The bar holds its breath for one second after the last woman steps back, and then it doesn't. Hands slide under Tim's shoulders and lift him off the marble, and he comes up dizzy, his heels scraping for purchase on the brass footrail, his cock slapping wet against his own belly. Somebody's palm flattens between his shoulder blades and presses him back down, and the marble is cold and tacky under his cheek where a woman's spilled drink has gone sticky.

"There he is," Denise says, close to his ear, and her fingers walk down his spine, counting vertebrae through the sequin dress. "Still with us."

"Yes but please let me go now."

"No." Her hand stops at the small of his back and presses, just enough. "Because we've had a change of plan."

Patty's grip on his left wrist tightens. She has his arm bent up behind him at an angle that keeps his chest flat to the bar, and she leans her weight into it, unhurried, like a woman settling into a chair. Her thumb finds the tendon in his forearm and presses there, and Tim's fingers curl on nothing.

"You hear that, sweetheart?" Rosa says from somewhere near his ankles. Her thumb digs into the bone above his heel strap. "New plan."

Denise laughs, low and warm, and the sound travels down the bar and comes back as a ripple of other laughs, women turning on their stools, women setting down their glasses. A rocks glass lands on the bar six inches from Tim's ear — clink — and the ice settles against the side of it, and he can smell the gin from here, juniper and cold.

"Ladies," Denise says, and her voice lifts, pitched now to carry the whole room. "He's been very good. He's licked loads of boobs he hasn't complained once, have you, baby girl?"

"No but please."

"No but please." She repeats it back to the room like a punchline, and the room takes it. "So here's what we're going to do. Every woman in this bar who wants a turn gets one. On his face. Until he's licked every last one of you off."

The noise that goes up is not quite a cheer. It's closer to the sound a bachelorette party makes when the stripper finally takes his shirt off — a bright, greedy, delighted noise, and Tim feels it land in his stomach like a dropped stone.

"How many is that?" somebody calls from the back.

Yuki answers without looking up from her phone. "Sixteen at least. unless you are shy"

Nobody in this bar is shy. Tim knows that now. He's known it since he innocently walked in

Stools scrape back. Heels hit the floor. Somewhere behind him a zipper goes down — not his, someone else's — and a woman says, "Finally," to her friend, and the two of them laugh the way women laugh when they've been waiting for something and it's finally arrived.

Denise's palm settles flat between his shoulder blades and presses him down until his cheek is flat against the marble and his neck is craned, and the position is wrong, all wrong, his throat exposed and his chin tipped up and his mouth already open because there's nowhere else for his face to go. She holds him there, and the marble is cold and hard

"Keep your hands where they are," Denise says, and Patty grunts agreement and shifts her grip, and Tim's wrists are crossed now behind his back, one hand over the other, held in one of Patty's big square hands like a bundle of kindling. His shoulders ache. His cock is a hot, wet, stupid weight against the edge of the bar.

"Who's first?"

A woman steps up on Tim's right, and he can't see her face, only the hem of a black skirt and a pair of bare feet in low heels, and then the skirt comes up and she's climbing onto the stool beside his head, one knee on the seat, the other foot braced on the bar rail, and she swings her leg over him and settles.

She's not gentle about it. Her thighs come down on either side of his head and clamp, and her cunt lands on his mouth, and Tim's nose fills with her — hot, wet, close, the specific animal smell of an older woman who's been drinking gin for two hours and has been watching a boy get used on a bar and has been getting wet about it. Her hand comes down on the back of his head and pushes his face up into her.

"Lick," she says.

He licks.

The first stroke is wrong — too high, up over her mound — and she makes an impatient noise and shifts her hips and grinds down, and the second stroke lands where she wants it, flat of his tongue up the length of her slit, and she exhales hard through her nose and her thighs loosen a fraction. Tim licks again. And again. Her cunt is slick and hot and tastes like salt and something faintly sweet, and his tongue finds her clit by feel, small and hard under the hood, and when he closes his lips around it she makes a sound that is almost a word.

"There," she says. "Right there."

Denise's hand is still flat on his back. Patty's hand is still locked around his wrists. Somewhere to his left, a woman sits down on a stool with a sigh and says, "God, I love this bar," and somebody else laughs and says, "You love it now."

He works her clit with his tongue, steady, and she rides his face in short rolls of her hips, and her hand on the back of his head is not pushing anymore, just holding, fingers buried in his hair, and her breathing goes ragged and then rhythmic and then ragged again. Her thighs start to shake. She's close. Tim can feel it in the way her cunt flutters against his chin, in the way her grip tightens, and he keeps going, keeps the pressure exactly where she put it, and she comes with a long, low, satisfied sigh that ends in a laugh.

