Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
H e stayed with her overnight. In the morning, he scrambled eggs for an omelet, while she pulled two of Cyn’s cinnamon rolls out of the freezer to thaw.
He’d offered to visit one of the excellent bakeries nearby, but she shook her head. “Trust me. Cyn’s cinnamon rolls are every bit as good. She’s a terrible cook, but she is an extraordinary baker. We have a mutual friend, Ben O’Callahan, who’s fantastic at both. He could make manna for angels. They trade baking recipes, as well as ideas for giving pain to their devoted subs. Both of them are sadists.”
“His submissive…is a woman?” Rev frowned. “He hurts her like Cyn does with Mick?”
“Yes. Ben gives Marcie what she wants, and vice versa,” Vera explained. “The need for pain can run deep in some people. And it’s hard to understand, but Ben would annihilate anyone who tried to harm Marcie. Though he’d have to get to them before she did. She’s a formidable fighter. Trains in MMA. She and Cyn spar regularly.”
He shook his head. “Not sure I understand that.”
“When you meet them at the club, you’ll understand better. There’s no missing their devotion to one another. Marcie would fire her 9-millimeter up the ass of anyone who tried to hurt Ben, or anyone she considers her family.”
She sat at the table, watching him cook. “Do you have some time to spend with me today, Rev?”
“Yes ma’am, I do. All day if you want.” He shot her a smile over his shoulder. “I sure want to.”
When she woke this morning and let her fingertips glide along his thigh and up his bare back, an idea had taken hold. She was pleased to hear she’d have time to pursue it.
“Good. After breakfast and a shower, I have something I want us to do together.”
He put her plate down and sat down next to her, making the chair creak as he settled. “Got everything you need, Mistress?”
“Looking like it.”
He smiled, then bowed his head. His prayer was silent, nothing he imposed on her, but she closed her hand over his and joined him. Saying a prayer of thanks for what was given, whether food or an intriguing man to share it with, wasn’t a denominational thing. At least it shouldn’t be, to her way of thinking.
When he opened his eyes, she was studying his hand.
“You smiling, Mistress.”
“I was remembering coming home from third grade and talking about skin color with my mother. I told her I didn’t understand white or black or brown, because everyone is all different colors. Only my hair was black.”
She turned his hand over to look at his palm, a lighter color than what was over his knuckles. Then she touched his mouth, that tempting pink seam when his bronze lips were pressed together, like now.
She kept that smile as they curved under her touch. “I pointed out that my friend Elliott’s hair was also black, but he was white. Only not really white, more golden brown, the color of the toast she made my father, because Elliot was in the sun a lot. The only truly white thing on him were his legs because he always wore long pants, except when we went to the neighborhood pool.”
“I bet your momma was trying not to laugh through all of that.”
“I was too young to understand the term ‘suppressed mirth,’ but it definitely fit.” Since she’d also learned the value of not ‘suppressing’ good memories of her family, she was glad she’d shared that one with Rev.
As always, he waited until she ate her first bite before he picked up his fork and dug in. “May I ask you some things about what you believe, Veracity?”
The question made her wary, but his sincere desire to know wasn’t something she’d reasonably refuse. And truth? She was starting to think she’d tell the man anything.
“Of course.”
“Do you believe in Heaven?”
“I believe in reincarnation. With each life, we learn and grow. If we did something harmful in a previous one, we have to pursue redemption. Not so much as a punishment, but as a spiral toward an ultimate state of enlightenment, and a better Universe.”
She gestured with her fork. “Say I was an abusive husband. In a subsequent life I might be the abused wife, to understand what it felt like to be on the receiving end. Or if something unjust happened to me in a previous life, that might be the cause that’s important to me in this one.”
“So you just go from one life to the next?”
“After death, I believe there’s a place for the soul to rest, recharge, and decide what it wants to do next. Connect with those souls we care about. That’s where Heaven comes in.
“During our lives here, I think we also cross paths with certain souls in different guises. Like that husband might be the wife in the next life, but likewise, she might be him, to help her soul understand what made him treat her that way. And they heal, and grow, and move on to the next level.”
He grunted. “It sound like kids in a schoolyard, trying to figure out how to play with one another the right way.”
“Yes. On a far more serious and intense level.” She chewed her eggs. “Mavis told me about the man you chased off from the school.”
He’d been about to start on the cinnamon roll, but he stopped. He stayed still, his arm on the table, his gaze steady on her.
