Chapter Four #2
“Fuck,” Wes said, gripping the sides of the stall.
The person fucking him laughed softly, setting a brutal pace.
Wes lifted himself on his toes and tried to rock back to meet them, but the hole in the wall was too narrow to move far.
He had to rely on the hands clutching the meat of his thighs, the press of a stranger’s cock, the growing pressure already threatening to tip him over the edge.
The first stranger pulled out to come over Wes’ ass with a groan, leaving his cock untouched. There was a shuffling of footsteps, and a man’s voice, low and a little breathless.
“He’s all yours.”
Another pair of hands adjusted Wes’ legs, and Wes grinned behind the wall, preparing himself for a magnificent evening.
***
DELAUNEY WAS, BY ALL accounts, having a truly lovely time. He was enjoying himself immensely. He’d never been so thoroughly distracted in his life.
He was also running short of believable lies.
The Swan’s Crown was a beautiful establishment.
The dominant courtesan who’d greeted him had been warm and inviting, offering Delauney the customary tea and careful discussion of limits and preferences.
The bedsheets were clean and silken, the paddles were lined with fur, and everyone was polite and effortlessly charming.
And Delauney had spent the entire time wondering what on earth a sailor’s library was.
There was no reason to think about Wes while he was being paddled by a delightful young dominant with a fake eyebrow scar and Katoikos-style hair jewelry.
But Delauney couldn’t seem to help himself.
He kept thinking of Wes wandering the halls of the library tower, his grim expression fading as he sank into the pages of...
of whatever kind of books he liked. Had he read any of Delauney’s paltry collection?
Delauney couldn’t remember seeing him reading, but they didn’t spend every moment of the day together.
Perhaps he’d found time on his own. Delauney caught himself wondering whether Wes would like the adventure novels Leo used to read aloud when they were boys, startling himself out of what was supposed to be a chivalrous attempt at aftercare.
“Come again, sweet boy,” the courtesan said, as Delauney gathered up his things and put on his vest. Delauney didn’t mention that he hadn’t actually come the first time, but he liked to think that he was a passable enough actor that the courtesan didn’t notice.
Delauney wished that Ned had come along.
He liked the other officers of the Manatee well enough, but he’d known Ned the longest, and Ned had a way of distracting Delauney from what they called Leo-like behavior.
It was unfair to Delauney’s brother, perhaps, since he was the only member of the family who actually paid attention to the running of their lands, but it wasn’t entirely untrue.
Leo was always so damn serious all the time.
He’d even tried to pass some of that onto Delauney, constantly asking him ridiculous questions about their parents and pulling him aside during events in the capital.
But how do you feel, Delauney? Why are you running away, Delauney?
Delauney hadn’t gone to sea to run away. He’d gone to sea because it had been the best chance to experience something other than the miserable excuses the nobility had for orgies on the mainland. Sometimes, as he’d tried to explain to Wes, things didn’t need to be complex.
Delauney tried to remember where Wes had gone. He’d said something about a library for sailors, but Delauney had only visited the library at Hekate’s Eye once. Perhaps there was a smaller library meant for nautical matters. Wes might even still be there.
But Wes probably didn’t want to be bothered.
Delauney had given him leave, after all, and it wasn’t as though he couldn’t amuse himself just because Wes happened to be the most organized man in his life so far.
He did have plans on the island that didn’t involve courtesans or the navy, but that appointment wouldn’t be for some time yet.
Delauney strolled past the pleasure houses of Hekate’s Eye, trying to admire the smiling courtesans and expensive perfume wafting through the air.
He could see people having tea and pastries inside, playing games, reading, or dozing while courtesans played hand-flutes.
Usually, he tarried too long with his own diversions to do more than race back to the inn or the ship, but he now had time to spare.
He thought of what he’d told Wes and sighed.
He had been shameless, once, but now he was firmly in the camp of every other ship officer who politely clapped while a highly-paid courtesan read poetry in a fashionable drawing room.