"Oh," she says. "Oh, that's good." She stays on his face for a second longer than she needs to, grinding down slow, and then she lifts off and steps back down, and the cold air hits his wet chin and he gasps.

The second woman is already moving. She's older than the first, wider through the hips, and she doesn't bother with the stool — she just plants one foot on the brass rail, hauls her skirt up around her waist, and swings her leg over Tim's head in one practiced motion, like she's been doing this her whole life, and maybe she has. She settles with her knees on the bar on either side of his face and looks down at him, and Tim can see her now, upside down, a woman with a soft chin and silver hair and a mouth painted dark red.

"Open up, sweetheart," she says, and it's not unkind. It's worse than unkind. It's fond.

He opens his mouth, and she lowers herself onto it, and she's heavier than the first, her cunt full and wet and spread against his whole face, and his nose is buried in her and he can't breathe except through the corners of his mouth, and she starts to move right away, slow heavy rolls of her hips, using his mouth like a hand. Tim's tongue works up into her, and she hums approval, and her hand comes down and pats his cheek — pats it, twice, like he's a good dog — and then holds his jaw steady.

"That's it," she says. "Nice and slow. I'm not in a hurry."

She isn't. She takes her time. She rides his face for what feels like ten minutes, and Tim's jaw starts to burn and his tongue goes thick and tired, and still she moves, slow, patient, humming to herself, and the women at the bar are talking over his head like he's furniture, like he's a footstool with a mouth, and one of them orders another round and the bartender — a woman, of course, everyone here is a woman, how did he not notice that walking in — sets four glasses down on the bar and says, "Anyone want to wet his whistle?"

"He's busy," Denise says.

"He can drink after."

The woman on his face comes with a long shudder and a sigh that turns into a hum, and she stays seated through it, grinding slow, and then she lifts off and pats his cheek again and says, "Thank you, honey," and steps down, and Tim's chin is dripping and his mouth is open and he is so hard it hurts.

The third one is quick and nervous. She's younger than the others, maybe thirty-five, and she climbs onto the stool with her skirt already bunched in both fists, and she's barely settled before she's grinding down on his mouth like she's been thinking about it all night and can't wait another second. Her cunt is wet and she tastes like she's been wet for a while. Tim licks her fast, the way she wants, and she comes in under a minute with a startled little cry, and then she's off him and gone, and the stool scrapes back and she's laughing with her friends and somebody says, "That's it? That's all it took?"

Patty's hand has gone slack around Tim's wrists. Not loose — she's still holding him — but the pressure has changed, and when he flexes his fingers she lets them move a little, and he realizes his arms have gone numb somewhere past the elbows and he doesn't care.

"Doing good," Patty says, low, just for him. "Breathe through your nose."

The fourth woman doesn't use the stool. She sits on the bar itself, right down on the marble beside Tim's head, and swings her legs around and settles her cunt on his mouth from above, which puts his neck at an angle that makes his throat ache, and she leans back on her hands and looks down the length of her own body at him, and Tim looks up past her belly and her breasts and sees her face, and it's the woman from the booth with the red bob — Carol — no, not Carol, Carol's still standing off to the side with her arms crossed. This one has a red bob too. There are two of them. There are two women in this bar with red bobs and Tim has been here long enough that this seems like the most important fact in the world.

"Hi," she says.

"Hi," Tim says, into her cunt.

She laughs and grinds down and he gets to work, and she's wet and easy and she talks the whole time — not to him, to the room, narrating. "He's got a good tongue, actually. I wasn't sure. You never know with the young ones. They get tired."

"He's not tired," Denise says. "Are you, baby girl?"

"No but please be gentle."

"Liar," Carol says from the side, and she's smiling when she says it, and Tim's cock jumps against the bar.

The red-bob woman on his face comes with a sharp little twist of her hips and a sound like she's been holding her breath, and she pats the top of his head and climbs off and says, "Four down, twelve to go," and Tim's stomach drops, because he'd forgotten, somehow, in the middle of it, that there were numbers, that Yuki was counting, that this was going to go on.

The fifth woman is already stepping up. She's tall, and she has to duck under the pendant lights to get her leg over him, and when she settles onto his face her thighs clamp down hard on either side of his head, and Tim's ears fill with the pressure of it, and the room goes muffled and far away — the laughter, the glasses, the scrape of stools, all of it underwater.

She doesn't say anything. She just starts to move, slow and heavy and certain, and Tim stops struggling. His hands go limp in Patty's grip. His heels come off the brass rail and hang. His jaw is sore and his tongue is tired and his cock is a hot stupid ache and erect and he just — endures it. Opens his mouth. Licks. Breathes through his nose when he can. The wet sound of her is loud in his own skull, and the marble is cold under his back, and above him,

Yuki's voice comes from somewhere to his left, flat and unhurried.

