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Temple

By: kidthor



“Why did they have to build the cursed thing all the way up the side of the mountain?”

The Agean Sea at his back, Aristaios paused in his assent and skeptically regarded the temple some hundred yards above him. A warm breeze from the sea ruffled his tunic as he stopped climbing for a moment to settle his ragged breaths. The moon shone brightly and even at this distance, with his old eyes, he could see the temple perfectly. By most standards it was small and unassuming for place of worship. It was a rectangular stone structure no bigger than some of the more ostentatious homes he had seen in the city beneath him. 

He began once more up the rocky slope and the wind seemed to intensify as he climbed higher sending shivers through his body as it whipped through his sweat soaked hair. He clutched his pack tightly to him so that it should not fall down the slope. The path, if it could be called that, was rocky and slow going. Several times he had slipped, and his scraped and bloodied knees bore the proof of hi ordeal. 

When he was within twenty yards of the temple the earth started to level out, and by the time he reached it, the ground in front of the temple was nearly flat. The temple’s entrance was guarded by four squat pillars only half again as tall as a man. The structure’s rear was either built in to the side of the hill or entombed by centuries of shifting stones. The temple was unadorned save for a red curtain in the doorway and a small cistern to the side of it. Aristaios paused at the cistern. He lay his pack down, cupped a handful of the cool water and drank. It tasted sweet and he drank another handful. Then, for a split second he peered into the water catching his reflection between ripples. His hair was thinning and there was more gray mixed in with his curly raven brown locks everyday. He was not a young man anymore. He saw his reflection, breathing raggedly, and matted with sweat.

“It will not do to meet the goddess in this state.” Aristaios stripped off his dirty, sweat soaked tunic. He thrust his head into the cistern and came away in a cascade of water.  He stood naked before the temple, the moon reflecting like diamonds in the water running in rivulets off his body. He tore a piece off his tunic from the hem, soaked it in the cistern and began to bathe himself. He winced as he dabbed the wetted cloth over the abrasions on his knees. There was a time when these wounds would have gone unnoticed, but now they were a stinging reminder of his mortality, as were his throbbing, aching muscles. The climb had taken much out of him.

When he finished bathing, Aristaios stood on the hillside and admired the moon. It was full tonight, and large in the sky. The breeze had almost dried him, and he was chilled now. He turned to retrieve a fresh tunic from his pack and caught the blur of movement behind him. He spun around but saw nothing save for the temple and his pack lying on the ground where he had left it. He quickly walked around the sides of the temple, but there was nothing there. It was just his old mind playing tricks on him again. He slid on his clean tunic, and stood before the doorway to the temple. The red curtain stirred in the breeze. He took a deep breath, gathered up his pack and entered.

Moonlight filled the interior of the temple and Aristaios was surprised to see a large hole on the roof. He was displeased at the temples state of disrepair, but the he saw the statue of Aphrodite bathed in moonlight, and a gasp escaped him. In his head he knew that the statue was a thing of cold stone, but it shone so brightly in the moonlight, Aristaios could swear it was alive. Aphrodite’s form leaned back in quiet repose, her legs stretched out before her and one arm resting on the curve of her hip. He could see the golden strands of hair, the seductive eyes, and pouting lips. He could see the porcelain skin of her bare shoulders, and the promise of her ample bosom beneath the folds of her robes. He could very nearly smell her.

He walked to the far end of the temple, upon the dais, and, tentatively, reached out to touch the statue. His hand caressed its thigh, but he felt only cool stone beneath his searching fingers. His shoulders slumped and he sighed heavily. It was a trick of the moonlight. Nothing more. 

Aristaios walked to the middle of the temple, set his pack on the floor and sat down cross-legged beside it. The stone floor was cool on his legs. He sat fully within the glowing circle of moonlight and it gave his skin an azure hue. He opened his pack, withdrew a small item wrapped in a fraying, once delicate cloth, and lay it on the floor before him. He began to gently unwrap the cloth. At the center of the bundle was a golden brooch. Its intricate designs caught the moonlight and seemed to hold it there on its surface. Aristaios raised his face and regarded the statue. He brushed aside a stray lock of his graying hair, and in the moonlight framing his face, a single tear slipped down his cheek. He took a deep breath and began to speak.

“Goddess, I have come to you to ask of you a favor, nay to beg of you.” His voice became raspy as he choked on his words and he could feel more tears staining his cheeks. “This brooch belonged to my wife, Kasandra. She is dead now more than ten years past…” Aristaios paused. His eyes caught the light reflected from the brooch and it seemed to captivate him for a moment, lost in his memories. 

“She used to wear this at the neck of her robes. She was so proud of this. It was the only fine thing she ever had. It’s all I have left of her now. We never had any children.” He paused again and took another deep breath to coax his words. “I loved her Goddess, more than life itself. I will never love another, yet…I am…lonely Goddess. You have already blessed me with more love in my life than any man could hope, but don’t you see? How can I be alone now…so lonely…” Aristaios’ voice trailed of. There was no sound in the temple. He could hear his heartbeat, his shallow breathing, and nothing else. Only now, stripped of humility before the likeness of the Goddess, did he realize the futility of his pleas. He was shamed at his weakness. His lack of fortitude. He began to slowly rewrap the brooch when he heard a noise behind him.
Aristaios jumped to his feet. He could feel his ankle twist as he did so. He stood in the crcle of moonlight, his ankle throbbing, scanning the darkened temple beyond for the source of the disturbance.

“Show yourself brigand! If you think this weathered old man an easy mark then you are mistaken.” Aristaios’ heart was pounding in his chest and his lungs were heaving now. He hoped that the thief did not notice. His bravado was a facade. He had neither the heart nor the desire to face a challenge right now.     

“Please be calm, traveler.” Aristaios started at the voice. A feminine voice.

“Who’s there? Show yourself now!” A woman stepped hesitantly from the shadows, her white robes shining pale blue in the moonlight. She carried a clay jar. The water inside was sloshing around. Some of it had spilled down the front of her robes and Aristaios could see the outline of her breast begin to form beneath the wet material. Embarrassed, he quickly raised his eyes to meet her gaze. He could only stare at her in wonder. She had long dark hair framing her olive hued complexion. Even in the half-light she was stunning.

“Wha…who are you…?”

“I am Elektra. The temples caretaker and handmaiden to the goddess Aphrodite. I did not mean to interrupt. It’s just that there are so few visitors here anymore. When I saw you, it startled me. I’m afraid I spilled some of my water.” Aristaios’ gaze was drawn back to her chest where the water had completely soaked through now, and her robe clung to her bosom. He could see that her nipples had stiffened under the cold waters touch. He felt a twinge in his groin and quickly looked away.

“I am sorry, Lady. I did not mean to frighten you. I believed the temple deserted. I will gather my things and go.”

“Nonsense. This is a place of worship after all. You are welcome here. Aphrodite is a kind hostess.” As she spoke, Elektra noticed Aristaios limping. “You’re hurt!” She grabbed his arm and her touch increased the stirrings in his groin. He nervously pulled away from her and turned to face the other direction. 

“I’m…fine. It’s nothing.” He tried walking away from her and his ankle buckled underneath him. She rushed to him and knelt beside his trembling body.

“You’re not fine. Just look,” she demanded talking his ankle in her hands. “It’s already started to swell.” Elektra began to gently massage his tender ankle. Her touch was warm and soothing. He could feel the pain release its grip from his ankle and her touch radiated along the length of his leg, stirring his manhood. He stared at her as she bent over his ankle. She was a vision. He could see the hint of full curving hips beneath her robes. He watched, hypnotized, as her bosoms swayed in time with her massaging hands. He was still staring when she caught him with her dark, sable eyes. The shadow of shame crept over Aristaios’ face, but Elektra merely smiled at him.

“You should probably stay off of your ankle for a while.” Aristaios flexed his ankle and stared at her in awe.

“There is no pain. It feels normal. Better than normal, in fact. You have magic in your hands!” Elektra blushed and lowered her head, smiling.

“It is nothing. Any servant of Aphrodite can do the same. All part of our clerical arts, and not magic, but simple massage techniques.”

Aristaios stood and tested his ankle, placing all his weight on it. He turned to her and smiled.

“Thank you for your generosity fair maiden.”

“Please, I am Elektra.” Aristaios smiled. 

“Alright then. Elektra.” The name rolled of his tongue and she smiled. “I am Aristaios.” 

“You are more than welcome to stay here tonight,” she continued. “Aphrodite’s house is your house as well this night.” Aristaios was silent for a moment before answering. He appeared troubled and spoke slowly, almost whispering.

“This is your home. I could not intrude.”

“Nonsense,” she replied. “This is the house of all who worship the Goddess of Love. Beside, you really should not make the trek back down the hill until your ankle has had time to strengthen itself. You are welcome here. You will stay.” There was a note of finality in her voice and Aristaios quietly nodded his head. She smiled widely at him. “I still have errands yet tonight, so forgive me if I am a poor hostess.”

“Please lady…” She frowned and he corrected himself. “Elektra, you are a most generous hostess. Please go about your business. This old man is tired and would take rest now.” She smiled once again. 

“There is a room behind the altar in which you may rest. Please. Bring your belongings and I will show you.” He gathered up his pack and followed her watching her form sway beneath her robes. He began to feel flushed once more. 

Elektra led Aristaios to a short hallway nestled behind the statue of Aphrodite. There were two rooms off the corridor, both with red curtains in their doorways. She gestured to the room on the right and held the curtain aside for him. Aristaios entered and was surprised to see that there was a candle burning already. The room was square with no windows and Aristaios guessed that it was built into the side of the hill. There was a cot in the corner piled with soft furs and cushions. The candle was on a small wooden table by the bedside. The rest of the room was bare.

“It doesn’t look like much, but the cot is very comfortable, I assure you. My room is across the corridor if you need anything. Sleep well, Aristaios.”

“You as well, Elektra.” Aristaios watched the dark beauty as she turned and left the room. His demeanor deflated. He tossed his pack down by the table and pulled his tunic over his head. He then bent to blow out the candle, and collapsed on the bed. The cot was indeed comfortable, and although near exhaustion, he found himself unable to sleep. His mind drifted to thoughts of Elektra. He had been immediately taken by her beauty, but he also found himself longing to bed her. It was a feeling he had not known since his wife died. Even now images of her stunning form flashed through his mind. The swell of her breast and the insistent nipple poking through the wet cloth of her robe. The sway of her wide, curved hips, as she sauntered before him. The velvety sensation of her hands as she caressed his ankle. 

Aristaios awoke with a start, realizing that he had been on the edge of a dream. His manhood was stiff and swollen. He blushed in the darkness. It had been many years since a woman had had this effect on him. 

Suddenly he heard the padding of bare feet in the corridor, and a shadow passed by outside the drawn curtain. He quietly rose and went to the curtain, drawing it slightly aside. He could see nothing in the corridor so he slowly stepped out and crept towards the main temple room.

The moonlight still shone in the room, but its angle was lessened now. He guessed he had been in the room for an hour. The temple seemed to be deserted, so he made his way towards the entrance. Aristaios was nearly to the entrance of the temple when he saw movement just outside the doorway. He flattened himself against the wall, it’s stone cold and rough against his naked skin. Slowly, Aristaios peeked around the edge of the entranceway. There was a figure just outside silhouetted in moonlight. He gasped as his breath caught in his throat. Elektra stood at the basin. Her robe was pulled down off her shoulders. He marveled at the smooth olive skin of her shoulders. His eyes followed the delicate line of her collarbone to where it plunged into the swell of her breasts, the cloth of her robe riding just above her nipples. She bowed and with a sudden splash, plunged her head into the basin. Then in a moonlit arc of water, she threw her head back. Water, seemingly chased with moonlight, ran in silver threads down her face, neck and perfect shoulders. Her dark hair fell in loose, wet curls around her face. She ran her slender fingers through it and smoothed it back. Then as Aristaios watched in silent wonder, she let the robe fall from her shoulders and stood, her naked form revealed to him.

Aristaios stood deathly still, afraid to even breathe. He should leave her to her privacy he knew, but he was rooted to the spot. He could not summon the will pick up his leaden feet. He was struck still with a sudden desire. Woken by a passion he had not known in many years. Elektra cupped her hands into the basin and came away with a handful of sparkling water. She splashed it onto her chest and began to rub the cool water over her breasts. The water clung to them, forming droplets like sparkling diamonds on her skin. Some of the water ran in slow rivulets over her upturned nipples causing them to become swollen and hard, in stark contrast to the supple flesh of her bosom. She shivered at the waters touch.  

Aristaios watched in wonder as Elektra bathed. Then, as if awoken from a dream, he realized that his manhood was swollen with passion, and he had been stroking it as he watched her. He realized now that he could no sooner cease to watch her than cut off his own hand. His thick and veiny member grew harder as he slowly stroked its length over and over, the sensation of his rigidness beneath the velvety skin sending waves of pleasure through him.

Elektra slowly ran her wet hands over her hips, down her stomach and then, to Aristaios’ silent wonder, over her silken mound and between her legs. He watched as her hands slowly stroked her own sex, her breathing becoming audibly more labored. She left one hand between her legs while the other roamed over her heaving breasts, pinching at her wanting nipples. Aristaios stood, transfixed in the shadows while he watched Elektra pleasure herself, taking relief of his own. As her hands began to move more hungrily over her body, she began to moan between breaths. Her hips were grinding into her hand now. She bit her lip. Aristaios, still grasping at his member, struggled to control himself, as he watched the handmaiden bring herself to climax. At last she let out a loud whimper, her thighs flexed and clutching at her probing hand. Her body shook and convulsed as she came, seemingly forever, as her cries filled the night air.

Aristaios could no longer hold back. He felt his hot seed flow over his hand, and as he came, he moaned loudly. He tried to stifle his desire, but it was too late. Surely Elektra had heard him. Aristaios, shame washing over him, fled into the temple. He ran across the main room and threw himself at the base of the statue. The stone perfect visage of Aphrodite, gazed mercilessly upon the pitiful, weeping form before her. Aristaios cursed himself.

“Lady…Goddess, forgive me. I have shamed myself and your temple. I have desecrated the very house of Aphrodite…” He heard the soft scrape of bare feet behind him, and let out another sob.

“Aristaios, there is no shame in what you have done,” Elektra’s velvet voice replied. “You desire me. That is all. This is more than just the house of Aphrodite. It is the house of love, of desire, of passion.” She placed a graceful hand on his shoulder as she spoke. Once again, her touch invited stirrings in his being. He tried to pull away, but she grasped his wrist and held fast. He had not the strength to oppose her. She knelt beside him and, gently ran a slender finger along his cheek. Aristaios turned to face her. She was still naked, skin glistening. He could not look away. He was bound to her eyes. 

“Sweet Elektra…you…haunt me. I’ve not had these feelings for years. In fact, not since the passing of my Kasandra. I am shamed at my actions. I will gather my things and leave immediately.”

Elektra smiled deeply. “Dear Aristaios, you do not want to leave. Your passion betrays you.” She looked downward and he was aware that his manhood was awakening to her presence. He silently cursed his nakedness…his lack of control. “Tell me Aristaios.”

“Tell you?”

“Yes. Tell me what you want. Do not be ashamed. Do not be frightened. Simply tell me.” There was a soothing timbre in her voice. Her hand gently stroked his arm sending shivers the length of his spine. His eyes trailed over the swell of her breasts. His entire body quaked as he battled to hold back his emotions, yet they triumphed, flooding over him like a great tidal wave. 

In a flurry of insatiable passion, his arms enveloped her, his lips seeking out hers. They locked in a hungry embrace then. He tasted her lips, the supple flesh of her neck and shoulders. His insistent kisses raced down the delicate line of her collarbone, and finally, poured over her breasts. 

Elektra clutched at the back of Aristaios’ head as his eager mouth ranged over her bosom. Her swollen nipples glistened with his saliva. She moaned softly at his ministrations. She could feel his engorged manhood throbbing against her thigh. 

There was no turning back now, either for Aristaios or Elektra. Her desire was just as molten as his, her breathing just as labored. He stood and pulled her up with him. His eyes moved over her wanton form, drowning in the deluge of her beauty. He slowly turned her so that he was now behind her. Again he had to taste her, and he trailed soft, warm kisses over her neck and shoulders. A gentle hand slid around her side and cupped her breast, his thick fingers pinching at her nipple. Another hand slid down her stomach, painfully slow, and over her pubis. Her silken fur tickled his fingertips. She was still wet, though whether from the water or her own nectar, he knew not. His probing fingers slid over the entrance to her sex, and as they did, she moaned and ground her pelvis into his hand. She whimpered then as his fingers inched inside, coated instantly by her juices. Her skin was flushed and the temple echoed with her desire.


Temple of Eros



Cushioned on a mountain of downy pillows, Haely watched her lover go about his morning routine. Their plush comforter was pulled up to her waist and she rested with her hands over her smooth belly, breasts bare for him to appreciate with a glance or a kiss every time he saw her through the doorway or approached the bed.

Outside the white, morning light of an approaching winter season hadn't quite surfaced round the curve of the earth which made their warm apartment, glowing with the single yellow candle from last night's adventures, that much more intimate. Minutes stretched like the mischievously held breath of children playing hide and seek with the adult working-world.

Jake chatted intermittently about the day's schedule as he shaved, combed his hair, ate a bowl of cereal but her mind was distant. He pulled on his black slacks and was about to zip them when the sound of her voice stopped him.

"Ah, ah." she smiled and thrust out her hand. Wavy, dark tresses haphazardly framed her angular face. His expression quirked into a grin as he walked over to her placing his crotch right in that lovely palm of hers.

His sexual appetite was ever-active and although he was often the aggressor, it was precisely his insatiable lust which allowed her to command him. Even now as her fingers slipped inside his trousers and freed his anticipating erection, he knew as well as she did that his cock was ultimately helpless to resist the summons of that sweet mouth with which she was now sucking him off.

Somewhere his cell-phone was quietly chiming it's ten-minute alarm, telling him it was almost time to leave for work but he couldn't stop thrusting himself between Haely's succulent lips. Firmly, her hands pressed against his pelvis and she withdrew him from her mouth, giving him a final loving stroke before releasing him to redress himself.

Their eyes met, hers glinting with promise of fulfillment, his burning with contained lust. Taking a breath, he rushed to finish dressing before leaving her with a lingering kiss for the day. This was a single morning in their life.

It was a new life at that, for they had just moved in with one another and as great as the dawn could be, it was their nights together that had been on Haely's mind this morning. Pulling on one of Jake's dress shirts, she leaned against the counter as the Folger's brewed.

Haely wanted to see him happy. He worked, she didn't. She made it a priority to ensure that coming home at the end of the day was well worthwhile for him. Before they had actually moved in together, she hadn't realized just how fitfully Jake slept at night.

There was no amount of relaxation, affections, or soothing techniques that could dissolve the stress within him enough to allow him to rest calmly. Constantly he would wake up, even if briefly, and fall into light sleep again. More often than she thought was average, his body twitched reflexively against some inner agitation.

This displeased her. A man's home is his sanctuary, if he cannot be at complete ease within those walls, then where can he be? Alas, Haely thought with a wry chuckle, men were stubborn; sometimes no matter how much they wanted to relent, the only way to make it happen was to bulldoze the fortress walls and leave them with no other option but to give up.

Sipping her coffee, the familiar wisps of formulating idea swirled within her head. Jake's birthday was next month, and now she knew precisely what give him.

++++++++++++

It had taken some convincing, but he had finally agreed to allow Haely to plan whatever she wanted for his birthday and plan she had. Jake couldn't fathom why she had chosen Crete, of all places to spend this mini holiday. He'd expected something far more low-key and personalized and was feeling slightly disappointed as they were taxied further away from Almirida.

Haely had been unusually quiet but he could see the excitement behind those heady, chestnut eyes, her hand tucked firmly between his legs in the back seat. He absolutely loved how sexual she constantly was with him; every chance to grope him, every luring brush by him in public places – they were all her way of demonstrating love through lust and he drank it in.

It wasn't much of a drive as they bounced along a remote dirt road and Jake was finding that he just couldn't focus quite as well on his usual, every-day stresses. When ever he tried to think of home, or bills or work, little shrubberies the likes he'd never seen winked at him from the roadside or the Mediterranean sparkled over the cliff.

As they rounded a bend, a massive compound rose up before them, pristine white with it's Athenian architecture. Haely's palm massaged at his arousal as she leaned in to speak with him quietly. God she had a way of lowering those sultry tones into his ear when she really wanted to entice him.

"That there," she pointed up the hilltop, "is the Temple of Eros. Something of an exotic resort if you will." She smiled at him and he leaned in and took a kiss from her pink lips. Jake was aroused by this, his ever-willing slut, always ready to satiate his hunger.

"Be aware, Jake," she murmured against him, hand rubbing at the erection straining against his blue-jeans, "you promised you would trust me, and so for the next three days we will be legally held within the confines of this retreat and not allowed to leave. Willing prisoners, if you like."

Jake pulled back some, his sharp green eyes searching her for clues, a small crease in his brow. "Alright…" he agreed, though he didn't make an effort to hide his speculation. As they turned through the gates of the property and up the round driveway, the thick doors of the resort opened and out swept an entourage of women who began silently unloading their luggage.

Mouth agape, he looked over at Haely who was obviously pleased by their scantily clad helpers. No doubt they were gorgeous, smooth legs, tanned arms curls of hair falling around their shoulders. Their short white dresses reminded him of Roman ladies at a bathhouse, a look Haely knew he had a penchant for.

Sweeping out of the double-doors then came a tall, elegant woman who ignored him utterly as she flowed over to his girl-friend. Jake was at a total loss for what to do so he simply waited as the women spoke aside quietly. Once or twice, their hostess (for that was what she seemed to be), cast him an appraising glance and then without a word in his direction she smiled and glided back indoors, white robes furling around her ankles.

"What was that about?" he asked finally, slightly irritated with all this mystery.

Haely smiled and stretched up a bit to kiss the corners of his mouth. "Remember, do everything that you are instructed to do by these women." He looked like he was about to interrupt but she spoke on resolutely, "The next three days are by my will and I will see you soon."

"I don't get it." He said irritably.

"Just go with the flow, Jake. And know that I love you."

All too abruptly, she placed an affectionate kiss on his lips and then he was being tugged away by soft hands and a cacophony of feminine voices, urging him inside. Off he was whisked into some of the most plush quarters he'd ever seen. He felt hamstrung between the serenity of the surroundings and his irritation at being separated from Haely.

When the hand-maidens came to undress him, bathe him and put him in clothing appropriate for dinner that evening, he was so stunned by the obviously adult theme, he just let them do their jobs, curious to see just how far this place stretched the meaning of "customer service".

That first night they were sat across the long table from one another, reclined on pillows and hand-fed by an overabundance of well-shaped female servants. Jake tried to pry hints about what was to come from his lover, but she was playing coy and he began to fall in to the game.

Needless to say, as their extravagant meal of garlic hummus and pitas, dolmathes and roast lamb came to a close, Jake was mounting desire was dashed back into irritated disappointment when Haely rose from her cushions, bid him goodnight with that smile in her sultry eyes, and left the room without him!

He wanted to be mad at her but he couldn't quite, he'd promised to trust her and she'd never let him down before. What else were they doing here though if not to spend their time together? Eventually he was led back to his quarters, feeling too drowsy to protest being undressed and put into his own bed. It was like sinking into a sea of clouds and he was out like a light.

I love you…

Haely's voice drifted in his mind, shuttered rays of sunlight filtered into his room. Mmm…finally. Her hands moved down his chest, fingers encircling him firmly as he roused dreamily. Reflexively, he pushed his length into her caressing hands, she always knew how to wake him.

Opening his eyes shot out of bed exclaiming, "What the…?!" or at least he would have if he'd not been secured, tied down to the frame. Looking down on him was some woman he didn't know and his wave of panic would have ensued if just at that moment he wasn't overcome with the sensation of pure pleasure shooting through his body as she stroked his engorged cock.

He pulled at his restraints but this Greco-roman demi-goddess just pushed him back onto the bed gently, "It is the will of your Lady." She said, working his erection to her advantage. He collapsed back, wondering where Haely was. As his eyes roamed down his own body, he realized for the first time just how erect he was and why. 

Jake didn't really hunger after other women, he loved his girl-friend, but now he found himself forcibly aroused within the constrictions of a cock-ring, and regardless of whether or not this woman would have normally/I> turned him on, he was so raging hard at the moment that his dick begged for release and pleasure from any source. Against his will or otherwise.

