Three months in, and Tim’s résumé was already a dead thing — a degree in communication studies, three years of nothing that turned into a line item, the only real skills he’d scraped out of it being the typing and filing he’d picked up in extra credit. The last year had handed him two jobs, both of them basically a typist, both of them temporary, both of them gone.

Three months in, and the café job was already a story he told like it mattered — barista, he'd say, as if the word scrubbed the truth off it, but really he was a dogsbody, a warm body for the rush, a hand that wiped down counters and smiled at strangers who never saw him twice.

His parents had stopped calling except to sigh, and the flat he'd landed in was the kind of damp that gets into your bones, the landlord a permanent haze of smoke and half-finished thoughts who collected rent in cash and never asked questions.

Then one evening, as he was wiping down the same sticky patch on the counter he’d been fighting for an hour, the bell above the door chimed and she came in out of the rain. Middle-aged, sure, but the kind of middle-aged that made him look twice — a coat that fit her properly, hair that caught the low light like it cost money. She smiled at him, and her honey-blonde hair cut in a sharp bobflahed in the harsh lighting and it was not the automatic smile people gave the help, but a real one, tired at the edges, and asked for a slice of the chocolate cake under the glass dome.

He got it for her, his fingers brushing the cool plate, and he heard himself say, "Half price," before he could stop, because tomorrow it would be dry and sad under the plastic wrap, and she looked at him then, not like a stranger, but like she saw the damp in his bones and the hours he had worked. She thanked him, low and warm, and he watched her take the first bite, the fork denting the frosting, and for a second the whole café smelled like sugar and her perfume and the rain on her shoulders, and he felt his own pulse in his throat.

She told him her name was Denise and she while older than him was attractive. She asked when he finished and he said soon and she told him if he fancied a drink to come to a bar she knew. He had not heard of it but she told him where it was and said he would think about it.

Twenty minutes later he was locking up,and the slam of the door was a sound he felt in his chest, a final punctuation on a shift that had stretched his feet into throbbing boards. He stood there a second, the night air cooling the sweat on his neck, and his mind was already drifting down the street, toward the idea of her. Denise. He thought about the rest of his Friday night, and the decision came easy, a stone dropping into still water. He’d go. He’d see what that smile was about.

He walked a quarter of a mile, the streets getting narrower, the shop fronts giving way to brick and shadow. The bar was down a back street, a single blue light buzzing over the door, and the sound of it reached him before he saw it — a low, wet murmur of voices, a woman’s laugh cutting through the bass. The air around the entrance was thick, warm, carrying the smell of spilled beer and perfume and the damp of the alley. He pushed the door open, and the heat hit him first, a wave of it, then the smell of wine and something floral, and the door hadn’t even swung shut behind him before he felt it. The weight of eyes. The sudden, humming silence that falls when a room takes you in.

Three steps in, and the door hasn't even swung shut behind him.

Tim registers the noise first — a wall of it, women's laughter stacked on women's laughter, glasses clinking, somebody shrieking with delight near the back. Then the heat. Then the smell of perfume and wine and something floral he can't name, and the fact that every face in the room is turned toward him like the whole bar was waiting on a cue.

He's the only man here. That lands slow, the way cold water lands — first the shock, then the understanding.and every woman in this place is somewhere between his mother's age and his grandmother's, and they're all looking at him.

He takes a half-step back toward the door. His shoulder blades find it.

Denise is already moving.

She slides off the bar rail like that stool was just a formality, honey-blonde hair snapping in a neat arc, emerald silk clinging where it counts. She's a head shorter and it might as well not exist. Her hand comes down flat on his chest — dead center, right over the pump, like she's reading whether it's still going — and it freezes him where he stands.

"There he is," she says. Low. Amused. Her fingers spread against the faded cotton of his band tee. "I told you girls. I said, look at the door at nine, he'll come in looking like a lost puppy, and here you are."

"I—" Tim's voice comes out wrong. He clears his throat. "I think i am in the wrong—"

"You've got the right everything." Her thumb drags once across his sternum, slow, like she's testing the fabric. "Rosa. Get the buckle."

"What—"

Rosa's already there. She slides in from his left, crimson wrap dress, gold hoops swinging, tits threatening to spill out of her top, and her hands land on his waist before he can even blink. Her fingers find the belt buckle like she's memorized the path — which, Tim realizes with a sick twist, she probably has. The leather gives. The buckle chirps.

