Balustrade (10 page)

“
I'm happy to help you with your fantasy, Jack.”

“
Jack?” Hilary hadn't been aware that their fantasies lined up quite so specifically.

She hadn't consi
dered another woman fucking her, as Chantal certainly intended to. She'd fantasized about another man in their bed. She never thought Jack would be receptive, and that fantasy had been long ago, replaced by fantasies of other things.

Chocolate chip muffins.

Live executions of troublesome employees.

Leaving the marriage.

Chantal gripped the dildo tight to her, her face registering a sharp wince as the knob inside her shifted. She drew the thick head of the thing up from the space beneath Hilary's pussy, up and between the folds, shaking it, Chantal fucking her twat. Jack fucking her ass. Come everywhere.

“
It’s a beautiful thing,” she heard Chantal whisper.

Chantal's weight on her, her very presence looming, had a strange effect on Hilary. If
you had told Hilary she'd be getting off on having Chantal looming over her, she'd have said you were crazy.

But there she was, Chantal's
breasts pressed to hers, nipples catching deliciously as their breathing slipped in and out of sync.

“
Oh my God,” Jack breathed into Hilary's ear, his thrusting stilled. “Look at her face.”

Hilary thought Jack had come, his cock twitched inside her and the soft moan le
aking from him usually heralded the kind of calm only a great orgasm can bring...or a shitty one for that matter, though Hilary didn't think there was such a thing except, once, when she was a teenager, her second boyfriend Ricky—he preferred Rick, she refused to give-in on that one—was nailing her in her childhood bedroom, the door cracked and the smell of homemade sourdough wafting up through the house along with a familiar tune hummed by her stay-at-home mom.

Rick was quiet, he'd promised he would be, but that didn't stop Hilary from grinding onto his prick, taking
it as deep as it would go, which, granted wasn't that deep, but his fat cock head didn't need to rub up inside too far to hit her g-spot, strum a rhythm so pleasurable she couldn't help but cry out. That's when she heard the footsteps on the stair and Ricky flooding inside her, her own orgasm two, three stokes away from the point of no return. And then her mother's hand was on the door and it was swinging. Hilary came as she rolled off her boyfriend and onto the carpet, curling up as the pleasure shuddered through her. She backed herself up under the bed.

That had been a pretty shitty experience, but the orgasm?
Amazing.

Chantal's face didn't register any effort. The woman was positively placid as she directed the dildo into Hilary's cunt, dipping it in slowly, an inch at first and then withdrawing completely. Hilary, her breath caught in her throat, arched her back and tricked her pelvis forward, coming nearly all the way off Jack's hard cock to take the odd protuberance deep inside her. Hilary's goal had been to bump the hilt, to effect a subtle reverberation, to shift the bulb inside the woman's twat. But Chantal was quick, bucking backwards with a grin.

Controlling the interaction expertly.

She smiled broadly and threw her head back in uproarious laughter, even as she drove the black cock deep inside Hilary.
“You like that, don't you,” she hissed.

Hilary had been meaning to say the same thing, so she merely sneered in return, chewing at her lips as she drove herself back against Jack, feeling his thick member rock back and forth, struggling with Chantal's.

A soft membrane their only separation.

The sensation was bliss, but it was Hilary's desire to turn the tables on Chantal that drove her to fuck the woman back, to match her thrusts, to clutch at her in such a way that if an outsider
—and there was a great possibility that there was one or five—would note that the women appeared to be wrestling, arms grappling, teeth bared. Hilary nipped at Chantal's breasts and the woman's face registered surprise for the first time. Hilary threw her head back beside Jack's and whispered, “Roll us. Put her underneath. Now.”

Hilary threw her arms around Chantal and Jack did the same, wrapping them both in his muscled arms. Chantal gasped as they pivoted onto her. Hilary drove her pelvis
forward as Chantal's back hit the mattress, taking the whole of the dildo inside of her and clenching around it. She shifted backward and heard a wet pop, even as Chantal cried out with pleasure.

The woman's eyes shot back to Hilary's and she choked,
“Jesus, yes. Do it,” just as Hilary was thrusting forward, pushing the bulb brusquely inside Chantal's wanting sex.

“
Fuck!” Chantal screamed, the word stretching out infinitely.

Hilary did just that, bringing the woman to a shuddering orgasm in several
violent thrusts, the whole time gritting her teeth and bearing down on the dildo, determined to control the woman, to dominate her. And when it was clear Chantal was hers completely, she released the strap on and rose, the black tool slipping out easily.

Hilary pushed jack off her;
he fell on his back next to Chantal's flushed form. His cock stood up long and rigid and his need expressed as a pout. Hilary took him inside her, riding him, pushing away his hands as he attempted to caress her breasts. She was focused on Chantal. The woman stared—glowered was a better word—her lips parted in shock and the dildo still twitching from the leather triangle in the cleft of her pubis.

