Denise grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him out of the light, through the press of bodies, and the noise of the room fell away behind them like a curtain dropping. She pushed him into a side room that was quiet and dim, and there was a comfortable armchair in it, and a large cushion on the floor, and Tim looked at both of those things and moaned, a low sound that came from somewhere deep in his chest, because he knew exactly what they were for.

Denise smiled at that moan, slow and knowing. She let go of his wrist and took a step back, and she looked at him standing there, all that desperate energy humming off him, and she let the silence hang for a second before she spoke.

“You’re popular,” she said, and her voice was easy, almost lazy. “Twenty-four woman to lick off. All sold.” She paused, and her eyes traveled down his body and back up again. “So get kneeling, baby. You’re going to be a busy boy.”

He knelt and the cushion took his weight, The side room was dim after the bar, one lamp on a low table, the light the color of honey and the walls close. He could hear the room on the other side of the door, the rise and fall of forty women laughing, and talking .

Denise stood by the door with her hand on the knob and looked down at him kneeling there in the pink slip with his cock still pushing the fabric out, wet at the tip, the seam of the stockings straight up the back of his calves. She didn't say anything. She just watched him settle, the way she watched everything, and then she opened the door and said, "Send her in."

The door closed. Tim heard a chair scrape somewhere out in the room, and heels on the floor, and then the door opened again and a woman came through it and shut it behind her with her hip.

She was maybe fifty-five. Plump in a way that looked comfortable on her — soft arms, a full chest under a green blouse, a round pleasant face with reading glasses pushed up into her hair. She had a wedding ring and a wristwatch and a handbag she set down on the low table with the care of a woman setting down her groceries. She looked at Tim on the cushion and smiled, and it was a real smile, almost apologetic.

"Hello, love," she said. "I'm Sheila. ."

Denise was still in the room. She'd stayed by the wall with her arms crossed, and she watched the woman the way she watched Tim, and Tim understood that Denise was not going to leave yet, that this was part of it — that he was going to do this with her standing there, cataloguing, filing.

"You don't have to do anything," Denise said. "He does the work. All you have to do is sit down and take what you paid for."

"Oh," Sheila said. "Oh, well. All right then."

She unbuttoned her blouse first, and folded it — actually folded it, and laid it over the arm of the chair — and then she stepped out of her shoes and unzipped her skirt and worked it down over her hips and folded that too. She was wearing plain white cotton pants, and she took those down and stepped out of them and stood there in her socks for a second, looking around for somewhere to put them, and then just held them, and Denise took them out of her hand without a word and dropped them on the chair.

From the waist down she was bare. Her thighs were thick and pale and dimpled, and her cunt was a full dark triangle of hair, thick and untrimmed, silver in it at the edges, and the lips showed through the hair, open a little, the color of the inside of a plum. She stood there with her hands at her sides and let Tim look at her, and she was blushing — the flush going up her neck and into her cheeks — and she was smiling at the same time.

"Where do I—" she said.

"The chair," Denise said. "Sit at the front of it and put your feet up on the arms. He'll come to you."

Sheila sat. The chair was low and wide and she settled into it and then worked her feet up onto the arms, one and then the other, and the position opened her — her knees falling wide, her cunt tilted up toward the lamp, the hair parting, the whole of her laid out. Tim stayed on his knees and looked at it. He'd licked a lot of women in the last three days and he'd learned that no two were the same, that they all had their own smell and their own shape and their own way of opening, and Sheila's was wide and dark and wet already at the bottom, a shine in the hair.

"Come here, love," she said. "It's all right."

He shuffled forward on his knees. The cushion went with him, half under him, and he got between her feet and put his hands on her thighs — warm, soft, the skin loose over the muscle — and she jumped a little at his palms and then settled. Her cunt was right in front of his face, close enough that he could smell her, warm and thick and faintly sweet, and the hair was coarse under his nose when he leaned in.

"Start at the bottom," Denise said from the wall. "Slow. She's nervous."

Tim put his tongue to her.

The hair was the first thing — coarse and dry against his tongue, and under it the wet, and the taste coming up through it, salt and something deeper, the flat animal smell of her filling his nose. He licked up from the bottom of her slit, slow, the way Denise had told him, and the hair dragged across his tongue and the wet came up with it and Sheila made a small sound above him, a surprised sound, and her thighs tightened on either side of his head.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, that's — that's lovely."

He did it again. Bottom to top, tongue flat, working through the hair to the skin underneath, and she was wetter now, the wet spreading as he licked, and he could taste her properly under the hair — sharp and warm and a little sour, the taste of a woman who'd been sitting in a bar all afternoon with a drink in her hand. He got to the top and found her clit, hooded under the hair, and put his tongue on it and she jerked, both feet coming off the arms for a second, and made a sound that was half laugh.

"Sorry," she said. "Sorry, it's — it's been a while."

"Don't apologize," Denise said. "He's good at it. Tell him what you want."

Sheila looked down at Tim between her thighs, his face half buried in her, his eyes up on her, and she reached down and put her hand on the top of his head — not gripping, just resting, the way you'd rest your hand on a dog's head — and her fingers moved in his hair, feeling the bleach, the pink tips.

"Your hair's so soft," she said. " Do it again, love. Right there."

He did it again. He put his tongue to her clit and worked it in slow circles and she settled back into the chair and let her head fall against the back of it and her hand stayed on his head, and she started to make the sounds — small ones at first, breathy, the sounds of a woman who'd spent years keeping quiet in bed and had to remember how to stop. Her hips began to move. Not much, just a slow tilt, meeting his tongue, and he followed her, kept his tongue where she wanted it, and the wet ran down his chin and into the collar of the slip and he didn't stop.

"That's it," Denise said, from the wall. "Keep her there."

Tim kept her there. He got his tongue flat and hard against her clit and held it and let her grind onto it, and her sounds got bigger — real moans now, low and rolling, the kind that came up out of a chest — and her hand closed in his hair and pulled, and he let her pull him in and kept licking. The hair was wet now, all of it, slicked down, and the taste was stronger, and her thighs were shaking on either side of his head.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, oh — don't stop, don't stop, I'm —"

She came with her heels dug into the arms of the chair and her back arched off it and both hands in his hair, and her cunt clenched against his mouth and the wet flooded out over his chin and down his neck, and she made a long groaning sound that went up at the end like a question. Tim kept his tongue on her through it, the way he'd learned, slow and steady, and she rode it out against his face with her thighs clamped on his ears and her breath coming in sobs.

Then she let go. Her legs slid off the arms and came down and she slumped in the chair, boneless, her blouse open, her chest heaving, and Tim knelt back on the cushion with his face shining wet and his mouth open and his own cock aching up against the slip, untouched, and he looked at her and she looked at him and she started to laugh — a helpless, happy laugh — and put her hand over her face.

"Oh, God," she said. "Oh, God, I've made a mess of you."

She had. His whole lower face was slick with her, the wet dripping off his chin onto the pink slip, and he could feel it cooling on his neck. He didn't wipe it. He'd learned not to.

"You've takne what you paid for," Denise said. She crossed the room and picked up Sheila's clothes off the chair and handed them to her, and Sheila stood and dressed herself, still laughing a little, still flushed, and buttoned her blouse and smoothed her skirt and picked up her handbag.

"That was — thank you," she said, to Denise, and then she looked at Tim on the cushion and her face did something complicated. "Thank you, love," she said, quieter. "You're a good boy."

She went out. The door opened on the noise of the room and closed on it again, and Denise looked at Tim with his face wet and her eyebrows up.

"Good boy," she repeated, tasting it. "She's not wrong."

She went to the door and opened it and said, "Next."

The next one was younger, maybe forty, dark-haired, in a black dress that she pulled up over her hips instead of taking off, and she didn't sit in the chair — she stood over him with one foot on the cushion beside his knee and pushed her cunt into his face and rode his tongue standing up, one hand braced on the wall, and she came fast and quiet, a hand pressed over her own mouth, and was out the door in under ten minutes with her dress still up around her waist.