"Oh no," he says. "No, no, I'm not—"

"You are." Rosa's laugh is loud enough to turn heads three stools down. She tugs the belt free of the loops in one smooth pull and it snakes away somewhere behind him. Honey, when accepted a drink from Denise, you took the bar and everything that comes with it.."

He tries to step back and finds he can't. His heels hit the door. There's nowhere to go that isn't through a crowd of women who have all, somehow, in the space of thirty seconds, turned their chairs toward him.

Patty takes his arms.

She's on him before the thought finishes — gray spikes, cracked leather, and her hands clamp his wrists, folding them up behind him like she's got a badge and a grudge. Her tits press flat against his back and she bites out, "Old habits die hard, and you, sweetheart, are a very bad habit.

"Easy," Patty says. Clipped. Almost kind. "Don't make it a thing."

"I'm not—"

"You're not going anywhere. That's all." She cracks her knuckles against his spine, one hand, then the other, and his arms stay exactly where she put them. He's wiry but he's not strong, not against a woman built like a retired boxer with a scar on her chin and forearms like dock rope. "Denise. He's ready."

"He's not ready yet."

That's Yuki. Compact, but she reads bigger than the rest of them — black turtleneck stretched tight over her chest, silver knife swinging at her throat like a promise, hair a blunt black curtain at her jaw — and she's been parked at the edge of things the whole time, watching, not saying a word. Now she moves in, close, close enough Tim catches her smell, soap and a ghost of sesame oil, and her fingers find the hem of his tee shirt.

"Wait—" he says.

She doesn't wait. Her hands are small and quick and the shirt's already halfway up his ribs before he finishes the word. He feels the cold air hit his stomach, then his chest, and then the cotton's over his head and his hair's a mess in his eyes and Yuki is folding the shirt once, twice, and tucking it into her own back pocket like a napkin.

Tim stands there bare-chested in the middle of the bar.

The laughter around the room changes.

He can hear it happen — the shrieks go quiet, one by one, and what's left is a low hum, women leaning in over their drinks, elbows on the rail, watching him the way you watch something good on television and Tim feels his face go red all the way to his ears.

His nipples are hard. He can't do anything about that. He can't do anything about any of it — his arms are still folded up behind him in Patty's grip, and the door is behind him, and every single person in this room is a woman, and every single one of them is looking.

"There we go," Denise says softly. She's got a bag. A big canvas tote, the kind you'd take to the farmer's market, and she's unzipping it with the calm of someone unpacking groceries. "Patty, keep him."

"He's kept."

"Rosa, the jeans."

"On it."

Rosa's fingers are at his fly before Tim can even process the sentence. Button, zipper, both in one motion, and then she's shoving denim down over his hips and his boxers come with them, and he's naked in a bar full of laughing women with his arms behind his back and his face on fire.

Somebody wolf-whistles. Somebody else applauds.

"Oh, honey," Rosa says, straightening up, and she's grinning, dark eyes glittering, and she lets her gaze drop down his body and back up again like she's pricing him. "You're going to be fun."

Tim's cock is half-hard and he hates himself for it. He's terrified and he's hard and the two things are sitting in his chest side by side and he can't tell which one is winning. The bar lights are hot on his bare skin. The floor is sticky under his bare feet — somebody's taken his shoes, he doesn't know when, he didn't feel it — and he's standing in the middle of a room full of women twice his age with nothing on and his wrists in a cop's grip.

"Please," he says. He doesn't even know what he's asking for.

Denise looks up from the bag. "Please what, sweetheart?"

"I—" His voice cracks. "I don't—"

Denise laughs, and the sound rakes down his spine like a nail dragged over a wound. "Relax, sweetheart," she says, "we're gonna give you a night you won't shake off. All you gotta do is be a good boy. And if you're not—well, baby, we got games we can play with those balls that'll leave you a sad, sorry mess." And again the pack of women holler and cheer, a few of them pointing at his crotch and shouting for him to get it good and hard for them.

She holds her eyes, and the words land somewhere low in his gut, heavy and warm. "And baby," she says, "you're gonna come for us, so we can have our fun." Her thumb traces the edge of the dress's strap, slow, like she's already picturing it on him. "In fact, baby, we're gonna milk every last drop of cum out of those balls of yours tonight—" She leans in, and he can smell her perfume, something sweet and sharp, and the heat of her breath on his cheek makes his skin prickle. "—until you're crying and empty."

