The woman who entered the Library had no particular purpose in mind. It was a cold and misty afternoon and she'd forgotten her raincoat. The sign above its door had made her smile. She had just turned forty and she was recently divorced and she hated her job and she just wanted something nice for a change. This could be it.
The air inside was crisp and clean, a far cry from the atmosphere of the vintage shops she frequented. There was no scent of must or mildew. The books featured in their front window had appeared ancient through the glass, but if that were the case, they had been immaculately maintained. That, or there was something else going on here. An enthusiast press, perhaps?
It was a curious space, both larger and more intimate than it had seemed from the outside. The area immediately past the threshold was arranged more like a lounge than anything else and featured both a comfortable-looking sofa and a plush leather easy chair. The seating flanked a low table that was piled high with books but neatly left space for a variety of elegant coasters that suggested the presence of beverages on site. Opposite all that was a simple sales counter without a register.
Beyond the lounge were a half-dozen rows of ample bookshelves that seemed to go on as far as her sight could trace, drifting into a deep darkness at their furthest visible point, and above them was a railed-in loft. She couldn't see much of what was up there, although she guessed that it was a workspace of some sort. It was occupied by a girl maybe half her age, who was wrapped in dancing silks and sparks of firelight. Her back was turned to the woman, but was intently focused on whatever it was she was doing, her arms moving in a practiced way, her voice faintly reciting words that the woman couldn't quite make out.
The girl also appeared to be floating a full foot off the ground, although it was hard to tell from this angle. That couldn't be right. The woman put it out of her mind.
Two men stood behind the counter, one tall and slender and olive-pale, the other short and broad and tawny-dark. They wore matching smiles and neckties and she didn't notice much else because she was trying desperately not to stare. It didn't much matter that they seemed to pull her gaze towards them, even more than their wares. She'd been told she stared too much and she was trying to break that habit, whatever joys it denied her.
"Welcome," said the tall one, his voice soft and plaintive. "Is there something that you're looking for?"
No, there wasn't. That was precisely the problem. She didn't know what she wanted out of life, let alone out of a place like this. She just wanted to feel good, for once. Was that so much to ask for?
"Um," said the woman, "are you a bookshop? Your sign says 'Library,' but this is the market district, so I wasn't sure."
"We offer a variety of services," said the short one, his voice brighter and sweeter, the honey to the other's cream. "Most of our customers prefer to read on premises, but if you'd like to take a volume away, that can be arranged."
The woman looked around. If they had other clients, they weren't here right now. It was just her and them. And the girl in the loft who definitely wasn't floating. She couldn't be.
"If you tell us your desire, we can gather a selection," said the tall one. "Or, if you'd prefer, you are welcome to browse on your own. We'll be here when you need us."
She didn't know why, but that suggestion stirred something inside her belly. Was that why she was trying so hard not to stare? She let herself look, just a little. Damn. They were pretty, weren't they. The tall one didn't have much meat on him, but look at those long fingers. The short one was thick in all the right ways, and she couldn't help but wonder what his bristly beard might feel like grinding against her—no. She had to stop. This wasn't becoming of a woman of her age and stature, even if she was newly single and desperately horny. It wasn't right.
"I think I'll have a look, myself," she said, trying to hide her fluster. "Is that okay?"
"More than," said the short one. "Go right ahead."
She set her purse down on the low table. That seemed to be appropriate under the circumstances. The tall one nodded in assent. She was in the clear.
The books on the shelves were variously bound in leather and cloth and came in every shape and size from large and fat to small and thin. Some had illustrations etched on their covers, but most did not, as the preference seemed to be for simple embossed designs or decorative patterns. Almost universally, their spines were emblazoned with titles in pressed gold. She read off a few of them: "For Want of a Duke," "The Dragons Have a Picnic," "Star-Ships Passing in the Night," and giggled. She didn't recognize a one of them and there was something alluring in that pang of the unexpected.
Unlike a bookshop, there were no duplicate copies; each volume was singular in its inclusion. And unlike a library, there appeared to be no system to how the books themselves were shelved. Surely there must be, if the tall one had offered to make recommendations, but it seemed haphazard if not entirely random. Judging by their titles, there was the fantastic perched next to the mundane, here was liminal horror lurking next to cozy affirmation. It only made sense if there was another, more esoteric categorization at play—or if they all had something unexpectedly in common.
