Victim's Ball

"This is mine now. You understand? If it goes into any other girl, it's because I said it could." She smiled at my surprised look, nodding at the possibility of other women. "In exchange for that commitment I will give you more pleasure than you have ever known, Mark Thomas. No fantasy is off limits, not fetish is too weird. No kink you have is too much for me to try exploring with you. But ... I expect and demand loyalty of a man I'm sleeping with. And ten times that much, to one I love, as much as I love you. Agreed? Good, now come here."

Following her lead, I moved between her open thighs and then smiled as she pulled me down on top of her. Her hand never left my cock, guiding it as I moved then she shifted me just a bit, and I felt the wetness of her pussy on the head. At her nod, I pushed into and her black lipstick ringed mouth opened in a breathy moan of pleasure as I sank into her. To be looking into Maggie's eyes as I slipped into her was a fantasy from so many nights, and to actually do it was a reality that no fantasy had ever matched. The look on her face, her lips trembling as I reached my full depth in her. The smile when she saw how much I was enjoying the tight grip of her on me.

Ecstasy in life.

Then she pulled me down into a deep kiss and we began to rock into each other. That timeless rhythm, as old as humanity and as beautifully choreographed by instinctive need as any grand ballroom dance. Her hands enwrapped my back, pulled me closer, and then she and I were skin to skin, our bodies growing warm with our shared heat. As I clinched my teeth, overwhelmed with pleasure, and gasped for air, I heard such a sweet sound. Maggie, whispering my name and that she loved me in my ear.

"Oh Mark, I love you. I have loved you for so long. Wanted you for so long." She nipped at my skin, biting at my neck. "More. I want this forever."

With more desire than air, I simply moaned my agreement and pumped harder into her. I wanted to tell her all those things. Those and more. I wanted to tell her of the many years when she had been the fantasy that either helped me to sleep or the desired love that had kept me awake. But I had passed the point where speech was possible. Need now drove my thoughts to a simple place of simple hungers.

I wanted to cum.

Nothing more or less than that simple base instinct, but I wanted something else in equal measure. I wanted to hear her cum as well. Catching the back of her knees, I pushed her legs wider and sat up, giving my body more purchase and more powerful strokes. With sweat dripping from my chin, I watched Maggs's breasts jump, bouncing with my thrusts till she caught the nipples and twisted, and pinched them. She did it so hard that, I winced.

"Oh, yes," she moaned. "Harder."

More than happy to oblige, I slipped my knees under her ass, lifting her more onto the small of her back and pushing her legs higher. She surprised me then by sitting up, catching my neck and pulling me back on top of her, bending her like a pretzel under my weight. My left boot found a flat-edged shelf behind me and with that to push off of, I drove into her till we smacked together. Her hands left my neck, went under my arms, and she clawed at my back trying to pull me even deeper.

"More! Please!" she cried out her whole body shaking under me. "Yes!"

Seeing that beautiful face, the one that had haunted my dreams for so many years of my life, lost in the throes of her ecstasy and knowing that I had brought it to pass was all it took to tip me over the edge myself. I shut my eyes tight and my body went ridged as it tried to drive even one single inch more of my cock into her.

"Mark, oh Mark yes. Cum for me, my lover," she said, whispering soft praise for my giving her such pleasure and now receiving it in turn. She held me tightly as the last explosive jerks tore through me, then she pulled me down and clasped me to her as I tried to catch my breath. She stroked my wet hair, whispering my name. Telling me how much she loved me, her mouth lightly placing kisses between the words. Lips, soft as twin butterfly wings, brushing my skin.

"Maggs ..."

"Yes?"

"I love you," I said at last when I could breathe again.

She smiled, placed a long slow kiss on my lips then hugged me to her. "I love you, too." She looked at me, tears in her eyes. "We should probably get up before some of the hotel staff come walking in and find us here."

I gave a half laugh and sat up, regretfully I slipped from her.

"Not like another pair of naked people would make much of an impression here tonight, not after what's going on out there in the ballroom."

