Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
T he Italian architecture of her house in the Irish Channel section of New Orleans reflected the many things the city was. The house was blue with cream shutters and trim, the small front yard bound with black wrought iron fencing. Flared shelf molding embellished the tops of the tall windows. A welcoming front porch spanned the width of her home.
She parked the car in her detached garage in back and led him to the cozy screened porch that overlooked her backyard. It had just enough room for her vegetable and herb garden, plus a meditation bench under the sprawling oak. The tree draped its arms companionably over the backyards of her neighbors.
As she took him up the steps past her potted flowers and unlocked the back door, he held the screen, his body close behind her. She turned to gesture him inside.
She’d loved the historic house from her first walk through. It was narrow but long, following the typical footprint of houses built in this area during the early 1900s. The floor-to-ceiling windows were in the master bedroom, as well as the front living room and dining areas.
It smelled like well-loved historic houses did. Old wood, plaster, and a mix of new materials to keep it maintained over the decades. The polished floors in the narrow rooms were mostly the original wood, but when needed, replacement boards were matched. She’d had the walls painted in the vibrant colors she preferred, a different color for each room, embellished with white crown molding.
She liked furniture crafted before 1930. Or looked like it had been. The avocado green velvet sofa with diamond tufted seat, cushions and arms could convert into a full sleeper sofa, and she had cream-colored pillows on it, printed with New Orleans street scenes. The sofa and two matching side chairs were grouped around one of the six fireplaces the house had.
A large watercolor of Ella Fitzgerald singing in a smoky club was over the couch.
Plenty of daylight streamed through the tall front windows, flanked by shimmering green and gold striped curtains. When she closed them so the living room became more intimate, light from the room’s tear-drop chandelier made the velvet of the couch and the gold in the painting’s frame gleam.
She wanted what she had planned to stay private, and her front porch was only a few feet from the street.
She turned to find him still within a step of her. Perhaps thinking he was crowding her, he started to step back, but she put a hand on his forearm. His ended up at her waist, fingers curling in. Energy vibrated from him, but he was waiting to see what she wanted.
“Kneel to me, Rev.”
The relief that swept him was so strong it rocked them both. He sank to one knee, but kept gazing up at her, a curious mix of submission and expectation, hope and demand, that made curbing her anticipation difficult. She wanted to unspool it in slow ribbons of pleasure.
“This is my home, Rev, and I’ve invited you into it. Would you hurt me here?”
Shock gripped his face. “No, Mistress. Not here, not anywhere.” Then he did that inner reflection thing, and added to it. “Never, Veracity. You’re safe with me. No matter what.”
“What changed there? When you chose to tell me both as a Mistress and by my given name?”
“I want you to know that I ache to be on my knees to you, but that change nothing about my promise to respect and protect you, as a woman trusting a man should expect. As you should expect, when you trust me.”
Vera took a steadying breath. “Thank you for that, Rev. You have the same promise from me, because when you willingly hand me control, I can hurt you, physically and mentally. The more you open yourself to me, the more that risk increases. So I promise to care for everything you entrust to me about yourself.”
She gestured. “On that note, take a seat on the sofa. We need to talk about some things first.”
When they moved there, he waited until she sat before he did, one cushion-width between them. “Before a Dominant and submissive engage in anything too involved,” she said, “we talk about limits first.”
Not just to bring him up to speed, but to gauge his reactions to the information she gave him now. Hard and soft limits, and examples of both. Impact play, sting versus thud, fire play, electric play. Suspension, restraints, toys.
She didn’t bother with the ones that didn’t appeal to her. As his knowledge of this world grew, if he found something that interested him in those areas, she could help him explore them with other Dommes.
She wasn’t thrilled with that thought, but under her supervision…she might be all right with it. A discussion for another day, if it became an issue. She’d shared subs before, usually with the other TRA women, but unless they were regular playmates, it was only for the occasional session.
It was rare she brought a man home to play. But Rev needed to explore this side of himself in a private environment, without the sensory overload that Progeny could be to those new to this.
She recognized when she needed to further explain a term or type of play. Not because Rev pretended to know something when he didn’t, but he’d get lost in thought over it, enough that she’d inject more information until that puzzled expression cleared, to be replaced by interest, indifference or amusing horror.