The one after that was older, in her sixties, and she sat in the chair the way Sheila had and talked the whole time — about her ex-husband, about her daughter in Oregon, about the cruise she'd booked for the fall — and Tim licked her through all of it and she came mid-sentence and lost her place and laughed and said, "Where was I," and then said, "Oh, it doesn't matter," and patted his head and got dressed.

Denise stood at the wall for all of them. She didn't move. She watched the way a woman watches a machine she's built, checking it against the plan, and once or twice she said something — "Slower." "Use your tongue, not your mouth." "Hands on her thighs, not on the cushion" — and Tim did it, and the women came, one after another, and the wet dried on his face and was replaced, and his jaw began to ache in the hinge again, the deep familiar ache, and his knees went numb on the hardwood under the thin cushion, and he kept going.

He lost count somewhere around the eighth or ninth. The door kept opening and closing and the faces kept changing and they were all different and they were all the same — the same rustle of clothes coming off, the same smell of a woman who'd been sitting all afternoon, the same wet under his tongue, the same sounds, the same hand in his hair. Some of them were shy and some of them were not. One of them — a tall woman with a runner's body and short gray hair — held his head still with both hands and fucked his face with her hips, hard and fast and without apology, and came with a grunt like a weightlifter, and looked down at him afterward and said, "Not bad," and left.

And then, somewhere in the middle of it, the door opened and Carol came in.

Red bob, elbow-woman from the bar, the one who'd had her chin in her hand watching him like a matinee the one who had drained him in the bar the first time. She was in a dark blue dress with a pattern of small white flowers and she had a drink in her hand that she set down on the low table next to the lamp, and she looked at Tim on the cushion with his face wet and his cock pushing the pink slip out and his hair wrecked, and she smiled the way she'd smiled at the bar.

"Hello, sweetheart," she said. "Youa re going make me come hard"

"Yes," Tim said. His voice came out hoarse.

"Good." She hiked her dress up and sat down in the chair and put her feet on the arms without being told, and she was bare under the dress — no pants, nothing — and her cunt was neat and dark and already wet, and she looked at him across it with her chin up. "You owe me," she said. "for making you come in the bar! Get in here."

He got in there. He put his mouth on her and she was wet and ready and she didn't need the slow start, and he went straight to her clit and worked it, and Carol watched him do it. That was the thing about Carol — she watched. Her eyes stayed on his face the whole time, on his mouth in her, on the way his jaw moved, and she drank from the glass she'd brought and set it down again and kept watching, and when she was close she put her hand on the back of his head and pushed him down into her and held him there and came with her eyes open, looking at him, and the whole time she didn't make a sound except for one long breath out.

"There," she said, when she was done. She let go of his head and sat back and looked at him with her face flushed and her mouth curled. "You're getting better at that. Denise, he's getting better at that."

"He's had practice," Denise said.

Carol got up and pulled her dress down and picked up her glass and finished it and set it back down empty. She looked at Tim kneeling there with her taste on his face and she reached down and took his chin in her hand and turned his face up and looked at him for a moment.

"You're going to be here a while," she said. "I'll see you at the end."

She went out. The door closed. Denise looked at the clock on the low table and then at Tim.

"Twelve more, at least " she said.

Tim knelt on the cushion and said nothing. His jaw ached. His cock ached worse — it had been hard for over an hour now, leaking into the pink slip, the wet spot gone dark and spreading, and no one had touched it, no one was going to touch it, that wasn't what this was for. He could feel his own pulse in it. He could feel the wet of a dozen women dried and fresh on his face, layered, and the smell of all of them in his nose, and the taste of all of them in his mouth, and he knelt there in the dim room with the lamp honey-colored on the wall and the noise of the bar going on and on behind the door, and he waited for the next one, and the next one came.

Denise came back with the clipboard. She stood in the doorway with it against her hip and read down the page with her thumb moving, and Tim knelt on the cushion with his face drying and watched her mouth. It was the mouth of a woman doing arithmetic.

"Rosa's got fourteen more names," she said. "Two of them are Rosa and Yuki. One's Margaret." She looked up. "You're going to do all of them. You're going to do them properly. And when the last one walks out that door, you're going to be exactly where you are now — on your knees, hard, and nothing in your hand." She tapped the clipboard once. "I'm going to go work the room. Rosa's running the door. You do what she says like it's me saying it."

"Yes," Tim said.

"Say the rest."

He knew the rest. "I'm your girl."

"Good." She set the clipboard on the low table, and she crossed to him, and she crouched down so her face was level with his — close, close enough that he could see the fine powder of her makeup gone and the lines at the corners of her eyes and the jasmine gone stale under her jaw. She put her hand on his cheek, flat, and her thumb wiped once at the corner of his mouth, gathering wet, and she looked at what came off on her thumb and then wiped it on the shoulder of the pink slip.

"You're a mess," she said, fondly, the way you'd say it to a dog that had rolled in something. "Stay a mess."

She stood and went out, and the door closed on the noise of the room, and Tim was alone on the cushion for the length of one breath. Then the door opened again and Rosa came in with the clipboard under her arm.

She didn't sit down. She set the clipboard on the arm of the chair and stood over him with her hands on her hips and looked at him the way a principal looks at a boy sent to the office — not angry, worse, interested. The crimson wrap dress had come loose at the waist sometime in the afternoon and she didn't fix it. Her hoop earrings caught the lamplight when she turned her head.

"Fourteen," she said. "You've done twelve since Sheila. That's a lot of licking"

She stood up and went to her bag on the low table and came back with a bottle of water and a roll of mints, and she cracked the water and held it out.

"Drink. Swill. Spit in the plant."

He drank half the bottle and swilled and spat into the potted fern by the wall, and the water came away tasting of a dozen women and he didn't let himself think about that. Rosa watched him do it and nodded once.

"Better," she said. "Now. I'm going to go first, because I've been standing behind a bar for two hours taking money for your mouth and I want what I paid for." She hiked the dress. Underneath she was bare — she'd come out without anything on under the wrap, and the dark hair was already slick at the edges, and she sat down in the chair and put one foot up on the arm and left the other on the floor, so that she was open to him at an angle, half turned, one knee up.

"Come here," she said. "And use your hands. I want your hands."

Tim shuffled in on his knees and got between her legs. Her thigh was warm and smooth under his palm, the skin oiled with something — she'd put lotion on at some point, coconut, and it mixed with the smell of her and made it sweeter, and he put his mouth on her and she was wet and salty under the sweet, the two things layered, and he licked up her seam and she made a low approving noise in her chest.

"There," she said. "Slow. I'm not in a hurry."

He went slow. He worked his tongue up the length of her and back down and up again, and she sat with her back against the chair and her chin up and watched the ceiling, and her hand came down onto his shoulder and stayed there, thumb moving in a slow circle on the bone, and Tim put his hands on her thighs the way she'd told him and held them and kept his tongue moving.

"You know what I like about you," Rosa said, above him, conversational. "You don't sulk. I've had boys who sulk. You just do it."

He didn't answer. His mouth was busy. She laughed anyway, a small huff of it, and her hips tilted up into his face.

"Left a bit," she said. "No — there. Right there. Hold that."

He held it. He got his tongue flat on her clit and stayed, and she ground down on him in a slow steady roll, the way she'd ground on him the first night in Denise's bed, unhurried, taking her time, and her thumb kept moving on his shoulder and her breathing went long and even and then began to break at the ends, and she came without any drama at all — a long quiet shudder that ran down through her thighs and into his hands, her cunt squeezing against his mouth, and she let out one breath through her nose and that was it.

"Good," she said. She let her foot down off the arm and sat forward and looked at him with his face wet and his eyes up on her. She took his chin in her hand and tilted his face and looked at it a moment, and then she let go and stood and fixed the wrap dress and tied it.

"Yuki's next," she said. "She's been watching the door all afternoon and she's got a look on her." She picked up the clipboard. "And Tim — she's not going to be like me."