He wanted to protest but every time he opened his mouth is was only to gasp at the sheer need of his ragingly unsatisfied hard-on. Then the woman ceased her handiwork, she moved to the foot of the bed and took up some sandals, strapping them around his feet and up his tight calves.

Untying him from the bed she directed him to stand, his cheeks flushed at having a strange woman seeing him in this state even at the same time as it there was something arousing about the exhibitionism of it all.

Go with the flow he thought to himself and simply let the lady dress him in a scant kilt of sorts before leading him into a portion of the courtyard which looked as though it were being remodeled. 

Behind him, the woman who'd pulled him from his slumber instructed that he was to carry the rocks from the crumbled interior wall, over to a wheelbarrow where he would then push them up a winding ramp to the upper terrace of some new suite.

Jake couldn't believe what he was being told and gaped incredulously at the woman. Then, much to his shock, she produced a riding crop and slapped him across the ass with it. He was about to protest when her voice said flatly, "By the will of your Lady."

He couldn't believe it; here he was sandaled and dressed in some small kilt, sporting an erection before god and everyone and about to engage in manual labor? He'd never been so utterly out of control before in his life. Huffing, he sulked over to the stones and picked one up, carting it the wheelbarrow.

Jake looked up at the terrace that he would eventually be pushing this think up and there he saw her, backlit by the golden sun. Haely watched down on him, her soft hair tied up with loose curls, clad in sheer white robes that draped around the golden ropes hugging layers of chiffon to her body.

She was beautiful, like a vision of the goddess Aphrodite herself. Just as he was about to wave to her, that horrible crop snapped across him again. He startled, anger fighting with patience and trust. Above him, Haely nodded to his task-master and disappeared from the balcony.

Glancing at the sky, the Helios sun was hardly even risen. Confused and curious about all this, Jake just set about carrying the rocks. Back and forth, to and fro as the morning wore on. All of this was so surreal whatever opinions he might have had dissipated like steam off the morning grass.

He filled a cart and pushed it up the ramp, skin glistening in the warming light. Rapidly a couple hours of this flew past and his muscles were beginning to feel it. Pausing to catch his breath, a lovely blonde strolled by him, slapping a leather paddle across his backside.

"Work." Was all she said. Exasperated, he hoisted another rock and began moving. Surely he wasn't meant to do this all day but as the hours ticked on, as his calves ached from pushing uphill, arms and shoulders from carrying and lifting, he began to think that it was.

The first time of the voluptuous beauties came around to allow him the chance to rest, he was relieved until she made him sit on a stone bench and proceeded to stroke his forced erection. When adrenaline wasn't coursing through his muscles, hands were pumping his rock-hard cock. This sustained arousal was making him so breathless that he didn't care anymore which of them came to stroke him but the constant buzz that he was riding was wearing him out.

Then, in the heat of the day he was finally led to the shore of a private beach. His drill-masters told him he was to swim from one side of the cove to the other, backstroke. His muscles were burning now and he only did what he was told, diving in to the cool, blue ocean.

Water slipped around his stiff penis like cool satin on smooth skin and he imagined himself plunging into Haely's inviting pussy, his lust was throbbing for her at he merest thought and he just wanted to get out of here and into her arms. Opening his eyes as he rolled onto his back, he thought he saw her on a cliff above the small bay and his cock leapt to attention, waves slapping around him tantalizingly.

Jake pulled through the inlet until he lost count of his laps and any time he thought to rest for too long, he felt himself being sprung to attention at the firm insistence of the leather crop. Never had he experience something like this and he wanted to cum so desperately it was driving him mad.

The day hazed into a delirium of sweat and labor, stroking hands and erections, stinging slaps across his buttocks and breathless sightings of the only thing he really wanted to be with: Haely. She seemed to manifest like a fevered mirage of relief. He was so tired, he couldn't remember ever having worked so laboriously.

A russet sun finally set over the horizon of the island, though Jake didn't notice it much. He simply hoped the day was done, that they would take him to his lover so that he could melt into her arms.

It was not to be. Instead, he was removed back to his quarters and tied up once more to his bed, soreness setting into his muscles. Heavily, he realized he would be too stiff to even move tomorrow, why had Haely done this him?

That night, as he drifted in to sleep, he suddenly felt the hands of a foreign woman upon him, stoking his loins, squeezing his buttocks, pinching a nipple. He couldn't sleep, for every time he nodded off he was awakened by the fount of cum that was being teased toward eruption before being left to simmer.

Finally, in the darkest hours of the night he was roused from his bed, stripped naked and led through a private hall. Overcome by sheer exhaustion, he felt so alone amoung these strangers, then she stepped from behind the thick curtains.

Locks of curly sepia hair tumbled down around her glowing face, in the candle-lit room, her sheer gowns flowing around the curves of her long body as she approached. Jake's heart pounded within, his ethereal goddess.

He'd hungered for her so avidly the past couple days, that even the merest sight of her caused his entire being to burn with obvious desire. Willfully, his legs strode across the room, muscles searing painfully from the previous day's workout.

Grabbing at Haely lustfully, his throbbing erection pressed against the thin veil of robes draped over her slender body. Her hands slinked around his shoulders, pressing delightfully into the sore musculature, fingers slipping through the soft hair at his neck.

Their bodies conformed into one another luxuriously. Regardless of how tired Jake knew he was, the scent of her hair, silken white skin, full breasts pressed against his chest, drove him on. He wanted to tell her that he needed rest, wasn't even thinking clearly, but the heat of her voice urged an animalistic lust he'd never known.

At first he tried to be gentle, hands grazing over pert nipples, tongue dancing about her mouth, but she was coaxing him with honeyed words that trailed into lingering kisses down his neck. Have you missed me, Jake?...Desired me?..Dreamt of putting that strong cock of yours to me?...

God! He couldn't resist…go ahead, that's why I'm here…his hands squeezed her ass, pulling her hips up against him as he sucked ferociously at one plump breast until her breath drew sharply between pleasure and pain.

I am yours…take me, unleash yourself on my body…

Her siren's call was too much, and he obeyed ravenously. Tearing off her sheer robes, they crumpled to the floor beneath the couple. The scent of her pussy was driving him mad and he dragged her down, splaying creamy thighs before him, delving into her moist slit with his tongue. Hips undulated beneath his oral worship, the sighs of her body belying her need for him to fill her.

Bringing her just to the edge, he pulled his body along hers and kissed her with the sweetness of her own vagina still on his lips as he plunged ruthlessly into her warm, wet pussy. Haely's body exploded with orgasm, writhing hard up against him as though she were trying to devour his raging cock.

Knowing that he couldn't hold back he pounded himself into her, following her candy-coated voice…cum for me, Jake, I want to feel you explode inside my body…and he did just that. He cried out against her, unable to stop plunging in and out, and she rode his bestial lust like a pro, wrapping her supple legs around him and rolling him over in one fluid motion, bodies never parting.

Mounted above him, he had full access to her breasts and his strong hands pinched her nipples, sliding down her curves toward her hips as he worked her body, helping impale her again and again on his engorged shaft.

She was fucking him like a Greek goddess of porn, sent down from heaven as his own personal slut. Careless of her own completion she drove their bodies together, filling herself with his thickness, pinning her weight against his sore arms. Oh, that divine oasis of hers pumped him relentlessly and he rose to give it to her, feeling the cum rise within.

"Oh god…Haely…" Jake drove himself up in to her, jaw clenched with feral need.

Yes…one more time…empty yourself inside me…

Waves of cum erupted up in to her, bursting forth from the head of his cock like a molten flow. His breath sucked from his lungs and into her mouth, covering him with kisses, the writhing of her hips slowing pleasurably along his sensitive organ.

Jake's eyes closed, every muscle in his body driven beyond exhaustion. The last thing he hazily remembered was a cacophony of feminine hands lifting him onto a bed, scented oil, every taut and sinuous muscle being massaged thoroughly…and Haely's fingers in his soft, brown hair.

Her amber voice drifted through his dreams, Happy birthday, Jake. Tonight, you will know perfect slumber…she'd done all that, for a good night's sleep…I love you.



Temple of Hathor



The glassy smooth lake water reflected her cocoa-colored face and the wide white sunhat as Jumana leaned over the side of the small boat. She turned her head and looked back at the boatman who lazily plied the tiller and imagined him wearing only the white linen skirt of ancient Egypt and herself as a priestess being conveyed to her designated temple. She closed her eyes and listened intently as if she could already hear the jangling music and the low-voiced chants of her sister priestesses echoing faintly over the water. A shiver ran across her bare shoulders, down through her thin ivory-toned sundress, and centered between her sun-warmed thighs. "Hathor," she whispered aloud, "goddess of love and desire, I am coming at last."

It had been a long and difficult journey, she reflected, as the boat engine purred softly in the background. A frown creased her mouth as she remembered scenes from the struggling days and the painful lonely nights. The nights! Even enfolded in the sweaty embraces of old and dissolute men -- all right, clients, no, escort renters -- she had felt the cold fingers of loneliness creep up her legs and probe at her pussy. Even as their lips sought her, as their hands groped her soft, trembling body, as their meaty cocks thrust inside her lips, even then she was alone. From her inner city childhood -- cast up like some poor marooned princess on an island of debris and the dregs of wasted lives -- she had always been alone, on her own, ignored and tossed aside.  

Back then, books had been her only real solace and comfort. She would huddle in dim corners of the project apartments with her small cache of books from the library and pour over them like a miser does his gold coins. They would take her away from the constant yelling, beating, rapes, drugs, yes, even murder around her to exotic places where history and fairy tale and legend merged and became more real than reality. And even then, she mused, it was the stories of Venus, Aphrodite, Hathor, goddesses of love and desire that most moved and resonated within her. She smiled at the thought -- gliding now toward the restored temple on an island in the Nile, in Nubia! -- that even as a frightened and sad little girl, she had been consecrated to this magnificent goddess and guide.

She wrinkled her forehead and brushed a stray lock of breeze-blown hair back beneath her hat as she mentally oiled and pampered her bare-skinned pussy. The mound -- mound of Venus it was called - still retained its dark, smooth-skinned beauty of course. Despite the years -- how many had it been now? -- of abuse and pounding and insult and occasional disinterest, still the folds stayed petal-like and opened to bloom. Her small-lipped clitoral hood, opening to reveal the out-sized clitoris -- did not even her very name Jumana mean "large pearl" -- had been too often ignored by her...by the men who rented it by the night -- her...well, she had to call them benefactors in a way. It was their money which had -- carefully saved -- paid for this very journey to the land of her sisters, to the land of Nubia her ancestors, to the temple of her goddess.

Her pussy had suffered that she might easily pay the boatman to rent the entire boat so that she could be the sole passenger, borne like a princess-priestess in the proper way. Her breasts had been sacrificed to the pawing and rough handling so that she could be here now. She had given up love for Love, capital L, and now she would reap the rich harvest bestowed with blessing from the very goddess of Love herself. She trailed fingers in the slow ripples of the boat's passage through the water and felt a delicious -- almost pre-orgasmic -- shudder.

As the boat neared the stone jetty, the memory of men faded from her mind replaced with the future dream of tender caresses, softer lips upon her own, the knowing lick of passionate tongue that would burn straight to her spirit with a flame she knew would consume and -- like the mythical phoenix -- she would rise reborn, renewed, re-cast as a daughter and sister of Love.

She gasped to see the two figures awaiting her. The old and wrinkled watchman of the jetty, his maroon fez atilt on his bald head, and his white shirt moving steadily in the lake breeze, she dismissed immediately. But beside him -- that vision -- stood a tall, pale woman in a deep blue dress or robe, face like a statue, body, framed as if by a sculptor, perfect in every curve. Oh, my heart, Jumana, sighed, and felt as if she had indeed been pierced by an arrow composed of desire, hunger, want, climax, and lingering satisfaction forever.

The jetty watchman reached a gnarled hand to steady her as she stepped off the boat and with a sad face placed Jumana's hand in the outstretched fingers of the woman in blue. The touch was more than lightning, more than simply sensual and erotic. It was Life...and Love...and Lust beyond measure all at once.

The woman in blue's eyes looked deeply into Jumana's hazel gaze and smiled gently, almost shyly, bringing their entwined hands up to her mouth and nuzzling the back of Jumana's hand as if...as if it were both breast and pussy somehow transmogrified together into one small patch of brown skin.

Had she let herself go, not suddenly stiffened her knees and lifted her head, Jumana knew she would had orgasmed right then, right there. She took a deep breath, sighed loudly, and nodded at the woman. "Hathor." she whispered in her mind, "I am here."

The woman led her up the newly restored stone stairway and through a gate and passageway lined with statues of women, some dressed in the ancient linen chemises of Egypt and Greece, others wrapped in what seemed transparent dresses of Roman design, still more -- as they progressed deeper -- naked and in poses that mimicked sex. Jumana's eyes were transfixed, looking left and right, and feeling herself grow wetter until she almost thought her nectar flowed down her bare thighs beneath the short sundress to feel cool as splashed water, yet hot as fluid lava.

Guided, the woman still holding her hand lightly, they took a detour to the left and entered a small room. Jumana's breath stopped, her heart beating wildly, as she looked at the ancient murals upon the stone walls. Here naked women worshipped each other's bodies. There they ravished each other's breasts and erect nipples with lips and tongue. Here, women's opened thighs were pressed tightly against other's women's open thighs. Here women with artificial cocks fucked lustily other women whose faces bore the expression of ecstasy.

She turned to the woman in blue. "Here?" she whispered softly.

The woman's reply was silence and a shaking of her head. She took her hand away from Jumana's and pointed to a small closed wooden door across the room. Jumana felt her heart stop, pause, beat again more strongly and stepped toward the door. The woman did not follow and Jumana looked at her in puzzlement. The woman in blue smiled briefly, pointing at herself and shaking her head, then pointed again toward the door. Jumana realized she must enter the next room alone.

Her fingers trembled as she opened the door latch and stepped within. The door closed firmly behind her and the solid sound of it startled her a moment. As she turned slowly in a circle to view the room, she thought she recognized it. Golden ornaments were everywhere, idols of women, richly-carved furniture, exotic and erotic paintings on the walls, a scarlet veiled bed raised upon carved and gilded lioness heads and paws. It was like a scene in a book or her dreams or her reveries, only brought to life before her.

A silhouetted figure arose from a languid pose on the bed, pulling aside the red transparencies, and stepping into the shadowed and flickering candlelight. Jumana almost fainted from the sight.

It was she. It was Venus and Aphrodite and Hathor in one. And she is as dark-skinned as I am, Jumana saw. Tall, elegant, glistening with scented oil, the woman came closer and the rich perfume of her nearly made Jumana swoon. It was like incense, musky, earthy, and yet jasmine-light with a hint of lake flower and the hot aroma of cinnamon and honey.

The woman was within reach and she reached. Automatically, Jumana's fingers matched the woman's gesture. She thought their fingers touched briefly and then the woman's strong -- goddess strong! -- grip was in Jumana's hair, pulling her to her knees. Jumana could stop her gaping gasps, mouth wide, tongue almost lolling and drool dripping down over her lips to her chin at the forceful grasp. A small cry broke from deep in her throat just before the woman's mouth fastened tightly over her lips and drowned it out. The dance of their tongues was slow and suffocating.

Jumana wanted to close her eyes and simply reel in the over-powering feeling, but she could not. The woman before her -- or goddess, she did not now know -- lifted a leg over Jumana's shoulder and began to rub her oiled, scented, blazingly hot pussy over Jumana's mouth.

Stars and heavens exploded in Jumana's mind. She trembled from head to toes, her tongue lapping at the offered brown lips, licking their sides and petals, darting between the folds to graze the side of her tongue within. Her mind was swirling with a single nearly incoherent word: Yes!

The woman or goddess began a quickly paced rhythm of swayed hips -- side to side -- then back and forth. Jumana noisily slurped at the flowing nectar there and then felt again that impossibly strong grip on her hair. She allowed herself to be guided upward slightly until her lips were centered over the woman's -- or goddess's -- clitoris. Jumana circled it with a light sucking motion and the hardened tip of her tongue danced on the swollen pearl within. With an inward smile, she felt the clitoris swell even larger, until it seemed to fill her mouth and offer her tongue a vast globe to lick and tease and toy upon.

Jumana was barely aware of her own genitals and yet -- when she paused just a moment -- they seemed awash with wetness as if her own pussy were a cataract of the Nile she has traversed, flooding and gushing without end. She had lost count -- if ever she had begun to -- of the orgasms wracking her body...and was only aware of how much she wanted to draw even one from the woman -- or goddess- who now rode her mouth.

At long last -- had it been minutes or hours or decades or centuries? -- there came a small hesitant tremble in the pussy Jumana worshipped. Like a dim nova in the distance it grew brighter and more powerful as it neared. Jumana wanted it all to stop right there. To savor and keep it forever as it approached, but that was not to be. Like a fiery comet the woman -- or goddess's -- climax came closer, inescapable, not that Jumana wanted to turn aside but rather be consumed in its crash.

Seeming to float or hover in the air, Jumana felt the woman -- or goddess surely now -- raise both legs to lock around Jumana's back and shoulders as she spasmed and cried out -- was it ancient Egyptian? -- in an incoherent babble that thundered through the room and nearly knocked Jumana across the floor.

After a blinding instant, the woman stood, hands on hips, looking down as the prostrate Jumana and smiling enigmatically at her.

"Priestess, servant, slave," Jumana heard the words in her mind. "I accept you."

Jumana awoke sprawled in her white sundress, her wide white hat barely out of reach. Groggy and weak, she shifted herself to her knees and looked around in wonder at the now empty and dusty room. Arising, on weak legs, she walked to the old wooden door and opened it. The woman in blue started as if from a nap and took Jumana by the hand. As before, but in reverse, she led Jumana along the rooms and passages of the temple, back to the stone jetty where the old watchman looked up and tossed his cigarette into a large open tin can.

The boatman helped Jumana aboard and she sat -- exhausted almost collapsing really -- on the scarred wooden bench, feeling the sunlit heat of it penetrate upwards until it filled her. Idly, she let her fingertips trail in the slick water's surface and never once looked back at the temple or the island.



Temple of Lum



This is a tale from Karlan Sunflower's world, (so far the only written tale from that world). The erotica in this tale could be called mistaken nonconsent. The storyline best described as Fantasy genre.

Before I disappoint anyone: In spite of the repeated referral to butts and behinds, there is no anal sex to be found here.

Copyright of Nanna Marker (lit ID ellynei)

*

Monte took in the view before him. A long line of well shaped women's behinds.

"What is this place?" he asked his travelling companion, Kevlo, not taking his eyes off the inviting round rears.

"Welcome to the Temple of Lum," laughed Kevlo.

"I thought Lum was a frigid god," commented Monte, considering the sight of about two dozen fit round female butts to be anything but non-erotic.

"She is," replied Kevlo with a smile, putting his arm over Monte's shoulders. "And so are her priestesses."

"Then what is the purpose of this display?"

"Well, my friend, this is where the priestesses of Lum accept seed donations," explained Kevlo, grinning widely at his friend's puzzled face.

"You should have told me to buy some before we came," reproached Monte. "I was raised to never visit a temple without donating. All I have with me is coin."

At those words Kevlo cracked into a heavy laughing fit. Luckily, he had Monte's shoulders to support himself on.

A middle-aged priestess noticed the two men standing at the edge of the room. This early visitors were usually few. She approached the pair, studying their travelling outfit; travellers were particularly welcome in this part of the temple.

"Welcome," she said with a soft but toneless voice.

"Thank you," said Monte solemnly, and tried to bow in spite of his friend's cramping hold on his shoulders. Kevlo struggled to get his laughter under control to offer the priestess a proper face.

"Have you come to donate?" asked the priestess.

"I would like to donate, Priestess, but I didn't bring seed," admitted Monte honestly. Next to him Kevlo broke into a new laughing fit.

In front of them the priestess raised her eyebrows questioningly, appraising Monte with her eyes whilst ignoring his laughing companion.

"I... I'm terribly sorry... We will... ah... get out of your way now," stuttered Monte, while trying to bow and pull his friend out with him at the same time.

"Do come back when you are ready to donate," said the priestess, tonelessly, softly.

"Will do," said Monte, backing out dragging the laughing Kevlo with him. "I promise."

Back out on the street Monte pushed Kevlo hard, hissing angry words at him.

"That kind of behaviour in a temple, how could you. It is sacrilege. Gods should be treated with respect. You lured me into entering a temple without bringing the proper sacrifice."

"Monte, listen to me," said Kevlo, still giggling.

"No!" Monte shook his clenched fist in front of Kevlo's face. "You shut up right now, or I'll beat you to a bloody pulp."

Amusement left Kevlo's face and he looked seriously into Monte's.

"I didn't mean to offend you, Monte. Let's talk it through over a mug of ale." With those words Kevlo started leading his travelling companion through the streets towards an inn.

On the way they passed through a market place.

"Hold on," said Monte and moved to a vendor whose booth was adorned with dried greenery. "Do you sell seeds?" Monte asked the vendor, untying his pouch from his belt.

The vendor, a round middle-aged man with equally round slightly bearded cheeks, perused his possible costumer. Monte's clothes were worn from travelling, fairly colourless from rough washing and long periods of too much dust and too little soap. Right now they were clean however, and a skilled eye could tell the cloth had originally been made of the highest quality leather and cloth.

"I sell many varieties of seed, Traveller. Anything in particular suit your fancy?"

Monte glanced backwards at Kevlo. His companion had bowed his head, hand over mouth. He looked like he had found an extremely interesting piece of gravel to study on the ground, or like he was about to break into a new laughing fit. Determined to keep his promise to the priestess, Monte turned his attention back to the vendor.

"Well I would like seed suitable for donation to a temple," said Monte, and conscientiously added, "Good quality preferably."

"Aha!" said the vendor, and bent to pick up a small bag from below the counter. "These are high quality raspberry seeds. The temple of Alluria accepts these in return for travelling blessings. I also have excellent corn seeds favoured by priests of the temple of Oxol." Noticing the lack of interest in his possible customer's eyes the vendor continued to list other seeds and possible places to donate them, until Monte interrupted him.

"Actually I was looking for seed to donate to the Temple of Lum."

"What was that?" asked the round vendor. "Could you repeat that please?"

"I am looking for seed to donate to the Temple of Lum," repeated Monte, louder this time.

"Did you say Temple of Lum?" The vendor's oversized belly started shaking, even sooner than his round cheeks cracked into a big grin.

"Yes." Monte heard Kevlo break into a loud laughing fit behind him, just a moment sooner than the vendor in front of him broke into howling laughter.

"Hey, Pail," the laughing round vendor yelled towards the neighbouring booth.

"What?" asked the neighbouring vendor.

"You won't believe what this guy is trying to buy!"

"Oh yeah?"

"Seed to donate to the Temple of Lum!" Informed the round vendor, still yelling.

"Seriously?" the neighbouring vendor studied Monte with disbelief. "You want to buy seed for the Temple of Lum?"

"Yes," replied Monte, annoyed with the laughing vendor, and still not understanding what the joke was.

The neighbouring vendor started laughing with a hyena-like sound, several others who had been close enough to hear followed suit. Monte noticed a young attractive woman standing at another neighbouring booth turning away from him, obviously struggling hard to not laugh.

"I'm sorry, Monte," said Kevlo, putting his hand on Monte's shoulder. "I should have explained before taking you there."

"Explained what?" asked Monte. His innocent question caused new riots of laughter in several people in the immediate vicinity.

"I'll tell you later." Bravely Kevlo tried to stop laughing while leading Monte away from the market. "Until then don't mention the Temple of Lum," he whispered, his voice still shaking with contained humour.

--=(o)=--

Neissa walked to a free spot, naked as the other two dozen priestesses who were assigned to seed accepting duty this afternoon. Patiently she waited for her turn to be assisted. She had only been uplifted to her current status as low priestess seven days back, and had only attended two rounds of seed accepting duty so far.

With her usual arrogance she had expected to get pregnant the first round. After all, natural magic was strong in her. She had calculated that with her being so superior Goddess Lum would easily find seed to brew a suitable child, since so few traits would be needed from the father.