He showed interest in impact play and restraints. Full recoil on anal play. She enjoyed fucking a male, but him proving his devotion by worshipping and pleasuring her body usually took the lead in her sessions. The psychological elements of Dominance and submission were her favorite areas to explore, and if she was with a sub who embraced that as she did, they found what worked for both of them. So far, Rev had earned straight As in that.
An example she gave him: A male standing at her back, waiting for her—waiting on her—with endless patience, to prove his service, even as he also exhibited those titillating signs of effort to leash his drives and desires.
Sometimes she coiled that leash around her hand and drew it taut, proving in more stringent ways how much in charge of his responses she was, especially when the sub needed that, too.
But she also liked to be the kind of owner who let the leash trail next to her sub, knowing his attention and focus never really left her. He wanted the leash there, and so did she, but she had no need to hold it.
"Play seem a strange word for some of this, Mistress,” Rev noted. “Electric play , fire play.”
"Yes. But many submissives start in the shallow end of the pool and eventually are only happy in the places where they can't touch bottom at all. Or get well over their head."
“They drown.”
"Depending on what you're drowning in, it's not always a bad thing."
His gaze moved around the room. “Your house match the clothes you like to wear. Sophisticated, from a different time.”
It might seem like he’d changed subjects, but this phase included a meshing between what the Mistress or sub wanted, and who they were. Rev was looking at that for her, as much as she was for him.
“In the church I attended growing up, you looked your best there, supposedly to please the Lord, though I'm sure there was some vanity involved, a little competition in the hats and gloves, the type of shoes, the pin just so on the lapel. The color of your man’s tie, his cuff links.”
She smiled as his lips tugged, showing his understanding and familiarity with it. Mostly black congregations hadn’t changed much on that, no matter the “casual dress” approach some churches now took.
“It still serves that primary purpose, I think. Deliberate care with appearance reflects attention to action, thought and words. So as an adult, I decided to do it every day of the week, a reminder that it’s important on all days, not just Sunday.”
“Deliberate care,” he repeated. “Teena Joy taught me that, too. In the way to dress, stay clean and care for your body.”
“I’ve noticed. I’ll send her a prayer of thanks.”
He grinned. “I gotta stay on my toes with you, Mistress. You telling me a lot of things, finding out what I like or might like. Will you tell me what you like?”
She put her hand on the cushion between them, and his gaze fell to it, to the sparkle of her rings. Today she wore three silver ones. One with a sparkling elephant head, one with a pentacle surrounded by a chain of flowers, and one simple band, engraved with the word Love.
"I'll tell you eventually, but I don't offer that up front. It’s automatic to say you want to do what I like, but that doesn’t help me know what’s driving your desire to submit. Whatever I do in my sessions with submissives comes from understanding what my sub needs. If those needs overlap with mine, then we both find what we need.”
“And if they don’t?”
She tapped a finger on the cushion. “It’s like we talked about before. If I have to have something from a sub he can't provide, it's incompatibility, not failure. I’ll steer him toward someone who’s a better fit for him.”
A frown appeared, and he put his hand over hers. “I want you. I want you to be happy. That means I’d do that thing to make you happy.”
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Because your happiness and what you need is just as important to me. I think no matter what, we’ll be friends.”
His lips tightened.
“You don’t want to be my friend.”
He gave her a half-amused look. “I do, Mistress. But I want to be a lot more than that, enough that the idea of being just your friend isn’t all that appealing right now.”
“The feeling is quite mutual.”
The intensity of those gingerbread-colored eyes, the set of his mouth, his closeness to her on the couch, was distracting enough to make her want to leave it alone for now. After all, it was anticipating something that might not happen. But though it had been a while since she’d initiated a newbie, Vera hadn’t forgotten her responsibility. No matter how much he’d captured her interest, it couldn’t be avoided.
“If something is meant to be, it happens. That’s how I approach the opportunities and disappointments in my life. There’s a path and a plan I may not understand, but I trust the Lord and Lady as I walk it.”
“I submit to God’s will,” he said.
“Yes, exactly. Though I’m not always gracious about it. Especially when I really want something.”