The woman picked out a leather-clad tome called "The Millet Farmer's Daughter" and opened it to a middle page. Not a paragraph in, she began to blush furiously. The contents were pornographic. Deeply so. Torn between two curiosities, she clapped it shut and selected another, the more innocently-titled: "Kyoto." Its passages were no less licentious.
"Have you found anything to your liking?" asked the short one.
The woman nearly dropped the book she was presently devouring, a breezy novella called: "Petit-Four on Vacation," which was currently embroiled in a steamy ménage à trois between the titular Miss Petit-Four and two ill-mannered sailors. The scene involved the creative application of a deep sea fishing net in a way that tickled her fancy just so. How long had she been reading in the stacks? How long had he been standing there? His proximity made her suddenly self-conscious of the fact that she'd soaked straight through her panties, even if he couldn't see what lurked beneath her dress.
"Um," said the woman, "yes. I mean... yes. This is—you said we can take them home?"
He flashed her a dangerous smile.
"If you'd like, that can be arranged," he repeated, "but I hope you'll let us show off our private collection, before you go. Based on what you've been browsing, I think we may have some items of interest."
The woman swallowed hard. Items? Of Interest? She had nowhere else to be. There was no one waiting for her at home. Why shouldn't she stay awhile longer?
She nodded vigorously.
He took the book from her hands.
"I'll put this aside for you," he explained, "to finish at your leisure. Now, follow me."
He brushed past her, careful not to allow for more than a whisper of contact between them. She wished he were less graceful. He smelled like lavender. She wanted to grab him by the waist and tackle him to the floor, but she didn't. She couldn't. She shouldn't. Instead, she trailed along behind him as they moved beyond where the light reached, into darkness and the hope of dreams.
"I noticed something about your books," she idly observed as they moved through the curiously long passage between the shelves.
"Oh?" prompted her guide. "What's that?"
It really was strange how far they were walking. It didn't seem like the place could possibly be as large as such a distance required. When she looked back over her shoulder to check, she could still see the lounge. It was receding, yes, but not as quickly as it ought to be for their pace. They should have left it long behind by now.
"None of them have any authors," the woman concluded. "Not listed, anyway."
Just like that, they passed out of the shadows and into light again. The woman now stood in a little illuminated rotunda. There was a plinth or a pedestal of some sort at its center, but its contents were obscured by a heavy velvet drop cloth. On the opposite wall, an oversized set of double doors suggested that this room was merely the tip of some grander iceberg. The doors were thickly lacquered and had been carved with a relief of many grotesquely entwining shapes and bodies that called to mind nothing more than the very words of lust she had so recently consumed.
"That is one quirk of our establishment," said the tall one, who had been waiting here for them. "All our works are produced on-site and their creator wishes to remain anonymous."
"It's the girl in the loft, isn't it," the woman intuited aloud.
The tall one smiled, neither confirming nor denying her deduction. As a reward or a distraction, he lifted the cloth from the mystery object at the center of the rotunda, revealing not a plinth, as she'd thought, but a dress-form clad in the most remarkable attire. It was less a bodysuit than a harness, all a chaotic tangle of a criss-crossing straps and buckles, only the buckles were encrusted with precious stones and the straps were made of strands of thick-linked golden chain. She imagined how every one of those scintillating arcs would grip her body. She could practically feel their bite. Without thinking about it, she dug her teeth into her bottom lip, suppressing an audible reaction.
"Would you like to try it on?" asked the short one.
"What?" she choked. "What do you mean? Here? But what if someone walks in?"
On reflection, that was hardly the most significant concern she ought to have raised, under the circumstances, but it was the first one that came out of her mouth.
The tall one lifted his hand and snapped his fingers and she heard the lock on the Library's front door turn over with a soft thunk.
"Our regulars know that we keep intermittent hours," the tall one explained. "Pay them no mind. They won't begrudge you your time in our care. May we help you out of your dress?"
It was good that he might consider anyone else's comfort, because as far as she was concerned, the world's population had been reduced to three people (plus one girl who was still definitely not floating but the woman was warming to the idea that maybe actually she was) and she was at its center.
"Oh," she murmured. "Yes, please."
