Chapter 34: Pleasure Dome - Part 1

The room they led us to smelled of warm oil and something floral I couldn't name, low couches arranged in a loose triangle so we could see each other without straining. I lay face down on mine, chin resting on folded arms, and let the woman assigned to me press her palms flat against my shoulder blades. Her thumbs found a knot I hadn't known was there and worked it loose with patient, circling pressure.

Beside me, Aria groaned into her cushion, the sound stretching long and unhurried. "Oh, that's—okay, wow. Lily. Lily, you have to tell me your secret."

"My secret to what," I said, the words coming out flatter than intended as the woman's hands slid down either side of my spine.

"To picking so well. First time here and you land the best hands in the building." Another moan, softer, punctuating the sentence like a comma. "That's not beginner's luck, babe."

"It was random." I turned my head enough to see her profile, eyes half-closed, tail curling and uncurling against the cushion in slow, contented loops. "I looked at a wall of faces and picked three."

Isabella, stretched on the third couch with her masseur working oil into the muscle along her forearm, didn't open her eyes. "I do not believe that. You scanned the entire wall before you chose. I watched you do it."

I had scanned the wall. That much was true. What I hadn't told either of them was the criterion I'd used—that out of forty profiles offering every combination of body and skill Hell apparently manufactured, I'd narrowed it down to the women and stopped there. It wasn't much. It wasn't even consistent, not after the taxi, not after the club with Valerian and the rest of them tangled together on a booth cushion. But it was something. One small refusal to let the body's easy, indiscriminate hunger make every choice for me. Proof, however thin, that some part of the decision still belonged to me and not to demon instinct settling into my nerves like silt.

The evidence undercutting that theory was already gathering low and warm between my thighs, which made the whole exercise feel less like defiance and more like a technicality I was arguing with myself.

"Or," Aria said, dragging the word out, "maybe you're secretly a regular. Sneaking off to the Dome between classes, very scandalous, very unlike proper Lily Nightstar—"

I gave her a look over my shoulder, the kind that used to make interns reconsider their phrasing.

She laughed, bright and unbothered, tail flicking once in acknowledgement. "Kidding, kidding. I know you're all buttoned-up and proper, it's cute, I love it, I love watching you pretend you're not enjoying yourself." Her masseur's hands paused at the small of her back and she arched into it, breath catching before she pushed on. "But seriously. You should loosen up more. Sex won't kill you, you know. It's like the opposite of that."

"I get enough of it."

"Every other day isn't enough, sweetheart. That's not a schedule, that's a diet plan."

"We went two days straight in London. I won that competition, if you'll recall."

"Doesn't count." Aria waved a hand without lifting her head. "That was a competition. Competitions are work. You're excellent at work, everyone knows that, you'd win a soul-counting contest against death itself. I'm talking about the fun kind. The kind where nobody's keeping score." She shifted, hips rolling slightly under her masseur's palms, and grinned at nothing in particular. "Anyway. Best part's coming up."

"Best part?"

The masseurs answered before either of them could explain, hands drifting from shoulders and spine to places that had nothing to do with muscle tension—the underside of a breast, the soft crease where thigh met hip, fingers tracing rather than kneading now.

I opened my mouth to object, some reflex insisting this had crossed a line, and then let the breath go instead. This was that kind of place. It had been that kind of place since the beaded archway. And if I was honest, the woman's hand sliding up my inner thigh felt considerably better than the honest objection I'd been about to make.

This was temporary, that much stayed true no matter how the room's heat pressed against it. I was leaving. This was only doing as the Romans did, nothing more, a costume worn well because wearing it badly would draw attention I couldn't afford.

Then a finger slid inside me, and the sentence I'd been building in my head came apart into no words at all.

*

The masseurs withdrew eventually, leaving warm oil and looser limbs behind them. I stretched along the couch, testing muscles I hadn't known were tight until they weren't anymore, my tail flopping against the cushion with none of the earlier tension in it.

"Okay." Aria sat up in one fluid motion, hair sticking to her shoulder where sweat and oil had mixed. "That was something. Thank you." She pointed at me with both hands, like I'd personally hand-carried the woman across the room. "Seriously. Top three massages of my entire existence, and I've had a lot of massages."

"You're still on this." I pushed myself upright, working a knot loose at the base of my neck with my own fingers. "I told you. It was random."

"Random or not," Isabella said, rolling her shoulder with the small, precise satisfaction of someone checking a repair had held, "you truly chose well."

"See, even Bella agrees, and Bella doesn't agree with anything on principle." Aria swung her legs off the couch, tail flicking upright with sudden purpose. "So. What now. Have you decided?"

I thought of the list Aria had rattled off on the way in, most of it evaporating the moment I'd stopped paying attention to focus on my own name on a wall of forty faces. One word had stuck. "The Aether-Vapor Lounges. You mentioned those few times."