She went out. Tim swilled water and spat and knelt back down, and the door opened, and Yuki came in.

She was wearing the black turtleneck still, and the silver knife at her throat, and she closed the door behind her with her back against it and stood there a moment looking at him. Yuki's face gave away nothing. It never did. That was the thing about her — she'd watched him get waxed and she'd watched him get fucked and she'd watched him dance with a toy in him and the whole time her face had been the face of a woman checking a sauce.

"You look terrible," she said.

"Thank you."

"It wasn't a compliment." She came off the door and crossed the room and stood over the cushion, and she looked down at him and then at the chair, and then she did something he didn't expect — she picked up the chair and moved it. Turned it, so that it faced the wall instead of the room, and set it down again and sat in it, sideways, one leg crossed over the other, so that he'd have to come around to her.

"Come here," she said. "Kneel where I can see you."

He shuffled around on the cushion until he was in front of her, and she uncrossed her legs and put both feet on the floor and looked at him for a long moment. Then she reached down and worked the turtleneck up over her head and folded it — folded it, exactly, into a square — and laid it on the arm of the chair. She unhooked her bra and set it on top of the turtleneck. Her breasts were small and high and her nipples had gone hard in the cool of the room, and she sat there in her dark jeans and the silver knife and looked at him with her hands on her knees.

"You've been licking women for three hours," she said. "How's your mouth and tongue."

"Sore."

"Good. You'll remember it." She unbuttoned the jeans and lifted her hips and worked them down, and she was bare under them too, and she stepped out and folded the jeans and laid them on the chair with the rest, and then she sat back down, naked except for the pendant, and she spread her knees and looked at him across the space between them. "You know what I want so do it."

She put one hand on the back of his head and drew him in, and he went, and she was neat and dark and trimmed short and she tasted clean, of soap and skin and the faint bitterness under it, and she was wet but not soaked, and he put his tongue to her and she didn't move at all. That was the thing about Yuki. She didn't move. She sat with her hand on the back of his head and her feet flat on the floor and her knees wide and let him work, and she watched him do it with her chin down and her eyes half closed, and every so often she said a word.

"Flatter."

He flattened his tongue.

"Slower."

He slowed.

"Now the clit. Small circles. Don't press."

He did it exactly, and she breathed out through her nose, once, the only sound she made, and her hand on the back of his head curled a little, the fingers gathering his hair, and Tim kept the circles small and even and she began to move — not her hips, her whole body, a slow rocking that started in her lower back and went up, and her breath came faster and her hand tightened and she said, "Don't stop, don't change anything," and he didn't, he kept the same small circles at the same speed, and she came with her head tipped back and her mouth open and no sound at all except a long hiss of air, her thighs closing on his ears, her cunt pulsing against his tongue in slow deep beats.

He kept going until her hand relaxed. Then he sat back on the cushion and she looked down at him, flushed, and reached for her clothes and dressed herself in the order she'd undressed, jeans then bra then turtleneck, and when she had the turtleneck on she smoothed it down and picked up the pendant and settled it at her throat.

"You're still hard," she said.

"Yes."

"That's not going to change." She stood and looked at him with her hands at her sides. "There's water on the table. Drink it. The next one's Margaret and she's been waiting a long time"

She went out. Tim drank and spat and knelt back down, and his mouth aching, and his cock was a separate animal, and he could feel his own heartbeat in the wet spot on the slip, and he heard the door open and close and a chair scrape, and then Margaret came in.

She smiled, and it was a small, private smile, and she uncrossed her knees and crossed them the other way and looked at him over the top of her glasses.

She stood and unbuttoned her blouse — a soft blue thing, buttoned to the throat, and she took her time with it, button by button, and folded it over the back of the chair. Her bra was beige and practical and she reached back and unhooked it and let it fall and her breasts came down heavy and full, the nipples wide and brown, and she took that off and laid it on the blouse. Then the skirt — a gray wool skirt with a zip at the back — and she stepped out of it and folded it and set it on the seat of the chair, and she was in plain black pants that she took down and stepped out of, and then she stood there in her stockings and her shoes and nothing else, and she was silver-haired at the crotch too, thick and untrimmed, the lips full and dark and already wet, and she looked at him and then at the chair and then back at him.

"I'm not sitting in that chair," she said. "I've got a bad hip." She stepped out of her shoes and peeled the stockings down and left them in a heap, and then she lowered herself down onto the cushion beside him — down on her knees, both of them, on the thin cushion, so that they were side by side, both kneeling, her thigh against his thigh, and she turned her head and looked at him from six inches away.

"There," she said. "Now we're the same height."

She swung one leg over him — not smoothly, with a grunt and a hand on his shoulder for balance — and settled onto his face, kneeling over him, her knees on the cushion on either side of his head, and her cunt came down over his mouth, and she was heavy and warm and she smelled of wine and of herself, and Tim got his tongue into her and she sat down on it with her full weight and let out a long breath.

"That's it," she said. "Just like that. I've been sitting at that table for three hours thinking about this."

She rode him slowly, both hands braced on his shoulders, and she talked the whole time — not to him, exactly, more to the room, the way a woman talks to a cat. "My husband's been dead six years," she said. "He was a good man. Boring. You're not boring." She shifted her weight and Tim got his tongue up into her and she made a low sound and settled deeper. "Denise says you're twenty-two. I've got a grandson your age. He's at Cornell." She ground down, slow and deliberate, and her cunt clenched around his tongue. "He doesn't do this."

Tim kept his mouth working. Her thighs were heavy and soft and they pressed on his ears and the weight of her made it hard to breathe and he didn't care, and she kept talking, and her hips kept rolling, and she was wetter now, slick all down his chin, and she reached down with one hand and found his hair and held it.

"Now," she said. "Faster. I'm not going to be long, I've been waiting all day."

He went faster. He got his tongue hard on her clit and worked it and she stopped talking and started breathing through her mouth, and her hand knotted in his hair and pulled, and she came sitting on his face with her back arched and her tits swinging and a long grinding sound in her throat, and she stayed on him through it, rocking, until it ran out of her, and then she lifted off him and sat back on her heels on the cushion and pushed her hair back off her face with both hands.

"Well," she said. She was flushed all down her chest. "Well."

She got up — slowly, with a hand on his shoulder, and she stood and dressed herself in reverse, pants then skirt then bra then blouse, and buttoned the blouse to the throat and put her glasses back on, and she picked up her wine and drank the last of it and set the empty glass down and looked at him kneeling there with his mouth open and her taste all over his face.

"You're a good boy," she said. "That's not a compliment either. It's just true." She went to the door and stopped with her hand on it and looked back at him.

She went out. The door closed. Tim knelt on the cushion and swilled water and spat into the fern and knelt back down, exhausted , and his cock had gone past aching into something else, a low steady throb that had nothing to do with wanting and everything to do with being kept, and the door opened again, and the next one came.

He lost the names after that. There were women he'd pleased before on the bar and women he hadn't, and they came in one after another, briefly, a pair who'd paid for a single slot together and sat in the chair with one on the other's lap and made him work between them, up one and down the other, until they'd both come and gone out laughing with their arms around each other. The one on top had a birthmark like a thumbprint on her inner thigh, and the one underneath had bitten her own lip so hard he saw the blood bead and she licked it off and grinned at him, and then they were gone.

There was a woman with a tattoo of a swallow on her shoulder blade who swore and cursed him as he pleasured her — the bird rose and fell with the muscle as she arched, and her voice went low and filthy in his ear, calling him things that made his face burn, and when she came she dug her nails into his wrist and said, "Don't you stop, don't you fucking stop," and he didn't, and she left without looking at him.

There was a woman who smelled of cigarettes and menthol and made him stop twice so she could catch her breath. The first time she put her hand flat on his chest and pushed him back, and he sat on his heels and watched her chest rise and fall under the thin fabric of her shirt, watched the pulse in her throat, and she said, "Give me a second," and he waited, and the second time she just turned her head and coughed into her elbow and then pulled him back in with her fingers in his hair.