Carol lets her arms drop. She studies Tim's face a long beat — the slick glisten along his jaw, the way his eyes have drifted blank and far-off — then lifts her hands and works the buttons of her blouse, first one, then the next, unhurried, and the women closest to her hush to watch while the rest keep laughing and chattering as if he isn't laid out for them at all.

Carol finishes the third button and shrugs the blouse off her shoulders, and it pools at her elbows, and she doesn't take it off the rest of the way — she leaves it hanging there, sleeves caught at her wrists, and steps up to Tim's side of the bar with her tits out and her arms half-pinned in her own shirt. She's got a body that's done some living: soft belly, silver stretch marks low on her hips, nipples dark and already hard from the air. She plants one hand flat on the marble next to Tim's cheek and leans over him.

"Look at me," she says.

He does. Upside down, blurred at the edges, but he does. His mouth is still wet from the fifth woman, slick from his own chin to his throat, and Carol looks at it and something moves through her face that isn't quite a smile.

"You're a mess," she says. "You know that?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Don't ma'am me either." She reaches down and takes his cock in her hand — not gentle, not teasing, just takes it, fingers wrapping around the shaft and squeezing like she's checking a fruit for ripeness. Tim's whole body jerks against the bar. "There he is."

The sixth woman is already climbing onto the stool. She's short and round and she has to hike her skirt up over her hips with both hands, and she's laughing at something her friend said, and she swings her leg over Tim's head without ceremony and settles onto his mouth like she's sitting down to dinner. She doesn't say anything. She just starts to rock, and Tim's tongue comes up automatically, flat and working, and she hums and adjusts her angle and grinds down harder.

Carol's fist starts to move.

Not slow. Not the way she was working him during the line, that patient unhurried pump that kept him on the edge for an hour. This is rough — a hard, dry drag up the shaft and a squeeze at the top and a jerk back down, and her thumb presses into the underside right under the head where he's slickest, and Tim makes a sound into the woman's cunt that comes out as a wet, muffled whine.

"That's right," Carol says. "Keep licking. Don't stop for me."

The woman on his face doesn't care what's happeninglower down the bar. She's got her eyes closed and her chin tipped up and she's rolling her hips in a slow circle, and Tim's nose is mashed flat against her pubic bone and he can't breathe through it, has to pull air through the corners of his mouth between strokes, and every time he does his tongue goes flat and still for a half-second and she makes an impatient noise and grinds down to remind him. Her cunt is hot and slick and tastes like gin and salt, and she's close already — he can feel the flutter against his upper lip, the way her thighs are starting to clamp in short pulses.

Carol's hand is relentless. Up, squeeze, down. Up, squeeze, down. She's not trying to get him off. She's trying to hurt him, and it's working, and Tim's hips are rolling against the bar edge because he can't help it, and his balls are drawn up tight and aching and every stroke drags a raw sound out of his throat.

"You gonna come?" Carol says. "Huh? You gonna come on my hand while you eat her out?"

Carol laughs — a real laugh, surprised out of her — and she loosens her grip a fraction and keeps working him, slower now, meaner, dragging her thumb over the slit every third stroke.."

The woman on his face comes with a sharp little grunt and a hard grind down, and Tim licks her through it because that's what he's for, and she shudders and sighs and lifts off, and the cold air hits his mouth and he gasps for breath like a swimmer surfacing.

"Six," Yuki says.

Carol doesn't stop. She keeps her fist moving through the changeover, and Tim's cock is slick now with his own leaking and her spit — she spat in her palm at some point, he doesn't remember when — and the sound it makes is wet and obscene under the bar noise, and Tim is making a thin continuous sound low in his throat that he can't stop.

The seventh woman is older, silver-haired, in a green silk blouse that she unbuttons all the way down and lets hang open. She doesn't climb onto the stool. She sits on the bar itself, right on the edge, and swings her legs up and over Tim's head so she's straddling his face from above, and she braces her hands behind her on the marble and looks down at him past her own tits.

"Hello, sweetheart," she says.

"Hi."

"I'm going to take my time. Is that all right?"

"Yes."

"Good boy." She lowers herself down onto his mouth, and she's wet, slick-wet, the kind of wet that comes from watching for an hour and a half and doing nothing about it, and Tim's tongue slides into her easy and she makes a low, pleased sound and starts to move — slow, deep rolls of her hips, taking his tongue all the way up and then back down, using him like something she bought.