She looked down at his large, chapped hand and cupped it in hers. As he watched her, she felt like the emotions they were feeling were shared, nothing unknown or held back. A strange feeling with someone she’d barely met.
Focus. Do your most important job first. Care for him.
“A lot of things happen when you enter this world. Your defenses get stripped away, and things boil up you may not expect. Just because you have a bad reaction to something doesn’t mean we’ve hit the ‘time to go our separate ways’ point. So as I said from the very beginning, don’t lie to me, and don’t be dishonest with yourself. ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t know how I’m feeling,’ are acceptable answers to any scenario we explore. As long as it’s the truth.”
She lifted her gaze. “I’ll take care of you, Rev, in the ways I know that you don’t, and I’ll look forward to discovering how you want to take care of me.”
Though he still looked tense about it, his shoulders eased enough to tell her that he’d heard her. They’d covered enough preliminaries. She pointed to the rug in front of the fireplace. “Go stand there, and take off your shoes and socks.”
His attention held her for a measured second, his hand squeezing hers briefly, before he rose to comply with her order. As he did, she moved to her antique cherry corner cabinet and withdrew several candles, infused with scents she wanted for this. She placed them on the metal tray on the top of the cabinet.
Before she lit them, she scooped a heart-shaped polished rose quartz out of the Swarovski bowl beside the tray. She held it in her closed hand, feeling the texture, absorbing the properties. Then she put it down and did the same with a rough cut one. Relationships were like that, going back and forth, rough to smooth, smooth to rough.
This was a beginning. Or was it? She suspected it wasn’t the first life where her and Rev’s paths had crossed. She sent a thankful blessing to the Lord and Lady that they were allowing it to happen again, in this way.
“Does it bother you that I’m not book smart?”
The question startled her so much the flame from the match singed her fingertips. She dropped it into the tray with a stifled oath and turned around. Before she completed the motion, he was in front of her, his eyes on her hand. When he gripped her wrist and blew on the injured area, he held her with that distractingly gentle strength.
“Does it bother you, Rev?”
His countenance was troubled. “I never thought it mattered, long as I doing what I’m supposed to do, for those in need of what I can do for them. Seemed wrong to get too caught up in it.”
“So why ask now?”
He gave her a rueful smile. “Fear of losing something I need and want bad. Wanting you not to look at me and see something less than what you need. I heard what you said, Mistress, and so I hope you know this isn’t that. I just need to be what you need. I want that. I want to be able to take care of you.”
As he spoke, his gaze was moving. Over her eyes and mouth, the pulse in her throat, the neckline of her blouse, the swell of her breast. A physical perusal backed by a powerful emotional hunger. Her skin heated from the concentration of it. She gripped his forearm and used his hold to step out of her shoes. She wanted ground contact, preparing to be a lightning rod. The carpet was cool through the stockings she’d put back on in the church restroom before they left there.
He wasn’t looking for reassurance. He was asking if he had the skills to do the job before him.
“All right. Go back to the fireplace and take off all of your clothes. You can take the cross off or leave it on, whichever you prefer. Stand there, feet shoulder width apart.”
He didn’t argue. He returned to the fireplace and removed his clothing. He left the cross in place, which she liked, because it said he didn’t think anything they were about to do would be in conflict with its presence.
He was already erect. God and Goddess, the man was beautiful, and she wouldn’t deny how much that beauty was intensified for her by his obedience. He stood, waiting respectfully for her next command. Her next wish and desire.
“Close your eyes. You need my permission to open them. To look at me again.”
His lashes fanned his cheeks. When she turned on the gas logs, the flame flickered over his bronze skin, tempting her to touch.
“Do you know some believe that looking is an act of possession? That’s why we read passages like we ‘capture’ someone in our gaze. Hold them, lock them into it. It’s why I’m telling you that you need permission to look at me. And it’s why I’m looking at you now. As much as I wish.”
His body tightened at the implication. His throat worked as he swallowed, and his heavy cock twitched against his thighs.