He moved in close to pull off her sweater in one smooth tug, while the other knelt on the floor and gently slipped her feet out of her heels before he reached up and rolled down her stockings. A few undone buttons and a rustle of fabric later and her dress was in the wild and she was in the buff. She wished she'd put on nicer underwear, but she supposed that anything would have seemed too plain when compared to the golden raiment on the stand.
The short one tucked his thumbs into the waistband of her sopping panties.
"May I?" he asked.
She nodded and tried not to be embarrassed by strings of wetness that came away with the cotton.
"And this?" asked the tall one, his fingers on the clasp of her bra.
"Take it," she urged, so he did.
It was comfortably cool in the heart of the Library, enough to soothe her inflamed skin, but not enough to justify her diamond-hard nipples. The thought of covering herself or in any way diminishing her nakedness barely occurred to her. The two men surely stared, but she felt buoyed rather than exposed. She wasn't some butterfly to be pinned to a board and hung in a frame on the wall, she was a treasure to be pinned to the wall and filled by two hung gentlemen.
"Can I put it on myself?" she inquired.
"Of course you may, if you'd like," said the short one. "But we'll be right here if you find yourself in any need of assistance."
"Actually," she drawled, "maybe while I put this on, you two... could take your clothes off? Is that okay?"
"It is," said the tall one. "We'd be delighted."
She didn't know where the surge of confidence that had enabled that request had come from, but she wasn't going to complain about the result. Was she really that horny? Or did she simply believe that the customer was always right? Was she even a customer? No money had changed hands. They didn't even have a cash register. Maybe they took their payment in other ways. It didn't much matter. What else did she have to lose? How much could she stand to gain?
Resisting the temptation to watch the boys undress, she approached the garment at the center of the rotunda. It wasn't that difficult to puzzle out. Once she had it gathered in her hands, there was a clear central column that only split at its end. She put one foot through each leg-hole and began to lift and shimmy. The golden links nipped at her flesh wherever they could gain purchase, but they were pleasant little nibbles.
The chains themselves seemed almost to multiply as they settled into place, the central thong splitting down the middle to nestle on either side of her vulva before meeting and then parting again to allow for unobstructed access to her asshole—how thoughtful. So it went across her stomach, one orbit digging into the clefts of her hips before the next cinched around her belly-button and the next rode the arch of her bottom ribs, each with several attendant interconnections that left her fully sensitive to the hundreds of points to which her flesh was now anchored. Much like they had below, the chains went both over and under her breasts, a line riding up the center of each dome with a perfectly-shaped ring to socket around her nipples before joining with several others over the ridge of her shoulders.
"You'll need a hand with the clasps," said the tall one.
He must be referring to the several hook-and-ring connectors that currently dangled on either side of her spine. As it was now, the garment was form-fitting, but fairly loose. Once clasps were closed, it would become much, much tighter.
"If you would be so kind," she requested, her voice so raspy that she could barely hear herself mumble the words.
He hooked the first ring, just above her tailbone, and her clit throbbed as its surrounds were subjected to sudden tension. Much like his counterpart, he was fastidiously avoiding touching more than the chains themselves. She wanted him to touch her. She wanted him to rub the gaps between the chains. All of them. Deep and hard. But he still had work to do, so she kept her mouth shut and tried to remember to breathe. Her belly juddered as he closed the second set, the soft, hard gold kneading and containing her rolls. The third set similarly cut into her breasts and made her nipples stand out that much more fiercely than they had before.
The final clasp, the woman discovered, was a collar around her throat. It hooked first in the front, guided together by his long hands, and then again in the back. Latched shut, it wasn't so tight as to restrict her airway, but it was a narrow enough band to hold itself in place at the crown of her neck, bringing every other part of the harness into stable tension—stable, that was, so long as she didn't move a muscle.
Now that she was fully bound, the tall one moved back away. The woman been so involved with her own enclosure that she hadn't considered whether or not he might already be naked while he sealed her in. Time to find out.
"How do I look?" she asked, twirling to face them.
Oh, goodness. Yes, he was already naked. They both were. Once again, she bit her lip to stifle an outright moan, only this time she didn't fully succeed. Just look at them.
The tall one was olive-pale from his ears to his toes, though his mild and slender body was erratically striped by an alarming assortment of glass-white scars. In some sense, he had answered her question without uttering a word, because the cock between his legs was just as long as he was, only not so slender, and it was pointed, warlike, right at her abdomen.