Her arrogance had not lessened upon not getting pregnant the first round, or the second. Rather she had then come to conclude that Goddess Lum would not waste the breeding time of her womb with anything but the most superb seed; she now expected to go to many rounds of seed acceptance prior to pregnancy.

Efficiently, clothed Priestesses aided the young fertile women get into position, starting at one end working towards the other. Each of the young women faced the long wall, in front of each was a rib shaped holder protruding from a hole in the wall. With room for breasts to hang free, these holders would support their upper bodies during the hours of seed accepting duty.

While the Priestesses helped her neighbour into position, Neissa contemplated which texts to study the next hours. While her body performed its duty on the donation accepting side of the wall, she planned to let her mind work on her education on the other side of the wall.

Once her neighbour was well set, the clothed priestesses moved on to Neissa, who bend over with a well-rehearsed movement. She was proud to display no clumsiness, in spite of this only being her third time on this duty. Placing her hands on the other side of the wall, she lowered her chest towards the rib supporting protrusion. The clothed priestesses checked that her breasts were hanging free and then lowered the shutters to her back. On the other side of the wall, another clothed priestess strapped her shoulders to the shutters. So she wouldn't be pushed further into the room during the next hours. When they were done, Neissa's arms, shoulders and head were on one side of the wall. The other half of her body was on the other side, ready to accept seed donations.

Neissa stood on her straightened legs, her upper body bent so far down her head was a bit lower than her butt. Priestesses of Lum were well trained, slender, and agile. But even a priestess of Lum would not have been able to hold that position for hours without severe muscle strain if not for magical aid. Most of the lower priestesses on seed accepting duty received magical relief for their muscles from older priestesses, but Neissa was not a normal low priestess - she was more gifted than most. She had been able to perform muscle relief spells long before reaching an appropriate age for ascension to priesthood -- or pregnancy. 

--=(o)=--

"No wonder everyone was laughing at me," said Monte, and started laughing himself. Now that his belly was warmed by a fair amount of good ale his public ridicule seemed funny rather than embarrassing -- like it might have if Kevlo had explained matters without a good offering of ale.

Kevlo laughed good naturedly, he himself wasn't drinking so heavily as he urged Monte to. Travelling together they made a habit of never both getting ridiculously drunk at the same time. This was a safer town to get drunk in than most places they had passed. With a striving economy, multiple temples and well-trained, disciplined city guards, Imelkon was a jewel of a city. But even the best of places had criminals, Kevlo preferred to be cautious.

"I promised to return to donate, you know," said Monte.

"So you did." Kevlo smiled. He still had many laughs left in him over Monte's first encounter with a Temple of Lum.

"Promises to gods and goddesses and priests and priestessesessess should always be kept," Monte listed, the ale made it difficult for him to count his 'esses'.

"I didn't realise you took religion so seriously," commented Kevlo. "You not being aligned to a particular god or such."

"My mother taught me to respect magic, in all its forms." Monte went silent a moment, turning the bolts in his alcohol affected mind. "So, these priestesses of Lum just offer their behinds to any and all men who walk by?"

"Well, behinds and behinds, you are not allowed to enter their rear entrances." Kevlo winked. "Lum wants every donation to end up in the proper location. Waste not, want not, and all that."

"Right." Monte nodded, trying to appear solemn, but his head bopped a few too many times to serve the purpose. "But isn't it dangerous for those poor priestesses, I mean there are illnesses out there. Dirty strangers groping those beautiful behinds, they could contract all sorts of things."

"No, no. Goddess Lum is a mighty deity, Monte. Her temples are blessed with full sanctity. No illnesses can be transmitted on her premises, none with ill intent can enter, and!" Kevlo waved a finger in front of Monte. "No random pregnancies can occur either. Lum is very picky regarding which seeds create life in her priestesses."

Monte stared at his friend's waggedy finger.

"Then why do they allow just anyone to deliver seed?"

"Well, for one thing they leave the sorting of seed to Lum." Kevlo took a small sip of ale, savouring the taste, before continuing, "Another thing is that all temples offer public services of one kind or another. The Temple of Lum offers relief to any man within the city walls who has fire in his pants. Did you know that rape is practically inexistent in Imelkon?"

"That is good, very good. Good, good," said Monte, fuzzily remembering another town where rape didn't exist. In that town it had been extinguished by a curse that made all men unable to perform sexually with anyone other than their legally wedded spouse within the city walls. That city had wedding chapels on every street, and divorce ministers had been equally redundant.

"I'm sure the priestess will forgive you if you don't come back to deliver seed, Monte. After all, you didn't know what kind of seed they wanted when you made the promise."

"A promise is a promise, Kevlo. Especially to a priestess." Now it was Monte's turn to produce a waggedy finger, which he ended up staring at with fascination too. "Do they have little donation side rooms?" Monte asked when he finally managed to drag his eyes from his finger.

"No."

"I might have a problem then," complained Monte.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I'm not used to performing in front of an audience."

"Don't worry." Kevlo grinned at his drunk travelling companion. "The priestesses offers such blessings to whoever needs it."

"Of course they do. Why didn't I think of that?"

"Because you have more ale in your stomach than brain in your head?" offered Kevlo.

"Good point." Monte pushed against the table with both hands, steadying himself while getting on his feet. "Let's go."

"Go where?"

"To the Temple of Lum, of course. Where else?" said Monte.

"Wouldn't you rather do that when you are sober?" asked Kevlo.

"You are asking me if I would rather be sober to drop my pants, and shove my cock into a woman I've never met, to deliver my seed in front of several strangers?" Monte grinned at Kevlo. "I think I prefer doing that while drunk."

"I've seen your cock, Monte. It's not THAT embarrassing."

"Nothing embarrassing about my tool, I just don't like flashing it in public. My mother raised me better than that."

"Well, I wouldn't say 'nothing'," teased Kevlo.

The two men managed to keep up a friendly, joking argument on whose cock was or wasn't embarrassing all the way to the Temple of Lum.

--=(o)=--

Neissa was studying healing spells, carefully relaxing her abdomen to not squeeze out the most recent donation. The silken scarf placed on her back, to mark that she currently held seed, tickled her skin. She had been reading about blessings to remove warts when the deposit was made, now she was reading about blessings to aid the healing of open wounds. Soon a priestess would come and clean her body, on the other side of the wall, and rinse the seed out of her; if this donation was meant to make her pregnant the good seed would soon travel past the point where gently inserted water could reach it.

Second donations could be placed on top of others, but most men preferred to place their tool in a clean sheath.

Neissa's reading was interrupted by two gentle taps on her right butt-cheek, a signal that a priestess was standing ready to clean her. She squeezed her abdominal muscles to push out the bulk of seed in her, and continued reading while her body was cleaned.

--=(o)=--

When Kevlo and Monte entered the hall of seed donation, it was more crowded than it had been on their last visit.

"My pant's are shrinking," said Monte, looking at the beautifully rounded butts presented. What he meant was of course that something inside them was growing. In spite of his drunken state, he doubted he would need a blessing to complete the donation.

Walking deeper into the hall he studied the well-shaped bottoms and the legs holding those raised high -- absently listening to Kevlo's explanation of what the scarfs meant. One particular set of buttocks caught his attention. That particular set looked like they wanted his attention. There was no scarf covering the back attached to those cheeks.

Arriving at the rear of his choice, Monte reached out a hand, then hesitated.

"Am I allowed to touch with my hands too?" he asked Kevlo. But the reply came from another source, with a soft toneless female voice.

"Feel free to let your hands enjoy her body."

Monte turned to look at the priestess who had spoken. She was holding a tray with small bowls of oil.

"Would you like some oil?" asked the priestess. Drunkenly Monte stared at her not understanding, so she elaborated, "Ointment." Monte blinked and then frowned, drawing a more explanatory word from the priestess.

"Lubrication."

To that Monte shook his head and replied, "No. I prefer my women lubricated naturally."

The priestess merely raised her eyebrows at that statement. Lum was an asexual goddess; a priestess who felt sexual desires could not convey her magic. The priestesses in the Temple of Lum were as frigid as their goddess.

"He is new at this," whispered Kevlo, and took a bowl of oil from the tray when Monte turned back to his target. "Thank you."

Politely, the priestess nodded to Kevlo and walked away. Another man accepted a bowl from her tray and unceremoniously freed his cock from his pants, to apply it generously. Steady visitors had no illusions regarding natural lubrication in this place.

Monte had forgotten everyone other than himself and the beautifully curved body in front of him. Softly he caressed the buttocks in front of him, both cheeks got loving attention.

"So beautiful," he whispered, and knelt to kiss the soft skin on her lower back.

He knelt deeper, and his hands trailed her legs feeling the muscle tone of both her upper and lower thighs. His mouth began exploring one of her hips; his tongue sneaked out to taste her skin. She tasted sweet -- a wonderful blend of cinnamon, apple, and young woman.

Monte had a slight magical gift. He could have become a wizard had he received training. But none knew of his gift; he himself did not realise it was magical. When Monte touched a woman's skin, it told him of the woman's sexual desires. What this woman's skin told him made his cock throb with desire.

'A groper,' thought Neissa, and sighed. 'Of course I had to get one of the touchy kind just as I reached the complicated reading.'

Turning her head Neissa looked at the low priestess to her left. The young woman's brows were furrowed with concentration; she was deeply focused on her own reading.

"How is the reading going, Laila?" asked Neissa, with a condescending tone. 'Takes Laila to have to focus so hard to read that book.' Neissa herself had read and understood the texts Laila was working on long ago.

Startled out of her concentration, Laila turned her eyes to Neissa.

"I am learning, Neissa." Laila's tone was as cold as Neissa's had been condescending. The two had never liked each other.

"Let Laila read in peace, Neissa." Juletta, a full-fletched priestess on Neissa's right had no liking for the arrogant low priestess. Very few did. Neissa considered herself the world's greatest gift to the city Imelkon, and acted like it too.

"I was just showing an interest in my fellow priestess under Lum," claimed Neissa with a fake smile. In reality she had scornfully wanted to distract Laila. If Neissa couldn't get calm to study, neither should any other. That was how Neissa functioned. "What are you reading, Juletta?"

Neissa turned her head to Juletta preparing to start a conversation that might distract Laila, even without involving her directly. Juletta sighed and tried to control her dislike for Neissa, as priestesses under the same god they were meant to treat each other like sisters -- loving sisters.

"I was..." Juletta was interrupted by an involuntary yelp from Neissa. "What's wrong?"

"Somebody bit me!"




Temple of Lum



"Bit you?" asked Laila.

"Yes! With teeth!"

"What else would somebody bite with?" asked Juletta.

"But nobody can hurt us in the donation hall." Nervously Laila clenched and unclenched her hands, accepting seed duty was fairly new to her too.

"Not unless both you and Lum wants them to," corrected Juletta. "But a tiny lovers bite hardly counts as hurting. Did it hurt, Neissa?"

"Not really, just caught me by surprise." Neissa tried to hide how embarrassed she was at having yelped.

Monte licked the spot he had bitten. He growled softly into the sweet skin, while it whispered more of its desires to him. Often he had dreamt secretly of subduing a woman, of forcing her, but he would never have done such a thing for real. He knew rape to be an abomination, abuse too, and would never harm a woman that way. But here was a woman who desired such things. He was sufficiently drunk to give in to her, and his, desires.

Smiling he got on his feet. He followed the contours of her butt with the nails of one hand, then slapped one of the cheeks. Intently he watched her muscles ripple in response. Again he slapped, smiling as the woman stayed in position - disciplined.

"Monte!" exclaimed Kevlo. He had intended to protest loud and clear, but what came out was merely a whisper. He stepped forward to pull his friend away, but rammed into an invisible wall. "Monte," he whispered, again. Trying to scream his friend's name, while pushing against the invisible barrier with his palms. "Monte stop!"

Monte's blood was rushing through his veins, roaring in his ears; he didn't hear Kevlo at all and continued to punish the delightfully round and responsive buttocks.

"Do not try to interfere." A priestess had moved to Kevlo's side. "Whatever this is, it is Lum's will. This magical border has been made by the Goddess herself," explained the priestess, softly tracing the barrier with a hand. Being a priestess of Lum, she could see and feel the magic of her Goddess.

"Something is wrong out there," complained Neissa through clenched teeth, trying to not flinch at every punishing slap to her butt-cheeks. "Someone is spanking me, and I don't wish to be spanked."

"We are in the Temple of Lum, Neissa. I can feel the Goddess all around us," said Juletta.

"Me too," confirmed Laila.

"And I can feel someone spanking my rear!" Neissa spat out.

"Maybe you like having your rear spanked," said someone further away. Her tone was irritated. A man had started making a deposit in her several minutes ago, and was still moving in and out of her body. In between his rhythm and Neissa's complaint the woman was unable to focus on the chants she was trying to memorise.

"I do not enjoy being spanked!" claimed Neissa. But Monte chose that particular moment to cease the spanking, and let his hand slide between her legs to briefly fondle her labia and glide a finger over her clit. "Bastard!" hissed Neissa, as a jolt of pleasure shot through her body.

"Calm down, Neissa. Look." Juletta conjured a shining magical symbol in the air, a symbol only visible to priestesses of Lum. "The magic of Lum has not weakened, her blessings still protect us at this place."

"Actually her magical presence here is even stronger than usual," commented another, studying the bright light of the symbol. "Whatever is happening out there is happening with the Goddess's consent, Neissa. Just look at the symbol."

Neissa did look at the symbol, she too could see that it shone with more power than usual. But the sight didn't calm her, because apart from shining powerfully, the symbol looked faint to her -- she could see through it.

'The bastard on the other side of the wall is making me feel lust,' realised Neissa. 'He is removing me from Lum.'

Rage boiled within Neissa, she had studied hard -- worked hard -- to become a priestess of Lum, was aiming to one day become a high priestess. She had never had issues with lust before. Now some random man had made her feel lust and she would have to work even harder -- she would need to again become frigid, now by will. In reality Neissa had never been frigid by nature. She and the Priestesses had merely assumed she was, because she had never responded with lust to any tests of desire.

None of the tests had involved being strapped down and spanked by a man.

Monte circled the woman's clit with one finger, the bud was engorged and full. It spoke of a desire to be touched, but also of a secret desire to be denied a while longer. With a wicked grin he moved his finger from it, and let it trail between her labia, catching moisture outside her opening.

'Natural oil is far better than mere lubrication,' he mused, sensing that she would feel strong lust if he inserted a finger. But he wasn't done teasing. He gave each of the reddened cheeks a new slap, harder this time, and enjoyed watching her jump on the spot. 'She isn't going anywhere.'

With his knowledge of sanctity blessings, Monte had no clue he might be able to touch her beyond her consent. Not being a magician he had no concept of what effects desiring something, which one didn't want, had on such blessings.

"Maybe you are being tested, Neissa," commented Juletta in response to Neissa's latest shriek.

Neissa turned hateful eyes to Juletta, while feeling those disturbing hands - on the other side of the wall - move along her back, to her shoulder-blades.

"Do you really think so, Juletta?" Neissa sounded sarcastic rather than sincere, it was by now rather obvious to her that Lum was testing her.

"Yes, Neissa." Juletta turned her eyes back to her scrolls, deciding to ignore the young displeasing woman.

"Do you want to pray with me, Neissa?" asked Laila, her voice sugary sweet, but ever so gleeful.

Turning her head to Laila, Neissa felt the hands travel down her sides, to her breasts. The fingers caressed the soft skin of her breasts while she replied.

"What would you like us to pray for, Laila?" Hatred was too obvious in her tone, but right then Neissa didn't care about sisterly behaviour. Hands were mauling her breasts. 'My nipples are erect,' she realised, as his fingers brushed them, seemingly accidentally.

"I was thinking we should pray that this should be your final test, Neissa. To ask Lum to test you fully right now, so it can all be over and decided afterwards." There was a shine to Laila's eyes, even though she tried to hide which way she would prefer such a test to fall.

"That sounds like a great idea, Laila." Neissa was far too arrogant and self-asserted to think she could fail a final test from Lum. Even if she had had doubts, she wouldn't have aired them in front of anyone.

Laila began a chant to send the mentioned prayer to Lum, Neissa joined in and so did all the other women, who were present for seed accepting duty, including the novices - present to carry books and scripts to and from the fastened women. Neissa felt Lum listening to and accepting the prayer. A moment later she couldn't feel Lum at all; Monte had caught her nipples between his fingers and squeezed them hard sending lustful sensations through her body.

Alternating between pinching and fondling the deliciously hard nipples, Monte listened to her skin. 'She is so horny.' He lowered his head to lick the sweet skin on her back.

Clenching her teeth, Neissa struggled to hold back moans. 'That feels heavenly. That bastard. If he wasn't protected by the sanctity of Lum's temple I'd curse him with every curse I know. He would spend the rest of his life as a limp-dicked, mute, blind, wart-covered cripple.' If her upper body hadn't been held tightly in place by the shutters she would have wrestled her nipples out of his grip.

A whining sound escaped through Neissa's nose as Monte delivered a particularly exciting double pinch to each nipple. Her eyes closed in response to dizzying lust as he first tugged, then fondled, then pinched again. 'There is nothing I can do to stop him.' The thought left her panting with further desire, she had never known that this was her sexual desire. The helplessness, the force. Neither had anyone else -- until now.

"Concentrate, Neissa," warned Juletta. "If you reach ecstasy the bond with Lum will be lost to you forever."

Turning a baleful glare on Juletta, Neissa bit back a snapping retort. Or rather she bit back every retort she could think of. Every one of them would have been direct lies, and she was not in a position to lie to a priestess of Lum right then. She ended up with a lame, "I know," as only possible reply.

On the other side of the wall, she could feel those strong hands -- belonging to a man whom she had probably never seen -- leave her breasts and sore nipples again. She would have been relieved for the end of that stimulation, if not for the fear that they were headed for the one place which throbbed harder than her nipples.

Desperately, Neissa turned the pages of her book, going back to a section she had read earlier. 'Warts, I need to read about warts. Nothing can be more non-erotic than warts.'

Monte's hands reached her soft folds again, wetness was seeping out of her now. Her labia were engorged with excitement. He caressed them, and the cleft between them, moving his fingers from her opening to her clit.

'I am wet, wet from my own juices. That bastard forced it on me. This is so humiliating, they can probably see it out there, on the other side.' Those thoughts didn't help her at all, on the contrary they made her even more lustful. 'I hope he finishes soon, I need time to learn to fight this.' The notion that she had no choice in how long he took made the burn even worse. Finally she found the section she had been looking for. 'This should work better than a dip in a tub of icy water.' She had many times laughed at novices and low priestesses who used such measures to gain control of their bodily desires.

Neissa started reading, intensely, focused. It seemed to be working. Until the unseen stranger started spanking her again.

"Bastard!" she yelled, startling a novice who had fetched books for one of the others.

"Calm down, Neissa," advised a familiar voice.

'Oh no,' thought Neissa, 'why does she have to witness my humiliation.'

Neissa raised her head to look up at the speaking woman, and greet the elderly lady with her title.

"High Priestess."

"Moments ago, Lum came to me and spoke to me, Neissa. She spoke of you."

Beads of sweat broke out on Neissa's forehead, as the man's hands alternated between spanking her and teasing her clitoris. She tried to keep her breathing even, but failed.

'Not even looking at that old crone can turn me off,' Neissa thought with utter disrespect.

"This is your final test as a Priestess of Lum, Neissa," continued the High Priestess, with a soft, yet toneless, voice. "This test will lead to a pregnancy."

"Will it be a worthy girl?" asked Neissa, normally she wouldn't doubt. Her superior flesh could not give birth to a mediocre child. She was convinced of it, usually.

"The man through whom Lum is testing you carries plenty good seed, she told me. Good for both boys and girls. But especially right now he carries the seed for a very special boy child.

"A special boy," spat Neissa. "Hah." There was no room for courtesy while her body burned like this. She had trouble even listening to the High Priestess's words.

On the other side of the wall Monte pushed two fingers into her moistness, and tickled her insides. Neissa's loud moan drowned the next words spoken by the High Priestess. Nobody had ever fingered Neissa that way, a moment she forgot who she was, where she was. Everything disappeared to a sensation building deep inside her. Growing, higher and higher, something new, something she had never experienced. She sought it, moving herself against the fingers. Around them. Clenching them.

"Almost there," she yelled. "Keep going, I'm almost there!"

The sound didn't travel across the wall, but Monte knew. Her body told him. With a sadistic grin he raised her higher. And then, in the very last moment -- the last split-second before her body could have taken it the rest of the way without his aid -- he pulled his fingers out. Grinning at the frantic movements of her behind, as she sought to recapture the missing stimulation.

"Shit!" screamed Neissa. "Asshole. Bastard. Shit-monger. Mule-fucker!" She kept mouthing a long list of words never meant to pass the lips of a Priestess of Lum, while her pussy contracted around nothing, trying to recapture the climb upwards. The deprivation of the promised ecstasy was unbearable.

As her body sank away from the peak she had not yet reached, Neissa slowly regained her senses. Still panting she moved her eyes back to the High Priestess.

"He stopped. I didn't fail, did I? I didn't reach the peak." Neissa panted. Her body still regretted the loss of promised ecstasy, but her mind was happy. 'He stopped, I passed. Even if by default it counts as passed.' "I passed the final test," she concluded out loud.

"The test isn't over yet, Neissa," stated the High Priestess.

'SHIT.' This time Neissa managed to keep the obscenity to herself.

Monte stood back till the woman's inner muscles settled, and her self-oiled opening stopped contracting. The scent of her arousal was strong enough to reach the onlookers. No one was servicing themselves with the other priestesses. All men present watched the show with disbelief, and arousal. None of them had ever seen the body of a priestess of Lum, sweaty and quivery with sexual intensity.

Moving back in position, Monte slapped her buttocks a couple times, reawakening her body. He moved a finger to her clit, teasing, fondling, rubbing.

"SHIT. ASSHOLE." Neissa resumed listing obscenities to describe the man touching her, as her body moved towards a peak again.

"Listen to me, Neissa," said the High Priestess. Neissa turned dazed eyes to her, trying to obey. Seeing she had at least part of her attention, the elderly woman continued, "If you pass this test, Lum will reward you with a twin pregnancy from that man's seed. The special boy and a girl."

"A worthy girl?" asked Neissa, and wiggled her rear to shake the man's finger off her most sensitive nub.

"Yes, it will be a most worthy girl, Neissa. But if you fail, you will be impregnated only with the boy."

"I won't fail," Neissa said with new determination. If she passed a final test, and gave birth to a worthy girl, she would rise very swiftly within the priestesshood of Lum. She wiggled her rear more vigourously. Priestesses were not meant to evade touch while on seed accepting duty, but contrary to orgasming, wiggling was not grounds for eviction from the order.

"Naughty girl," said Monte, very much enjoying the woman's attempts to escape his touch. "You want more spanking don't you?" He caressed the dancing bottom. Her skin screamed a desire for more of everything. He started spanking her again, mock punishment for her attempts to resist him. In reality, a reward for her efforts. His magical senses told him she yearned for more spanking, more force, more humiliation.

She did.

But his special sense for lust, didn't tell him how much she also didn't want to orgasm. Didn't tell him what it would do to her career as a priestess.

'He is punishing me,' thought Neissa, and grinned triumphantly through the painful slaps to her rear. 'He is trying to make me give in. Well I won't. Keep spanking, Monkey-ball-licker, hit harder too, turn me off!'

Neissa might have been right that if she was spanked hard enough, she would have been turned off. But she didn't know Monte, and didn't know of his special ability. Her skin told him exactly how hard he could -- and should -- hit to keep her body on fire.

Laila observed Neissa's face intently. Her hope that Neissa would fail faded slowly, as Neissa's grin widened in triumph. Laila expected her life in the temple could become very tough if Neissa rose above her in rank. 'I shouldn't try to sabotage the final test of another. But if Neissa rises my life will be hell, in spite of my bond with Lum. Goddess, please forgive me, I am desperate.'

"I see your struggle is going better now, Neissa."

"It is, Laila." Neissa's eyes shone when she turned her face to the other low priestess. She too came to think of how miserable she could make Laila's life in the future, as long as she passed this test.

"It is good for you that it is better than before. When you begged for his touch to continue, I thought you had lost."

Neissa blushed at the reminder of that shameful behaviour. Priestesses of Lum never begged for sexual attention.

'I forgive you, Laila. You are a part of her test too,' the voice of the Goddess whispered in Laila's mind.

