Chapter 27: The Random Orifices
The silence Eloise left behind was not empty. It was a pressure, thick and waiting, like the air before a summer storm breaks. The dining room door swung gently on its hinges before settling shut with a soft, final click. The tableau held: Colin, spent and gleaming with sweat; Anthony, slumped in his chair, trousers dark with his own release; Daphne, slowly adjusting her skirts, her breathing shallow; Violet, with the taste of her son still on her tongue.
Benedict finally lifted his head from his hands. His eyes were red, but his mouth was twisted into something that was not quite a smile. “Well,” he said, his voice cracking on the single syllable. He cleared his throat. “That was… instructive.”
Sophie, his wife, reached for his hand under the table, her fingers icy. He did not take it.
Violet resumed her seat, the picture of composure. She dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin, though it was clean. “Eloise has always been high-strung. The excitement of the evening was evidently too much for her constitution. She will retire with a headache, no doubt.”
Her words were meant to plaster over the fissure, but they rang hollow, absurd. The proof of the evening’s true ‘excitement’ was cooling on Colin’s plate, soaking into the linen.
Colin was the first to move with purpose. He pushed his ruined plate away with a disdainful finger. The clatter of china on wood made Anthony flinch. “She’s a problem,” Colin stated, his voice flat, all earlier ecstasy vanished, replaced by cold assessment.
“She is your sister,” Violet said, though it sounded less like a reminder and more like a item on a list of considerations.
“She is a loose thread. She always has been. Thinking her own thoughts, forming her own judgments.” Colin’s gaze swept the table. “This only works if we are unanimous. If our devotion is absolute. A doubting witness isn’t just an inconvenience, Mother. It’s a threat.”
Anthony found his voice, though it was rough, scraped raw. “What would you have us do? Lock her in her room?”
“Perhaps,” Colin mused. “Or perhaps we help her see. Convert the doubter. It’s a far more satisfying victory.”
Daphne smoothed her hair, her cheeks still flushed. “She’s frightened. What she saw… it’s a shock to the uninitiated. We must be gentle.”
Colin laughed, a short, sharp sound devoid of humor. “Gentle? No, Daphne. Truth is not gentle. It’s a battering ram. It breaks down doors. We show her the full, glorious truth. We strip away her quaint notions of morality until all that’s left is the raw, beautiful core of what we are.”
He stood, tucking himself fully away, fastening his falls. The act, so mundane, was performed with a regal air, as if donning armor. “We continue. Tonight. Here. The ceremony was interrupted. It needs completion. A proper reaffirmation.”
Violet nodded slowly. “The household is unsettled. The servants are whispering after last night. After Eloise’s display. A show of strength, of unity, is required.”
“Precisely.” Colin looked at Anthony. “Summon the footmen. The faithful ones. Thomas and Gregory. They will attend. They will participate.”
Anthony’s jaw tightened. A flicker of that old, possessive jealousy crossed his face. Sharing the sacred rites with hired men still galled him, but Colin’s will was law. He gave a curt nod. “As you wish.”
“And Benedict? Sophie?” Colin turned his gaze on his brother. “You have witnessed. You are implicated. You can retire in silent complicity, or you can kneel with us. There is no middle ground.”
Benedict looked at Sophie, her face pale and drawn. He saw the fear in her eyes, but also a dawning, horrified curiosity. He looked back at Colin, at the terrifying certainty that radiated from him. He had spent his life as the charming, artistic second son, avoiding responsibility, avoiding the intensity that both Anthony and Colin wore so naturally. Now, intensity had come to claim him.
“What does kneeling entail, exactly?” Benedict asked, his tone artificially light.
Colin’s smile was slow and knowing. “You’ll see.”
The dining room was transformed again, but not cleaned. The soiled linen, the spattered plates, they were left as they were—testaments, relics. Violet had ordered the heavy velvet drapes drawn, shutting out the indifferent London night. Only candles remained, dozens of them, their flames casting leaping, demonic shadows on the walls. The air was stale, thick with the mingled scents of sex, cold beef, expensive wax, and a new, cloying note: jasmine oil, which Daphne now dripped onto the central candelabra, the hot metal sizzling softly.