Almost as if mention of it brought the awareness of it back, the moaning of sexually-overlaid music was overwhelmingly powerful. I winced, feeling as if the bones behind my ears and my temples were being assaulted. Getting to my feet, I helped Maggie up, but before she could start to dress, I pulled her to me. Her lips smiled under mine as I kissed her. And then she gave a soft sighing-purr when I pulled her back against my chest. I held her to me, wanting to never let her go. She was like my point of reality as the sounds from beyond the room grew and dimmed, tides of dark music and moaned lust going over us like waves.

It was a long time before I wanted to remove my cheek from the top of her dark hair and let her get dressed. I watched her putting back on that short skirt and smiled, thinking that I might just get the chance to remove it twice tonight. She saw the look, grinned, glanced down at my crotch and gave a slight nodding shrug.

"When we get back to my place." She grinned.

Sated for the moment as I was, I still could not get out of this place fast enough with that kind of promise offered. But then I opened the door.

"Oh, dear god."

Holding my right ear and Maggie's hand, I pulled us down the hall, away from the ballroom, where the music was now at thunderous levels, far beyond what a human ear could withstand. And the orgasmic screaming, at times even louder than the music, told of erotic pleasure being taken to levels the human body was not meant to go as well.

As we passed through the kitchen area, devoid of hotel staff, I looked back into that orgy of flesh in time to see Cassandra and Colette LeCouvereur slip from it. The two of them ran, hand in hand, to a curtained off doorway. Their faces enraptured with joy smiled and then waved at Maggs and myself.

And disappeared from sight through the curtain behind them.

That sudden feeling I had earlier came back just then, only this time it felt a hundred times worse. When Maggie started to walk towards where the two girls had gone, I took hold of Maggie's arm and, ignoring her protests, led her out one of the opened glass doors that lead into the courtyard of the hotel.

The paving stones under foot were slick, damp with evening dew. I noticed as we walked out on to them, the dream-like quality of this night faded a bit. And in that moment, I felt parts of my mind awaken that I had not known were asleep.

"Mark, what's with the five finger death grip? I wanted to go talk to Cass! Let go of my elbow, please."

Looking down, I saw that my hand was holding her tight enough to possibly leave a bruise. Then her face was before me, in all its glorious beauty. I made love to Maggie tonight. The thought went flashing past, with a hint of surprise, like I had not known about it till I remembered. "What the hell?"

"Mark!"

"Sorry," I said letting her go. "Just suddenly had a bad feeling. Like, if we didn't get out of there, something terrible would happen." I tried to hide my fear-shiver as I felt again that tingle of prickly spider-like fingers at the base of my neck..

"You felt that too?" she asked me softly. Her hand moved to my arm and she pulled herself closer to me. "I thought it was just a goose on my grave."

I was about to say something but stopped, and my jaw dropped open as the moon cleared the clouds overhead.

Standing out there in the thick mist surrounding the hotel was an incredibly tall structure. The foggy dampness of the night had kept it all but hidden. However, in the moonlight it suddenly appeared. And there, in that spectral lunar light, I saw something I had always wanted to see, but now at this surreal moment that desire utterly fled from me in fear. Inexplicably half-finished, and far too ghost-like, standing ominously tall in that glowing moonlit-mist ...

... was the Eiffel Tower.

"Mark? What's wrong?" Using Maggie's shoulders, I made her turn towards the half-finished metal tower. "Holy shit, is that ...?"

Her words hadn't even left her mouth when several things happened simultaneously. The uncompleted Tower vanished into suddenly thicker mist ... those catastrophic levels of music inside stopped in mid-tune. And, it was in that ear-shattering silence, that a loud wood on wood THUNK rang out through the opened doorway behind us.

Then here was a woman's scream.

Then several more.

Then all hell broke loose inside!

Screams, people running in panic. Some of them threw open the many tall glass doors that led out here to this courtyard and fled from the ballroom.

There were a dozen cries for someone to call nine-one-one. Another scream, this one followed by someone running towards us. I pulled Maggie to me as a naked woman came through the closest door; she was covered in blood. She was already past us when I realized it was Jason's girl Wilhelmina. She ran off the patio area, across the manicured lawn, onto the long, large-brick driveway, and she was heading for the gates. When I looked down at Maggie, who was tugging at my vest, she was pointing at something inside that I could hardly make out through the press of half- clothed Goths. But as the frightened crowd thinned out, I saw it.

