6. Gluttony

Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us ~ Peter De Vries

In love, as in gluttony, pleasure is a matter of the utmost precision ~ Italo Calvino

Lying dreamy in the midst of silken cushions and languid bodies, he watched the smoke curl from his lips and spiral up up towards the ornate red and gold of the ceiling. He saw how the white tendrils dissipated, melting into the air. It, this entire scenario, had become rhythmic. Routine.

More money than sense, was how she had described him, casting the words over her shoulder with a sidelong smile as she led him to his usual room, closely followed by the most beautiful girls, the most entrancing nymphs to be purchased.

Clad in silk dressing gowns and matching underwear – corsets and french knickers – these mesmerising creatures would lay him down and undress him, quickly adorning his rich frame with their half naked bodies. His favourite wore nothing but pantaloons and always removed them very slowly, standing over his supine form, letting her dark curls fall around her lustfully smiling eyes, giving him the first and best view of her pink cunt.

Meanwhile, beside him, another sat, dressed in blue satin pajamas, and prepared a pipe, lighting it and raising it to his wanton lips.

The room was dimly lit, but what little light there was, cast perfectly over the naked flesh of his many hostesses. Intermittently, and with the slow pointing of his fingers, one or another of them would recede into the darkness at the edge of their lit love-making, and return with fruit or chocolate or wine and feed him with nimble fingers, licking anything spilled from the corners of his lips with her rough, pointed tongue. And again, the girl in the blue satin pajamas would raise the pipe to his lips and he would feel his senses overload with the rich indulgence of deep, heady smoke.

Throughout the evening mouth after mouth, tongue after tongue, would taste his lazy erection; in the few moments that his pleasure grew hard enough, they would take turns sliding their heated wetness down over his cock, attempt to clench around him, to keep him upright, but with the laziness and familiarity he would eventually grow softer and they would return to their paid-for kisses and expensive blow jobs. They touched and caressed one another, even pushing delicate fingers inside soft cunts, all for his pleasure, but the view no longer conjured in him any more than a pulse and a deeply indolent smile, before his face and his erection returned to their previously idle state.

It wasn’t always this way; when he had first discovered this place, the brothel where decadence and indulgence were more important than sex, he had been wild, spilled cum over every wide eyed whore available to him, pressed them into the cushions and sheets and turned each innocent into a mess of sweat and lust. He paid for them and he took them. But as time went by his lust had dissipated like the smoke from his pipe, and been replaced by an ever growing comfort. He returned again and again by force of habit; when plays had been attended and dinner had been eaten and all his friends had receded into their homes, this was where he would go. To indulge and relax and smoke until dawn. The enjoyment lasted longer than his orgasms, but even that came to an end.

Peeling his sticky back from the satin cushions he stood, stumbling a little, so unused to being on his feet. Planting a mandatory kiss on the lips of his appointed favourite, who would – in turn – meet his parting gaze with a mandatory smile, the girl in the blue pajamas took his hand and led him through the maze of darkened, smokey corridors, from whence he could hear the moans and sighs of those who were only skimming the surface of their gluttony, still able to enjoy the pleasures their wealth or savings afforded them, not yet so deep in indulgence that their bodies had forgotten how to respond – as his had.

Reaching an external door, the girl smiled and he stepped out into the dawn’s unforgiving light, heard the heavy door slam shut behind him, and, standing lifeless on the street, felt another familiarity; the horrible, all consuming awareness that once again he had spent his hard earned money in a place that robbed him of his time and gave him nothing but quiet and painfully all-knowing dissatisfaction.

• • • • •

The Seven Deadly Sins
1. Pride
2. Envy
3. Wrath
4. Sloth
5. Greed
6. Gluttony
7. Lust