Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
G od’s Light and Voice Church was a long rectangular building with beige vinyl siding, and a few tall narrow windows edged with white trim. It was the type of structure that could be erected with limited funds.
The marquee by the road, with the usual interchangeable messages one saw in front of many churches, said “Find God Here.” Behind it were three tall and rough-hewn wooden crosses. The purple sash draped on the middle one fluttered in the breeze. Two big apple trees near them had benches to enjoy their shade and contemplate the crosses.
Vera found a space in a mostly full parking lot. The landscaping that flanked either side of the wide front walkway made up for the plainness of the building. The lush flowers and ornamental grasses said the church had an accomplished garden club. The concrete pedestals of two bird baths, one on either side, were angels with lifted hands and arched wings.
At the door another angel held up a boat. Inside the boat were multi-colored smooth stones shaped like tiny fish. When she touched them, she detected an energy that suggested they were prayed over, as she often did to her own talismans, like her pentacle. She expected the congregation could take and use them like worry stones. Choosing a blue one, she slipped it into her coat pocket.
Someone inside was speaking in a muffled but sonorous voice, backed by trills of organ music. She’d changed her mind about coming, then changed it again, so it was thirty minutes after the service had started. Even so, as she stepped into the foyer, an usher met her, a middle-aged black man in a gray suit, a purple flower in the lapel. “Welcome to God’s house,” he murmured and opened the nave door. “May He be with you, sister.”
“And with you.”
When he offered her his arm to escort her to a pew, she knew why Rev’s gesture at the school, to keep her from falling on the wet floor, had seemed familiar. She thanked the usher quietly and slipped into the back row.
The church was two-thirds full. Potted plants set in the narrow windows dressed up the surroundings. A carved and polished cross was mounted in the transept. To the left side of it was an area for the choir, dressed in purple and silver robes. The pulpit was on the right side.
She had the pew to herself, except for the usher who took a seat at the other end of it. From her glimpse of the phone now balanced on his knee, she saw he had a view of the parking lot to know when any stragglers had arrived, so they could be greeted as she had been. A customer-oriented marketing technique Ros would approve.
The minister, a tall and compelling man with a clipped beard, single gold ear stud and shaved head was finishing up a rousing call to serve Jesus. The price of his tailored suit didn’t mesh with the plainer setting, but his message was passionate, even if a little overly scripted.
In dealing with the rejection of her family, she’d explored a lot of Christian denominations, as well as the paths of other faiths. She’d eventually found her home in Wicca, and was now a spiritual leader in NOLA’s pagan community. She routinely led Sabbat rituals and officiated at handfasting and crossing over ceremonies.
Wicca wasn’t a conversion faith—it respected other forms of worship, so she was comfortable attending most churches. She ignored the tenets that harped on being the only right path, and focused on what connected it to hers.
Do no harm. Love one another. Give more than you take.
No matter how humans managed to twist and fuck up those messages, the common thread endured. Religion didn’t trump faith, which in her mind was always about cherishing life through compassion, kindness and service.
The oil paintings mounted on the walls between the windows were done in bright, bold colors and looked like the work of local artists. Most depicted the Gospels, Jesus’s journey and teachings. In one of them, Jesus was healing the leper.
He’d understood what faith was, too, and had loved humanity, despite their thickheadedness.
She reminded herself of that when she thought of her ex-husband. Or the family she’d had to leave behind, but remembered daily in her prayers before she quietly shut the door on that heartache and got on with her day.
And while it might startle some people, she also felt closest to what spirituality and faith were about when she was in a session with a submissive. Raising that sacred sexual energy connected them to the Lord and Lady, the male and female divine principals.
“Let’s hear Brother Rev’s take on what I just told you.”
The preacher’s announcement pulled her out of her head and into the present. From the expectant shifting in the audience, the highlight of the service was about to happen. Calls of “Amen” and “Blessed Jesus” confirmed it.
Then they stilled. And remained still.
Vera glanced at the usher. His smile at her seemed to say, “Get ready for this.”
A single note filled the air of the church. Not from an instrument. From a human throat.
No words. Not initially. Just that note, drawing out, filling the room, touching down, touching her, touching everyone. The energy in it turned all souls toward it, like sunlight after six days of clouds.
