Chapter 113: A Taste of Things to Come
The buzzer above Door Seven was still screaming, a single, unblinking eye of red light, when the heavy door at the end of the secret corridor banged open. Julia stood there, backlit by the harsher lights of the facility’s main hall, her silhouette as crisp and commanding as a prison warden’s.
“That’s enough viewing, gentlemen,” she announced, her voice slicing through the muffled sounds of ongoing pleasure. “Service call. Everyone out. Now.”
A collective groan, part relief, part anguish, rustled through the hooded men. Paolo peeled himself slowly from his viewing slot, his breath fogging the glass one last time. Henry, still mopping champagne from his shoes, looked up with pathetic gratitude. Rupert remained frozen, his eyes locked on Margot’s spent form through the glass.
“Blue!” Julia barked. “Move your feet or I’ll have you cleaning the latrines with a toothbrush.”
Rupert flinched, pushing himself away from the wall. He joined the shuffling line of blue-hooded men filing out past Julia. As he passed her, she gave him a withering, knowing look. “Eyes forward, slave. Your shift isn’t over.”
They emerged into the main hall of the warehouse, a cavernous space now echoing with a different kind of energy. The party was over. The neon signs cast a sickly, festive glow over a battlefield of celebration. Empty champagne flutes and crumpled napkins littered every surface. Confetti clung to sticky patches on the floor. The scent of cheap alcohol and expensive perfume had curdled into something stale and faintly sour.
“Right,” Julia clapped her hands once, the sound like a gunshot. “Your wives, and their enthusiastic companions, require privacy and stamina for their further enjoyment. Your job is to ensure their environment upon return is… spotless. You will clean this hall. Every glass, every scrap, every last glittering speck. You will do it quietly, efficiently, and without complaint.”
She paced before them, her heels clicking on the concrete. “And while you wipe down tables and sweep floors, I want you to think. Think about what’s happening behind those soundproofed doors right now. Second rounds. Third rounds. Exploration without the pressure of an audience. The discovery of new… preferences.” A cruel smile touched her lips. “Is Dolores discovering she enjoys a little breath play? Is Elizabeth finally getting the thorough shafting she’s been fantasizing about for months? Is Margot…” she paused, her eyes scanning the hoods until they settled on Rupert, “…is she being shown depths of her own capacity for pleasure that she’d forgotten existed?”
Rupert’s cheeks burned beneath the leather.
“They are not thinking of you,” Julia stated flatly. “Not for a second. Their world right now is heat, and friction, and release. Your world is Windex and trash bags. So get to it.”
The men dispersed like scolded schoolboys. Paolo and Henry teamed up to clear the central banquet table, a mountain of discarded canapés and wilting celery sticks. Another cuck—Slate—began meticulously collecting glasses, his movements precise, a way to keep his mind blank. Rupert found himself handed a push-broom by a silent attendant in a black domino mask.
The sweeping was mindless, rhythmic. The scritch-scratch of bristles on concrete was supposed to be hypnotic, but it only carved out a space in his head for the images to flood back in. Margot’s arched spine. The trail of the ice cube. The possessive grip of the bull’s anchor-tattooed hands. Her mouth forming the word “Mine.” Over and over, he replayed it, each time with a different inflection, a different meaning.
He could hear the low murmurs of the other men.
“She… she sounded different,” Henry whispered to Paolo, stacking plates with a clumsy clatter. “That last cry. I’ve never heard her make a sound like that.”
“Dolores,” Paolo sighed, not with sadness but with a kind of awe. “When she gets that particular tone of command… Christ. The things she asks for. The things he does.” He shook his head, a grin audible in his voice. “Makes my knees weak just remembering.”
“Do you think they’re… finished?” another cuck asked, his voice thin.
Julia, who was overseeing their work from a raised platform, snorted. “Finished? It’s barely half past one. They’re just getting warmed up. The bulls are on a bonus structure for multiple completions. Incentive, gentlemen. Something you might understand.”
Rupert swept a pile of confetti and broken plastic towards a dustpan. The mundane absurdity of it was crushing. Here he was, cleaning up after a party celebrating his own marital obsolescence, while his wife was likely, right now, convulsing around a stranger in a room that smelled of her and him and sex. He felt a bizarre, hollow ping of jealousy—not for the bull, but for the broken plastic cup he just swept up. It had witnessed the whole evening, unfeelingly. It wasn’t tasked with understanding.
The work took over an hour. As they wiped and polished, the sounds from the playroom corridor were completely silenced by the heavy door. The only noises were their own labored breaths, the clink of glassware, and Julia’s occasional, blistering critique. “You missed a spot, Azure. Do it again.” The hall transformed from debaucherous wreck to a sterile, shiny space waiting for the next event. It felt like erasing evidence.
A grand clock on the wall, garish with neon, ticked towards 2 AM.
As the final glass was dried and stored, Julia stood. “Line up,” she commanded. “Facing the playroom door. Hands behind your backs. Eyes down.”
The men obeyed, forming a ragged line. Rupert stood between Henry and Slate. He could feel Henry trembling. Slate stood rigid, a statue of suppressed tension.
