The following short story can also be found in two short story collections - Pantheon (with a second tale by Nicola Jayne Taylor) and The Erotic Tales of Carmilla Voiez (with five erotic tales by yours truly). To check out the Kindle formats of either book click the cover images below.
Dreams of Saturnalia
Will stumbled on the first of five shallow steps leading out of the main entrance of the “Restaurant at the Edge of the World”. Behind him he could still hear the drunken cheers of his work mates. He glanced over his shoulder, momentarily paranoid that they were laughing at his expense, but they were oblivious to his absence.
He’d struck out with Crysta, the woman he had admired from afar for the past six months and who, apparently, favoured older, richer men with shiny BMWs and fat stock portfolios. He saw the boss’s indigo car parked in the car-park beside the restaurant and couldn’t resist a swift kick to the bumper. The alarm wailed in response and he rushed behind the stone-clad building into the shadows of a moonlit garden.
Here, on the patio, the Christmas tunes, fairy lights and inebriated colleagues seemed a million miles away. Skeletal tables and chairs, abandoned during winter months, huddled together for warmth against the frosty elements. He understood their loneliness. He too stood apart from the other guests - frozen out.
He almost hadn’t come to the Christmas party. The cliques at work maddened him at the best of times with fake sounding laughs and sly sideways glances. Only Crysta had tempted him to join the celebration. The thought that their lips might meet for a moment beneath a sprig of mistletoe and she might see him in a new light had been enough incentive for him to pull on his best trousers and wear the requisite shirt and tie. Instead he’d watched as Mr. Grey, the boss … the married boss … the married boss with two children, had pawed at her over coffee and she’d smiled indulgently, perhaps conspiratorially at his confident seduction.
Will spat on the patio and strode further from the building, across the grass and towards a wooden fence. It was further away than it looked. As he reached it, at last, the moon was swallowed by clouds and he was embraced by a darkness so intense that he could believe he was, as the restaurant’s name suggested, standing at the edge of the world. He gripped the wood tightly, afraid that vertigo might cause him to tumble over this arbitrary barrier and send him spiraling downwards into nothing. Perhaps he’d drunk too much, trying to build up the courage to approach the object of his desire, or perhaps the profound darkness was so disorientating that he forgot where and when he was. His thoughts shrank back from him to where they felt safer, on the windswept patio with its wrought iron tables and chairs. He turned to follow, but the world had vanished and he didn’t know where even the smallest step might lead. His hands flailed around for support, but even the fence was beyond his grasp. His grip on reality fled. Then the moon passed, undamaged, through the clouds and illuminated the landscape once more.
Ahead, he saw a bone-white temple where the restaurant had stood. He bit his lip so hard that he tasted blood.
‘Where am I?’ he asked the night.
The giggle that seemed to answer his question was not reassuring in the least.
Scents and sounds assaulted his senses as though he had just escaped after years spent in sensory deprivation. Laughter and music filled the air. He smelled roasting meat, exotic perfumes and something else that he was unable to identify, but which attracted him more strongly than all the rest. Something deep and musky, sensual and powerful excited his loins and made his cock swell.
Unable to resist, he hurried across the grass towards the building.
Instead of fairy lights and electric bulbs, a circle of candlelight separated the outside from the inner sanctum of the temple. Beyond this dancing light, dozens of bodies, maybe more, sat, lay or stood on the immaculate marble. Those who were clothed wore rich reds, greens, and golds. Men and women lifted overflowing goblets to their smiling lips and delved into bowls of grapes and pomegranates. Plates were laden with meats and cheese. Some ignored the food and instead feasted on each other. Bodies writhed in ecstasy as others kissed, caressed, sucked, and licked their flesh. Willing sacrifices all to the grinning, god-like man, at the very centre of the space, who sat on the only seat visible - a cushioned throne.