Carol's fist tightens. She's watching the woman on his face — watching her ride him — and her hand is moving in time with the woman's hips, up when she rises, down when she settles, and Tim is being fucked at both ends by the same rhythm and he can't tell anymore which sensation is which. His jaw aches. His tongue is thick and tired. His cock is a hot wire in Carol's fist, and every downstroke drags him closer to the edge and every squeeze at the base hauls him back, and he's making sounds into the woman's cunt that aren't words.

"Look at him," Carol says. "He's not even fighting it anymore."

"He's a natural," Denise says.

"He's a slut," Carol says, and she says it fondly, and Tim's cock jumps in her hand.

The silver-haired woman takes her time the way she said she would. She rides his face for a long slow stretch while the bar keeps moving around them — glasses clinking, women laughing, somebody's phone buzzing on the bar top — and Tim's tongue works up into her in long strokes and his nose is buried in her and his chin is soaked and she's humming to herself, some tune he doesn't recognize, and then her hips start to stutter and she bears down hard and comes with a long satisfied exhale, and she stays on him through it, grinding slow, and then lifts off and pats his cheek twice.

"Thank you," she says.

Carol spits in her palm again and goes back to work. She's got a rhythm now that's worse than the first — three fast strokes, then a hard squeeze that stops him dead, then three more, and Tim's hips are jerking against the bar edge and his heels are scrabbling on the brass rail and he's so close he can taste it, can feel it building low in his balls, and every time she squeezes he loses it and has to start over, and the tears are back, leaking out the corners of his eyes and running down into his hair.

"Please," he says. "Please, Carol, please—"

"Please what."

"Please let me—"

"You know I can't do that." She squeezes at the base, hard, and holds it. “You can. You're doing so good. Three more and then maybe."

"Three—"

"Three more women, and then we'll see."

The eighth woman doesn't bother with the stool either. She's tall and lean and she has a tattoo of a swallow on her hip, and she steps up to the bar and just stands there with her legs apart and pulls Tim's head forward by the hair until his face is between her thighs, and she holds him there with one hand fisted in his sandy hair and fucks his mouth with short, sharp thrusts of her hips. She's not wet the way the others were — she's wet the way a woman is when she's been thinking about it and hasn't touched herself, tight and hot and slick only at the center — and Tim has to work for it, has to push his tongue up into her and find her clit and hold the pressure while she grinds against his face, and she doesn't make a sound the whole time, just breathes hard through her nose and holds his hair and uses him.

Carol's hand has gone from rough to cruel. She's jerking him fast now, no squeeze, no pause, just a hard fast fist that drags him up the edge and over it, and Tim's whole body is locking, his toes curling in the patent heels, his hands fisted in Patty's grip, and he's right there, right there, and—

"Don't," Denise says.

Carol stops. Dead. Fist still wrapped around him, thumb pressed hard into the underside, and Tim makes a sound that isn't human and his hips jerk twice against nothing and the orgasm pulls back and leaves him shaking.

"Not yet," Denise says again, mild, like she's reminding him about a parking meter.

Tim's crying now. Really crying, his face a wreck, and the tall woman is still grinding on his mouth and he's still licking her because he can't stop, because his tongue is doing it on its own, and she comes with a short sharp gasp and a hard press of her cunt down onto his face and then she lets go of his hair and steps back and Tim's head drops onto the marble with a wet thud.

"Two more," Denise says. "Then you can come."

Carol lets go of his cock. She wipes her hand on the front of Tim's borrowed sequin dress, leaving a wet smear across the black, and steps back, and Tim lies there with his face on the marble and his cock twitching against the bar edge and his wrists still crossed in Patty's hand, and he can hear the ninth woman's heels on the floor.

"Two more," he says, to nobody, into the marble.

"Two more," Patty agrees, low, close to his ear. "You can do two more."

The ninth woman is small and quick and she's already wet through her underwear — Tim can smell it before she's even up on the stool, that specific warm musk that means she's been watching and waiting and has been wet for a while. She climbs up and settles onto his face and she's so slick that his tongue slides in her easy, no friction, just heat and wet and the taste of her, and she starts to ride him fast, little quick rolls of her hips, chasing it, and she's talking the whole time — "Oh, that's good, that's so good, right there, don't stop, don't you dare stop" — and Tim licks her fast and hard because he wants her done, wants her off him, wants to be two women closer to the end, and she comes in under three minutes with a high startled cry and a hard grind down that nearly breaks his nose against her pubic bone.

Carol is back. She doesn't wait for the tenth woman to get settled — she just reaches under the bar and takes Tim's cock in her fist again while the ninth woman is still climbing off, and she starts working him before his mouth is even clear, and Tim groans into the cold air and his hips buck up into her hand.

