The House of Flame Lilies Ch. 04

And locked it with a firm click.

He strode back to the doorway.

And stepped into the shadows.

The tremor in his breathing echoed in the arched, stone passage. He descended cautiously into the depths, sliding down the great gullet of the house. He expected the air to get dank and musty as he went, but instead it got dryer, scratching his throat and under his eyes. The scent of charcoal drifted up towards him. He twitched his nose and continued curiously. He reached the bottom and came face to face with a heavy, oak door, nails the size of strawberries in its thick, iron hinges. His windpipe narrowed in the dry air. He turned the weighty, iron handle and pushed the door open.

Sparrow was wafted by heat and startled by the sudden flare of flame. He halted and squinted.

He was in a round room, illuminated only by a great basin of flickering fire, seemingly suspended in mid-air. As the air from the stairway whisked into the room, the flames swelled and danced and painted the reality into relief. The basin was cradled in the arms of a tall, marble statue of a sturdy, proud-faced woman, her body draped in classical dress, the carving so fine it looked like the folds of real linen. Her face was veiled, the details of her glare exquisitely etched through the ripples of the stone semblance of translucent cloth.

Sparrow gazed at her. His eyes adjusted to the eerie light. The round walls were ringed with marble columns, interspersed with twelve statues. Either side of Sparrow, near the door to the library, stood two impressive women, looking more like white cloud than carving. One was in ancient hunting gear, her short dress carved mid-flutter around her solid thighs, a quiver of arrows at her back and a crescent moon rested on her brow. She was posed as if about to break into a determined run. The other was naked and voluptuous, her hair in twisted tresses dressed with pearls, coming apart in her fingers as she combed through it. Her lips were flicked into a sly smile, her eyes half-closed in pleasure. Opposite Sparrow, flanking another door straight across the room, beyond the fire, were two more marble statues. One was an aging, well-built man, his smooth, muscular chest revealed by a drooping robe hung from one shoulder. His beard and hair flowed like whipped meringue and he brandished a bident in one clenched fist. The other was a woman captured mid-dance, corn and flowers etched into her flying braids, a thin cloth clinging to her and frozen whipping in the invisible wind. These two statues were turned towards each other, arms outstretched longingly. The light poured over the five moon-pale figures, painting them in sunset and writhing shadow, filling their blank eyes with brightness and casting illusions of breath into their stone stillness.

Interspersed between the columns were eight more statues, these about half-height, standing on plinths and carved from solid black and red gems that traded colours in the whirl of flame. Every statue, marble and gem, was adorned with wreaths of flame lilies. The vibrant, spiked petals draped over their shoulders, crowning their heads, forming frothing pools at their feet. They gave the hard, stone space a strange, wondrous wildness. It was overgrown, fertile, heathen. An underground jungle. Another trinket box of lustrous life, like the greenhouse. The flowers' heady, fruity perfume stirred into the dry charcoal.

Sparrow edged into the centre of the ring of statues and slowly turned about him, thirteen pairs of polished, imperious eyes following his every move. The stone seemed to shift in the firelight, shadows galavanting up the columns and over the floor. The heat of the fire scorched Sparrow's cheeks and roasted him in his fine, wool coat. He rubbed the back of his neck and felt a slick of sweat. He tugged at his collar to expose a little more of his throat. The silence in the room was almost as pressing as the heat, relieved only by the crumbling of charcoal. These figures had a weight to them, an agedness that shrank Sparrow into a child in his mind. They all towered over him, giving him the unnerving, tantalising feeling of being jailed, of being on display.

He looked into the eyes of the central, veiled woman, glaring down at him through a second veil of flame, the underlighting of her harsh features haunting. He gazed up at her and wet his lip. "Are you a goddess?" he whispered. She didn't answer. His gaze floated down and nestled into the hypnotic spiralling of fire, his face flushing and the roots of his hair crackling. "A fire goddess, maybe?" He thought about Vestalia, about how she had appeared to him out of the shadows of the hearth that first night. "Is this her secret? Heresy? Is that what you are?"

Something glittered in his vision. He blinked and peered into the tips of the flames. Bright droplets were falling into the basin from overhead. He frowned and looked up.

"Oh, God!" His stomach lurched. His hand flew to his mouth. He tripped backwards, only just keeping his balance.

