The anal hour

The cigars were done before the brandy. The husbands came back in from the terrace in a cloud of smoke — three of them, then the fourth, trailing ash. Margaret waved a hand in front of her face. "You smell like a chimney sweep."

"That's the point of a cigar, Margot."

"That's the point of a chimney."

Bertrand poured himself another. Georges sat on the arm of Isabella's chair, permitted for about four seconds before she shoved him off. Peter moved through with a silver scraper, emptied the ashtrays into a bucket of sand, and straightened the humidor lid. The fire had burned down to its orange heart.

Dessert had come earlier: a dark chocolate thing in thin slices, most of it untouched, plates cleared away. Nobody had room. Everybody had had other things on their minds.

Aline finished her brandy, set the balloon glass down with a small decisive click, and looked at the clock on the mantel.

"Right," she said. "An all-hour."

The husbands stopped talking.

"It's nearly eleven. Peter, would you —"

"Of course, madam."

She stood, smoothed the front of her dress with both palms, and looked around her circle of women. "We've got a little surprise for you ladies," she said to me. "The party room. Come with me."

"Surprise," Bertrand said. "At your age."

"At my age, Bertrand, I get to have surprises. You get to hear about them."

She walked—barefoot, straight-backed—out into the corridor with the dark panelling. The other four rose like birds off a wire. Eleanor collected her heels from the hall and carried them rather than wore them. Chantal went past me with her chin up. Isabella paused long enough to look at my lap, thought better of it, and looked anyway.

I got as far as the threshold. Peter was there. He always was.

"Sir."

I looked at him.

"Only assholes to be taken down there, sir." A beat. "The room, I mean."

He produced four Viagras from his waistcoat and held them in a fold of white cloth. I took them and swallowed them dry, one after another, in a row, like a man taking medicine. Peter handed me a glass of Evian without being asked. I drank half. The water was cold and faintly mineral. The first pill hit somewhere around the fourth swallow — spreading warmth in the chest, a low pull under the belly.

"Another four," Peter observed. "Ambitious, sir."

"You gave them to me."

"I offered them, sir. There's a difference." He took the glass back. "The party room is at the end. Mind the step."

The corridor ran long — wainscot, sconces, a runner of dark red wool. The women's laughter came back along with it ahead of me, high and excited. Then the double doors were open, and the light changed.

The room was big. Two storeys of it, or one tall one with a vaulted ceiling, I couldn't tell — plaster panels, white, brilliantly lit by a row of pendant lamps on long cords. No fire. No leather. Nothing soft. Bare polished grey concrete underfoot, five sex benches in the middle of it, standing in a circle.

Padded black leather. Steel legs. Angled backrests on hinges, adjustable, and set at five different pitches. Footrests. Handgrips at the head.

The women poured in around them. Chantal squeaked. Isabella did too, covering her mouth and squeaking again on purpose. Eleanor sat down on the nearest bench, bounced, tried the backrest hinge, and laughed out loud.

"Oh, Aline. You shouldn't have."

"You said the fitting was the problem."

"He can even lean back when I sit on him," Eleanor said, delighted, working the hinge all the way down. "Look at this. He can lean back."

More laughter. Five happy women, five benches, and a circle with a hole in the middle where we would all be visible to each other.

"Alternate as usual?" Margaret asked. "Or bingo again?"

"Bingo," Aline said. "So we can all watch."

"Bingo," Eleanor said, "so we can all watch."

"Excellent."

"Yes."

"Bingo."

They arranged themselves, one at a bench, like a jury taking its box.

"Who's first?" Isabella asked.

"Whose sphincter goes first?" Margaret said. "Tightest one."

"That's me." Chantal's arm went straight up at the shoulder, the way a girl's does in a classroom. "Me. Me, me, me. Oh, please, professor, can I have the first bumming? Please. Ah, pretty please?"

"You may," Aline said, laughing.

"Go on, then."

They said it almost like a chore.

Chantal got up. She looked at my cock — fully erect, four tablets deep, standing out of my trousers with the head flushed dark — licked her lips twice and turned to the room.

