Author: Akiko

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I walked out through the kitchen door into the garden, and the cold hit me like a good slap.

It was a lovely night. Clear, frosty, a big orange moon over the bare apple trees. Somebody had lit a fire pit on the lawn, and a handful of guests in hats and cloaks stood round it, passing a bottle and telling ghost stories. A man dressed as a pirate was explaining the plot of a film nobody had seen. Nobody was masked as anyone who was upstairs. Everyone was just cold and cheerful.

I stood on the edge of the grass with my breath steaming and the key in my pocket. Behind me the house glowed like a lantern. Music pulsed out of the ballroom, and above it, along the first floor, I could see window after window with a dim flicker of candlelight behind curtains.

One of the upper windows was lit red. A figure in the glass, just a shape, a woman with her hair pinned up, looking down over the garden. Maybe at me. Maybe at nothing.

It might have been a trick of the light.

I’m a sensible man. I have a lift to inspect at nine on Monday. I have a perfectly nice flat and a perfectly nice bed, and nobody had made me do a single thing tonight.

The side gate was twenty feet away, the taxi rank a five-minute walk beyond it. And at the front door, at the foot of the stairs, the cat woman was surely still waiting.

→ I keep walking and call a taxi

→ I go back and return the key at the front door

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The library was lamplit, warm and lovely, a long room with floor-to-ceiling shelves, a rolling ladder, a fire turned low, and one deep leather armchair. In the armchair sat a woman in a silver butterfly mask, bare feet tucked under her, a green velvet dress pooled around her legs and a battered paperback in her hand.

She looked up over the top of it. “You’re not a murder victim,” she said. “Good. I was expecting one.”

“Sorry. Wrong room?”

“Blue ribbon. Right room.” She patted the footstool by her chair. “Sit. I’m thirty-eight and I’ve read this chapter four times. I’d rather talk to you.”

So I sat. And we talked, and she was funny, sharp, a bit self-mocking, a woman who had spent a long time being the sensible one at parties. She’d come up here to read. She’d said yes to the quiet. She’d stayed because somebody she hadn’t expected to like might walk through the door.

“I don’t want a performance,” she said, tracing the spine of her book. “I want somebody who’ll sit with me, and maybe, if it feels right, do the other thing. No rush. No audience.”

Through the soft green velvet I could see the shape of her thigh. The firelight shone in her eyes. She put the book on the arm of the chair and held out her hand, palm up.

“So,” she said. “What would you like to do, highwayman?”

→ I stay on the footstool and keep talking

→ I ask what she’d like to do that she’s never done in a library

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I pushed the purple door open and went in, because the key was warm, the ribbon was tight, and I had spent three years saying no to everything.

The old billiard room was a fever dream. Candles on every ledge, a table pushed to the middle with its baize covered by a heap of bare bodies, a leather sofa along one wall with three more entwined on it. Masks everywhere. Feathers, glitter, leather, lace. And above the noise a low warm hum of voices, nobody shouting, everyone checking.

“Is this good?” Somebody was saying it, right now, in the dark. “Yes? Tell me if it’s not.” And somebody else, “God, yes, don’t stop.”

A woman in a gold mask, tall, dark-skinned, naked except for the long glove I’d seen through the door, pulled me in by the cravat.

“You’re new. Welcome. There are three rules and one word, and you’ve been told them.” She looked me up and down. “I’m twenty-nine, and I’m going to take your trousers off in front of all these lovely people unless you say otherwise. Do you say otherwise?”

My heart was a drum. Across the room a man in a devil mask looked up from between a woman’s thighs and gave me a thumbs up.

I could say yes, and let the room swallow me whole. Or I could say thank you, let go of her hand, and walk back down the corridor to a red ribbon and a woman who had said ten minutes.

→ I tell her yes

→ I tell her thanks, but I’m expected elsewhere

← Back

The brass key turned like it had been oiled for me.

The red room was dim and warm and smelled of candle wax and expensive perfume. A huge bed, dark red sheets, a fire crackling in the grate. She stood at the tall window with her back to me, the scarlet silk clinging to her waist and hips, the red domino mask still on, one hand resting on the glass.

