The Box of Desires

It was the year of our Lord 1830, and the thirty-first year of my manhood, when I went home to Eastleigh.

The occasion for my homecoming was a melancholy one. My parents -- my father a former Member of Parliament, my mother the daughter of a local landowner -- had passed away recently. A wasting sickness took hold of my father, bearing him off in little more than six months, a hale and hearty man reduced to a shell. My mother lingered just a few weeks longer, her heart broken by the loss of her husband, before she too moved beyond the reach of this world's light.

The scenery as I rode in the coach to Eastleigh matched my reflective mood as I thought once again of my childhood, and how little time I had shared with them. For I had been sent to boarding school, then to the varsity, and from there I had joined the Navy, learning to become a man in the way that hundreds, nay thousands of Englishmen before me have, and no doubt after me will. Despite that I had loved my parents dearly and treasured the memories I did have of them. And despite my glumness I was resolved to make them proud in my management of Eastleigh and the surrounding estate.

We rode for a little while through the fens, cloaked in a cold English winter day. Fog lingered here and there in patches and the pale sun had no warmth and precious little light to it, the more visible sign of its presence the long, jagged shadows thrown by the gaunt trees that lined the road. I shivered, drawing my coat up around my shoulders and tucking my head down into the collar.

At length, the house -- now the home I was master of -- came into view. It was late afternoon, and in the pale, limpid light I confess it did not at first seem a welcoming sight. Eastleigh had always been a slightly ramshackle affair, added to at the whim of its owners across the years without any coherent sense of design, but it now appeared rundown and sad to my eyes.

I shook myself, telling myself I must make the best of things.

My driver brought the horses to a halt just outside the front of the house and suddenly my coach door was being opened and I was being helped to descend by a tall, handsome man who I judged to be in his fifties.

"Welcome home, Mr. Luke, sir. Welcome home to Eastleigh," he said. "You may not remember me, but I remember you. My name is Winton."

John Winton. My memory of him was as a young man who would lift me onto his shoulders and carry me around the garden, telling me about the plants that grew there. He had aged well -- surprisingly well -- for although the house was a good place to work, the life of the staff was hard, involving early mornings, late night, much physical labour and not a great deal of leisure.

I shook his hand warmly and smiled broadly: "Of course I remember you, Winton! Of course! How are you?"

He smiled and demurred to answer, beckoning me into the hall to greet the rest of the staff.

"There are just a few of us here at present, Mr. Luke, sir. But I've no doubt you'll have your own plans for the staffing of the house."

The hall was dark, lit only by a few candles here and there and I almost shuddered as I stepped inside, thinking that before addressing myself to staffing I would have to banish this pervasive gloom.

"You'll remember Mrs. Hudson, I should think sir," Winton said. "Her dinners are still spoken of in reverent tones in the village."

Mrs. Hudson, the cook -- a shortish woman, clearly given to tasting the dishes that left her own kitchen to make sure they were perfect, but with a titanic bosom encased in a perfect starched white apron -- bobbed and blushed and welcomed me, holding back just a moment before engulfing me in a hug that, were it any tighter, would have left me with broken ribs. "We've missed you so much, sir. So, so much. Welcome home to Eastleigh."

Next to her stood a girl in maid's uniform with a face I didn't know -- although it was familiar.

"This is Molly, my daughter," said Mrs. Hudson. "She was born after you left home, sir, but has entered into service with the family."

Molly smiled -- and I smiled back. For she was a peach of a girl, eighteen or nineteen, with long dark hair and a comelier version of her mother's figure. She had inherited the vast bosom her mother had -- and I found myself almost driven to distraction by the way it moved as she curtseyed.

The other members of staff -- James the under-butler, William the stable-lad, Anne the scullery maid -- were introduced to me in turn, each mumbling and muttering their welcomes as if in awe of the master of the house. I tried to put them at ease.

"And now sir, I've no doubt you'll want to settle into your rooms," said Winton. "There are some papers there waiting for your attention if you've the stomach for them, although I'm sure they can wait. Dinner will be served at eight."

He led me through the corridors of the house, all of them seemingly dark and dismal and I made the decision that ere long light would be let in on this old house. In particular, we passed a door that was locked with a vast padlock and chain, almost threatening in its appearance, and when I asked what lay beyond, I got little answer from Winton.

Finally we reached my rooms -- and I must confess I was heartened by their appearance. In contrast to the rest of the house they were warm and well-lit, a fire burning in the place and with comfortable and colourful furnishings. The walls were a deep red, a colour that I have always loved, and with a host of candles burning they seemed almost alive with the glow that came from them.

Winton left me, and I strolled to the window, looking out at the estate that I was now master of. Woodland, farmland, a stables, a small smithy -- all this was now mine to run and make good with.

I turned back and my eye was caught by an item on the broad wooden desk that stood just behind me, set so as to catch the light from the window and make writing easy.

