Chapter 18: Fetching for the Gods
The salt air didn’t feel clean. It felt thick, sticky, clinging to Arthur’s skin like the pink lace camisole Vivian had chosen for him. The outfit was a repeat from the drawer—the panties, the stockings clipped to a garter belt, the padded bra that gave him the pathetic illusion of breasts. Over it, she’d made him wear a sheer black robe that hid nothing, its silky fabric whispering against his thighs as he walked. A final touch: a thin, leather collar with a small silver bell.
The Ocean’s Embrace was a monument to other people’s pleasure. Music pulsed from the main deck, a deep, rhythmic throb that vibrated up through the teak planks. Laughter, sharp and liquid, spilled from groups clustered around the glowing swim-up bar. Everywhere he looked, there were bodies—tanned, toned, intertwined on loungers, pressed against railings under the purple twilight. He was a ghost in a neon nightmare.
“Don’t just stand there,” Vivian said. She was stretched out on a double lounger, a vision in a white bikini that glowed against her skin. Darius lay beside her, one heavily muscled arm draped possessively around her shoulders. Marcus, another of her regulars from back home, occupied a nearby chair, his eyes hidden behind mirrored aviators.
“We’re parched,” Darius said, his smile a white slash in the dim light. He squeezed Vivian’s shoulder. “Your girl here can fetch, can’t she?”
“That’s what she’s for,” Vivian replied, not looking at Arthur. She pointed a manicured finger toward the crowded bar. “Two mojitos, extra lime. A gin and tonic for Marcus. And a bottle of Pellegrino for yourself. You don’t get the good stuff tonight.”
A soft tinkle sounded as Arthur nodded, the bell on his collar ringing. A couple walking past, a man and woman in matching linen, glanced over. The woman’s eyebrows rose, a smirk playing on her lips before she looked away. Heat flooded Arthur’s face, burning down his neck. He turned and began to pick his way through the crowd.
Each step was an agony of exposure. The stockings rubbed against the tender skin of his inner thighs, a reminder of the deeper, healing abrasions from Brick. The padded bra felt like a grotesque joke. He kept his eyes down, watching his own pink-painted toenails in their delicate sandals navigate the slick deck. The murmur of conversations seemed to dip as he passed, then resume with a hushed, amused energy.
Look at that. a woman said.
Is that a man? asked a guy.
Certainly not much of a man. another woman said laughing.
He reached the bar, a crush of bodies smelling of coconut oil and expensive vodka. He waited, trying to make himself small. The bartender, a shirtless man with intricate tattoos, served three other people before his eyes finally landed on Arthur.
“What can I get you, sweetheart?” he asked, his tone not unkind, just professionally bored.
Arthur’s voice came out as a reedy whisper. “Two mojitos, extra lime. A gin and tonic. And a Pellegrino.”
“You got it.” The bartender turned, his hands moving with efficient grace. Arthur stared at the array of bottles, the glowing ice bins, anything to avoid the gazes he could feel on his back. From a lounger nearby, a man in his fifties openly stared, licking his lips slowly before giving Arthur a wink.
The drinks arrived. Arthur fumbled with his little clutch purse—another of Vivian’s additions—and paid with her room key. Balancing the tray was a delicate operation. The glasses were cold and wet, the bottle slippery. The bell tinkled with every slight movement. He began the gauntlet back.
Halfway, a woman in a sequined sarong, drink in hand, staggered backwards with a laugh. She bumped hard into his side.
The tray lurched. The mojitos sloshed, green liquid spilling over the rims and onto the tray, onto his hands. He gasped, freezing, managing not to drop it.
“Oopsie!” the woman giggled, turning. Her eyes traveled from the tray, up the robe, to his face, to the collar. Her giggle died, replaced by a look of cold, fascinated disgust. “Well. Aren’t you something.”
He didn’t speak. He just adjusted his grip, his wet fingers slipping, and walked on, the spilled liquor dripping onto the deck.