Vera’s fingers were in a knot in her lap as the note expanded into harmony. Still no words. None were needed. She shut her eyes to get closer to it. The male voice reached for the heavens, the earth, and everything in between. Gathered it up. Then the words evolved from the notes.
“Gather the wheat. Gather the souls. Show them light. Show them hope. Show them truth.”
A voice so fluid and strong, she could have listened to it forever. She’d already heard that voice speak words. Now it sang them, moving closer. She opened her eyes.
Rev was coming down the steps from the small balcony over the chancel and transept. She expected he’d been listening to the sermon, waiting for his cue. While acoustically the elevated position would have helped the power of his voice, she had no doubt it would have felt the same from ground level. Even from a cellar. He wasn’t using any sound enhancement, not even a mic in his lapel.
His brown suit, white shirt and plain brown tie weren’t expensive, maybe secondhand off a rack, but it had been altered well for the body she’d felt beneath the coveralls. Shoes shiny. Short crop oiled and gleaming. As he sang, he reached out toward the congregation.
The calls to “Praise Jesus” and “Bless the Lord” rose and fell as he moved down the two steps from the transept and into the nave. Half of the congregation were on their feet, their hands in the air. From the profiles she could see, many had their eyes half closed as they swayed like that wheat he was singing about.
He kept singing, but his gaze was moving, left, right, left, right. It wasn’t the passing eye contact of a performer, but a purposeful scan. A seeking. When Rev came to a stop, his attention was on a woman in the middle of that row. Her shoulders were bowed, and from the way they were shaking, she was weeping.
Though no obvious direction was given, the standing members settled back into their pews, though quite a few were energized enough they perched on the edge, ready to surge to their feet again when the spirit moved them.
Vera noticed a faint tightening on the preacher’s face. He shot a glance toward an older woman, sitting on a short bench perpendicular to the pulpit. She made a slight quelling motion.
“Sister, come sit here,” Rev was saying to the woman. “Help her come. She needs all y’all’s help.” Rev pointed to the aisle seat. Obligingly, the eight people between him and her shifted, the one closest to the woman encouraging her to rise. She seemed to lack the strength to do it on her own, and multiple hands helped support and get her there. Including the man on her opposite side, whose face held pain. Her husband, from how he touched her waist, his simple wedding band gleaming.
When the woman at last sank down in the aisle seat, her head was still bowed, and she wrapped her arms around herself.
Vera’s heart tilted as Rev went to one knee beside her. He touched her knee, the silky stuff of her skirt. Her dress had flowers on it, a bright pattern she’d likely bought on a far better day.
“You gonna sing with me, sister,” Rev said gently. “Sing this line. ‘Show me hope. Help me, Lord.’”
He sang it, low, easy, a plea set to music.
She shook her head and began to rock, but he brought her hand to his face. He sang the words again as that intimate contact drew her attention to him. He did it without hesitancy. Confident. Vera was leaning forward herself, hand gripping the edge of the pew in front of her.
“You sing that first bar, and I'll come in behind. Just like the Lord, holding you up, standing behind you, helping you through anything. He going to catch you, sister. He's holding you in His Hand right now…can’t you feel it? Just like my hand on you…”
His grip tightened, and her fingers slowly curled around it. Her voice was thin and quavered as she haltingly sang the words. “Show me hope… Help me, Lord.”
“Help her,” Rev said, and the room was swept with “Go on, sister… Let the Lord help… Bless his name… He loves you…”
Rev picked up those same words and put them to that music in his voice, a whole orchestra in it, every note clear. As she repeated the line he suggested, her voice began to strengthen. The power of the effort tingled against Vera’s skin and sank into it.
Each time the woman sang the line, Rev came in behind her, doing in song form exactly what he’d described, a subtle but strong presence echoing her own plea, lifting it up, carrying it forward.
Then something broke and she was crying out different words. “Forgive me, Lord, I've been so afraid, I've been so afraid…and that was wrong. I should have known You were there.”
“He’s with you sister… We don’t need to be afraid…”
People rose, more hands lifted. Since Vera was on the aisle seat of her pew, she could still see Rev and the woman.
“It’s scary to let go of what we know.” Though spoken lower, a conversational tone, Rev’s voice resonated through the church like the preacher’s had. There was still that hum to it, on the cusp of becoming music again. “Because we don't know God, not face-to-face like you and me now. We don't know His face. We know our bodies, and it's scary to let go of our bodies. We know all about them, and when they get sick and they letting us go, they’re freeing our soul, cutting it loose. That's new and scary.
