…go back to the cellar and see what’s down there.

There’s clearly something going on down in the cellar; seemingly a hidden heart of activity in the home of your target. Either she’s down there or the people down there know where she is. If things get dicey or questions get asked, you just make your excuses and walk away. Anything is better than just sitting in the dark; certainly this will be more productive. You stand and walk out through the door you entered by, and begin to move down its gloomy corridor.

It’s a corridor that takes you back to the cellar door, and thankfully without incident. The thin strip of light that emanates from its base glows with a familiar soft candle flicker. You listen, pressing your ear to the wood and willing the sounds you want to hear to come forth. None do. Silence stained with faint and distant muffled sounds at least tell you the occupants are some ways beyond. While someone could still be hiding behind the thick old wood, they’d have to be as silent as you are. Not that it would matter if there was. You shake your head; no need to over think this; you’re a pirate after all. After a deep breath, you take the handle and open the door like you were born to do so.

As you thought, stairs lead down to the source of light at the bottom. They’re wide and somewhat shallow, travelling for longer than you expected. Both the stairs and the room beyond are walled with a cold and grey looking stonework with a rounded ceiling of shaped arches. The door hid the noises well, each step bringing the slight echo of the sounds into louder relief, though no clearer for it. There are words, though murmured in a way that suggests a close proximity between speakers, and...slaps? Or claps? Mixed with shuffling and low rumbled growls? It’s a stew of noises, foreign to you, and blended together as they bounce off the walls; impossible to dissect without some visual clarity. It’s a clarity that comes as you trot down the last few steps.

The room at the bottom reveals itself in full, far larger than you thought a single underground room could be. It stretches ahead of you, lined with some kind of bars on the left side, and stacks of crates on the right, terminating in a small gathering of people at the end. Some of them sit and some of them stand, while some of them...bend? You take a step forward, passing the lantern on the wall at the base of the stairs. Shadows of various depths litter the space between you and them, but they have several lanterns about them, and with the nearest light now behind you, their actions give understanding to the noises they make.

Two men sit in chairs with their backs to you; one sporting a mop of black grease, the other a bald head that almost shines in the dark. A third hovers between standing and sitting, looking at something in his hand, while beyond them, the subject of their gathering; two people are bent into stocks, their heads and hands visible against a plank of thick wood, their bare legs visible behind and beneath them. It’s hard to tell their gender from just the tops of their heads and the tanned pillars of their distant legs, partially obscured by the men and the wooden stand of the stocks, but a final older looking man stands behind one of them. His chest is bare, and from the clapping of his thrusting hips meeting those of the stocked prisoner, it’s a nakedness that extends to them both.

It’s a sight that stops you in your tracks. The woman in the stocks -and from her predicament, she must surely be a woman- does not scream or shout or beg or moan. From what you see, she simply takes the attentions of the man behind her, pinned by the wood on her hands and neck, as well as the hands on her hips. The musk of the scene drifts over to you, either on the stale underground air or in the expectations of your mind, gilding the surreal image with sent of sweat and other unclean fluids. The man inside her, the only one facing you, lets his words gain clarity as you watch his lips move.

“-to fit a man. Can’t go your whole li- uh –whole life without stuffin a few gashes every now an then.” His words blur on the surface of your unprepared mind. It’s a dungeon. It’s a **** dungeon. The bars on your left glint with a dull shine, their cages empty. Near the two captives is something else that’s empty; another stock, open, ready, and inviting.

You shake your head, freeing it of the image given by your imagination, while swallowing your fear and disgust. The captain isn’t here; and wouldn’t be, or...or shouldn’t be, so why are you? Unless you could ask... The idea of stepping into the middle of the...show before you, is repellent. There is nothing you can do for the poor woman, save to finish your mission.

“What...ugh fuck... what are you lookin for sweatheart?” The older man is looking at you, your small form silhouetted by the light behind you. He doesn’t stop his rhythmic task as he shouts. The others turn around to look at you, their faces similarly shadowed as they look across the dark gulf between. Only those in the stocks don’t look, their heads hanging as loosely as the dead.