The room hums around them, the women's laughter a low, rolling wave that presses against his ears. He feels his own pulse in his throat, in his fingertips, in the hollow behind his knees. His mouth is dry, and he thinks about how the floor feels cold under his bare feet, how his chest rises and falls too fast, how his cock twitches, traitorous, at the promise in her voice. She doesn't blink. She just watches him, and the quiet stretches, thick and sticky, until he can almost taste it.

Tim's mouth opens. Nothing comes out.

He thinks about the door. He thinks about his shirt in Yuki's pocket and his jeans on the floor and his keys somewhere he can't remember. He thinks about the way the whole room went quiet when they took his shirt off, and the way that quiet felt — not scary, exactly. Hungry. Like being picked.

He doesn't move.

Denise smiles, slow, and pulls something out of the bag.

It's a dress. Black sequins, tiny straps, the kind of thing that weighs nothing and catches every light in the room as she shakes it out. She holds it up against his chest — up to his shoulders, down to his hips — and tilts her head, measuring him with her eyes like a tailor.

"Hm," she says. "You're narrower than I thought. It'll hang. That's fine. That's better, actually." She looks at Yuki. "Panties?"

Yuki's already got them out of the bag. Black lace, small, held between two fingers like she's presenting a dish.

Tim's whole body goes hot. "I'm not—"

"Arms up, sweetheart."

Patty lifts his wrists without being asked, and Tim's arms come up over his head because there's nothing else for them to do. The dress comes down over him — cold, the sequins sliding over his bare shoulders and his chest and his stomach, the fabric whispering all the way down to mid-thigh. It's too short. It's way too short. The straps settle against his collarbones and Denise's fingers are at the back of his neck, fastening the clasp, and the whole room of women is watching a twenty-two-year-old boy get dressed like a doll in the middle of the bar.

Somebody claps. Somebody else says turn around, and Patty turns him, one hand on his shoulder, and the sequins flash under the lights and the women at the bar all make the same low noise at once.

Denise steps back to look at him. Her laugh lines deepen. She's got her head tilted and her eyes half-lidded and she looks, Tim thinks with a strange swoop in his stomach, genuinely pleased — like he's a gift she picked out for herself and it turned out better than the picture.

"Panties," she says. "Then the stool."

Yuki kneels.

Tim looks down and there she is, on one knee on the sticky bar floor, holding the black lace open at his ankles. "Step," she says. Quiet. Like she's telling him the temperature of a pan. He steps. She slides the panties up over his feet, up his calves, up his thighs, and her knuckles brush the underside of his cock through the sequined skirt and he makes a sound he's never made before.

"There," Yuki says, and stands, and pats his hip once, gently, the way you'd pat a horse. "Good."

Rosa's already dragging a barstool out from the rail. It scrapes loud across the floor. She plants it in the middle of the room, spins it once, and points at it with her chin.

"Sit."

Tim sits.

The sequins ride up under him. The stool's cold through the lace. His knees are apart because that's how the stool is, and the dress is short enough that he can feel the whole room looking at the inside of his thighs, and Denise is walking toward him now with her emerald blouse and her jasmine perfume and the calm of a woman who has already decided how the rest of the night is going to go.

She stops in front of him. Looks down. Reaches out and hooks one finger under his chin and lifts his face until he's looking straight up at her.

Her thumb drags slow along his jawline, and Tim can feel the callus catch on the stubble there, a small rough drag that sends a shiver down the back of his neck. The room is close, hot with perfume and sweat and the low electric hum of women who have already decided what they want. He hears the clink of a glass somewhere behind him, ice settling, and the scrape of a chair leg on the floor, and he knows without looking that they’re circling, that the space around him is shrinking.

"You're going to be good for us," she says, and her voice is low, almost kind, the way you’d talk to a dog you were about to feed. Her other hand comes up and cups the side of his face, her palm warm and dry, and she tilts his head just slightly, enough that he can see the curve of her mouth, the small satisfied smile she’s wearing. "And when we're done, you get your drink. But we take our fun first, and if you're sweet about it, some of the ladies will rape you."

The word lands in his stomach like a stone dropped into still water, and he feels the heat of it spread, a flush that starts in his chest and crawls up his throat. The dress is thin against his thighs, and the stool is hard, and he can feel the cool air on his skin where the hem has ridden up, and he thinks about the way they looked at him when he walked in, the way they’re looking at him now, and his heart is a fist pounding against his ribs.

