The Circle get a taste but only that

The chamber began returning to its intended shape only after there was nothing left to spend, weapons found, cloth gathered, Hippolyta already putting people where they were supposed to be. Sitting up was as far as Winston got toward joining that effort. The Circle did not wait for him to fail at standing. Four pairs of hands were under him at once, lifting with the grim efficiency of women who had decided the king would not be seen staggering, Alkyone and Myrto at his back and shoulders, Charis and Philomela at his thighs, which put his bare hips in their arms and the rest of him on display whether anyone had admitted that was the point.

They carried him reclined, as if he might break, and every step pressed him into them: breast and belt, the heat of a stomach, a cheek too close to his ribs. Hands that needed only to hold kept finding skin they did not need, a palm sliding under his ass and staying there, fingers at his inner thigh inching higher with each adjustment of grip, Myrto’s arm across his waist making a slow pass of her thumb along the line of hair below it that had no excuse left in carrying. None of them looked at one another while they did it. He felt that too.

The blindfold left Philomela with weight, heat, and the smell of him, and she followed the last of those without shame, turning her face in against his hip as they moved and breathing him in like a trail, careful at first and then not. Charis glanced down, saw where that mouth was aimed, and dipped a moment later, close enough that breath touched the wet length of his cock. Composure lasted in Alkyone only until the scent reached her as well. Then her jaw tightened, and she leaned in despite herself, lips nearly brushing him as she took stock of what the bed had left behind.

They had not reached the bathing chamber.

Warm air and the murmur of Tektonia’s channels came through the doorway at the threshold, and the four of them stopped as if the stone itself had required a decision. Nobody stepped inside. Charis’s voice, when it came, had the shape of duty and almost none of its substance.

“We can clean you before the water, my king,” she stated. Her eyes were on his cock, not his face. “Properly. If you will allow it.”

Myrto’s throat moved. Alkyone looked at Hippolyta’s absence in the corridor as though permission might still be hanging there, then back to him. Philomela did not bother with the pretence. Her mouth was already close enough that the next words landed against his skin.

“Let us taste what they left,” she said. “We can wash you after.”

Winston, who had never been a strong man, heard the offer and the hunger under it and did not pretend he wanted the virtuous version.

“Yes.”

They did not take him the rest of the way in. Stone met his back first, and the four of them lowered him to the passage floor with the same efficiency they had used in the carry, easing his sore hips down between kneeling bodies until he was sitting up just enough to see them. Philomela’s blindfold had already turned toward his lap. Charis was looking at his cock as if the offer had been a formality. Myrto’s mouth was still set in the shape of work. Alkyone glanced once toward the empty corridor, then her attention came down with the rest, and the warm air from the bathing chamber touched his skin and went unused.

What reached him first was breath, then a mouth. Philomela found him by scent, lips parting over the head of his cock, tongue gathering what the bed had left wet on him, Aurascyra and Helisparga still there in the taste she made a sound over, a sound that had nothing to do with cleaning. Heat followed along the shaft as Charis tasted her way down, slow and unashamed, while Myrto’s hesitation lasted only until she bent and licked the underside with her eyes lowered, as if official posture might survive contact. Colour climbed her face the instant she had him on her tongue. Watching all four of them kneeling in the passage, pulse gone stupid in his throat, Winston felt the last pretence of hygiene leave the act.

There was room enough for a fourth mouth, and Alkyone took it with the same stubborn completeness she had once called service, sinking until her lips met the others. For a little while they still shared him in wet, unhurried passes, Charis along the shaft, Myrto at the base pretending this was work, Philomela making a small helpless noise whenever the smell of the bed hit her again. The head stayed in Alkyone’s mouth. Slow pulls, deep enough that the soreness in his hips went sharp and useless, his hands finding hair and stone and the nearest shoulder while he watched her throat work around him, until the sharing stopped and a seal left the others whatever remained of the shaft.

Each swallow drew him further in. What little strength he had went forward into that heat, pleasure gathering in a thin helpless line along a cock that had already been emptied once today and breaking anyway, thick pulses he could not hold back emptying onto her tongue. She drank as if she had been waiting for it, following him when he twitched away, sucking the next pulse out of him too. A thin run escaped the corner of her mouth. Her thumb put it back. She swallowed that as well, still sealed around him, still taking, until there was nothing left and she only held him there, breathing hard through her nose, eyes down, leaving him clean with the same refusal to do a duty by halves.

Winton was glad he was too exhausted to try and have further sex, layign with these four women would ruin his and Hippolyta's plans for them.