“Do you want that?” she asked. “To possess me, or be possessed by me? Do you want to consider yourself mine? I don’t want you to answer the question, Rev. Even if I ask you a question, stay silent until I tell you specifically to talk. Say ‘Yes, Mistress,’ if you understand.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
The two words echoed inside her head, swirling down into her chest, her stomach and between her thighs. She drew them back up with her breath and held them under her ribs. She spun the energy they created from the base of her spine and took it up to her third eye, that sensitive center between her brows. All of its meanings tingled over her face, lips, throat and beating pulse.
In Tantra, a man and woman were opening themselves up to the Lord and Lady, channeling their energy. They each became a representative of those entities, him the Lord, her the Lady. God and Goddess, revering the sacred energy of their bond. Their joining.
She removed all of her clothes, and then moved closer. When she dipped down to graze his toes with her fingertips, he started, the touch unexpected, but then he stilled, a column of electrical vibration. Lightning gathering.
She followed the energy channels up to his knee, the muscles of his thigh, then across, circling the base of his rigid cock and brushing the soft hair around it. She lingered, stroking the shaft with her nails, her thumb pressed against his lower abdomen, before stepping around him, letting her fingers trail over his hip. She stroked his fine, taut buttocks and teased the seam.
Continuing a spiraling touch, she came back to his front, to his stomach, the navel—another connection to the female Divine. Up from there to the middle of his chest, the depth and breadth of it a physical manifestation of the heart beneath, the man that he was.
Her own heart was beating as strongly as his when she flattened her palm against him, her fingertips brushing his cross. She channeled the energy coming from her through her palm and imagined it spreading through his body.
She created another spiral around his arm. After she gripped his fingers, a brief hold, she was back to his corded neck, that strong throat. She made sure her touch passed over his lower lip, right cheek, eye and forehead, and let it rest on his third eye in his forehead before stroking over the crown, over his skull, and his hair. He dipped his head, so she didn’t have to lift on her toes. Seeking any way to show his desire to serve her.
As she drew deep on the power she was raising, his skin was reacting to her touch, the nerves answering it. Whether he was aware of it or not, his body was swaying in a slight spiral motion, following the energy flow.
She did the same route from the opposite side. Tracing solar channels, which were His energy. The lunar channels, which were Hers. Their energy.
Every part of her felt alive, caught in this moment. “How are you doing, Rev? You may answer me.”
“I’m…it’s like bliss, but there’s…I want to touch you, Mistress. Hold you. Have you under me. Over me.”
“The desire to worship and devour, to elevate and possess. They’re not inconsistent desires.”
“Your voice…it’s gotten deeper, throatier. I like it. Like it’s that way just for me.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s the energy you’re willingly letting me touch and share. Take for my own.”
When she did this in the club, channeling elemental energy, she let it take over her voice, her body, and guide her down the right path. Plenty of nights she didn’t go this deep, though. It was more of a meditative exercise at the beginning, to get her in the right mindset to play. When she flogged her sub’s handsome shoulders, his tight ass, that energy spiral tightened into an arrow she directed toward his need to release, even as she immersed herself in the visceral pleasure of making him fight to hold back, for her.
But this was her home, her hearth, and she wanted more from Rev. There was a danger of wanting too much from a sub, especially one that answered the darker needs, the yearning emptiness, the disappointments and pain of betrayed and confused relationships. There was also the right path to take past that quagmire, letting the energy heal it, not letting it take over in the wrong ways and taint it.
She pulled her breath into her heart chakra, and leaned toward him. As she let the breath out, she caressed his chest and the base of his throat with that heart energy. She gave it light and color, watching it drift like a mist into the intimate pockets of his collar bones and float over the curve of his shoulder. The terrain of his body was like a planet, like the moon, a new universe and yet home, all at the same time.
The quiver of response told her he felt the impact of the breath energy. His cock was getting ever harder, thicker. She wanted to touch and taste the meat of him, the glistening fluid at the tip, tease the slit, grip and work him. She wanted to lay him on her floor, arms outstretched, legs together, his pelvis the center of him, rising and responding to her touch.
“Let’s see how well you’ve done your homework. Without opening your eyes, can you recall my face, Rev? Every detail.”
She moved so her hip was against his upper thigh, her hand on his biceps. She felt the energy rush of his reaction as he realized she’d removed all her clothes. Her bare skin brushed his as her breath rippled over his shoulder, cheek almost touching it. While she leaned into the solid support of his body, she laid her head there and looked at the fire. He steadied himself to support her.