"You're gonna come," Carol says. "You're gonna come on my hand before the last one's done, and Denise is gonna be so disappointed."

"No—"

"Yes." She jerks him hard, fast, mean, and Tim's balls are drawn up tight and his cock is leaking down her knuckles and he's right on the edge again, right there, and the tenth woman is stepping up and swinging her leg over his head and settling down onto his mouth, and he's got a cunt on his face and a fist on his cock and he's being pulled apart in two directions and he can't hold it, he can't, he can't—

"Denise," he sobs, into the tenth woman's cunt. "Denise, please, I'm gonna—"

"Come," Denise says.

Tim comes.

It rips out of him — a hard, wrenching, full-body orgasm that curls him up off the marble and slams him back down, and Carol's fist keeps working him through it, milking him, dragging every last pulse out of his cock, and he's coming on his own belly and the borrowed sequin dress and Carol's hand and the bar, and the tenth woman is grinding down on his face through all of it and he's still licking her, still working his tongue, because his body won't stop, and she comes a few seconds after him with a surprised little oh and a hard clench of her thighs around his ears.

Carol lets go of his cock and it slaps wet against his belly, still twitching, and Tim lies on the marble with his eyes closed and his mouth open and his chest heaving, and the room is loud around him and far away, and somebody is clapping, and somebody else is laughing, and Denise's hand is on the back of his neck, warm and heavy.

"Good girl," she says.

Tim doesn't answer. He can't. His jaw is locked and his tongue is thick and his whole body is shaking in little aftershocks, and he can feel his own cum cooling on his stomach under the sequins, and Carol is wiping her hand on his dress again, and Yuki is saying something about the count, and somewhere at the end of the bar a woman is asking whether they're going to let him rest.

"No," Denise says. "He's got six more at least to do."

Tim opens his eyes. The ceiling is a blur of pendant lights and smoke and the underside of the bar's tin ceiling, and he stares up at it and breathes, and Patty's grip on his wrists has gone gentle, almost kind, and somewhere to his left a stool scrapes back and a woman says, "My turn," and Tim closes his eyes again and waits.

She's already up on the bar before he's finished the thought. This one doesn't take the stool — she plants a knee on the marble on either side of his head and crouches over him like she's about to sit down on a low wall, and Tim gets one look up the underside of her chin and the dark curl of hair between her legs and then she's down on his mouth, all her weight, no preamble. She's heavy and warm and she smells like cigarettes and she tastes like the lime in whatever she's been drinking, and she grinds down slow and deliberate and says, "There. That's it. Stay still."

Carol's hand finds his cock again. He'd gone soft in the last minute — not soft, not really, but flagging, the way a body flags after it's been wrung out — and she takes him in her fist and pumps him twice, quick and dry, and he comes back up in her hand like she'd flipped a switch. "There he is," she says. "Thought you were done. You're not done."

"Nnh—"

"Lick her. Don't talk."

He licks her. The woman crouched over his face has her hands braced on her own knees and she's rocking in small tight circles, and her cunt is wet and open and she's using his whole mouth, grinding her clit down onto the flat of his tongue and then pulling up just enough to let him breathe before she settles again. Tim's jaw is shot. His tongue is doing what it does anyway, on its own, up and in and flat and up again, and she hums low in her chest and takes it.

Carol's fist is rough from the first stroke. She's got him by the shaft and she's dragging her hand up and down without any spit now, just the slick he's leaking, and it's dry enough at the base to burn and wet enough at the head to make a sound, and every upstroke she wrings him like a rag and every downstroke she pulls his balls up tight against the root. Tim's hips come off the marble in short little jerks he can't control and Patty's hands close down on his wrists again, not hard, just there, keeping him pinned to the wood.

"Eleven," Yuki says, when the woman finally lifts off him with a wet sound and a satisfied sigh and climbs down off the bar.

Tim sucks air. His mouth is full of her taste and his own spit and he can't swallow, just lies there with his chest going and his cock standing up in Carol's fist, red at the head, slick from root to tip.

The twelfth woman doesn't climb on the bar at all. She's the one from the end of the room — the one who asked whether they were going to let him rest — and she comes around the bar with her skirt already pushed up around her waist and her underwear in her fist, and she stands at the side of the bar by his shoulder and looks down at him and then at Carol's hand working his cock and then back at his face.

"Turn him," she says. "I want him sideways."

"He's not a piece of furniture," Denise says, from somewhere behind his head, amused.

"He's close enough." She taps Tim's shoulder with two fingers. "Roll onto your side, sweetheart. Face me."

