CHAPTER 2
Beth needed somebody to talk to about what was going on and there was only one woman that seemed qualified. “Mah-Mah?,” Beth whispered on the phone. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Beth? Everything okay, honey?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Sorry to call so late.”
“Now it ain’t never too late for you to call, I’m just worried,” she said, her voice creaky with sleep. “Ain’t nobody hurt,” Mah-Mah said, sounding like she covered the phone. “Hold on Beth while I get to the kitchen.”
“I’m sorry to call but I can’t sleep.”
“Well, I’m glad you called me,” she said, maybe happy to be needed for exactly that. “I want you to call me anytime you need anything. I mean it. Are you at the land dock?”
“No, we’re at Maggie’s. Her and Spook went, uh…camping.”
“Camping, huh,” Mah-Mah said. “I sure hope he’s not rushing that kind of thing.”
“Oh, that’s exactly what he’s doing. Ever since they got back with Cherie, Sahvrin has been…”
“Stupid?” she helped, sounding pissed.
Beth let out a breath, sitting on the toilet. “I get that he’s scared, Mah-Mah but…I don’t like how he’s handling these fears. I feel like he doesn’t trust me to do what’s best or right and that he needs to force me or trick me into it. He doesn’t need to do that,” she whispered, wiping her stupid tears. “I would do anything for that man.”
“Oh honey,” she whispered. “I know damn well you would. I know he knows that too but like you said, that fear is stealing all his common sense. He’s terrified because he loves you so much, you realize.”
“I do,” she strained, nodding. “But…I don”t want him to force that. I need to find a way to give him what he needs without him…taking it.”
Mah-Mah let out a long breath. “Well…I may not have all the answers, but I got ears to hear you. I’m sure we can put our noggins together and figure something out.”
“And it’s not just me, it’s Maggie and Cherie and now even Tully.”
“And it’ll be the same for every woman after,” Mah Mah mutter-assured. “Gonna have me a cup of coffee before this boy makes me hit the whiskey. And his father ain’t no help,” she assured. “Probably where he gets it. But I think you’re on the right track just so you know. It ain’t no good to be forcing that kind of thing from a woman. Not when it’s a gift she’s supposed to give.”
“A gift I crave to give,” Beth clarified around shaky breaths.
“Of course you do, you’re an angel,” she explained gently. “So, naturally, that’s what you need to do.”
Beth wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Do what?”
“You don’t let him take it.”
“How do I stop that?”
“Well, for one, he can’t take it if you give it to him first.”
Beth rose up at the stir of hope. “How? He wants us to do that…gauntlet thing. All of us.”
“No, what he wants is for you to fail it so he can force you to do something you’re already willing to freely do. And how do the other women feel about all this?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t had a chance to talk to them.”
“We need a meeting,” Mah-Mah announced, sounding ready to have it that second.
“Maggie and Spook are supposed to be back in two days,” Beth remembered.
“What about Cherie and Tully?”
“Not sure.”
“Gonna have to hodge-podge it. Do what we can while we can. Did he mention when he wanted the Gauntlet to happen?”
“Not a definite date but he’s sounding very ASAP about it. Is there anything you can do by way of the Bishop codes? Some…loophole?”
Another sigh. “Hmph. Not without this turning into a tit-for tat tug-of-war.”
“So, how do I give him what he wants before he takes it? I’ve already told him I’d give it. Put it in writing and everything.”
“The only way I can see this working is by beating him at his own damn arrogant game.”
Beth paused, curious.
“You’ll need to do those Gauntlet Trials and pass them. Then you can turn around and put yourself in that little love prison of his and hand him the keys to that door.”
Beth’s stomach danced with dread and excitement all while considering what might go wrong with it. “You think he’ll even allow that possibility?”
“Now that part I can help with.”
“How?”
“By informing him my big nose is going to be all in the details, and if I smell anythingfishy, I will bring it before The Auditors.”
“You can do that?”
“Yes ma’am I can, and I damn well would,” she half sang. “But aside from him giving you ladies a fair test, your success will fall heavily to the Dice.”
“The dice?”
“The Gauntlet Dice. You roll them before every test, and it determines the level of difficulty. A low roll mean less challenging, a high roll means more.”