The short one, on the other hand, was unblemished from head to foot, his tawny-dark skin sculpted with easy but faultless care. He offered a different answer to her question, because his delta mirrored her own, except that his vulva was capped not by a shy clit, but by a brave little cock that strained towards her belly just as eagerly as the other's.
"We cater to all appetites," the short one noted, following her gaze, "but you are not obligated to engage with anything or anyone you do not wish to. We're here for your gratification, not the other way around."
The woman shook her head, dismissing his concern. It had been too many years since she'd given head—the idea of it had repulsed her ex, all stereotypes to the contrary—and now she'd been handed everything she could ever want (except maybe another pair of bodacious tits) without even having to ask for it. We should all be so lucky.
"Come here," she invited.
They helped her to her knees, one hand each on each of hers, and she thanked them in turn. She wrapped her lips first around the tall one's cock, appreciatively cradling his shaft as she tentatively lapped at his head, trying to savor, trying not to inhale him, trying to keep herself from getting too carried away. She ran her tongue next through the short one's cunt, tracing the lines of his vulva before dragging her lips along his little cock. Back and forth she went, a little farther, a little further, her body moving faster and her heart pounding harder with every alternation. At this rate, she would soon become an animal, trapped in the throes of her wanton lust.
She wanted nothing more. She wanted to disappear into them. But with every nudge, with every tripping step towards oblivion, the chains on her body held her back. They bit and snagged and yanked and pinched, but they never cut and they never tore. While her will threatened to float away, they kept her feet planted firmly on the ground. Was that an accident or their design? It didn't much matter: she was much too busy sucking cock and eating cunt to care.
"Which one of you boys is going to come for me first?" she slurred in-between laps.
"Him," said the tall one.
"Hey, now," the short one protested. "Are you so sure about that? You're looking pretty shaky around the knees, there, o loving husband of mine."
The tall one chuckled and caught the woman by the chin, half-way through her exchange. He slipped his middle finger past her lips and she suckled on it gratefully, wetly, enough to make it slick and smooth. He then moved that finger around to the short one's backside and pressed it unceremoniously into his ass, just as the woman resumed her attentions, driving her tongue as deep as it would go inside of him from the other end.
"Oh, fuck you," the short one groaned as he came.
His hands found the back of the woman's head for support and pulled her upwards, directing her lips to latch around his little cock as he jerked his hips forward. He did not ejaculate, of course, but with the surge of wetness that coated his cunt-lips as they ground against her chin, she could almost believe that he had. It seemed good for him, and that was good enough for her.
She moved back to the tall one, taking his cock as far into her throat as she could manage and wrapping her fist around the rest. Pumping as her lungs fought for air, she felt him start to swell and then there was no doubt at all about whether or not he ejaculated, because her mouth was suddenly full of hot and bitter semen. She swallowed in a hurry as her mouth began to overflow and was overjoyed to discover the feeling of the golden choker working against her as she attempted to down his entire load. What she didn't manage to drink spilled out, dripping down her chin and spattering her tits, a new cluster of pearls to adorn her already priceless regalia.
The short one, recovering, helped her stand and helped himself to the tall one's leavings, lifting them off of her tits with languid, pleasing strokes of his fat tongue.
"I believe it's your turn," he said, when he was finished.
"Yes," she agreed, "but no oral, if you please. I'm not patient enough for that, right now. I need your cocks. I need them in me. Both of them, if you can."
Something close to but not quite shame passed across the short one's face, but the tall one reassured him with a serene little wrinkle of his eyes. Even through her cum-drunk haze, the woman could tell how much they loved each other. She felt real and stinging envy, but only for a second or two. They were about to fuck her senseless. Who was she to disparage who they were when she wasn't around?
The tall one rumbled words too soft for her to hear and waved his hand over the short one's delta. Where there had been nothing but his own slick and ruddy flesh, now he wore a golden garment, the cousin to the woman's own. Like hers, it was comprised of several strands of tightly-wound golden chain. Like hers, it split around his vulva, leaving his inner parts unbarred. Unlike hers, it sprouted a golden rod, inhumanly smooth and polished but recognizably curved and mushroom-tipped.