Hanging above him, strung up in chains from the ceiling, was a huge, dead bat. Its skeletal limbs were contorted in the binding, its head lolling and wreathed in matted, scraggly fur, caked with dried blood. Its large ears were crumpled in opposite directions. Its needle teeth protruded from its exposed gums and its black eyes popped, as if it died during deranged laughter. The light streamed through its strained, warped wings, like they were lantern panels, the fanning appendages folded awkwardly into the web of chain, so its whole, child-sized body looked broken, mangled, pulled to pieces and crammed back together by someone who had never seen something with wings before. Its torso was strained out exaggeratedly and slit deeply from ruff to groin. A steady trickle of blood dripped into the fire from the wound, the light oozing in the sticky, exposed viscera. The sour, metallic scent of its blood polluted the flowers and charcoal.

Bile singed the back of Sparrow's mouth. He ripped his eyes from the grotesque sight to the flourishes of stone leaves crowning the columns. Now he saw there were chains there catching the light, heavy iron manacles dangling empty from the top of each pillar. Sparrow gasped. Confused images raced behind his eyes. His veins rushed cold, his hands splaying at his sides and his legs restless and ready to run. He turned imploringly back to the statue cradling the blood-fuelled fire. She glared as if daring him to challenge her.

"What is this place?" he murmured.

Her veil seemed to stir under the illusory shadows, but she did not answer.

Where was Vestalia? Vestalia who always had a story, Vestalia who always had an explanation. There was a penetrating, frightening darkness to this room, but maybe there was a reason for it. She knew so much more of the world than him, perhaps this was simply something he didn't understand. Like whatever had been hidden under his nightmare. Something she could make him understand. Something safe and slightly magical, like everything else here. Or at least, everything she hadn't kept secret.

He peered through the flailing flames to the marble lovers separated by a second, arched, heavy door.

The best thing you can do when you're lost is put one foot in front of the other, until you're not anymore.

He looked defiantly once more into the face of the grand, glowering fire-keeper. He pressed his lips together. He swept past her in a billow of dove grey, through the next door.

He stepped onto a platform, almost pitching forward, throwing himself back and planting his heels to stay secure. He was looking down on another round, windowless, stone-walled room, the harsh mirage of firelight replaced by the soft glow of several candelabras scattered around the edges. The central space of the room was completely bare, a clean, obsidian floor, glimmering in the candlelight, like dark cloud with lightning flashing behind it. It was carved with grooves all travelling out in a spider's web pattern from the middle to the edge. At the back of the room was a large bed, canopied in black gossamer. Sparrow silenced his shuffling feet on the stone platform and pricked up his ears.

There were noises coming from the bed.

Sparrow squinted through the dim, gilded haze. Just visible through the gossamer shroud was the writhing movement of flesh. Sparrow's face heated and his abdomen bubbled. He cautiously pulled the door closed behind him, being careful not to let it click. He inched along the platform, until the gossamer peeled back from the figures on the bed, and ducked into the shadow of his elevated position.

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled nervously, but saliva trickled over his tongue.

On the bed were two young men, one stocky with a scrub of yellow hair and a close beard, now getting thicker with neglect, the other broad and soft-bodied, with tousled, chestnut curls and a face and shoulders completely covered in freckles. Both were naked, the streaks and scratches of sunshine and old wounds and hard labour mapped over their skin, morphing as they slithered and struggled. Both had each wrist secured in tough manacles and their throats clasped in weighty, leather collars. Long, clinking chains snaked from the bonds and lay limp around them, fastened to the posts at the head of the bed. They had thick, leather-wrapped, wooden bars clamped between their teeth, fixed with straps behind their heads. And they... Sparrow's eyes widened... They had glinting, steel devices locked around their cocks, their cherry-red, half-erections thwarted by the close bars of the cages. They were entwined together on the bed, grinding and grunting helplessly, trying, Sparrow realised, to relieve their lust in the confines of their imprisonment.

Imprisonment...

"There are no men of yours in this house."

"I know you're holding them somewhere."

"If I wanted to take more territory, I would take it. I wouldn't need hostages."

"Then you aren't keeping them hostage. You're keeping them for some sick sport, drawing out their pain for your twisted pleasure."

"I'll admit, that does sound like me."

The memory hit him, blasting the fog from his mind and rushing him with ice. That's what the stranger had been here for. Prisoners. Captives. But... Surely not... Not Vestalia, not his mistress. Not his love.