“Oh dear,” she whispered. “I’m pretty good at losing in games. Maybe I’ll get low rolls.”
“My prayers will surely be with you either way. You know what? I got it,” she said quietly.”
“Got what?”
“An idea.”
“What is it?”
“I think…” She let out a breath after a few seconds. “I think it’s best you don’t know. Because when he finds out, he’ll be hella angry. No, the less you know in this one, the better for you.”
Beth was back to dread and fear, pacing from the wall to toilet. “Oh boy. Okay.” She took several even breaths. “I trust you. You know what’s best in that.”
“Good. And we can both trust the good Lord. And The Oratrice.”
“The Oratrice?”
“The leader of the Auditors,” she said. “Sometimes situations require a special ruling by her. Things not written on the books or things involving Regle 33.”
“What is that?”
“A rule for clouded judgment. I believe the big-world word is recusal. The removal of oneself from a legal decision or vote due to a conflict of interest.”
“I see,” Beth whispered as confusion mixed with blind hope. “So maybe we won’t even have to take the test?”
“Oh no, honey, the requirement to pass the Gauntlet Trials to become a member of the 12 is clear law—no ifs, ands or buts on that. But the whens and whys and whats on its particulars are points of squabble. There’s no guarantee this will work but it’s the best I can think of. Anything that would take away his ability to force things that should never be forced is what I’m shooting at.”
Beth sat on the ledge of the tub as fresh tears surged. “Thank you, Mah-Mah. So much.”
“Oh honey,” she cooed, sounding half angry still. “It’ll allll work out, don’t you worry your sweet little soul one bit.”
Beth nodded, letting the confidence in the old woman’s tone help her to breathe. She was relieved to have her pulling for her.
A sudden knock on the door shot her up. “Coming,” she called.
“You better go,” Mah-Mah whispered. “I’ll call The Grand Oratrice first thing in the morning to get the jump on things and set this in motion. If she says what I think she will, we’ll meet in the pantry to go over specifics.”
“Got it.”
“Ma-Petite, who are you talking to?”
Beth hung up and stared at the door. “Mah-Mah,” she said, hurrying to think.
“At this hour? Are you okay?”
Beth checked her face in the mirror then opened the door. “I just…” Her thoughts scattered at the sight of him standing there naked and hard.
He closed the distance between them, igniting instant heat. “You just what?” He slid the backs of his fingers along her cheeks while burning her with the lust in his half-curious gaze locked on her mouth.
“I had…female questions,” she managed firmly.
His dark eyes rose to hers and her heart banged in her chest as he searched for the validity in her answer. But it was the open sex plotting that had her quaking. She remembered about the giving before he could take. She should do that now.
“What kind?” he asked, his mouth at her ear as his hands slid inside her robe and along her waist.
“The…baby making kind,” she thought at the last second.
His hands paused and he pulled back, looking at her. She realized he took that in the literal baby making sense and not just sex.
“I just…want to make sure I’m not making a baby before we’re ready.”
He returned to his eye-sexxing, bringing heat to her skin. “I’m ready for that whenever you are, Ma-Petite.”
She closed her eyes at the whisper. “Okay,” she whispered back, nearly panting with what was brewing between them.
“I need you in bed with me.”
“Okay,” she said again as he kissed along her face.
“Five minutes ago.”
“I’m…sorry.”
“Mmm,” he said with a moan at her ear. “Are you?”
She nodded, gasping when his thumbs grazed both hard nipples. “Yes.”
“Are you being too good again, Ma Belle Eveque?”
Her head fell against the door as he teased his thumbs across the tips. “Yes,” she moaned hearing only the pleasure in her mind.
“Of course you are.” He rolled both nipples slowly between his fingers, drawing her gasp.
“Are you going to punish me?”
He captured both breasts in his hands and squeezed with a growing intensity, his mouth at her parted lips. “What do you think?”
“Yes,” she whispered, getting his cock in both her hands.
He kissed at her open mouth, groaning as he teased with brief licks before delving in deep, his cock thrusting in and out of her tight hold. His breaths turned harsher with every pump, as she captured his balls in her hand. A warning growl tickled her spine and she added to her crimes with more of the same, knowing what he’d do, desperate for it.