There was a woman who didn't take anything off at all — just pulled her jeans down to her knees and stood braced against the wall with her back to him and made him lick her from behind, and she came fast and pulled her jeans up and was gone in four minutes and never said a word. But he remembered the way her skin tasted, salt and soap and something underneath that was just her, and the way her hands had pressed flat against the wallpaper, fingers spread, and the small sound she made, a single exhale, when it hit her.

And through all of it, the noise went on behind the door — the shrill rise and fall of forty women. Twice Denise looked in. The first time she just stood in the doorway with her arms crossed and watched him work a woman in the chair, and when the woman came and got up to dress, Denise said, "Good," and shut the door again. The second time she didn't come in at all — she just opened the door a hand's width and looked at him on his knees with his face wet and his cock straining the pink slip and his hair wrecked, and she smiled, and shut it.

Somewhere past the tenth or eleventh, his knees stopped being knees. They were just two places where he met the floor, and the floor came up through the thin cushion, and he knelt on them anyway because getting up wasn't a thing that was on the table. His jaw had gone past pain into a numb hot swell and he had to think about closing his mouth. His cock had been hard so long that it had stopped being an event and become weather. He could feel the wet spot on the slip gone cold and then warm again where the next woman's thighs pressed it against him.

And then the door opened and Carol came back.

She was still in the dark blue dress with the white flowers and she had a fresh drink in her hand and she stood in the doorway and looked at him and then at the clock on the low table, and she came in and shut the door behind her and leaned on it.

"Last one," she said. "I bought the last slot. I told Rosa to save it for me." She came across and set the drink down and stood over the cushion looking at him with her chin in her hand, the way she'd looked at him from the bar, like a woman at a matinee. "You've done well today. ."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet." She hiked the dress up and sat down in the chair and put her feet up on the arms, and she was bare under it, and she was already wet, and she looked at him across her own knees with her eyebrows up. "You've been at this five hours and you're still hard and you still haven't come. That's the whole show, isn't it. That's what Denise is selling." She reached down and put two fingers on herself, unhurried, spreading, showing him. "Come and get it, sweetheart. Last one of the day." and Tim went to her on his knees. He got his mouth on her and she was wet and warm and tasted of gin and of herself, the two things layered, and she put one hand down onto the top of his head and held it there without pressing.

"That's it," she said. "You know what you're doing”.

Tim kept his tongue moving. He got it flat on her and worked up and down the length of her and she made a low sound and her heel dug into the arm of the chair. She was tighter, more deliberate, the kind of woman who knew exactly how long she had and exactly how she wanted to spend it. She reached down and took his hair in her fist and moved his head where she wanted it, and Tim let her move it, and she ground up into his mouth in short hard rolls.

Carol came with her heel braced on the arm of the chair and her fist twisted in his hair, and she held him against her through the whole of it, grinding down, so that Tim couldn't breathe and didn't try to, and when it let go of her she pushed his head back off her with the flat of her hand and sat there a moment with her chest heaving and her eyes shut.

"All right," she said, when she had her breath. "All right." She swung her feet down off the arms and stood and pulled the dress down over her hips and smoothed it, and she picked up her drink and finished it and set the glass on the low table, and she looked down at him kneeling there with his mouth open and his chin slick to the jaw.

"I'll tell Rosa you're done," she said. She went to the door and opened it, and the noise of the room came in like water through a gate — the women, the glasses, the low roar — and she stood in it a moment with her back to him and then she turned her head.

"You did good, sweetheart," she said, and went out, and the door shut, and it was quiet again.

Tim got the water and swilled and spat and drank the rest of the bottle, and his hands were shaking on the plastic. His mouth, jaw and tongue hurt. He knelt back down on the cushion. The fern had a wet ring of soil around its base and he looked at that instead of at the door.

The door opened. A woman he didn't know came in — fifties, big through the shoulders, a floral blouse and reading glasses pushed up into her hair — and she looked at him kneeling there and said, "Oh, you poor thing," and sat down in the chair and took her glasses out of her hair and folded them and put them on the arm, and then she hiked her skirt and said, "Come on then, love, let's get it over with," and Tim crawled in between her knees and got his tongue into her and she was quick and businesslike and she came in under three minutes with her hand flat on the top of his head, and she stood and fixed her skirt and put her glasses back in her hair and said, "There's a good lad," and left.

The next two came together. Sisters, he thought — the same jaw, the same laugh — and they took the chair and the cushion both, one in the chair with her legs over the arms and one kneeling on the cushion beside him with her hand on the back of his neck to steer him, and they made him go back and forth between them, chair then cushion then chair, and the one on the cushion kept saying, "No, the other one, she's not done," and the one in the chair kept laughing at that, and it went on long enough that Tim stopped hearing the words and just moved where the hand on his neck pushed him, and they finished close together, the one in the chair first and the one on the cushion watching her sister's face while she came and then putting her own hand down between her legs and finishing herself off against his mouth in three quick strokes, and then they got up and dressed and left together, still laughing.

And then Rosa came back .

She stood in the doorway and looked at the page and then at him, and her mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile. "Four more you are a popular girl" she said. "Including me again, because I bought a second slot while you were busy. And Yuki's coming back through because she says you owe her one for the door." She tapped the clipboard. "And Margaret's put her name down a second time. She's at the bar telling everyone about you. You've got a reputation now."

Tim's voice came out rough. "Okay."

"Okay," Rosa said, and she set the clipboard on the arm of the chair and came and stood over him, and she looked at his face — his mouth, the click in his jaw, the wet down his neck — and she crouched and took his chin and turned it and looked at the left side where the click was, and she pressed her thumb into the joint and he flinched.

"That's a real one," she said. " So here's what we're going to do. You're going to lie back on the cushion for me. On your back. I'm going to sit on your face and you're going to keep your jaw still and let me do the work." She stood and stepped out of the wrap dress and let it fall on the chair, and she was naked under it again, and she stood there with her hands on her hips and her hoop earrings swinging. "Lie down."

Tim lay back on the thin cushion with his head at the edge of the fern pot and his knees up, and Rosa came down over him — knees on either side of his head, facing his feet this time, so that he looked up the length of her back and her spine and the back of her neck — and she settled her cunt down onto his mouth and put her hands on his chest and took her weight there, and she was warm and heavy and slick, and Tim got his tongue up into her and she began to move, rolling her hips down onto his face in a slow grind, and he didn't have to do anything but hold his tongue up and let her use it.

"That's it," she said, over her shoulder, not looking at him. "Just stay. I'll do it." She rocked on him, slow and steady, her weight coming down and up and down, and Tim lay there with his hands flat on the floor and his cock straining the pink slip and his jaw finally still, and she went on like that for a long time, unhurried, working herself on his mouth, and he could hear her breathing change and her hands press harder on his chest, and she came with a long low sound and stayed on him through it, grinding slow, until she lifted off and sat back on his chest and looked down at him upside down.

"See," she said. "Easy." She got up and dressed and picked up the clipboard. "Yuki's next. She's got the door covered and she's coming in."

Yuki came in with the turtleneck still on and the pendant at her throat, and she closed the door and stood looking at him lying on the cushion with his jaw slack and his mouth open and his eyes half shut.

"You're wrecked," she said.

"Yes."

"Good." She crossed and looked down at him, and then she did the thing she'd done before — she moved the chair, this time dragging it around so it faced the fern, and she sat in it sideways with one leg crossed over the other and looked at him on the floor. "Get up on your knees. Slowly. Don't use your hands."

Tim got up on his knees without his hands, which took a long time and made his thighs shake, and Yuki watched him do it with her chin down. When he was up she uncrossed her legs and stood and worked the turtleneck up over her head and folded it and laid it on the arm of the chair, and the bra on top of it, and the jeans folded and laid on top, and she stood naked except for the pendant and looked at him.

"This time you're going to do it standing," she said. "On your feet. Because I want to see your legs."