At last, the woman relented: the girl in the loft had been floating, after all, and she could delude herself no longer. She moved to the nearest wall and planted her palms on its tiled surface, sticking out her ass and spreading her heels as far as her body could handle.
"Don't keep me waiting," she half-begged, half-demanded.
The cock that parted her folds must belong to the tall one, for it was warm and soft on arrival. He slid it back and forth, collecting her dew and doing his best to ensure a smooth insertion. She sighed in exasperation and thrust her ass backwards, nearly managing to force him into her on her own, but the angle was wrong and he deflected. He slapped her ass, hard, in reprisal or reassurance, and then entered her while she waggled and whimpered.
Fuck, it had been so long and, fuck, he was so long. Even halfway inside, he seemed to fill her completely, but then he kept going, delving a little deeper with each thrust, getting a little rougher with every return. She rocked back into him, encouraging his excess, until she felt and heard the victorious clap of his thighs against her cheeks.
"Yes," she grunted. "More."
For the span of a few heartbeats, no more came. He withdrew and left her empty, hollow, alone. But before she could turn to protest, his hand found the back of her neck and held her gaze forward, towards the wall. He wouldn't let her look. He needed her to feel. That was when the short one pushed into her.
His golden cock was not so large as the tall one's, not by half, but there was something different about it—and not just that it was forged of metal. It wasn't cold, for one thing, but it wasn't warmed by body heat, either. She'd had steel implements inside her before. When they matched your temperature, their presence all but vanished. No, this cock wasn't just warm, it was hot and very, very present. It was so hot that she swore that if she looked now, her belly would be glowing from the inside. There was fire in her, and whether that was figurative or literal, she couldn't say.
Every thrust was a new gout of flame, filling her with fireworks from the depths of her core to the corners of her vision. What's more, it seemed that her golden harness and his golden cock worked in tandem, for the heat that passed from his hips danced across her body, running up the golden chains like electricity through power lines, or sparks along a fuse. If he didn't slow down, she was going to combust.
And then he pulled out and the tall one replaced him, his cock icy by comparison, but spreading her so much wider and reaching so much farther. It was a respite, in one sense, but it was no less sweet torture. They began to trade places and she felt like the desert sands under the baleful stewardship of the sun at its equinox, twelve hours of wracking heat and twelve hours of ruinous cold. The woman shuddered and sobbed her way to orgasm while the short one was fucking her, but she was still coming when swapped and the tall one didn't cease his thrusting until she'd climaxed a second time.
They let her catch her breath, but it wasn't long before they moved her, four hands guiding her as she swam through delirium. One of them bit into her nipple and her consciousness surfaced long enough for another wave of pleasure to crash over her as the other ran his tongue along the curve of her jaw and ear, sending her down and drowning again. She whirled and the world spun with her.
When the woman blinked out of her haze, she was back in the center of the rotunda. Little else had changed, but the dress-form had been switched out for a richly-upholstered ottoman on which the tall one sat, legs spread wide, shoulders back, his eyes upon her. The short one was on his knees, the tall one's cock impressively far down his throat. Hearing her stir, he let his lover's pole hang free with a spit-wet lurch.
"It's your turn, again," said the tall one, as the short one rose and moved around behind him. "Don't keep me waiting."
She tried to picture exactly what he had in mind, but then his partner made it plain. He grabbed the tall one's legs and bent them back, exposing his whole backside but, more importantly, leaving his cock standing out and proud, ready for her to mount. He would play the missionary that she might play the amazon. How novel.
The woman stepped forward, visualizing the exchange of their deltas, that his long cock was attached to her, that her wet cunt waited between his legs. She thrust into him—and him into her—forcing herself as far as she could go down his/her length in one steady motion. To her great satisfaction, she made it nearly two thirds of the way on the first try.
"Keep going," the short one cooed. "Fuck him properly."
She swung her hips, approximating the motion that had been used upon her on so many occasions, riding him standing as he began to mewl. It took more effort than she had imagined, but she quickly got the feel of it. She took his legs from the short one, gripping him by the ankles to better brace herself, folding him in two with every thrust, that she might enter him all the way to his hilt.
