Author: Akiko

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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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“You lead,” I said. “Mask on. Names secret. Tell me what you want.”

“That,” she said, “was the right answer.”

She undressed me like unwrapping a present, then stepped out of the scarlet silk. She was lean and strong, freckles scattered across her shoulders, a pale scar on one knee, and a mouth I wanted to learn.

She put me on my back and knelt astride my face. “Tongue. Slowly. Tell me if you like it.”

I loved it. I licked her until she was dripping on my chin, circling her clit, two fingers inside her, her thighs trembling either side of my ears. She came with a long ragged cry, grinding down on my mouth. Then she turned, rolled a condom on me, and slid down my cock with a gasp that I felt in my teeth.

We were wild. Her on top, red mask and bare breasts bouncing in the firelight. Me flipping her onto her back and pounding into her, her heels digging into my arse, her nails down my back. We came together, shouting nothing at all. Then slower, a second time, spooned in the red sheets, her back warm against my chest, her fingers laced in mine.

At dawn she turned in my arms. “Do you want to know?” she said.

“Yes.”

She lifted off the domino. Dark eyes, freckled nose, a smile I’d seen over a pint every Thursday for two years.

“Nina,” I said. “Quiz captain Nina?”

“You’ve owed me a round since March,” she said. “Serbian, via German. I knew it was you the second you apologised to a coat stand.”

Ending 9 of 16: Mask Off. You found the full happy ending.

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“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am. I just can’t do this without a name.”

She nodded, slowly. There wasn’t a flicker of anger in her. She went to the door and opened it, and the candlelit corridor spilled in, along with a thread of laughter from somewhere far away.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “That’s honest. A lot of men would have lied and then sulked.”

“I wanted to say yes.”

“I know you did.” She touched my cheek with one black glove. “Your body already did. But it has to be yes all the way down, highwayman, or it isn’t worth having. That goes for me too.”

I didn’t want to leave. I could feel my cock pulsing against my trousers, I could still smell jasmine, and every cell in my body was shouting at me not to be a pillock. But I’d said it, and she’d heard it, and now it was done.

At the top of the stairs she took the key from me, unclipped the ribbon, and slid it into her bodice. She kissed me once, on the cheek, quickly.

“If you change your mind,” she said, “I’m here until three.”

I walked home through the cold with my hands in my pockets and an erection that lasted all the way to the bus stop. I got myself off at two in the morning with the light off, thinking about silver whiskers and a mouth I’d never get to learn.

The night was perfectly fine. I was just a bit sad about it.

Ending 8 of 16: Too Much to Ask. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“What do you want?” I said. “Tell me. Everything. Out loud.”

Her eyes widened behind the mask. Then a slow, extraordinary smile spread across her mouth.

“Nobody ever asks that,” she said. “They just assume.” She took my hand and drew it to her hip. “Sit on the chaise. I’ll tell you everything.”

I sat. She stood in front of me and began to undress, and she talked while she did it, low and unhurried and filthy. She wanted to be kissed for a very long time first. She wanted my mouth on her breasts, because it was the best part and nobody ever bothered. She wanted me on my knees with my tongue inside her until she begged. She wanted me to hold her wrists above her head and fuck her slowly on the bed until she cried out.

“And afterwards,” she said, naked now, with her black mask on and her ears askew, “I want you to say something kind. That’s all.”

I did all of it. I kissed her for what felt like twenty minutes. I took each nipple between my lips and sucked until she moaned. I licked her to a shuddering climax with her thighs on my shoulders, and when she pinned my wrists to the pillow and said, “Now,” I pushed into her, slow and deep, watching her face. She came twice. The second time she said, in a cracked voice, “Oh, God, you listened.”

Afterwards I stroked her hair and told her she was gorgeous, and meant it.

She didn’t give me her name. She gave me a kiss that I thought about for a month.

Ending 7 of 16: Ask Me Anything. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“Can I touch you too?” I said. “I’d really like to.”

She stopped. For a second the whole room waited. Then the corner of her mouth went up under the velvet.

“Good,” she said. “You asked. That is exactly the right thing to say. Yes.”

I stood up. I took her by the waist and walked her backwards until her bum met the dressing table, and she hopped up onto it, scattering candle stubs, and spread her thighs. The black satin rode up. She wore nothing under it. She was shaved smooth and glistening.

I knelt. I kissed the inside of her knee, and her thigh, and then I licked her, one long flat stroke, and she swore. I did it again, slower, then closed my lips round her clit and sucked, two fingers sliding into her, curling forward the way you’d feel for the tight spot in a faulty lift. She grabbed my hair. “There,” she said. “Oh, fuck. There.”

She came on my mouth with a cry that rattled the silver brushes. Then she pulled me up, rolled a condom over me, turned and braced both hands on the mirror.

I took her from behind. The mirror showed everything: her mask, her open mouth, my face, her breasts swaying, her eyes catching mine in the glass. She came again, hard, watching herself do it, and I followed her, growling into her shoulder.

She turned and kissed me. “Highwayman,” she said. “You’re allowed back.”

Ending 6 of 16: Mirror Work. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“Wrists,” she said.

I held them out. She took the thin black ribbon from my left wrist, the one that said yes, and looked at me over it.

“Still yes?”

“Yes.”

“Say it properly.”

“Yes. Please. Tie me.”

She looped it twice round both wrists, pulled it snug, and fastened it to the iron scroll at the head of the chaise, just tight enough to keep me honest. Then she stood, reached behind her, and let the black satin fall to her feet.

She was magnificent. Tall, strong, tanned in the candlelight, small high breasts, nipples like dark buttons, a neat strip of black hair. She stepped out of the dress and straddled my lap, wearing only the mask.

“I’m going to take my time,” she said. “And you’re not going to come until I’ve told you to. Is that understood?”

“Yes.”

She rolled a condom onto me with her mouth. Then she slid down on my cock in one long, slick, merciless glide and stayed there, fully seated, grinding in tiny circles while I begged. She rode me slowly, then fast, then slowly again, stopping whenever I got close, her nails raking my chest, her voice in my ear: not yet, not yet, you’re so good, not yet.

When she finally said now, I came so hard I saw stars. She followed me down with a shudder, laughing into my neck.

She untied me, kissed my wrists, and kept the ribbon.

Ending 5 of 16: Tied Up. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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