A Roman gladiator. That was how I felt, like a Roman gladiator, waiting for my turn to die.

Although, of course, it was Hashim, stood beside me in this antechamber, who looked the part, with his chiselled, bronze body gleaming with the fragrant oil I had rubbed over him less than an hour before in preparation for the ceremony. Even his bald profile — featuring what some might call a ‘Roman nose’ — evoked the image of a champion fighter at the Colosseum, staring calmly at the door of carved mahogany before us.

Next to him, I was a toy doll. The top of my head barely reached his broad shoulders, and my pale frame, whilst not emaciated, did not have muscle tone to compare with his. My hair, washed in the same pre-ritual bathing as the oiling, hung sleek and loose down my back, which, together with my delicate facial features — balanced precariously on that line separating masculine and feminine, especially clean-shaven — gave me an androgynous look. Fitting, I supposed, given that the demon or god this place had been constructed in honour of had features of both a man and a woman.

Three days I had been in the Temple of Baphomet after accepting Hashim’s invitation. At least, that was how long ago I had been told it was by the Disciples of Baphomet, as the cult members called themselves. In reality, I had no way of knowing other than counting the number of long sleeps for the complex consisted of a series of interconnected caves carved out of basalt. I had no watch or phone, there were no clocks, and I had not seen the sun since that fateful day when I decided to attend a black metal concert at an English castle. Where in the world these caves were, I had no idea, for no one would tell me.

To settle my nerves, I let my eyes wander along the designs drawn on Hashim’s skin by whatever deranged tattoo artist the cult employed to decorate their bodies. Futile though I knew it to be, I attempted to memorise the paths they took, looked away at one of the torches mounted on the wall, then back at his arm.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not figure out the key to the optical illusion that made the markings subtly different from seconds before. There was a loop I had failed to notice on his bicep, the thick lines down his forearm overlapped a few millimetres from where I remembered, and in spite of having repeated ‘pointing at thumb' to myself, the end of the spiral wrapped around his wrist was, in fact, pointing at his forefinger.

I shook my head. Living underground was messing with my mind.

Terrified screams from behind those blood-red doors brought me out of my reverie with an unpleasant jolt. Loud cheering followed, drowning out the hypnotic background chanting that had been going on for hours. I groped for the count — was that the ninety-first or ninety-second such eruption?

“Ninety-third,” Hashim corrected me, reading my mind.

That was a gift all the Disciples had, and had grown rather irritating. I know I can be shy to the point of mute, but maybe I want to keep my thoughts private if I don’t speak them.

“Sorry, Chris,” he apologised, softening the second intrusion with a cheeky grin framed by his trimmed goatee, “we don’t have any control over it.”

“It’s alright, Hashim,” I replied, relieved at the opportunity for conversation, however small. “How, um, how many more?”

“Nine.”

I nodded and swallowed. I had mixed feelings about that countdown. The sources of the screams were the neo-Nazis, captured the night we met, for whom I did not have much sympathy. I believed Hashim when he said they were all in some way involved in hate-fuelled violence. Genuine human fear was still unpleasant to hear, however.

What happened when the countdown finished also filled me with apprehension — the far-right thugs were ‘food’ for the ‘Children of Baphomet’, whatever they were, then we would enter for a mysterious ritual. All they would tell me about it was that a ‘portal’ would open to present me as a ‘Candidate Disciple’ to the god.

Mystical bullshit with a side order of murder, was my initial judgement. Now that the event was imminent, I wondered, What if my application is rejected? Would that mean I would also be food for the Children? And what the fuck were they?

As usual, the words got lost on the way to my mouth. Although it had taken a day for me to work out, cult members would often give me subtle mental nudges to guide me away from topics or parts of the Temple that were off-limits. He kept reassuring me that I could leave at any time, the price being the loss of all memory of our meeting, but I wondered if he would permit me to say ‘no’ to him.

“Oh, you can always say no,” he told me, trespassing in my mind yet again, “but you don’t want to.”

I pouted, but he was right. I wanted him. Every moment we had been together, my desire for him had increased, despite him denying me both knowledge of his beliefs and any kind of sexual release. About the former, he would only say that belief must come from true knowledge, not from the proselytising of others. The justification for the latter was that we were to save ourselves for the ceremony. I hoped that was a promise.

Instead, when not touring the tunnels and meeting other worshippers, our conversations stuck to more rational topics — music, guitar gear, his homeland, and wine. He knew a lot about wine, but actual samples of what he described to me were also off-limits, for a ‘cleansing’ was another part of the preparations. Water and a thin but tasty soup were all we consumed.

A sickening, wet thud accompanied by disappointed booing next door interrupted my reminiscing.

“Butterfingers,” Hashim said, rolling his Rs in that honeyed, Middle-Eastern accent of his.

