Succumbing (Sinful Submissions Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Catullus Carmen 7

  Foreword by the author

  Prologue by the narrator

  One: Distance helps Laura & Richard become closer

  Two: How a virgin had many children

  Three: How Lucille became a woman & lost a friend

  Four: How Harold's prayers were answered

  Five: The first time Hannah fell in love

  Six: How Alastair got his scar

  Seven: When Antoine tried to get over her

  Eight: What love did to Lewis

  Nine: When Hannah wanted what Jen couldn't give her

  Ten: Pleasure & Poison

  Eleven: The adventures of Teasel, the cat

  Twelve: Why Antoine stopped using paint

  Thirteen: What Eric needed

  Fourteen: Tough times for Jessica

  Fifteen: What Hannah's husband didn't mind but Hannah did

  Sixteen: How Antoine became his great work

  Epilogue by the narrator

  Afterword by the author

  Catullus Carmen 16

  Succumbing

  Sinful Submissions Book Two

  Further Musings On The Price Of Passion

  By Ed Bemand

  Published by Waerloga Books.

  © Words and pictures copyright Ed Bemand 2013.

  All rights reserved.

  [email protected]

  www.EdBemand.co.uk

  www.WaerlogaBooks.co.uk

  This collection should be considered a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Warning, this collection includes graphic sexual content and is intended for adults only.

  With apologies to Gaius Valerius Catullus

  Catullus Carmen 7

  You ask how many times I want to fuck you,

  My love, before I'll be satisfied.

  How many sands are in the desert

  In the lustful spice-lands

  Between the oracle of the boiling god

  And the sacred tomb of the stuttering king?

  Or as many stars are in the silent night's sky

  That watch men's furtive love.

  That's how many fucks I want to fuck you

  Before my madness will be complete.

  More than the curious could count,

  Or evil men tell stories about.

  Foreword by the author

  Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

  This book is a follow-up to my previous volume, Sinful Submissions. The stories were originally written in November 2011, as with the year before the original text would be written as my effort for that year’s NaNoWriMo (National Novel-Writing Month).

  Of course, much time has passed since the body of the text was originally written, but this should not be taken as an indication that the stories themselves were not recorded in the course of that single month, merely that no small amount of time has been required to tease them into a publishable form. In the meantime, the text of the third volume in the series has already been written, during November 2012, and in due course it too will be published.

  Some of the stories here have already been distributed in different forms, but it is in this collected form that their greatest truth can be discerned. They were written as an entity and are best appreciated as such. Characters, connections and details are present between many different stories and while they can stand alone they are better together.

  I won’t deny that occult means were used to enable access to these stories, but nor will I offer details of the methods used. Those that know understand the dangers implicit and those that don’t are best sheltered from them. There is no place for idle dabbling. Many are the stories of people who have attempted invocations and paid a high price for their hubris.

  To those who may question my choice in writing these stories or may even doubt what I’ve said about them, I offer no argument or>/p> explanation.

  Indeed, some may prefer to accept it as merely a collection of lurid tales and they are welcome to. Who am I to judge what others believe? We are all free to interpret what we are presented with as we wish. Just because one person says something is a door does not preclude another from seeing a gazelle or a lawnmower, but with freedom comes responsibility. If we do choose to see a shooting star where others see oncoming traffic, we can’t blame the Universe if it finds us sprayed across the tarmac.

  Even with the many precautions that I wove around myself in advance of last year’s work I seemed to have underestimated what I was letting myself in for. In light of that fact, it seems only natural to ask the simple question. Why? More specifically, why, when I can hardly pretend to be ignorant of what faces me, why would I choose to re enact this undertaking? Why would I choose again to invoke the entity that was the source of my previous record? Why would I take the chance? Surely once was enough. Perhaps others would have a more perceptive insight into my reasons than I can express here.

  My simple, questioning answer is, how could I not?

  I can only hope that my preparations were adequate and that the familiar presence I can feel encroaching will be sufficiently contained that the price exacted from me for what now begins will not be too high.

  Now it is time to allow our narrator the opportunity to speak for himself. I sense him growing close and I believe that he has tales that he is eager to share with us.

  Prologue by the narrator

  Peni tento non penitenti

  I've spent a lot of the last year working with children, some of them as young as six, who are forced to work in diamond mines in Africa. At first they cry a lot. Then they go quiet. My job mostly involved whipping.

  That's not true.

