"I'm your uncle," Max said, his throat dry. "How can you deny me the secret of your pleasure? Why won't you give me my last chance to feel something?"
"Not this way, Tonton B`eb`ete," Kueur said.
"What way, then? What do you want me to do?"
He hung up after he could not stand to hear the quiet, steady sound of their breathing over the phone.
With the doorman huddled in a corner, staring at him with wide eyes, Max rang the intercom to the twins' loft until Kueur answered.
"I'll kill myself if you don't give me what I need," he said. He surprised himself, sounding like a desperate junkie. "Right here, right now. People will have to step over my body to get into this building. I'll write a suicide note in the guest book, addressed to you. Telling everybody how cruel you were, denying your uncle what he needed."
"You always give," Alioune replied. The intercom hissed, and her words carried a mechanical overtone. "You give so much. And you take. But do you ever share, Tonton? Have you ever shared? No more than you have ever felt, I think. No more than that."
Max held his finger against the speaker button but said nothing. Tears burned his eyes. He started to weep. Sobbing, he escaped to the street and ran.
The Beast howled as it gnawed at its own guts.
He'd kept Nicole for an entire day and night at one of his secret places on the West Side, downtown, where the smell of raw meat hung in the air like mist. The place was small, the paint on the walls peeling; the floor was filthy, but there was an alcove with a working toilet. A cold, rat-poison-scented breeze blowing in through a six-inch-wide grated vent opposite the steel door that opened onto a forgotten service duct leading up from the basement. A single low-wattage bulb illuminated the space. Refrigerated rooms surrounded the secret room on all sides, and above and below, insulating them against the world.
Nicole was hung spread-eagled in a harness suspended from the ceiling. He stared at her unconscious form as he lay, naked, flat on his back on the floor, trying to feel something. Anything.
He'd tried ordinary pleasure. He'd ridden her silky warmth, thrust himself into the portals of her body. But after his initial excitement, the sweet prize he'd sought receded and his erection had failed.
He'd tried his imagination. He'd allowed Nicole to regain full consciousness while restrained, suspended himself beside her and tried to ride her terror and panic as she became aware of her situation. He screamed when she did, and cried, and begged, and struggled. Letting himself down with a push of his release button, he'd taken and given hallucinogenics smuggled out of a desert government laboratory; tried a device that allowed Nicole to shock him with jolts of electricity with a trigger in her ball mouth gag; listened to her curses and pleas for release. But the pleasures he'd felt were no more than passing shudders, as if from a chill breeze running through a warm house. His imagination, too, had failed him.
Nothing moved him. The curves of Nicole's body, the dark wetness of her sex, the brown honey spots on her breasts, left him cold. Neither the fear and pain in her eyes when he tortured her, nor the ecstasy in her face when he drugged her, excited him. He'd offered everything in him he had to offer. There was nothing left to give.
He'd finally given up, feeling as if he were only going through the motions of pursuing sexual pleasure. As he had for a long time, whenever he took on the role of a lover.
He'd returned Nicole to her drugged stupor and wearily settled to the floor to consider his options. He'd wondered what would happen if he stayed in the secret room. Never came out again. Let the both of them die slowly of starvation. Of if he set a fire in the room. Or locked the both of them in one of the meat freezers. Or let her go, without scrambling her memory, and let the authorities and panicked employers try to track him down.
For the first time in his life, Max did not know where to look next to satisfy his hunger for sensation. The Beast paced restlessly in the cage of his body, until, exhausted, it settled in a corner and stared at the blank walls of his imagination. And whimpered.
A hand caressed his forehead.
Startled, Max jumped up, swung one arm up in a defensive arc while searching the floor for a weapon with his free hand. Alioune blocked and redirected his arm as she knelt by the open steel door. Kueur put a hand over his as she settled beside him. Wearing dark designer jeans and pastel silk T-shirts, the twins looked like a pair of exotic models posing on an industrial set.
"You see, Tonton, we are not without skills," Kueur said with a smile.