I laughed nervously. It was the fourteenth time he had made that joke, and I gathered cause of the sound was a fascist falling to their death rather than fulfil their role of sacrificial victim. I never had a stomach for real gore or violence, so it did not exactly make me comfortable. The strange way the dark, volcanic rock of these caverns absorbed most of the light did not help, and I started to feel I was floating in a starless void. In an attempt to keep me anchored, I turned to the other five Disciples waiting with us.

The view was far from unpleasant — nudity was compulsory in the Temple and ogling one another actively encouraged. Tamisra was closest to us, a petite woman with brown skin, short hair, and a delightful, Liverpudlian accent. A doctor in her late twenties, were it not for the tattoos all over her, I would have had trouble believing she was a cult member.

That went for all of them. James, the stocky Welshman in his forties. Tomas, the Swedish nurse, even taller than Hashim, but leaner. Carla, the curvy Italian midwife in her fifties, though my guess had been fifteen years younger. Surrounded by them was Rosemary, the pregnant Australian beauty therapist who had performed the least enjoyable part of my ‘cleansing’ — a full body wax.

She gave me a smile. I returned it, my eyes roaming over her tanned figure. Vine-like markings covered her, too: over her arms, her thick thighs, and even her full breasts, almost reaching the dark areolae. More curled around her belly, which looked larger than it had when she had been working on me. The baby must have kicked, for movement under her flesh turned the design on the surface into a nest of snakes.

“Are you sure Rosemary is okay to come to this?” I asked Hashim. “She looks about ready to pop!”

“Rosemary?” he replied, puzzled, before the mind-reading kicked in. “Oh, is that what she told you her name is? She is integral to the spell we will cast. The other four will look after her.”

“You mean her name isn’t ‘Rosemary?’ What is it then?”

“I’ll tell you after the ceremony, if you come back,” she piped up.

“What do you mean, ‘if?'” I asked, panicked, but she simply stuck her tongue out.

Rosemary’s grin vanished and she straightened her back, looking past me. I realised that there had been no screams or cheers for some time. With mounting dread, I turned to face the door. The crowd began stamping in unison. Once. A long pause. Twice. A fraction less. Again, then again, getting faster and faster until the doors were thrown open, Hashim grabbed my hand, and we walked out.

The Temple hall was even larger than I had expected, a roughly semi-circular cavern, close to thirty metres long on the flat side opposite where we came in. Its general shape implied it was a natural formation. Polished slabs of dark marble covered the floor, showing no trace of impact from the fourteen bodies we had heard. A large, red pentagram had been inlaid in the centre, containing two altars of the same deep crimson stone. Ten balconies, hewn out of the rock in consecutive layers, lined the rounded wall, packed with naked, cheering bodies.

However, as we took our places by the altars, I hardly glanced at our new audience. What dominated my attention was the monumental statue of Baphomet towering before us. Until now, the focus of this strange religion had seemed the least serious aspect of it, since the demon was present on so many of the metal albums I owned, but this likeness was terrifying.

Meticulously carved from pitch-black rock, the deity had been depicted seated on a throne, flanked by the eagle’s wings on Their back. A stern goat’s head, level with the topmost balcony, with eyes glowing orange from the flames of the torches in an oversized chandelier dangling from the ceiling, looked down upon the spot I was being led to. Between the massive horns burned a fire, spitting a veil of embers before Their face.

Muscular arms, one male and one female, were in the classic pose of all Baphomet images since the nineteenth century, one pointing to a moon of white marble in the ceiling, and the other to the ebony moon outlined in white on the floor. Pendulous breasts dominated the chest, dimples in the nipples so realistic, my lips parted to suckle on them. The abdomen could be that of an athletic man or woman, before it joined the crossed, hairy goat legs ending in cloven hoofs as tall as me.

Between those legs, this statue departed from the traditional imagery that substituted a symbolic staff for the genitalia. Not here. Here, that part was lewdly human, in the form of a gigantic, limp penis, hanging down in front of boulder-sized testicles and crowned with a bush of carved hair.

Demon-gods don’t wax, I observed, with a little bitterness at my recent stinging depilation.

“Lo! Baphomet!” Hashim proclaimed beside me. “The Goat of Lust attacking the heavens with Her horns!”

“Lo?” I said, raising my eyebrows and trying not to laugh.

“It means ‘look and behold!’” he informed me.

“I know what it means,” I said. “I’ve just never heard anyone use it in everyday conversation. Next, you'll be saying ‘thou’ and ‘verily.’”

“Is this an everyday conversation for you?” His expression was deadpan, but I could tell he was laughing at me inside. He had a point.