The guillotine blade was no longer at the top of the wooden frame.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Sitting on the low front steps of the L'Hôtel du Nord, my face bathed in red and blue, I watched the coroner's van pull away. Maggie sat between my legs on a lower step, her back leaned against my chest. She had stopped crying but was sitting numb. My arms rested on hers.

The van carrying Jason's body stopped at the gate, paused for traffic, then turned and vanished from sight. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that the cleanup crew had started to try and remove the sanguine parts of him that had been left behind. My gorge rose as I pictured again just how terribly large that blood stain had been.

"We have your statement right? You can leave now." The officer in front of us told us in a way that was not a request.

"I wanted to make sure my friend Cassandra was alright before we left," said Maggie. She used my knees to help get to her feet. Jealousy flashed my blood hot for a second when I saw the officer try to sneak a quick look up that too short skirt she wore. "Can we speak to her before we go?"

"Now this is Cassandra Williams, right? The one that orchestrated this little party. Is that right?"

"Yes. She was like probably the only Cassandra here tonight." I tried to be helpful. By the look in the officer's eyes he didn't think I was being helpful at all. He flipped back open his note pad.

"Well, we have talked to two dozen guests. None of them have managed to tell us just where Miss Williams is. Now we've searched the whole place and apparently she must have fled the grounds just before ..." He adjusted his glasses to let us know just how serious he was. "... or after the ... accident."

Maggie started to shake her head.

"We saw Cassandra right before the ... well, before Jason did ... what he did. She was walking through a doorway out the main ballroom. We can show you where. Maybe you missed a part of the hotel."

"Miss, I guarantee you we missed nothing, but by all means, let's go take a look." He followed Maggie and me as we walked back into the main room. I looked over at the big painting. That image of the half-built Eiffel Tower sent a shiver down my spine and I had to look away. The blade of the guillotine, which was now raised once again, caused an equal reaction.

"They went through there." said Maggie pointing at the curtained-off doorway.

"Miss, I have a crime scene to deal with; I don't have time for jokes." He snapped his note pad closed. "You can, if you would, please leave now." The officer shook his head at us both, disgusted, and then walked to where another officer was still talking to Chris and Cindy. They were both nearly as covered in blood as Wilhelmina had been.

Well, their clothes weren't.

"What the fuck?" Maggie asked looking at me. I shrugged and moved to the curtain. When I touched the fabric, the old cloth almost shredded at even so light a touch. I could feel threads popping under my fingers as I lifted it back from in front of ... the most beautiful painting I had ever seen.

Of Colette and Cassandra, dancing naked in the rose garden behind the hotel.

The now-completed Eiffel Tower, painted to one side of center, with the rising moon turning it into a black silhouette. As my fingers, of their own doing, pulled a red silk and lace choker from my pocket I noticed the metal plaque next to this painting.

~Colette and Cassandra LeCouvereur, daughters of the seventeenth owner. Executed by guillotine in 1805, for conspiracy against the government. The completed Eiffel tower was later added to this painting, at request, by Cassandra's granddaughter.~

I felt Maggie's hand take mine. Her fingers, shaking, took the embroidered red silk from my numbed ones, and as I watched, she laid it on the frame of the painting. The brilliant color stood in sharp contrast to the old gilding on the frame. But the lace choker matched perfectly the ones worn by both women in the painting.

"Take me home, Mark. Please?"

Placing my arm around my beloved Maggie, I ignored the look the officer gave me as we walked past him. That "I know you know more than you are telling me" look he had been giving everyone since he got here. I didn't care about what he thought. I knew what we had seen, even if I could not make my mind accept it. As we stepped out the front door I noticed the sky beginning to turn pink.

This haunted midsummer night was finally over.

*

(I would like to thank my editor, and for this story translator, the lovely patientlee. The amount of effort that went into this story is mildly staggering. I would also like to thank Rozalin_0123 for her time in giving this story a Beta read, and for the comments she gave that helped shape it. To both of you beautiful ladies, thank you. As always any mistakes you see now are all on my own head. Hope you enjoyed it and please remember to leave a comment and vote.)