"Alioune? Kueur? What are you doing here?" Goose pimples crawled over his flesh as a chill breeze blew in through the open doorway. The stench of spoiled meat flooded the room. Oil dripped from the door hinges.
He smiled, despite his shock, at the craft of his two adopted nieces.
"We think it is time," Alioune said, letting her caress travel gently up his arm, to his shoulder and neck. "You are ready for us."
"Ready? For what?" He tensed. His cock shriveled, his genitals pulled up into the shelter of the hollow of bone between his legs.
"Do not worry, Tonton," Alioune continued. "Our building is discrete. The door man and the tenants who saw you will not betray us. As for Nicole, her friends believe she is on a vacation. Searching for herself. They believe, from the way she's been acting lately, thanks to you, that she is in crisis and needs time for herself. There is no one who will interfere with us."
"What are you talking about?" Max asked, his voice small. The Beast listened, trembling.
Kueur's fingers traveled along the length of his arm, glided across his shoulder, circled his left nipple. "You have learned some things, no? We denied you, and you did not let loose the Beast on us, or on another. And, after all these years, you finally tore down the wall between us and surrendered a part of yourself to us. We could not have come if you had not done that."
"Surrendered?"
"Share is the word closer to the truth," Alioune said.
She slid up to Max, legs stretching out on either side of him. "For you, giving is only half the equation. There is also the taking. You give to receive something that will feed the Beast in you. But when one shares, there is no expectation of a return. It is an act of selflessness. It is an act beyond the appetite of the Beast."
"I don't understand. What did I share?"
Kueur pressed her palm against his breast. His heart beat faster.
"Yourself," she said. "Your pain and desperation. Your most intimate desire."
"And what would that be?"
"Death," Kueur said with sadness. She kissed his left nipple. Her hair brushed against his skin. The warmth of her body burned him.
"Is that all you wanted?" he asked, his voice tremulous.
Alioune pulled her T-shirt off, then drew his head back between her small breasts. "Not what we wanted," she said. "What was necessary, for what you ask."
"You want us, Tonton B`eb`ete. And we would give ourselves to you. But what we do has requirements." Kueur leaned back, took off her T-shirt and unzipped her jeans. She was not wearing panties.
Behind him, Max felt Alioune maneuvering out of her jeans. "It is like an electrical circuit. We need the proper conductor. A creature beyond the care of pain or pleasure. A man, or woman, who has stopped caring about themselves, their hungers, their needs. Through desperation, or joy, or despair. Or, quite simply, because they have forgotten what they need in their drive to please others."
Kueur, naked, pressed the heel of his hand against her sex. Her pubic hair scratched his skin.
"Like the prostitute you saw us with, in the Bois," she said. She brought his hand up to her mouth. Put his thumb in her mouth, ran her tongue along the edge of his nail. Sucked.
Bit.
Max flinched and tried to pull his hand away. But she was strong, and his thumb stayed in her smiling mouth.
Alioune circled his neck with her lean arms and whispered, "Do you remember his eyes, Tonton?" Her hot breath sent a shiver down his spine. She thrust the ti
p of her tongue into his ear, then gently kissed her way down the back of his neck. "Do you remember the look of his pleasure? He had given up ever feeling anything again. From trick to trick he went, selling himself for nothing, for the money to feed himself. So he could survive. So he could live for another night of searching for what he'd given up finding. Until he met us." She thrust her tongue against the hollow at the base of his neck, pulled back enough to speak. "We felt our pleasure through him, and he felt ours. But he was not as strong as you, Tonton. He did not last. None of them ever do. But you will. You will, Tonton."
Max moaned, sagged against Alioune. She supported him as she worked her tongue up and down from the hollow to his ear and back. He looked up at Nicole suspended above them. Her eyelids twitched.
"You had to leave the narrow path of your life before you could find what you needed," Kueur said, twisting his hand into a wrist lock.
He cried out and jerked his free hand over to try for a release. She let him go before he could strike her. Alioune pulled his hand back, pressed it against her breast. "Because the pleasure you seek is ours, channeled through you," she said.