Sudden silence made me focus on the figure before us, holding herself with the bearing of a High Priestess. She was about the same height as Hashim, but with skin I would have called black were it not for the omnipresent stone to offset it. With hair cropped short around an attractive face with a straight, elegant nose, high cheekbones and full lips, she held her head imperiously on a long neck. Her tits were small and pert, and her body slender but strong, with gorgeous legs—

Oh! I interrupted myself when my eyes arrived at the top of those legs. Perhaps I should be referring to them as ‘they’ rather than ‘she’. The lack of clothing meant their cock was on full display, though their undeniably feminine figure had prevented me from noticing it before. I shouldn’t assume gender identity in a cult such as this.

“No, you should not,” Hashim murmured with a smile. “However, in this case, you were correct — Winta is a woman.”

Relieved I had not caused offence, I listened to what she had begun to say in the hope that it would give me an idea of whether or not I was about to have my heart cut out and eaten. Unfortunately, she spoke in Latin. My knowledge of Latin did not extend much further than, “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas”, “Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice”, and, of course, “Romani Ite Domum”. If she was giving a full explanation to the congregation, I could not comprehend it.

Whatever she was saying was lengthy, though, so I took the opportunity to look for Rosemary and her attendants, but a wooden screen that had been placed between us, blocking my view. Instead, I examined the altar. Cut from a single slab with all edges rounded, it reached the top of my thighs, the other dimensions reminding me of a double bed.

Chanting began in the gallery above. It must be starting.

“I was hoping for a more metal soundtrack,” I joked nervously.

“Sadly, not all of us are metalheads, Chris,” Hashim answered.

“No,” called Rosemary, from the other side of the screen, “some of us are more into Madonna than Morbid Angel. I wanted to use Like A Virgin, but Hashim vetoed it so we’re stuck with Spooky Gregorian Chant Number 666 in B Flat Minor.”

Banter ceased when two cult members emerged from a door at the side carrying a small, steaming cauldron on a tripod that also held a thick, black candle in a bracket.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“The sacred elixir,” Hashim replied. “We drink it to begin the Rite of Summoning.”

“What’s in it?”

“The same as the soup you’ve been eating. There is goat’s milk, ginseng, ginger, saffron, horny goat weed—”

“Horny goat weed?” I laughed. “You made that up!”

“No, it is real. I can tell you all the ingredients if you wish, but it is quite a long list. Aphrodisiacs, for the most part.”

“Wait, I’ve been drinking an aphrodisiac cocktail every meal for three days and you haven’t let me even have a wank? You’re cruel!”

“You don’t have much longer to wait. There is one additional ingredient today.”

“It’s not ’shrooms, is it?” A sacred hallucinogen, maybe with a name like psilocybe baphometis, would at least explain the tattoos writhing over the bodies on the balconies. “I don’t think I could handle tripping right now.”

“No, it is not ‘shrooms’,” he said, rather amused, and then turned his gaze back to his fellow believers. “It is come.”

“You mean, as in spunk?”

“Every Disciple except myself has contributed their ejaculate.”

“Every Disciple?” I asked, thinking that at least half the population of the Temple did not possess penises.

“Yes,” he confirmed, that telepathy filling in the blanks for him. “All Disciples with vaginas ‘squirt’ as you call it.”

“Hot!” I said, and then remembered I was meant to drink it. “Wait, you want me to drink a cauldron of come? That’s gross!”

“Your penis disagrees,” he replied mildly, while a petite East Asian ladled a serve of the pungent liquid into the silver chalice held by her rotund Southern European assistant.

I looked down at my rising member.  “You’re an idiot,” I scolded it. “You watch too much bukkake porn.”

“I believe the term here is gokkun,” Hashim informed me, taking the vessel and raising it, along with one eyebrow.

“You can still back out, Christian,” he said, his expression challenging me.

I closed my eyes and blocked out everything except my thoughts. Do I want this?

“I’ll do it,” I said, opening them to the man I desired before me. “Let me meet your god.”

He grinned, then bellowed, “To Baphomet!” and drank deep. Lowering the vessel, he passed it to me, wiping the residue from his moustache with the back of his hand. The Disciple in charge of the potion had lit a taper and stood ready to light the candle. Everyone was waiting for me.

I sniffed the concoction. It had the aroma of concentrated sex. Fuck it.

“To Baphomet!” I said, and drank.

My tongue tingled under the thick soup, and it slid down my throat with ease, but as it hit my stomach, the warm, fizzy sensation coursed through my veins. Hashim sharpened in focus, all else blurring into the background, so I was only dimly aware of the candle being lit. I stepped towards him and he stroked my cheek, tucking a strand of hair behind my ears, and then leaned down, his breath on my lips.

“When the candle goes out, the magic will be complete,” he told me, and we kissed.