His finger plunged inside her. “Oh!” she shot out, the intensity stealing the strength from her legs. She lifted one and bucked her hips, meeting his thrust while jacking him off harder and faster. “Bishop,” she cried when he hammered her core, getting his tongue and teeth along her face.
“My fucking angel,” he grit, bucking his hips. When his head went back and his hot seed hit her belly, she kissed him with fresh hunger. There was nothing more satisfying than bringing his orgasm. The sight, sound and feel was the most erotic experience. But she also knew he’d allowed his orgasm so he could go nice and long for what he had planned.
****
“Well…the flowers don’t lie!” Tully declared, launching out her chair to pace in the small living room.
Lesion puzzled over the odd expression, wondering what that had to do with him loving her enough to marry her with sex. “I thought… you wanted that.”
“Of course I want it. But I’m not the problem, you are!”
“How am I…” Lesion paused, redirecting. “What do you mean the flowers don’t lie?”
She suddenly raced to the corner of the room and returned to dump a handful of daisy petals onto the table. “That’s twelve flowers and they all said the same thing.”
Lesion regarded the pile then her. He was utterly lost. He wasn’t even sure what question to ask for clarification.
“Twelve times, Lesion! Twelve times it landed on he loves me not!”
“Tully,” Lesion beckoned, holding on to his patience. “What does that mean? How did the flowers tell you that?”
Her cute face pinched with incredulous disbelief and maybe confusion. “What do you mean, how? They just did!”
He lowered his head, taking in a slow breath. “Tully…how do flowers know anything of that nature? Much less such a thing about me?” he asked, meeting her perturbed stare.
“You don’t know?” she asked, seeming to finally consider he was truly ignorant of her odd flower facts.
“I have not a single clue,” he assured, wanting to take her hand and pull her into his lap. He watched as she took her seat again and stared with distress at the petals on the table.
“Well…you take a flower, and you pull the petals off one by one and… you say ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ and whichever one it lands on at the last petal is the truth of the matter.” She raised her clear, serious as can be gaze to him. “Cause flowers don’t lie,” she reminded with soft sincerity.
Lesion lowered his head again, mostly to hide his smile. What a treasure she was. But what strange odds. How on earth could twelve flowers all have the same lying thing to say about him?
“Well…what do you have to say?” she wondered as he eyed the petals.
He raised his brows before looking at her. “I’m trying to figure out what I did to those flowers that they would lie twelve times about me.”
She shook her head, adamant again. “Flowers don’t lie.”
He nodded slowly, trying to come up with a suitable solution to her adorable problem. “Let me see these petals.”
She quickly pushed them toward him, and he began sorting through the pile. “Ah,” he said after a dozen or so.
“What is it? What are you seeing?”
The hope in her sweet tone told him she wanted the flowers to be wrong. “See here?” He pushed one of the petals toward her. Notice the split in this petal?”
“I do,” she said softly, raising a curious gaze to his. “What does it mean?”
“It means it’s a twin. So…it counts for two votes. And that changes the answer to the question of Lesion loving you.”
She stared at him with such earnest before regarding the petal again. “Really,” she whispered, astonished. She quickly began examining the rest of the petals and Lesion realized he may not have won yet. “Here’s another like it!” She sucked in a breath. “And another.” She sped up, searching the pile. “I’ll need to redo the whole process. I’ll need more flowers.”
He hid his sigh. “I don’t see why you need to.”
She shot her gaze to his, brows pulling together. “To know the truth.”
He sat back and eyed her before raising his hands to his chest. “When have I ever lied to you, Tully? You trust the flowers more than you trust me? Who rescued you from that hell? The flowers? Which of these flowers in the swamp would give their life to protect every part of you?” He watched as tears slipped down her lowered cheeks. “I may not know many things about love, Tully, but I know that I cannot see the world the way I used to. It’s as if you’ve imprinted yourself in every fiber of my being. You’re everywhere that I am. I can’t see or hear or taste or touch or feel without thinking of you. You’ve changed everything in my entire world to one, singular, miraculous thing. Her name is Tully. And I want in this moment to make love to her, but more than that, I want…” Lesion paused and lowered his head, weighing his feelings and searching for the right words. “I want you to know me with all that you are so that you never doubt me or my feelings.”