'Thank you, Goddess,' thought Laila, and focused on what to say next. "It must have been so hard for you, Neissa. To come so near to physical ecstasy, right here. For the eyes and ears of your frigid sisters."

Neissa blushed deeper, with shame. Even more so as her body responded to Laila's humiliating words.

"To have all of us see your shame, as you nearly left Lum for physical pleasure, to pant, and moan, and scream, and let us all see your lust. That must have been really humiliating. Poor Neissa. Shamed right in front of us."

Panting Neissa tried to avoid the fingers, each time they sought her clit. She had her legs under control, but her pelvis betrayed her. It rubbed against his hand every time it found her, often giving her a strong stimulation sooner than her legs could move her again.

"Is it hard again, Neissa? Is the bad man touching you in private places?" teased Laila's voice.

"SHUT UP!" screamed Neissa. She jumped round frantically on the other side of the wall.

Monte gave the jumping rear a hard slap, startling the woman into a moments immobility. That was all he needed to insert two fingers in her. The third he kept partially bend, part of it nudging at her clit as she started moving again. He laughed as his hand followed her movements, allowing her to stimulate herself on his hand. His cock pressed hard on the inside of his pants, begging to be let out. But this was too great an experience to rush.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit," panted Neissa in tune with her motions. The stimulation was immense, every movement she made brought her further stimulation rather than escape from his fingers.

"Is it bad again, Neissa. Did he make you horny again?"

Neissa ignored Laila's words, or rather, refrained from replying. She couldn't ignore how the added humiliation turned her on even more. 'That little bitch, I'll get her for this. After this is over I'll make her pay.' The knowledge that there was nothing she could do to stop Laila's commentary right now, made Neissa feel even more helpless.

For a few moments longer, Neissa kept bouncing her legs, desperately trying to shake the hand off, helplessly listening to Laila's derogatory reminders of the full extent of the shameful situation. In the end Neissa had to stop moving, as she was nearing an orgasm from the movements against the man's fingers.

'Shit, shit, shit,' she thought, keeping her body absolutely still. Any further stimulation and she would go over the peak. She felt it, even though she had never passed that peak in her life.

Monte felt it too. He kept his hand absolutely still with her. Enjoying how she clenched her inner muscles around his fingers; how she involuntarily milked them.

'Soon I will give her something better to milk. Soon. But first a little more teasing.' Again he found himself waiting for his horny target to cool.

Breathing heavily, Neissa regained control of her body. 'He could have made me peak there, if he wanted to. My only hope of passing this test is that he doesn't want me to.' A tear of helplessness streamed down Neissa's cheek.




Temple of Lum



Laila noticed; the nicer girl softened. "I'm sorry, Neissa. I'll shut up now."

'She pities me,' realised Neissa. 'How dare she!'

Neissa tried to think up a stinging retort, but soon forgot those endeavours as the fingers started moving on the other side of the wall.

Monte pulled his hand out of the once again still pussy. His hand was drenched with her juices, as was her inner thighs. The scent was heavenly. He moved to her clitoris again, and stroked it ever so gently.

Neissa moaned, and blushed deeply in shame at that response. She didn't need Laila's voice to remind her of her shame. Laila remained silent as promised, but someone else snickered. 'He only just started touching me, and I am already on the edge again.' Neissa was frantic, but dared not move. She had a feeling that even the slightest movement on her part could set off the career crashing orgasm.

Extremely slowly, Monte ran his finger back and forth on her clit, watching her opening contract in response. 'She is so very close, I could push her over in seconds if I wanted to.' Her legs shook like the flanks of a freshly tamed horse. Monte grinned sadistically.

"It's a shame your head is hidden by that wall," he said. "Maybe if you had been able to beg me for release, I would be more merciful." With well-controlled movements, he kept stimulating, prepared to pull his hand away if she should get too close to the edge.

"I can't take this," whimpered Neissa, and then blushed at having said it out loud. Her blush deepened to crimson as she heard several low snickering laughs. She had never thought about how many enemies she had made herself within the temple. Trying to control her breathing, and her yearn for ecstasy, she went entirely still. His touch was electrifying. That tiny slow movement of a single of his fingers, had her whole body responding with pulsing heat.

He pushed her, slowly, surely, expertly, deeper into physical pleasure.

Neissa looked up at the High Priestess, defeat in her eyes. 'I have no choice about this, if he decides to push me over, I am going over. Whether I want to or not.'

Already dizzy with lust, Neissa's panting became heavier. 'That touch, that touch.' Electricity, fire, radiated from her clitoris. Slowly it built a new mountain, heisting her up, pulling her in. 'It is happening, it is happening.' Desire pulled her into wanting it, logic forced her to fear it. But she had no control of it. Her body followed his touch, ignoring her wants. 

Clitoral orgasm, now it was almost within her reach, but she managed to not reach out. 'Soon it won't matter anyhow, he is going to push me over.' Her gasps exhaled as whining sounds, she barely heard it. Everything disappeared to the sensation.

But then he stopped.

"He stopped, he is going to let me stay on the right side of the edge." Neissa didn't care that she was speaking out loud. All that mattered was the relief for the sake of her career, and her regret at not gaining release.

She was mistaken however.

Monte wasn't planning to let her go unsatisfied. He just wanted to come together with her. He had let go off her to free his throbbing cock from his pants. As soon as that was done he plunged into her.

"Thank you for this gift, Goddess Lum," he whispered, as the priestess's warmth enveloped his member. Her walls oiled, and tight with tension of arousal.

"No," gasped Neissa. "No.. No.. No." Her denials were timed with each of his first slow strokes, as his movement pushed her towards a new peak. Even after only a few afternoons of seed accepting, she was familiar with the movements of men during sex. His were not the movements of a man who was almost finished. 'This time it will happen.'

She closed her eyes and hid her head under her hands, as her breathing hastened and became even more rugged. 'Ecstasy, oh Goddess, ecstasy!'

Monte began moving faster. 'We are going to come, both of us. Together.' Her skin dictated his speed, as much as his own needs did. Fire grew. Sweat broke out on his chest as he roared out his pleasure. Time stood still as his release started in his stomach and moved down and through his cock. The orgasming muscles of the priestess guided his shot into her depths.

Again and again, he shot his life-giving seed into her. Donating to Lum as promised. On the other side of the wall Neissa screamed in ecstasy and defeat. Her bond with Lum was broken forever. The frigid Goddess could never communicate with one who had known physical ecstasy.

Before recovering from his first delivery, Monte realised he wasn't done. Instead of withdrawing as usual, Monte slowly resumed his piston movements.

'What?' thought Neissa, she had as yet not experienced a man continuing right after ejaculating in her. "Stop him, High Priestess. I failed. I am no longer a priestess of Lum. He no longer has a right to deposit his seed in me."

"You are not evicted until the shutters have opened, Neissa. Until you are offered a normal dress instead of priestess gown you are one of us, and must endure the remainder of seed accepting duty same as the others."

"You, BITCH," screamed Neissa. Her face contracted as her body started responding, yet again, to the man's movements.

The High Priestess turned her back to Neissa and walked out of the room, ignoring the rest of the low priestess's insults.

Monte held on to the now struggling woman's rear end; he forced her to peak twice more, before he shot again emptying his resources. With Monte's donation complete, the Goddess Lum removed the invisible barrier she had set up to protect the coupling. Kevlo dragged his exhausted, and still considerably drunk, travelling companion from the Temple. He made sure to get himself and Monte out of town within hours, in spite of Monte's drunk and tired protests.

Kevlo knew what consequences orgasms had for priestesses of Lum, he had no desire to face a furious, freshly godless sorceress.

In the temple, eight more men -- all of whom had witnessed the sexual arousal of Neissa's body -- donated their seed to her. But of all the seed in her from that day Lum's choice was set on Monte's special seed. As promised -- or threatened, depending how one would see it -- Neissa was impregnated with a special boy from Monte's seed.

And that was how Karlan Sunflower was conceived.

* Copyright of Nanna Marker (lit ID ellynei)

Message to my steady readers: No word of 'Majgen' was harmed or delayed in the production of this piece - this piece was sprayed out overnight as a block-relief.

Please believe me, Majgen is, and remains, my top priority. (Even though I do find my 'Karlan Sunflower' universe rather entertaining.)

P. S. How is my progress on punctuation and grammar going? Any particularly consistent mistakes? Feel free to give me an anonymous pm, feedback or comment.

Date of afterword, aug 10th 2008



Temple of the Bat-God



1938

Central America

A hard yank at the rope made her stumble. 

She almost lost her footing and ran unsteadily ahead several paces to catch up, not wanting to fall. If she did, they would either drag her, or carry her and she couldn't stand the thought of their hands on her again. 

Underbrush lashed at her bare legs. She felt twigs snag and rip the lacy fabric of her nightgown. Wet leaves slapped her arms. Her bare feet stubbed their toes on roots, trod on stones that gashed their tender pink soles, squelched through mud.

The night air was warm, and thick with the moisture of the rain forest. She was sure that her nightgown must be clinging damply to every contour of her body, but she had never been less concerned about modesty in her life. 

Around her, she could hear her unseen captors calling to one another. Their language was unfamiliar to her, but their delight in their prisoner was evident nonetheless. Their laughter, their anticipation ...

She was grateful for the hood in that it at least prevented anyone from seeing the tears that rolled unchecked down her face, and muffled any of her involuntary cries. 

At least the ones who had her ... at least they were human. 

In the distance, and growing more distant with each clumsy lurching step, came the screams from the camp. Fewer screams, now, and only from female throats. The men must all have been dead. The women would be soon, though by the sound of their terror and agony, they would welcome death when it claimed them. 

So far, she had been untouched, except for what contact had been necessary to subdue her, bind her, and cinch the hood over her head. 

What might await her at the end of this nightmare journey could well leave her wishing she had shared the fate of the native women at camp. For them, at least, it would be over. 

She thought of Camila, her maid. Was Camila already dead? Hopefully, if so, she had died quickly, and had not had to endure unnatural violations. 

And what had become of her father? Of Nick? 

Thinking of Nick brought a lump to her throat. It seemed impossible that only a few hours ago, she had knelt beside him in the big tent, tending to his wounds. That he had kissed her. 

It had all happened so fast. 

**

Before the blood and death, a cloying green heat hung over the camp. 

Insects made a steady, pervasive drone as they sought out sweat-shiny, unprotected skin. Even the sound of the river seemed stifled by the oppressive swelter of the day. 

Faith Calloway fanned her face with one of her father's rumpled maps. The result was a listless stirring of the still air, offering little relief. 

Then, hoping that the flush in her cheeks could be attributed to the temperature, she turned back to Nick. 

Nick Stone. Features as rugged as his name. Strong jaw. Cleft chin. Granite-grey eyes. His scuffed leather fedora was set aside, and his belt, from which hung a gun and a hunting knife, had been draped over the back of the chair in which he sat, shirtless and stoic. 

"This might sting a little," Faith said, opening the bottle of iodine. 

One corner of his mouth rose in a wry, slanted grin. "Can't hurt worse to clean them than it did to get them."

Strange to be so close to a half-dressed man. Oh, she was used to it with the workers, brown-skinned natives who went around all the time bare-chested in loose-fitting white pants and sandals. But this was Nick. A white man, an American. 

And they were almost alone, the two of them. As alone as they could be in a camp that consisted of two dozen or so workers, all going about stacking firewood, fishing, and loading rifles. The women cooked and washed clothes down by the river. Faith could hear the musical tones of their speech, and the sharper, brisker voice of her father issuing orders. 

The canvas sides of the big tent were folded up in hopes of enticing a breeze through the inner layer of gauzy mosquito netting. It wasn't like they were hidden from view. There was nothing indecent about it.

Still, her hands trembled as she carefully painted Nick's cuts and scrapes with the reddish-brown iodine. He only showed his pain once, an indrawn hiss between clenched teeth, when she reached the worst of the wounds.

"You could have been killed," she said, not as a condemnation or judgment of his ability, but in sober realization. 

"I told your father that this would be a dangerous trip," Nick said. "As ambushes go, we got off lucky. Only two men dead, if Tulio lives through the night."

"I don't think any of us ever doubted the danger."

She had to kneel beside him to dab iodine onto a long shallow scratch that ran just above his waistband. Her gaze kept wanting to stray lower, and with resolute effort she kept it fixed on her task. 

"Gutsy of you to come along," he said. 

Was that actual approval, or mockery? She couldn't be sure. 

"My father's been talking about this for as long as I can remember. It's his life's dream to find Tzikatal. I would have hated to miss it."

Still kneeling, she stoppered the iodine and put it aside. As she was about to rise, Nick caught her hands in his. 

"Faith."

"I need to get the bandages," she said, and now her voice shook as well as her hands. 

His grip was at once tough and tender. He leaned forward so that their faces were only inches apart.

The sounds of the camp now seemed very far away. The muggy air was harder than ever to breathe, or perhaps it was something else that left her breathless. 

"Faith," he said again, in a low murmur that was like a spoken caress. 

"Oh, Nick," she sighed. She moistened her lips, swallowed, and edged forward just a little ... just a little ... 

... and he crushed her to him, finding and claiming her mouth in a hot, hungry kiss. She heard a small, startled cry that she realized was her own, an "ooh!" that turned into a "mmph!" 

Her palms had instinctively gone against his chest to hold him away, but the feel of him, so solid and warm, the mat of dark-blond hair curling crisply beneath her fingers, robbed her arms of any strength. 

Nick slid from the chair so that he was on his knees as well, both of them on the bumpy canvas floor of the tent. 

Her arms somehow twined around his neck, their bodies pressed close. Only the thick khaki of her blouse, with its many pockets and epaulets, and the formidable stiffened cups of her brassiere, were between their pounding hearts. 

He reached up and unpinned the bun at the back of her head, freeing her hair to tumble in waves around her face. He had told her, a few days ago, that the color of it was somewhere between cinnamon and nutmeg. 

A storm of pent-up curiosities and yearnings brewed in her. Oh, she knew the way of a man and a woman ... she knew it in theory, at least ... but had always told herself that such things would have to wait until marriage. 

But in that moment, as his tongue probed along her lips, teasing them apart, Faith found herself ready to fling all thoughts of waiting until marriage aside. She wanted to pull him the rest of the way to the floor of the tent and twine her limbs around his. To surrender. To give him all that she had to give, and gladly take all that he offered. 

Before she could express any of this, her father called, "Nick? Faith?"

They sprang apart as if scalded. This time, Faith knew, her rosy blush could not be blamed solely on the heat. She fussed at her hair, tangling it as she tried to hastily tuck it back into a demure arrangement. 

Professor Calloway ducked under the tent flap. He took in the scene, eyebrows raising to furrow his high forehead. 

Faith's blush deepened. Nick had gotten back in the chair, and she had picked up the bandages, but the iodine she'd coated his injuries with was smeared ... and the front of her khaki blouse was stained by it in several places. In the fading light, the stains looked like blood. She felt mussed, flustered, hot and bothered. 

"I'll take over from here, shall I?" Professor Calloway inquired. Behind his spectacles, amusement twinkled in his eyes.

Faith didn't trust herself to speak. She gave him the box of bandages and, without daring to look at Nick, fled the tent. 

A mild but welcome cooling breeze had finally arisen. The tarnished blue of the sky was giving way to burning orange and dark crimson. Already, shadows pooled and gathered beneath the trees. Small animals rustled in the underbrush as the nocturnal creatures began to stir. 

The women dished up meals of flatbread made from coarse-ground corn flour, cooked fish and sliced fruit. They chatted and flirted with the male workers. If not for the alert and armed men walking sentry around the edges of the camp, it would have been easy to mistake the mood for one of festive relaxation.

In the tent she had just vacated, Faith heard her father and Nick discussing their plans for the following day. Nick, true to form, wanted everyone else to stay safely here while he and a few of the best warriors went ahead to scout the area in case of another ambush. He reminded Professor Calloway that it was his job to take the risks. 

She smiled at what she thought she sensed in his tone – that, for Nick, it wasn't entirely about the money anymore. Her lips still tingled with the aftermath of the kiss, and she hoped she wasn't just imagining that he had genuine feelings for her. 

Faith ate her supper, then, as the spectacular sunset deepened toward night, retired to her own tent to change into her nightgown. Her maid, Camila, clucked over the iodine stains on her blouse and took it away to rinse in the river. 

A strange, high, eerie cry made the fine hairs on the back of her neck prickle. It hurt her ears, that cry, the way the screech of fingernails on a chalkboard could drill directly into one's mind. 

The camp fell briefly silent. There was a low gabble of consternation. Then the cry came again. Closer. Louder. Shrill. 

Faith's eyes clenched into slits and she winced, putting her hands over her ears. That was no good; it was as if the noise shivered right through the bony shell of her skull. 

She wanted to scream in sympathy. Anything, just to make it stop!

When it finally did stop, she was panting in ragged gasps and shuddering all over, her skin stippled with goose bumps. 

"Faith? Faith, are you all right in there?" her father called from the other side of the sloped canvas wall. 

"I ... I think so. What was that?"

If he answered, she didn't hear. There was a sudden tumult of shrieks and shouts, the sharp report of rifles firing. Over all of that was a strange flapping-snapping noise that made Faith think of a starched sheet on a clothesline, whipped by a high wind. And the cry again, several cries shivering from several throats, like the cries of the damned. 

She ran out of the tent without thinking – heedless of danger, heedless of the fact that she was barefoot, wearing only a nightgown – and jerked to a halt at the sight that met her eyes. 

Creatures dove from the bruise-colored sky. Creatures as big as men, and shaped vaguely like men ... but shaped also like bats grown to hideously impossible size.

Their bodies were covered with bristling brown and black hair. Instead of arms, they had leathery wings tipped with a cluster of grasping fingers. Instead of feet, their legs ended in talons of some black, hornlike substance. 

As they descended on the camp, their wings beat the air with that flapping-snapping sound. They screeched those unbearable cries. 

Faith stood stunned, unable to move. By the firelight and the last dying westerly glow of the setting sun, she saw with merciless clarity a bat-thing rake its foot-talons at a worker, and rip fatal furrows across his belly. 

Clutching himself, trying with little success to hold in his internal organs, the man sprawled on the ground. In the instant before the bat-thing's wings folded around its victim, Faith saw its muzzle plunge into the man's guts and tear out a dripping hunk of meat. 

She whirled away, but everywhere she looked were similar horrors. A bat-thing crouched atop Eduardo, the guide, shredding strips from his face while Eduardo thrashed and babbled an incoherent prayer. 

Eduardo's little boy, Javiero, whom Faith had been teaching English, lay dead with his body beside the fire and his wide-eyed head several yards away. 

Ramon, one of the riflemen, shot a bat-thing out of the sky but then, as three of them surrounded him, placed the barrel of the rifle under his chin and blew his own brains out before they could savage him with their claws. 

Inez, trying to crawl to safety with her long black hair hanging in her face and her pretty white dress in tatters, was seized from behind by one of the creatures. It held her pinned in place, and something long and rigid, something pink-red and glistening, poked out from the dense pelt at its groin. 

Faith's shocked mind could not believe what she was about to see, not even when the bat-thing mounted Inez. The woman's scream pealed through the camp. Her head flung up, and for one ghastly moment her eyes met Faith's. She knew what was happening to her. 

The creature drove against her in a frantic, hunching, convulsive movement. At the height of its frenzy, it darted down and brutally bit the back of Inez's neck. She collapsed, her spine severed so that she was paralyzed from the waist down. 

But that did not stop a second bat-thing from flipping Inez onto her back and shoving her legs so far apart that her hips must have burst from their sockets. The bat-thing fell upon her, thrusting furiously. 

Another woman ran by. Marcela. She had been stripped bare, her skin covered with long scratches. A waist-length black braid streamed behind her, and it was this braid that was her undoing. A flying bat-thing caught hold of it and hauled Marcela off the ground. Her feet kicked frantically at air, and then the bat-thing let her go. She tumbled into a cluster of its fellows. They surrounded her, bore her down, and she vanished beneath a pile of bristly fur and leathery wings.

Several of the workers broke and ran for it, scattering in all directions. The monsters gave eager chase, now seeming to take a cruel pleasure in hamstringing their prey and watching the crippled men still scrabble and crawfish toward the shelter of the trees. 

Something grabbed Faith's arm and she jumped, screamed. 

"We have to get out of here!" her father cried, tugging on her arm. "This way!" 

Together, they ran around the tent and headed for the river. Behind them, the screams and gunshots and eerie cries of the bat-things continued. Professor Calloway fought through the wet foliage, into the shadowy gloom of the rain forest. Faith, gasping, hurried after him. She looked back against her will, a helpless and gruesome fascination drawing her eye as surely as a magnet draws iron filings. 

The bat-things had found Tulio, the wounded man Nick had brought back, the only other survivor of the ambush. Still drugged, he presented no challenge to them as they tore his flesh with their teeth and lapped up the blood. 

With a whoosh and a thump and a shower of shedding leaves, a bat-thing dropped from a tree and landed directly in front of Professor Calloway. It rose to its full height, well over eight feet, and opened its wings to their entire twelve-foot span.  

Up close, the creatures were even more monstrous. The head was furry, with triangular ears and a flexible black nose sneering up from thin, pointed yellow teeth. But there was something disturbingly human about its features as well. 

Though batlike, though the high and piercing cries they emitted might be a form of echolocation, this one at least was not blind. Its eyes, large and brown and canny, flicked from the professor to Faith. Its sneer widened, and the cluster of little fingers at the top of its wings flexed greedily. 

A stiff, reddish length of flesh emerged from low on its body, and she quailed. It would tear her father apart, and then it would do to her what the others had done to Inez, to Marcela. 

"Run, Faith!" Her father must have reached the same conclusion. He spread his arms wide, blocking the creature's advance, and cast a desperate final glance over his shoulder at her. "Run!"

She took a faltering step back. "Father!"

"Go!"

Snarling, the bat-thing leaped in the air. The downdraft from the single powerful stroke of its wings blew Faith's nightgown swirling around her ankles. The bat-thing drew up its knees, the curved black hooks of its talons poised above her father. One hard kick, and he would be opened from collarbones to hips. 

A gun roared, deafeningly close. Faith felt something hot streak past her, and in what seemed the same instant, the bat-thing's head exploded into gobbets of warm meat, bone chunks, and gristle. A sticky scarlet geyser drenched the professor, and splattered Faith.

Nick Stone ran up to them. Faith rushed to meet him, and threw herself into his arms, burying her face in his chest and trying not to sob. He embraced her, stroked her hair. He smelled of sweat, gunsmoke, blood and adrenaline. His heard thudded a rapid, audible drumbeat beneath her ear. 

"Nick, oh, thank goodness," she gasped. 

"Let's get you out of here," he said grimly, putting one arm around her while the other one held the smoking gun and his grey eyes swept back and forth, scanning the trees for another target. "Are you all right, Professor?"

"Incredible," Professor Calloway said, stooping to examine the dead bat-thing, which lay crumpled like a loose sack. His face was twisted in a sort of fascinated revulsion. "This shouldn't be possible –"

"Now, Professor," Nick urged. "If we can get to the river, we might be able to slip past them."

"What about the others?" Faith asked. "Camila, Marco, Lupe, Pedro?"

Nick only shook his head and looked grimmer than ever. He pulled Faith and her father away from the dead creature and hurried them into the forest. 

**

That was the last thing Faith remembered, until waking to find her wrists being roughly bound by a man with dark skin and broad features. He wore a sleeveless dark-yellow robe under a leather cape, and a gold headdress crudely hammered into a design of interlinked bat's wings. 

Other men, similarly attired, stood straight and alert in the dusk. They were armed with bows. She had recognized the fletching of the arrows as being identical to the ones her father had removed from Tulio's flesh. 

She had still been able to hear the screams and unearthly cries from the camp, could still smell blood and smoke hanging in the humid air. She had looked desperately around for any sign of her father or Nick, and saw neither of them. 

It was the last action she had a chance to take before the man in the gold headdress put the hood over her head, and secured it snug around her neck. She had been hauled to her feet and made to walk, yanked along by the rope that extended from her tied wrists. 

Now, with the noises from the camp swallowed up by the whispering liquid rush of the river, her captors stopped. Faith did not immediately comprehend this, and took a few more blind, bumbling steps after the rope went slack. A hand closed on her upper arm, squeezing, and she froze in place. 