Thomas and Gregory stood rigid just inside the doors, still in their full livery. They had been ordered to attend, not to serve. Their faces were masks of trained neutrality, but their eyes were wide, reflecting the crazed dance of the flames. They had seen much, but they understood this was different. This was formalized.
Colin sat at the head of the table, not in his chair, but on the table itself, his boots planted on the polished mahogany. He had shed his coat and waistcoat. His shirt was open at the throat, sleeves rolled. He looked like a dissolute king holding court in a ruined hall.
Violet stood to his right, her hands clasped before her. Anthony knelt at the left, his head bowed, still as a statue. Daphne finished anointing and took her place beside Violet, her gaze fixed adoringly on Colin.
Benedict and Sophie hovered near the doorway, uncertain. “Sit,” Colin commanded, not looking at them. “Observe. Or leave. But if you leave, you do not return to this house. Ever.”
The ultimatum hung in the hot air. Slowly, Benedict led Sophie to two chairs against the wall. They sat, spectators in a theater of the obscene.
Colin let the silence stretch, letting the tension coil tight in every belly. His hand drifted to his lap, palming himself through the fine linen of his trousers. A visible bulge grew, hardening under his touch.
“I can’t focus on anything else,” he said, his voice a conversational murmur that nevertheless carried to every corner of the room. He wasn’t whining; it was a statement of profound fact. “All day, since this morning, it’s all I can feel. This ache. This need.”
His fingers worked the buttons of his falls open. The sound was obscenely loud. He drew his cock out, already fully erect, thick and flushed, a bead of pre-cum glistening at the slit. He sighed as the cooler air touched him, a sigh of relief. He wrapped his fist around the base, giving himself a slow, possessive stroke. “I tried to dull it. This morning. I fucked a candlestick from the Blue Room. The brass was so cold, so unyielding.” He began to stroke in earnest, his fist moving with a rhythmic, lubricated sound. “I rammed it up my ass anyway. Bent over the dresser. I fucked myself on it until I screamed into the mattress. But it wasn’t enough. It’s never enough. It just makes the hunger sharper.”
Violet’s breath hitched. Her own hand disappeared beneath the folds of her gown. Her eyes were locked on her son’s moving hand. “I understand, my darling,” she whispered, her voice husky. “The hunger is divine. It is the pulse of our faith. This morning… I used the leg of the pianoforte. The wood was old. There was a splinter.” She bit her lip, her hips beginning a subtle, grinding motion against her own hand. “I rode it. I bled onto the rosewood. The pain… it is part of the devotion. A sacrament. It proves we are real.”
Anthony, still kneeling, let out a low groan. He pressed his forehead against the edge of the table. His own cock was straining against his trousers, a frantic prisoner. “I need a hole,” he gasped, the words muffled by the wood. “Any hole. I’ll fuck the butter dish if I have to. I’ll fuck the goddamned keyhole. I need to be inside. I need to spend.”
The vulgar desperation from the ever-controlled Viscount was more shocking than anything else. Gregory, the footman, felt his own traitorous body respond, a hot flush of shameful arousal tightening his groin.
It was Daphne who moved. With a serene, gracious smile, as if offering to pour more tea, she gathered her skirts in her hands. She turned, presenting her back to the table, and bent gracefully over it, her upper body resting on the surface. She lifted her skirts and petticoats up and over her back, exposing herself completely. The candlelight played over the pale curves of her arse, the dark, glistening furrow between them. She was already wet, her cunt lips swollen and shining.
“Use me, Anthony,” she said, her voice melodic, inviting. “I’m just a hole for the god’s vessels. A vessel for a vessel. Take your ease.”
With a choked, animal sound, Anthony was on his feet. He didn’t crawl this time; he lunged. He fumbled with his trousers, freeing his aching cock, which sprang forth, angry and red. He didn’t guide himself. He simply positioned his hips and drove into her with one brutal, burying thrust.
Daphne cried out, a sound of pure, sharp pleasure-pain, her fingers scrabbling against the tablecloth. “Yes!” she shrieked. “Yes, brother! Fuck your devotion into me!”
Anthony set a punishing pace immediately, his balls slapping against her flesh with a wet, rhythmic smack. He fucked her with the utter abandon of a man who had shed every last pretense of civilization. He gripped her hips, his fingers digging into her soft flesh, bending her further over the table. Plates rocked. A glass tipped over, spouting claret like blood.
