Author: Akiko

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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

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“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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“What’s something you’ve always wanted to do in a library,” I said, “and never had the nerve?”

She went pink under the butterfly. “Against the shelves. Standing up. With a ladder.” She said it so fast the words ran together. “Is that mad?”

“It’s the best idea anyone’s had all night.”

She put the book on the floor, stood up, and walked me backwards to the tall shelves, kissing me hard, her tongue in my mouth. I lifted her. She wrapped her legs round my waist. Her skirt rode up and I found out that she wasn’t wearing any knickers and was absolutely soaking.

“Condom,” she gasped. “Pocket.”

I got one on one-handed. She guided me in, and I thrust up into her while the spines of Dickens dug into her back. She was loud. She gripped my shoulders and moaned into my neck. “Yes, highwayman, yes, harder.”

“Hold on,” I said, and tried to take a step. My foot caught the wheel of the rolling ladder.

It rolled. We went down together in a tangle, her laughing, me swearing, sprawled on the Persian rug with a volume of Trollope on my head, still joined.

She wriggled on top of me, helpless with giggles. Then she stopped laughing. She rolled her hips, slow and deliberate, and said, “Don’t you dare stop.”

I didn’t. She came on top of me, riding, hands on my chest, and I flipped her over and finished on the rug, gasping.

“Best library visit I’ve ever had,” she said.

Ending 14 of 16: The Ladder. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“I’d like to stay here,” I said. “On the footstool. And keep talking.”

She laughed, surprised and pleased, and we talked. About books, about her job, about the hell of being the sensible one. About how I’d spent three years not dating anybody because I’d got comfortable. We shared the last of her whisky from a flask. At some point she put her hand on mine, and at some point after that I kissed her wrist.

“That’s sweet,” she said. “Do it again.”

I kissed the inside of her wrist. Then her palm. Then the soft crook of her elbow, and she shivered. She slid down out of the chair onto the rug in front of the fire, pulling me with her, and kissed me slowly, thoroughly, the way you would if you had until morning.

She undressed me. I undressed her. The green velvet slid down to a lovely freckled body, soft hips, a full, heavy chest. I kissed all of it. I took my time with her breasts. I took my time between her thighs, until her hand was in my hair and she said, steadily, “Yes, there, exactly there,” and came with a long, low moan.

Then I was inside her, on the rug in the firelight, rocking slowly. She wrapped her legs around me. We moved like we’d done it for years. When she came again she held my gaze, and I came a minute later, shaking, her name unspoken between us.

We slept in front of the fire under Tom’s tartan throw.

She’d gone by morning. The butterfly mask lay on the pillow, and I took it home.

Ending 13 of 16: Slow Burn. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“Thank you,” I said, “but I’m expected elsewhere.”

Gold Glove smiled, let go of my hand and squeezed it once. “Of course. Go and be expected. Come back if it goes wrong.”

I jogged down the corridor with the key in my hand and a hard-on that made jogging an unpleasant business. The red door still had its red ribbon.

Except it didn’t, quite. The ribbon had been taken off its bow and retied round the handle. On top of it, as neat as a cat on a wall, hung a small white ribbon. Closed.

I knocked softly. “It’s me. Highwayman.”

Nothing. A sound inside, a low laugh, a woman’s laugh, followed by the rustle of silk. And then a man’s voice, warm and unhurried, saying something I couldn’t make out. She’d waited. Obviously she’d waited. Ten minutes was ten minutes.

A folded scrap of paper lay on the carpet by the door. I picked it up with a shaking hand.

Ten minutes, I said. Hope the purple room was worth it. Maybe next year.

R.

I sat on the floor in the corridor with my back against the wall and my cock heavy in my trousers and laughed until I choked. Then I did something I’m not proud of, and I won’t describe it, but I did it with the note in my other hand.

It was a good orgasm. It was also a very lonely one.

Ending 12 of 16: Ten Minutes Late. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“Yes,” I said.

She grinned, took my hand, and led me into the candlelight. The billiard table was a landscape of bodies, and I was welcomed onto it like a lost cousin. Someone pulled off my tricorn. Somebody undid my cravat. Gold Glove, twenty-nine like she’d said, undid my trousers and went down on her knees on the baize with her hands on my thighs.

“Is this good?” she asked.

“Fantastic.”

Her mouth was wet and clever. I held on to the cue rack and groaned, and a woman in a white lace mask put her mouth on my neck and a hand on my arse, and the devil man, who had finished between somebody’s thighs, wandered over and murmured, “Mind if I join?” and I said, “Please.”

I ended up on the leather sofa with the woman in lace riding me hard, her breasts in my hands, her friend in a leopard mask kneeling over my face, tasting like peach and sweat. Somebody’s hands, I didn’t know whose, stroked my balls. Somebody’s tongue found the lace woman’s clit, and she came with a scream, clenching around me.

I came with a groan I could feel in my knees. Cheers. Actual applause, which was frankly a bit much.

The room hummed. People swapped. People laughed, checked in, drank water. I fell asleep on a heap of velvet cushions at four, and woke at ten with a hangover, a stranger’s stocking round my neck, and an immense, stupid grin.

Ending 11 of 16: Billiard Room. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“I think I know you,” I said. “Hold on. It’s Chloe, isn’t it? From the climbing wall?”

Her hand stopped on my chest.

It was a small thing, a pause no longer than a breath, but the room cooled by about ten degrees. The fire popped. She took a very slow step back, and the red silk slid off her shoulder and she didn’t catch it.

“No,” she said. “It isn’t.”

“Sorry. I thought…”

“I know what you thought.” She wasn’t angry. She sounded tired, a little amused, a little hurt. “I told you the rules. I didn’t want to be a guess. I wanted to be somebody who wasn’t anybody’s anything for one night.”

“I’m an idiot.”

“A bit.” She considered me. “But you’re also here, and you’ve got an erection, and I’ve got ten minutes before I stop wanting to. I’m leading. You don’t talk. And you don’t get to know.”

She pushed me onto the bed, climbed up, and took my cock in her glove. I should have stopped. I didn’t. She stroked me tight and fast, watching my face, twisting at the head, and I came with a gasp across my stomach in under a minute.

She wiped her glove on the red sheet, kissed my forehead, and retied her dress.

“Goodnight, Ben.”

The door shut behind her. On Thursday, at the pub quiz, our captain Nina frowned at my wrong answer, then gave me a look I couldn’t read, and I never did work out why my ears went hot.

Ending 10 of 16: Wrong Name. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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