Her thumb drags slow along his jawline again, back and forth, a lazy rhythm, and she leans in close enough that he can smell the jasmine on her neck and the faint bitter note of coffee on her breath. "What do you say?" she asks, and her eyes are dark and patient, and she doesn’t blink. "Well, you don't really have a choice, but it'll be easier on your nice round balls if you just say yes to serving us."

Tim swallows. His throat clicks. The sound is loud in the quiet that has settled around them, and he can feel the weight of their attention like a hand on his skin, heavy and warm and waiting.

He lets out a moan, a raw sound that scrapes out of him, and the words tumble free—"oh god, please, be gentle"—and the women watching break into laughter, their hands coming together in sharp, delighted claps.

"Good boy."

She lets go of his chin and turns to the room, and the room is already moving in — chairs scraping, women rising from their seats, the hum turning to hands and the hands turning to heat, and Tim sits on the stool in his borrowed dress with his heart slamming against his ribs and knows, the way you know weather, that he isn't leaving until they're done with him.

Denise hitches up her slacks and swings one leg over the stool, straddling his lap, and the whole bar leans in to watch.

She settles her weight down onto his thighs and the stool groans. Her knees clamp his hips, pinning the sequined skirt flat between them, and Tim feels the heat of her through the silk of her slacks — a broad, deliberate warmth that spreads up through the lace and into his skin. She's close enough that he can see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, the small gold hoops in her ears, the way her tongue touches her lower lip before she speaks.

"Now," Denise says, and her voice is pitched low enough that only he can hear it, though every woman in the room is straining toward them. "You've been very good so far. Standing still. Saying please." Her hands come to rest on his shoulders, thumbs finding the hollows above his collarbones. "But good boys don't get to keep their hands to themselves, do they, Patty?"

"No ma'am."

"So we'll fix that." Denise turns her head, not looking away from him. "Patty, sweetheart, would you?"

Patty's hands close on his wrists again and haul them behind the stool's backrest, and this time she doesn't let go. She holds them there, one big hand wrapped around both his wrists, and Tim feels the cold metal of the stool's frame press into his spine. His shoulders pull back. His chest arches. The dress's straps go tight across his collarbones and the sequins drag cold over his nipples, and he makes a sound he doesn't mean to make.

Denise watches his face while it happens. She's reading him, the way Yuki reads a pan, and whatever she finds there makes her smile widen.

Her hands slide down from his shoulders. Palms flat. They travel over the dress, over his chest, and the sequins chatter under her fingers, and then her thumbs find his nipples through the fabric and press — just press, slow and even, and Tim's whole body jerks against Patty's grip.

"Oh, look at that," Rosa says from somewhere behind him. "He's sensitive."

"Very," Denise agrees. She rolls one nipple under her thumb, back and forth, and the sequins drag with it, and Tim's breath comes out in a thin whistle between his teeth. "Rosa, honey, come see."

Rosa comes around the side of the stool, and she doesn't bother with the dress. Her hand goes straight under the hem, up the inside of his thigh, and her palm is warm and dry and she finds his cock through the lace with the unerring confidence of a woman who has done this before. She cups him. Weighs him. Her thumb strokes once along the length of him through the panties and he's already hard — has been hard since the stool, since the dress, since the word rape came out of Denise's mouth and landed somewhere below his stomach — and Rosa laughs, delighted, and squeezes.

"There's our boy," she says. "Denise, he's ready."

"I know he's ready." Denise leans in and her mouth finds the side of his neck, just below his ear, and she bites — not hard, but enough that he feels teeth, and his hips jerk up off the stool and Rosa's hand rides with him, working him through the lace while Denise's tongue soothes the spot she just marked. "He's been ready since he walked in the door. He just didn't know it."

She sits back. Her weight shifts on his thighs and the stool wobbles and Patty's grip on his wrists tightens to steady him, and Denise looks over his head at the room.

"Ladies," she says, and her voice carries now, pitched to the back of the bar. "You've all been very patient. You paid your dues, you bought your drinks, you waited your turn." She reaches down and takes the hem of the dress between two fingers and lifts it — just to mid-thigh, just enough that the whole room can see Rosa's hand working under the lace, and a wave of noise goes up from the women.