"I wonder if he can make me come without touching my clit," she said. "A bet."

"A bet," Isabella shouted.

"What's the main prise, Aline? A week of his cock?"

Aline laughed. "Let's do it."

"A week of his cock," Eleanor said. "A week. God."

"Peter, would you be the jury?"

"Yes, madam. I'll be happy to."

Peter drew a chair to the edge of the circle, sat, folded his hands over his knee, and set his chin on them. Not ashamed at all. A man at a tennis final.

"Lay down," Chantal told me. "Nearest bench. That one."

She didn't know my name. It occurred to me she had never once asked it in six hours. Nobody had. I was cock.

I lay down. The leather was cool through my shirt. My cock stood straight up off my belly, absurd, greased already at the tip from nothing but air.

"Peter, would you lube his phallus, please?"

"Of course, madam."

The glove came in — warm, unhurried, a full circuit from root to crown, working the slick lube down the shaft, over the ridge, gathering a little pool at the base, a second coat, a third. He stepped back.

"The cock is ready, Mrs Chantal," he announced.

She climbed up, knee on the footrest, other knee, hands on my chest, walking herself up my body until she straddled my hips. Her dress was rucked up around her waist. She reached back, found me, and dragged the head through the cleft of her arse, up over her hole, and down again.

"Peter, could you help me, please."

"Of course, Mrs Chantal."

The glove closed around the shaft, angled me square, and held.

She let her weight go.

The first half-inch took four seconds. Her mouth came open. The second half-inch took longer. A sound came out of her like a hinge, something between a grunt and a note of music. Then the head of it was in; the ring of her closed on the groove behind it stayed there.

"Oh, he's so fat," she said. "Oh God. Oh God, he's fat. He tears me open. He tears me—"

"Bear down," Eleanor said.

"I am bearing down — aah — oh, that's it, that's — oh —"

She sank. Slowly, in stages, her jaw tightened each time, the tendons standing in her neck. Sweat came out along her spine in a fine sheen, small of the back to the shoulder blades, a layer of it glossing her. On the fifth stage she made a low, strangled noise, bore down hard, and took the rest of me in one long push to the root.

"Fuck," she said, staying still, breathing, full to the hilt, thighs trembling against my hips. "Oh, so good. Oh, it's so good, it's — aah."

Then she started to move.

She did it well, this one. Slow. Deep. Every stroke all the way up to the crown, every stroke all the way back down to the hilt, a long impaling rhythm like a woman working a pump. Her young legs did it easily, thighs flexing, hips rolling through at the bottom to grind herself on the base of me before she rose.

The circle leant in. Not at me. At the place where she was taking it.

"Look at the ring on her," Eleanor said. "It's white. Look how white it's gone."

"Fat as a fist," Isabella said. "That's a fat cock, that. Fat as a fist."

"Thick," Margaret said. "Say the word properly. Thick. There's no shame in liking it."

"I like it," Isabella said. "I'd say thick all night."

"You'd say anything all night."

"Not to you."

The bench creaked. Chantal's breath came in through her teeth, sharp and rhythmic, timing itself to the strokes. Her arse was opening around me in a slow, pale ring, closing, and opening, and the women watched it happen with the frank, unembarrassed attention of people at a gallery.

"My mouth wouldn't have him," Eleanor said into her coffee. "Look at the girth on that. My jaw would ache by the second inch."

"You've a small mouth," Margaret said.

"I've a small mouth, a small everything; it's my cross to bear."

"His mushroom's very big," Isabella said. "Very big, that. Maybe I could try later."

"Try what? Swallow it?" Margaret laughed. "You'd want a shoehorn."

"Half of it."

"Half of it isn't swallowing. Half of it is kissing."

"Oh, I feel him in my colon," Chantal cried, eyes shut, faintly annoyed at being talked over. "Ah. Ah. All the way in my colon—"

"Thick as a wrist," Margaret said, ignoring her, sitting forward. "Look at the shaft of it. Look at the veins standing out. That's a properly thick cock, that."