  And so here we are again, Halloween. Poised at that fateful moment that is the meeting of the seasons. I love this time of year, when the sun turns cold and the earth starts to die. Everything that was green has turned to decay and mush. Soon frost will scour the surface. Everything that can is fleeing, to warmer climates to the south, or deep underground into insulated burrows to conserve heat and wait it out.

  For the next few days the nights will be ripped apart with fireworks and as soon as their season passes it will be time for the premature Christmas lights that proliferate in towns. It’s hardly a surprise that people enthusiastically embrace festivals involving bright lights when the world has turned dark around them. The trees lose the gaudiness that they have borne through summer and are exposed as bare skeletons that promise little chance of resurrection in spring, and yet however absent life may seem to become over the coming months we all know that in time the cycle will move to its next phase and life will spring forth again. It is hardly a surprise that the traditional deepest part of winter is celebrated by many as the birth of the sun god. That spring time itself carries with it a celebration of rebirth from death is only natural.

  Halloween is a popular drinking night for many. Secular consumerism has found the way to package Halloween so that it can profit readily from it. Gaudy macabre decorations surround us. Pumpkins, a fruit that scarcely anyone bothers with the rest of the year becomes briefly ubiquitous. No one eats them of course. The alleged edible component is discarded. The actual purpose of this waste of almost food is driven by a slightly remembered superstition that is deemed the province only of children and the mistaken. After all, in an age of cold materialism, who worries that the dead will trouble them?

  Believe or don't believe. It is a night when the dark sky broods and spirits are abroad. People having fun and wearing silly costumes can easily
distract themselves from it. It is a threatening night to be on your own and far from home. The weather having rapidly taken a turn for the worse, the light clothing that had seemed more than adequate when inside or under the afternoon sun is now doing little to shield you from the persistent drizzle. The moon is strong enough to cut a swathe through the clouds but they are thick and block the stars.

  Things that seem unlikely and laughable can become terribly possible in certain circumstances. We can all be brave sat in our house with the lights on and the doors locked. Not that I’m trying to scare anyone, but it’s important to remember that there are more things around us than we can understand and it is a fool who assumes that he knows too much.

  And what is my goal? I am not driven by some ill-advised self-imposed literary challenge. My being, such as it is, is transcendent. I am above such things. Of course, I am not here to tell my own story, I am merely a conduit, the way that access to these stories may be granted. There are so many others available to us and it is always easier for us to appreciate the humour of tragedies that are not our own.

  Another year has passed leaving scant traces for all its seeming importance. All these details that we agonise over in their moments, feeling their weight pressing and restricting us, their repercussions are usually trivial at best, minutiae that is scattered like dust by the breezes of time. So much of what we do is lost as soon as it is done, so much passes unnoticed. So many are forgotten. So many tales are untold.

  Maybe that's why. Tales have to be told. They fight to resist being forgotten, doing whatever they can to remain alive. Who can blame them for being willing to fight to survive?

  Does it bother me that details of my tales may offend people? Hardly. People need to be offended. Not all stories can be told using anthropomorphised animals with suppressed sexual appetites. Some stories need to be told with blood and fucking. Sometimes at the same time. I know lots of those stories. They’re something of an interest to me. If you have fear of either or both of these things, then perhaps you would be better not continuing.

  Those who remain should remember that they have been warned. Dark tales await us as we turn the page. Read on, and all will be revealed in time.

  One: Distance helps Laura & Richard become closer

  Distance can place a great burden on any relationship. When two who are used to being close are obliged to be apart it can be very difficult to maintain intimacy. Absence from their partner makes many seek the solace of an eager body that is closer to them, the distance making commitments that were made when their partner was present seem insignificant, no matter how much determination might have been involved in the making of them when two were together. To others the distance can be the source of extra inspiration, it gives them a reason to work harder to ensure that both are getting what they need from a situation and can even give them fresh opportunities that they might not have found otherwise.

  Laura and Richard had been together for about a year and a half when he received a lucrative job offer that meant he would have to work overseas for a year with very little opportunity for him to return or her to visit him. They both liked to think that what they were involved in was serious and after talking it through agreed that they wanted to continue the relationship, regardless of the hundreds of miles that would stand between them for that year.

  Their sex life together had been satisfactory, but always fundamentally conventional. Most of the time it was missionary. If they were feeling more daring, she would go on top. Her giving him a blowjob was deemed a remarkable and memorable event and the idea that sex could involve anything substantially different hadn’t even really occurred to them.