It was a tender kiss, not the raw, aggressive kisses of the night we met. There was no urgency now, no danger of bigots prying us apart. Regardless of the oddness of the ceremony, the mysteries of the cult's telepathic powers, and the weirdness of their body art, I was safe in Hashim's strong arms. I invited his tongue inside, greeting it with mine in a languid dance.

Our bodies pressed together, the dome of his sex nuzzling my hairless balls setting my blood pumping. Waxing had removed all barriers between our bodies, and the unmediated skin to skin contact, particularly in our nether regions, was electrifying.

“Follow them,” he whispered when I paused for air, and I found my fingers had been tracing one of the lines on his left hand. “See where they take you.”

The tingling from the elixir filled my head, and I obeyed as if in a dream. My finger wandered along the black path to his elbow, noting how there was a slight increase in temperature when it passed on to the ink. I mirrored my action on his other arm, the warmth guiding me while I lost myself in those dark brown eyes. Perhaps there was more light in here, but I swore the design did not extend to his cheeks before.

The first destination was his left nipple, small but stiff when my fingertip drifted on to it. Still looking at his face, I brought my lips to it. I licked over the erect nub and then around the surrounding skin, stretched taut over his pectoral muscle. Each time I traversed the tattoo, the heat difference was perceptible, but it just turned me on more. Fingers meshing in my hair encouraged me, and I began sucking at the little teat, eliciting a growl. He let me move over to the other side, and his eyes widened as I gripped his flesh with my teeth and flicked my tongue over his nipple. I released him, continuing my journey along his body art with my mouth.

My kisses swept back and forth, sometimes up a little, but tending south. I indulged myself when I reached his abs, leaving the prescribed road to have those hills beneath my lips, then picked up the path again as it circled his navel. It led over to the right, the warm trail weaving along the line from his waist down to his inner thigh.

Ignoring my own cock, hard from all this exploration, I attempted to tease him by following a line towards his knee, but it just looped back up towards the bare area above his crotch. I gave in and kissed the gorgeous, dangling orbs I had been led to.

He must be getting as hot as his tattoos, I thought, tasting them each in turn, unless they tattooed his ballsack, too. The idea made me wince.

Looking up from his testicles, I was delighted to find all nine glorious inches of Hashim’s manhood standing to attention. I was so pleased with myself that I was utterly unfazed by the presence of several thinner lines twisting around the lower part of his shaft where before there were none.

Ignoring any niggling suspicions about that discovery, I set about baptising his cock with my saliva, licking every part of it from base to tip, and then running my lips up and down each side of the shaft, sensing every vein. I anticipated him pulling me onto him at any moment, but he restrained himself, only softly stroking my hair. In the end, I was the first to break, taking the swollen head into my mouth and sucking myself down as far as I could. Swirling my tongue, I withdrew and then pushed down more whilst running my hand up over his stomach to his chest.

To my surprise, he stopped me before I took him in my throat and pulled me back up. The kiss was more passionate now, and he moved inexorably forwards until the rounded edge of the stone bed pressed into the backs of my thighs. Our rigid dicks bumped together, pulsing. In unison, we each brought a hand down the other’s side to wrap around our members, slick with precum and spit.

Our hips ground them together, our poles sliding inside our fist sheath, unhurried, sensually. Nothing I had done with another man compared in intimacy to his sex pressing against mine. Teeth grazed my earlobe and neck, hot breath on my jugular when he yanked my hair to remind me of his strength.

Earlier than I expected, when his thrusts were still slow, he groaned into my neck and tightened his grip. Shuddering, his warm seed fountained up between us. The jet against my glans triggered my climax, my semen joining with his to spill over our entwined hands.

The orgasm receded, but our kiss intensified, our hands leaving snail trails on each other’s bodies. Perhaps when our cocks did not even begin to soften, I should have been puzzled, but my lust for Hashim consumed me. I broke the kiss to suck on his sticky fingers, then once more followed the maze of lines on his epidermis, cleaning his abs and feasting on the mess we had deposited on his proud pole.

He sat on the altar while I continued tracing his tattoos, finding a path down his left leg around his calf muscle. My tongue circled his ankle and was drawn towards his toes. I gave in to my urges and set to licking and then sucking on each of them in turn, pretending each was an extension of his penis.

I stood up, forcing him to lie back on the stone bed, and then kissed my way back up his leg, abandoning the guidance of the body art. My hands slid under his knees and lifted them while I kissed my way over his thighs and licked along the boundary of his buttocks. A part of me was unsure, never having kissed a man down there, but the magic of the elixir was filling me with uncharacteristic sexual confidence. I nipped playfully at his cheeks and looked up past his balls and twitching length to meet his eyes.