He got up. His legs were water and he got up anyway, and Yuki came and stood against the wall with her back to it and one foot up on the low table, and she was open to him at an angle and she reached down and spread herself with two fingers and looked at him.

"Come here," she said. "And don't touch me with your hands. Only your mouth."

Tim bent to her — his knees bending, his back bending, his hands locked behind him — and got his mouth on her and she was neat and dark and trimmed and tasted of soap and skin, and he worked his tongue into her and she put one hand flat on the top of his head and held him there and didn't move, the way she hadn't moved before, and every so often she said a word.

"Higher."

He went higher.

"Slower. Small circles."

He made the small circles. His legs shook and hismouth ached and he kept the circles small and even, and she stood against the wall with her foot up on the table and her hand on his head and watched him work with her eyes half closed, and her breath came faster and her hand curled into his hair, and she came the way she came, with a long hiss of air and her thighs closing on his ears, and Tim stayed on her through it with his hands locked behind his back and his legs shaking under him.

She let him go. She reached for her clothes and dressed in her order, jeans then bra then turtleneck, and smoothed the turtleneck down and settled the pendant, and she looked at him standing there swaying with his mouth wet and his cock pushing at the slip.

"Sit down before you fall down," she said. "Margaret's last. She's been at the bar an hour telling people about your mouth." She went to the door and stopped with her hand on it and looked back. "You're doing well. That's not a compliment. It's just true."

She went out. Tim sat down on the cushion because standing was over, and he swilled water and spat and drank the rest, and the door opened, and Margaret came in.

She had a fresh glass of wine and her glasses on and the blue blouse buttoned to the throat, and she shut the door with her heel and stood looking at him sitting there on the cushion with his jaw hanging and his mouth wrecked and his eyes up on her, and she took a drink and set the glass on the low table and pulled the chair around — not the way Yuki had, but square to him — and sat down in it with her knees together and her hands folded.

"Hello again, Tim," she said.

"Margaret."

"Good boy." She uncrossed her knees and crossed them the other way and looked at him over the top of the glasses. "I told the whole bar about you. " She reached up and took the glasses off and folded them and set them on the table by the wine. "Now. I'm going to sit in this chair and you're going to come here and do it with your mouth and your hands both, and you're going to take your time, because I've got nowhere to be."

She stood and unbuttoned the blouse, button by button, and folded it over the back of the chair, and unhooked the beige bra and laid it on the blouse, and her breasts came down heavy and full, and then the gray wool skirt, folded, and the plain black pants, stepped out of, and she sat back down in the chair in her stockings and her shoes and nothing else, and she spread her knees and looked at him.

"Come here," she said. "On your knees. And put your hands on my thighs like a good boy."

Tim came to her on his knees and put his hands on her thighs — warm and soft and silver-haired at the tops — and he got his mouth on her and she was wet and heavy and tasted of wine and of herself, and she leaned back in the chair with her chin up and her hands on the arms and let him work, and she talked the whole time, the way she'd talked before.

"My husband never did this," she said. "Six years dead and he never once did this. He thought it was beneath him." She shifted her hips up into his face. "You don't think it's beneath you, do you."

Tim kept his tongue moving. He got it flat on her and worked up and down the length of her and she made a low sound and her hand came down off the arm and found his hair and held it.

"That's it," she said. "Right there. Don't stop." She ground up into his mouth in slow rolls and her thighs closed on his ears and her hand tightened in his hair, and she came with her back arched and her tits swinging and a long grinding sound in her throat, and she stayed on him through it, rocking, until it ran out of her, and then she pushed his head back off her with the flat of her hand and sat there getting her breath.

"Well," she said. "Well." She stood — slowly, with a hand on his shoulder — and dressed herself in reverse, pants then skirt then bra then blouse, and buttoned the blouse to the throat and put the glasses back on, and she picked up her wine and drank the last of it and set the empty glass down and looked at him kneeling there with his mouth open and her taste all over his face.

The door closed. Tim knelt on the cushion and swilled water and spat into the fern and knelt back down, and his jaw was a hot wire and his cock was a separate animal and his knees were two places where he met the floor, and he heard the door open and close and a chair scrape, and he thought, that's the last one, that's all of them, and he waited for Rosa to come in and tell him he was done.

The door opened. It wasn't Rosa. It was Denise, her emerald blouse gone creased and her hair come loose from the bob, and she stood in the doorway and looked at him on the cushion with his face wrecked and his cock straining the pink slip and his hands hanging at his sides,

"Well done pretty boy," she said. "You did all of them." She set the clipboard on the low table and crossed to him and crouched down so her face was level with his, and she looked at him a long moment — at the click in his jaw, at the wet down his neck, at the wet spot on the slip gone cold — and she put her hand flat on his cheek and her thumb wiped once at the corner of his mouth, gathering wet, and she looked at what came off on her thumb and wiped it on the shoulder of the pink slip.

Denise's thumb came away from his mouth wet and she wiped it on the slip's shoulder, the same fond gesture, the same cataloguing look. Then she stood and held out her hand.

"Up," she said. "We're not done with you yet."

He took her hand and she pulled him to his feet. His knees screamed and his jaw clicked and the blood rushed out of his head and he swayed, and she held his arm until he steadied. The pink slip was stuck to him in places — the wet spot on his cock, the sweat at his back — and he could feel the dried layers of a dozen women on his face, tight and stiffening.

"Walk," she said. "You can do it. It's not far."

The noise hit him before the door was fully open — the room had been going all afternoon, but it had been a background roar, muffled by the wall. Now it was a wall of sound, forty women laughing and talking and clinking glasses, and the smell of perfume and warm alcohol and something sweet frying hit him in the face like a hand. He blinked in the light. The bar was brighter than the side room, the high windows still letting in the afternoon sun, and every woman in the place seemed to turn toward him at once.

"There he is," someone called. "The little worker."

"Look at him, he's still in his nightie."

"He's still hard!" — this from a woman near the bar, delighted, and a wave of laughter went up around it.

Denise walked him through the room with her hand on his arm, and the women made way for them the way they'd made way when they came in — a path opening, then closing behind them like water. He felt hands on him as he passed — a palm on his ass through the slip, a finger trailing down his arm, a woman reaching out to touch his hair as he went by. He didn't flinch anymore. He didn't have the energy to flinch.

There was a clearing at the center of the floor, the same clearing where Denise had stood him and taken off his coat. But now there was a chair in the middle of it — a plain wooden chair, the kind that had been stacked by the wall — and beside it, a small table with a bottle of water and a towel. And lined up in front of it, in a loose arc facing the chair, were the women.

He counted them without meaning to. Twelve. He recognized most of them — Margaret, at the end of the line with her glass of wine, and Carol, , and the woman with the silver temples who'd touched his shoulder when the coat came off. The others were faces he'd seen in the crowd, some of them faces he'd seen from the cushion between their thighs. They were all looking at him.

Denise stopped him in front of the chair and turned him to face the line.

"You've done the charity work," she said, loud enough for the room. "You've licked off every woman who paid and you did good." A murmur of agreement went around.But you haven't finished proper," she said, "these women want you to shoot off for them.” She put her hand on his chest, flat, the way she'd done it the first night, and pressed him back until his knees hit the chair and he sat down in it hard. "You're going to sit here and you're going to let these ladies touch you and rub you as they want. you can come when you want but all twelve are going to do you with no gaps

Tim sat in the wooden chair with his hands on his thighs and his cock standing up against the pink slip, and the line of women looked at him, and the room went quiet the way it had gone quiet when the coat came off.

"Number one," Denise said.

The first woman stepped forward. She was maybe forty-five, dark hair pulled back, a green blouse with the sleeves rolled up, and she had the look of a woman who'd been laughing all afternoon — flushed, loose, her eyes bright and Tim remebered a hairy clean cunt but could,not remember when in the afternoon he has served her . She came to stand in front of him and looked down at him sitting there with his hands on his thighs and his cock pushing the slip out, and she smiled.