Will pinched his arm hard enough to make him hiss air through his front teeth. The vista didn’t fade into a half-remembered dream, but some faces turned to look at the source of the noise. They smiled when they saw him, Will, with his polyester trousers and slightly sweaty shirt, and beckoned for him to join their party. After a moment’s hesitation, he stepped over the circle of light and into the embracing warmth and golden glow of the festivities.
‘Welcome.’ The man rose from his throne, towering over Will. He must have been two meters tall at least and easily a meter wide. His huge body filled Will’s vision even as his warm smile bade him welcome. ‘Eat, drink and be merry.’
Will stared in silence, terrified, as the man sank back into his throne, tucking silver furs around his body. Huge man, furs - Will almost laughed as the name Santa popped into his head. But this was no bearded old man, dressed in boots and a red Christmas cap. This giant was young, virile, dark-haired, clean shaven and bare-footed. It would be easier to believe this was Satan than Santa, but there wasn’t even the hint of malevolence in the merry-making.
Tearing his eyes away from his host, Will looked at the food and drink. He had eaten more than his fill of bland turkey, watery brussel sprouts and stodgy Christmas pudding that evening, yet his stomach yearned to taste this food as though he had skipped five meals or more. He reached towards a grape then snatched his hand back. His mother had been a fan of fairy tales, reading them to him every night from infancy until he discovered super-heroes at the tender age of eight. Although more than a decade had passed, he remembered her lessons well. If he ate this food he could never return. He would be trapped - a prisoner of Faerie, unable to escape from this world of revelry, unable to return to work and call strangers, threatening them if they did not repay their debts.
His eyes widened and he grinned, shovelling handfuls of food into his salivating mouth and washing it down with a wine that tasted sweeter than he imagined possible. Fingers stroked his hair and he turned towards a red-headed beauty in green silk. Her eyes were the colour of her garment and her lips the softest peach. The tip of her tongue flicked across her bottom lip, making it glisten like diamonds.
‘Hello,’ Will said, after swallowing. ‘Great party.’She smiled and kissed his lips. He was lost. He gripped her body tightly, feeling the soft swell of her breasts and stomach against him. He covered her mouth, face and throat with hungry kisses then sank, slowly, to his knees before her. Tracing her breasts with his tongue as he descended.
Her laugh was musical and her eyes full of humour. ‘You do not need to kneel before me.’
But his worship was far from complete. He moulded his hands against the contours of her waist and hips before he let them rest on her ample buttocks. His heart quickened and he moved them again, around and around, caressing her ass while gazing at her beautiful face, beyond the peaks of her hard nipples and full breasts. Crysta’s appeal paled in the face of this supernatural beauty. The secretary’s rejection amused him as he pressed his face against this goddess’s pelvis and felt the warm, welcoming throb of her sex against his nose. She smelled rich and sweet, like ripe apples and freshly cut grass on a warm day. His cock felt so hard he wondered whether it might explode, but the thought didn’t induce fear, just pure desire. He wanted to taste her, he wanted to cover himself in her juices, which he knew would be far sweeter than any wine. He wanted to lift her silk skirt and hide beneath it, but his hands would not lift the fabric without her spoken consent.
Glancing around at the other party-goers, he realised they were having too much fun of their own to care what he did. His only concern was whether the woman, before whom he knelt, felt discomforted by his actions. He could not bear to do anything against her will.
‘May I?’ he asked.
She stroked his light-brown hair. ‘Yes,’ she answered.
He lifted her skirt, marvelling at the luminescence of her skin and the fine golden hairs that decorated her slender shins. She was exotic, unique and completely authentic. He suddenly had the desperate urge to know her name so that he might repeat it as a prayer. He looked up, losing himself in the depths of her eyes. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Lumina,’ she answered.
‘Lumina ...’ Air left his body with her name. ‘Lumina, Lumina, Lumina.’ He felt giddy as his breath carried it again and again, outwards and upwards, towards his goal.