It was a box. A dark, wooden box, almost exactly a cube, covered with carvings that were abstract and yet somehow not, a picture just dancing on the edge of recognition. I picked it up -- it lay heavy and somehow warm in my hand -- and turned it over and over, seeking some sort of catch or keyhole that might show where it opened. But there was nothing.

I glanced through some of the papers left to me by my parents -- God bless them -- but there was little that shed any light on their last months or indeed by way of instruction in running the house.

Dinner was hearty, Mrs. Hudson outdoing herself with a joint of roast beef, vegetables, roast potatoes and a boat of gravy that seemed to have no bottom. The staff busied themselves, seeming to me to be happy once again to find purpose in their lives. I ate well, perhaps too well, but was left feeling greatly satisfied at my homecoming.

After the long journey and all the trials of the day, I retired early to bed.

I said I perhaps ate too well, and that still seems to me the most likely explanation for the dreams I had -- which were of a most startling and stimulating nature.

I dreamed of a woman riding me like a stallion, my cock thrusting upwards into her bottomless, sopping wet cunt, her hair flying around her as she bucked and twisted.

I dreamed of another woman who took my cock between her sumptous breasts and excited me until I exploded into orgasm, long white ropes of cum covering her face and bosom.

I dreamed of a third woman who took me into her mouth with such hunger that I was almost afraid -- and who again drained every drop from me, swallowing my seed with such relish that I did not demur when she kissed me with cum-soaked lips, my essence passing back and forth between us.

I dreamed of threesomes, foursomes, orgies, a veritable Greek or Roman panoply of perversion and desire. Men coupling with men, women with women, groups where it was difficult to tell even which of the sexes was doing what to whom.

When I woke it was to find myself drenched in sweat, my bedclothes in tremendous disarray, my member enormously erect -- and Molly, the maid, opening the curtains to let in the light.

I gasped, trying to cover myself, but before I could Molly turned back to me with a smile on her face and a glint in her eyes.

"Let me help you with that, sir. I can welcome you home to Eastleigh in my own way, even though you do not know me."

And before I could utter a word, she was by my side, her hands moving straight to my cock and beginning to work it with the most devilishly sensuous motion.

I lay back, groaning at the ecstasy she was inducing in me almost immediately, with only the faintest part of my brain wondering at how soft her hands were -- an unusual thing for a maid given to working with pail and brush. But then my thoughts were cast away as if on the wind as she moved one hand to my aching balls, squeezing and cupping them as her other hand continued to fly up and down the length of my shaft.

It was strange -- she seemed to know how to touch me exactly so as to produce the greatest pleasure, lingering now more slowly, then stroking harder and faster, squeezing and then loosening her grip so that her fingers seemed merely to graze my sensitive skin.

My cock swelled, seeming bigger to me than it ever had before, the veins standing proud on the shaft and the tip a vivid pinkish purple with liquid leaking freely from it and enhancing the sensation as it reached Molly's already slippery fingers.

"Cum for me, Mr. Luke sir," she murmured. "Cum for Molly. Give Molly your spunk for she needs it sir, she hungers for it. She longs to see it fly forth from your magnificent cock. Cum for me. Cover me in it."

Her pace quickened, she shifted in her dress somehow to unleash her perfect tits, the sight of them exciting me to fever pitch, and my breathing grew ragged and quicker as my orgasm approached. And when it came -- I swear it -- it was torrential, my seed flying in spurt after spurt after hot white spurt. I was shocked to see Molly bend her mouth to taste it, her small pink tongue lapping at me eagerly. A jet landed on her breast, covering her hard pink nipple, and she lifted it to her mouth and sucked hungrily on it.

And then she was gone, with a smile and a shimmy, and I was left alone to recover, my need now sated but my head still spinning.

I rose, donned a robe and walked to the window -- but stopped when I noticed the box on the desk where I had left it. During the night, it seemed, one of the faces of the box had opened. Inside was the outer face of another box, somehow embedded within the first, again with the same abstract yet familiar pattern. But on the inside of the face that had opened was a drawing.

I lifted the box and took it to the window, turning it into the light so I could see the drawing -- and was not a little shocked to see it portraying a scene not so far removed from that which Molly and I had just played out -- a young woman, bent over a man with a monstrous cock, sensuously manipulating him to an overwhelming moment of crisis.

For a moment I thought the picture moved before my eyes, the woman's hand sliding lasciviously, and the jets of semen arcing through the air with incredible force. And then I blinked and the picture was still, and I was left uncertainly thinking that the memory of my debauchery with Molly had filled my vision for those moments with such power as to appear real.

I sank into the chair behind the desk, my legs suddenly weak. And it was then I noticed a paper that had been underneath the box. All that was written upon it, in a strange and straggly hand was this:

The box is open. Let it begin.

To be continued...