The heavy door swung open.
The first thing that hit them was the heat. It rolled out in a wave, thick and animal, carrying within it the unmistakable, complex perfume of spent passion—sweat, sex, latex, and the faint, sweet trace of lubricant. Then came the bulls.
They filed out, one by one, still wearing their golden leather hoods and scant thongs. Their bodies gleamed with a fresh sheen of sweat. Some moved with a lazy, sated swagger. Others walked with the slight stiffness of muscular exertion. They were, as promised, a cross-section: young and old, lean and heavily built. And, as their pouches made indiscreetly clear, variably endowed.
Behind them, the wives emerged. They were wrapped in silk kimonos or sheer robes, their hair messy, their makeup smudged in the most telling and beautiful ways. They looked dazed, softened, radiantly exhausted. They chatted in low, laughing murmurs to each other, barely glancing at the line of blue-hooded men.
Margot appeared last. Her red curls were a wild corona around her face. Her kimono was tied loosely, gaping to reveal the upper curves of her breasts, which bore a faint, red bloom—the memory of a beard, perhaps, or the abrasive delight of a mouth. She was smiling, a deep, private, satisfied smile. She caught Rupert’s eye for a fraction of a second, and the smile widened, turning mischievous. Then she looked past him, as if he were merely part of the decor.
Julia stepped forward, holding a stack of small, white towels. “Your final service,” she said to the cucks, her voice dripping with faux sweetness. “Your wives have been thoroughly… entertained. The gentlemen have facilitated their pleasure. You will now show your gratitude by ensuring the gentlemen are presentable.”
She walked down the line, placing a folded towel in each man’s limp hands. Rupert’s felt absurdly small and clean.
“Approach the bull who served your wife,” Julia instructed. “You will know him by the scent. Clean her essence from him. Everywhere.”
A low murmur of disbelief ran through the line. Henry made a small, choked sound.
The bulls had stopped, waiting with an air of bored condescension. Margot’s bull stood slightly apart. He was one of the taller ones, powerfully built through the shoulders and thighs. The anchor tattoo on his wrist was dark against his skin. He watched the line of blue hoods, his own golden mask giving nothing away.
Rupert’s feet moved as if through wet cement. He walked towards the bull. The space between them shrank. He could smell him now—the musky, personal scent of male exertion, and underneath it, something floral and familiar. Margot’s signature jasmine perfume, mixed with something sharper, more primal. Her scent was all over him.
He stopped an arm’s length away. The bull looked down at him, his breathing calm and even. Up close, Rupert could see the fine sheen of moisture on his chest, the light abrasion on his shoulders—the marks of eager fingernails.
He unfolded the towel. It was pitifully inadequate.
“Go on, Blue,” Julia’s voice came from behind him. “Don’t be shy. She certainly wasn’t.”
Rupert raised the towel. He hesitated, then placed it against the bull’s sternum. The man was warm, almost fever-hot. Rupert wiped downwards, the white cloth coming away damp and stained with a translucent sheen. He moved to the shoulders, where the scent of Margot was strongest. He wiped over the taut muscle, seeing in his mind her hands clutching there, her body meeting his thrusts.
The bull remained impassive, a statue being dusted.
Then Rupert had to kneel. The most obvious deposit was there, glistening on the golden leather of the thong’s pouch, a sticky, pearlescent patch. His wife’s essence. The physical proof of her satisfaction. His hand shook as he brought the towel to it. He dabbed, avoiding contact with the man’s flesh beneath the leather. The towel grew damp and clung.
As he wiped, his gaze fell on the anchor tattoo again, so close now. A detail. A marker. This was a real man. A man who liked boats, maybe. Or the sea. A man who, in a few days, Rupert might pass in the village high street, or stand behind in the queue at the bank. He would never know. He would always wonder.
He finished, the towel now a ruined thing in his hand. He stood up. The bull looked down at him, gave a single, slow, almost imperceptible nod—not of thanks, but of acknowledgment—and then turned, walking away to join the others.
Rupert looked across the hall. Margot was watching him now, her earlier smile gone, replaced by an expression of intense, searching curiosity. She was studying his face, what little she could see of it beneath the hood, for a reaction. He had nothing to give her but the emptiness of a man who has finally, truly, cleaned up after a party he was never really invited to.
Julia clapped her hands again. “Excellent. The service is concluded. Bulls, you may use the rear exit. Wives, collect your things. Cucks… you may take off your hoods. The night, for you, is over.”
The removal of the leather hood felt like shedding a second skin. The cooler air of the hall hit Rupert’s sweaty face. Around him, men were blinking, looking like sailors washed ashore after a storm. They avoided each other’s eyes.
Margot walked towards him, her kimono whispering around her legs. She stopped close, her scent—now layered with the night’s activities—enveloping him. She reached up and touched his cheek, her fingers cool.
“Well?” she whispered, her voice a husky thing he barely recognized. “How was your evening, Blue?”
He looked at her, at the vibrant, well-fucked woman who was his wife, and found he had no words at all. The question hung in the air between them, enormous and unanswerable, as the neon clock ticked steadily towards a new day.