The fabrics of her skirt had reached mid-thigh. Her legs, strong and slender, led his eyes upwards, further and further towards the waiting heat of her sex. He leaned forwards, with his nose between her thighs and let the silk of her green dress fall around him, tenting him in a soft semi-darkness as he pushed upwards.
Will had seen female genitals before. He was twenty-three years old and more than bearably attractive to the opposite sex. He’d had a few one-night stands, watched his fair share of pornography alone and with friends, and even courted a girl for a couple of months. But he had always seen them as a hole to be filled, a receptacle for his lust. He had never paused to wonder at their intricate, sensual beauty. The almost iridescent flow of colours across velvet lips that encircled, like petals, both the bright pink bud of clitoris and the glistening entrance of that gently pulsing wonderland, the vagina. He saw it all now, in its full glory and it was calling him. His eager tongue extended towards the wetness mere inches above. As the tip of his tongue nudged between Lumina’s labia, two things happened. Her body trembled, making the petals of her sex undulate, and a potently sweet and salty nectar dripped into his mouth, making his mind soar and his body burn. Grasping her buttocks he pulled her closer, drinking greedily as her moans of pleasure caressed his ears.
‘Lumina,’ he whispered inside her and the sound was swallowed by his hunger for everything she was.
He felt her fingernails dig into his shoulders and shivered deliciously, welcoming the pain. He prayed that she would press hard enough to scar him so that he would never be able to forget this moment and would know that he had not dreamt it. He imagined his blood flowing as freely as her juices flowed into his mouth; juices that were feeding him, nourishing him so that he might never feel hungry again. The fact that he was being fed by this woman did not infantilise him; he felt more like a man than he had ever felt before. He felt like a king, a god, as if she was strengthening him with her essence, readying him for what might come next.
Lumina lifted her dress, exposing Will to an unwelcome audience. Perhaps his sense of displacement was written plainly on his reddening face, because she placed a cool palm on each of his cheeks and knelt down in front of him, as if shielding him from a judgmental world. He welcomed her kiss, although it stole the mouth of her sex from him. They shared the warmth of her juices as their tongues rolled together and explored each other’s mouths.
When she pulled Will to the floor and he lay across her body, embraced by her thighs, he saw that the heat of her desire matched his own. If it had been a dream, surely his clothes would have disintegrated then and he would not have struggled with zipper or underwear, but struggle he did, not willing to move from between her thighs. When, at last, his cock burst free, its purple head searched for the wet warmth. She angled her pelvis and he plunged inside her as stars exploded in his head and their fire shot along his spine and into his balls. He kept his movements slow, trying not to lose control. He felt every yielding ridge of her as he moved in and out, and the way her muscles hugged him tight, guiding him deeper with each thrust.
Will felt as though she was devouring him with his mouth and for a moment his thoughts flashed back to Crysta and it was her below him, red lipstick smudged across her skin and blond curls spread across a leather car seat. He blinked and he was in Lumina’s arms again, plunging in and out of her and squeezing her hard nipples through the diaphanous silk of her dress.
He felt her grind against him as her mouth opened in a scream of pleasure. Her orgasm tightening and loosening the pressure on his cock as he pushed deeper, losing himself in her pleasure, sharing it and moaning blissfully. The wave of his own orgasm pushed the heat back up his spine until his head was again full of stars, exploding and imploding, in a crescendo of light.
He awaited the softening of his cock post-orgasm and the inevitable feeling of loss and disappointment that would follow, but his desire remained and his cock felt harder than ever, as if this orgasm had been of a new breed, not confined to reproduction and ejaculation, but something pure and bright - an explosion of energy that made every cell in his body tingle while dampening none of his ardour.
Lumina giggled, presumably at the expression of wonder on Will’s face. He knew instinctively that she was not mocking him with her laughter. It was an expression of unbridled joy and he joined her, enjoying the way her cunt squeezed him as she laughed.
She reached out and pulled a bowl of fruit towards them. She fed him as he remained deep inside her body, passing grapes and pomegranate seeds from her lips to his mouth.