The hand moved surreptitiously, fingertips grazing the side of her breast. Faith wrenched away with a revolted cry. Men laughed. The hand returned, no longer surreptitious. It closed over her breast in a painful clamp. 

Another voice spoke, sharp and stern. The hand was hastily withdrawn. 

Her rapid breathing puffed the bag in and out in front of her face. More hot tears streamed down her cheeks. 

Where was Nick? He wouldn't let this happen to her ... unless ... unless ... and her father ... could they both be dead? She couldn't remember. Her last memory was of following Nick through the woods, and of just beginning to feel that they might escape this horror after all.




Temple of the Bat-God



And then ... nothing. 

The stern voice spoke again. Men took Faith by the arms, this time careful to avoid touching her anyplace else, and guided her down a steep muddy slope. 

The river. Were they going to drown her? 

She was lifted, another man or two bending to take her ankles. Despite her kicks and struggles, they carried her onto something that dipped and rocked. A raft, or a boat. Water splashed against wood with a hollow sound. 

The men crowded in around her. Under the concealment of close quarters, one of them reached under her and groped her bottom. Faith writhed and squealed. Someone pressed a hand on her chest, pressing hard on her sternum, holding her down. 

It was too much. Darkness crashed over her again, and she fainted. 

**

Warmth and light awakened her, and Faith's first muddled thought was one of an almost inexpressible relief. 

A dream. The bloodshed, the death ... it had all been just a dream. She was safe in her own tent, safe at the camp. Soon Camila would come in, bringing coffee, to help her wash and dress.

A trickle of hot water, coursing down her chest, brought her all the way awake. 

And she saw that she was not in her tent at all. 

She was bound nude to a slanting slab of rock, tilting back at a forty-five degree angle. Her wrists were above her head, her ankles tied immodestly apart. 

A pair of young women stood on either side of her, one holding a large gold bowl while the other dunked a rag, then wrung it out over Faith's body. The steaming water was scented with strange oils. 

The women wore dark-yellow sleeveless tunics, the cloth so thin and sheer that they might as well have been bare-breasted. Their inky-black hair was swept up and pinned with ornaments of gold, and gold torcs graced their supple brown throats. 

"Help me," Faith whispered. 

One of them smiled at her. She spoke in an unfamiliar language, words perhaps meant to be reassuring, and patted Faith on the cheek. 

The slab to which she was bound stood at the center of a large chamber. The walls rose in a series of inward-decreasing squares, like the hollow interior of a stepped pyramid – which, Faith surmised, it was. 

This had to be Tzikatal, the lost city her father had sought. Tzikatal, and the temple. The temple of the bat-god, known to many Central American tribes as Zotz. 

And there, looming high on one of the walls, was an image of Zotz himself. The sculpture depicted a bat with a wingspan twenty feet or more across, and a body twice the size of a man. The head was that of a leaf-nosed bat, with sparkling yellow gems for eyes and a larger gem, a blood-red ruby, set into the base of Zotz's throat. 

The statue's only human traits were its curled-fingered hands at the top of the wide wings, and its enormous stone genitalia. The erect phallus jutted up and out from the body, and while the rest of the carving was rough, this part had been polished to a satiny sheen. 

The light and warmth in the chamber came from several large braziers, which leaped and crackled with flames. Craning her neck, Faith saw murals, pictographs, plinths and columns. She saw the glint of gold everywhere, shining in the firelight. She saw more maidens in yellow tunics approaching, carrying golden platters heaped with fruit and flowers. 

"Please," she whispered to the one who had smiled. "Please, you must help me. Let me go."

Again, the young woman patted her on the cheek. Then she coiled a lock of Faith's hair around her finger and admired the cinnamon-nutmeg hue. The other one pointed to Faith's eyes – the sea-green color had to be unusual to them – and said something perhaps meant to be a compliment. The first one nodded, and reverently touched Faith's creamy-white skin. 

"Don't do this, please don't," Faith said, though she was losing hopes she hadn't even known she harbored. 

She had listened to her father talk of native tribes and primitive ways long enough to know a sacrifice when she was one. They had undressed and bathed her while she was unconscious, and tied her to this slab in the temple. Next, she would be adorned with flowers, as befit a proper offering to the god. 

True enough, the other maidens sprinkled her with fragrant petals, looped garlands around her neck and waist, tucked blooms into her hair. 

The smiling one chose a piece of fruit and held it up, cocking her head inquisitively. 

At the sight of it, so firm and ripe and juicy, and the succulent smell of it, Faith's stomach growled. Her already dry mouth felt parched. She wanted to resist, wanted to deny them, but the lure of the fruit was too much. She stretched toward it imploringly. 

Part of her mind was expecting it to be snatched away, as the women erupted in scornful laughter. But the smiling one held it to her lips. Faith bit deep, and the gush of sweet juice was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted. 

"Zivia," the young woman said. 

Faith repeated it as a query, not sure if it was her name or the name of the fruit. 

"Zivia," the young woman said again, and this time tapped herself to indicate that it was her own name. She gestured inquiringly at Faith. 

"Faith Calloway."

"Fay-eeth." Again, she smiled, as if proud of herself for managing the difficult foreign word. 

"Where is my father? Where is Nick? What have you done with them?" Faith pulled at the bonds, disarranging some of the flowers and earning scolding looks from the other women. 

"Fay-eeth," Zivia said, chiding. She lifted a wide-mouthed clay vessel, painted yellow with symbols in red. Something sloshed inside. 

The fruit had only roused her appetite, and Faith was overwhelmingly thirsty. She licked her lips. "Please."

Zivia held it so that she could drink. It was chocolate, unsweetened the way the Mayans drank it. Faith drained the vessel despite the bitter taste. She tried not to feel renewed hope – if they meant to kill her, why would they waste precious food and drink on her? – and told herself that fed or not, she was still bound to this slab so like an altar, beneath the glaring yellow eyes of Zotz. At any moment, a priest could come in with a sacred obsidian knife and slit her throat, or cut the still-beating heart from her breast. 

A commotion at the side of the chamber made her turn her head. The women fell back and she saw men, men in yellow robes, carrying two large wooden frames. Tied spread-eagle in the center of the frames, naked and battered, were the limp and motionless forms of two white-skinned men. 

Her father and Nick. 

Faith screamed, yanking on her bonds more fiercely than before. They remained unyielding. Neither man responded to her cry. Blood seeped sluggishly through the professor's cap of thinning, greying hair. Nick's face was puffed and purple from a vicious beating. 

"Nick! Nick, can you hear me? Father!"

The yellow-clad men braced the frames upright, seating the long poles in holes in the temple's stone floor. Then, silently, they filed off to the side and formed a line. The women, having finished fussing with the garlands of flowers, joined them. Only Zivia remained, holding a platter of fruit. 

She should have been mortally embarrassed to be exposed like this in front of the men, and to be seeing what she was seeing. Yet decency was the least of her concerns. Even her very real fear for her life was fading as a strange lassitude slipped over her. 

Drugged? Had the chocolate been drugged?

A low, slow chanting rose from the assembled natives in their yellow robes and tunics. It throbbed in Faith's mind, driving away other thoughts. She felt it in her pulse, which had been racing but now slowed to that steady, rhythmic pace. 

Her arms relaxed, going slack against the bonds. A mellow, languid warmth filled her body. At the same time, her senses became heightened. She could smell every different variety of the flowers that adorned her, the fruit, the smoke. 

The melody of the chant was a symphony in her ears, underlain by the crackle of the flames. Her vision sharpened until she could make out every minute detail around her, from the smallest pictograph to the individual strands of Zivia's shining black hair. The aftertastes of the fruit and the chocolate mingled into bittersweet. The stone slab was both silky and coarse against her skin. The chamber seemed to be swaying, spinning, subtly expanding and contracting around her. 

Drugged, yes ... no question of it. 

Zivia took another fruit from the platter. Faith's mouth watered, but the woman did not offer it to her. Instead, Zivia held it over her and squeezed. Clear juice ran from the crushed fruit, spattering Faith's breasts and belly. Beaded droplets of juice sparkled like diamonds on the taut peaks of her nipples. Rivulets of it ran, tickling, down her sides. 

"What ... what are you ...?" Formulating words was too great a challenge, speaking an effort for which she hadn't the strength. 

Still with that reassuring smile, Zivia crushed a second fruit, the juice dribbling over Faith's legs and the nest of russet curls between them. With her preternatural senses, Faith felt the juice trickle over the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. 

A groan from her left made her turn her head, to see that Professor Calloway was stirring. Her father raised his head, blinking blearily at the surroundings. He looked dazed, and whether it was from the head blow he must have sustained, or whether he, too, had been drugged, Faith couldn't be sure. 

More figures came into the room, a procession of them, all walking tall and proud. Faith recognized the man in the lead, the one in the gold bat-winged headdress who had tied her hands. He was flanked and followed on both sides by tall, dark shapes wrapped in cloaks ...

No. Not wrapped in cloaks. 

Tall, dark shapes with their leathery wings folded about their furry bodies. 

The bat-things, the creatures, the monsters. Their talons clicked and scraped on the stone floor as they moved. 

The man in the headdress stopped in front of the tilted slab. The bat-things surrounded Faith, their wrinkled black noses twitching and sniffing eagerly. 

"Get away from her, you devils!" Nick shouted. 

Faith could barely see him past the bat-things, but she could hear him thrashing in a sudden fury, the wooden framework to which he was lashed creaking with the force of his struggles. 

"Faith?" her father called querulously. 

"Fay-eeth," Zivia said, stroking her cheek. 

Feeling dreamy and distant, Faith rolled her head back to its original position. 

Zivia's pretty features were blurred. At first Faith thought that this was through some fault of her eyesight, but her vision was still uncannily keen. Then she saw what it truly was ... the short dark fur sprouting from Zivia's skin ... the melt and flow of bone as Zivia's face altered.

Her body was undergoing a similar transformation. She shed her tunic as her shape changed. Upraised arms shortened, contorted. Her pinkie fingers stretched to impossible lengths, curving, extending. 

Bat-thing ... bat-woman ... her torso still with something of a feminine shape, though covered with downy black fuzz ... bat-woman with long and lovely legs ending in dainty claws ... 

Far down in some portion of her mind, Faith voiced a silent inner shriek. On the outside, she could only stare as Zivia completed her transformation. The bat-woman still wore a gold torc, and golden ornaments in her hair. 

"Faith!" Nick threw himself side to side. A piece of wood made a loud splintering crack. "Faith!"

The man in the headdress – the high priest – gave an order and gestured. Four men hurried toward the captives. 

Even in her floating, drifting, serene state, Faith caught her breath, expecting to see the flash of knives, the spurt of blood. 

Instead, she heard a quick series of thuds and grunts, and when the men stepped back, Nick slumped with his head down and his chest heaving as he sucked in gasps of air. 

Zivia brought the cluster of fingers atop one of her wings to stroke Faith's cheek again. Shuddering, she tried to twist away from that abominable caress. The bat-woman's black lips curled in a smile. Her teeth were sharp, almost fangs. 

"No!" Faith meant it to be an outraged scream, but the best she could do was a soft moan. 

Bending, Zivia lapped sticky-sweet fruit juice from the sideswell of Faith's breast. Her tongue was rose-pink, warm and slippery. Her breath was cool. She licked again, a slow and teasing lick that spiraled around and around the hardened nipple. 

"Oh, God, no!" whimpered Faith. As horrified as she was, her body with its inflamed senses was responding to the illicit contact. 

Zivia licked up another runnel of juice, taking her time. Faith clenched her fists, trying to will away the tingle that coursed through her, that pulsed strongly between her legs. 

This could not be happening! With the silent men and bat-things looking on, with her helpless father and Nick right there ... hearing her mewl and sigh as Zivia's tongue teased her nipples and ran in lingering wet swipes along the valley of her cleavage. 

The black, misshapen lips pressed a trail of kisses from her breasts to her belly. Soft kisses with the pinprick threat of sharp fangs only adding to the intensity of the sensation. 

Faith tossed her head from side to side, her fingernails digging into her palms, her words begging Zivia to stop while her treacherous body quivered with anticipation and wanted the bat-woman's delicious, tormenting tongue to move lower and lower. 

Leathery wings, not rough but smooth as suede, draped over Faith's legs as Zivia crouched, grasped her knees in those clustered fingers, and urged them open as far as the bonds on Faith's ankles would permit. The bat-woman licked away the dribbles of juice that covered Faith's thighs. Her cool breath was an icy susurration against the molten core of Faith's being, and with no more thought for her father, for Nick, for modesty or decency or the onlooking natives and bat-things, Faith tilted her pelvis to present herself to Zivia's mouth. 

"Ah! Oh, oh, yes!" was the cry torn from her throat as Zivia's tongue slid wetly along her folds. 

She tried once more to free her hands, not so she could push Zivia away but so that she could pull her closer. She had never experienced anything like this, never, not even in her most torrid daydreams. The arousal she'd felt when kissing Nick was nothing compared to this. She wanted more, ached for something she couldn't name, needed and craved it with such a maddening fire that she could barely think. 

"More, yes ... oh, a little more ... oh, yes, yes, like that ... more ..." she panted, rocking her hips against Zivia's face, feeling that tongue probe her depths and dart with coaxing urgency against a spot that made her reel from ecstasy. "Just ... just a little ... no!"

This last, bursting from her in a cheated cry as Zivia abruptly drew back, leaving her poised on the brink of some unimaginable precipice. Faith wailed in frustration, bucking her body, opening herself, offering herself. 

But the bat-woman rose, sloe-dark eyes fixing hungrily on Faith's, showing those sharp teeth again in a smile. Zivia stepped to the side. She folded her wings around herself. 

"Faith!"

She became aware that during the entire sordid scene, her father and Nick had been yelling her name, and spewing curses and threats at their captors. 

The high priest ignored Nick and the professor. He surveyed Faith, his gaze sweeping her body with possessive insolence. He snapped his fingers, and two of the flower-bearing maidens rushed to remove his yellow robe. 

He was naked beneath, his brown-skinned body almost totally hairless, broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. Above and behind him, the stone image of Zotz boasted its enormous erection; the priest boasted a less impressive but substantial one of his own. 

Faith's head had been somewhat cleared of the drug by the combination of Zivia's depraved attentions and the burning realization that Nick and her Father had witnessed the entire thing, seen her writhing and begging. 

Now she looked at the priest with dread, understanding that he meant not to kill her, but take her. Deflower her, the virgin on the altar. Perhaps then, after, would be the obsidian knife. 

The male bat-things keened their high, excited cries, and she saw that they, too, were stiff with need. Some had already seized the young women, rudely tearing open their yellow tunics and pushing them to their hands and knees to penetrate them from behind, as Faith had seen done to Inez. 

But rather than scream in agony, as the women of the camp had done, these ones welcomed their inhuman ravishers with rapturous moans. 

Others of the bat-things only waited, looking at Faith with a raw desire that further blew the fog from her mind and replaced it with cold terror. She turned to the priest with a plea in her eyes – a plea that, even if he had to do this, he would be kind enough to kill her before the bat-things had their turns. 

The priest gave no sign that he understood her silent plea. Nor did he immediately settle himself between her legs and plunge into her. He shouted more orders to the yellow-clad men, most of whose robes showed proof of their arousal. 

The men dragged the wooden frameworks closer to the stone slab. Faith saw her father's outrage, fear and confusion ... saw something else in Nick. Although he struggled against it, he couldn't control that part of him that twitched and swelled and rose from its bed of thick blond hair. 

He met her gaze and immediately looked away, shamefaced ... only to steal another glance at her breasts, her loins. 

"Nick," she pleaded. 

"Fight them, Faith," he said hoarsely. "Resist them. Don't let them do this to you."

"I ... I can't stop them."

"Then don't like it!" he cried. "Don't – ah!"

Whatever else he had been going to say was lost as Zivia dropped to her knees in front of him and took the whole hard length of him deep in her mouth. Nick's head flew back, cords standing out in his neck. His entire body went rigid, trembling. 

"Nick!" Faith shouted. "Nick, no!"

Zivia's head bobbed. She made slurping, sucking noises. Faith could see Nick's erection sliding in and out of her mouth, spit-shiny and huge. Nick groaned each time Zivia swallowed him down again. Sweat stood out in beads on his face. 

Another order from the priest made Faith wrench her attention away from Nick. Horribly, shamefully, seeing what Zivia was doing to him only made her want to try it herself, want to feel a man filling her mouth, taste him, see if she could make him groan like that. 

The pulsing fire in her loins was stronger than ever, and she was now almost eager for the priest to take her. Just to have an end to it, just to be released from this purgatory of suspense!

But instead, the priest gave an order, and gestured to Professor Calloway. Two of the yellow-clad men cut the ropes that held him, and dragged his stumbling, protesting form toward the altar. 

Faith paled at the hideous idea that they might force her father to take part in this unholy ritual, that they might position him between her legs. 

"Anything but that!" she screamed. "Please, anything but that!"

The young woman who had helped Zivia bathe Faith knelt at the priest's side, holding the same now-empty golden bowl. The priest raised an obsidian knife that could have been born straight from her worst imaginings. Its black blade gleamed in the firelight. 

In a single swift movement, the razor-sharp edge slashed Professor Calloway's throat. 

The professor made a surprised, glottal sound that became a gurgle as a red-purple torrent poured from the wound. The young woman caught most of it in the bowl, though she, and the priest, were doused from the pumping arterial spray. 




Temple of the Bat-God



"Noooooo!" Faith howled.

Her father's eyes, hazel and befuddled, met hers one final time as the men released him. He toppled slowly, mouth working, and fell dead on the floor of the temple he had searched for all his life.

The priest turned from his sprawled body and raised both hands, which were wet with blood. He began to chant. Other voices picked it up. 

Faith wept, tears running as hot and copiously as had her father's blood. They were going to die here, all of them, and their deaths would be terrible. 

Yet even as her soul felt torn in two with grief, her body still hummed and throbbed, and when the priest knelt on the slanted slab between her knees, some part of her tensed in eager anticipation. 

But he did not ravish her. He knelt over her with his member in his bloodstained hand, gripping it and rubbing up and down in short, hard jerks. His chanting voice grew huskier. Pearly drops oozed from the end of his erection. 

"Get off her!" Nick rattled the wooden frame again. He had been abandoned by Zivia, the bat-woman having left him waving stiff and indignant in mid-air as she crouched avidly to watch the priest. "I'll kill you, you son of a bitch!"

Ignoring Nick, ignoring Faith's frantic struggles, the priest continued chanting and massaging himself, hand moving faster, leaving crimson smears. His back arched, and he convulsed, and the woman with the bowl used it to catch the gouts of thick white fluid. 

The semen and blood swirled together, milky-red. The woman offered the bowl to each of the bat-things in turn. They dipped their tongues, sampling the delicacy, and their eyes burned with a feverish new intensity.

As this monstrous rite went on, Faith's father's remaining blood oozed from his body. It joined together and flowed in rivulets and patterns through the mortar joint channels between the stones. 

Her eyes met Nick's. "Can't you do something? Can't you get us free?" she sobbed.

Nick looked away. Guilt and shame suffused his features. "He didn't ... hurt you," he said haltingly. "Maybe he ..."

Somehow, she knew what was in his mind. The priest hadn't "hurt" her, indeed ... and now Nick was thinking, perhaps even hoping, that the two of them would be made to enact whatever perverse sacred marriage was taking place. Perhaps the yellow-clad men would cut him down and bring him to the altar-slab. The handmaiden of Zotz had prepared them both, after all ...

If that were to be the case ... another unwelcome throb of liquid heat in her loins made Faith squirm on the altar. Yes, oh, yes ... to have Nick kneeling over her ... to have Nick guiding himself ... that purpled, bulbous head nudging between her folds ... and then piercing her, inch by inch ... 

The priest took the bowl from the young woman and brought it to Faith. She recoiled, thinking that he meant her to drink from it – his seed and her father's blood – and almost gagged. But rather than tilt the bowl's brim to her lips, he tipped it over her body.

The milky-red mixture splashed over her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. It was still body-temperature, and the smell of it was ripe and earthy and awful. 

Stepping back, the priest spoke a single word and waved his hand. At once, the bat-things swarmed over Faith, in a voracious frenzy. 

It was Zivia and the fruit juice again, but tenfold, as they licked and lapped with their many hot, flickering tongues. Their wings rustled, their fur brushed her bare skin, their greedy mouths suckled her nipples and delved between her legs. 

Faith screamed again, a long and loud peal that rang to the heights of the chamber. It was a scream of horror, but also of unimaginable lust. The tongues, worming into her most sensitive places ... slippery red-pink erections rubbing against her sides, her legs, as the bat-things crowded close. 

One of them leaped high with a flap of its wings and landed with clawed feet clutching the upper edge of the tilted slab. It squatted over Faith, leaning forward with inhuman suppleness to lap up the milky-red drops that stippled her upper chest and neck. Its organ touched her cheek. If she moved her head even a little, the vile thing would be against her lips. 

She dimly heard Nick, but his bellows, curses and threats were almost entirely drowned out by the squeals and chitters of the bat-things and the ongoing chant. 

They licked her, licked her, slithered their tongues into her, rubbed against her. Faith wailed with lips pressed tight-shut, wailed wordlessly for them to do it and get it over with, to take her, she couldn't bear it any longer. 

She wriggled her hips and splayed her thighs as wide as they would go, sure that one of them must, any moment now, crawl atop her and bury itself with one rough thrust. 

Once more, her body hurtled toward that precipice, and she strained for it with all her might, needing to get there, needing it before she died in her frenzy of depraved passion. 

And suddenly, shockingly, the bat-things abandoned her. Faith stared around incoherently, her breath in heaving gasps, her body cleaned of blood and semen and cooling as the air evaporated the bat-things' warm saliva. 

The priest's obsidian knife flashed twice. Faith expected pain and felt nothing, and then her wrists were released, the cords lashing her to the altar severed and hanging in loose loops. 

Before she fully understood that her feet had also been freed, that her limbs were her own again, two of the bat-things flew down and seized her by the arms. Their wings beat furiously, and Faith was lifted from the slab. The crushed and rumpled remains of her floral garlands fell away in a petalstorm. She saw Nick, watching as she was borne up, up, over the heads of the yellow-clad humans and the other bat-things. 

Carried high ... carried toward the looming, scowling statue of the bat-god. Zotz's jeweled eyes reflected the fires, lending a bizarre life to the stony features. 

She didn't know what was happening until the bat-things began to lower her toward the sculpture. Faith grasped wildly and caught hold of the upper edge of the statue's spread wings. Her toes found precarious purchase on ridges. 

The bat-things let go, and there Faith was, clinging desperately on tip-toe, her arms and legs already shaking from the strain of trying to hold herself up and avoid being impaled on the enormous stone phallus of the bat-god. 

As it was, she couldn't lever herself high enough to avoid touching it completely. The swollen round head nudged between her legs, pressing into the soft tender folds. If she tried to relax her feet from their tip-toe pose, or if she unbent her elbows, she would sink down onto it. 

The more she moved, shifting her weight and trying to maneuver herself into a less vulnerable position, the more she caused the smooth-polished knob to slide and rub in agonizingly tantalizing ways. 

She was moist and slippery from the ministrations of the bat-things, and her own body's juices slicked the stone phallus. Her shoulders were on fire, her arms aching. An impending cramp nagged at one of her calves. Her toes had already gone white and numb from the pressure. 

"Hold on, Faith!" Nick called from the chamber floor. "Don't let go!"

More tears blurred her vision as she tried to look down. This was the most fiendish torture yet! She had been ready for them to take her, the priest or the bat-things or even Nick ... she had been bound and helpless and couldn't have fought them if they wanted to tear away her precious virginity. But this ...

Nick was just visible, still in his wooden frame, and the sight of him filled Faith with an unaccountable anger. He would blame her, because if her arms or her legs – thrumming now like live wires, and her fingers had gone as numb as her toes – failed, it would be Faith Calloway's own fault for being unable to hold on.

But how could she hold on? No one was going to rescue her. All she was doing was delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later – sooner, by the white-hot pain searing her limbs – she would lose. She would either plummet backwards, breaking her neck and back and skull on the temple floor below, or she would have to impale herself. 

And it was unbearable, the hard push of Zotz's eternal erection poised just so, taunting her. Hadn't she wanted, needed penetration? Hadn't she craved it? 

"Faith! Faith, be strong! You're better than this."