"Thank you," Aline said, from her bench, as though it were her own work.

"I'll take it. Perhaps tonight — or not. Tonight's spoken for. But I'll take it. A wager on it."

"You'll take it in the throat?"

"In the throat."

Aline considered her, head tilted.

"If you can have him in your throat, Margaret," she said, "I'll give him to you an entire week."

The room made a sound. Eleanor's cup stopped halfway to her mouth.

"A week," she said, faintly scandalised. "Aline, that's the prise twice over. That's two weeks of cock on one table."

"She won't manage it," Aline said. "Look at him. Thick as a wrist, and Margaret's got a neck like a swan."

"I've swallowed worse."

"You've swallowed worse lengths. There's a difference."

Peter's pen moved. Nobody asked him to write it down. He wrote it down.

"Note the terms," Aline said, without looking at him. "The gentleman's on the clock for both."

"Both noted, madam."

"Nice rhythm," Eleanor said, to Chantal, as though nothing had happened. "Nice long rhythm."

"It's the depth," Margaret said. "Look at her. She's not even fighting it."

"I can't help myself," Chantal cried. "I can't—oh, fuck—I can't help myself—"

Her right hand left my chest, went down between us, found her clit, and worked it fast, sloppily, with three fingers at once.

"Ah, yes. Ah. Ah. Ah, fuck me. Fuck me—"

Her hips sped up. Short strokes, grinding, her arse slapping my thighs at the bottom of each one. Sweat ran into the small of her back. Her head went back, hair swinging.

"Somebody caress his balls, please," she managed. "Please. He's—he needs—"

"That's my job," Eleanor said, and got up.

Her hand closed over my sac — warm, dry, cupping the full weight of it — thumb starting a slow rolling circuit. Round. Round. Round. She leant in close to see; her tongue came out, dragged flat up the seam of it, from root to crown. The whole sack tightened hard against the shaft.

The other women talked over us. Comfortable. Settled. Peter poured brandy, one glass at a time, and handed it round.

"He has nice veins," Isabella said. "Look at the veins on it. Such a good cock."

"The veins are the best part," Margaret agreed. "You feel everyone is going in."

"Thick as a wrist," Isabella said again, admiring. "I'd have to take him in stages. I'd have to be shown how."

"You'd be shown," Aline said.

Chantal came.

It started behind her ribs — a shudder through the whole frame, a gasp cut off in the middle, then the clamp of her arse around me in four hard pulses. Her fingers kept going on her clit. Her voice went up into something thin, high, and broken.

"Ah—ah—AH—"

The clamp was what did it. That, the tongue still moving, the four tablets, the whole lit circle of them watching. It came up out of me all at once, no warning, no build — a long hot surge starting deep, going on, one rope after another, pumping up into her bowels. She felt it go. She came again on it, hard, back bowing, mouth wide, a second shudder racking her hips to her shoulders.

"Oh — oh, he's coming, he's coming inside me, oh God, oh —"

The heat of it. The pulse. She rode it out in little broken bounces, whining, until the last of it was in her; the clamp eased, and she folded down onto my chest, gasping, cheek against my collarbone, the sweat of her back cool in the draught from the doors.

Peter uncrossed his legs.

"The jury finds," he said, "in favour of the gentleman."

"Oh, well done," Aline said, applauded twice, dryly.

Chantal lifted her head. Her eyes were wet at the corners. "I didn't touch it for the first one," she said. "You all saw. The first one was him."

"We saw," Margaret said.

"Prise stands, then." Aline finished her brandy. "A week. Peter, put it in the book."

"It's in the book, madam. Along with the second."

"Second? "Chantal said.

"Mrs Margaret's wager. The throat." He closed the notebook over one finger. "Two weeks outstanding, sir. Should you be called upon? Perhaps she could do it tonight, madam?"

Margaret smiled at me across the circle, slow and entirely unhurried, the way a woman smiles when she has all the time in the world. She knew before I did.

"Whose do you go next?" Aline said.

Isabella's arm went up.

To be continued.