Patty lets go of one wrist. Tim rolls — awkward, half the sequins dragging on the marble, one heel coming off and clattering to the floor — and ends up on his side with his face at the edge of the bar and his cock still in Carol's hand, and the woman swings one leg up onto the bar edge and settles her cunt right against his mouth from the side, and it's an angle he's never done, his jaw working sideways, his tongue having to find her from a direction his mouth doesn't know, and she holds the back of his head with one hand and presses him in and says, "There. Like that. Slow."

Carol doesn't stop moving her hand. She keeps the same rough rhythm going while Tim works the woman sideways, and the drag of it is different from this angle — she's pulling him toward her now, not up, and every stroke tugs his whole body an inch across the marble, and the friction on the underside of his cock where it rubs against her knuckles is starting to go from burn to raw.

"Carol—" he says, into the woman's cunt.

"What."

"It hurts."

"I know." She squeezes at the base and holds it, thumb pressed hard into the spot under the head, and Tim's whole body curls and his tongue goes flat and still against the woman's clit and she makes an impatient noise and grinds her cunt into his face to wake him up. "Keep licking. You can hurt and lick at the same time."

He does. He gets his tongue back up and finds her clit again and works it slow and sideways while Carol drags his cock raw in her fist, and the woman on the bar edge starts to breathe through her teeth and her hand in his hair goes tight and she comes in a long shivering pull that she rides out with her eyes shut, and Tim keeps his tongue on her through all of it because that's the rule, that's what he's for, and when she finally lets go of his head he sags flat onto the marble and his cheek is wet with her and with his own tears and he can't tell which is which.

"Twelve," Yuki says.

"One more," Denise says. "Then you can have a drink."

Carol keeps her fist on him. She hasn't stopped since she picked him up again and she doesn't stop now, and Tim is making a thin continuous noise against the marble that isn't a word and isn't a sob, something between, and his cock is so raw in her grip that every stroke sends a bright wire of pain up into his belly and every third stroke drags him right back to the edge anyway, because his body doesn't care anymore, because his body has stopped listening to him entirely.

The thirteenth woman is the one who's been sitting on the stool nearest the jukebox all night, the quiet one in the denim jacket who Tim hasn't heard say a word. She comes up to the bar without hurry and unbuttons her jeans and shoves them down past her knees and steps out of them, and she's wearing nothing under them, and she's already wet — he can see it, the shine on her inner thighs — and she climbs up onto the bar and straddles his face facing the room, her back to Denise, so that Tim has to take her from below, her cunt coming down onto his open mouth while she leans back on her hands and watches the rest of the bar watch her.

"Last one for now," she says. "Make it count."

She's slow. She takes his tongue deep and rides it in long, patient strokes, and she's the first one all night who's actually quiet — no talk, no direction, just the small sounds of her breathing and the wet noise of his mouth on her — and Tim works her with what's left of his jaw and his tongue and his neck, and Carol's fist keeps dragging up and down his raw cock under the bar, and the two rhythms don't match, and he's being pulled in two directions again, and his eyes are running and his mouth is full and his cock is on fire in her hand.

"Come on," Carol says, low, close to his ear. "Come on, you little slut, you're so close, I can feel it. Don't you dare."

"Denise—"

"Not yet," Denise says. "When she's done."

The woman on his face takes five long minutes, and Tim gives her everything he's got left — his tongue up into her, his lips around her clit, his nose pressed into the wet hair between her legs — and she comes quietly, almost politely, with a small huff of breath and a slow clench of her thighs around his ears, and she stays on him through it, rocking gently, and then lifts off and stands up on the bar and steps down on the other side, pulling her jeans back up as she goes.

"Thirteen," Yuki says.

Carol's fist stops. She holds him at the root, thumb pressed hard, and Tim's whole body is shaking and his hips are jerking against nothing and his cock is jumping in her hand, and she looks down at him with her lips pressed together and then over at Denise.

"Well?" she says.

"Let him," Denise says.

Carol starts to move her fist again — fast, hard, no squeeze, no pause, just the raw drag of her hand on his ruined cock — and Tim comes almost immediately, a thin wrenching orgasm that pulls up out of his balls and barely spills anything, just a little, a wet pulse over her knuckles, and his whole body locks and shudders and then goes slack on the marble, and Carol works him through the last of it

Carol steps back from the bar and wipes her hand one more time down the front of Tim's borrowed dress, and the sequins drag wet under her palm. "He's yours," she says, to the room, and walks off with her blouse still hanging off her elbows.

Tim lies on his side on the marble his mouth open and his jaw clicking when he tries to close it. His cock is still out, still wet, lying against the black sequins like something that belongs to somebody else. He can hear his own breath going in and out of him, loud, ragged, and under it the bar going on — glasses, laughter, a woman somewhere near the jukebox saying, "Oh, she's going to do it, look at her."