They wait for your response. It’s in the silence of their stilled conversation that you notice the other noise, feminine and gasping, echoing from deeper within, from some adjoining room further down. More prisoners? A man joins in the moaning. They don’t sound like victims. It’s enough to throw you off further, making your response drag in the silence. The man’s brows nit in confusion and his mouth opens to ask again. You make out the object in the hand of one of the men, glinting in the light as he stands fully, turning to face you. You head off the question set to repeat.

“I’m here to pick up some wine?” Gods above, why did that sound like a question! You quickly clear your throat, as if to gruffly push aside the uncertainty of your statement. They look at each other. It’s a brief thing, a flash of meeting eyes that seems to end instantly. Eventually, the one standing, and not otherwise engaged, speaks up while half-heartedly shaking his empty bottle.

“What a coincidence, I was just about to get some.” The others titter as he steps away, and you think you hear a muttered ‘thought you just did’ from one of the men.

The man lumbers toward you, and as he closes the distance, he blots out the light that settles about his friends, leaving him a faceless approaching shadow. You stand, frozen; can you say you’ll find it yourself? You dismiss the idea, as he’d already said he needs some. Damn it, he’s getting closer! As he enters the pool of light oozing from the lantern behind you, you finally see his face, buried as it is in the frazzled mop of wild hair on his head. It looks less carved from stone than left to drop and chip where it may; a wide and brutish jaw mossed with stubbled growth is set under a thunderous brow, giving him a naturally hard expression. It’s all framed above a bare-chested and well haired body, bound with sea forged muscle and (thank the gods) a pair of white trousers, and as he nears, he reaches out toward you with thick and calloused hands that could break you with a single snap. You want to run. You want to put your dagger between you and him. But you don’t and you thank yourself for it. His hand reaches your shoulder and passes it harmlessly, giving you a close view of a tattooed skull upon his wrist, and with a small clatter, the lantern behind you comes free of the wall and moves with his arm to the space in front of you. The low angle can’t help but give his unsmiling face a more sinister air.

“Come on, it’s this way.”

He begins to plod to the right, shining the light upon an archway behind a small pile of wooden crates. It leads into darkness, but as you look, several thin strips of light seem to be at its far end. Perhaps another door? They seem to be set high up, as though stairs lead to it, but it seems too dim and slanted for it. You glance at the men and their ‘party’, and while you still can’t see the bald man’s face, he looks confused; head tilted and leaning forward as he looks at you. The light of the pilfered wall lantern had better lit your clothes, and you decide to follow it into the darkness before he fails to match your face any of his fellow crewmen.

The room and its noises, its assaults and crude conversation, fade behind you as you walk into this new corridor, guided by the light carrying man ahead. It clear why he came here; the walls on either side are lined with long wooden cabinets, with many of their diamond shaped compartments holding a bottle of some kind or another. Most at the start, within easy reach, hold nothing but dust, while further in you see a wealth of glass necks and corked ends, each holding back dark and no doubt fiery liquids. As the man ahead forges onward, they light up and shine with dancing light, before fading just as quickly as he passes, leaving them in darkness. Could you take a bottle and leave? Following this man alone in the dark corridor does not sit well with you at all.

Just as you think this, he stops maybe half way towards the thin sliver of light at the far end, standing by some out of place looking boxes stacked within an alcove, just between a break in the shelves. He gestures to you, towards the bottles in front of him, inviting you to pick as you please. Glad to be finished in this mistake of a destination, you step forward and pick one at random, pulling some dark green bottle from its diamond slot. Perhaps you should try the stairs after all; getting as far from this place as possible sounds good. As the bottle reveals its label and is about to fall free of the shelf, a thick hand smothers yours, making you jump.

“No.” It’s a simple word, rumbled from the man as he pushes the bottle back into its hole. “No. That’s shit.” He leans back to look at the shelf.

After bobbing about, he finally puts his lantern upon the top of the shelves and pulls free a far fatter bottle, with a long thin neck and ballooning base. He breaks the wax seal on the cork and pulls it free, letting its glass neck hum a deep note as he does, and puts it to his nose for a sniff.

“Here.” He puts it to your nose, evidently wanting you to sniff, and as you do you’re struck by the dizzying power of it. You’ve never been one for drink, finding it a past time far too expensive for your meagre Agent income, and so you find it impossible to identify. You catch the word ‘fiery’ on the label through you suddenly watering eyes and heartily agree, wanting to cough and splutter as you imagine your nose hairs burning back.