“You came,” she said, without turning. “Ten minutes. I’d started to think you wouldn’t.”

“I nearly didn’t. I’m Ben. Sorry. I’m not supposed to…”

“Thirty-three,” she said, “single, fixes lifts for a living, terrible at lying. Tom’s list had a few details.” She turned. “I’m thirty-one. That’s all you get, and that’s the point. Nobody here has to be anyone else’s anything.”

She crossed the room and stopped inches away. Her gloved fingers walked up my chest and unknotted my cravat. Her eyes were doing something warm and wicked behind the red.

“The rules are simple. Masks stay on. If either of us says cinders, everything stops. Otherwise, I’d like to lead. I’d like you to do what I ask, and I’d like you to tell me what you like and what you don’t, out loud, in your own filthy words.”

Her dress dropped open at the shoulder. She was wearing nothing underneath it.

“Do you want to find out who I am?” she said, very softly. “Or do you want to find out what I’m like?”

→ I keep the rules and let her lead

→ I tell her I think I know who she is

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“What’s your name?” I said.

I regretted it before the words were finished.

The room changed. The cat stepped back, her hand slid off my chest, and for a second she was just a woman in a mask who had been told something she’d said at the door. She was not cross. She was very still.

“That,” she said, “is the only question I won’t answer.”

“Sorry. God. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’d rather you ask than guess.” Her voice stayed soft and level, the voice of someone who has said this to a lot of men and forgiven most of them. “But it’s rule two, and I wrote the rules. Masks stay on. Names stay secret. If either of those is a problem for you, there’s a staircase, a garden, and a taxi rank, and nobody will think any less of you.”

I looked at her. At the whiskers, the ears, the generous mouth. At the bare strip of thigh the slit had shown me. I wanted to know her name very badly and I wanted her very badly, and for the first time in my life I could see those were two separate things.

“If you want to stay,” she said, “ask me something else. If you don’t, say goodnight, and I’ll open the door.”

She let go of the handle. Her chest rose and fell. She was waiting, perfectly polite, perfectly sure of herself, for what I’d choose.

→ I ask her what she wants instead

→ I tell her I can’t do this without a name

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“Take charge of me,” I said. It came out gruffer than I’d planned. “Please.”

Behind the mask her eyes lit up, and the whole room seemed to shift on its axis.

“Good,” she said. “On the chaise. Hands behind your head. Don’t move them until I say.”

I sat. I put my hands behind my head, like a man being arrested by somebody he really wants to be arrested by. She stood in front of me and peeled off her gloves, one finger at a time, and dropped them in my lap.

“Everything stays on except what I take off,” she said. “That includes your mask.”

She unbuttoned my shirt and my trousers, without hurry, and drew my cock out into the candlelight. She looked at it for a long moment, head tilted, ears tilted too.

“Hm,” she said. “That’ll do nicely.”

Then she knelt between my knees and licked me. One slow, wet stripe from the base to the tip, and I made a noise I’m not proud of. She did it again. She took the head in her mouth and sucked, just the head, while her hand worked the base, and when my hips lifted she tutted and stopped completely.

“Hands,” she said. “Mask. Words. What do you say, highwayman?”

“Please,” I said. “Please, may I come in your mouth.”

“No,” she said, smiling. “Not yet.”

→ I let her tie my wrists with the ribbon

→ I ask her to let me touch her too

← Back

“Watch,” the swan said, and her whole face went soft behind the feathers. “Yes. We’d like that. That’s a lovely thing to ask for.”

She walked me to the velvet armchair and sat me in it like a king. The wolf poured me a whisky from a decanter without a word and put it in my hand. Then they turned to each other.

I’d never watched anything like it from three feet away. She undressed him slowly, button by button, kissing every inch she uncovered, until he stood bare and thick and hard, the silver wolf mask still on his face. She sank down in front of him. Her red mouth closed round his cock, and he put one big hand in her hair and groaned.

Then he lifted her onto the bed. He pushed her thighs apart, and she looked straight at me over the curve of her own belly as he lowered his head. She was loud. She said his name, then remembered, and said, “Wolf, oh God, Wolf, there,” and I laughed out loud, and so did she, and then she was gasping again.