“We wonder, can we get that coffee we like anymore? How will we do without that? How will my husband manage? The poor man don’t even know how to wash his own clothes.”
His tone had changed, creating a ripple of laughter, the most powerful kin to hope.
The woman lifted a tear-stained face to Rev, smiling. Vera could see the evidence of poor health there, a woman struggling with serious illness. She’d likely been sitting in church, feeling overwhelmed by her fear, isolated by it, but Rev had brought her back to them.
As he rose, and gestured to the others in the row, the woman was helped back to her seat. Her husband put his arm around her, and she clung to him in a way Vera expected she hadn’t done in a while. She’d been holding herself apart, caught alone with her fear, needing to be brave, thinking she needed to do it all by herself.
Vera had led energy raisings for people with emotional or physical afflictions. The person was put in the center of the circle, a symbolic as well as literal focus, the coven participants putting hands upon them to channel healing energy and intent toward them. To give them whatever they needed to help connect them to the Divine, for healing, acceptance and strength.
It was a beautiful, intimate thing, like this. It brought tears to her eyes, but she also noticed the subtle motion of the preacher. In response, the ushers rose and began passing collection plates.
Learning how marketing worked from some of the best—Ros, Cyn, Abby—she knew their timing was excellent. Churches often provided resources that helped people in need of jobs, food, clothing, housing. If the money was put to good use, she had no objection to it. But something about this…it felt a little off.
It wasn’t a calculated coordination with Rev. He seemed as oblivious to it as Skye was when she was deep in a programming issue, and Bastion left her favorite soda at her elbow for her to hydrate when she surfaced.
Rev was working his way back to the transept. He’d also moved on to Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror,” with lyrics that lent itself to a religious setting. His voice made the transition easily, pulling them into a song they could sing with him. The choir joined him in leading it.
When they concluded, there was a general call to praise. Rev gave the impassive preacher a respectful nod and skimmed his fingers along the wood molding of the pulpit. As he did, he shot a smile toward the older woman. Despite her cryptic exchange with the preacher, she gave Rev an approving look, her expression poignant.
It was obvious he did it as an acknowledgement, a silent nod to the one who’d once occupied that pulpit. Probably the aunt who’d raised him, that Mavis had mentioned had died a year ago. The older woman was likely her sister, and Vera was guessing the preacher was Witford, Rev’s cousin. Some similarities in his and Rev’s features suggested it.
An alcove behind the pulpit had a door to other parts of the church, but it also held a chair. Rev was mostly concealed by the shadows as he took a seat in it, but his head lowered, and his shoulders slumped, as if the energy to do what he’d just done had taken a toll. Maybe the emotion he put into it had overwhelmed him.
She wanted to go to him, and would have, if she was formally his Mistress. However, she continued to watch him as the preacher handled the last half hour of the service. The choir offered a mix of traditional and contemporary hymns. They were excellent, but her body was still humming from the music that came from Rev.
At length, he left, slipping out that door. In case he was departing, she considered leaving to see if she could catch him in the parking lot. Before she could make a decision, the side door to the nave whispered open and he was there. The usher was no longer in her pew, so he moved toward her unimpeded. As he took his seat next to her, his slacks brushed her sheer stockings and the hem of her skirt.
Her breath caught from him being so close to her, so unexpectedly. His gaze met hers, and it was alive and fierce and wondering, to see her here. The energy between them was like a sewing needle flashing back and forth, stitching together two pieces of cloth.
She had her hand on the small expanse of cushion between them. Rev’s eyes were on it when he reached out, but he didn’t touch her. With his fingertip, he traced the shadow her braced arm was casting. It might be the most intimate thing she’d ever seen a man do. She wasn’t breathing as he did it. When he put his palm down on that shadow, she wanted to touch him, but it would dilute the potency of the act, so she didn’t.
The service was concluding. “I need to help my cousin,” Rev murmured. “Can you wait a few moments so I can talk to you afterward?”
“Yes.”
He rose. To exit the pew this time, he moved in front of her, his gaze on her lifted face. She touched the crease of his slacks over his knee, just a glancing brush. His eyes went there, those gingerbread eyes heating, and then he was past her and slipping out of the door.