When he finally reached their lounger, Vivian sighed dramatically. “You took forever. And you spilled.”
“I’m sorry,” Arthur murmured, lowering the tray. Darius took his mojito, his fingers brushing against Arthur’s deliberately.
“Shaky hands,” Darius observed. He took a long drink, his eyes never leaving Arthur’s face. “Nervous?”
“She’s just eager to please,” Marcus said, accepting his gin and tonic. “Aren’t you?”
Arthur nodded, the bell tinkling again. He handed Vivian her drink, then placed the bottle of water on the small table beside her.
“Not there,” she said sharply. “You hold it. You’re not sitting.”
So he stood, a step behind and to the side of their lounger, holding his bottle of warm water like a servant at a medieval court. He watched Darius’s hand trace patterns on Vivian’s bare shoulder. Heard Marcus talk about the stock market. Heard Vivian’s light, flirtatious laughter in response to something Darius murmured in her ear.
“You know,” Darius said, his voice pitched just loud enough for Arthur to hear over the music, “they’re showing that amateur film festival tonight in the Atlantic Lounge. Heard there’s some pretty kinky submissions this year. Real home movie stuff.”
Vivian shifted, turning her head to look at Arthur over her shoulder. Her smile was brilliant and terrible. “That sounds fun. We should go after this drink. Might see some familiar faces.”
The memory of the phones, the glowing screens capturing every whimper and streak of blood on his living room floor, hit him like a physical blow. The air left his lungs. The bottle of water trembled in his hand.
“I think she’d like that,” Darius said, watching Arthur’s reaction with open enjoyment. “A little culture. Maybe it’ll give her… ideas for her own performances.”
Marcus chuckled. “Always room for improvement.”
The music switched to a deeper, more insistent track. On the dance floor by the pool, a new scene was unfolding. A woman, completely naked was dancing erotically to the music. The crowd cheered and someone led her away to the orgy area.
Darius finished his drink and set the glass down with a decisive click. “Now that's hot! Let's go check out that area." He stood, all coiled power, and extended a hand to Vivian. She took it, sliding gracefully to her feet.
“Come along bitch,” she said to Arthur, not looking back.
He followed them, the unopened water bottle still in his hand.
They walked into a glass atrium and people were having sex everywhere.
The glass atrium was a riot of sound and skin, a humid jungle of tangled limbs and wet, slapping echoes. Under the dome, the warm air clung, thick with the scent of sex, sweat, and chlorine from the nearby pools. Bodies moved on scattered cushions and low benches, a mosaic of heaving backs and splayed thighs, their moans merging with the thrumming bassline that poured from hidden speakers.
Vivian didn’t hesitate. She led Darius and Marcus toward a large, circular padded platform near the center, its surface already glistening. With a practiced motion, she untied her bikini top and let it fall. Darius’s hands were on her immediately, pulling her against him, his mouth finding hers in a hungry, performative kiss as Marcus watched, a smile playing on his lips.
“Get over here, Marcus,” Darius said, breaking the kiss, his voice rough. “Plenty to go around.”
Marcus joined them, his hands exploring Vivian from behind as Darius focused on her front. They moved with a coordinated, possessive ease, lowering her onto the padded surface. It was a display, a reclaiming. Arthur stood frozen just inside the entrance, the unopened water bottle a forgotten weight in his hand. The sheer robe did nothing. The bell at his throat felt like a klaxon announcing his presence.
A man to his left, sweating and flushed, nudged his companion. “Check out the bellhop.” They both chuckled.
“Think that’s part of the show?” the companion asked.
“Looks lost. Probably waiting for a tip.”
The laughter was a physical blow, sharper than any from Brick. He wanted the floor to swallow him, but the polished marble offered no escape. He could only watch as Darius freed himself from his shorts, his erection springing forth, and guided himself into Vivian with a smooth, powerful thrust. She cried out, her back arching, her fingers digging into Darius’s shoulders. Marcus, kneeling beside them, leaned in to take one of her nipples into his mouth.