"Hello, pretty," she said.

"Hello."

She reached down and touched him through the slip — her hand closing over the head of his cock, the fabric slick with his own wetness — and he jumped, a small whole-body thing, and she laughed softly and held on.

"Easy," she said. "I'm just looking." She wasn't just looking. She was stroking him through the pink fabric, slow, her thumb running up the underside of his cock, and the wet spot spread under her hand and she felt it and smiled. "Oh, he's ready. He's been ready all day, hasn't he."

"Yes," Tim said. His voice came out rough.

"Good boy." She worked the hem of the slip up, gathering the fabric in her fist until his cock was free — standing up hard and dark against his belly, the head of it slick and shining, the shaft streaked with the wet that had been soaking the fabric all afternoon. She looked at it for a moment, her head tilted, and then she wrapped her hand around it — warm, dry, her fingers barely meeting around the girth — and gave it one slow stroke from root to tip.

Tim's hips came up off the chair. He couldn't help it. The touch was so much — after hours of nothing, after his cock had been hard and untouched and leaking for what felt like a year, the feel of a hand on it, a real hand, fingers closing around the shaft, was like lightning down his spine. He made a sound, a low broken thing, and the woman laughed softly and did it again. She stroked him slow and steady, her thumb dragging over the head each time, and Tim sat in the chair with his hands gripping his own thighs and his head going back and his mouth open, and he could feel it building already — the long slow pressure that had been coiling in him all day, the thing he'd been holding back since the side room, since the car, since the morning.

"Not yet," Denise said, from somewhere behind him. "He's not for the first one.”

The woman's hand slowed, and then stopped, and she let go of him and stepped back. "I know," she said. "I'm just warming him up." She looked at Tim with his cock standing up hard and wet and his chest heaving, and she smiled and moved away.

The second one stepped up without a word. She was younger, maybe thirty-five, short blond hair, a dark tattoo snaking up her forearm, and she had taken longer than most to come on his face and she didn't bother with any of the slow build. She just took him — hard, rough, no mercy — her grip digging in, stroking him fast and mean while the women watching hooted and clapped. Tim sobbed, his whole body jerking, and the ache lingered, his arousal bleeding out with every stroke of her hand, each pump draining the heat from him until he was softening, wilting, the fire gutted before it could catch.

Her hand slid off him, a slow, cruel curl at the corner of her mouth, savoring the wreckage she'd left behind.

The third woman was older, maybe sixty, with silver hair cut short and a pair of reading glasses on a chain around her neck. She didn't kneel. She stood in front of him, took her glasses off, folded them, and handed them to a friend in the line. Then she looked down at his cock with the calm appraisal of a woman who'd seen a thousand of them and wasn't impressed by any and Tim could not remember serving her.

"He's pretty," she said, to no one in particular. "Like a little doll." She reached out and took hold of him — not stroking, just holding, her thumb resting on the shaft, feeling the heat of him, the jump of his pulse. "You've been a busy boy, haven't you."

"Yes," Tim whispered.

"Mmm." She began to move her hand, slow, almost lazy, a full grip that dragged from root to tip and back. "That's what I heard. That you licked off every woman in the room who paid." Her thumb circled the head, spreading the wetness. "That's a good skill for a boy to have." She worked him steadily, no rush, her grip firm, and Tim felt the pressure begin to climb again — slower this time, deeper, a heavy tide that started in his balls and rolled up through his belly.

She stroked him for a long minute, her face impassive, studying him the way you'd study a machine you were thinking of buying. Tim's head fell back. His mouth opened. The sound that came out of him was thin and high and he didn't care. He was so close. He could feel it building, the wave cresting, the edge rushing up at him —

The woman's hand stopped, mid-stroke, and held. Tim made a sound like a wounded animal. She held him there, her hand tight around the base of his cock, until the wave receded, leaving him trembling and wet-eyed, and then she let go and stepped back.

The fourth woman was heavyset, with a kind face and a floral blouse, but he remembers a smelly very wet cunt and a loud orgasm fro her and she came at him with both hands — one closing around his cock, the other cupping his balls, her thumb working the soft skin behind them. Tim's hips bucked. He couldn't help it. and he heard himself make a sound that was almost a word.

"Easy, sweetheart," she said, her voice warm. "I've got you." She stroked him slow, her hand a loose ring, her thumb still working that spot behind his balls, and Tim felt the pressure build again — a different pressure, deeper, coming from lower down, like something was being drawn up out of him by a string. "That's it. Let it build. ." Her fingers tightened, a squeeze that ran up the shaft, and Tim's vision went white at the edges. "Not yet, though. Not for me." She let go of him, patted his thigh, and stepped back with a wink. "Save it, handsome."

Tim sat in the chair, shaking, his cock standing up so hard it hurt, the head dark and leaking drops of pre-cum that ran down the shaft. He was aware of the women in the line watching him, of the murmur of approval, of Denise somewhere behind him saying something he couldn't hear. All he could feel was the pressure, the enormous swollen pressure, the thing he'd been holding back all day and couldn't hold much longer.

The fifth woman was Rosa. She stepped out of the line with a smile that didn't reach her eyes, and she walked up to him slow, her hips moving under the crimson dress, and she stood in front of him with her hands on her hips.

"Look at you," she said. "All dressed up, all worked up, and not a drop of relief in you." She reached down and took his cock in her hand — her grip familiar, proprietary, the grip of a woman who'd held him before — and gave it one slow, deliberate stroke. "You've been so good. All afternoon. All day." She stroked him again, slower, her thumb dragging over the head. "You've done everything we asked. You've been a good girl." Tim's breath caught. The word went through him like a current. "And now you're going to come . Not for me. I'm just the warm-up." She leaned in, her mouth close to his ear, her hand still moving on him, slow and firm. "But I want you to remember who's been holding you back all day. Who's been keeping you on the edge. Who's been doing this to you." Her hand tightened, a squeeze that made his whole body lock.

"Good girl." She gave him three more strokes — slow, deliberate, merciless — and then she let go and stepped back, and the room was silent, and Denise's voice came from behind him, clear and amused.

The sixth woman stepped forward, and Tim knew her before she reached him. Carol. Her chin was up, her arms crossed, and she had the look of a woman who'd been waiting for this all day to do him and her two orgasms had just been a warm up to this . She stopped in front of him and looked down at his cock — standing up hard and dark and leaking, the shaft slick with the wetness of five women's hands — and she smiled, slow, the smile of a woman who had him exactly where she wanted him.

"Hello, pretty," she said.

"Hello," Tim whispered.

"I've been waiting for this." She reached down and took hold of him — her grip sure, her fingers closing around the shaft like she owned it, because she did — and she gave him one long, slow stroke that started at the root and dragged all the way to the tip, her thumb pressing hard into the head. Tim's hips came off the chair. His mouth opened. A sound came out of him that was almost a sob. "Oh, he's ready. He's so ready. You can feel it, can't you, the way he's trembling." She stroked him again, faster, her grip firm, and the pressure in Tim's belly surged, the wave rising, the edge rushing up at him, and he heard himself beg — "Please — please —"

"Please what?" Carol said. She didn't stop. She stroked him harder, her thumb working the head, and Tim felt the orgasm building, cresting, about to break —

"Please let me come —"

"good girl," Carol said. "you can come for me." She stroked him once more, slow, deliberate, her thumb pressing into the slit, and Tim felt the wave break — the orgasm surging up out of him like something physical, like a hand closing around his spine and pulling — and he came with a sound that was almost a scream, his whole body arching, his cock jerking in her grip, a splash of cum spilling over her fingers and onto his belly, and Carol held him through it, stroking him slow, milking every drop until he was spent and shaking and sobbing.

"Good boy," Carol said. She held up her hand, slick with his cum, and showed it to the room. "That's what I'm talking about."

The room erupted. Laughter, applause, women calling out, and Tim sat in the chair with his chest heaving and his cock softening and his eyes wet, and he thought it was over. He thought he was done.