There were conveniently-placed ledges where she could rest her knees, and she had no doubts that many other virgins before her had been in this very spot, faced with this very choice. To surrender and accept and perhaps even enjoy her fate, or to fight a futile battle and then be possessed by the bat-god anyway. 

She looked down at Nick, hoping to make him understand that she could no more resist this than she could have fended off the priest or the bat-things. She couldn't hold on. Her arms were weakening. 

When she saw him, her earlier anger came back in an incensed fury. 

Not only was Nick still rock-hard, but Zivia stood in front of him, positioning herself so that he could – if he chose – enter her from behind. Nick's eyes darted from Faith to the bat-woman to Faith again. 

Then, with a throat-tearing cry, he rammed his hips forward to plunge his length into Zivia. The bat-woman shrilled in triumph as Nick, his expression one of utter madness now, thrust savagely in and out, grunting through clenched teeth each time his pelvis pounded against Zivia's furry backside. 

The hypocrisy of it ... and she was supposed to be better than this? She was supposed to be strong, hold on, resist ... when he couldn't?

"Aaaah!" Faith cried, and sank down, down. 

The smooth, thick stone opened her, deflowered her. The pain was barely noticeable through the quaking rush of relief that flooded her agonized arms and legs. She felt stretched, filled, the breath knocked from her lungs in an explosive gust. 

For a moment, she only rested there, knees braced, arms around the bat-god's neck. Her pulse thundered, and she felt it most strongly down low. Being filled wasn't enough. She wanted to feel more, to move. The ache in her limbs was quickly forgotten as she tried rocking her hips. The movement sent ripples of sensual euphoria through her body. 

She raised and lowered herself in a quickening tempo, riding the immense phallus. She was aware that she was moaning aloud in a sheer blissful ecstasy, aware but heedless. It felt too good to care about anything else. Her father was forgotten, Nick nearly so. 

The only thing that mattered was the climax she felt building in her, that precipice, and this time she would be allowed to reach it, to throw herself over. And if there was only darkness and death on the other side? What of it?

As it began, as spasms wracked her body and wrung delirious cries from her, she heard a strange and brittle crackling sound. The solid mass of the statue moved, the mighty wings flexing. Shards of thin stone fell away. The yellow gemstone eyes blinked, and when they opened again, they were eyes, glowing golden living eyes. 

Her hands, which had been resting on stone, now touched thick fur and warm skin. She felt the change inside, too, as the stone phallus transformed into hot, firm flesh. 

Despite this new and sudden horror, she could not stop the throes of orgasm. And as Zotz thrust into her, his erection now throbbing with life, Faith was sent into even greater realms of hitherto unknown delight. 

The bat-god folded his vast wings around her, enveloping her in his leathery, musky scent. His talons gripped a perch below, and he swung down and away from the wall to hang head-down like a roosting bat. Clinging by his feet, wings wrapped snug around Faith, the bat-god drove into her again and again. 

Dizzied by the tumultuous rush of blood to her head, and by the succession of shattering climaxes, Faith was swept away into darkness. 

**

The rainy season lived up to its name, with an all but ceaseless downpour for weeks on end. Drywashes became creeks, creeks became rivers, rivers overflowed their banks. The green of the trees and plants glimmered like emeralds under the deluge. 

But in the caverns below Tzikatal, everything was cozy and dry. There was ample firewood, and food, and warm, soft bedding. 

Faith sat with Zivia and Camila, a large platter of fruit and fish resting between them. 

Camila did not speak. She hadn't spoken a single word in the months that had passed since the attack. She only stared blankly off into space, sometimes rocking back and forth, sometimes trembling. 

Of the half-dozen women at the camp, only Camila and Marcela had survived ... and Marcela had slit her wrists months ago, when the curve of her pregnancy had begun to show. Camila had never made any similar attempts, but Faith wondered what the girl would do when her time came. It wouldn't be long now. Only a few days, at most. Even if Camila did not deliberately harm her infant, she was in no state to be a good mother.

In Zivia's lap, a sleepy bundle of fur yawned and gurgled, opening granite-grey eyes to gaze adoringly up at her mother. Faith wondered what Nick would have thought, had he lived to see his daughter. 

She ran the palm of her hand over her stomach, felt a lively kick, and smiled. She hoped it would be a boy.



Temple of the Gorgon



(Music at paragraph 13 is 'Hanging On' by Active Child.)

"We have been able to 'reach an understanding' with him, First Director..."

"And I see you wish to insert one of our 'illegals' too, alongside -" He leant forward and clasped his hands together on top of the desk. "One of our top foreign resident operatives." 

"Aah – we have a slight note of caution to express about this one element First Director. It is likely that our own operative is possibly also experiencing some mild form of pathological profile, we think related perhaps, to past, er, synaptic overload..."

"And so then you will have to explain this to the professor beforehand, so that he is not taken by surprise. I have read the operative's personal file extensively. It is interesting."

*

Where Valeria Rakmanina lived was not an overly-tall building, but it did have a heli-pad on its rooftop. They took me to her using a private KA-62 Oboronprom helicopter, a bright shiny crimson thing, with an interior that looked like it was designed by the same people who build Mercedes cars.

It never fails to impress me just how stable the ride is in the cabin of a decent, non-military helicopter when in normal flight, and how precise good landings feel when they are carried out by competent pilots. This helicopter was set down with its characteristic whiny turbine noise echoing very loudly across the street-created concrete canyons in between all of the surrounding other buildings, probably waking up the entire block neighbourhood snowy caped in its otherwise quiet winter darkness of nearly midnight.

I disembarked and immediately had to turn the collar of my overcoat up in what even seemed to me at the time like a very stereotypical move, but it was so cold outside. I could feel the heat from the turbines juxtaposed against the freezing cold air, wind, and swirling breezes of the open outside deep wintery ambience. Luckily it wasn't very far to the small entranceway down into the building. I had been provided with a key, and I unlocked the door and went in.

...Suddenly, everything was different. The air was different. The sound was different. The temperature was different. And the smell was different.

I had walked into a thick but optically crystal-clear elevator tube, with its luxe floor of thick dark navy blue coloured new carpeting and some kind of logo or ensignia embroidered into it in a silver weave.

As the rooftop door closed behind me, a soundproofed type of silence descended all around. The elevator, instead of lowering, began to turn slowly around. And when it did eventually begin to move downwards, it did so in a smooth languid spiralling motion. At first there was a faint hum, followed by the sound of amplified tumbling water, and then a fluoro-coloured light began spearing into the wan glow of the elevator's round glass space.

All around, outside the elevator's glass, in the dark wall, were small tile-sized coral-filled aquariums with little electric blue and canary yellow animated bits and pieces flitting about within.

A series of cold neon light tubes shone, about two feet each in length, placed apart in irregular, non-linear fitments embedded into the circular tunnel wall at intervals between the separated, vertically-descending, glowing aquarium display units. 

In Russia, almost everywhere among the super wealthy, there was still this obvious penchant evident for the by-now-everywhere-else nearly passé luminescent vodka bar interior design motifs. I say nearly because I suppose passé is still dependent on the sheer money value being expended - this was right up there at the level of ludicrous extremes, and that certainly made a difference. The light was certainly being bent in rare fashion, here, I thought.

*

She knew I was coming. Obviously for the sake of theatrics she had synchronised some kind of strange music to accompany me down in the elevator as I descended slowly in its turning cylindrical, again crystaline cabinet. It sounded like an awesomely powerful and technically accomplished castrati voice singing, albeit singing some ultra-modern, chill-trance-lounge, professional dj-mixed electronic composition. I had never heard the song before. And it was distinctly unusual.

And actually... there was something disturbing about the particular tune.

But I was truly not prepared for the scene that opened up to me when the elevator stopped descending, and when I oriented myself fowards. 

Okay so I was pretty sure I was looking at a real live Gorgon. You know, red snakes in magnificent hair, ultra-beautiful face, flashing grey eyes. The tall sinuous body, the upper arms with those almost masculine guns...

The room was large and this time down here it was all very classically purist in design theme - elongated dimensions in every main element, brushed metal fittings and woollen carpeting and rich, steel-inlayed, highly polished dark wood everywhere. The slightly raised, full-sized chaises were in brush-napped dark blue velour. And there was a single chain-driven counterbalanced, hi-tech weights machine standing right in the middle of the floor. And bent over its leather-padded strut extending out to one side, was a young -, very young man, almost a boy, stripped to the waist, wearing tight black jeans...  And with bare feet. A chewy tube neoprene bit and bridle in his mouth and around his head...

His hands were secured in shiny chrome chains to a chrome lug in the floor, neatly installed in the carpeting. And there was a single shiny chrome chain attached to an ankle bracelet and held tightly at the other end to another floor lug.

The woman was clearly sweating profusely, beads dripping down her face from her forehead under the shock of gorgeous hair and shining gold custom real Versace diadem, with its snake designs that made her look really, in the circumstances, like she actually had snakes in her hair. She wore a tiny black soft leather top and tight leather mini skirt, all bearing the superstylized winged-Vee Versace motif, and long-up-to-the-knee and high-heeled patent black leather Versace boots. I knew that her name was supposed to be Valeria, and now I got it: she was Valeria – the only surviving Gorgon according to the myth – and whose name meant, 'The Mighty.' Whether or not it was her real birth name didn't strike me at all as particularly that important to know right now. Right now, she was, The Mighty Gorgon.

And the young man chromium-chained up in there seemed likely to think so too. He was shaking with what appeared for all the world to be pretty much like straight out fear to me...

"It's you, though, he's afraid of." She suddenly said, turning to me, as if reading my mind. "He's an extractee. What we call an extractee... I told him, Ian, that if I don't manage to pump a thousand kay-gee's up on this weights press right now, here, in the next half an hour, a bad man is going to come in and pull his pants down and fuck him in the ass real hard – like happened to him in Virginia." She smiled and repeated sarcastically, "Virgin-ia."

She leant over to the male and pulled his face up towards her. "Is that what happened to you over there prr-etthy bhoi? You got fucked in the ass? You've been fucked in ass already, have you? You're gonna be fucked again, soon too."

One or two jerking breaths pulsed out from the victim.

Valeria began to move away from the weights machine and towards me. Suddenly I could smell her. Clean watery sweat, very acrid underarm apocrine sweat, and brand new leather tanned the old fashioned way with its oxides and aldehydes and bleaches and dyes. "And I also told him, that if I do manage to pull up a thousand, I will pull his pants down myself anyway and plough a strap-on in him. And whip his ass. But my muscles might be so tight it will be hard for me to hurt him that much at all, but I told him -" She almost whispered, and made her eyes into thin slits. "I really do want to hurt him a lot." He breath smelled hot and excited, but it had none of the poppyseed overtaste of someone on heroin, or the sourness of someone using cocaine, or the phenolic of amphetamines, or the sulphur and onions of someone on MDMA. Or even the crushed green Morning Glory odour of someone using marijuana. Or that odd disconcerting scent that always accompanies the mentally ill and the mentally desperate.

"So are you going to fuck him in the ass for me, Ian, or do I have to hit that thousand kg's."

"No. I don't think so. I won't be doing that. So you'd better hit it for the both of us, O Mighty One. For him, and for me. Besides, I want to see you work out." I replied.

"Okay Yanni. Let's see me go for it then."

For the next half an hour I watched in awe and amazement as she got behind the machine and half squatted a thousand kilograms in total, in a calm and relaxed regular rhythm, even cajolling the boy along the way to look over at her telling him she wanted him to get a strong hard-on.

Eventually, and with all the more of a hot sweat pouring from her after the exercising, she got out of the machine, wiped her face and arms with a fresh white towel, and slowly wiped her thighs and legs in front of the lad so that he could watch her stunning body fervidly, proposing an apparent expectation of something even more sexually arousing yet to come.

She moved around to behind him, and reached under his waist and undid the top button of his jeans and unzipped the front of them, and began to peel them down off him until they were around his knees. And then she got down and unclasped the leg chain. And moved around to his front and squatted down in front of him and undid the wrist-holds. Then she stood up and leaned forward close up to his face and clicked her tongue and said softly: "Stand up, little boy."

She looked over directly at me. "Fear is a part of divinity." She said somewhat didactically. "Fears grow all by themselves just like living snakes growing out of your mind. You cut the head of one of them off with a rationalisation, and just as soon another springs up right there to take its place. Fears are limitless."

She turned back to the young male with his jeans around his ankles. "Take them right off." She addressed him in a low tone. 

She turned back to me and changed the subject slightly. "We just more or less kidnapped him, you know. He has not much idea about all what is going on here – what I have been doing to him," she said fairly ungrammatically. And then, raising an eyebrow: "I think maybe even, that he is still a virgin as far as women go, but of course nowadays these guys still know plenty enough of things about sex don't they?

"Are you a virgin, young man? Well, anyway you're a young man aren't you?"

He appeared genuinely afraid of her; what she had been specifically saying or doing to him before I got there I had no real clue about but possibly she might have been playing up on, recently-in-the-local-news, urban legends, really -, of rich people stealing the vulnerable off the streets for whatever kinds of uses they had for them. Nothing very pleasant though, of course. 

"This young man is a heterosexual -, virgin, doesn't have a girlfriend, used to go to the national libraries a lot..." She declared gratuitously, in a terse summary, although with some certainty.

She held him by the jaw with her elegant and long fingernailed, if also rather strong, left hand. "Don't worry. I will not harm you. I might hurt you but I won't harm you. We don't do those kinds of things here that I was talking about. Good people don't do those things. Only bad people, very bad people, do those things. I am saving you, from those things."

I decided it was the moment to ask a potentially touchy question. "Are you going to take in any weapons – in-country, I mean?"

"Me, personally, actually take in, no. I don't need to..." She smiled on that last bit.

I shrugged. I just figured that I needed to know how much distance to keep at key moments. At the moment it was a bit of an unknown; a bit inconclusive of an answer that she gave. Not that I knew for sure but I realized some of the foreign mission centres might have had those modern, ultra advanced digital printers for certain pieces of illegal equipment, and for those really very expensive projects, they very possibly would have even had access to the military-launched VHALTi-cubed's: very high altitude intelligent descent delivery device systems - that were able to payload small side arms, maybe one of the new Strizh Swift Strike 9mm's, or other dubious items, and were able thus to insert such things behind closed borders. Although I knew in reality there were a veritable number of ways these things could have been enabled; some more mundane than others.

"Miron Ivanovich." She addressed the young man. "Are you afraid of me?"

"Yes." He replied. He was now completely free of all of the restraints including the leg-chain but as far as moving his body around he seemd to be almost catatonic.

"You will address me with some courtesy, either 'Miss' or 'Madame' it doesn't matter to me. Do you understand?"

"Yes Madame."

"Stand up straight." She ordered.

I almost missed it because I was so interested in this interplay in front of me, but another door to another room at the far end of the lounge had opened quietly and unobtrusively and now there was a second woman in here. Ordinary-looking, with a head of fairly full, dark brown hair, almost plain featured in her angular symmetrical face, yet in closer focus there was something extremely memorable, intelligent, in the eyes and mouth and slightly Patrician nose; she could hardly have been more than say, about twenty-three or twenty-four. Dark blue silk dress with a flowing skirt that stopped above the knee. Not Rubenesque but very definitely tightly curved. Trim and hard muscle hipped. Body accentuated by the current season, a la mode, European High Fashion Pavlovo Posad handcrafted shawl tied around her waist. There was a single little owl motif on the front upper left-hand side of her dress. She looked directly at me, her flashing grey eyes acknowledging me subtly as if we knew each other. I had never met her before as far as I knew...

Holding onto a hem on one side of her dress she almost tip-toed around the scene and came over to where I was.

"Hi," she said, in a quiet matter-of-fact voice."

"Hi." I returned.

"That's my pal Sara, John." Valeria announced across to me, suddenly affecting an English accent, from the centre of the room. "Mind that you treat her nicely, she's much more dangerous than I am."

I couldn't imagine what that meant; this girl who was standing in front of me holding the hem of her skirt as if nervously, or something, I wasn't sure.

"Would you like some vodka," the girl asked, nodding over to a small bar area to my left side. "I think maybe we'll need some..." she opined, and then gestured with a small movement of her head towards the direction of over-her-left-shoulder. "For the floor-show with those two over there."

"Oh really... Well maybe some voda then." I willingly and easily went along with her viewpoint.

"But can bisexuals drink vodka?" I murmured under my breath jocularly. She smiled thinly back.

I watched as Valeria turned back to her weights machine once again, and bent over to the floor and produced a pair of shiny metal handcuffs from near the base of the machine where they had been lying, latent, under another small clean fluffy white towel I hadn't taken much notice of there before. She lifted her arms high above her head and with deft movements clicked her hands into the metal handcuffs and looped those tightly into a dead-lock clasp balen secured onto the end of a steel cable coming from the highest overhead strut on the machine.

"Now, there, look Ivanovich. I am completely at your disposal and at your mercy. I'm sure you weren't expecting that, now were you?"

The young man was most unsure of what he was meant to do about it or what was meant to go on now.

"I will explain it to you in detail Ivanovich." Valeria said, very casually. "And I hope you will hurry to the understanding. I am completely secured and unable to move my hands very much from here. And I am inviting you to take fullest advantage of the situation – now that you have me at you mercy and not me having you at mine, as it were. What will you do, Ivanovich. What will you do?" She lifted her head and tilted it to one side, exposing a side of creamy long neck.

"Why don't you come closer to me, over here. Come and inspect me."

Miron Ivanovich's eyes fixed themselves on her exposed underarms, and he drank in the submission of her handcuffed, hands-high-above-the-head position. Yes, it appeared that now she was indeed fully under his power, at least as far as it went physically. But he was unable to do anything except shake his head sporadically, almost in irritation at something, perhaps at himself.

"So if you don't mind my friends over there watching... And they will not interfere I assure you, unless you try to do something very seriously dangerous... So why don't you go ahead and fuck me.

"Get over here Ivanov!" She shouted at him contracting his name deliberately and he jumped. "If you don't get over here right now I'll break through these pissy cuffs and break your fucking neck with my bare hands!" She hissed and he got the point. "Get over here right now. That's it. Right up to me. Right up close to me. Right up against my ass. That's right...

"Touch me...

"Touch me with your hands. That's it. Touch my ass. Feel my ass. Feel my ass with your hands. Feel all over my ass. That's right. Go ahead. You like a woman? Maybe you don't know whether you like one or not yet. This is a woman. Get down there boy and smell my pussy... Do it!" 

It took about another few minutes though before the young man's sense of relief at becoming unexpectedly unbound, and also very likely as not, too, a sense of his being less in danger of sheer physical sexual violation than he had initially thought, started to make the blood flow more freely through all of his extremities, and then soon enough too his cock began to stand fully erect and then it looked like as if it had became almost unbearably hard, and clear transudate began dripping out from the top of it. 

For about the next half an hour at least, I got to watch a stunning display of frenzied naiive cock fucking a very controlling pussy – to the additional background sounds of insinuating murmuring instructions that issued forth quietly from the luscious, languorous, possibly even slightly sardonic mouth of the chained up creature: "Come on, come on, come on... Wait... Wait... Wait... Come on, come on, come on. Wait... Wait..."

And then she just said something to him that was inaudible to everyone else and he spurted out all over the floor outside of her, his painfully stiff cock jerking upwards all by itself in its final crescendo from the previously ever-heightening amplitude. ...twitching in its falling eventual resolution.

*

What is utterly fantastic and fanciful in real life sneaks up upon you and you may easily fail to realise the impossible logic behind something, especially when it is presented to you as unquestioned fact in the typical broad media cant.

And then there is the existentialist spin that always goes along with that too. For evil does 'anything it takes,' to get what it wants - they say so themselves. Whereas the good has boundaries. 

There is of course, a fight going on.

But factually, without expectancy or prior knowledge that a certain intentional key exists at all, the things that are going on around everyone, are simply so many meaningless shapes and moving shadows in the breeze.

The woman called Sara walked over to the centre of the large room, untying the ornately-coloured wool, silk, and cashmere hand-woven Russian craft cloth wrapped around her waist... And placed it carefully around the young man's neck and bare shoulders. "Craft," she said. "Makes performance." And satisfied with her addition, she stepped back.




Temple of the Gorgon



In upper class, invitation-only Europe, where G.H. Mumm the famous champagne maker puts on private shows as a sponsor of Formula 1, there are often performance artists in attendance, playing around with light shows, laser lights, dichroic reflectors, flourescent paints, millions of plastic balls - all that kind of thing. People move around in Missoni or Brioni tuxes. Flash bulbs glitter-pop everywhere. Wearing a Bushnel lensed, photochromic polaroid set of sunglasses is not unusual.

And the young punk who is spray-painting graffiti art onto a velvet roped-off special area of wall, is not unusual. Whether written openly or only visible through the sunglass's lenses, the words 'you are being watched,' are not unusual in that context.

A million plastic balls thrown down a street, a million yellow rubber ducks floating across the oceans of the world, a million stars in the sky – all of these are meaningless in their myriad number semiotic expressionism. 

However, the person who might automatically be able to identify, for instance, a Russian Pavlovo Posad shawl from any other kind - off the top of their head in any given out-of-the-blue circumstance – whether of the boy painting on the wall outside the hotel, or of the artist in the private function roped-off, lobby entrance area, purposely set-aside performance art wall – well that person is just a coincidence or a very great rarity indeed. It is difficult for the unsuspecting to be alert to the meaning of such things 'accidentally' being present in amongst the mix of very important people.

Whether a Pavlovo scarf is a pun on a Pavlovian Dog or not, it does not really matter, in the end. The end is higher than the pathways there, they say.

Some cleverness and sophistication, lies in the performance artistry of truly high-grade assassination teams; who undertake their art for a very limited, a difficult, and a discerning audience. 

There are a hundred thousand, a million – ways to elude the grasp of being understood by the wrong sorts – the stupid and the ignorant; which is what dominates most of the world today. It is only necessary to know that the clever, is on your side; you who are merely among the innocent.

When the screws are about to be put to the head of an old snake, the figure of the gorgon is an appropriate metaphor.

Here is the meaning of the gorgon. A gorgon is a mysterious creature, whose head appears to grow snakes when you look at it. But those snakes are the reflections of the observer's own inner wickedness, and that is why the direct observer turns to stone, and why a mirror faced to the gorgon  disarms the being itself.

The gorgon is a metaphor of course - a metaphor used to describe something that exposes you to your own self-condemnation and your right to have earned perdition. If you are that bad! Some people are that bad and that is why there are gorgons, and whether metaphorical ones or real ones or simply only imagined ones. They all function equally well. 

An 'ordinary' assassination becomes special, of course, with the added extension of the whole mythical drama of those poisonous fangs of the wanton gorgon being twisted into its victim's eminently merited veins, before they go... And the old men in the Turk's Hat buildings insisted upon knowing about that, in quite some detail. Personally I fear some of these current Lords of Ancient Ruhm may actually believe the gorgon herself to be a real being, that is, an actual thing. Which I suppose, proves the very validity of the metaphor itself. And partly too, I suppose, its enduring power throughout such a long history of the tale.

But then again, among the sceptical or the agnostic in those exotic Eastern-looking buildings today, are only those that have never met Valeria in person. Not forgetting that there were those who were agnostic, if not sceptical too, about the Jackal, in his day. Not to say he was an actual jackal!

*

Valeria is not specifically a client of mine; the old men are, I guess. Sheer arrogant inquisitiveness on my own part was going to get me into a 'scene' with her. Maybe. Although I do have rich clients in Europe and Asia who are constantly asking me where are, or who is, the best at sex in the world.

I haven't established that answer yet. But I have a shortlist.



Temple of the Hawk Women



Inspired again by the art of DeTomasso ...

Revised a scoach more 10/24/14. Tried some fun tweaks. 

1.

She had not intended to go out to these ruins alone. Not that she minded the solitude. In fact she preferred it. But coming out here by herself like this was bad form, at least to some degree. For this wasn't really her expedition. A man named Baker had set it up, after he made the find on his own a month earlier. She only knew the chap slightly. Nice enough fellow. Bit erratic, but a little insanity was frequently useful in their game. He had called Lara in as a last minute emergency replacement for another member of his team, after some sort of accident. But then today, she arrived at their hotel to find his entire team bedridden. They didn't seem to be at death's door, thankfully, but none of them would be fit to visit the site for some considerable period. Baker thought it was just bad luck. "Capriciousness of the gods," he'd said. Lara herself suspected poisoning. It was suspicious that all half dozen of them would get sick at the same time, right on the morning they were about to start. She found out the man she'd been summoned to replace had been trampled in the street by oxen. The kind of accident that might not have been as accidental as it appeared.