A wild groan like a bull being whipped. Sparrow held in a gasp, folded himself tighter into the shadows and peered down. Something inside him told him he shouldn't be looking. This wasn't only private, this was undignified. The men tangled themselves together clumsily, spines arching and rolling, thighs thudding together, feet skidding. Their breath came in miserable, vulpine whimpers. Sweat beaded on their crumpled brows. Saliva drizzled freely from their strained lips in their forced grimaces, the freckled man's cheeks shining with it and the blonde's beard wet.

The blonde rolled with a gravelly, frustrated snarl onto his companion, drawing a piglet squeal from him, muffled through the gag. He stuffed his hand between them and began to tug on his companion's balls. The freckled man wheezed and moaned and panted, thrusting his hips erratically into the touch. Then he whined in pain and wriggled free. The blonde huffed and rolled off him and clawed at the bedsheets, already in chaos around them. His shadow whisked away and Sparrow saw the freckled man's cock pulsing a sore pink against the cage and slowly diminishing again to fit. He looked crestfallen, bereaved. He smashed his face into the nearest pillow and choked into it. His sweetly padded chest pumped manically. He flung himself over and plastered his body to the blonde's. They thrust instinctively against each other, the cages singing and rattling together, their thick necks twisting and craning under the choke of the chained collars. They began to fumble with each other's nipples, pinching them raw, nuzzling needily into each other's shoulders with their dripping mouths stopped by the bars. Their bodies twitched and jerked like faltering mechanisms. Steamy, harried, tragic noises of ragged want chugged out of them.

Sparrow stared. This was no ordinary desire. They were men possessed. He watched transfixed, part disgusted by the pitifulness of it, part afraid of what could have done this to them, and part enraptured, feeling the heat rise under his clothes and his own cock stir. He gazed slack-jawed at their open, raw, bestial lust, and the artfulness of the way their bonds surged and controlled and taunted it. He sucked on his lip and watched their cocks pulse and swell and shrink in the cages, watched their asses clench and buck, watched the flush flare around their tortured nipples as they lost all gentleness with each other, watched the way their teeth gnawed at the bars and their wrists jarred and chafed in the manacles. He watched, watched, watched. His ears tingled with the chime of the chains and the creak of the mattress under their vigour, and the snuffling, mewling, rumbling music from their plugged mouths.

The whisper of bare feet on stone.

Sparrow stopped his breath, pulse freezing, and held himself as still as the stone wall behind him. The men heard it too. Their writhing halted immediately and both their faces turned eagerly up with wide, hopeful eyes. Sparrow followed their gaze.

She melted out of the shadows behind the dreamy candlelight, a short chemise in the same black gossamer of the bed floating around her thick thighs. She stepped with a slow, panther prowl into the pool of warm glow around the bed, wide hips swaying like a heavy pendulum. Her hair tumbled down her broad back, the scarlet tips flicking the dip of her spine. She was adorned with a bright, blazing crown of flame lilies. With her phantom-pale, sharp-cut features and tall, powerful body, the crown made her look just like one of the divine figures in the mystical room behind. Like a heathen, ancient deity. Her dark, summery scent drifted into Sparrow's stunned senses.

The men on the bed grunted and scrambled hastily to kneel on the mattress, hands behind their backs, spines rod straight, knees spread to exhibit their contained cocks. Sparrow saw the muscles in their arms and thighs and necks ridge as she approached.

Vestalia walked gracefully, slowly, knowing she had all the time in the world, relishing their desperation. Her pomegranate nipples and the crest of thick, black hair over her vulva peeked through the thin veil of her garment. The petals of her crown kissed her temples. Her mouth was wide and smiling red, red like the gash in the hanging bat. Sparrow's heart ached. Even in his creeping fear, even under the thudding of his pulse roaring at him not to watch any more, she was so, inescapably beautiful.

She rolled her gait all the way to the edge of the bed before she spoke. Her long, taloned fingers reached out and caressed the napes of the men's necks. They both sighed and moaned in response, the sound pouring into Sparrow and almost making him echo it.

"My good boys," Vestalia crooned, petting their hair and around their jaws. "Taking care of each other, while Mama's away."

They nodded vigorously.

She chuckled, that low, sensual chuckle that curled its fingers around Sparrow's cock. "Excellent. You really have been so, so good." Her voice was satin and acid.