“I been doing that since you showed up at the school,” he said. “Each time I see you, I look some more, because when we apart, I want to call it up in my head, strong enough it’s like you there with me.”
“I do that, too.”
“You do?”
“You sound surprised I’ve been thinking of you as much as you’ve been thinking of me.”
“I don’t think that’s possible.” Humor mixed with desire in his voice. “You couldn’t do all those complicated things you do if you was thinking of me that much. Easier for me when I cleaning up after the kids or keeping things fixed.”
“I’m a very good multi-tasker. Just ask my boss.”
She lifted her head to lay a finger on his beautiful mouth, stroking the cushion of his lips. “Sing for me, Rev. No words. Just whatever music is in your heart. Keep doing it until I say stop.”
She laid her head back on his shoulder and waited as he sent the command wherever it needed to go to respond as she wanted. When it came, the notes were slow and powerful, like drums calling others from their homes to dance in the darkness, risk whatever was there, because it was too sensual to resist.
It was a different sound from what she’d heard from him before. As he continued to stand as she’d ordered, feet shoulder width apart, hands at his sides, twitching with the desire to touch, she drew back so she could take her fingers on a journey down his chest, scrape his nipples with her nails. A zigzag motion over the stomach muscles took her even lower.
The notes went up, down, erratic, as she circled his cock. When she dropped to a knee, flattening her palms on his thighs, she bathed his shaft in that caressing, heart-energy-filled breath. There was also a good mix of sexual energy she pulled from the base of her spine.
He shuddered. With his eyes shut, the notes would spin in the darkness in his head, getting wilder and less predictable. The deepness of his voice became a growl, a call to mate.
She touched her tongue to the tip of his cock, rolled it around the ridge of the head. She closed her whole mouth over it, sliding halfway down, as much as she could take without pushing him into her throat. As she came back up, she did it slow, tasting and experiencing that part of him, the strength and power of it.
Yoni and lingam. Lingam was a good word. It made her think of linger , and she liked lingering on this part of him while she tracked his reactions. She gripped his buttocks, the muscles flexing as she drew him deeper. When she increased her hold, it was a non-verbal cue to tell him to remain still, to not push into her mouth, no matter how much the animal need in him wanted that.
She liked feeling his struggle to obey, to rein back his primal need to prove his power and strength. She could command it, call it to her, but a part of him would want her to know it could overwhelm her. Which only increased the dangerous pleasure in testing it.
She intensified her sucking and stroking, and released one buttock so she could cup his balls, roll them in her palm, squeeze them. His song was changing, the drum-like notes punctuated by the passion behind them. Like men dancing around a fire, crouching low, brandishing their spears at the flames as they shouted out short, sharp notes that matched the thrusts.
She slid her mouth off of him and rose. As she straddled his cock, gripping him between her thighs, she rubbed her wetness over him. A breathless oath broke through the wordless song before it stumbled forward again. She laid her hands on his chest, lifting onto her toes to put her mouth on his and take the song inside her, a vibration of notes.
The power of the contact escalated what was already spiraling around them. She held his neck so she could draw him into her mouth and play with his tongue. That growl was back, his violent need. His hands were still at his sides, but he wanted to use them so much it made her dizzy with anticipation.
She drew back, biting his lip. He had his eyes screwed shut, showing her how difficult it was to keep them that way.
“Lie down, Rev.”
She had her hand on his shoulder and, as he went down, that touch slid to his arm. He captured her fingers, impulsively bringing them to his mouth when he paused on one knee. She cupped his head as she leaned over him. “You earned a punishment for that, Rev. That pleases me.”
A huff of half breath, maybe a chuckle, and then he stretched out before her, a glorious sight, his thigh muscles drawn tight, cock erect. “Arms out to your sides. Keep them there. Feet together.”
When he complied, she straddled him, stood over him. “Open your eyes.”
His irises were melted copper, the centers black as the primeval darkness his song had evoked. He stared at all of her, her thighs, the triangle of her sex, the tilt of her breasts and her mane of hair, tangled over her shoulders.
