The arousal is suffocating and yet he cannot feel. Every sensation is dull on his numb skin, as if life itself has become a dream, ephemeral, intangible. No matter how many hands and mouths are on his body, roaming, caressing, it's never enough. If they achieve anything then to increase the raging hunger. It cannot be ascribed to a lack of exertion - Mistress Mab's girls know their trade, their ministrations are skilful, their dedication beyond doubt. Still, satisfaction will not come, nothing of the soothing emptiness of release.
John Alden longs for her hands on his chest. He longs for passion in the scrape of fingernails, fever in the lips dragged across skin, breath like the ghost of a summer breeze and soft thighs twining around him. The pull in his guts demanding their union is more than just desire of the flesh. Their bodies are merely the means to make the connection, it's their spirits that are to rejoice by the way of carnal pleasures.
They have had that once, a link of body and mind, forged in stolen hours and secret kisses. There used to be times when their love was real, not hauntings in the dead of night, no visitations in the borderlands between sleep and waking. He has had a taste of her mouth and her skin and the sweetness of her sex, he has smelt her hair and felt her trembling around him. That's how he knows it is really her who comes to him in his dreams.
He has dreamt of Mary before, countless times in the years of his absence, but those were pale memories, shadows. Now the dreams have become tangible, they leave him hungry and hard and reach from the nights into days like greedy fingers. He still bears the marks of her fingernails, angry red proof of the transgression of natural borders.
Deep down he knows what this means, even though everything in him battles the only possible conclusion: it is witchcraft. Mary has cast a spell on him in the most literal of senses. On every conscious level he is in denial. How could he believe the woman he loves to be a witch? How could he stand the thought of her being found out?
He grew up with the stories of what is done to a witch under torture, how bones snap and sinews tear and eventually fire licks flesh from bone. Usually the mind gives in long before the body is broken, even if then at the latest. A being can only endure so much.
The accounts were detailed, meant to inspire awe in the hearts of those who heard it. As if the torment inflicted upon these poor souls was but a foretaste of hell's agony awaiting whoever chose to strike a pact with the devil, not merely abhorrent proof of what man does to man in the name of religion.
Everyone in their right mind understands the implications of torture: persons subjected to it will confess to anything that is asked of them, anything at all. There is no truth to their stories, they would call the sky red and the grass purple if only this spared them the pain.
John has never been quite been able to see the sense in maiming a body when all it achieves is to extract false testimony. He is one for clean cuts and sober decisions: if the evidence is sufficient, and only then, should sentence be passed. Without mercy, without regret but also without passion or fear. His god is a god of reason and justice, not one of wrath and superstition.
More than sixty years have passed since the great witch hunts ravaged the Old World like a plague and John Alden has believed these days over and gone, left behind like the lands of their fathers. Yet it seems this very madness has at last found its way into New England, sowing suspicion and fear and it sickens him to see the panic-stricken, sanctimonious fervour grow among the people of Salem, for it is certain that their zealotry will precipitate them all into ruin.
The dark thoughts must have shown on his face because the girls double their efforts.
Stay here, sweet Captain, they croon, stay with us, we shall ease your sorrows.
The woman above him, hair like rye, lifts her hips, only too fall back, taking him further into her body. The movement is all about friction and pressure and goodness and John cannot help but groan as she keeps fucking him, as much for her pleasure as his. This is not meant to wear him out, he realises, she cares not for his satisfaction until she has had her own fill of him. She grinds herself against him with the unconcerned wantonness of a whore, of someone who needs not worry about propriety.
Something at last that he finds interesting. Something to break this ban of impassivity.
His hands rise to her hips, sprawl of fingers possessive on the supple flesh, and she smiles at him like honey and wheat, and the next of her moves is nearly punishing. She braces herself against his chest, the nails sharp on bare skin, and John groans again.
Harder, he says, and she obliges while the brunette to his side tightens her hand in his hair and tugs, viciously, pulling his head backwards, and the pain of it goes straight to John's groin. Yes, he hisses and then her mouth is upon his, her tongue like a snake between his lips and he has no choice but to give in to the kiss. If he does well, the grasp in his hair is bearable but every time he tries to win back control, she yanks so hard his scalp hurts.
It is more exciting that he would have thought possible. The pain penetrates the haze of languor, sharp pangs fading into a sensual ache, and for the first time in days he does not think about Mary Sibley. He simply moves with that woman like water with the tide and allows another to ravish his mouth and there are more hands pressing him into the pillows and mouths suck and fingers bruise and nails rake. Sensations pelting down on him like rain, John Alden finally climbs towards release.
The desire coils tight in his belly and ever tighter as tremors begin to crawl over his thighs, the silvery telltales of crisis, shudders of chill and delight. Dream, desire, death, they are never closer than now. Moans muffled by the fog of arousal reach his ear and under his fingertips the girl riding him trembles, so close. He wants to see her come apart, wants to see this moment of absolute bliss twisting her face, but the women hold him down. Fingers dig cruelly into shoulders, a hand covers his eyes and the brunette is still kissing him. He struggles half-heartedly against their grasp but to no avail. In this darkness he is alone, trapped in the body, reduced to a bundle of nerves and sensations. The wicked edge of fingernails over his nipples makes him arch involuntarily, driving deeper into the rye-haired whore, and after that he feels nothing but her muscles convulsing around him, a vortex he cannot resist and he is shattering, tension breaking like glass. Jagged, sharp splinters that cut to the bone, the violent jerks in which he spills his seed. Then finally the madness crumbles away and melts into relief and exhaustion.
It will not last long, that much he knows as he leaves Mistress Mab's establishment, he already feels the renewed stirrings of desire, but for the time being alleviation is all he can hope for…