Baker hadn't told anyone else about calling Lara. He said it had been a late night inspiration. Baker's enemies, if he had enemies—and provided they weren't actually gods—shouldn't have any idea she'd become involved in this business. 

So she'd gone ahead to the ruin alone. Just to look around a while, and make certain for herself no one else had found the place. Ransacking the site before Baker's team got there.

It was larger and grander than she was expecting. A real lost city, hidden up inside a mountain cleft. A major road ran right by the foot of that mountain, built fifty years ago, when this country was still colonized. There was a fucking Taco Bell, of all things, not fifteen minutes' drive away up that road, to the north. It was marvelous that no one had found the ruins before Baker. This region was rather densely populated, rugged as it was—by no means a howling, trackless wilderness. Good to know the modern planet, cluttered as it had become, still had some special surprises like this, tucked away.

Baker had described the city as baking hot, bone dry and dusty. "A skeleton of a city, lifeless as the moon," he'd said. Well, it had evidently rained a fair amount since he first visited, because it wasn't like that at all, when she got up there into the cleft. The place had turned into a swamp. Most of the city was flooded, the ruins sticking up from in the middle of a broad and murky lake. Those hulks of stone not entirely submerged were entirely covered in greenery, in place of the dark water, giving them a shaggy look. Not skeletal or dusty in the slightest. The complete antithesis of lifeless—there were about a billion birds, bugs and monkeys all over, and all of them, as was their way, raising a ruckus of shrieks and screeches like they were hoping to bring down the mountaintop, with all their damn noise.

Beautiful. No, really.

The lake was too deep for her to reach any of the structures without swimming. She wasn't properly outfitted for this setting. She would have liked to have on one of her wetsuits. Instead she was dressed for desert terrain. She wondered if Baker had been just been joking with her, when he described this place. Had there been sarcasm in his voice? If there had been, she'd completely missed it. Or had this been some clumsy halfass attempt at subterfuge, to throw off his competitors, in case his phone was being tapped? 

Just as likely the weather had simply shifted, since he was here—even though it hadn't been very long ago. Dramatic changes like this weren't particularly unusual, especially on mountains. Tomorrow the whole site might get buried in snow. 

She could have swum out to the ruins without undressing. Her usual shorts and top would not have hindered her. They were almost soaking wet already, just from her sweat. A cooling rinse in that lake would be good for them. Her hefty boots would have given her a little trouble, but they were all she needed to remove. Even her guns were designed to take a dunking without hurting the things. Her little backpack was also entirely waterproof, and quite lightweight. She could stash her sunglasses in there. 

But even though it was unnecessary, Lara took off all her things. Except her gunbelt, and her backpack. She jammed her clothing into the backpack with her sunglasses, though they made it a tight fit in there, with the supplies it already contained. She left her boots on the shore, on top a rock, with her socks tucked in them. They were much too big and cumbersome to carry along. And she didn't mind running around barefoot, even out in a potentially perilous wilderness like this. Sure, it wasn't entirely safe, but what the hell. Native peoples in the jungles of the world did this all the time, regardless of sharp stones or thorns or bugs or snakes. We Westerners baby ourselves too much. And going barefoot just feels better, in hot, sticky weather. Her feet got too slimy and itchy in her boots, in a climate like this. Barefoot felt cleaner and freer and all around more fun. 

As for the rest of her body ... Well, the same things applied. And clambering through the boggy thickets to reach the lake, she'd got covered in filth, along the way. Greenish, foul-stinking mud had got spattered all over her. And then, even yuckier, she had to peel off several shredded sheets of thick nasty cobwebs crisscrossing her face and torso and her thighs. In the shadows under the canopy, she hadn't been able to see the dense layers of the things strung between the trees across her route. So she'd barged right through them. Got the stuff in her mouth and up in her nose. She hated when that happened. It happened all the time, to a Tomb Raider. At least she didn't find any spiders themselves clinging to her. 

She needed a refreshing wash, was the point.

So this was why, when Lara Croft swam across the dark lake, toward the largest of city structures, she made that swim entirely naked, but for her backpack and gunbelt. It might not seem a wise thing to do. No doubt it was impractical and reckless. Perhaps it seems unrealistic, that an experienced and professional adventuress like Lara Croft would chose to do such a thing, in such a wild and unknown place, no matter how hot and dirty and uncomfortable she'd become, in the course of her tromp through the surrounding swamps. But this is what she did. And what's more, she delighted in it. In fact the brazen recklessness of the decision served as an added goad. A sweetener.

She had some brief trouble about halfway across. She was attacked by a hippopotamus, of all things. Most people don't realize how fierce and formidable those silly-looking beasties can be. Damn thing would have liked to chomp her into slurry. But she was too quick for it. And it did not pursue her, when she reached the building and pulled herself from the water. 

She had found the crumbling remainder of a stairway built along the outside wall of the structure. It led her up two stories or so to an open doorway ... It was not a dark doorway—the building didn't have much roof left, letting in plenty of sun. Lara went in. 

A long gallery, perhaps a temple.Almost entirely open to the sky. Two lines of tall statues, facing each other. A few were knocked down and broken, but most stood intact. Fashioned from reddish stone, they were all female figures, nude, with the heads of hawks. Their design looked a little Egyptian, but only a little. All the figures held their arms outstretched before them, with upraised palms. Perhaps they were supposed to be beckoning, or it was some sort of salute. Or perhaps in the past they had each carried something. Perhaps they weren't religious figures at all—perhaps this had been a place for making clothing, and these statues were only the ancient equivalents of shop dummies, for tailoring or display.

Archaeology is tricky like that. 

The interior walls were draped with flowery vines. She didn't recognize the flowers—some variety of orchid. They were quite large, and bright purple, with a powerful, odd scent. At first it seemed like cinnamon. Then it seemed more like vanilla. It would have been a pleasant smell if it was slightly less strong. Instead it was overpowering. Like when a kid splashes on too much cologne and it makes you ill. But her nose got used to it fairly quickly, and then she stopped noticing it altogether. 

Later she would wonder a lot about that. The speed and the totality with which she had forgotten about those weird flowers, right after she took notice of them. But it wasn't usual for her to pay much attention to flowers, in any case. It was probably less odd that she'd forgotten about them than that they'd caught her interest at all, even if only for a few moments. 

But that scent had started really bothering her ... And then it stopped. So sudden, like flicking a switch. That was the scary part. Nobody wants their switches flicked without them realizing.

It was possible the flowers had done something to her. When she breathed in their pollen. She might never know for sure. But possibly the flowers were to blame for everything that followed after this. They might be the reason she had acted so impulsively and rashly. She might have been stoned or tripping a little—drugged by the funny fumes from those weird plants. 

Or maybe she was kidding herself and that was bullshit. Maybe she was grasping at straws, so she wouldn't have to take the responsibility on herself. After all, she was already acting impulsively and rashly before she went into that building and smelled those fucking flowers. She was already naked, by that point. And not just naked, but excited. Stimulated. Aroused.

She'd got herself turned on, doing this, the way she was doing it. Romping about in the nude, all by her lonesome, in the steamy heat of a lost city. A mad lark. What if she'd hurt yourself? Or what if other tomb raiders turned up and found her like this? That was not a very unlikely prospect. It was quite dangerously possible. The whole reason she came out to this place, supposedly, had been to make sure no other raiders had sabotaged Baker's team to steal in ahead of them. That was what she had told herself, anyway, when she decided to come.

But nobody else was here. Looked like Baker's problems were mere mischance, after all. And now Lara was just fooling around. This wasn't proper exploration. She was just indulging herself out in the sun, for the giddy thrill of the thing.

That fucking angry hippo could have killed her. But she'd been too good, too fast for it. Surviving a murderous assault is quite a rush. Nothing makes you feel as alive as nearly dying. 

Fights always turned Lara on, provided she won them, of course. Afterward, she'd find herself in quite a state of keenness. It was like, "Ha! I didn't die! I'm so awesome and unstoppable! I should fuck someone!" A triumphal act of affirmation. Not that she'd ever quite put it to herself in those particular words. But the feeling—the urge—was always there, after every battle. Didn't matter who or what she'd been fighting. Bad men, monsters. Now, a goddamn pissed-off territorial hippo. She didn't always dash right out and act on it, when she'd feel the craze boiling up—but sometimes she had. 

And she decided she would, that day. She would take a few minutes and settle the need. May as well. No reason not to. Nothing stopping her. Nobody around to interrupt. It was like she had the whole world to yourself. 

So she'd go ahead and take the matter in hand, so to speak. She'd searched her feelings and carefully thought through the problem, and now she knew she could put her finger on it. Tee hee. 

Lara sat down on an empty plinth, where one of the statues had toppled over, ages ago. It was quite clean—rain would come straight down on it, through the great holes in the roof. And right now, instead of rain it was taking brilliant rays of sunlight. So the stone was nicely warm—not too much. 

She slipped her backpack off to use for a pillow, when she lay back flat. The plinth wasn't large enough to let her to stretch out completely, not as much as she'd have liked. She put her knees up, propping her heels on the edge of the plinth at its corners on that end, letting her toes dangle loose. That position worked well enough. Staring straight up through the broken roof into far off clouds, that seemed in her imagination to take on the shape of another lost city hanging up there over her, upside down—she put her gloved raider's hands to her own secret swampy cleft and invaded it with her fingertips. She plunged right to work, without restraint. With a fair degree of wanton aggression, instead.

Lara didn't just tease or diddle-dandle herself, or if she did, she only did that for a few seconds. Maybe a bit longer than that, but not much longer. No more than half a minute. And then she revved herself up, and started going to town. Time to get serious.

Lara wasn't just playing around here. That wasn't gonna do the job. She wanted to fuck. She wanted to get off, and get off good. So she fucked her hand, and fucked it hard. She fucked herself hard, with her fingers. 

She didn't fantasize about anything else happening, while she did this ... Simply wasn't necessary. Lara didn't need to conjure up an imaginary lover. Her present reality was quite hot enough, just as things stood. The knowledge of herself all alone in this place, misbehaving, acting out. The image in her own mind of her famous body displayed nude and lewd on this stone plinth for all to see, or at least be able to in theory, should anybody happen to chance along ... And she wasn't just masturbating nowhere special; she was committing the rude act in what used to be a temple or a palace, whichever this ancient crumbling structure used to be ... Such reckless and frankly disgraceful behavior for a world-renowned archaeologist. A desecration, almost. Like she didn't know any better ... Like she didn't usually hold herself to higher, stricter standards. 

No additional material was required in here. Sure, that was a bit narcissistic of herself, perhaps. Getting off on her own hotness and badness. Still, it would be dishonest to pretend she didn't know how exciting other people would find this wanton indulgent spectacle, if they got to see it. And imagining that excitement was pretty damn exciting for her. It's pretty damn sexy to be a sex symbol. It's pretty damn great. There are drawbacks, sure. Never near enough to stop her taking pride and pleasure in it.

She wasn't completely solitary and unobserved, in fact. There were all these big statues looming around her. Now it was like they were waking up. She could feel spirits stirring in the air, in the shadows—or she imagined she could. Carved eyes that had seemed utterly blank and empty a minute ago no longer looked that way, when Lara glanced around her again. Now all those eyes had living glints in them, it seemed. She could feel the gazes of every towering Hawk Woman fix upon her body from all sides, and the consternation they were feeling. Who was this interloper? Where had she come from? How dare she enter this place uninvited, and then further desecrate it with obscene behavior? Had she no decency? Had she no shame?

Somehow their annoyed, judgmental regard only enflamed her worse. It was silly, but Lara found herself taunting them—silently, yet she knew they could hear her thoughts just fine, or if they couldn't, they could guess them perfectly, just from watching her, and seeing the expression on her face ... Watch me, you old dead bitches. Watch me get myself off in the middle of your temple. All you can do is stand there powerless and stare—because you're only a bunch of old crumbling pathetic statues, after all. And I'm Lara Croft, the glorious and infamous Tomb Raider. I know in your secret hearts, you envy me as much as you despise me. Or more, probably. Oh yes. Yes indeed. Yes! Yes! 

She imagined she saw the statues shivering a little, like she was making them tremble ... It was only her own vision that was shaking, not the Hawk Women, as her head juddered around. But it made it look like the ghosts haunting this place, inside the things, were straining with all their power, hard as they could, to make the figures come fully to life and move off their plinths, only they couldn't quite manage the deed. Too old, too weak. Yet moisture trickled down the statues' surfaces. Like perspiration, and perhaps other fluids. For Lara dreamed she could see it leaking thickest between their stone thighs ... And the nipples of the statues—they stood out like black spikes. She could have sworn they hadn't looked like that when she first came into this place—they hadn't been carved that prominently on the statues' breasts. Now they were, somehow. Like magic. Like she'd made them get bigger and change color. 

Nonsense. Fantasy. Or just possibly an outright delusion, brought on together with her sexual frenzy by the funny vapors of those weird flowers on the temple walls. Or maybe it really had been ghosts that made these things happen. The magical influence of ancient spirits her presence had aroused in this place, in more ways than one. 

Whichever interpretation you prefer, it was all pretty damn hot. Erotic energy suffused the chamber, or seemed to. A fizzling purple fog—completely invisible, yet she thought of it as purple, even so. Lara'd got herself thoroughly swept up in it, whether this giddy electrified atmosphere was entirely imaginary or otherwise. It was gonna get her off big. Soon. She could feel it churning closer, all over herself ... Or then again, maybe not so soon. Maybe that wasn't possible—maybe this was all built up too much now to rush through.   

Didn't think getting herself her fix would take very long when she decided to do this. She'd felt on edge enough when she began that she expected to peak right away. Soon as she touched herself, almost. But somehow it didn't turn out like that. Wasn't gonna be that easy anymore. Somehow, now that she'd got cooking, she couldn't quite get herself to the finish line. Not like she thought she would. 

It was strange. It wasn't like she wasn't making herself feel good, because she was. She most definitely was. She was making herself grit her teeth so hard she thought they might crack. And it wasn't like she needed something more, or something else. It was stranger than that. This was something new. Like her threshold had shifted, and kept shifting. The bar, so to speak, kept raising, before she could get herself over it. She'd feel herself getting close, going higher and higher—but then somehow the top would move further off, ahead of her. And she'd have to keep chasing it. Straining even higher for it.

This was a wonderful new development, for a while. Then it stopped being wonderful. It started to become annoying. It started to get a little scary. Made her start to groan. 

It wasn't normally this hard to finish. It didn't usually take her this long, or this much effort. The sensations she was giving herself—they'd got so intense they were starting to hurt—though it was a good hurt. She was making herself sore. Making herself cry out. "Uhn! Uhhrrn!" She shouldn't be able to take this—to feel the feelings this intensely without triggering a climax. That was what a climax was—when your system couldn't absorb anymore. The whole world burst. But her world wouldn't burst this time, for some reason. She just kept absorbing more and more—more than she ever had. "Uhh! Ohrrh! Ahhnn!" It was awesome—but it was also agonizing. She was starting to get scared. She could imagine her body catching on fire, literally. Spontaneous combustion. Well, no—not spontaneous. Ignited by frustration. This crazy inability for her system to just finally pay off and let her come.




Temple of the Hawk Women



God—God—God—

What was happening to her? What was causing this?

She sat up suddenly, to examine herself. It was kind of silly. Like she could discover the solution just by looking at her pussy. And she didn't stop churning herself, as she was looking. She found she couldn't. Her fingers had a mind of their own. They just kept right on with their task, while she sat there staring at them with a dazed expression, her mouth hanging open. Come hell or high water, as the saying goes—they weren't gonna quit, 'til they got her off. They'd keep churning away in her gash, 'til they worked themselves down to the bone. If that's what it was gonna take. Juices splashed out of her all over the place. Awful lot of the stuff by this stage. She'd made quite a shiny puddle in front of her crotch along the edge of her plinth, dribbling over the chipped edge. Christ, she could even see the reflection of her face in it. 

"Holy shit," she mumbled to herself, "Holy fucking shit." 

And then suddenly, Lara Croft realized she wasn't alone anymore. She didn't hear anything or see any signs, not consciously. But somehow her sixth sense told her she was being watched, behind her. Really watched this time. It wasn't just the statues. This was a different feeling. It was somebody else. Somebody real. 

That stopped her fingers. That stopped them dead. 

She swung herself around on her bottom, on the plinth, so fast she almost scraped off skin on the marble, drawing her guns as she swiveled. To face the doorway where she'd come in. Her back had been to it, before, when she first lay herself down on the plinth. Why had she done that? Why had she stupidly put her back to the chamber's only entrance, an entrance that permanently gaped open? Why hadn't she taken a little more time to find herself a more secure spot, before she ... got busy?

Well, she'd been too horny to bother about that, obviously. And also, of course, the risk of someone finding her had added to her excitement. But she hadn't actually wanted that to happen. The threat was interesting, as an idea—but in reality, it was mortifying. This just sucked.

Five men in the doorway. All of them staring at her with big goofy grins. Five big grinning fuckers, with guns.

They weren't right on top of her, at least. She had a fair bit of distance to work with, between them by the doorway and the plinth she'd chosen to settle on. 

But they were blocking her only way out of here, unless she could fly up through the holes in ceiling. The surrounding walls were high, and looked too smooth for climbing.

And she was stark naked. That would have been plenty bad enough, in itself. But she'd been fingerfucking herself ...

And they'd all seen it. They'd snuck in and been watching her, who knows how long. She'd been too wrapped up in her own nonsense to even notice, until just then.

They'd been hearing her grunt and gasp and moan, like an animal. Must have heard all of that. 

"Holy fucking shit," she mumbled again.

2. 

"Hey there," said one of the men. He stood a little further forward than the others. The leader. He had a beard and a ponytail, and his bright teeth looked gigantic. Ogre teeth. But that was probably just her imagination—exaggerating his smile. It was a big smile—well, of course it was, considering. But it probably wasn't really as monstrously huge as it seemed to her, in her embarrassment. "No, don't get up," he went on,"Please. Seriously. Don't mind us. Just keep right on doing what you're doing, Miss Croft." 

She took a moment, before she replied. A couple deep breaths. A swallow, to clear the tension in her throat. "Having a bit of private moment, gentlemen. Could you give a girl some privacy?"

There now. That had come out pretty well, hadn't it? Nice presentation of panache.

"Ah, come on. Don't be mean. Wouldn't you prefer a little company? Doesn't that sound more fun?"

"Afraid I don't know any of you chaps well enough for that."

"Well, yeah. I understand. But we could change that, couldn't we? You could get to know us real well, if you're up for it."

They were edging forward, little by little ... She fired a single shot into the air. Probably should have gone ahead and killed one, even if it started the rest of them shooting back. Best if they just got right into things, if they were gonna get into things.

But no, the one shot did enough, at least for the moment. The whole bunch retreated. They leaped backward like rabbits. If rabbits can leap backwards.

"Keep your distance, please," she said, "Stay right where you are." 

"It's cool, it's cool. Nobody means you any harm here. Just a friendly offer. Just being friendly."

"The answer's no."

"Okay, if that's your call. That's how it'll be. I won't pretend it isn't disappointing. I thought you were supposed to be really adventurous."

"I've been known to be, now and again." 

"There you go. I assure you, nobody came here looking for a fight."

"You boys got an awful lot of guns, though. Odd." 

"Strictly defensive. Lot of dangerous animals around here."

"Yes indeed."

"Oh, I see. You're implying that me and my guys are dangerous animals. Well, fine. Fair enough. We can be, when it's appropriate, or when it's necessary. But that's not the case, at the moment. Why would any of us wanna do you harm? You're one hell of a beautiful woman, Miss Croft. None of us wanna fight with you. What's the good of that? We want you to like us." 

"You flatter me. But if you take one more step forward, I'm going to shoot you in the face. Don't test me."

"Hey, I get it. I'm not moving. I'm just talking. It's all right if I keep talking, isn't it? So long as I don't take a step?"

"The moment any of your friends try anything either, you're still the first one that dies. Keep that at the forefront of your mind."

"I hope it doesn't come to that. Be a damn shame, if I do say so myself."

"Would it?"

"Oh, I don't mean for my sake. I'm not tootin' my own trumpet. I only meant it'd be a shame, 'cause you'll die, next. Same moment you blow me away, all my boys will open up. We've got machineguns, you may have noticed, not just pistols. You don't need any more holes in that wonderful body of yours. The ones you got already look quite nice enough, from over here."

"You should consider a change of careers. You might do rather well for yourself, on stage."

"I so much enjoy this kind of banter, don't you? It really steams me up. I'm bantering with Lara Croft. This is really a highlight, seriously. I think, for me personally, this is even more exciting than watching you finger yourself was, before. How is it for you, though? Tell me honestly."

"You're holding up your end decently enough. In all fairness, I have to grant you that." 

"Look, I think I can guess what you're worried about. You're imagining somebody sent us to ambush you, maybe kidnap you. But no, this is pure coincidence."

"You responsible for poisoning Baker's team?"

"Well, yeah. You know about that? Okay. We did that. I mean, it was actually somebody working for the same guy we work for that did that. To get them out of our way. But just for today. The boss wants us to nab one of these pretty hawk-lady statues. It's for his private collection. That's all we're gonna do. Everything else here, it's all yours, whatever you want. Credit for the discovery, all that crap. We're not gonna blow the whole place up or anything. We're not gonna spoil the find for science, or whatever, if you're worried about that. Besides there's like, what, six or seven good statues? They all look the fucking same to me. And the damn things are too big and hefty for you to drag one out by yourself."

"I was considering taking just the head, from that broken one over there."

"Yeah, that's a smart notion. That'll work. So you see, there's no reason for us to start waging war, is there? We can each go about our individual business without stepping on each other's toes."

"Sounds that way."

"So how come you won't lower your gun? You're still pointing it right at my face, you know." 

"Yes, so I am. Hmm. I suppose it's on account of the fact I still feel a measure of concern regarding the possibility of a gangbang."

"I'm not gonna deny that thought has crossed one or two of our minds. We would certainly be up for some arrangement along those lines. But nobody's trying to force you to do anything. Have any of us tried to force you to do anything? I think me and my men have all behaved ourselves courteously, up to now, haven't we? Think about it. Be fair. All we've done—the only thing we've done that you could possibly classify as sexually aggressive, to any significant degree—is expressed our admiration and interest in you, as a desirable individual. We think you're hot and we've told you so. That's not too terrible a thing, is it? You can't really get mad about that, can you? Just for us, you know, taking an interest, as active guys. And it's not like we've trespassed on to private property of yours. You're the one that was making a lewd spectacle of yourself. We just stumbled across you, by chance. Nothing wrong in that. And we've kept our distance, all this time."

"Only because I'm armed."

"That wounds me, I have to say. I'm actually offended."

"Oh dear."

"Remember, you didn't have your gun out before. We could have tried to rush you, while you were, um, occupying yourself, with your eyes shut. When we first walked in. It's not all that much ground to cover. But we didn't take advantage, did we? We held back. Just watched."

"Just watching was taking advantage. True gentlemen would have announced their presence."

"Well, hey now, it was awkward. Didn't wanna startle you. You nearly shot me right off when you spotted us. Would've done the same thing if I called out to you. 'Excuse me'—BANG!"

"You've got an answer for everything, don't you?"

"I'm adaptable. That's why these guys made me the leader."

"Can't you all just fuck off?" 

"Not without a statue. Too much money on the line, as well as our reputations. I suppose we could duck out for five or ten minutes and come back. How's that sound?"

Too convenient, was how it sounded. Better to keep them in sight, so they couldn't set up an ambush for her, somewhere outside. 

"On second thought, how 'bout you stay right where you are, and I'll leave first. If I get up and leave, will any of you try to mess with me?"

"Nope. How could we stop you? We'll be sorry to see you take off, of course. We'll miss you, after you're gone. But if that's what you wanna do, c'est la vie."

"How do I know you all won't chase after me?"

"Fun as that sounds, I think we'll all be too busy lugging out a statue, to our boat. That's gonna be a bitch, getting that done."

"Yeah, they sure look heavy. And they might be a bit too big for the doorway."

"You know, I think you're right about that. Fuck. We'll have to widen it." 

"Good luck with that."