Aria's nose wrinkled, not unkindly. "Okay, don't get me wrong, great pick, very good instinct—for later. Not right after a massage though. We want something more, y'know, stimulating. Feeding Line's good. Or the Sensory Deprivation Slimes, those are fun, very intense, very—" she made a shape with her hands that explained nothing.

"Something with more engagement than hands would be welcome," Isabella agreed, tone dry enough to suggest she'd already been thinking it before Aria said it.

"See?" Aria jabbed a finger at me. "Pick something different. We'll do the Lounges later, promise, I'll hold your hand through it and everything."

"I don't know what half of those words mean."

"That's the fun part! First-timer's prerogative." Aria grinned, wide and unbothered, already rising to drape an arm over my shoulders. "Besides, you picked masseurs like an absolute champ. Trust the instincts. They haven't failed you yet."

I let the arm settle, weighing the unfamiliar names against the very familiar sensation of being talked into things I hadn't agreed to. "Sanctuary of Attainment, then." It sounded safe. Contained.

Aria's smile did something complicated, amused and fond at once. "Somehow I knew you'd pick that one."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She just shrugged, tail curling loosely around my calf, entirely unhelpful. "Nothing bad. It just—fits your vibe."

I didn't know whether to take that as a compliment or a diagnosis.

*

We walked back into the main hall, still slick with oil and unconcerned about it. Clothing felt like an afterthought in a place where everyone was either completely bare or wearing scraps that served aesthetic purposes rather than practical ones. A succubus passed us going the opposite direction, her purple skin gleaming under the floating light crystals, accompanied by two mortals on leashes who stared at nothing in particular. Their expressions were placid, vacant in a way that suggested this wasn't their first visit.

Signs dotted the corridors at regular intervals, some carved into obsidian plaques, others projected in shimmering runes that shifted languages depending on where you stood. The Feeding Lines. The Chastity Gauntlet. The Sensory Deprivation Slimes. Each name either explained everything or nothing, and I couldn't tell which was worse.

"Third floor," Aria announced, veering toward a spiral staircase that twisted upward through the centre of the dome. She took the steps two at a time, tail swaying behind her with each bounce.

"How many floors does this place have?" I asked, following at a more measured pace.

"Six. Nine if you count the underground levels."

The number stuck in my head, refusing to settle quietly. Six visible, three hidden beneath. The same structure as Hell itself, just inverted. Or maybe not inverted at all—maybe this was exactly how it was supposed to work, pleasure stacked on pleasure, each layer pulling you deeper until you forgot there'd ever been a surface.

Fingers snapped in front of my face. "Focus."

I blinked, finding Aria half a step ahead, turned back to stare at me with one hand still raised. "I was focused."

"No, you were thinking. There's a difference." She dropped her hand, but the look didn't go anywhere. "You do that a lot, you know. Just vanish into your own head while the rest of us are standing right here."

"There's nothing wrong with thinking," Isabella said from behind me, her voice carrying the faint edge of someone who'd had this argument before.

"Never said there was." Aria resumed climbing, throwing the words over her shoulder without slowing down. "But Lily thinks enough for all three of us combined. It's like she's trying to solve equations that don't have answers, and meanwhile she's about to walk face-first into a support beam."

"It's not that bad."

"Last week you almost walked into a lamp post."

The memory surfaced, unwelcome and entirely accurate. "I dodged it."

"Barely." Aria reached the third floor landing and stopped, spreading her arms wide in a presentation gesture that encompassed the entire corridor ahead. "Anyway. Save your excuses. We're here."

The entrance was marked with a simple brass plaque: Sanctuary of Attainment. The door stood open, revealing a room lined floor to ceiling with equipment I recognised from exactly one context, and none of it involved sanctuary.

Racks of leather cuffs in graduated sizes. Whips arranged by length and material. Paddles, crops, gags, blindfolds, restraints in configurations I couldn't immediately parse the function of. Everything polished, organised, displayed like tools in a workshop.

I stopped in the doorway. "What exactly did I just choose?"

"Something that fits your vibe," Aria said, already halfway to the far wall. She lifted a coiled whip from its mount, testing the weight with a practised flick that sent the tip snapping through empty air. "Perfectly, I might add."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

She turned, grinning in a way that suggested she'd been waiting for this exact question since we left the massage room. "You're bossy. Controlling. You like things done a specific way and you get twitchy when people don't follow instructions." The whip coiled back into her hand. "This whole room is basically your natural habitat. I'm surprised you didn't beeline for it first thing."

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again and found I had nothing that would successfully argue the point.

"Don't overthink it," Isabella said, stepping past me into the room proper. She moved to a different section, fingers trailing along a row of silk restraints with the same clinical assessment she'd use for any other piece of equipment. "Aria's exaggerating, but she's not entirely wrong."

"Thank you for that resounding defence."

"I don't deal in flattery." Isabella selected a length of black silk, examining the weave. "Only accuracy."