The straps wet with their sex.

Hilary beamed with pride as she fucked Jack and with each stroke her eyes grew wild with a phantasm of pleasure. She moaned loudly, losing herself in the abandon of the act. Plunging herself down upon him, deeper and deeper. She wanted the whole of him, and reached back between them, fondling the soft skin of his scrotum, cradling his balls and then, taking him as far down as she could, slipped one of his balls gently inside her, one, then the other. Jack gasped, surprise flushing red across his cheeks. He tossed an embarrassed glance at Chantal, who raised an eyebrow and cocked her head oddly.

If she was being
judgmental, it didn't matter to Hilary.

The sensation of having all of Jack's sex
organs within her thrilled like his cock alone couldn't, she was filled. And as she gyrated gently about him, the orgasms exploded through her body and she screamed, her voice echoing as the pleasure radiated through her, pulsing, shocking her breath still in her chest, stopping her heart for a single beautiful moment before ticking back into shuddering ecstasy.

And then it was too much, she rose off of him, his semen drizzling out of her as Hilary tossed herself back against the padded headboard and panted into recovery.

“That was quite amazing,” Chantal said, gathering her robe around her.

“
No fucking shit,” Jack panted, his dick still hard and glistening with their enthusiasm.

Hilary nodded.
“Now, Chantal, if you wouldn't mind taking that contraption and getting the fuck out of our room. I'd like to fuck my husband again.”

Chantal shrugged, but her blush gave away the shock she felt at being ordered around like this. Still,
who the hell was she? Hilary had used her like she was an extension for the strap-on and not the other way around. Her satisfaction was nearly total in its complexity. As the woman exited their room, not venturing a single sideways glance back at them, Hilary fell back onto Jack, kissing him deeply and whimpering for him to take her softly, make her come and come and come.

Later—it must have been three or four in the morning as the darkness still had a hold over the courtyard—Hilary slipped her hand across the sheet, seeking her husband and turned up nothing but a handful of fabric.

“
Jack?” she called, suspecting that he was quietly taking a piss in the suite's bathroom—emphasis on the quietly, as the silence couldn't have been more total if they'd been in deep space.

She sat bolt upright and looked out the undraped window at the balustrade and the empty gap of the courtyard beyond.

“Where the hell are you?” she whispered.

Hilary
swung her legs off the bed and twisted on the bedside lamp, scanning for a note, something to indicate where Jack had gone. She didn't understand. He'd been spent. More so than she'd ever seen, so exhausted he'd nearly passed out with come still beading at the opening of his cock.

She'd have to go out there. Leave the room and find him.

Hilary felt a stitch in her chest, a skipping of her heart at the prospect. But she wrapped the robe around her and stepped out onto the balcony, nonetheless.

The hall was silent
and the last of the revelers had clearly turned in for the evening, drugged out, worn and spent and, more than likely, chafed and dreaming of genital salves. She passed the first few rooms without incident, nothing stirred inside the shadowed cells, nor did any sounds issue from the main or staff floors, but something did catch her eye.

A flickering.

From the depths of the caged entrance.

As though a candle burned
somewhere in its inky blackness.

Hilary padded down the stair, stopping at the
mezzanine and crouching to scan the courtyard floor for signs of life, preferably not of the red-eyed variety. She thought back to her dream and the argument and wondered what it all meant. Did dreams ever mean anything beyond rehashing the minutiae of our days? Stress tossed in a blender and poured out in muted colors, bizarre acts and weird snippets of dialogue?

This is the wrong meat.

Whatever it was, Hilary had to agree, it was wrong. So wrong.

Seeing no one, she slipped further down the stair until her foot padded softly onto the cool
marble of the courtyard. She pressed forward, one tentative step after the next and then stopped dead. Voices. Whispering. The sound was no doubt issuing from within the flickering hole in the center of the space. Hilary glanced up at the perfect square of night sky, stars glittering brighter than any she’d seen in the city, clear, vibrant, somehow alive.

The further she walked toward the center of the room, the more she noticed
the stars’ reflection on the glass interior walls, a galaxy repeated all around her. Bright orbs.

Eyes staring at her, waiting.

Her hand reached forward, steadying on the cage, its door hanging open. She listened, not daring to take the first step down into the Balustrade.

“
When will you make the transfer?” the voice was clearer this time, recognizable. Ludovic's deep timbre.

“
Soon,” Chantal responded. “My time is nearly done here, my only regret that I will never see you again, or you either, Jack.”

Hilary's breath caught in her chest. Jack. She scoured her thoughts of the last few days, searching for some meaning to his presence down there.
His sneaking around the courtyard certainly made sense in this light. But what was his connection to Chantal, to Ludovic, to Balustrade?