As she brought her attention back to the front, she noticed the aunt staring at her. So was the preacher. And their looks weren’t friendly.
Leaning against her car door, Vera could see the front of the church. As the remaining parishioners came out, Witford and Rev’s aunt shook hands and thanked them for attending.
Rev had joined them, but he was quiet, standing back, only engaging if someone spoke to him. Since the preacher took the lead in almost every instance, very few did, though Rev was touched often. His forearm, his shoulder, a hand pressed. A grateful smile sent his way. Like he was a sacred relic they needed to touch, or connect with in some way.
When the church was empty, Witford spoke to him. Rev shook his head and gestured toward Vera. The aunt responded with a note of urgency. Interestingly, Vera saw Rev’s expression harden, though his tone with her was patient. She couldn’t hear most of the exchange, but she heard his parting words. “I’ll be by later, Tisha.”
As Rev went down the steps, their worried eyes followed him. While Mavis might suspect their motives, which meant Vera did, too, at least some of the worry she saw in them was for Rev, which mystified her. He was a grown man, after all.
As he reached her, he extended his hand. She placed hers in it, curious, and he pulled a folded paper from his pocket and transferred it into her palm. It was the hundred-dollar bill she’d put in the collection plate.
“How did you know it was mine?” She kept her fingers curled over his, so he’d know she didn’t want to break the contact.
“It smelled like your perfume. And Ray told Witford the ‘new lady in the back’ offered it. You aren’t here for that. It’s not necessary.”
She turned their hands over, closed his fingers over the money and grasped his wrist. His gaze flickered at her grip. “First lesson, Rev. Don’t second guess my intentions. Understand?”
His pulse accelerated under her touch. “I’ll be back,” he said.
He crossed the parking lot, intercepting the usher she now knew was Ray. When he handed the money back to him, Ray gave him a curious look, then a grin and a light punch to his shoulder. Rev smiled wryly.
As he returned, she reminded herself she was standing in a church parking lot. She shouldn’t obviously ogle him, no matter how good the man looked and moved in a suit. But it was a view worth appreciating.
“Couldn’t give it to him later?”
“I don’t like handling money much.” Rev paused, waited. She arched a brow.
“You said I shouldn’t second guess your intentions. I’m waiting to hear them before I tell you mine.”
“I’d like to take you to lunch. Or a coffee. Whatever you prefer this time of day.”
Those light brown eyes held hers with an unsettling expression. He still didn’t say anything.
“Problem?”
"I just want to be the one doing the asking."
“Fine, then.” She produced a card from her purse. “This is my cell and email. Reach out to me when the spirit moves you and we’ll see what works out.”
She pivoted on her heel. Yet when she reached the driver’s side of the car, he had followed her and was standing close. He held the card carefully, but he didn’t seem to have taken his eyes off of her.
“Miss Morgan? Veracity?”
“Yes?”
“May I take you somewhere?” At her look, he added, “Didn’t say I wanted to wait to ask. Unless you prefer that.”
Her brief irritation was overruled by a larger desire to smile. Rev took a step, bringing himself closer. Not too close, not really, but his sexual appeal was a strong, pressing energy. His easy indifference to it only increased the effect.
Sunday church goers looked forward to lunch, so the parking lot had emptied fast, leaving them mostly alone and unobserved.
“There’s a place I like to go, near here,” he told her. “It’s quiet and pretty. That’s what I prefer after church. I eat later, at my aunt’s. She do a full Sunday dinner, and if I don’t leave room for every dish, I hurt her feelings. You welcome to join me for that, if you have that kind of time.”
“Not today. But the pretty place sounds good.”
“I usually walk. It about a half mile down the road, but there’s parking, if you want to drive it.”
She dipped her head toward her car. “Hop in. Unless you’d like to meet me there.”
His eyes holding hers, he opened her door. “I don’t want to make you wait for me.”
Rev’s destination was a turnout area with a short walk to a scenic marsh overlook, a good rest stop for a vacationer using the rural highways route to get to Texas. In addition to three parking spaces, there was a picnic table, a trash can and a marker that said some historic person had once camped overnight there.
The boardwalk to the scenic overlook posed no challenge to her heels, but Rev provided his arm as they walked together. They had the place to themselves, so when they reached the rectangular deck with its bench seating, she turned toward him, tall and looking down at her. Waiting. Not passively, though. She didn’t think Rev did anything passively. “Did your parents like astronomy?”