Colin watched, his own strokes accelerating, his fist a blur on his cock. “Yes!” he snarled. “Fuck her like a beast, Anthony! That’s what she is! That’s what we all are! Beautiful, filthy beasts!”
His eyes, wild and glazed, fell on the remains of the roast beef, a congealed, cold lump on a silver platter nearby. A target. A profane altar. “I’m going to come on that roast,” he announced, his voice guttural. “I’m going to mark it. Consecrate it.”
He aimed his twitching cock, his whole body tensing, a corded muscle of pure need. His orgasm took him violently, with a roar that shook his frame. Thick, white ropes of cum jetted from him, arcing through the candlelit air to splatter across the cold beef, the rich gravy, the sprigs of parsley. Pulse after pulse after pulse, he coated it, until the meat gleamed under a new, vile sauce.
The sight, the sheer blasphemous filth of it, tipped Violet over the edge. She threw her head back, a long, keening moan tearing from her throat. Her body convulsed against her own hand, her release soaking through her silk underthings, dripping down her inner thighs. “My boys!” she wailed. “My perfect, glorious boys!”
Anthony, spurred by Colin’s climax, gave three final, jackhammer thrusts and froze, buried to the hilt in Daphne. A raw, broken yell was ripped from his chest as he came, pumping his seed deep inside his sister. Daphne clenched around him, her own climax a series of sharp, shivering cries, her body milking him dry.
The room dissolved into a cacophony of panting, sobbing, the drip of fluids, and the low, hungry crackle of the flames.
From his perch on the table, Colin, still catching his breath, looked past the heaving bodies of his siblings. His eyes found Benedict and Sophie. Benedict was rigid, his face a pallid mask of shock, but his hand was clenched white-knuckled on the arm of his chair. Sophie had hidden her face in his shoulder, but she was peeking, one eye visible, wide and dark with a terrified fascination.
Then Colin’s gaze shifted to the footmen. Thomas stood frozen, his arousal unmistakably tenting his breeches. Gregory looked as if he might be sick, but he, too, could not look away from the ravaged, glorious scene.
“You see,” Colin said, his voice hoarse but penetrating. “This is the truth. This is the family. Not the balls, not the picnics, not the bloody politeness.”
He slid off the table, his movements loose-limbed, satiated. He walked, his cock still out, slick and softening, around to where Thomas and Gregory stood. He stopped before them, the intimate, musky scent of sex and sweat rolling off him.
“You’ve served. You’ve watched. You’ve tasted,” Colin said, his eyes boring into Thomas’s. “Do you believe?”
Thomas swallowed hard. His eyes dropped to Colin’s cock, then back to his face. He nodded, once, a jerky, helpless movement.
“Gregory?” Colin’s voice was softer, but no less demanding.
Gregory’s defiance from the vestibule was ashes. The spectacle had broken something in him. The raw, unabashed power of it, the complete surrender to appetite, was more terrifying and more seductive than any sermon. He felt a terrifying urge to kneel, to press his face to the floor where Colin’s seed had dripped. He gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
“Good,” Colin purred. He reached out and cupped Gregory’s cheek, his thumb stroking the man’s jawline. The touch was possessive, tender. “Then tomorrow, you will begin a new service. You will attend to my sister Eloise. You will watch her. You will report her movements, her words, her moods. You will be my eyes and ears. And in return…” He leaned closer, his lips almost brushing Gregory’s ear. “In return, you will be rewarded. With my favor. With a place inside this truth. Do you understand?”
Gregory’s knees trembled. He was being asked to betray a lady of the house to her own brother. He was being conscripted into the family’s secret not as a passive witness, but as an active agent. It was a point of no return.
He looked into Colin’s eyes, saw the warm smile that held no warmth, only absolute command. He saw his future there: either cast out into the cold, normal, impoverished world, or here, in this hot, dark, profane heaven.
“Yes, sir,” Gregory whispered, his voice cracking. “I understand.”
Colin patted his cheek. “Excellent.” He turned, looking at the wreckage of his family, the new converts, the terrified spectators. “Now, someone ring for a fresh pot of chocolate. And for God’s sake, open a window. It stinks of paradise in here.”