“
My time has just begun,” Jack continued. “And Hilary's.”

Her knees were growing weak.

“She is just as you and Dr. Madrigal described,” Chantal said.

“
More so,” Ludovic added.

“
Her dominance is innate, her presence rivals mine.” Chantal's heels clicked across stone, the sound stitching through Hilary's heart, one palpitation, then another. “She'll make a consummate sentinel, they'll respect her, yield to her...possibly even more than me.”

“
Give yourself some credit, Chantal. You have been their goddess—they're both afraid of you and desirous. You instill it in them. You've been magnificent. But it is Hilary's turn and she will provide the controls, necessary.”

“
Yes,” Chantal agreed.

“
Yes.” Jack parroted.

This is the wrong meat.

No.

Hilary had no intention of being anyone's goddess, and she certainly wouldn't be replacing Chantal. That was not going to happen. Whatever they were talking about. Whatever Jack had betrayed her over, discussing her like a product he'd delivered, Hilary wasn't having any of it. Who were these people? What was this place? She wasn't any closer to understanding it and she
didn’t want to be.

Unable to
listen to another word, the fear of this unknown turn shuddering through her, she ran. Hilary covered the distance between the balustrade and the exit corridor in frigid slaps. She thought back to their arrival.

The keys left in the car. It had been right there in the directions.

She hoped they still were and that the front door to this place was unlocked.
That
more than even access to the car. She could, at the very least run, across the desert, to the zealots.

They'd help her, they'd been offering in those shouts and curses. Or that's how she'd need to interpret it to keep going. Sometimes a little trick of the mind
was enough to keep your feet moving.

She reached for the door and pulled it toward her, shocked that it gave on the first
pull; she swung it open and bolted into the darkness. Remembering that the car was to the right amidst the tumble of other Mercedes.

Hilary stopped still. The darkness washing over her like ink.

Nothing, there was nothing there.

“
No!” she cried out.

They were on the right when they parked, it'd be on the left now. Hilary pivoted and ran toward the opposite corner of the cube. But when she arrived, her fears were founded.

Nothing.

Grass fluttered and combed in the breeze, black hairs ruffling atop a gritty gray dandruffed scalp. Her eyes snapped toward the horizon, for signs of life in the distance, the fanatics' camp, a fire, something. All was darkness.

“Hilary?” She spun around to see Chantal walking breezily toward her. “You've overheard something, haven't you?”

H
er face was placid, more welcoming than she'd ever seen it.

Relaxed.

“And you're scared, that's understandable. Let me assure you, that of everyone here at Balustrade, you have nothing of which to be frightened. In fact, it is you that will be feared. There will never be a moment when you won't be obeyed totally. You are to be their sentinel.”

“
What are you talking about?” Hilary's eyes were wild with uncertainty. “And how is Jack involved? How the fuck is he involved, Chantal?”

“
Jack has been with us for a few years now, recruited into our church and a devout supplicant.”

Hilary's mind reeled. Church. The gym.
Jack’s little play on words was subterfuge. That part rang true. Hilary had caught him in lies before, many times. But this.

Chantal swept her hand out toward the building.
“This is but one of many around the globe. These balustrades are built around the points where Hell pierces into our world. They are containment. But they are also just buildings, not prisons.”

“
What are you talking about?” Hilary screamed, madness swimming in her head.

“
Nothing can stop the spirits that rise from the balustrade. They'd leave directly if they weren't entertained, if they weren't controlled. Our world would be overrun. So we give them opportunities. We give them bodies. We give them temporary relief from their hell. And in return, they obey, they do not go further. There is but one stitch. They require willing shells.”

“
Who here is willing? Who?” Hilary screamed. “Not me!”

“
You've all signed contracts, I witnessed your agreement, myself. It is unreasonable to suggest that we could fill this place with willing puppets week after week, but the demons respect technicalities. And so...”

“
Community service?” Hilary rubbed her forehead, so hard it felt as though she might be bruising.

“
Yes. It's little more than a word play, but it suffices for our purposes.”

Hilary scowled.
“That's disgusting. These people are being used!”

“
But the end result is ultimately salvation, Hilary! The world is protected from them. That's what's important. I understand your hesitance. When I came, I was much like you. I felt tricked, horrified, bewildered. But over time, I assumed my role and did so with the kind of verve that the hellborn respect and fear. It is a saintly thing. You will agree. Maybe not right now, but in time. You will make a consummate sentinel.”

Hilary turned to run,
her mind reeling.

She’d been right about the demons.

The devil.

Everything.

She made it a few yards before hearing a whistling in the air and a sharp pain in her side. Then she was falling.

Drifting. She was unconscious before she hit the ground.