"Thanks. Guess you better get up and get going, if you're set on leaving. Sure you wouldn't rather stick around with us? Just for a while, for some laughs? No pressure." 

"Just for laughs, huh?" 

"Yeah. Give us a chance. We're all worldly adults. You might be surprised."

Why did she do what she did next? Why didn't she go, when she had the opportunity? 

It felt a little cowardly, for one thing. More than a little, in fact. The way he was baiting her—like a playground dare. She shouldn't have let it get under her skin. But it did, somehow. She couldn't help it.

If she left, if she ran—it would feel like they showed her up. She didn't want to let them do that. She wanted to show them up, instead. They thought they were badasses. Well, she was also a badass. And in fact, her ass was badder. She wanted to show these cocky cunts just how bad it could be. 

They wouldn't be able to handle it, if she really let herself cut loose. No fucking chance. She wouldn't let them scare her and chase her off the site. She wouldn't let the men best her. She'd take the leader's dare. She'd take them on, on their ground, on their own level. And if she let herself do that, she'd destroy them. She'd wear them out, wring them out, and then discard them—like dishrags. Lara Croft would take all these boys to fucking school. And then personally teach them some lessons they'd never forget—lessons that would goddamn stick. Each and every one.

"Tell you what, mate. You want a chance? All right. Maybe I'll give you one—if it's on my terms. You up for that? Think your man enough to meet my expectations? Let's see how well you can follow instructions. First—and this should go without saying—I want all five of you to put your weapons down—stack them against the wall behind you. Do that now."

"You also gonna put your weapon aside?" 

"No, I'm not. I'm keeping mine exactly where it is." 

"Doesn't seem quite fair."

"Five of you and one of me? I think it balances those numbers nicely. But if you can't accept that part, then we'll go no further."

The men traded looks for a while, but didn't openly discuss it. Then the leader finally shrugged and put his weapons down, and all the rest followed his example. One of them grumbled, as he did it. Another one giggled. The leader casually slapped the back of that chap's head. "Be mature." 

"All right," Lara said, "Good. The next instruction should come as no surprise. Shed your gear, boys. All of it, all of you. Let me look you all over."

"You heard the lady, men. What are we waiting on? Strip yourselves down and line up for inspection." 

They did. No complaints or giggles, now. 

"What's the verdict?" the leader asked. 

"Satisfactory."

They were a fairly handsome set. All younger than her. No models or movie stars, but they all looked fit and clean. Could have been much worse. Lots of tattoos, all over them. Dragons and wolves and lions. Ah, kids these days. Besides the leader, they all had shaved heads, like good little soldiers should. A couple had kept their sunglasses on, like dipshits. She wasn't sure where they were from. Couldn't tell just from looking them over. They weren't white guys, and they weren't all the same. But she couldn't identify their nationalities or even their races more specifically than that. One or two looked possibly Asian, or partially Asian, but not definitely and definitively Asian. Mixes, perhaps. Hell, maybe they were clones or androids or aliens. The life she lived, nothing felt too far-fetched, anymore. 

"And now?" the leader prompted. 

"Now we're going to proceed ... but in an orderly fashion. And by that, I mean one by one. Are we clear on this? I'm not having your whole gang climbing all over me at once. You better all not to be in too much of a hurry. Each one of you will get a turn to show me your stuff, but when your chance comes around, you're gonna damn well let me set the pace. Is that understood? Anybody have a problem with this arrangement? If you do, tough. I'm the one with the gun. I'm running the show. And this should go without saying—but I will say it anyway. Misbehavior will not be tolerated. Consequences will be terminal." 

"You know" said the leader, "I don't usually respond to bossy women. It's not my nature. But I like this—I like the way you're taking charge. It's kind of—I don't know how to put it. Nifty."

"Glad you feel that way."

"Which of us you wanna start with? Who gets to go first?"

"You do. You're their leader, after all."

"All right! Yeah! Here we go!"

"You're gonna start off with—"

"With my mouth," he interrupted, crouching down, "I know. I've read the manual." 

He wasn't bad at it. Wasn't the best she'd ever had, either. But he did it pretty good. Still, she only kept him down there like that for a minute or two. He was proficient enough that he could have probably got her off like that, eventually, if she made him keep going. But it would have taken too long. It wouldn't have been a very satisfying come. She wasn't really into it, even though it felt decent. Wasn't in the mood for getting off like that. Not now. She wanted to get crazier. She was in a cock mood, not a tongue mood. She wanted real proper full-on fucking.

Also it had put her off some that he'd anticipated her. She hadn't been happy about that. As if she was obvious. And it sort of was, wasn't it? The obvious thing for a woman to demand, starting off—to start off with tongue. She didn't want to be obvious. She wanted to be shocking, right now. She wanted to shock these men. 

So she moved him upward. Let him enter her. He slid in easy. A good fit. A good start.

"Show me what you're made of," she told him, "Show me what you can do, if you can do anything."

He didn't go about it the way she would have guessed. He didn't take off like a racehorse, like most men would have, if you said that shit to them. Instead he kept shifting around, trying different angles. He kept taking himself all the way out and sliding it back in, in slightly different ways. He wasn't really fucking her yet. Instead he was probing her, testing her. Like an oilman, sinking discovery wells. He was watching her face very close. It was a scientific look—like he was peering through a microscope. Gauging her reactions. 

So far he wasn't finding what he wanted. He wasn't making her react much at all. Might have been doing better if he put less thought into it. Maybe he was starting to realize that. His face had got rather red, but he kept on experimenting, wiggling around. A little higher, a little lower. Fast a while, then slow. Slow for a steady count of ten, than faster again ... and then faster still. A little left, a little right. Still no major success. But he wasn't giving up. Not just yet ... 

Fucking guy was trying his damnedest to impress her. And she liked that he was trying. The results were not proving exceptional, to any degree—but the effort he was making in itself, she found impressive, or at least charming. So many men even in the modern day and age still don't care if they can get a woman off, so long as they get off themselves—or they just assume it happens automatically. That all it needs to get the job done is plugging in and pumping, like you're inflating a bicycle tire. But it ain't that goddamn straightforward. It takes more art than that. 

And then all the sudden one of his silly tiny adjustments unexpectedly paid off, at last rewarding his exertions for both of them. It was something he did with her legs, raising them a good deal higher than she usually positioned them herself, when she took a man into her. He was actually holding her thighs too tight, putting too much strain on them. He might leave bruises. And yet it was worth it, for the way it realigned the contact points inside her. So his strokes were homing in full length across her most sensitive spots in there, along the top of the passage. And that surface was also being stretched taunt inside her, by the angle of her legs, and the strain from her muscles—and this tension increased its resistance, when his cock pushed against it—making it more sensitive, more responsive. And it had already been damn responsive to begin with! 

It made her cry out. Just a little. More of a gasp. But he didn't miss the signal. Hearing it made the man cry out himself. "Ha! There! There we go!" 

Yes indeed, there they went. Now that he'd found his target, he sped up his thrusts. She was afraid that would ruin it. All too easy for a man to do. Either he'd throw himself off the target, in his galloping eagerness, or start hitting in too fiercely, overstimulating her tissues and turning the good sensations into bad ones. Too intense if not actually painful. That had happened to her too many times before ... But this time it didn't happen like that, thank God. This time the good sensations just got better. 

Good enough to get her off? Maybe ... Hopefully ... If he could keep going like this another minute or two without giving out on her or screwing it up, making another unneeded adjustment. He better not. She'd be pissed if he made that mistake, at this stage. 




Temple of the Hawk Women



He didn't. He didn't mess up or quit on her. He brought her over the line, real good.

She cried out for him, again, as it happened. A short yelp—no mighty glass-shattering scream, but a much louder exclamation than the previous one. Unrestrained.

The other four men all hollered like football fans at a goal. They all recognized what her yelp had signified. That embarrassed her. She'd almost forgotfor a minute the others were watching. Maybe it was stupid to feel ashamed about it. The problem was it took the orgasm away from her, a little, when they cheered. It was her moment, or it was supposed to be. She didn't like that the men were getting off on it too—feeling like big studs. Was that selfish of her? 

The problem with fucking these men was that she didn't just get to fuck them. They were all gonna get to fuck her. She wished she could have the one part without the other.

She shouldn't have let them do anything else but eat her out. Maybe that would have worked better. She shouldn't let any of them come. She should make them pleasure her, but not reciprocate. That would have showed them. Put the fuckers in their place. 

But she wanted to feel the cocks. She wanted real sex. Real fucking, nothing halfass. She'd got too worked up. She wanted to see the men come for her. She needed to make them come. She wished she didn't, but she did. When the urge hit her like this, that was part of it. She got off on getting people off. The power-trip of that. It wouldn't be real fucking if she didn't make all the stupid men come too. 

The men wanted the same power-trip, of course. Perfectly natural, and only fair. But it still made her mad, a little. Selfish or not, she couldn't help it. She wanted to make them all come, and she wanted them all to make her come—but she hated how proud of themselves it would make the fuckers. 

She would do her best to hide it, if the others gave her orgasms. She would try to sneak it past them, holding the pleasure in. She wasn't very good at that, though. It was difficult. If the feelings didn't hit you strong enough to make you lose control, it wasn't a proper climax, was it? You weren't getting off good enough, if it didn't make you yell. 

The leader was ready to finish now. He pulled out and tried to scramble up in range of her face, but she wasn't going to allow that shit. She grabbed hold of it with her free hand to steer him, and made him shoot on her stomach. Most of it. A little fired out far enough to reach her tits. 

"God," he panted, "God damn. Wow."

"You enjoy yourself?"

"I sure did, Miss Croft. You appeared to enjoy yourself, too." 

"I have no complaints. Get out of the way, now. Let's see how the next man measures up." 

It was the guy that had giggled. And he was giggling again, as he shuffled up to her. But she stopped him, before he could lunge himself over on top of her. "No. On your back, please. On the floor there. This time I'm driving."

He was disappointed, and didn't disguise it. "Would you rather wait, then?" she asked. To her surprise, the guy nodded, backing away. "One of the rest of you better be willing to accommodate me on this, or the fun stops right now." Two of the others hopped forward, to offer themselves. She made her selection between them with a rapid "Eeny-meeny-miny-moe." 

But this guy rather disgraced himself. He went off inside her almost as soon as she started bouncing on him. "Christ," he said, "Sorry, sorry. Too much build-up. Sorry." 

She squatted over his face, digging out his spooge with her fingers so it dribbled down on him. Then she made him lick her. But not for long. He wasn't any good at it. 

Number 3, the other guy that volunteered to lie flat for her and be ridden, did a much better job of it than Number 2 had managed. Problem with him, he turned out to have too much stamina. Too much of a good thing. It took a long time and an awful lot of exercise to get him done. Wasn't enough just to bounce on him like Number 2. He liked it—needed it—hard and fast—hard and fast as was humanly possible. She really had to throw her hips into it and work her legs. Her muscles were burning, by the end of it, and she was soaked with sweat, red in the face, and completely out of breath. 

She did come three more times, on top of the guy, before his cock finally gave itself up to her. The spectators probably didn't notice, like she had hoped. They were all little quick ones, jolting kicks, very different than the first one the leader gave her. Not to say they weren't as good—they just did very different things to her. They weren't climactic climaxes—they didn't wring her out. Instead these ones spurred her on. Like little blasts of lightning, supercharging her body. She was used to orgasms that stunned her into a daze and made her body go limp, if only for a second or two. But the way those three struck her, they sped her up instead. They didn't make her feel done—they just made her want more. Each time one struck, her strength had been just about to give out, and she was sure she'd have to stop galloping on the guy to take a breather—or at least slow way, way down—but then one of those lightning kicks would strike through her out of the blue and blast her right back up to full speed, and full pressure ... She read once that lightning actually shoots up from the ground into the sky, even though it always looks like it goes the other way, when you see a flash. She was reminded of that piece of trivia, because of course she felt the three "lightning strikes" burst upward through her body, the same way. 

Two men left. No, wait—actually just one. The other guy had been jerking himself too hard, while he was watching ... He'd taken himself past the point of no return. Missed his shot. Or rather, he'd wasted it. He was one of the guys that kept his sunglasses on, too. What a total lame wanker, in every respect. 

Lara herself wouldn't have minded being done, by that stage. Number 3 had just about burned her out. At the same time, though she was tired, she was fine with keeping going, at least a little while longer. She was wasn't gonna try to wriggle out of taking care of the last guy, so long as he was the one doing the work. Time for some doggy, looked like.

This final chap was the one that backed out of being Number 2, 'cause he didn't wanna lie down for her. Didn't like it that way. Well then. He said doggy was his favorite. So that had worked out good. 

Doggy was often Lara's favorite, too. Not always. And she had some problems with it. She frequently wished it didn't feel as good as it did. Because it felt the most submissive, for her. Even more than missionary, somehow—flat on your back with your legs in the air. Doggy was the most animalistic, and that made it feel the most demeaning. Bending over for it, on your hands and knees. With the guy behind you so you couldn't see him. And all he was looking at—all he wanted to look at—was your arse, and his cock going into you, stretching you open as much as he could. And men always slapped your bottom, while they did it. And they pulled your hair. And yet it usually felt good, when they did those things. Not always—not if they did it too hard or too much. But when it was done right, that stuff made you jump and tighten up inside. Made you feel everything more. And better.

Doggy made her come the strongest. Not always, but often. It was troubling. Even when it was really good—when it was at its best—it made you feel humiliated. She wished she didn't like it so much. Or that it didn't bother her like it did. But it did. It always would. 

Just like she expected, that last fuck with that last guy was both the best and the worst.

Just like she'd feared, the guy pulled on her braid while he pounded her, and he kept slapping her arse. It was demeaning, and she kept telling him not to do that, but he kept doing it anyway, and she let him get away with it—because it felt good, every time he did it. Too good to punish him for it, like she should have.

She had holstered her gun. She did this for no other reason than the fact it was awkward to support herself in the doggy position, with the weapon in her hand. This was a mistake. But by that stage she felt it wasn't necessary to keep hold of it. Not to say the men had exactly earned her trust. But she didn't feel afraid of them. Even on her hands and knees in the submissive doggy pose, she felt in control of the situation. The men were all enjoying themselves too much to give her any trouble, weren't they? They had no reason to. And even if things changed, it would be easy enough to draw the weapon again if she had to. She was confident in her speed, and in her instincts.

And she was feeling really good. The last fucker was giving it to her really great. She was feeling too much pleasure to keep her guard up properly. Holstering the weapon was stupid, but that's what pleasure does to you. It turns you stupid. Makes you vulnerable. You can't worry about things, when you're feeling super-good. When your nervous system is too busy rapidly closing you in on another explosive orgasm. 

When he made her come, he made her scream that time. And then in another minute, just before he finished himself, he managed somehow to get her off again. She tried a little to resist the second one 'cause at the last moment he told her to do it in a bossy and arrogant voice and she didn't like that—didn't want him to think he had her coming on command. He did, though, that second time. She couldn't hold it back. Guy had a real weird accent. Couldn't place where it came from. "Come one more time for me, Tomb Raider! I wanna feel you come again on my cock!" Sounded more like "Comma wunnama teem fuhme Tummreeder!" Was the fucking guy from another planet or what? "Squeeze it with your cunt as hard as you can. Make my cock come with your squeezes!" Except he said skeezes instead of squeezes, and pronounced cock like cook. She would have giggled if she wasn't otherwise occupied ... 

That time when she went off, she didn't scream again, but just because she couldn't. She would have and wanted to, except it took her over so completely she couldn't make a sound. A real throat-strangling toe-curler. She almost passed out.

And when he came, he came on her face. She hadn't meant to let him do that. He was supposed to dump it on her arse or spray it up her back, if his aim was off. But he hustled around in front of her, still holding on to her braid, before she realized what he was doing, because she'd just had that last gigantic climax herself—what was it, the fifth or the sixth—and she wasn't paying any attention. And she couldn't dodge out of the way, once he started, since he had hold of her braid. He kept her perfectly positioned, for the shot. Made her take it from the side, straight across both cheeks. 

Like he's signing his signature, when a guy does that to you. Anyhow, that's what he wants to think. Fuckers have made themselves a ritual out of it, sanctified and institutionalized by the porn industry. It's the mark of masculine sexual prowess. This is what they want to believe. And a girl had better keep that fact in mind, silly as it might seem. You let a guy do that to you, and he thinks he's putting his personal stamp on you, laying his claim. "Look," he's saying to everybody, "I had this woman. I claim this bitch." It can maybe signify the exact same nonsense when he puts it on your belly or your butt or your boobs—but it doesn't, actually. It's way better for him when he puts it across your face. That's the real deal. That's when it counts. Like in all the filthy movies he jerks off to when he's alone. When he's got you looking up into his eyes at him, from down before him on your knees. Taking that crap from a guy—it's an act of fealty. That's what you're giving him, if you allow it. And sure, it's nonsense. It's retarded. It's a joke. It doesn't really mean as much as a guy wants to pretend it does. Doesn't commit you to a life of worship and awe and servitude. The spooge washes right off and it's not like it leaves a stain or anything. You might only have chosen to take it that way with irony, for a laugh, or maybe to make a point. To show how meaningless to you it really is, or to try to. Sometimes, though—lots of times—the guy won't get the message. You'll take the shot and look up at him and meet his gaze dead in his eyes and see that he's not getting it, not the way you intend. Instead he's thinking you're thinking he's a sex god, for real. It's infuriating and obnoxious. 

Lara Croft has learned to be carefully selective about the chaps she allows to do that particular thing with her. Earlier in her life she was quite a bit more offhand about all that stuff, for a period, or tried to be, but no longer. An act like that has meaning, whether it should or shouldn't. It still feels like it does for her, at least. Thus Lara only takes a facial off someone that's earned it as a special privilege, a prize of merit. Someone she's found she can trust to appreciate the gesture for what it stands for, while at the same time not reading too much bullshit significance into it, down the line. She'll only do it for a guy when and if she pretty much means it—quite a rare event, in real life relationships—and only when she knows that the guy will genuinely value the action and take it seriously, without taking it too seriously. 

This fucking guy hadn't qualified. Yeah, credit where it's due, he just got her to come real strong—twice, no denying that—and his physical performance had honestly impressed her. No question. If she was gonna give out certificates after all their fun was over, she'd pick him as the Champion Screw over the rest of his bro's. That still did not entitle him to give her a facial. Especially not in front of an audience—and this kind of audience, in this kind of setting. Not without asking her first, at the very least. If he'd just taken a moment to ask her if it was cool, she might have made an exception to her normal standards—another exception, rather, if we're keeping track—and accepted the money-shot, in the crazed taboo-breaking spirit of today's entire encounter. Instead he forced it on her, out of the blue. Not acceptable. Damn appalling and rude, after everything else she'd let them do with her.  

And then when he stepped back some, the fucker kept holding her like that by her braid so his leader and one of the others—the wanker in the glasses that hadn't got to fuck her—could step up over her and give her two more facials, together. She was stunned by the audacity of it. Even though both of them had already come, enough time had gone by and they'd had more than enough stimulation watching her get banged and banged and get off over and over and of course cranking themselves all through the show she'd put on, that they were both all set to pop again, right on cue. Thankfully the last two weren't—the two she'd ridden on top of—they hadn't been able to get their cocks going again. She'd already drained them dry. 

Still ... Three shots like that were more than enough to completely drench her face, and her tits too. They made a huge, disgusting, disgraceful mess on her. She spat and coughed and screamed again, but not at all in pleasure. 

"Ahh God! Don't! You fuckers! Fuck! Gahh shit!" 

They cheered and laughed at her, of course, enjoying themselves immensely.

She tried to draw her guns. Well, she'd lost her temper ... She would have blown them all to Hell. She should have tried that sooner—but she was too shocked, too appalled. It's impossible to think clearly when three men are pumping jizz all over your face, especially when one of them is pulling your hair hard enough to make you cry, and you're still punch-drunk from an enormous orgasm ... 

So she wasn't fast enough. They grabbed her arms before she got her guns free. Wrestled her hands off the handles, and then forced her arms behind her back while somebody else took the guns out of their holsters. The leader called for rope, and one of the gang ran to their piled packs, to produce some.

"Hurry!" he screamed, yet laughing too, "She's strong! Fucking strong!"

"I'm hurrying!" the other arseface called back, "I'm hurrying!"

"Hurry faster!" 

"No!" she roared as she fought, though not at all effectively—all she could manage in that position on her knees was to writhe and squirm and holler. "No! Get off me! Get your hands the fuck off! Let go!" Then she felt the thick scratchy rope looping her wrists and tightening. Nearly pissed herself. From despair as much as rage. "Don't you fucking do this! Don't you fucking dare!" 

But they fucking dared. They got her good. 

They tied her hands, and they tied her ankles too. She couldn't get away. She couldn't prevent them. "No! Damn you! No! Fuck! No! Bastards!" Then they tied her elbows and her knees. Christ, how much fucking rope did they bring with them? Then they made another little loop to hold a sock in her mouth, gagging her.

They still weren't quite done. They unclipped the buckle of her gunbelt, and the straps that held its holsters to her thighs, and pulled the whole assembly off her, as well, flinging it across the chamber. There was no real reason to do that. They'd already emptied the holsters, and it wasn't like it covered anything on her. But they still took it away, hooting and howling like apes, like it was a big deal for them to deprive her of it. 

And it was a big deal. It shouldn't have been, perhaps, but it was. It hurt to lose that belt. And she groaned through her gag, like she'd been kicked. "Muhhhrrruhh!" Somehow it took the last of her strength and resistance away—not like she could have kept fighting, even if she still had it on. For the holsters were empty and she was already bound. She was already done for. And it hadn't covered any part of her ... but still, but still! She felt a hundred times more naked and a hundred times smaller and weaker and fucked without it on.

They dressed themselves, passed some bottles of water around from their packs, and then they got busy carrying out one of the hawk-headed statues, to load in their boat out there or whatever they had. Turned out the doorway wasn't too big for it after all, so moving the thing wasn't as hard as it might have been. Still took the group a couple hours.

Lara lay on her side on the floor, all this time, bound and gagged, naked and filthy. Sticky and itching all over with dried and crusted semen. She did not waste her strength trying to struggle, though she shivered frequently—not with cold. She wept a little, but was too angry to feel much fear or despair. At least she didn't think of her feelings as fear or despair. She didn't acknowledge those emotions—anchoring herself, with all her remaining will, on to anger, alone. On to burning, blazing, furious rage.

But unfortunately, a feeling that intense is hard to maintain, for any great length of time. The fire inside her was only simmering low and blue, by the time the men's attention returned to her. 

Once they were done getting the statue out, the men came back into the temple. They drank a good deal more water, smoked some cigarettes, and ate some candy bars. Then they all undressed again. 

They ungagged Lara and gave her some water, but kept her tied. Each of them was going to fuck her again.

Since she had already given herself to all of them, she had been half-expecting the men to want to move on to some new, more ghastly amusement. But it seemed the novelty of screwing hadn't yet worn off. No doubt it was a big difference, indulging themselves upon a bound protesting captive, versus how it was before, with her in charge, calling all the shots.

The leader spent a few minutes massaging her, believe it or not. Foreplay, for Chrissakes! Rubbing her shoulders and her breasts, and then the bottoms of her feet. She kept telling him to stop and fuck off. He only grinned and told her how gorgeous she was. It was absurd and appalling. In spite of herself, her bound body responded slightly to his hands, warming and tingling again under his caresses. The way he rubbed and squeezed her feet felt especially good, and when he kissed and sucked on her toes. A personal weak spot, damn him. He made her tremble. He made her pant. Gradually, methodically, his hands took bolder liberties, working their way up her calves to her thighs, and then higher, to her clit and her cunt. (Yes, she used that word on herself, at the moment—she thought of her own womanhood as her cunt, crude and hateful as that word is—because that was how she was feeling. Crude and hateful and filthy.) She was already wet before his fingertips reached that point. They quickly made her wetter, those fingertips, and made her whimper. Her filthy hateful over-sensitive cunt was more practical-minded than the rest of her. Showed no fight at all. It just went right ahead and warmed and lubricated itself as thoroughly as possible for the evil and undeserving cocks that were going to plunge back into it, pretty soon. A dutiful and eager cock socket, ready and well-schooled to its purpose—the translation of internal tactile stimulation into brain-smashing paroxysms of pleasure. Undiscriminating, that was what it was. Greedy, too. Christ.