Lesion watched as his sweet angel became consumed with the truth of his words and hurried to him. The universe opened its secret doors as she climbed in his lap and devoured his mouth. His mind dove in after, confessing things of its own accord, a litany of sound, the voice of this heaven she poured into him. “This mouth, this beautiful mouth,” he gushed, holding her face and taking as much of it as he could. “This is mine, Tully. All of you, all of you is mine.”
The sounds she made were a music so new to his ears and mind it made him need to create a written language for it.
Tully broke the kiss and held herself back. “Why?” she wondered around the burn in her gaze still locked on his mouth. “Why would they lie?”
Lesion’s chest filled with those hot chemicals as he stroked her innocent face now filled with curious wonder more than worry.
“They can’t lie,” he said, wanting to put her beautiful mind at peace. “But they can’t tell things they don’t know either. I’m a very private man and I keep all my feelings and thoughts in a place no man or woman or…flower can go. The flowers didn’t lie, they just didn’t know.”
Rapture filled him at the sweep of her tongue over her perfect lips while in stern contemplation. “They guessed?” she wondered.
He couldn’t stop his smile at the tenderness in her tone. “I suppose they did.” Seeing the direction of their words, he hurried ahead with, “I think maybe my quiet mood may have been mistaken for…grumpy, or…foul. Mean. Unloving,” he added, watching the dots connect in her eyes then dawn in her smile.
She finally brought her lips back to his, devouring him and his mind again. “And I bet you only pick them to ground them up.”
He slid his fingers into her hair from beneath, caressing her scalp. “Yes,” he agreed, gripping her head and holding her perfect mouth still for his explosive explorations. “Like a mad monster. So mad and insane,” he breathed, standing with her.
She clung to his body as he carried her to his bed. Their bed. He paused next to it, realizing. Their marriage bed.
“Make love to me, Lesion. I’ve never made love before.”
The soft beg filled his mouth like warm magic followed by panic.
“I wish I was a virgin,” she added, answering the rogue worry that crossed his mind as he quickly stripped out of his swamp attire.
“You are,” he assured, not counting the abuse she’d suffered.
Her eyes gripped his cock tightly as he climbed on the bed and helped with her white lace sundress. Her nakedness was something to behold and Lesion was at war with a million instincts even as her head shook for some reason.
“But I’m not,” she said.
He tore his eyes from the feast beckoning between her legs and met her worried gaze. “You are to me,” he assured, back to eyeing his very own miracle.
He pushed her legs apart and she got up on her elbows. “How is that possible? And…why is it to you?”
At hearing he’d opened something too fascinating for her to pass up, he paused again, staring at her. He grazed her body with his as he made his way to her mouth for another kiss. “Until I touch you in this way, you are untouched. It doesn’t matter who or what has touched you before.” He nipped along her mouth. “It doesn’t count.”
Her delicate fingers groped his face and held it tight. “Is this…the kind of virgin you are? To me?”
Lesion fought with the loaded question, knowing it posed as a possible barricade to what he wanted immediately. But every answer that came presented more blockades she’d be unable to leave. “A virgin just means being new to something. This is new to me and new to you the same?” Her curiosity morphed into confusion, sending him in search of a better answer only to realize he had none. “How about we figure it out later.”
“So you’ve…been with another woman?”
His heart faltered then recovered almost as instantly as he gushed his, “No! I have never been with any woman. In any way. Ever.”
She stared into his eyes as he carefully returned to her mouth. “Let me,” he whispered, moving between her legs. “Let me be your first. They way you’re my first.”
“Your very, very, first?”
“Very very,” he whispered, sliding himself along her entrance. The very beginning of her was hot and tight, stealing his breath along with every thought in his head.
“Then take it. Take me for the first time,” she gasped, wrapping her legs around him.
“Tully!” he strained as she forced him deep inside her.
All his mental calculations of pace and flow and rhythm’s were shattered as he bucked his hips like some wild animal. Exactly fourteen strokes and he blew apart inside and out. Holy father of swamp fires, she’d swallowed him whole. His Tully universe gobbled him up and he knew he’d never see his old world again. And he never wanted to.