“Blessed Lady,” he murmured. “Thank you, sweet Jesus.”
Her chest was tight with painful, pleasurable need. “What do you want, Rev?”
“You upon me, Mistress. Me inside you. Serving you.”
“Ask for it.”
“Please, Mistress. Let me serve you. Give you pleasure. Give you joy.”
She lowered herself, gripping his cock to guide him into her. His attention latched onto her mouth as she bit her lip. She was slick with need, but he was engorged enough to make it an effort to take him, a balance she appreciated with pure feminine ecstasy, the right fit between their two bodies.
His arm muscles flexed, fingers curling. She wanted his hands on her, but she was exploring how well he respected the boundaries she set. She told herself her aching need to toss them out the window wouldn’t serve them going forward, even as a truer voice told her she was protecting herself from how much she was feeling for him.
She accepted that. She rocked her pelvis on him, drawing that ecstasy closer, but holding her own leash on it as his body tightened. She was making it tough on him, and that gave her joy, too. He groaned as she dropped her head back on her shoulders, arching her back, tilting her breasts. The air movement made the nipples more sensitive as she rose and fell, the friction of him within her only stoking that fire.
“Mistress…please…I need to…”
“Not yet,” she breathed. “Not yet… Move with me, Rev.”
He did, hips thrusting up, trying to match her rhythm even as his breath grew more ragged. Her chin came back down as she gazed upon him. His face held granite strength. He was dedicating himself to her need, to her commands. Fighting his own will. It caught her on fire, and it spread all over her.
Let’s see just how good you can be…
She let her orgasm roll forth and take her, a strong wave that rocked her body, locked all her muscles and turned a hum of pleasure into a cry. Every nerve involved, the energy she’d channeled throughout this session turning the release into a long wave that held her the way she wanted him to hold her. A thrilling embrace, experienced on an eternal journey together.
She wanted him to see it, to want to be within it with her, enough to deny himself whatever she demanded inside this intimate circle, a circle about the two of them and their connection to things far bigger than the mundane world.
Then, pinnacle reached, those thoughts were swept away. The strength of it bucked her upon him, so much it made her lose her balance. His hands were there at once, one on her waist, one at the side of her throat, holding her steady, his eyes upon her, still fierce with the desire to release, but it hadn’t overwhelmed his desire to serve.
Everything she could want in a sub.
She put her hands over his and gripped, their fingers lacing as she rocked and shuddered, convulsing from the power of the climax.
When it finally ebbed, that hold was still there, and he was a taut cord beneath her, his cock pulsing inside her cunt, her quivering, sensitive tissues gripping him.
“What do you want, Rev?” she asked again, her voice trembling.
He stared up at her. “To stay like this forever, Mistress.”
“Without releasing, finding your own…joy?”
She liked how that wry look found a place amid the urgent need, its darker side. “I afraid…if I do that…it like a storm. The more powerful it is, the more it can take away what you don’t want to lose.”
Her mind was swirling and chaotic, body trembling. And yet his words created a still point that made her find her balance. And her answer for him.
“Your grip is strong, Rev,” she whispered. “I know you won’t let go. Draw a deep, slow breath.”
When he struggled to comply, she slid up his length, and started to come down. “Let it out,” she murmured. “And come for me now.”
He conceded the battle but disengaged his fingers, gripping her hips with such bruising strength she knew he’d done it to protect her fingers. The gesture made the song inside her rise to a greater pitch.
Vera moved with him, gripping, stroking, and crying out at the jet of his seed. Her hands fell to his chest, digging in as they rocked together, caught in a boat on a turbulent ocean. It took them up higher and plunged them down over the crests, only to bring them up again.
Her second orgasm wasn’t as powerful, but it didn’t need to be. Joy had many different ways of expressing itself. She gasped at his guttural cry and how forcefully he brought her back down on him, again and again, the animal in him as fully unleashed as she’d commanded it to be.
She reveled in feeling that power answering her call. And when he finally stopped, chest expanding and contracting, the veins in his throat still throbbing, his strong face was contorted in wonder from the depth of it all. She stroked his jaw, his cheeks and temple, her hair falling around her face in a dark, soft cloud as she gazed down on him.
