Chasing the Virgin
The Milanese palazzo rises against the night sky like a promise of excess, its baroque facade washed in amber light that spills from arched windows onto cobblestones worn smooth by centuries of privilege.
Inside, the masquerade ball churns with bodies and secrets, the air thick with perfume and the particular desperation of people who have paid too much to be seen.
Caspian stands at the edge of a gilded salon, his silver domino mask catching the chandelier light as he surveys the room.
Vespera Frost, seasoned model, materialises beside him like smoke given intention.
She wears no mask—her severe platinum buzz cut and architectural black blazer are identification enough, the four inches of her avant-garde heels bringing her eye-level with him.
Her dark lip curves.
"You're hunting," she says.
"Recruiting."
His pale grey eyes track a cluster of young models near the champagne fountain, their laughter too bright.
" Darling, I want you for my new fashion label."
Vespera's winged eyeliner flickers as she blinks—once, deliberately.
She tilts her chin down, looking up through her lashes with the pose that once graced the A1 magazine covers.
"Your House. No."
She tastes the words.
"The dockyard boy builds a sandcastle."
"I know what I'm doing."
"You know what you think you're doing."
She shifts, liquid leather trousers catching the light.
"I've watched boys like you for a dozen years. The ones who confuse ambition with destiny."
"Doesn't matter which; the money will be obscene."
She laughs, a dry sound like pages turning.
"You can't control two women in your life, Caspian. Mila Cruz with her chaos. Inès Laurent with her pride."
She steps closer, sandalwood and leather rising from her skin.
"And now you chase a third. Celedwen."
Caspian's hand stills at his lip.
"You don't know —"
"I know everything." Vespera's dark eyes hold his.
"The girl confides in me like I'm her mother. You'll never bed, let alone woo Ms Rey."
She disappears into the crowd, leaving Caspian to scull champagne.
Then he sees her.
Or thinks he sees Ms Rey.
Across the salon, near the terrace doors, two figures in costume move through the press of bodies.
Both wear masks—one silver, one gold—and both have hair the colour of autumn leaves, of peat smoke, of the Galway countryside that excites his loins.
Celedwen. Has to be one of them.
Caspian moves before he decides to, cutting through the crowd with the dockyard swagger that clears space without apology.
One of the women turns as he approaches, and the taller one's mask catches the light—silver, filigreed with vines, nothing like the simple domino he expected.
"Ladies." He lets his voice drop to the register that has opened doors and unfastened buttons. "The stables. Private. Join me."
They exchange a glance he cannot read behind their masks. Then the shorter one laughs, a sound like champagne bubbles, and the taller one nods—once, slow, deliberate.
Caspian swaggers, two fire crotches to seed and a virgin to deflower.
They follow him through the terrace doors, down stone steps slick with evening dew, across gardens where topiary beasts watch with leaf-shaped eyes.
The stables rise ahead, converted now to house the palazzo's event horses, the smell of hay and leather cutting through the garden's rose perfume.
Inside, the space breathes with animal warmth. A single lantern hangs from a beam, casting amber pools that shift with the draft from the half-open door. Caspian closes it behind them, the latch clicking like a promise kept.
The taller woman reaches up first, unfastening her silver mask. The face beneath is wrong—older, painted with expertise, beautiful in a manufactured way that has nothing to do with Galway meadows.
"Gia," she says, as if introducing herself at a dinner party. "And this is Rosa."
Rosa's gold mask comes away to reveal similar architecture: high cheekbones, knowing eyes, the particular gloss of someone who has learned to become whatever is required.
"We are the pre-paid premium package," she observes, her gaze travelling Caspian's frame with professional assessment.
"We can be whoever you need."
Caspian stands frozen in the lantern light, the recognition settling through him like sediment.
Not Celedwen.
Never Celedwen.
Two call girls in costume, hired for the evening's entertainment, their red hair a coincidence rather than conspiracy.
He should leave.
Find Celedwen.
And what: hold her hand if he's lucky.
Kiss her cheek on a tenth date.
Marry her and have missionary sex under the sheets in the dark.
Instead, he laughs—the sound irregular, self-mocking, dredged from the same place that fixed cars at nineteen and saw opportunity in breakdown.
"Premium," he repeats.
"Show me what that means."
Gia moves first, her fingers finding his overcoat's shoulders, pushing it back until it pools on the hay-strewn floor.
Rosa circles behind, her hands sliding up his chest beneath the vintage tee, finding the chain at his throat and following it down.
"You're shaking," Gia observes, her painted mouth curving.
"Cold."
"Liar."