Revitalised and rested, he gathered momentum and fucked her again and again. Her legs around his hips and her claws in his shoulders, pinning him there, although he would not have moved away from her if his life had depended on it. He shuddered as a fingertip traced his spine from the base of his skull to the cleft of his buttocks. A face moved into his limited field of vision and planted a gentle, but not entirely chaste kiss on his cheek. Still fucking Lumina, he turned to kiss the soft, fragrant mouth and enjoyed the teasing finger as it strayed across his ass to his hip and back again.
Another hand, this time ruffling his hair and another mouth to kiss, then another and another, until the temple became a blur of lust-filled faces, male and female, and his body was covered with gentle, playful hands, stroking his skin, massaging his balls, thighs and ass, and one that seemed more purposeful, drawing circles around the tight entrance of his anus, making him gasp into whomever’s mouth he was, at that time, kissing.
Will could no longer feel the marble beneath his hands, knees and toes. He was floating on a cloud of flesh, filling holes with his cock and his tongue without any idea whose holes they were. He too was being filled. It was slow, but insistent, and his body expanded around the veined hardness, allowing it entrance. Waves of pleasure washed over his nervous system.
He should be spent, but each time he came he felt more energised. Nothing felt entirely real, but at the same time each touch was uniquely and undoubtedly corporeal. It could not be a dream. These feelings were not merely products of his drunken imagination. He could never have imagined feeling this connected, this desired, this penetrated and yielding. He could never have imagined enjoying sex this much. Nothing he had experienced before came close.
Faces flashed before his eyes, Lumina’s, Crysta’s and dozens of others; they merged together as flesh expanded around him and inside him like a warm, sensual mist that was part of him. He was cradled by the desire that surrounded and filled him. The hands that held him aloft and stroked him. And then reality returned; he felt the marble, cold and hard, under his kneecaps and felt pressure mounting deep inside his balls. The crowd moved back and, as his seed splattered onto the temple floor, dozens of voices cheered and congratulated him and smiles assured him he was beautiful.
‘Will.’ A deep voice resounded from the centre of the temple. It filled his mind and pushed him to his feet. ‘I believe it's time for you to go.’
Will shook his head. ‘Let me stay.’
‘This isn't a place; it's a moment in time. A celebration of flames - the sun, the candle and the heat of desire. The winter feels cold sometimes, but without it we would not be able to feel true fire. Saturnalia will be here again. You can return here and eat, drink and fuck until once more you are spent.’
‘Lumina,’ Will said.
The giant beckoned Will to his throne and Lumina came too. Will looked into the god’s eyes and knew that everything was good. He leaned over and kissed a mouth that was as firm and unyielding as stone. He pushed against it as hard as he could, bruising his lips between teeth, wanting to melt into this man and become one with this god.
‘Ouch!’
Will opened his eyes and saw Crysta beneath him. He glanced around and registered the cream leather seats and polished interior of Mr. Grey’s BMW.
‘Take it easy,’ Crysta said. ‘You don’t have to eat me.’
‘Does Mr. Grey know we're here?’
‘Rob? No of course not. He’s probably passed out in the bathroom by now. Hey you’ve got some staying power. You almost done?’
'‘What? Oh! Sorry, it’ll be the beer I expect.’ He pulled himself gently out of her and watched as Crysta pulled up a pair of red lace panties and smoothed her skirt back down.
‘This was nice,’ she said.
Will nodded.
‘But, we’re not ...’
‘I know,’ he answered, grinning. ‘Just a bit of Christmas party fun.’
Crysta smiled and looked relieved. ‘It’s not that ...’
Will put his index finger to her mouth as if to silence her. ‘You don’t have to explain a thing. I’ve decided to accept tonight as one of those once in a lifetime crazy experiences.’
‘Thanks,’ Crysta said, blushing slightly. ‘I ... I’m glad you had fun.’
Will winked. ‘Plenty.’