He blinked. “I didn’t know my daddy. But my momma liked reading to me from a book about stars and planets, and one of the few things she told me about him was that he liked the sky and everything in it. I still have the book. Why you ask?”
“Your name, Karman Leone. Leone is a version of Lion. Lion sounds like Line. The Karman Line is the line between earth's atmosphere and space. The known, the unknown. Home and other.”
“I didn’t know that. Thank you.” That, and a flash of wonder in his eyes, told her he welcomed a glimpse of something he didn’t know about his mother. “She died when I was three.”
“So you remember her.”
“Yes.”
A simple answer to emotions that weren’t simple at all.
She sat down on a bench, her knees together, her feet aligned, back straight and hands resting on either side of her, because she wasn’t inviting him to sit with her. “Kneel in front of me, Rev.”
His hands curled at his sides. Energy wrapped around his whole body, holding it rigid for a beat. She half closed her eyes, lifting her chin to feel it touch her, the heat of that anticipation.
He dropped to a knee.
Firsts could be indescribable, but everybody knew that, so “first” usually covered it. First kiss, first love. First time to experience this, with this man. Each move he made under her command would build the feeling between them, as well as guide her own reactions. When he obeyed her, it introduced him to her every erogenous zone, as well as knocked on the door to her heart.
“Take a moment to look at me however you wish,” she said. “But do not touch me.”
He started with her face. He studied her brow, his attention vibrating through her third eye and crown chakra. With a stomach-hollowing breath, she pulled more energy through her core to expand that feeling, widen her sensitivity to him, feel what was going on with him.
She looked, too. At his mouth, the curve and shape of his lips, their dimensions and capabilities. She thought of how sensitive and responsive her skin would be to their touch. As his gaze slid to her throat, she lifted her hands to the purple blouse she’d worn beneath the lavender skirt and jacket. She slipped the button at the V, then the one below that. It revealed the black lace of her bra, the satin cups that covered the nipples. Though she kept her breath controlled, the slow in and out to match the heavy thud of her heart made the ample C-sized curves quiver.
His own breath drew in at the sight. “Look, but do not touch,” she said. A reminder.
He honored the gift with avid appreciation, but the gaze that moved back to her face showed he was in command of himself, while acknowledging her command over him.
“You told me once. You never have to repeat yourself, Mistr—Veracity.”
He’d naturally wanted to call her Mistress, but she’d said only a select number of people had permission to call her that. He’d remembered.
“You may call me Mistress,” she said.
His eyes lowered again. Moved over her breasts, the folds of her blouse framing them. He moistened his lips.
“What would you do, if I said you could do anything?” she asked. Her body was tight, ready. Wanting him.
“I’d put my mouth and hands there. I’d peel back the lace and suckle you, feel you quiver under my touch. Taste your perfume, your skin. You. Hold your waist in my hands, press my fingers into your hips.”
That energy coursing through her widened and intensified. “Keep looking.”
His attention slid to the skirt smoothed over her thighs.
“Do you like to use your mouth between a woman’s legs, Rev?”
“Yes ma’am.” His voice was husky. “I like that taste, too. I like having my mouth there when she find her joy.”
A lovely word for orgasm. She slipped the tiny buttons along the right side of her skirt to reveal her leg, the loosened fabric sliding away from it. Reaching up, she curled her fingers around his tie. When she tugged him forward, his eyes held fire. “Put your hands on my knees.”
She parted them beneath his touch. She also took her hands away to brace her arms on the bench again. As she leaned back, she flexed her foot, dropping the shoe from it so she could put her stockinged sole on his thigh. The other foot, still in its stylish heel, was planted beside his opposite knee. “Bring your mouth as close between my legs as it can get without touching my panties. Then be still, until I tell you otherwise.”
He'd left his suit coat in her car, so when his back curved, she watched the dress shirt stretch over muscle and his shoulders. As his hair, jaw and ears brushed her inner thighs, sheer lust tightened her nipples and gave her gooseflesh on her arms, the small of her back, her neck. When he was so close a twitch from her might have pressed her cunt against his lips, he stilled.
