The Broken Circle

The stone building's oaken door was lit by fires of torches mounted in sconces that flanked the wooden portal. The door itself was marked with the wear of more than a hundred years, but it stood firm in the gloaming.

Cara stood at the edge of the firelight, her face partially concealed by the hood of her brown cloak. The dark garment exposed the pale skin of her neck and collarbones before coming together at a silver brooch shaped like an oak leaf. The young woman clutched the cloak tightly about her spare frame as the wind whipped through the mature wheat fields that surrounded the building.

She raised her fist to the door as if to knock, but before her skin could touch it there was a sound from within. The whir of tumblers against iron whispered into the autumn air, and the portal's intricate silver doorknob began to turn.

The door swung inward, revealing a shadowy figure clad in black. The figure's head was concealed by the hood of a black cloak draped about their body.

Neither party spoke. Cara took a step across the threshold, her bare foot absorbing a chill from the stone floor within. Once inside, she could make out stairs descending into the earth, the bottom made invisible by darkness.

The shadowy figure gestured down the stairwell.

With a cautious eye cocked in the direction of her cloaked companion, she edged past the person and slowly padded down the stone steps. As she descended, her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

Cara was about halfway to the bottom when she flinched at the sudden sound of metal grinding against metal. She turned to see the cloaked doorman swinging shut the building's front door. Her skin crawled as every nerve in her body came to life. There was no turning back now.

She exhaled a sharp, steadying breath, and finished her descent. At the bottom of the stairwell she made out the shape of a door ahead through the gloom. Its countenance was limned by the faint glow of light from beyond. In the usual place she could discern a knob, and reached out to grasp it.

The metal was cold to the touch, but she turned it to the right and pushed the portal open with ease.

The door swung wide to reveal a stone chamber lit by a hundred identical white candles oriented in a near circle, broken only as it faced her door. There was a pair of heavy wooden doors on the far side of the chamber, their oaken planks strapped with iron at the top and bottom, much like the one she just opened. Her door was marked with a sigil of an unfinished circle much like the circle of candles, but with a dot in the middle.

Cara approached the center of chamber. There, she relaxed her grip on her cloak and shrugged it from her shoulders. The article slid to the floor, unveiling her bare skin beneath. She stood naked in the center of the near-circle of candles, her skin alive with gooseflesh and her nipples erect in the chill air of the subterranean chamber.

Looking down, she saw in the otherwise gray stone floor a pair of small white stones approximately two feet apart. With a steadying breath, she lowered herself into an upright kneel and gently shimmied each knee into position touching one of the two white stones.

Cara heard the door close behind her, but she didn't dare turn her head to acknowledge it. From behind her, a booted figure advanced into the circle. Despite her apprehension, she stared straight ahead as the person lowered a red linen scarf in front of her eyes. They pulled it tight against her head and tied it in the back, blindfolding her.

She remained motionless. The figure removed her cloak from the circle. On the far side of the room, she heard one of the doors open. Another person entered and crossed the room to stand in front of her.

-[]-

"Are you prepared?" A soft male voice asked from above.

"I am," she breathed in reply.

The man crouched to her eye level, and she could feel his breath on her face.

"Do you possess the will, the courage, and the stamina to be one of us?"

"I do," she called, finding her voice and issuing her reply with strength and conviction.

"Do you accept the price of failure?" he queried.

"I do," Cara whispered, her voice catching in her throat.

The man kissed her softly on the forehead, his lips barely connecting with her skin. He stood, and walked away from her.

"Prepare yourself," the man ordered.

Fear began to coalesce in her mind, but she shook it away with a swing of her hair, and erected herself as tall as she could while remaining kneeling. Her arms she positioned behind her, hands aligned so their fingertips touched, fingers spread as wide apart as her hands could comfortably keep them.

From behind her, the figure that blindfolded her took a step forward. A moment later, she felt something hard and metal being slipped into the place where her thumbs touched.

A coin.

As the coin slid into position, Cara pressed her thumbs together to hold it in place. Another coin presented itself, this time to her index fingers. And so it went, until she held five coins between the tips of her fingers behind her back.

"Let one fall, and you still may find a place among us," the man's voice carried from across the room.

It was a woman's voice close behind her, however, that sent a shiver running up her spine. "But should more than one coin slip your fingers, your body will be forfeit to us until the first light of the morning star."

Footsteps as the man returned to the circle. Now one stood in front of her, one stood behind. Cara saw nothing, imagined everything, and waited with every nerve in her body alight.

Cold. Wet. Droplets of liquid falling onto her head. One, then two, then a drizzle, finally a torrent, as her tormentors poured what felt like a bucket of water onto her. The water cascaded all around her, soaking every square inch of her frame.