She presses against him, and her body is all calculation—hips angled, breasts presented, the architecture of desire stripped to its engineering.
"We've had nervous ones before. You want to pretend you're somewhere else. Someone else."
Her fingers find his belt.
"We can play that game."
Rosa's mouth finds his neck, teeth grazing the tendon there with pressure.
"Tell us who she is," she murmurs against his skin.
"The one you're seeing when you look at us. Shout her name while you fuck or bugger us."
Caspian's hands move of their own accord—Gia's waist, Rosa's hair.
He pulls Gia's costume top aside, finds her breast with the roughness of someone escaping thought.
"Just fuck. Both of you."
They comply with the efficiency of professionals.
Gia sinks to her knees in the hay, her fingers freeing his cock.
Rosa stays standing, turning in his grip to present her back, guiding his free hand beneath her skirt to find her already bare, already wet with whatever preparation they use for these evenings.
"Fuck," he breathes, as Gia's mouth closes around him—warm, insistent, skilled in ways that register as absence, as the negative space where genuine desire would live.
Rosa grinds against his fingers, her hips setting the rhythm she wants.
"Your cock's so fucking hard," she whispers, looking back at him with eyes that hold no particular interest beyond the transaction.
"Gia's gonna take it deep. Show her how you like it."
Gia does—throat relaxing, taking him to the root with the detachment of someone who has removed herself from the act even while performing it.
The wet sounds fill the stable, all rhythmic, punctuated by Rosa's manufactured moans as she rides his hand.
"Your fingers are so good," Rosa gasps, the template of her performance worn smooth by repetition.
"My pussy's so wet for you, fuck, don't stop—"
He doesn't.
He fucks Gia's mouth with increasing desperation—chasing the image of red hair that wasn't Celedwen's, the idea of innocence he has already corrupted without touching.
Rosa comes against his hand; her body clenching in waves that feel rehearsed, and he feels nothing.
"Switch," Gia says, pulling off him with a wet sound, saliva stringing between her lips and his cock.
"Rosa wants that dick inside her."
They rearrange with professional speed—Rosa bending over a hay bale, skirt lifted, Gia kneeling beside her to watch and touch and coach.
Caspian enters Rosa in one rough thrust, the heat of her familiar and alien, the grip of her cunt another performance in a long series of anonymous stages.
"Your cock's so fucking big," Rosa moans, the template again, the words losing meaning through repetition.
"Pound my tight cunt, fuck, harder—"
He does. He pounds her with the violence of someone trying to break through his own skin, Gia's fingers finding his balls, his ass, whatever access he grants.
The hay scratches his knuckles where he grips Rosa's hips. The lantern swings slightly, casting moving shadows that make the stable feel like a ship at sea.
"Ah—your dick is so fat—" Rosa's performance escalates, her back arching, her cunt squeezing in pace with her words.
"My pussy's being pounded so good—ah! —I'm gonna—fuck—"
She comes, or simulates coming.
"Oohh! Aahh! Yes! Yes! Uhh!"
Gia takes her place before Rosa's tremors subside—bending over the same hay bale, presenting herself with the same efficiency. Caspian enters her without transition, the wetness from Rosa easing his way, and finds her tighter, more responsive in her physicality if not her presence.
"Your cock's hitting so deep," Gia gasps, her voice cracking slightly with genuine sensation breaking through performance.
"Fuck—ahh yes—but bugger my tighter hole."
She pokes a finger in her own rilled crack.
Caspian bends and spits in her spread gape.
He rims her tush with his knob.
He punctures firmly into her pinhole tight crack.
She anal skill this party call girl.
Backdoor clench and internal muscle ripple.
Her eyes turn, exuding carnal lust.
"Say the fuckin name you wish to say. It's no sin."
Caspian groans, grunts and starts: "Cel—"
He's close to spewing jizz.
He withdraws.
Rosa has recovered enough to kneel before him, her mouth joining Gia in anticipation.
Tongues stretched out to catch every drop of his load.
"Cum on our faces," Rosa instructs, looking up with eyes that hold something almost angelic now, the transaction momentarily forgotten in the sensual present.
"Cover us—"
He does.
His hand works his cock in the final strokes, and he comes across both of them—Gia's painted cheek, Rosa's waiting tongue, drops on her chin and throat; the hay beneath them, his own knuckles where he grips too tight.
The release is physical without being intoxicating pleasure, emptying without holding satisfaction.
They clean themselves fast, restoring costume and composure while he tucks himself away.
Gia restores her silver mask, Rosa her gold, and they leave without farewell—professionals who have delivered the premium package, their red hair disappearing into the garden dark.