  The last time that they had sex before Richard was due to go was a fiery and eager joining. Passion consumed them both as they drove each other closer to climax, culminating in frantic, desperate clawing at each other’s flesh and near screams as the sensations reached their peak. They felt happy and connected as they lay there afterwards, the sweat cooling on their bodies and the endorphins in their veins suffusing them.

  They had never really planned in detail for their futures, though both would admit that they liked to at least hope that they would be together. Part of Richard was even tempted to propose to Laura before he left but fear of what might happen in the year they would be apart had made him stay quiet.

  Richard tried to find opportunity to call Laura every day to begin with. Hearing the sound of her voice made him feel less far from home, though in a sense it made the pain all the greater, reminding him of his affections for her when his days were spent focussing on work and trying not to linger too much on her absence.

  The time difference to where Richard was made things difficult for them to talk and it was often uncomfortably late at night for him when they did. Laura had had to get used to him sounding half asleep. He had nodded off while she was talking before.

  It wasn’t long before they came to miss the physical aspects of their relationship. They were accustomed to having sex almost every day normally, so a few weeks without it was enough to make their beds seem even emptier.

  It was Laura that had first suggested that they find some way to express their affections despite the distance. She had found herself reading much in the women’s magazines that were her diversion in idle moments at work. The problems that they were experiencing were nothing unique to them and the writers appeared to have lots of suggestions for ways that they could maintain their intimacy.

  Laura suggested that they try talking to each other about what they were thinking, she had read that phone sex was something that many couples would do as a substitute for the physical act when circumstances precluded them. It wasn’t something that either of them had naturally taken to. It was also so awkward at first that they became nervous and giggly. It was hard to concentrate enough to build the mood. There was so much embarrassment involved in it and it was hard to know what to say. How were you supposed to go from banal conversations about work and the weather to heated demands that the other start touching themself? The articles she had read seemed to be very sparse in terms of suggesting what you should actually say.

  One night while they were talking Laura found her mind starting to wander as Richard rambled his way through a story about some event in his day.

  “Are you alone?” She interrupted him.

  “Of course.”

  “I miss your cock.”

  The bluntness of the statement surprised them both.

  “It misses you too.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything.”

  “When did you last play with it?”

  Richard was embarrassed and muttered his reply.

  “Speak up. I can’t hear you.”

  “This morning in the shower.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Did you make yourself cum?”

  “I did.”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “You, of course.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  “Tell me more about what you were thinking.”

  “Just you... the way you were last time we were together.”

  “You’re imagining me like that now, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it hard?”

  “It is now.”

  “Good. Touch it for me.”

  “What?”

  “Just touch it for me. I miss feeling it. Tell me how it feels.”

  “Warm, smooth. Hard... very hard.”

  She laughed.

  “Hard for me?”

  “All for you.”

  “Stroke it for me.”

  She could hear his breathing getting heavier as he did as she asked.

  “Keep going.”

  His breathing grew faster and she could faintly hear the sounds of him moving his hand faster.

  “Would you like to cum for me now?�
�

  “Yes.” His voice was barely a whisper.

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes please.”

  “Still mine?”

  “All yours.”

  “Good boy. You can cum now.”

  She could hear him gasp softly as he did. They said nothing for long moments, his breathing the only sound on the line.

  “You liked that?”

  “I did.”

  “I’m glad. It’s my turn next time…”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Well, I just made you cum, so it’s only fair that you return the favour, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know what to say.”

  “You’ll figure it out. Good night.”

  “Good night. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  The line died.

  Richard fell asleep shortly afterwards, forgetting to clean up the mess. Laura lay in bed alone in the darkness. She pressed her hand between her thighs and slowly rubbed herself, feeling the moisture that had gathered there during their conversation. She spread it over her swollen lips, parting them gently with a fingertip. When she too fell asleep a little later, she felt satisfied.

  She tried to make it easy for him next time they spoke. Richard sounded a little nervous and was making meaningless small talk. He hadn’t forgotten what she had said but had no idea how to start.

  “I bought a vibrator.” She interrupted his platitudinous prattle.

  “Have you tried it?”

  “Yes.”

  “A lot?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Do you have it now?”

  There was a soft buzzing noise on the line.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you do with it?”

  “Why don’t you tell me what to do with it?”

  “Okay. Are you naked?”

  “Almost. I’m wearing the purple silk nightie. You know the one?”