I happened upon one of the markings, receiving a small spark as if I had placed my tongue on the terminals of a nine-volt battery. Instead of repelling me, it pulled at me, dragging me along a spiralling path. Hairless, the smooth surface ended in the star of puckered wrinkles. I paused, the tip at the entrance to his arse, considering my next move while I brought my hands down closer to keep his cheeks apart. With the flat of my tongue, I licked up the valley, from coccyx to perineum, experiencing every change in feel and flavour.

A sticky residue adorned his entrance, sweeter than sweat. I lapped over it, Hashim taking sharp breaths, and I received a small jolt each time I brushed the tattoos. Finally, I stiffened my tongue and pushed inside. His sphincter squeezed, hugging my muscle in a way it had never been hugged. I thrust in and out of him and then circled the entrance again, trying to settle into a rhythm until two hands grabbed my hair and pulled me into him, his hips lifting to meet me.

Humming, I entered again, my nose nuzzling his scrotum, and I brought one hand down to grip my cock, still firm in spite of the recent orgasm, but the temptation of his perfectly proportioned phallus only inches away from my face was too much to resist for long. I let my tongue glide up the middle of his perineum, giving his balls a cursory suck on my way past.

Hungrily, I gripped his shaft, my patience for drawn-out and sensual teasing dissipating in a growing haze of desire. I wanted him in my mouth. After a single long lick up the underside of his shaft, my lips were around his dome. I sucked him in, surrounding him with my warmth, listening to his moans. Fist wrapped around the thick shaft, I pumped and twisted in unison with my head movements, not holding back, assuming it would take some time to reach a second peak.

I was mistaken.

He came before I even needed a breather, filling me to overflowing. Caught by surprise, I spluttered and then laughed. Not laughing with an ejaculating dick in your mouth was a lesson they neglected to teach in sex education classes, at least at my school. Warm spunk travelling down my throat was abruptly snorted out of my nostrils. That caused a fit of giggles, which could have been dangerous had I not managed to pull myself off him and receive the remainder of his tribute on my cheek.

Once his climax had faded enough to allow him, Hashim laughed too and dragged me up on top of him for a mirth-and come-filled kiss. His cock gave one last pulse against mine, which now ached for its own second release. Sensing that, he rolled me off him onto my back and pinned my hands above my head for a deep tongue kiss that felt like it circled the back of my palate. He kissed all over my body, his goatee tickling pleasantly, sucking my fingers, nibbling at my palms and nipples, and then sliding off to suckle on my toes. Lifting my hips to encourage him to accelerate his journey to my groin, I had to make do with scooping remnants of his last climax from my cheek and sucking it from my fingers.

Teeth touched my scrotum on its way into his mouth. A powerful hand squeezed my shaft, forcing a bead of clear liquid to ooze out and fall onto his fingers. Air escaped my lungs at the patterns he was painting on me in his warm, wet hollow, and then was sucked back in sharply when it snaked under them. I remembered this trick from the top of the castle tower, but previously he had moved on before I could process it. This time, he kept eye contact, daring me to remark on the fact that with both my testicles enclosed in his lips, he was capable of tonguing my arsehole. My breathing quickened, but I stayed silent, reaching down to stroke the black tattoos on his scalp.

Only, they were no longer black. A dull but distinct, red glow was showing through.

An illusion caused by the light of the flames, I told myself, but knew it was a lie.

Nor did any sane explanation spring to mind for them not being flush with his skin anymore. What he was doing to me felt too good to get alarmed, however, for he had released my balls and swallowed my whole length instead. I could not believe how close to a second climax I was, that familiar pressure building already.

He pulled away and licked back down. Without stopping, he pushed my thighs apart as I had done to him and began lapping between my buttocks. My cock jerked every time he passed over my star, my grip on his skull tightening, trying vainly to pull him closer. Circle, circle, circle, and then up, down, up he went, teasing me with stabs.

“Please!” I begged him. “Hashim!”

“You want this?” he asked, sticking his tongue out at me. It did not look unusual in length.

“Yes!” I gasped. “Whatever the fuck it is you’re holding back, do it!”

Smiling with his eyes because his lips were pressed against the centre of my hole, he licked around the first ring, making it wink around him, but managing to resist being ejected, and then eased in further. While he French kissed my bum, I extended my own tongue, but three finger-widths was the furthest I could get from my mouth. He was already that far in and dancing all around those inner walls, yet I could see both his hands on my legs, so he was not cheating by using fingers.

He arrived at his destination: my prostate. A few cocks had been there. Fingers, certainly. Quite a variety of toys. Never a tongue, until now, probing and massaging it like nothing ever had. I groaned and sucked in oxygen. Heat was building, in a different place than before, and far more intense. Touching myself was what I wanted to do more than anything, but my hands gripped the edge of the altar, his power as effective as rope in holding them there. All I could do was watch, my cock straining so hard it hovered above my stomach, with my lover beyond it, penetrating me with his eyes as well.