His favorite courtesan in the House of Onyx had understood that, at least. He’d made a habit of trying to make Delauney cry loudly enough for neighboring courtesans to hear, teasing at scandalous behavior without slipping into full impropriety.
Delauney kicked a stone as he turned around a bend.
It skittered to a stop next to a brick wall bursting with creeping yellow roses, and Delauney stopped to take in the sight of them.
There were so many, a veritable blanket of thick, unseasonable blossoms, and they let off a scent that was nothing like the cloying, artificial sweetness of the high-end pleasure houses.
A smack of a hand on flesh startled him into sudden alertness, and Delauney’s gaze slid past the flowers and into the alley beyond.
He froze at what he saw there. A line of people stood in front of holes in the wall, smiling and cajoling each other, their faces hot with hunger.
Some holes showed glimpses of mouths or faces.
Sometimes, a hand would reach out through one to stroke someone’s cock or slide between someone’s folds.
There were larger holes, too, some revealing a person seemingly trapped in the wall with their legs lifted up and tied to the brick, or leaning over with their torsos hidden and their asses on display for use.
A young man tossed a bucket of water over one of the exposed backsides, and the person on the other side squealed and laughed.
“Curious?” A woman in a librarian’s uniform sat on a chair by the roses, examining Delauney with a critical eye. “They’re all volunteers, if you’d like to borrow one while they’re here.”
“Oh,” Delauney said, staring as a man slapped someone’s cunt through a hole in the wall. “Oh, I think... that is, I probably shouldn’t...”
“No room on the lending side, I’m afraid,” the librarian said. “Just be respectful and remember that the toilets are past the white line only. If you hear a bell, step away until your back is to the wall and stay there until I tell you to move. Now have fun, darling.”
Delauney tried to protest that he had no intention of stepping inside the alley, but then he saw a man walk up to someone standing with his upper half through a hole in the wall.
He kicked the man’s legs apart and thrust inside him, gripping his ass in calloused fingers.
Delauney’s mouth went dry. His cock stirred properly for the first time all day, and he drifted past the flowers and into the alley.
The man being fucked was a few paces down, past a few holes where people were grinding into the wall, being serviced by anonymous hands and mouths on the other side.
All Delauney could see of the man were his legs and ass, brown skin warm in the shadow of the alley, feet bare on the slick, recently washed stone floor.
Delauney could hear him groaning on the other side of the wall, and his cock stood hard and erect between his legs.
The man fucking him looked like a sailor, but not one Delauney recognized from his ship. He had a proper scar over his eyebrow, not one carefully painted on for effect, and he smiled wolfishly when he saw Delauney.
“We don’t often see a submissive on this side of the wall,” he said, slapping the ass of the man he was fucking. He didn’t slow his pace, his gaze fixed on Delauney. “If you want a turn, you’ll have to wait. Unless you want to give the rest of us a show.”
Delauney felt heat flush over his face and down his chest as a few others glanced in their direction. Someone waiting for a turn with another pair of anonymous legs walked over, hands in her pockets. Delauney opened his mouth to speak, but found that he had nothing to say.
“Go on,” the sailor said. He drew out of the man in the wall, eliciting a groan of frustration. “Get down there and give him a little relief. I saw you eyeing his tool.”
Delauney hadn’t been spoken to so disrespectfully in years.
Even dominant courtesans tended to defer to him in some way, acknowledging an invisible hierarchy even as they bent Delauney over their knees.
To the people here, Delauney was just a strange submissive—wealthy, perhaps, but no one with any visible rank or station.
He looked at the trapped man’s hard cock, then back up at the dominant looming over them both.
“Look at the mouth on this one,” the sailor said. He pressed a thumb to Delauney’s lower lip, parting his mouth.
“A shame he’s not on the other side of the wall,” a woman said, and a thrill coursed up Delauney’s body.
“Go make use of it,” the sailor said, patting Delauney’s cheek just lightly enough for it not to be a slap.
Delauney approached the man in the wall, examining his shaking legs, the toes that flexed as he tried to raise himself invitingly to the strangers in the alley, the sheen of sweat on his skin.