at my ear. I felt the heat of her breath on my neck, and everything south of my belt tightened.

“Red ribbon,” she whispered. “End of the corridor. Ten minutes. I am not telling you my name and you’re not telling me yours. Come and find out what I do instead.”

She took her drink and walked away through the crowd, hips swinging.

→ I go upstairs and look for the red door

→ I lose my nerve and head for the kitchen

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I followed her up. It would have been rude not to, and also I couldn’t have looked anywhere else if I’d tried. The satin moved over her hips on every step, and the slit kept opening on a long, strong, bare leg.

“Ages,” she said over her shoulder, “are the one thing you may say out loud. Nobody up here is under twenty-five. Tom’s list is very strict. And if anyone, anywhere, says the word cinders, everything stops. No sulking, no questions.”

“Cinders. Got it.”

The upstairs corridor was lit by candles in jam jars. Every door had a ribbon knotted on its handle.

“Blue is the library,” she said, strolling. “Quiet. Somebody reading and hoping to be interrupted. Purple is the old billiard room. Seven or eight people at the moment, and the baize has seen things. Black is mine.” She glanced back at me through those silver whiskers. “And the red one, right at the end, is spoken for. She tied it herself. She’s waiting for somebody.”

“Who?”

“That,” she said, “is the point of the masks.”

A door halfway along opened. Gold ribbon. A man in a silver wolf mask and a woman in a white swan mask stood there in the glow, holding hands. The woman smiled at me, slow and deliberate, and crooked one finger.

The cat woman stopped beside me, close enough that I smelled jasmine and warm skin.

“Well, highwayman? They asked first. But I’m standing right here.”

→ I take the invitation from the couple at the gold door

→ I ask the cat woman what’s behind the black ribbon

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I lost my nerve in a very British way. I went and stood in the kitchen and made tea.

Tom found me there ten minutes later, still in his Dracula cape, a plastic fang hanging out of his mouth. He took one look at the mug and the black ribbon on my wrist and howled.

“You’ve been given the key! You absolute legend! And you’re down here making a brew?”

“There was a woman,” I said. “In red. She said she was waiting.”

“Ah. Her.” Tom grinned and tapped the side of his nose. “I’m not saying a thing. Rule of the house, mate. Nobody says who anybody is.” He got himself a beer, leaned on the fridge and softened a bit. “Listen. You’ve had a rough couple of years. You don’t have to do anything up there. That’s the whole point. Everybody who goes up has said yes to whatever they’re doing, and anybody can stop anything with one word. It’s the safest room in London.”

“That’s actually quite reassuring.”

“Library’s quiet, if you want quiet. Blue ribbon. Some woman’s been in there with a book for two hours, looking like she’s waiting to be talked to.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Or there’s the back door and the garden, and nobody will ever mention it again. Your choice, Ben. Honestly.”

The key sat in my hand. Warm and heavy, and absolutely mine to use or not.

→ I take the key up to the library

→ I step out into the garden and walk away

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I climbed the stairs with my heart going like a lift motor with a bad bearing.

The corridor was long and dim, candle flames shivering in their jam jars. Blue ribbon: a crack of lamplight, the smell of old books. Gold: a rhythmic creak, and a woman’s voice saying yes, oh yes, just like that. Black: shut tight, quiet. The key was warm in my fist.

At the far end, a red ribbon hung on a dark wooden door, tied in a perfect bow. Next to it, one door before, was purple.

Purple was open a few inches. Candlelight and heat poured through the gap, and a babble of low voices and wet, slapping sounds, laughter, a man groaning, a woman’s voice breathlessly saying more. Somebody inside saw me looking. A hand in a long gold glove appeared through the gap and waggled its fingers.

“Come on in, highwayman,” a voice called, amused. “There’s room.”

Down the corridor the red door waited, still and silent. A minute earlier a woman in a scarlet dress had told me exactly where to find her.

I stood between them with the key in one hand and my own pulse in my ears and about two seconds of courage left.

→ I put the key in the red door

→ I push open the purple door

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“Mine is the room nobody gets shown,” she said. “But you asked nicely, and I like your hands.”

She opened the black-ribboned door with a key of her own. Inside was a small, warm room with a black velvet chaise, a mirror taller than me, and a dressing table covered in candle stubs and silver brushes. Her room, for the night, and nobody else’s.

“I run the stairs,” she said, closing the door. “I keep everyone safe, I tie the wrists, I count the keys back in at three. I don’t play.” She turned to look at me, a black cat in a black room. “Usually.”

“What changed?”

“You said sorry to the coat stand.” Her gloved hand came to my chest. “And then you said it to a potted palm. Nobody is that polite unless they mean it.”

I kissed her. I’d barely decided to, my mouth was just there. Her lips were soft behind the velvet edge of the mask, and she made a small noise and pulled me in by the tailcoat and kissed me back hungrily, her tongue sliding against mine.

When she stopped she was breathing hard. Her thigh had pushed between mine, and I’m sure she could feel exactly how pleased I was.

“I’m thirty-four,” she said. “I’m not going to tell you my name. Do you want to be told what to do, or do you want to ask me something?”

→ I tell her to take charge of me

→ I ask her what her name is

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“We’ve been hoping someone nice would come along,” said the woman in the swan mask. She had a warm, husky voice and a mouth that looked made for laughing. “Come in, highwayman. Please. Let me look at you properly.”

The room was lamplit gold, with a huge four-poster and a velvet armchair in the corner. The man in the wolf mask shut the door behind us, gently, and leaned against it. Broad, dark-bearded, shoulders like a rugby player.

“I’m thirty-eight,” he said. “She’s thirty-six. Ages are allowed.”

“Thirty-three,” I said. “Lift engineer. Names are not.”

“Lift engineer,” the woman said, delighted. “Oh, that’s good. I’ve never been taken up by a professional.”

We all laughed, and the nerves went out of the room like air from a tyre.

Then she stepped close and went serious. “Here’s what we want. We’ve talked about it for a year. One night, one man, someone kind. My husband wants to watch me and then join in. I want both of you, at once. But only if you do. And you say no the second you want to, to either of us, and we say thank you and mean it.”

She took my hand and laid it flat on the swan’s white feathers over her breast. Her heart was going like a bird’s.

Behind her the wolf nodded once, eyes bright through the slits, one hand rubbing the front of his trousers.

“Yes or no, highwayman?”

→ I say yes, to both of them

→ I ask if I can watch them first