Desperately Cara clung to the coins as the water chilled her to the very core.

In seconds the flow of liquid ceased. The blindfold and her hair clung to her skin. Droplets of water beaded all over her flesh. Every few seconds, one exceptionally large one would break free of its mooring and trail a path down her torso or a limb. She heard, behind her, an empty wooden bucket being placed on the stone floor.

In front of her, she felt something touch her collarbone. It was soft yet sharp, like the tip of an artist's paintbrush. She gasped and held her breath as the tip of the brush glided down the length of her collarbone, toward the center of her chest. As it slid off the end it arced down the center of her chest, sweeping around to the left and up the outside of her left breast. It stopped at her other collarbone and repeated the process, arcing under and around her other breast. The paintbrush finished its orbit at the center of her breastbone, where it rested, gently poking at her flesh.

She could feel, despite the cold, or perhaps because of it, her skin flushing with heat. It was as though the room had gotten a lot warmer.

When the paintbrush began moving anew, it worked its way up the center of her chest and traversed her neck, toward her ear. It looped slowly around the arc of her ear and continued along the bottom of her blindfold before coming to rest at the tip of her nose.

The sensation vanished.

When the sharp tip of the brush returned, this time to her inner thigh, the surprise was too great.

As a gasp of shock issued from her lips, the coin between her pinkies clattered to the stone floor, the ring of metal on stone echoing around the room.

"One coin lost so soon," the woman hissed, close to her ear.

"Trust me when I tell you," the man began with a low, steady tone. "That you do not want to drop another coin."

"We're just getting started," the woman cooed, farther away now and walking off.

-[]-

Through it all, the man did not remove the paintbrush, and Cara focused all of her energy on controlling her fingertips. After allowing her to calm herself by resting the brush heavily on her thigh, the man began to work the implement slowly up the skin of her thigh, rising until it met the crease of flesh just to the side of her sex. And there he turned it, following the sensitive skin of that crease upward, until it crested her pubic bone. There he arced it to the center of her torso and traced the brush upward.

The brush slid around Cara's belly button, where he looped it in three orbits before continuing upward. At her solar plexus, he swept the brush to the side, bringing it up the underside of her pert breast.

Once atop her breast, the brush began a revolution along the outer edge of the raised skin. When the brush completed a single orbit, it curved inward, just a little, and ran another circle. Inward and inward, circling again and again, closing the circle a fraction of an inch with each revolution.

Cara didn't dare move a muscle. She didn't dare breathe. While the tantalizing sensation on her breast left her head swimming in pleasure, she did her best to focus on the coins between her fingertips.

Another revolution and the brush traced the outer rim of her dark pink aureole. There the man set the brush in orbit, tracing a complete circle every few seconds.

"I don't think you have it in you," the man teased. Cara exhaled as slowly and carefully as she could through slightly parted lips.

Halfway through her exhale he arced the brush inward, circling the middle of the aureole, deftly avoiding the erect nipple at its center. She inhaled with a gasp, barely retaining control over the coins.

As the brush circled her aureole she felt her total focus drawn to her nipple. It burned with tension, nerve endings searching the ether for some direct contact, ANY sensation, to fill the void.

And then the brush vanished from her breast, and there was nothing but emptiness. She sucked in air greedily, her chest heaving as she tried to steady herself. She thought she heard the woman stifle a laugh on the other side of the room.

The brush returned, this time to the outer rim of her other breast. As it began a revolution around the outside of the uninitiated breast, she realized with dread that the whole process was about to repeat itself.

Seven minutes and an eternity later, sweat poured down her taut muscles as she fought with her body to stay the course. The brush danced in circles atop her aureole.

When the sensation vanished again, both of her nipples were on fire with need. It was as though every nerve ending in her body were gathered at the tips of her breasts.

The next thing she felt was a mouth closing over each of her nipples, the warm, wet envelopment squeezing and kneading her tender flesh. She cried out and attempted to pull back, but four hands quickly shot into place, grabbing hold of her back, shoulders, and ass.

The sensation was electric. It was overwhelming. Her whole world exploded and she saw stars despite the blackness of the blindfold. When she recovered from the initial shock she moaned in pleasure as the two mouths ravaged her nipples, their tongues alternately flicking and circling around her erect flesh. All of the built up tension shot right from her nipples, down her spine, and into her sex.

As her arousal mounted, she could smell the musty odor of her wetness filling the air, but despite the initial explosive sensation and the utter rapture that followed she held the four remaining coins. She could feel her breathing grow ragged with lust.

It was then that the mouths and hands abruptly vanished.

Cara couldn't stifle a slight moan of frustration.

-[]-

"I'm impressed," the woman mused, her voice coming from close by Cara's side.