"Our conductor of flesh and emotion," Kueur whispered, driving her nails into the flesh under his arms. "Of sensation, and pleasure."
"Our soul. Our Tonton."
"And here, I think," said Kueur, looking up at Nicole's vacant-eyed form, "we have two such special conductors."
"Thank you, Tonton." Alioune settled Max's head on the floor. "We have never tried with four." She stood, lowered Nicole, unbound her.
Kueur reached for Nicole's hand. Nicole whimpered, stared at Alioune, then at Kueur's hand. Finally, she took it, allowed Kueur to pull her down to the floor beside Max. Kueur slapped Nicole's face with one hand, scratched Max from armpit to hip with the other. Max gasped, Nicole grunted.
Kueur smiled and said, "We should have known that when your time came to be with us, Tonton B`eb`ete, you would make it special."
Alioune settled between his legs like a butterfly in the cup of a waiting flower. She kissed his balls, ran her tongue over them, licked his thighs and hardening cock. Her hands caressed his legs as he squeezed her body between his knees.
Kueur turned to Max and kissed him, pushed her tongue into his mouth, probing. She tasted like lemon ginger. He breathed her in and swallowed her taste.
Nicole, responding to Kueur's encouraging hand, rolled over his body. She lay on top of him, arms at her sides, legs on the outside of his. Her hair fell across Max's eyes, found its way with Kueur's tongue into his mouth.
Alioune moved his cock into Nicole, maneuvered the woman's hips from side to side. A faint moan escaped Nicole.
Kueur pulled away from Max, leaving him gasping for more of her kisses. She drew Nicole's head up by the hair, scratched Nicole's cheeks and drew blood. Suddenly, she slammed Nicole's head into his chest. Max grunted from the impact of her forehead on his collarbone.
The shock and pain of bone hitting bone traveled through Max, and he kicked his legs instinctively.
"Yes," Alioune whispered, her voice hoarse. She shuddered between his legs, then pushed Nicole's hips back and forth to a faster rhythm. The warm moistness of her mouth covered him where Nicole's did not.
Pain evaporated. Max gasped at a sudden shot of pleasure running through him, exploding from between his legs. He forced himself up, saw Alioune had jammed her fingers into Nicole from the rear.
Kueur cried out, laughed.
Max looked to her. She grabbed his hair and banged his head hard to the floor. He heard a crack, and his vision blurred. Pleasure shattered like a crystal vase thrown to the floor. The knock on the back of his head sent a cold wave down to his toes.
Alioune moaned.
"Do not be shy, Tonton," Kueur teased, nuzzling his neck.
Max shook his head, grabbed hold of Nicole's shoulders and threw her off, then climbed on top of her, ignoring Alioune's twisting body between his legs. He thrust himself into Nicole, bounced against her hips, grasping for the pleasure that seemed to be rolling back and forth through his body like a tide, just out of his grasp.
Alioune jammed her hand into him. He arched his back, reaching for sensation. Kueur sighed, caught her breath, then scratched his back, drawing blood. Max cried out, but the pain drained out of him as Alioune began to pant.
"Work harder, Tonton," Alioune commanded, massaging his butt and back with one hand while the fingers of her other hand still worked like snakes inside of him.
Max complied, his body tingling as the pleasure and pain passing through him was beginning to carry him along on its surging waves.
Kueur drove her finger into a nerve cluster at the base of his jaw, sending a sharp dagger of pain into his brain. Almost immediately, the pain was consumed, absorbed, sucked away by a powerful undertow. He did not have time to cry out; it was Alioune who screamed. He felt the pain blossom in her. It was like watching a nuclear detonation from a distance. Moments later, the aftershock rushed through him, propelled by Alioune's massaging fingers and eager tongue. He was carried by the wave front of sensation headlong into Kueur's next torture: biting his earlobe. Back he went, driven by pain, to Alioune. Faster, he jerked between them, between extremes of sensation, the back-and-forth tide rising, trapping him in its tempest waves.