"Sit him up," Denise says.

Patty hauls him up by the wrists like he weighs nothing, and Tim comes off the marble and his head lolls and the room tilts, and then he's sitting on the edge of the bar with his bare feet hanging and his dress rucked up around his waist and his cock still standing sore but out of it, and the whole bar is looking at him, and he can't get his eyes to focus on any of them.

"Drink," Yuki says, and puts a glass of water against his lips, and Tim drinks, and the water runs down his chin and into the collar of the dress, and it's the best thing that's ever happened to him. He gets three swallows and then she takes it away.

"Three more," Denise says, from behind him, and her hand lands on the back of his neck, warm, proprietary. "You said you wanted to be done. You're not done. Three more and then we'll talk about your furture."

The fourteenth woman is already coming around the end of the bar. She's big — genuinely big, soft and heavy through the hips and the arms, with a face that's been through sixty-odd years and a mouth that's been through a few more than that, and she's wearing a flowered dress that she's already got hiked up in both fists. She doesn't bother with the stool or the bar top. She just plants herself in front of Tim where he sits, spreads her legs, and pulls his head forward into her by the hair.

"Open," she says.

He opens. She's warm and heavy and she smells like powder and gin and the inside of her is soft and wet and tastes like nothing he's had yet tonight — mild, almost sweet, the way an older woman tastes, and Tim's tongue goes into her because that's what his tongue does now, and she rocks her hips forward onto his face and holds him there with both hands buried in his sandy hair.

"That's it," she says. "Slow. I'm not one of the young ones. I need it slow."

He gives it to her slow. Flat of his tongue up her slit, again, again, the way she asked, and she's wet enough that it's easy, and she grinds down on him in long lazy rolls and talks over his head to her friend — "He's got a soft tongue, this one, he's not all elbows like the last one" — and Tim works her clit with the tip of his tongue and her thighs start to tremble against his ears and she keeps going, keeps talking, keeps rolling, and the whole bar is watching and nobody's helping him and his cock is standing up out of the black sequins dripping onto the floor.

She takes her time. She takes her time the way a woman takes her time when she's got nowhere to be and a boy's mouth to sit on, and Tim's jaw is burning and his tongue is thick and she's still rolling and still talking, and then her voice goes up at the end of a sentence and her hands tighten in his hair and she comes — a long, low, shuddering thing that she rides out with her eyes closed and her mouth open, and Tim keeps his tongue on her through all of it because that's the rule, and when she finally lets go of his head he falls back against the bar and gasps.

"Thank you, sweetheart," the woman says, and pats his cheek, and waddles off with her dress still up.

The fifteenth is her friend — the one she was talking to — and she's just as big, wider through the shoulders, with short gray hair and a tattoo of a rose on her forearm that's gone blue with age. She doesn't pull his hair. She takes his chin in one big hand and tilts his face up and looks at him for a long second, at his wet mouth and his wrecked eyes and the mess of tears dried on his cheeks.

"Look at the state of you," she says. Not unkind. "You're doing good, kid. Keep it up."

And then she climbs up onto the bar and settles herself down over his face from above, and Tim has to lie back on the marble to take her, and she's heavy — heavier than the last one, her thighs coming down on either side of his head like two hams, and she settles her whole weight onto his mouth and he can't breathe at all except through the corners, and she starts to move right away, slow and heavy and grinding, and Tim's tongue comes up into her and works, and she tastes like the last one, mild and warm and wet, and she rides him without a word, just breathing hard through her nose, and the women at the bar have gone quiet to watch.

Denise's hand is on his chest now, flat over his sternum, feeling his heart go. "Breathe," she says, low, just for him. "Through your nose. There you go."

He breathes through his nose. The woman on his face grinds down harder and her cunt flutters against his chin and she comes with a grunt and a hard press of her hips, and Tim licks her through it and she stays on him a beat too long and then lifts off and climbs down, and the cold air hits his face and he gasps like he's been underwater.

"One more," Denise says. "One more and you can have another drink and we'll see about the rest."

The sixteenth woman is the oldest of the three. She's tiny and bent and she's got a cane, and she sets the cane against the bar with a click and looks up at Tim sitting there with his cock out and his face a mess and his dress ruined, and she laughs — a dry, delighted, wheezing laugh — and says, "Oh, I haven't done this in years."

"You don't have to," Tim says, and his voice comes out wrecked.