It was a raw, animalistic dance of possession, and Arthur was its only audience of one. Whimpers and commands and the slick, rhythmic sounds of their coupling filled his ears. He saw Vivian’s eyes open, those familiar blue eyes, and they scanned the room before locking onto him. There was no warmth there, no apology, only a cool, assessing ownership.
A woman nearby, riding her partner, glanced over at Arthur and snorted. “Someone’s not getting invited to the party.”
The party escalated around him. The symphony of grunts and sighs seemed to amplify, the air growing denser. He saw Darius’s muscles coil and release, saw Vivian’s legs wrap tighter around his hips. Marcus stroked himself, his gaze fixed on where their bodies joined. Time dissolved into a series of vivid, awful snapshots: the strain in Darius’s neck, the sheen of sweat on Vivian’s stomach, the approving nods from nearby strangers.
With a final, guttural shout, Darius shuddered and went still, buried deep. He held there for a long moment before pulling out, collapsing beside her on the padding. Marcus quickly moved to take his place, entering her with a less graceful, more frantic urgency. Vivian gasped, her head turning to the side, her eyes finding Arthur again.
They never left him as Marcus finished, his own climax a brief, tensed shudder. Then it was quiet, save for the ragged breathing of the three of them and the ongoing chorus from the rest of the atrium. The smell of their sex was immediate and pungent.
Vivian pushed herself up on her elbows. Her skin was flushed, her hair disheveled, a mixture of fluids glistening on her inner thighs. She looked utterly spent, and utterly in control.
“Arthur,” she called, her voice hoarse but clear. It cut through the ambient noise. “Come here.”
The bell tinkled as he flinched. A few heads turned. A low whisper of interest rippled through the nearest clusters of people.
He took one step, then another, his legs heavy as stone. The distance to the platform felt endless. Every eye he passed felt like a brand.
“Hurry up,” she said, a note of impatience sharpening her tone.
He reached the edge of the padded platform. The smell was overwhelming up close. Vivian spread her legs wider, a deliberate, explicit display. She gestured with two fingers. “Clean it up. All of it.”
A man watching from a nearby bench let out a short, sharp laugh. “No fucking way.”
“Way,” someone else answered, a giggle in their voice.
Arthur’s vision blurred. The atrium, the bodies, the laughing faces, all dissolved into a smear of color and noise. There was only the command, and the glistening evidence of his own irrelevance. He dropped to his knees on the hard floor beside the platform. The pink lace of his camisole scraped against the edge.
He leaned forward, closing his eyes, and did as he was told.
The taste was bitter, salty, a brutal cocktail of other men that coated his tongue and throat. His stomach lurched, but he kept going, mechanically, a machine servicing its primary function. The laughter around him crystallized into distinct, piercing comments.
“Now that’s a dedicated cuck.”
“Getting the sloppy seconds… thirds?”
“Look at her face, she loves it.”
Vivian did. She lay back, one hand draped over her forehead, a slow, satisfied smile spreading across her lips as he worked. Her other hand came down and tangled in his hair, not guiding, just holding him in place, a fixture. When he finally pulled back, breathing hard, his mouth slick and foul, she patted his head twice.
“Good girl,” she murmured, the words only for him.
"Hey, do you rent him out?" A pretty girl next to them asked. The guy fucking her, had just pulled out, and she had a thick pool of jizz leaking down between her thighs.
Vivian’s laughter was bright and easy, the sound she used at open houses. “Consider him community property. Go ahead, honey. He doesn’t bite.” She gave Arthur’s hair a final pat and released him. “Unless you want him to.”
The girl with the slick thighs grinned. “Nah, just the cleanup crew is fine.” She hooked a finger. “C’mere.”
A hand shoved Arthur from behind—Marcus, he thought—pushing him toward the adjacent padded mat. He stumbled forward, catching himself on his hands. The bell jingled madly. He looked up at the girl’s flushed, smiling face, then down at the glistening mess on her skin. The smell was different from Vivian’s, sweeter, mixed with coconut sunscreen.