And beneath him, barely conscious, her humanity stripped until she was responding to him on only the most primitive levels, Nicole grunted and moaned, her pain and pleasure a shifting bed over which the storm cycle of sex and sensation raged.
Alioune screamed for Kueur, drinking the pain from him and Nicole.
Kueur cried out for Alioune, downing their pleasure, as well.
Together they shouted his name. Tonton, they called. B`eb`ete.
Max.
And the Beast howled as sensation filled the pit of its appetite. Blood pounding in his ears, the smell and taste of sweat and sex and blood on his tongue, body heat burning his skin, Max surrendered to the Beast, to the storm, to Alioune and Kueur and the dark sorcery of their sex. The thunder of their ecstasy boomed through him. His own pleasure screamed like a hurricane wind, amplified beyond limitations in the twins' all-encompassing bond. He thrust and grabbed and tore, choked on what he put in his mouth, shut his eyes against the lightning-bright flashes of overwhelmed nerves. He shook and trembled, and finally convulsed, as the twins rose to their climax like two goddesses on pillars of volcanic fire.
He came as if he were in a dream. Hot, pulsing, endless. A throbbing beam of joy cut his body in half and scrambled his mind until he could do no more than moan and mewl and twist his body, stretching for one more pulse of pleasure. And when the beam faded enough for him to think, the first thing that came to his mind was the certainty that what he had experienced was as pale as a distant star compared to the glory of the sun that had burned in the bodies of Alioune and Kueur.
"Sweet Tonton," Kueur whispered between gasps for breath. She crept away, bloody, hair matted, and braced herself against a wall, legs folded under her.
Alioune said nothing, but crawled on all fours to the bathroom, coughing, her sex swaying casually. She cast razor glances over her shoulder. Her body moved with primal, carnal strength. Like a jaguar with its mouth still painted with the blood of its kill.
Max stood up on trembling legs. Muscles twitched randomly in his back. He ran a hand over the back of his head, felt the bumps and cuts, checked his wounds. None were serious. Nicole's, he noted, were fatal.
She looked like any of the twins' lovers he'd cleaned up after one of their wild nights.
"Your place is just as good as our Box," said Kueur. Her breathing had slowed to normal. "So private. But of course it would be. You are our Tonton B`eb`ete."
Max picked up a piece of the blouse he'd ripped off Nicole when he first brought her in, and wiped his face.
"I hope this doesn't mean I'm falling in love," he said with a glance at Kueur. "People might talk if they knew I'd turned to incest." He cocked his he
ad back and laughed, feeling giddy. It was as if he had been transformed, as if he had been crawling like a worm through daily existence, and suddenly discovered one day that he had become a butterfly, beautiful and glorious. A butterfly capable of tasting the sensual depths of any flower he wished to taste.
"Do not worry," Alioune replied from the bathroom. She turned on the tap and splashed water on her face. "Love is no more a part of your future than guilt was a part of your past. You are beyond the shallowness of emotions, Tonton. More so now than you ever were." She shook her head, flinging water and blood on the walls. "You are a part of us. Your Beast is tamed, your hunger fulfilled."
"For now," Max said.
"Forever," Alioune replied. She turned and faced him as she slicked back her hair.
Max stood still, let the blood-soaked blouse fall to the floor. The Beast was quiet. Invisible. Consumed.
Max suddenly felt light, almost insubstantial. Like a butterfly fluttering in the air. His future without the Beast flashed in his mind: drifting from flower to flower, aimless.
"But," he said, his voice thick, "I need my hunger. It gives me strength, it drives me, makes me fight for life."
"We are your strength, now," Alioune said. She braced herself with one arm on each wall of the small bathroom. The curving lines of her slim, dark body stood in sharp contrast to the filthy, flat surfaces and straight lines surrounding her. "We are your hunger. We are your reason to fight."
"You killed the Beast yourself, by sharing," Kueur said. "We only consumed its corpse."
Tales from the Crossroad, Volume 1 Page 12