The man, now lit from above by the steady lantern, takes it back and corks it.

“Good?”

Unable to speak, you simply nod your head.

The man stands most in the light, as he stands away from the shelf, with you standing with you back to the bottles and lantern above. As a result, you see him clearly as he hands the bottle to you. It’s large and full, and as he grips the stem, you accept the base with both hands.

“We’re lucky,” he takes a step closer to you, his brooding brow casting shadows at its hard angles, “Got all this good shit down here.” You back into the bottles as he gets a little closer, rattling them softly as you hold the bottle like some sort of talisman. “An all you got to do-“ Your heart hammers. He’s too close! “-is reach out and take it.”

He kisses you; his puckered lips meeting your terse lines. You may be shocked, but not so much that you leave your lips open to his impertinent intentions. With a deep breath, his two free hands best your bottle tied ones and he begins to ensnare you, one hand about the back of your neck, holding you to the kiss, the other placing a palm upon your belly, just under the pathetic rag jacket. You make a muffled yelp, leaning your head back and nocking the shelf with it, sounding another tinkling of bottles, and not knowing what to do, you push down and away on the hand feeling at your exposed belly button.

It’s the wrong move.

As much as you push away, he pushes toward, and the down you give is one he accepts gladly, slipping his hand down the hem of your stolen trousers. Fingers rake through your fur, led by the runaway charge of a mad mid-digit, which cleaves between your legs and over your sex before burying itself inside.

You cry out in shock, or try to; with his lips already on your mouth, the best you get is a startled yelp, quickly muffled to silence by his renewed passion and the plunge of his thick questing tongue. You feel it between your teeth; alien and writhing, yet insignificant to his actions below. He withdraws there, briefly. You feel his forefinger rolling across the jewel of your entrance before barging back inside with crude insistence, then leaving, then entering. You let go of the bottle, grabbing with one hand his forearm, trying to push him away, yet it’s as hard as iron and the heavy bottle nearly falls, making you grab it once more. His rough digit slides across your soft inner skin, back and forth, in and out, nail to knuckle. Your body rises and you stand on tip toes, lifted up by his effort; yours to escape and his to pursue, yet still driven into his mouth and deep kiss. You fumble the bottle hand to hand to hand, until you hold it by the stem in your right so you can once more try and **** him from you with your left, yet you soon finding yourself holding on to his wrist, trying to stay standing as your knees weaken. This shouldn’t be happening. You don’t want this! His arm feels strong. A prickle of sweat dances across your lower back. This is the first time a man has touched you there, inside, with his hand at least. Even you, exploring in the bath, never felt so… The bottle!

You’d not wanted to drop it, lest it shatter and draw even more attention. Now it sits like a club in your hand, ready to brain this animal; to break and cut him, or club him if it doesn’t. But could you hit hard enough? Its heavy and angled badly thanks to his closeness. It could also bring his friends, but not fast enough for you to run up the stairs. A great way to make fast enemies, but what other choice do you have!? He continues to dig at you below, and you turn your head to get his lips off you, succeeding only in spilling them down your neck.

You could reason with him, maybe. He doesn’t budge as you shove him, but in all fairness, neither would a brick wall and you certainly don’t feel strong dwarfed in the shadow of his well-muscled chest. If you told him to get off -talked to him- then perhaps you could leave without leaving bodies in your wake. You could tell him you need to take the wine to someone; or that you’ll be right back; or that you just don’t like the thick musk of sweat sent that rolls off him in waves. You’d lose the element of surprise though, no matter what you say. What do you do if he declines to stop and gets forceful? What if he drags you to the stocks? So many questions flit through your mind, and you feel you could answer them any other day, but right now, a stranger is sucking on your neck while insistently fingering between your legs, so you’re a little distracted.

A rumble sounds in your ear.

“You scared?”

You dig your fingers into his forearm. Yes, gods yes! Until you find the words, only a whimper answers him.

“Don’t be.”

He tries to trace his kisses back to your lips, smothering your turned cheek with wet pecks and hot breath.