She came lower, her nipples brushing his chest as she kissed his forehead, that third eye. She held there as his hands passed over her back and hips, the dimple above her buttocks, then reverently molded over the curves.
Right after, though, he stopped, a slight tension passing through him.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “You may touch me, Rev.”
“I thought I had to ask first.”
“There are ways of asking and answering that have nothing to do with a voice. You asked with them.”
She took him to her bedroom. On the way, his fingertips brushed her hair, a curtain he was adjusting to see what was beneath it. She stopped, glancing up at him as he discovered the tattoo on the back of her shoulder, a whimsical black cat curled around a pentacle. Her skin shivered under his touch, especially when it moved back up from there to her nape, to close on a handful of her hair.
She put her hand on his chest and lifted on her toes to meet his lips, their bodies pressed against one another. His grip tightened, an intriguing pull against her scalp before he recalled himself and eased the touch. She broke the kiss.
“If you want the guest bathroom to clean up, you can meet me in my room at the end of the hall.”
He nodded, his mouth wet from hers. When she turned to leave him, she felt him watch her until she disappeared into her bedroom.
By the time he arrived in the doorway, she’d taken care of her own needs and slipped under the covers, her arm bent under her head. He paused at the threshold, a handsome nude male.
The bed was a sturdy antique with spiral posts, a ribbon design carved into the headboard. A couch faced the fireplace at the opposite end of the room. On the wall near it was a framed 1900s photo of a coven doing a circle ritual by a harvested field, their willowy bodies bent backward toward the moon, their pale hands joined in its light. Over her bed was an erotic painting, a naked man and woman, artistic shadowing giving hints of hip, buttock and breast, as well as clasped hands. The painted words, As above, so below, followed the curves of their joined bodies. Sculpted pieces on her dresser and side tables reflected similar spiritual and erotic themes.
Mounted around her antique wardrobe were five rare vintage BDSM photos, where a black woman in petticoats and chemise dominated a man in his small clothes, his cropped hair slicked back, eyes fixed on her as he served her on his knees.
Rev took in all that before his focus came back to her. “Can you spend the night?” she asked.
“Yes. I have to be at work by seven. I’ll get myself up about five-thirty and slip out quiet.”
It was earlier than she rose, but not by much. She would send him on his way with a cup of coffee, and some almond coffee cake she’d baked a couple days ago.
“You got an interesting picture in your guest bathroom,” he said.
It was a caricature drawn by an artist in the Square. Vera in a clawfoot tub, one shapely leg dangling out of a froth of soap. Fairies rode floating bubbles while a three-legged black cat, perched on the sink, peered at them.
“Do you have a cat?”
“Ros does.” She smiled. “Me or Skye are his sitters when Ros has to travel. Freak likes to go to Skye’s loft, and sometimes to her and Tiger’s place out in the sticks, though he got banished from the barn when he decided to take a nap on Tiger's beloved Harley and sharpened his claws on the seat. He's missing one leg in front.”
During their visit to the Wishes mailbox, she’d told him some details about all the women, and their husbands or significant others. “Come lie down next to me,” she said.
As Rev did, she turned on her hip to face him. His gaze touched the painting above her. “That one’s interesting, too.”
“It’s a study from a bigger photograph, one that depicts the Great Rite. That’s a ritual drawing down of the male and female faces of the Divine, the Lord and Lady, into a man and woman while they make love. A circle is cast, and the energy they raise between them…it’s a strong thing.”
“That something you do in your faith?”
“There’s a symbolic way to do it. But I’ve watched the real thing, done by a married priest and priestess. It’s beautiful. Maybe you could incorporate it in your next church revival.”
He gave her an amused look. “Sometimes you like to misbehave, Mistress.”
“I do.”
He reached out to twine a lock of her hair around his finger. “You are beautiful to me, Veracity.”
She knew she was attractive. Compelling. Striking. She liked decorating what she had, and changing that look with her moods. Her master bedroom closet was for her hats and jewelry. Her clothes and shoes required the square footage of her smallest guest room, though the shoes were Ros’s fault. She’d taught Vera to be overly appreciative of footwear.