Denise’s smile is a slow, knowing curve, and then her fingers hook into the waistband of the panties—thin, black lace that gives way without a fight. She pulls them down, not fast, not teasing, just deliberate, and the fabric slides over his hips, over the jut of bone, and Tim feels the air hit him there, cool and sharp against the heat of Rosa’s palm. The sound is nothing—just a whisper of cloth—but it fills the room, everyone leaning in, holding breath.

Rosa’s hand doesn’t move. Her fingers are still wrapped around him, warm and sure, . He can feel the ridge of her knuckles, the pad of her thumb pressing just at the base, and he’s harder than he’s ever been, the pulse of it visible, a jump under her grip. Denise lets the fabric fall to the floor, a dark puddle at her feet, and she doesn’t look away from him.

“There,” she says, soft, almost to herself. “That’s better.”

The room is quiet, but it’s a loud quiet—the scrape of a stool, the clink of a glass, the collective inhale of twenty women who can see exactly what Rosa is holding. Tim’s breath comes short, his chest tight, and he can feel Rosa’s palm shift, just a fraction, just enough to remind him she’s there. Denise’s hand comes up, two fingers under his chin, tilting his face toward hers.

“You’re doing so well,” she says, and her voice is honey and gravel, and he believes her.

“One at a time,” she says, and the room settles into a hungry hush. “Hands only. We’re not getting rough yet—and we’re not letting him finish, are we, girls?” A ripple of laughter, sharp and knowing, answers her. She looks down at Tim, her eyes dark and warm and dead serious. “We’ve got all night to wring him dry.”

Tim's mouth is dry. "Denise— I don't think I can—"

"You can." She pats his cheek twice, light, almost affectionate. "You'd be surprised what you can do when a room full of women is watching. Now." She lifts her weight off him and stands, and the sudden absence of her heat leaves him cold through the dress. "Yuki, you first.."

Yuki steps out of the crowd. She's been standing at the edge of it the whole time, arms folded, watching — and now she uncrosses them and walks to the stool and stands in front of Tim with her head tilted, considering him the way she'd consider a piece of fish on a cutting board. Her silver knife pendant swings once and settles.

"Hello again," she says.

"Hi," Tim manages.

Her hands come up and take his face — both of them, small and cool, thumbs at his cheekbones — and she holds him still and looks at him for a long moment, and then she leans in and kisses him. Her mouth is soft and she tastes faintly of sake, and her tongue touches his lower lip once, twice, and then she's done, and she pulls back and looks at his face again and nods, satisfied, like she's confirmed a seasoning.

"Good," she says. Then her right hand slides beneath the hem and travels up the inside of his thigh, taking its time, and when she reaches his cock she doesn't cup him the way Rosa did. She traces. A single fingertip drags from the root to the tip, and Tim goes rigid against Patty's grip, and Yuki watches his face the whole way, reading every flinch, and when his hips jerk she pauses, holds, then does it again.

By the third drag, the lace is soaked through, clinging to him, and he can feel the damp bloom spreading, warm and undeniable, and Yuki feels it too — her fingertip finds the spot, presses into it, and a soft, satisfied hum escapes her throat.

"He's wet," she announces to the room, and the women cheer, and Tim's face burns so hot he thinks the sequins might melt.

"Next," Denise says. "Rosa, you've had a turn. Patty, let him go — no, keep the wrists. Just one hand. Let him have one."

Patty releases his right wrist. His arm comes free and he doesn't know what to do with it, so it hangs, and then a woman he doesn't recognize — fifties, red glasses, a laugh like a car door — is in front of him and her hand is under the dress before he can even say hello. She's brisk about it. She grips his cock and strokes him, root to tip, root to tip, at a steady rhythm like she's churning butter,and the mundanity of it is somehow worse than anything else — worse than Yuki's slow tracing, worse than Rosa's squeeze — because it means he's not even the main event. He's a thing they're passing around while they catch up.

"Nice and thick," she says, to her friend. "Remember when they were all like this? Before the divorces?"

"Barely," her friend says, and they both laugh, and the red-glasses woman gives him two more brisk strokes and moves on.

And then it's a line. Tim loses count. There's a woman with a silver bob who kneels down in front of him and looks up under the dress with frank curiosity, like she's inspecting a car she might buy, and she doesn't touch him at all, just looks, and that's somehow worse. There's a tall woman in a blazer who takes his free hand and puts it on her own breast over her shirt and holds it there while her other hand works him, and he doesn't know what to do with his fingers so he just leaves them, flat and helpless, and she laughs at him. There's a pair of women who come up together and one of them holds the dress hem up while the other one plays with his balls rolling them, weighing them, and the two of them discuss him like a shared dessert.