"I know I don't have to, sweetheart. I want to." She gets herself up onto the stool with both hands on the bar rail, and it takes her a while, and nobody helps her, and Tim sits there and watches her climb and doesn't say anything, and when she's up she swings one leg over his head and settles down onto his mouth and she's light, so light, and she's wet — she's been wet a while, he can taste it — and she starts to move in small careful rolls of her hips, and Tim licks her slow and gentle because she's old and because he's tired and because it's the only thing left in him, and she hums and holds the bar rail and takes it.

She takes a long time a very long time. She's in no hurry at all. She rocks on his mouth in little patient circles and hums to herself and once she says, "That's nice, that's very nice," and Tim keeps his tongue working on her clit and his eyes closed and his hands flat on the marble on either side of him, and the bar waits, and nobody laughs, and then she shudders — a small, dry, private shudder — and sighs, and lifts off him and pats his knee.

"Thank you, dear," she says.

"Sixteen," Yuki says.

Patty gets her down off the stool. The cane clicks on the floor and she's gone, and Tim sits on the edge of the bar with his cock still hard and his face wet from chin to throat and his dress ruined and his jaw aching so bad he can barely close his mouth, and Yuki puts the water glass back against his lips and he drinks the whole thing and she refills it and he drinks that too.

"Good girl," Denise says, and her hand slides up from his sternum to his throat, not squeezing, just resting there, and Tim's whole body goes loose under it, and he hates how good it feels, and he doesn't care.

"Can I—" he starts.

"No."

"But you said—"

"I said we'd see." Her thumb moves along his jaw. "And I see a boy who's got more things to do before he gets to rest."

Tim's stomach drops. "What thing."

Denise turns his face toward the end of the bar with two fingers on his chin, and Tim looks, and there's a woman standing there who he hasn't seen all night — or he has, he must have, she must have been in the crowd — but she's the one they've been saving. She's not young. She's not thin. She's got a body that's carried children and years and a lot of good food, and she's got her dress off already and folded over her arm, and she's wearing nothing but a slip and a pair of support hose rolled down to her knees, and she's looking at him the way a woman looks at a dessert she's decided to have after all.

"This is Margaret," Denise says. "She's been waiting . She's the one who paid for the drink."

"Hello, Margaret," Tim says.

"Hello, sweetheart." Margaret sets her folded dress down on the bar and steps out of her shoes and comes forward, and she's got a soft belly and heavy breasts and a thatch of gray hair between her legs, and she takes Tim's head in both hands and looks at him, and then she climbs up onto the bar and lies back on the marble and pulls him down over her by the hair.

"Come here," she says. "On top. I want to watch your face."

Tim gets his knees under him on the bar and crawls up over her and settles between her thighs, and she's wet — she's been wet a long time, he can feel it against his chest — and she takes his head in her hands and guides his mouth down onto her cunt, and Tim licks her, and she watches him do it, her eyes open, her mouth soft, one hand stroking his hair back off his forehead like a mother.

"There," she says. "Good boy. Slow."

He goes slow. He's got nothing left but slow. He works his tongue up into her in long flat strokes and she hums approval and her hips come up to meet him, and she's warm and wet and tastes like salt and skin, and her hand in his hair is gentle, and it's the gentlest thing that's happened to him all night, and Tim finds himself crying a little while he does it — not from the pain, from something else, from the way she's petting him — and Margaret wipes his cheek with her thumb and says, "There, there. You're all right. Keep going."

She keeps him licking her for ages her excitment slowly ring and then she comes slow, too. A long, rolling, quiet orgasm that she takes with her eyes on his face, and Tim licks her through it and she holds his head and breathes, and when she's done she keeps him there a moment longer, her cunt soft against his mouth, and then she lets him up and sits up on the bar and pats his cheek.

Denise's hand is on the back of his neck again. "Now," she says, "you can come again."

Carol is already there. She's got her blouse back on but unbuttoned, and she takes Tim's cock in her fist without a word and starts to work him — and he's so raw and so far gone that it takes almost nothing, three strokes, four, and he's coming, a thin wrenching pulse that barely spills, his whole body curling over Margaret's lap, and Carol milks him through it and then lets go and wipes her hand on his dress one last time.

Tim sags down onto the marble beside Margaret and lies there with his eyes closed and his chest heaving and his cock twitching against his own thigh, and the bar is loud and far away, and somebody is clapping, and Margaret is stroking his hair, and Denise is saying something to Yuki about the count, and Tim doesn't care about any of it.

"Get him up," Denise says, after a while. "He's got a tab to close."

Patty hauls him off the bar and sets him on his feet, and Tim's legs don't work right and his heels are gone — one somewhere under the bar, one still on his foot, the strap broken — and he stands there in the black sequin dress with his cock out and his face wrecked and his hair standing up, and the whole bar looks at him, and Denise comes around in front of him and takes his chin in her hand.