The word beautiful, as he meant it, felt different. He saw the vulnerability beneath the strength, and his words said he wouldn’t abuse the knowledge. She’d just unraveled him, and he had responded by doing some of the same.
“I like knowing that, Rev.” She touched the lids of his eyes, one at a time, making his lips curve. “Sleep,” she said, and shut her eyes to give the impression that she was doing the same. Yet when she opened them, his were still open.
“I can sleep anytime,” he said. “What you said, about memorizing your face? I’d like to keep doing that instead. I keep seeing new things in it.”
She didn’t mind the idea of doing that with him as well. “There’s an exercise in Tantra. Studying one another’s faces, gazing into one another’s eyes. Saying nothing. Just looking your fill. It connects to that thing I said, about possessing one another through your gazes.”
She touched the area between his brows, “Sometimes, as you do it, you find your gaze moving here, because that’s the spiritual center of the soul. You can feel it, if you put your fingers there.”
With that thoughtful look, he did so, but then he put his hand back down and gripped hers, between them, his knuckles resting on the upper rise of her breast. “I like the idea of looking at you without having to say anything.”
“Me too.”
So they did that. And in time, their breathing aligned, their lids grew heavy, and they both slept.
She woke a while later. Because she was in the mood to indulge herself, she slipped down to her kitchen for a glass of wine and a bite of cake. This room was for cheerful moods and brighter colors. Ceramic voodoo dolls sat on the sink windowsill with glass bottles holding cut greens from her yard. Her mixer was blue, as was her toaster, while her fridge was covered with magnets collected from her travels.
On the wall behind her eight-setting oak table was a painting of a woman stirring a cauldron at a fireplace, watched by a half dozen cats and two children, one boy and one girl. The boy sat on the hearth petting one of the cats while the girl pressed against her side, the woman’s hand on her hair. A man stood by the hearth, drinking coffee, his hand on the woman’s shoulder in a way that suggested he was caressing her neck with his thumb under her hair.
The title of it was “The Kitchen Witch and Her Family.”
When she moved in, she’d bought the picture from a Royal Street gallery. Knowing it represented a wish that hadn’t come true, she’d lately been thinking about replacing it. It made her melancholy, and she didn’t hold onto things that encouraged wallowing in self-pity.
Tonight, the picture didn’t make her feel melancholy.
Vera closed her eyes as she ate the cake, not only to savor the sugar and almond flavors, but the picture of Rev’s face. Of his long and powerful body beneath her, between her thighs. Of how he had responded to her.
She didn’t stay in the kitchen long. When she returned to the bedroom, he was still sleeping, his fingers curled in the sheet that held her warmth and scent.
Teena Joy had believed he was called by God to serve a purpose. She’d held him out of school, taking childhood epilepsy, laryngitis and reading difficulties as proof.
Through her work at Laurel Grove, Vera had seen abuse spawned by ignorance, instead of deliberate cruelty. But while Vera questioned Tisha or Witford’s motives, Tisha wasn’t entirely wrong. A worldly interpretation of Rev’s circumstances could cause its own problems.
Rev had told her what his aunt believed, but not necessarily his thoughts on it. Yet he’d made it clear that when he sang and channeled that energy, he was content, feeling he was doing what he was supposed to be doing.
He wasn't victimized. He’d served his aunt as he was serving Vera, with no sense of subjugation. He didn’t perceive his relationship and service to God as at odds with what Rev needed and wanted to do. In his devotion toward the Virgin Mary and other representations of divine female energy, he'd recognized his yearning for the Goddess in his life, and how that connected to his desire for an earthly Mistress.
Yes, maybe some opportunities had been taken from him, but as he matured, rather than getting hung up on what ifs, he’d focused on his blessings and the will of forces bigger than himself, to take him where he needed to go.
Tisha and his cousin’s recent behavior weighed heavily on him, though. The relief he’d shown when Vera told him to kneel on her carpet, willing to give him a port in that storm, told her that. She had no doubts now that she’d made the right choice, coming to find him.
She’d seen glimpses of the alpha will that had made the decisions that led him to her bed tonight. He minded none of the obligations in his life—his family, his congregation, his job at the school—but he wanted something for himself. And it looked like that something was her.
Unlike Witford and Tisha, she had no intention of standing in the way of that.