My cock was aching against my trousers. I palmed it through the cloth, and she saw.

“Highwayman,” she panted, one hand knotted in her husband’s hair. “Do you want to stay in that chair? Because you’re welcome to stay in that chair. There’s no wrong answer.”

→ I keep my hands on the armrests and stay

→ I thank them and slip out quietly

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“Yes,” I said. “Both. Please.”

The swan woman exhaled like she’d been holding it all year. She took my face in both hands and kissed me, deep and slow and wet, while I felt the wolf’s big hands settle on my shoulders from behind and ease the tailcoat off me. The coat hit the floor. My cravat followed. Fingers worked down my shirt buttons, hers in front, his from behind, until I stood bare-chested between them and shaking a little.

“You’re lovely,” she murmured. “Look at him, darling. He’s lovely.”

“He is,” said the wolf, in my ear, gravelly. “Does he like being touched?”

“He does,” I said. My voice cracked and they both laughed, kindly.

She undid my belt and my trousers dropped, and my cock sprang out hard against her silk skirt. She wrapped one hand round it, thumb sliding across the wet tip, and I swore. Behind her, the wolf unzipped her gown, and the whole thing slithered down her body. She was pale and lush, heavy breasted, dark nipples, a soft round belly, black stockings and nothing else but the feathers on her face.

Her husband cupped her breasts from behind. She leaned back into him, still stroking me, and looked up at me through the white feathers.

“Now,” said the swan, breathless. “Tell us what you want, highwayman. One of us will happily do it. Or both.”

→ I tell them I’ll do whatever Swan wants

→ I tell them exactly what I want

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I went back in. The ballroom was in full swing, and at the foot of the stairs the cat woman stood exactly where I had left her, as if she’d been carved there.

I held out the key. “Not tonight,” I said. “But thank you. I mean it.”

“Good answer.” She took it, looked at it, and then up at me through the whiskers. “Nobody ever gives it back. Most men think the key is a prize. It’s an offer.”

“It was a good offer.”

“It is.” The corner of her mouth went up. “Highwayman. I’m off duty for ten minutes. The coats are very warm and very private, and nobody has hung a ribbon on the cupboard under the stairs. Would you like to?”

I thought about it for approximately one heartbeat.

“Yes,” I said.

She led me to a tiny cupboard behind the stairs, crammed with other people’s coats, fur and wool and the smell of winter. She shut the door. In the dark, I felt her take both my hands and put them against the wall.

“Keep them there,” she said. “If you want me to stop, say cinders.”

I heard my zip. I felt her breath, then her mouth, hot and slick and slow, taking all of me, one gloved hand wrapped round the base. I leaned my head against a mink and gasped. She worked me with her tongue and her throat, humming, her hand working in time. When I told her I was close she held on, took everything, and swallowed.

She stood up and kissed my cheek.

“Same time next year,” she said. “Mask on.”

Ending 16 of 16: Key Returned. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I kept walking. I went through the side gate, down the lane and onto the main road, past a very drunk Wonder Woman being sick politely in a hedge, and I called a cab.

It came in eight minutes. I sat in the back in my tricorn hat and my tailcoat, the black ribbon still on my wrist, the key in my pocket, and I watched the lit windows of Hartley House shrink to a dim orange star in the rear window.

The driver glanced at me in the mirror. “Good party?”

“Don’t know,” I said.

At home I put the kettle on and didn’t drink the tea. I sat on the edge of my bed with the key in my hand and I thought about a woman in a scarlet dress whispering in my ear, and the heat of her breath, and the words end of the corridor. I lay back and unbuttoned my trousers and took myself in hand, slowly, picturing the red mouth, the long hands. It didn’t take long. It was a decent orgasm and a melancholy one. I came on my stomach with my other hand over my eyes.

My phone buzzed on the bedside table. Tom.

Mate. Red dress at the bar asked where you went. Rules end at midnight so: her name’s Nina. Quiz captain Nina, you absolute idiot. She’s been up there since ten waiting for a highwayman.

I read it three times. Then I put the key on the bedside table, next to my keys, my phone and a wasted evening, and lay in the dark thinking about Thursday.

Ending 15 of 16: Taxi Home. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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