I came. Shot right into my open jaws, then more and more, painting my stomach and chest. No hairs there anymore, every wet landing fell directly on my skin, and I was grateful that I would not soon be experiencing that unpleasant pull of drying spunk on my follicles. My head dropped down, overwhelmed by the spasms racking my body under his merciless tonguing. He slowed with me, sensing the precise point at which I could take no more, and withdrew.

Propping myself up on my elbows, I looked over my torso with its fresh stripes of jizz, and my cock giving a final twitch then coming to rest in a pearlescent pool. At my feet, Hashim rose, his own torso glistening in spots with the spoils of his past two orgasms. To my amazement, his organ was still rigid in his fist.

“Fuck me!” I exclaimed. What the hell was in that potion? Magic Viagra?

“So soon?” he responded to my spoken words, feigning misinterpretation of my surprise with a raised eyebrow. Whatever was in the potion transformed my amazement into further lust, for I did want him to fuck me again. Immediately.

“Yes!” I said, licking semen from my lips once I managed to get my breathing under control. “Go on, fuck me!”

He dragged a hand over my stomach, gathering cooling jism to spread over his length, and I lifted and opened my legs again. His mushroom pressed against my ring and then plunged slowly but firmly inside, not stopping until his thighs touching mine.

“Fuuuck, that’s good!” I yelled as he launched into vigorous thrusting.

The markings at the base of his shaft, or rather ridges, as they had become, attained an intensity in heat a fraction below the pain threshold — a strange sensation, but it helped my muscles to relax and accept the pounding. Before we could even consider changing positions, he stopped deep inside me, roared, and exploded, which set me off with no further stimulation.

He pulled out, come cascading out of my anus to land with a wet smack on the polished floor. Weak and breathing heavily, my cock still twitching with pearls bubbling up out of it, I glanced at the candle. Less than an eighth was gone.

“We keep this up until it's gone?” I asked incredulously.

By way of answer, Hashim walked around the altar and climbed back on, kneeling over my face to press the purple head to my eager orifice. A long strand of congealing jizz dangled from the tip, adhering to my nose when I opened wide to receive him. He tasted even better than before. His whole shaft was plastered in layers of our combined fluids, some dried and flaky, some gelatinous, and some still fresh, warm and liquid. All these states of goo built up on my lips as they were pried apart by his intruding member.

He slid straight to the back, tickling my tonsils. While I was able to relax enough at the start, it did not last. He kept going, past the epiglottis, and I started to gag on the invader. On he went until his sticky, sweaty, come-spattered balls were pressed either side of my nose, and I thought I might suffocate.

He withdrew and I gulped for air as his cock popped out in a spray of spit. While I got my breath back, he slapped me playfully with his heavy, slimy dick. I grabbed the bulbous tip to stroke it as I cleaned his shaft before guiding him back in, determined to give it another go.

I suppressed my panic and found that I could in fact still breathe. Once he had built up a steady pace, he fell forwards onto his elbows to slather me with his prehensile tongue. I pushed up into his gullet and gripped his buttocks, urging him to fuck my face harder, my fingers slipping on his tattoos, which had swollen, thick as ropes, and slick with sweat. Soon, another delivery of his cream filled my mouth, all the sweeter for arriving at the same time as my own eruption.

This dose of sperm energised me. I slid out under Hashim’s legs and knelt behind him, pressing my throbbing, hypersensitive dome between his cheeks, the semen that still hung from it coiling in his knot. The glow of the spiral around his entrance was undeniable now, with an irregular throb, like embers in a fire.

Thankfully, the heat it gave off had not increased further, or I would have been scorched. Instead, I could caress the pattern on his cheeks, noting the slickness again, more slippery than mere sweat. An oily excretion gave it a sheen, the texture alien yet strangely sensual. So sensual that it guided my hands to his hips and reminded me what I was to do next. One forceful thrust, and I was inside him.

I could get used to this, I thought, admiring the sloping landscape of his rippling back muscles. A view I seldom got, for I always ended up as the ‘bottom’ in my intimate encounters with other men.

Fuck, he’s beautiful! And if glowing lava tatts are the price of being able to come every five minutes for ten hours, I will willingly pay it.

Savouring every millimetre of movement, I pulled my dick out, his inner muscles squeezing it all the way. I had not expected him to be so tight, but he clenched harder than I could with my hand. I pushed back in, watching the slime coating my shaft build up around the entrance as it was scraped off until I was buried in him once more.

I don’t have this many muscles inside, do I? I thought when he pushed back against me with a satisfied groan. Multiple rings gripped and released my entire length in an undulating massage. I had heard of ‘power bottoms’, but this was far beyond what I had ever imagined. Reaching around and wrapping my hand around his girth, I slammed into him repeatedly.