"I'm not," the man shot back. Equally close but at her other side.

Cara managed to regain her composure despite the ache of lust that wracked her body.

Footsteps echoed as her adversaries crossed the room. They stopped somewhere outside the circle of candles.

When they returned to the circle, fear once again crept across her consciousness, and the muscles all along her torso tensed in anticipation.

Someone crouched low before her.

The paintbrush returned. It's fine tip resting gently on her breastbone. After sitting still for a moment, the man began to direct its path down her chest. At her navel it circled three times and continued downward.

With precision and patience, the man dragged the brush into the wispy tendrils of her pubic hair and teased it slowly toward her clitoris. Right as the pubic hair gave way to the fleshy hood that cloaked the most sensitive square inch of her body, the man stopped his southbound journey and removed the brush.

At the paintbrush's retreat, Cara realized that she had begun to grind her hips, just slightly, in anticipation. She let out a baited breath when the sensation stopped, and a subtle moan snuck through her parted lips as she exhaled.

The paintbrush returned, this time to the delicate flesh below her vagina. It traced an intricate glyph, than moved upward and slid over the pink petals of her excited labia. The brush painted the wetness that flowed freely from her, spreading it across her vaginal lips.

The man began to slide the brush upward once more but at the last second he ducked the brush to the side, sweeping it along the outside of her clitoral hood, putting only the slightest pressure where she so desperately wanted it. Atop her clitoris the brush danced along the hood as it worked its way up to the line of her pubic hair. There it turned and moved downward once more.

Finally, gloriously, it dipped over the tip of the hood and touched home, arcing over the erect nub of her clitoris as it peeked proudly from underneath its protective skin.

She shrieked briefly at the initial sensation, and began to gasp in pleasure as he lightly and rhythmically flicked the brush over the surface of her clit. She lasted ten seconds before fumbling the coin between her index fingers.

Despite the fact that the man continued to relentlessly tease her clit, she reacted as the coin slipped, and before it could get free of her grip entirely she shifted the pressure on her fingers and caught it between her fingertips and the first knuckle of each index finger.

"Now I'm impressed," the man announced to the woman as he continued his ministrations.

Another few seconds of pleasurable agony and he withdrew the paintbrush once more. Again Cara used the moment's respite to take a quick breath and relax her muscles.

With the click of hard soles against stone the woman crossed the room and crouched behind Cara. The next thing she felt was a hand plant itself firmly cupping her entire sex. The man's hand. She gasped as the man slowly inserted his middle and ring finger into her vagina to the first knuckle. He swirled the fingers clockwise, only once, and withdrew.

Another moan escaped her lips, at which she felt a second hand, the woman's hand, wrap loosely around her throat.

The man's hand returned, this time at her mouth. He drew his middle and ring fingers lightly across her parted lips and she could taste and smell the tangy sweetness of her arousal.

At this, the woman's other hand began to caress Cara's sex, gently kneading her clitoris. The sensitive button tingled with kinetic energy.

She moaned, long and hard. The man's fingers slipped into her mouth and she sucked on them as if they were his cock. As she gave herself over to wanton desire, however, a fragment of her psyche remembered the coins and held them fast.

As she sucked, the hand that kneaded her clitoris began to slip down, past her clit, below her vagina entirely. Soaked in Cara's arousal, the index and middle finger began to circle her anus. As they began to press against her most intimate of spaces, the fingers around her neck began to tighten.

The man's fingers left her mouth and began to draw circles around her clit.

The woman's fingers pressed harder and harder against her ass, until the wetness that coated them pushed them through the ring of muscle that blocked their way.

Cara groaned as the woman's two fingers slid in her ass. The man's hand began to move faster across the surface of her clit.

In the distant haze, she could feel her arousal brewing into a firestorm. It took every muscle in her body just to control her hands enough not to drop a coin. Sensation rolled over her in waves.

The man's fingers rubbed relentlessly across her most sensitive spot while the woman began to slowly massage her from the inside out, fingers probing as far in as they could reach before withdrawing almost all the way out.

Over, and over, and over.

Sparks began to ignite in her mind. Her vision clouded and stars sprung into the periphery of her sight. The fingers in her ass and on her clit worked faster and faster. Sweat poured from her skin. Her cheeks and nipples flushed, and liquid dripped from her sex. A tear soaked into her blindfold.

And Cara came.

Every muscle in her body quivered and failed. Her hips dived into motion, grinding her ass and her clit into waiting hands. A cry of sheer ecstasy crashed from her lips.

Coins clattered to the stones below.

And as the fragments of her consciousness slowly began to piece themselves back together, she realized with a sense of dread and excitement that her night was just beginning.