“Get to work, sweetie,” the girl said, leaning back on her elbows. Her partner, a bearded man, watched with detached curiosity as he stroked himself back to fullness.
Arthur bent his head. The act was mechanical now, a hideous extension of the first. He closed his eyes, trying to detach, but the specific textures assaulted him—the contrasting fluids, the coarse hair against his nose, the girl’s idle sigh above him. When he was done, she pushed his head away with her foot.
“Not bad,” she said to Vivian. “Useful little thing.”
“Told you,” Vivian replied. She was sitting up now, Darius’s arm around her, sipping from a fresh drink someone had handed her. She pointed vaguely to the left. “That guy over there by the pillar looks like he could use a mouth. Be a darling, Arthur.”
It wasn’t a request. It was navigation. A new destination in his endless tour.
Arthur crawled. The teak floor was unforgiving on his knees. He reached a man leaning against a marble pillar, his cock in his hand, watching a trio of women. The man looked down, surprised, then understood. He didn’t speak, just guided himself between Arthur’s lips. He tasted of chlorine and stale beer. Arthur focused on the grain of the marble, his mind fraying into static.
He finished quickly with a grunt, tapping Arthur’s cheek in dismissal.
“Over here next, cleanup on aisle five!” a woman’s voice called, laughing. It came from a tangle of limbs on a low leather sofa. A redhead was spread-eagled, two men having just pulled out of her. She waved at him. “C’mon, don’t be shy.”
The journey continued. Each body was a new landscape of humiliation. A woman with a intricate tattoo across her hipbone who gripped his hair and moaned, “Yeah, just like that, get it all.” A man who held him by the collar and thrust roughly, cursing, the little bell muffled against his stomach. The tastes and smells merged into a single, putrid soup of salt, copper, and perfume. His jaw ached with a deep, burning fatigue. The raw tenderness from Brick’s visit, a constant background throb, flared with every awkward position.
He became a service animal, moving to pointed fingers and snapped commands. The lighthearted dialogue around him was a soundtrack to his erasure.
“He’s efficient.”
“Send him my way when you’re done.”
“Does he do anal? Mine’s itching for a tongue.”
He lost track of Vivian, of Darius, of everything but the next set of genitals presented to him. His world narrowed to the patch of floor in front of his eyes, the next taste, the next pounding in his skull that matched the throb of the music. A part of him, the accountant who balanced ledgers, noted the sheer volume of strangers. The number was unsustainable. The body would break.
But the body obeyed.
He was wiping his mouth after a particularly forceful man when a new hand, softer, cupped his chin. He looked up into the face of a blonde woman he vaguely recognized from the pool deck earlier. Her expression wasn’t cruel. It was almost pitying.
“You look wrecked,” she said, her voice low. Her thumb brushed over his slick lower lip. For a wild second, he thought she might offer kindness, a glass of water, an escape. Then her other hand directed his head firmly downward, between her own legs. “One more won’t kill you. Be a good girl.”
The hope, that tiny, stupid flare, extinguished instantly. It left him colder than before. He performed. He always performed.
When he finally sat back on his heels, disoriented and hollow, the crowd around that particular cluster had lost interest. He scanned the humid room through stinging eyes. He found Vivian. She was standing near the entrance now, dressed again, talking animatedly with a tall man in a ship’s officer’s uniform. She gestured toward Arthur, then toward the officer’s clipboard, her smile professional and persuasive.
Darius stood beside her, whispering something in her ear that made her laugh again. She nodded, then glanced at her watch.
She caught Arthur’s eye across the distance and crooked her finger, summoning him back. The movement was effortless, habitual. The promise of the film festival in the Atlantic Lounge hung in the air between them, a new appointment on the ledger.
His knees protested as he pushed himself up to obey. The bell gave a weak, final chime.