He's shaking. His thighs are shaking. He's been hard so long it hurts — a deep, hot ache that runs from his balls up into his stomach — and every time he gets close, every time his hips start to move on their own and his breath goes ragged, the woman currently touching him stops. Every single time. Denise is standing at the edge of it with a glass of wine, watching, and every time Tim's face changes the way it changes right before he comes, she says, "Not yet," in that low amused drawl, and the hand withdraws, and Tim makes a sound that isn't quite a word.

"Please," he says, to no one. "Please, I can't—"

"You can," Denise says. "You're doing so well."

He's soaked now, the way they keep dragging him up and dropping him back down, and the dress is bunched around his waist—someone did that, he's lost track of who, and no one's fixed it—and his bare thighs press against the cold stool, slick with sweat, and every woman who steps up to him gets a full, unobstructed view of what's going on as his cock stands there, hard and open, flushed dark and leaking, twitching with every breath he takes. And there's a woman on her knees in front of him now, palms on his thighs, pushing them apart, spreading him wider, and she's just staring at it. At the way it jumps when she exhales. At the way it throbs, visibly, in time with his heartbeat, in time with the desperate pulse he can feel in his throat, in his teeth, in the aching, swollen tip that she hasn't touched yet, hasn't even gotten close to touching, and he's already trembling, already dying for it, already so far gone he'd beg for anything she'd give him.

"Oh, honey," she says. "You're dripping."

She breathes on it. A whisper of cold air and Tim's entire body snaps like a wire, and he's on the edge, right there, about to spill, when Patty's palm cracks down on his shoulder and shoves him back into the seat and Denise says, "Not yet," and then he's choking on a sob as she presses a bag of ice hard against his crotch and the women watching hoot and holler and tell him he'll be begging for them soon, that he'll come for them over and over, not just once, not just twice.

"How many is that?" Rosa asks from somewhere.

"Fourteen," Yuki says. She's been keeping count.

"Fourteen," Denise repeats, and she sets her wine down on the bar rail and walks back to the stool, and the crowd parts for her without being asked. She stops in front of Tim and looks down at him — at his ruined face, at the wet lace, at the way his free hand is gripping the edge of the stool so hard his knuckles have gone white — and she reaches down and takes his chin again, and lifts it, and makes him look up at her.

"You haven't come," she says. It's not quite a question "Now. You've earned something."

She looks over her shoulder at the room.

"Ladies," she says. "He's ready. Who wants to be first?"

And the room answers, all at once, a wall of hands going up.

Four hands. Then six. Tim loses the shape of it almost immediately — who's where, whose fingers are whose. Denise stands back with her wine and lets it happen, and what happens is this: they don't wait their turn after all. The line dissolves. The women come at him in a loose crescent, and the stool spins a quarter turn under him, and someone's nails drag up the inside of his thigh while someone else's thumb pressesflat against the head of his cock and holds it there, and he hears himself make a noise that has no vowels in it.

"Easy," Patty says at his back. Her hand is still clamped on his left wrist. "Breathe."

He breathes. It comes out a sob.

A woman with silver hair has both hands under the hem now, and she's not touching his cock at all — she's gripping his hips, thumbs dug into the hollows above the bone, holding him still while another woman's knuckles work the length of him Slow. Root to tip, root to tip, the same stroke as the red-glasses woman but without the chatter, just thehard pumping of skin that's gone raw and oversensitive. Then somebody touches him. Just a fingertip, right on the slit, and Tim's hips come off the stool so hard Patty has to plant a boot on the crossbar to keep him down.

"Not yet," Denise says, from behind her wine. "And you'll be good a little longer”

Time don't mean anything to Tim. What means something is the hand that's got his balls and is rolling them now, slow, the way you'd worry two coins in a pocket, and the mouth that's closed on his ear and is telling him, in a voice pitched for him alone, exactly how red his face is, exactly how hard he's leaking, exactly what he looks like from where she's standing. He doesn't know her name. He'll never know her name. She bites his earlobe and lets it go and steps back into the crowd and someone else takes her place.