The men nodded again, the freckled one releasing a weak whimper.

She smiled at him and cupped his cheek. He pressed into it, gazing yearningly up at her.

"Oh, my poor, hungry pets," she purred. "Do you need feeding?"

They nodded again, their breath grating in their throats and their hips fidgeting.

Vestalia eyed their fidgeting, sweat-laced bodies. Sparrow stared at her prismatic eyes shifting all the colours of roses as she brazenly drank in their every physical detail. She drew her hands from them, the pathetic things leaning towards her to sustain her touch for as long as possible. She smiled indulgently. She hooked the chemise with her thumbs and effortlessly dropped it from her body, the black mist rippling over her curves and pooling at her feet, leaving her bare and shining and eerily perfect, even more like the statues. Sparrow began to tremble.

She stroked her fingertip over her plump, crimson lip. Her smile turned deliciously wicked. "Well then, my pretties, let's feed."

Vestalia sank onto the bed, like moonlight flowing into the black gossamer, the flame lily crown like the red rim of an eclipsed sun. The bed hangings rippled as the two captive men parted like the Red Sea to welcome her between them. Their hands moved to her immediately, soft, stifled groans escaping their gagged mouths as they stroked her hair and grasped her flesh. Sparrow watched their fingers sink into her fat like cream, watched the chains attached to their necks and wrists slide over her, watched her recline into their caresses, her head falling back and her torso bowing out, her breasts and belly rising and glancing the golden candlelight. He felt each touch on her body as if it pressed to his own, kneading his flesh hot and his core open. He bit his lip. He wanted to run. He wanted to understand.

He wanted to keep watching. His eyes burned with it. Burned hotter than staring into fire.

He crouched deeper into the shadows. She rocked backwards, humming in a tone that strummed his heart strings. The square, blonde, bearded man hurried with a clink of chains to her back and caught her, closing her in his arms, his eyes welling with tears as she nestled to his thick torso, slinking a little to feel the stroke of the downy hair on his chest. Her hair bunched against his cheek. The chubby, freckled man with mousey curls tumbled forward and pressed his brow to her collar. The chains wound around them in a tangled fishing net.

Vestalia curled her hands around the backs of their heads, smiling silkily. "You boys have such hungry mouths. Just like me."

The men mumbled miserably around the bars clamped in their teeth.

She chuckled darkly. "Would you like them to be free? Would you like to be able to taste me? Would you like to be able to speak your worship?"

Sparrow shivered.Yes.

The men nodded, shivering too. Vestalia grinned like a wolf and her fingers flickered over the buckles of their gags. They rattled open with another shudder and fell to the bed. The men groaned and rolled their jaws and collapsed instantly into unintelligible babble. Sparrow caught only occasional words, how beautiful she was, how generous, how divine, how they never wanted to be free, how they had been captives their whole lives in the world without her. Their praises and kisses spilled over her. They ran their lips feverishly on her skin, their mouths eager and messy on her breasts, her arms, her cheeks, her shoulders, her thighs, her feet, her throat. They bubbled around her, like a whirlpool, and she bathed in them, like an ocean nymph.

Sparrow gazed helplessly at the bliss on her face, her fluttering eyes and her vixen smile. Her pleasure called to him magnetically, haunted his body and mocked his heart. He was overjoyed at seeing her worshipped, at seeing her glazed in adoration as she so utterly deserved. But to watch it from the shadows, to not be able to dive into the crush of flesh and make his offerings too, it was torment. Somewhere between ethereal elation and emerald envy, Sparrow drank in his mistress taking what she was owed, but nothing from him, who owed her the most.

Each of the men slid a hand to one of her thighs and eased them apart. Sparrow's mouth watered as the sticky, pomegranate gleam of her cunt bloomed into view. His cock pressed his britches. Vestalia hummed musically and settled deeper against the blonde man's broad chest. He stroked tenderly up her body, his eyes hazy and glistening with tears of relief. He scooped her breasts into his large hands and began to massage them with the most treasuring care Sparrow had ever seen. He softly rolled her nipples between finger and thumb and padded his freed mouth up and down her neck and shoulder. Sparrow stared at the flush rising slowly in her nipples, the way they gently darkened, ripened, pricked up desirously. His tongue tingled. He dragged it along the roof of his mouth and writhed his hips, grazing the stone floor.