Then Denise's voice cut through the noise.

"Not yet," she said. "The line's not done with you."

Tim heard the words the way you hear a verdict — clear, final, no appeal in them. His softening cock twitched on his thigh, a small animal reflex, and he felt the wet heat of his own cum cooling against his belly where Carol had left it shining. He wanted to say please. He wanted to say no. He wanted to say he couldn't, that there was nothing left, that his body had been emptied out of everything except the shaking.

He didn't say any of it.

The as the seventh woman was already stepping forward before Denise had even finished the word. She was tall, mid-fifties, with a sharp jaw and a dark blazer over a white blouse and he again could not remeber when or if hehad serviced her, and she looked at his softening cock with the same calm appraisal as the silver-haired woman before her. She didn't wait for him to be ready. She didn't ask.

"Not done," she said, and her hand closed around him.

Tim made a sound he didn't recognize — a thin, high whine that came out of his throat without his permission. The touch was wrong. It was too much. His cock was limp and wet and oversensitive, the skin rawbeing denied and then rubbed and teased, and her hand was dry and firm and she was stroking him anyway, slow and deliberate, a full grip that dragged from root to tip and back again.

"Oh, he's tender," she said, half to the room. "Look at him twitch."

"Please," Tim heard himself say. The word came out broken. "Please, I can't —"

"You can," she said. "You will." Her thumb circled the head, pressing into the slit where his cum was still drying, and Tim's whole body locked. The sensation was electric and awful, a bright spike of overstimulation that shot up his spine and turned his vision white at the edges. His cock jerked in her grip — not hardening, not yet, but jumping, twitching, responding despite everything. "There it is. See? He's got more in him." She worked him faster, her grip tightening, and Tim felt the impossible thing begin to happen — the pressure building again, the swollen ache of a cock that had nothing left to give being forced to try anyway.

He sobbed. It was a real sob, wet and ugly, and it came out of him while the tall woman stroked him with her calm, impassive face, and the room watched, and Denise said nothing.

The eighth woman took over before the seventh had even stepped back. She was younger, maybe forty, with a shock of red hair and a grin that showed too many teeth and again he reembered her cunt on his mouth. She didn't stroke him like the others. She held his cock in her fist, tight, and squeezed — a slow, deliberate pressure that started at the base and ran up the shaft like a wave of fire. Tim screamed. It was a small, strangled sound, barely a breath, but it was a scream, and the redhead laughed.

"He's a screamer," she said, delighted. "I love that." She did it again, the same slow squeeze, and Tim's hands came off his thighs and gripped the arms of the chair, his knuckles white, his whole body arched and rigid. "I want to see how fast we can get him coming again. I bet we can. I bet he's got one more in him."

"I don't," Tim gasped. "I don't — I can't —"

"Shh," she said. "You don't get to decide that." Her hand moved, a loose ring now, stroking him slow and easy, and the pressure in his cock was a dull, terrible ache that was somehow also pleasure, the two twisted together until he couldn't tell them apart. He was half-hard. He could feel it, the impossible stiffening, the blood returning to the abused tissue, and he made a sound that was almost a sob and almost a moan and not quite either. "There he is. There's the good boy."

She worked him until he was fully hard — a thick, dark, aching erection that hurt in a way Tim had never felt before, a swollen pressure that throbbed with every heartbeat — and then she let go and stepped back, and the ninth woman was already there.

The ninth woman was Yuki. Tim saw her face and felt something in his chest loosen, a small thing, a flicker of relief — and then he saw her expression, the same quiet, watchful intensity she'd worn all day, and the relief died. She didn't smile. She didn't speak. She reached down and took his cock in her small, quick hands, her fingers cool against the overheated skin, and she began to stroke him with the same precision she used to chop an onion — efficient, deliberate, no wasted motion.

"Yuki," Tim whispered. "Please. Please, I've done everything —"

"I know," she said, her voice soft. "You've been very good." Her thumb pressed into the head, a small circle, and Tim's hips bucked. "But we are not done. And you don't get to stop until we say so." She stroked him faster, her grip firm, and Tim felt the orgasm building again — a thin, desperate thing, nothing like the full-body wave that had broken for Carol. This was a smaller pressure, a tighter coil, a thing that felt like it might tear him apart from the inside. "Hold it," she said. "Not yet. Not for me."

She worked him to the edge and held him there, her hand still, her thumb on the head, and Tim sat in the chair with his whole body trembling and his eyes wet and his mouth open, and he didn't know if he was going to come or cry or both.

The tenth woman was Margaret. She came forward with her wine glass in one hand, set it down on the small table beside the chair, and looked at Tim with a soft, almost maternal expression. "Oh, sweetheart," she said. "Look at you. You're shaking like a leaf." She reached out and took his cock in her hand — her grip gentle, the touch of a woman who'd buried a husband and knew what it meant to be gentle with something fragile. "It's okay. I've got you." She stroked him slow, her thumb soft on the head, and Tim felt the pressure ease — just a little, just enough to breathe. "You've been so good today. So brave. Let it go for me, sweetheart. Let it go."

Her hand moved faster, a steady rhythm, and Tim felt the orgasm surge up out of him — not the thin, desperate thing that Yuki had been holding back, but a real one, a wave that started in his balls and rolled up through his belly and broke over him like something physical. He came with a sound that was almost a scream, his body arching, his cock jerking in her grip, spilling of come over her fingers, and Margaret held him through it, stroking him slow, her other hand on his thigh, murmuring, "That's it. That's it, sweetheart. Let it go."

When it was over, Tim collapsed forward, his forehead nearly touching his knees, his chest heaving, his cock still half-hard and throbbing with a pain that was almost pleasure. He thought it was over. He thought the women were done.

"Nuext," Denise said.

Tim lifted his head. His vision was blurry with tears. He saw the eleventh woman step forward — a woman he didn't recognize, mid-forties, with dark curly hair and a kind face — and he saw her reach for his cock with a smile, and he heard himself make a sound that was almost a word, almost a plea, almost nothing at all.

"Please," he whispered. "Please, I can't — I can't do it again —"

"You can," she said, and her hand closed around him, and Tim screamed.

It was a real scream this time, high and broken, and it echoed off the bar's walls and the room went quiet and then the women laughed, a warm, delighted sound, and the woman worked his oversensitive cock with her hand, stroking him slow and firm, and Tim sobbed and begged and came again — a thin, painful orgasm that was more spasm than pleasure, his body jerking in the chair, his cock twitching in her grip, nothing left in him but the shaking.

"Good boy," she said, and let go, and stepped back.

The twelfth woman stepped forward. She was older, maybe sixty, with silver-streaked hair and a floral blouse, and she looked at Tim with something like pity and something like hunger and something like neither.

"You've been so good," she said. "So good for all of us." and Tim remembered her moaing in orgasm on his tongue She reached down and took his cock in her hand — the touch like fire on the raw, abused skin — and Tim sobbed, a wet, broken sound, and she stroked him anyway, slow and gentle, her thumb soft on the head. Her hand moved faster, a steady rhythm, and Tim felt the impossible thing begin to build again — a thin, terrible pressure in his cock, a thing that felt like it might kill him, like it might tear him apart. "That's it. That's it, sweetheart. Let it go for me." She worked him hard, her grip firm, and Tim came with a sound that was barely a whimper, his body going limp in the chair, his cock twitching and just a drop coming out, and the woman held him through it, stroking him slow, until he was spent and sobbing and done.

She let go and he heard the women around him — the eruption of applause, the sharp, bright cheers, the laughter that rang like shattered glass — and he knew, dimly, that it was for her, for what she had done, for the spectacle she had made of him, and maybe for him too, but it all came to him through a haze, muffled and distant, like sound heard underwater. His head was swimming, his body still trembling with the aftershocks of what she had wrung from him, and he could feel the slick, cooling mess of his own release on his skin, a shameful, undeniable proof of how thoroughly the women had broken him open.