Freed of his supporting role, the short one moved around behind her. She paid him no mind. She was fucking this man. That was her only care in the world. Or it was until she heard the short one fall to his knees again and felt his hands spread her cheeks. The tongue of the man behind her thrust up into her second hole as her first hole thrust down upon the cock of the man in front of her. That the short one could match her pace and move back and forth with her was, again, an impressive feat, but that he was able to send his tongue flicking in and out of her while he moved to her rhythm was a feat of sexual acrobatics hitherto unknown to the woman. Again, she felt the whip of jealousy strike her heart. Perhaps they were looking for a third? Or, at the very least, a new regular?
When he stood again, she knew what he had in mind. It might have scared her at any other time in her life, but she was already so far away from anything she had experienced that it didn't much matter if they shattered a few more taboos.
"You go gently, now," the short one whispered in her ear, "and I'll try to do the same."
"Is there a safe word?" she asked, trying not let her fear show.
"Mercy," he told her, "or the sign of three. Use them if you need them, but I don't think you will. You told us you needed both of our cocks and that has been arranged."
He spit into his hand and rubbed it on the head of his golden cock before he guided it to her back entrance. She had thought it might hurt. She had thought there would be great resistance, especially with the tall one's cock speared through her. She had thought wrong. It turned out her body was as greedy as her heart. He slipped past her outer band and it wasn't long before he'd reached his limit, all the way up inside her. The short one wrapped his arms around her, one hand on her mons, the other on her tit, and eased her down, pushing her further onto the tall one's cock, until he, too, reached his limit and she was utterly sandwiched between them.
She came without additional provocation and they held her while she shook. When the shaking stopped, she started crying, all her walls torn down, and they just kept on holding her. They'd scoured her and wrung her out and put her in the breeze to dry. Now that she was clean, they wouldn't move on until she was ready. They would support her from the inside out, her rod and her staff, each of them mighty. God, she didn't even know their names.
The woman moved first and the short one followed. She thrust her hips outward, he thrust his hips upward. She drew backward, he drew downward. The tall one received her as the short one gave. The short one filled her up as the tall one eased her down. And all that was sweet and pretty, but it didn't much matter once they really got into it. They were fucking. Just fucking. Hard. Low. Fast. Rough. Grunting and wheezing and sweating and slapping. Their bodies mashed against each other. Their hearts thumped against their ribs. And then the tall one's balls boiled over and he was shooting up inside of her and the short one's reservoir overflowed and he was squirting all over her legs and she fell apart and came back together and fell apart again.
The tall one thought she was sleeping—and maybe she was, maybe it had all been a dream—when he ran his hands along her body and sang the incantation that turned the golden harness into motes of starlight. Released and naked, he carried her to another room—or perhaps the rotunda merely shifted around her again—the short one soothed her body with warm washcloths and sweet-smelling oils and soft powders. They let her dress herself, but she felt as much a passenger as the one behind the wheel. Minutes or hours or days after she'd first followed the short one through the strange passage between the stacks, she followed him back again out of darkness and into the light.
Maybe they'd taken the scenic route, because the tall one was already behind the front counter when they arrived in the lounge. He had left his necktie undone, but he had his smile on straight. It was no less genuine than had been at the start, but it struck her differently, this time around. He'd really meant it. They both had. Whatever this place was, it shouldn't exist—but she was so glad that it did.
The last book she'd been reading was sitting on the low table, next to her long-forgotten purse. It was accompanied by another volume, an apparent sequel called: "Petit-Four Underground." She picked up her purse, but she left the books behind.
"I think I'd prefer to read on premises, after all," she told them. "Is that okay?"
"Join us whenever you can spare the time," said the tall one. "If the door is locked, simply ring the bell. Our regulars are often fond of company."
The woman swallowed hard. Fond? Of company? She could think of nowhere else she'd rather be. There was no one holding her back at home. Why shouldn't she stay awhile anytime she liked?
She nodded quickly, but without that familiar restless anxiety. In fact, the woman felt more relaxed than she had in a long, long time. Yes, the world outside was damp and dreary, but it didn't much matter. She had discovered a number of reasons to smile. She had just turned forty and she was recently divorced and she hated her job, but she had stumbled into something nice for a change. This could be enough.
As one last indulgence, the woman glanced over her shoulder. The girl in the loft definitely wasn't floating now, because she was standing at the railing and watching her go. She gave the woman a wink and a wave goodbye. A gentle heat blossomed in the woman's breast. The Library was ever-growing and she was welcome in its embrace.