“Oh fuck, fuck, FUUUCK!”

Hashim voiced what my vocal cords were incapable of. His cock pulsed in my hand while his extraordinary sphincter milked mine, and I bit down on his shoulder blade to silence my cry, inhaling his scent.

When clarity and movement returned to me, a thirst came with it so strong that, without thinking, I pulled out of him and slipped onto the floor behind him, slurping at what I had deposited between his buttocks. I gulped it down, sending sparks through my system like the elixir before it.

We entered a feverish wet dream, a frenzied blur of relentless sex. Words became superfluous, lust and desire bonding us as one. Each climax arrived faster, more intense than the last, and with corresponding growth in the volume of ejaculate. Both of us developed an insatiable thirst for it, lapping it up, each mouthful making us hornier. We became cocooned in goo, the sickly-sweet stench filling the air, as though the long-forgotten audience had been raining their own gifts down upon us.

Sounds echoed in a cacophony of fucking. The smack of sticky flesh crashing together. His grunts and growls, my moans and gasps. The squelch of come being ejected from one arse by the other’s cock, and the drip of our discharges on the hard surfaces around us. These became slippery with our discharges, and I slipped more than once. Hashim always managed to catch me, standing firm in spite of the profusion of bodily fluids.

Nothing lasts forever.

His tattoos, once engorged with whatever magic was fuelling us, passed from red to orange and culminating in blinding white, the change mirrored in the pentagram that surrounded us.

“Brace yourself!” Hashim said suddenly through gritted teeth as he slammed into me from behind. “The Climax approaches!”

He had a way of speaking that meant I could always hear when he capitalised words. My arse ached from the pounding, and every micro-movement of air on my cock sent tremors up my spine. Another orgasm was imminent, and it was different, more than an increment on the last. White-hot heat built in my core, itching for release. The very air around us contracted and vibrated, seeking to join with us.

Hashim broke first, with a wordless howl, but I joined seconds later. We exploded in a supernova, our souls melting and combining. Time was meaningless.

Eventually, I reached a peak and drifted down from nirvana.

Once my brain recovered enough to start interpreting separate senses again, it met with the incredible sensation and sight of my penis spewing out semen in a single unbroken stream. It soaked me from torso to hair, flooding my mouth with its texture and taste. Behind me, come sprayed out of my arse around the throbbing member that filled it, the nerve endings inside telling me he was experiencing his own endless ejaculation.

In what must have been a huge effort of willpower, Hashim wrenched himself out of me. I spun to face him, my buttocks falling with a large splash in the sea of sperm on the altar. Still seized with that uncontrollable thirst, I launched myself at his cock whilst pumping my own with my fist.

The torrent of semen poured into my throat even before my swallowing reflexes kicked in, but there was so much it overflowed onto my chest, joining with mine. Glorious darkness surrounded us, closing in. The design on his skin strobed brilliant white, providing the only light.

The only light, except for the candle. Its flame caught my eye. It flickered. Once. Twice. Then winked out.

Reality returned with a subsonic boom, and I tore myself from Hashim, my desire for his seed receding fast. Our ejaculations subsided into more natural, sporadic spurts, and the fog of magical orgasm faded, expanding my sphere of vision outside of our pentagram.

The audience had fallen silent, expectant.

“Wow!” I exclaimed when my climax concluded at last and allowed me to speak. “That was amazing!”

Rosemary panting the other side of the wooden screen beside us drew my attention.

“Oh shit!” I cried after she let out a throat-shredding shriek. “Is Rosemary giving birth while— Oh what the unholy shitting fuck is happening to you?!”

Hashim was staggering, pupils dilated so much they had taken over his eyes. The glow crept to the edges of what I still thought of as tattoos, despite all evidence to the contrary, and his face screwed up with something other than sexual pleasure. They sedately peeled away from his skull, dripping mucous, and leaving raw indentations where they had been embedded. He fell to his knees as they unravelled from all over his body, growing and writhing as they did so. When he opened his mouth to speak, a protuberance flopped out on a shower of thickened saliva, flexing and curling in ways no tongue can, no longer making an effort to appear normal, and then stretching out towards me.

The crowd erupted in a deafening roar, though I could not tell if it was from excitement or terror. I slid backwards in our slime that covered the marble floor. The glow faded, revealing mind-bending green patterns on purple tentacles, a writhing mass of them embedded in his back. They spread out, holding his now limp but still-conscious frame a good two metres above, mucous raining down on me.

Doctor Octagon on acid, I thought, stunned into dumb observations instead of escape. So much acid he can’t count — there are far more than eight limbs there!