The moist heat of his breath made her want to close that miniscule distance, but she didn’t. Lifting one hand, she smoothed it over his curved back. The shirt had a softness to it that added to its fit. At his collar, she trailed her nails along his nape. As she inhaled the masculine scent of his aftershave, the light touch of oil in his hair, she detected some rosemary in it.
“Think about your breath. Draw it in, draw me in. Then exhale, knowing the heat of your breath is stroking me. Making me wetter and making me want you even more.”
“I right here, Mistress.” His voice was muffled, slightly hoarse.
“Yes, but the wanting is part of the pleasure. Isn’t it?”
The puff of his breath as he spoke made her inner muscles contract and her lower belly flutter. She bit back a moan as he followed her direction, and his breath’s stroke became more rhythmic. She noticed his grip on her knees had constricted and suspected he’d recognized the order to keep them there served as a restraint. His shoulders lifted and lowered with each breath. Her body wanted to move in that same dance. She’d lift her hips and rub her damp pussy against his wet, so close mouth.
But this was a blissful test of the possibilities. She reined herself back, though her arousal was intense enough she might have to pull off the road and finish herself before she arrived at the privacy of her own home.
“Are you aroused, Rev?”
“Yes ma’am.” A half chuckle, strained.
“Sit back, stand up and show me. It’s my turn to look.”
He did so with reluctance. She was taking him away from where he wanted to be, but it also might be the first time he’d displayed himself to a woman this way. She liked the thought of that, enjoyed seeing the internal battle to meet her desires without self-consciousness, and settle into it.
Yes, Lord and Lady, the man had been blessed. The generous evidence of his cock against the slacks made her ache to put her hands on his thighs and play. Knead, squeeze, stroke, all while requiring him to stay still, until his body started to tremble with the effort.
Instead, she lifted an approving gaze to his. “You did well. How do you feel?
She saw heat and strong male desire. “Like I hoped to feel.”
“And how is that?”
“I've pleased you. Created desire in you.”
“And in you.”
His lips creased in a smile. "They the same thing."
The honest answer rocked her. When she shifted, intending to reclaim her shoe and get up, he lifted a hand.
“May I help you?”
At her assent, he knelt—with some effort, given his erection—and guided her foot into the shoe. His touch was strong on her ankle and heel. When he stood, offering her a hand to rise, she could tell he’d recognized it was the end of the moment, and she wanted to move to the next. He showed no attitude about that, even while that strain to the fabric of his slacks told her he was ready to serve her.
The man was acing the test for her preferences.
“The doing is new to you. But not the thinking about it.” She touched his cheekbone, straight as a sword under the smooth skin. Her thumb followed his nose to the curve of the nostril, the rougher skin above his lip, along his jaw. Shaved, but the hint of the beard was there. “‘I dream of kneeling. For her.’ Tell me about that.”
The tiny muscles around his eyes creased. The irises showed sparks from his emotion, like moving water when the sun’s light struck it through tree branches. Giving him time with his answer, she started them walking again, her hand curved in the crook of his elbow, their bodies brushing.
“For a long time,” he said at last, “maybe since I became a teenager, I’d think of the Virgin Mary when I kneel. Or sometime an angel with a face like lightning, and wings so strong, but hands so delicate, resting on my bowed head.”
Rev looked at her. “Always female. I feel the power of God in it, but the power of earthly desire, too. Like it something right, that desire to kneel to a female spirit that’s another face of God. Of Love. I want her to tell me what I can do for Her, how I can serve Her.”
“How does that gel with your family? The preacher is your cousin, right? Witford? And your aunt Tisha was sitting on that bench near him.”
He nodded. “I never told anyone about it. Seemed too private, and didn’t affect what they need from me. I didn’t even tell Teena Joy. She the aunt that raised me, Tisha’s sister.”
Grief vibrated from him, still strong when called to the surface. Vera turned toward him, resting her hand against his neck.
Under her touch, his eyes closed, but then opened, his gaze meeting hers. “I know you not God, Veracity. It not like that. I see you as a woman, and desire you like that. I won’t put you up on the wrong kind of pedestal.”
Most men new to a relationship, trying to secure the affections of a woman, would go the opposite way to build her up. He understood the mistake that would be. A woman needed to be seen as human and fallible, to know the love she was being offered was real and true.