His free hand. He's been leaving it flat on the stool, gripping the edge, and now a woman in a wrap top takes it and guides it — not to her breast this time, but under her skirt, to the front of her panties, and she's wet, and she presses his fingers against the wet fabric and holds them there and rocks against his hand while her other hand works his cock, and Tim's fingers don't know what to do so she does it for him, dragging them up and down over the seam, and she comes — quick, quiet, a hitch of breath and a clamp of her thighs around his wrist — and then she pats his hand and lets it go and moves off into the crowd like she's just finished a cigarette.

He's going to come. He can feel it building low and hot and inevitable, the ache spreading from his balls up into his stomach, and he tries to warn them, tries to say it, but the only sound that comes out is a thin, high whine, and the woman currently kneeling in front of him — the one with her face level with the head of his cock, the one who's been blowing on it — looks up at Denise and says, "He's close."

"I know." Denise sets the wine down. "Hands off."

Every hand snaps away at once, and it's worse than any of the touches—the sudden cold, the sudden nothing, his cock jerking up with no one on it, twitching, the slick tip catching the bar light, and the air on it feels like a wound. Tim's whole body folds against Patty's grip, and the sound that tears out of him is a stabbed thing, raw and broken, a noise he doesn't recognize as his own. Then he's crying as the ice is shoved hard around his groin, the shock of it a white-hot slap that travels up his spine, and the need to come drains out of him like water, leaving him hollow and shaking, his breath coming in wet, ragged gasps, his hips still twitching against the cold, searching for something that's already gone.

"There," Denise says, and she walks back to him, and she's smiling, and she takes his chin and lifts his ruined face and looks at it for a long moment. "That's what I wanted to see."

"Nineteen," Yuki says.

"Nineteen." Denise's thumb drags across his lower lip, and this time he does open his mouth, and she lets him, and her thumb rests there on his tongue for a second, tasting him, and then she takes it away. "Now you've earned the rest of it."

She looks over his head at Patty.

"Let him go."

Patty's hand opens. Tim's arm drops, numb and useless, and he nearly slides off the stool — his legs have gone to water, and the sequined dress is rucked up around his waist, and his cock is still out, still wet, still aching, and every woman in the room can see all of it.

"Up," Denise says. "Stand up."

He stands. The stool scrapes back and his knees wobble and Denise catches him by the shoulder and steadies him, and she's close now, close enough that he can smell the jasmine and the wine on her breath, and she looks up at him — he's taller than her, he's taller than most of them — and she reaches down and takes his cock in her hand, bare, skin on skin , and strokes it once, root to tip, slow, and Tim's head falls back and he groans at the ceiling.

"Please," he says. "Please, I'll do anything."

"I know you will." She lets go of him — lets go, and steps back, and he sways on his feet, and she looks at the room over his shoulder. "Ladies. He's yours. But he doesn't come until I say so, and I haven't said so yet." She smiles. "So be creative."

And the room closes in.

Hands. Hands everywhere — on his shoulders, in his hair, under the dress, on his ass one small cool hand wrapping his cock and one warm dry one cupping his balls, and somebody's mouth on his neck and somebody's breath in his ear and somebody laughing, low and delighted, right against his throat. He's turned. Somebody turns him, hands on his hips, and now he's facing the bar and the mirror behind it, and he can see himself — the black sequins, the ruined face, the sandy hair plastered to his forehead, the dress rucked up and his cock standing erect with a woman's hand wrapped around it — and he can see the women behind him, the whole crescent of them, watching him watch himself.

"Look at him," Rosa says, from somewhere in the crowd. "He's watching."

"Of course he is." Denise is behind him now, close, her breath on the back of his neck. "He's a good boy. He wants to see." Her hand comes around his waist and her fingers find his nipple through the dress and pinch, and Tim's reflection jerks, and the women laugh.

Somebody kneels behind him. He feels it — the shift of weight, the hands on his calves, and then a mouth on the back of his thigh, teeth, and he can't see her in the mirror, she's below the frame, and that's somehow worse, not knowing. The hand on his cock is moving faster now. The mouth on his thigh is moving up. And Denise's fingers are still working his nipple through the sequins and her other hand has found his throat, not squeezing, just resting there, the weight of it, and in the mirror he watches his own face do something he's never seen it do before.

Tim's ass is bare to the room, and a woman he can't see makes a sound of pure approval and bites him — right on the cheek, hard enough to leave a mark — and Tim's cock jumps in the hand that's holding it and a bead of come wells up at the tip and hangs there, shining, and every woman in the room sees it.

"Oh, he's close," somebody says.

"Not yet," Denise says.

And the hand stops.