A low rumble edged its way into my perception, allowing fear to kick-start my uncomprehending brain. I spun onto my front and tried to flee in my hands and knees but slipped in the pool of come, banging my cheek on the floor. Something warm wrapped around my ankle, and I redoubled my efforts to escape, but too late. I kicked futilely, but only succeeded in having my other leg ensnared.

The rumble grew louder, and dust floated down from above. Movement in front distracted me, and even in my current predicament, I was still amazed as the formerly flaccid phallus of the Baphomet statue began to engorge. Tentacles inched their way up my leg as the colossal cock emerged from its sheath and, shedding dust, raised itself, the rest of the idol resolutely motionless. The man-sized penis passed the horizontal, no longer obscuring that which lay beneath it in shadow.

Illuminated by the bright torches, I could see the individual folds of Baphomet's labia between the gargantuan testicles. At the centre lay a slit no wider than my palm. This passage should have been dark, but as I was dragged back through my own semen, a pale light began emanating from it.

When the carved cock ceased moving and stood towering proudly above it, more tentacles wrapped around my free limbs and lifted me from the ground. I strained against my bonds as the light grew brighter and white froth oozed from the stone cunt, sloshing over the hooved feet. More came, cascading in a slow-motion waterfall of pale gunk. The slit began to widen, accompanied by groans from the rock, protesting against the assault on its unmalleable nature.

There was another scream behind me, and I twisted my neck, looking down from my new vantage point. The screen separating the two halves of the pentagram had been knocked aside. Rosemary was on the second altar, straining with the effort of childbirth, legs held apart by the two men. Were I not being held spreadeagled in the air by the hell-squid sprouting from my lover’s back, the evidence of multiple male ejaculations on a woman giving birth and her companions would have struck me as wrong. So too would the way her doctor, Tamisra, was pinching her clitoris and sucking on her nipple.

As it was, my eyes settled on Carla, the midwife. She knelt in the puddle of placental blood and amniotic fluid at the end of the birthing bed, one hand inside Rosemary, coaxing the being out with cooing noises. Clashing with this near-traditional image of childbirth were the passionate movements of her other hand at her own crotch and the tentacles wrapping around her wrist. For Rosemary’s baby was no human baby.

“Lo!” intoned the High Priestess, stepping forward. “A Child of Baphomet! Brought forth out of mindless, millennia-long infancy and nurtured through adolescence in the womb of Disciple Kylie!”

Before the fact that ‘Disciple Kylie’ was the woman I had known briefly as ‘Rosemary’ could register, a large tentacle from the beast that held me whipped down and hovered in front, waving tenderly to the juvenile. The latter sensed it, tiny tentacles scrabbling at the stone, writhing and emitting bizarre high-pitched clicks. It released the midwife and wrapped flailing limbs around the bigger one.

“YEEESSSSS!!!” Rosemary’s final contraction sounded near orgasmic, and the demonic offspring was expelled from its temporary home, flicked into the air to dangle next to me. The wriggling, screaming, bloody mess was too bizarre for me to process before more movement at the statue took my attention away again.

“Lo!” the Priestess called again, and I had to admit, it was a good word. “The portal to Baphomet opens!”

An enormous, dark pink, fleshy bulb burst forth from the glowing aperture and began to open in the manner of some grotesque, tropical flower. I hung suspended above it, clumps of miscellaneous goo shaking loose to fall on the opening petals. Under one layer lay another, as if Pablo Picasso had had a wet dream, and then tasked Salvador Dalí with sculpting the result out of flesh. After these seven quivering sheets separated, they revealed a dark maw with no visible bottom. Through my terror, I recognised the enticing, fragrant smell of an aroused vagina wafting up to me.

Is this to be my fate? I pondered. Thrown into a carnivorous cuntflower of doom after having the greatest sex imaginable?

“Candidate Christian!” the Priestess addressed me directly for the first time. “Allow the Child and Their infant siblings to feed first.”

The flailing, screeching thing next to me had already doubled in size since being pulled from its second mother. With a whip-like motion, the monster holding us both hurled it into the flower, and it vanished with an abrupt, cut-off shriek.

“Once Their hunger has been satiated, the mature Child will be sentient. If you are still with life, They will find you and lead you to Their Father-Mother. Good luck!”

“Good luck?!” I screamed. “How will I even know they’re not about to eat me?”

Love, came Hashim’s voice inside my head, for his elongated, tentacular tongue was too busy stroking my cheek to allow him to speak aloud. You will feel overwhelming love and lust when they are ready. Surrender to it. If you sense hatred, run! But you must speak with Baphomet — humanity depends on it!

These were the last words I heard before I was flung towards the warm, wet tunnel.

“What do you mea—” My demand for an explanation of that uselessly cryptic advice was cut short when I landed with a squelch, knocking the air from my lungs. I caught a final glimpse of Hashim and raised one hand in a pleading gesture.

With a schlup, my world went pink.