Though he’d moved her, she kept her tone light. “Good. Because that would be a lot to live up to, and while pleasure can be sacred, I also like the kind that keeps us close to the earth.” She curled her fingers around his tie to tug on it again. “Primal and needy, the heat of the storm.”
He gripped her wrist, telegraphing the need she was spurring. When she gave the hand a significant glance, he let her go, fingers slipping away reluctantly. She propelled them into a walk again.
“Rev, are you familiar with BDSM? Dominant, submissive? You called me Mistress without prompting.”
His lips tugged. “When I was a boy, other boys showed me things. Magazines and videos on their computers, but most of it just worried me. So, yes ma’am, I know some of it. I feel the words, in the way you say them. And there’s a lot about surrender in the Bible. Submission and surrender.”
So he recognized it when it was in front of him. The magazine and video reaction made sense. Porn didn’t usually offer the spiritual side of the relationship, and he’d made it clear that he needed that.
“There’s a place here in New Orleans, Progeny. It’s a club for people who embrace domination and submission in their relationships. I’d like you to join me there one night, as my guest, if you’re interested in going. What do you think?”
She walked with him without saying anything further, letting him have time to make his decision. Even so, she was amused to discover she’d been holding her breath until he did.
“I think I’d like that. But may I take you out first, and then you can ask me again, if you still want that?”
He wanted to get to know her before they went down that road. She had mixed feelings about it. He was asking up front for their relationship to be more than that. She would have preferred to start them inside that boundary. But it was a fair request. And, since she could tell how much their talk about the club intrigued him, it said good things, that he wasn’t rushing toward more intense levels of Dom/sub play without getting to know her better.
“Where will we go?”
“Wherever you want. Where do you want to go?”
“Surprise me, based on what you know of me so far. I’m not trying to trip you up, Rev. What you choose will tell me more about you.” She flashed him a half-smile. “Dommes love information.”
“Like if I tried to take you somewhere expensive and fancy, thinking that’s what you want, I’d be sticking to your surface. Not seeing you.”
“I already knew you wouldn’t do that.” She cocked her head, considering him. “Your confidence is tied to a curious lack of ego. Ego is what causes that kind of mistake.”
“I might make other mistakes.” He looked down at her. “I want to please you, Mistress. It unsettles me.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Deciding she wanted another taste of that desire, she turned toward him, bringing them to a halt again. She loosened his tie, slid it free and unhooked the top button of his shirt so she could caress the valley between his collar bones. A deliberate and proprietary act, saying she could handle him as she wished.
His reaction to it was another unforgettable first. The heat and pulsing life against her fingertips was a match for what she could sense lower down, for both of them. She wanted to press herself against him, but restricted herself to this one intimate contact. The earthy scent of his aftershave would linger on her fingers. She liked knowing that.
He wore a silver cross on a slim chain under his shirt, and she remembered she’d seen the hint of it under the collar of his coveralls. She was surprised he didn’t wear it over his tie for the service, but sometimes a faith talisman was a personal message to oneself. She lifted her gaze to him.
“That’s the good kind of unsettled, Rev. A Mistress likes to have her man off balance sometimes, so he learns he can rely on her to right his world. What should I wear for my surprise date?”
With his eyes holding hers, her body resisted her brain’s order to step back. But she managed it. “Rev,” she prompted, with a smile for both of them. He cleared his throat.
“Wear shoes good for walking. I know you’ll need to drive, since I don’t, but I’ll come to you. Is Thursday afternoon okay? I have a half day off.”
“Yes. Pick me up at work. We can go from there.” She removed her cell from her purse. “Let’s exchange numbers in case anything changes.”
“I don’t carry one, but I usually here or at school. If you call either place, they’ll find me. Can you tell me where you work, what it near?”
“Thomas Rose Associates, in the Garden District, near Coliseum Square Park. The address is on the card I gave you.”
“Okay. I know the area.”
She studied him. “Part of being with a Mistress includes telling her what might inhibit your ability to serve her needs and desires. Do you understand that?”
His gaze remained steady on hers. “You asking me something, but you haven’t gotten to it yet.”
“You don’t read well, do you?”
“I didn’t have a lot of book learning, but I can read. And do the math a man needs to take care of himself.”
“Did you have problems in school?”
“No ma’am.”
She was reminded of what Mavis had said, about how he’d politely dismissed her concerns and firmly moved off the topic. “Honesty and trust are vital to determining where you and I can go together, Rev. If you aren’t ready to tell me the full story about it, that’s an acceptable answer. But at some point, I’ll need to know.”