At the gazebo, they are joined by three young men.
Caspian stands alone in the stable, the smell of sex and hay and his own sweat surrounding him.
The lantern flickers.
Somewhere, a horse shifts in its stall.
The stable door opens on silent hinges.
Celedwen stands in the frame, backlit by garden lights, her auburn hair loose around her shoulders—no mask, no costume, just the flowing linen dress she favours and bare feet that have carried her from the palazzo's public rooms to this private place where she sometimes visits the horses, seeking their uncomplicated presence.
She sees him.
Sees the hay in his hair, the open jeans, cum stains on his pants; his slight bulge, the sticky sheen on his hands that catches the lantern light.
Sees the evidence of what he has done with women who were not her, in a place she considered sanctuary.
"Celedwen—"
He doesn't step towards her.
His hand covers his open zip.
She steps back.
One step, then another.
The light catches her face—fresh-faced, freckled, the dewy complexion that has launched huge fashion campaigns.
Caspian thinks, if only we two had met in the countryside, not in Milan.
"I ride here," she says.
Her voice is quiet, mysterious, the enigmatic quality that makes interviewers lean forward and never receive answers.
"The grey. Donatello. He was lame last week. I came to see—"
She stops. Her gaze travels the stable—the hay bale, the disturbed floor, the smell that hangs unmistakable.
Her nostrils flare slightly, a sign of what she has processed.
"Celedwen, I thought—those women, I thought they were—"
"Don't."
The word lands like a door closing.
She steps back again, into the garden dark.
"We chose who we want to be."
Her bare feet make no sound on the stone path.
She does not run this time—she walks with that floating grace, unhurried, as if the stable and its occupant have already become memory, consigned to a past life.
Caspian stands in the lantern light, his hand still extended, his jeans still open, the smell of paid sex surrounding him like accusation.
He does not follow. He knows, with the clarity that comes too late, that there is nothing he could say that would outrun what she has seen tonight and on other occasions.
Morning brings optimism.
He might get lucky.
Caspian tells himself, she's worth playing the romance game to get into her knickers.
The Hotel Bristol's lobby breathes with the particular hush of old money and discretion.
Caspian stands at the reception desk, his black overcoat pressed, his vintage tee replaced with something that doesn't smell of hay and transactional sex.
In his hands: flowers—wildflowers, specifically, the kind that grow in Galway meadows, sourced from three florists before dawn.
And chocolates, Belgian, in a box that cost more than his father's monthly rent.
"Miss Rey," he says to the concierge.
"Tell her Mr Bane is in the lobby."
The man's expression shifts—professional courtesy becoming something more complicated.
"Miss Rey checked out this morning. Early. Before six."
Caspian's thumb finds his lower lip.
"Her forwarding address. Her next booking. She's a model, she must have—"
He tries to hand the concierge a wad of notes.
"Sir."
The concierge's voice drops, becoming almost gentle in its formality.
He waves off the money.
"Miss Rey has taken holy vows. She joined the Ursuline Sisters this morning—the convent at Santa Maria delle Grazie. She will not be receiving visitors."
The words land like physical blows.
Vows. Sisters. Convent.
The architecture of rejection so complete, so absolute, that he cannot find purchase for argument or charm.
"She's nineteen," he hears himself say.
"She is resolved."
The concierge pauses, then adds, with the particular weight of someone who has witnessed many dramas in this lobby:
"She left something for you. At the desk."
It is the broken teacup. The one from Sybilla Roux's kitchenette, the one that shattered when Celedwen fled the sight of him with Mila.
Someone has gathered the pieces, wrapped them in linen, and tied the bundle with rough twine.
No note.
Caspian stands in the Hotel Bristol's lobby, wildflowers wilting in his grip, chocolates growing warm against his palm, the broken ceramic heavy as judgment.
Through the tall windows, Milan moves on—scooters and fashion and the endless machinery of desire—while somewhere in a convent's silence, Celedwen Rey kneels in prayer for a promise kept, a grandmother honoured, a world escaped.
Caspian does not move for a long time.
The concierge watches without watching, professional to the last.
And Caspian Bane, who has fixed engines and climbed runways and fucked strangers in stables, railway toilets, and backstage of catwalks, stands finally in the wreckage of something he cannot repair like the shattered teacup, cannot replace like fabric in a design, cannot even fully understand that he has lost.
There ends this tale.
Some beauties remain untouched.
They never copulate.
So, thank the earth there are: Ines's, Mila's, Gia's and Rosa's.
Amen.