Tim sat in the chair with his head hanging, his chest heaving, his cock softening on his thigh, and he was aware, distantly, of the room erupting — applause, laughter, women calling out — and he was aware of Denise's hand on his shoulder, warm and steady, and he was aware of her voice, close to his ear, soft and amused.

"Good girl," she said. "You did so well."

Denise's hand stayed on his shoulder, warm and steady, and Tim sat in the chair with his head hanging and his chest heaving and the room going on around him like weather. The applause was thinning out into talk, into the clink of glasses, into women turning back to their drinks and their conversations, and he was aware of it the way you're aware of rain on a window — out there, not in here.

"Can you stand?" Denise asked, close to his ear.

He tried. His thighs came up off the chair and his knees locked and he sat back down hard, and the wooden chair legs scraped the floor, and somebody nearby laughed — not unkindly, the way you'd laugh at a puppy that fell off a step.

"That's a no," Denise said. She straightened up and looked over his head, and Tim turned his head enough to see who she was looking at. Rosa was coming across the floor with the clipboard under her arm, and behind her, Patty — the leather jacket, the spiked gray hair, the jaw — and Yuki at her shoulder with the pendant catching the light, and the four of them closed in around the chair like a curtain drawing.

"He's done," Rosa said. "Everyone paid, everyone got theirs."

"Then we're moving," Denise said. "Patty, get his arm."

Patty didn't ask. She stepped in and took Tim's left arm above the elbow and hauled, and Tim came up out of the chair the way a scarecrow comes up off a fence post — all at once, wrong-angled, his feet not quite under him — and she caught him against her side with a grunt.

"He weighs nothing," she said as she got her shoulder under his arm and her hand clamped on his wrist, and she held him up like a man holding up a coat on a hook, and Tim's head lolled forward and his hair fell in his face and he could smell her — whiskey and old leather and the cold outside on the jacket — and it was the first thing all day that smelled like anything other than a woman's cunt and a woman's perfume, and it steadied him for a second.

"Coat," Denise said.

Someone had the camel coat. It came over his shoulders from behind and Denise belted it at his waist while Patty held him, quick and practiced, the way you'd dress a child who was already asleep, and the coat closed over the pink slip and the wet spot and the seamed stockings and the whole wreck of him, and Tim stood in the middle of the bar in a nice coat with his cock soft against his thigh and his jaw clicking and his eyes half shut.

The room watched them go. That was the thing he'd remember — not the line, not the chair, but the faces turning as the four women walked him toward the door, the way a room turns to watch a thing being carried out. Carol lifted her glass to him from the bar and didn't smile. Margaret was talking to a woman he didn't know and stopped mid-sentence to watch him pass.

"Eyes forward," Yuki said, at his other shoulder, quiet.

He put his eyes forward. The door was a rectangle of gray evening light at the end of the room and it got closer one step at a time, and his heels — the black heels, still on, still buckled — made small sounds on the floor that he could hear between the beats of the noise, and his knees kept trying to fold, and Patty kept not letting them.

Then the door was open and the cold hit him.

It hit him like a hand. The bar had been warm all afternoon, warm and close and smelling of women, and the air outside was cold and wet and it went into his lungs and his eyes watered and his whole body clenched, and for one second the world came back into focus — the street, the parked cars, the wet shine on the pavement under the streetlight, the ordinary indifferent fact of a town going about its evening.

"Car's fifty meters," Rosa said. "He's not going to make fifty meters."

"He'll make it," Denise said.

He made it about twenty. Then his left leg went and Patty took his whole weight without comment, and Yuki came in on the other side and got his right arm over her shoulder, and between them they carried him the rest of the way with his heels dragging little lines through the wet on the pavement, and Tim's head hung and the street slid by underneath him and he thought, distantly, that this was the first time he'd been outside in days, and that he was seeing it upside down, and that he would not be able to describe a single thing about it afterward.

The car was Denise's — , cold inside, the seats stiff with the evening. Patty got the back door open and Rosa took his ankles and between the three of them they folded him into the back seat, and Tim's body went down onto the cold leather and he made a sound, a long low sound, and the door shut on it.

"In," Denise said, and the doors opened and shut around him, and the engine turned over, and the heater came on with a smell of dust and warmth, and the car pulled out into the street.

Tim lay on the back seat with his cheek against the leather and his knees drawn up and the coat open over the pink slip, and the streetlights went over the roof of the car one after another, light then dark then light, and the heater blew warm on his face and his feet were cold and his jaw clicked when he breathed and his cock ached with a low, used, hollow ache that had nothing left in it.

He was aware of them talking. Not the words — the shapes of the words, the rise and fall, Denise's low drawl and Rosa's laugh and Patty's short flat answers and Yuki saying something once that made them all quiet for a second and then laugh. He was aware of the radio off, of the wipers going once across the windshield, of the indicator ticking at a turn.

Then the talking went away.

Not the sound of it — the meaning of it. The words stopped being words and became a texture, a warm hum, and the light going over the roof slowed down, and Tim's body got heavy in a way that had nothing to do with the seat, heavy from the inside out, like his bones were filling with sand, and he felt it coming the way you feel sleep coming when you're already three-quarters under, that last slow slide, and he didn't fight it. He couldn't have fought it. He'd been holding himself up for hours and there was nothing left to hold himself up with.

Someone said his name. He thought it was Rosa — the shape of it, the two syllables, the way she said the vowel. He tried to answer and his mouth wouldn't do it, and then the light went over the roof one more time and he was gone.

He came up back. The car had stopped and the doors were open and cold air was coming in, and he was being lifted — hands under his arms, hands under his knees, his body a dead weight between them, and Patty's voice somewhere above him saying, "Watch his head," and he was gone again.

When he came up the second time it was because of the light. Someone had turned a lamp on close to his face, and he was lying on his bed — Denise's bed, — and the coat was gone and the heels were gone and the slip was still on, rucked up around his hips, and he could feel the stockings still on, the seams pressing into the backs of his calves.

The four of them were in the room. Denise was at the foot of the bed with her arms crossed. Rosa was sitting on the edge of the mattress by his hip with her wrap dress loose and her hair coming down out of the ponytail. Patty was standing at the window with her back to the room, looking out at the street. Yuki was at the bedside table with a glass of water in her hand.

"There he is," Rosa said. She put her hand flat on his shoulder and pushed him gently back down when he tried to lift his head. "Stay. You're not getting up."

She came around the bed and sat down on the other side of him, and she put one hand behind his head and lifted it, careful, the way you'd lift a baby's head, and put the glass to his mouth. "Drink."

He drank. The water went down his throat and it was the best thing that had ever happened to him and he drank until the glass was empty and Yuki took it away and set it on the table.

Dense came around the bed and stood over him and looked down at him lying there in the ruined slip with his face wrecked and his hair wrecked and his mouth open, and she had the look she got when she was doing arithmetic. "He did well. He did better than well. He did all the women who wanted him and he came when he was told ."

Patty turned around at that. She looked at Tim on the bed — the length of him, the slip, the stockings, the pink nails on his hand lying open on the sheet — and her pale blue eyes went over him slow, and she cracked her knuckles once, both hands, the way she did when she was thinking.

"He's got a bruise coming on his jaw," she said. "And his knees are shot. He was on that cushion for six hours."

"He was," Denise said. "And he'll be on it again."

I ain't saying no to it," Patty said. "I'm saying not at first light. Give him a stretch to breathe before we put him back on the clock. We don't want him cracking on us early." And every one of the women let out a laugh, low and knowing.

Denise reached down and pulled the slip straight over his hips, a small tidy gesture, the way you'd straighten a rug, and then she looked at Rosa. "Get the stockings off him. He'll sleep in the slip."

Rosa did it. She sat him up with a hand behind his back and worked the stockings down his legs one at a time, rolling them, and Tim sat on the edge of the bed with his head hanging and his hands on the mattress and let her, and the air on his bare legs was cold and then Rosa's palm was flat on his thigh for a second, warm, and then gone and he passed out.

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