“It not that I can’t tell you. People don’t understand. They judge, based on what the world is.” His mouth tightened and he sighed. “I don’t want to know you going to judge me like that, and I know that’s the wrong reason not to tell you. I’m enjoying this right now, where we are together.”
“Me too.” She took a breath. “I can’t promise I’ll react the way you wish, but I will try to understand.”
“Okay.” They started walking again. “When I was little, my momma would read to me, like I say. The day after she died, that was the first time I sung. Teena Joy was listening to a hymn on the radio, and I started to sing with it. She said I sang as good as the singer, got every word right, but also gave the song a power that told her my voice came from God. Told me my momma had sent me a gift to comfort me, to help me get by without her.”
He’d tucked her arm further under his, so instead of her holding onto his elbow, he could hold her hand, fingers interlaced. His grip was light, cognizant of her rings, though his thumb was worrying the onyx stone on one of them.
“Teena Joy took up the reading to me, like my momma did. When she thought I old enough, she started to teach me my letters. I did well enough on that, but then…I started to zone out for a couple minutes at a time. Usually when I was trying to read stuff back to her.”
Childhood epilepsy , she thought, and Rev confirmed it.
“The family doctor said he thought it was seizures, but he wanted her to take me to a specialist. There weren’t no money for that, so he gave us some medicine and said it usually worked itself out with age. But every time I did much more than basic reading and figures, it’d get worse.
“Since I loved being read to, she did that to help me learn what was in books that I needed to know. I liked fixing and building things, too. Beau says I have mechanical aptitude.”
He was measuring her reaction so far. She wasn’t sure what to think, since the story wasn’t done, so she kept her expression neutral.
They’d reached her car. He opened her door so she could sit in the driver’s seat while he leaned against the side. “First day of kindergarten, when I woke up, I had really bad laryngitis, even though I was fine the day before. Teena Joy said God had decided I shouldn’t go to school, so she taught me at home. One of our neighbors was homeschooling her kids, so I joined them sometimes, but mostly it was Teena Joy.”
The discomfort from him hit a different note. Because he was an honest man. “She made sure my schooling was considered enough for anyone checking. I wasn’t sure she was truthful with them about it, which never sat quite right with me, but it over and done with, and back then I wouldn’t disrespect her by going against her on it.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, rubbing at his chin with his thumb. “So that’s it.”
The story was one of a poor family trying to take care of a special child, the best way they knew how. But it only added to the mystery of the man before her.
“Do you believe your voice came from God, and that it’s dependent on you not being formally educated?”
“I think Teena Joy thought that. I just serve God, and respect the people in my life I love. I don’t go against them unless they put something in my path I know ain’t right.”
An intriguing response. He wanted to talk about something else, she could tell, and truthfully, she needed to think about what he’d told her. She decided to take them out of those waters for now. “Did you have friends your age growing up?”
That appealing boyish smile crossed his face. “Plenty. I have more relatives than corn on a cob, plus there was the kids in Sunday school.”
He touched her hand, resting on the window frame. “You got a furrow in your pretty forehead, but it don’t need to be there. I never lacked for the things that mattered growing up, and I get along fine now. I have people who watch after me, same as I watch after them. That what a family do.”
I have people who watch after me. Her mind returned to his aunt and cousin. Whether it was good or bad depended a lot on why they were watching.
She gazed at their fingers, resting together, and then withdrew her hand and put her keys in the ignition. “Want a ride back?”
He shook his head and shut her door once she’d tucked her legs back in. “I’ll be staying here a while. But I see you Thursday.”
“Okay.” But she didn’t turn over the engine. She looked up at him through the open window and he met her gaze for one of those prolonged pauses. She thought about kissing him, giving him that option, but it was too soon.
“Veracity.” When he touched her face, she saw resolve. “I not an educated man. But I not a stupid one. You mind me?”
It was an old turn of phrase, with a variety of meanings, but this one was clear enough. Respect what I’m telling you.
She’d asked him not to second guess her as a woman and as a Mistress. The same was required in return.
He’d used the phrase well. Rev gave mixed signals, both beta and alpha. This moment was an alpha one. She liked a sub with an extra helping of that.
“I mind you,” she said.