“I won’t ask you if you don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’ll answer any question you want to ask of me, Mistress. But most questions about things like that want to turn it into something else, so it can make sense to the person asking. I not saying that’s what you doing. I just telling you why I don’t like talking about it. It like looking at someone else’s painting, picking up your own brush and making it something different, then calling it their painting still.”
She studied him. “People are bad about not listening, even when they ask for a story or an opinion. We translate what we hear through the filter of our own story, our beliefs, our judgments. But when I’m in session with a submissive, I have to really listen to what he’s saying to me. With his mouth, with his body.
“I’m not saying I’m immune to the trap of filtering, but I’ll treat what you say like that, I promise. And I know you’re not lying to me, but there’s more to why you don’t want to talk about it. Can you tell me about that?”
He cracked his neck and looked out the window. A mix of reactions crossed his expression, then he shook his head. “No,” he said softly.
But it wasn’t “no” to her. He’d denied himself something, maybe the right not to tell her.
He turned to look at her again. “When I chased him, I could feel what his intent was. What he would have done if he could have gotten that child away from us. I knew he was sick, but any person that hold hate or harm in his heart is sick. Just different levels of disease, and his was so bad, it had invited evil in to take that sick and make it worse. But I didn’t see all that, feel all of that, not at first. I was angry, Mistress. Full of rage.”
In his hard face, she saw what she suspected Mavis had. “I was strong enough to hurt him. To kill him. And I wanted to. That rage grabbed me strong, because I love those kids. They my kids, just the way they are to Miss Mavis and the teachers, and their parents. Then, when I got up on him, I knew that feeling wasn’t right. It didn’t walk with God.”
He took a steadying breath. “So I opened myself up to Him, asked for help. ‘Lord, what do I do?’ And that’s when I saw that evil perched on his soul, a darkness on top of his sickness, that had made him go from just being sick to doing something to hurt a child. And I knew what I needed to do. I opened myself up to it, and it was cast out, through me. Lord did it all. I was just the instrument He used.”
She touched his hand. “How did you feel afterward? Were you all right?”
He looked at her fingers on top of his. “I was tired. Felt like I could barely move. After the police come and got him, and Miss Mavis leave me be, I sat down against that tree. Guess she thought I went back to work or headed home, because it was last period. I fell asleep, and when I woke, it was the next morning. Ten minutes before time to be at work.” He chuckled without humor. “The Lord made sure I didn’t oversleep.”
He paused. “I did wake up once. Probably about three a.m. There it squatted, a few feet away. That darkness. I said the Lord’s Prayer, and it hissed at me, like a mad cat. Then it was gone. I might have dreamed that, but I don’t think I did.”
His expression cleared, and he looked at her. “I didn’t expect you to ask how I felt. I guess I should have. You already done told me. You want to look after me when I need it.”
“You did that for me, too, the day Witford and Tisha were in my office. Before anything else, you asked me if I was okay. If I’d been with you then, in the woods, I would have sat with you out there.” Their hands were still linked, and they gazed at that connection, feeling it.
“Witford and Tisha think you wrong for me. They say you not Christian. They think you changing me, rather than knowing what I know. You were what I hoped to find.”
Tears touched her eyes and she squeezed his hand. When he touched her face, concerned, she shook her head. “You say things that just…”
That quiet all my worries. Heal what needs to be healed. And it’s happening so fast, it’s scaring the shit out of me.
She didn’t say that. Instead she worked around it. “The people we love can know a lot about us, but the deepest wishes of our hearts, I think only we and maybe the person who’s the answer to those wishes can see that part clearly.”
Vera saw that fit for every woman in the group, with the man each had found for herself. Even Abby and Neil. When he came into her life, because of him being a Dom and her illness, it had been hard to see how it would work. But it had, because they were that person for one another.
“Enough of that.” She gestured to the plate. “Eat your cinnamon roll. I have plans for you.”
His eyes warmed and he picked up the fork. As he took a bite, she smiled at his expression. “So was I right?”
“If the devil all about temptation, Cyn got this recipe from him.”
She grinned. “There are days I think Cyn is the devil. Her name does rhyme with ‘sin’ and her full name is Cyn bad .”
He chuckled. “You told my aunt there no Satan on your path. But do you believe in evil?”
“Yes. Just as the good that people do permeates all of us and guides us on the Lord and Lady’s path, so too there can be evil, created by the darkness in us all, if we let it get the upper hand, through fear or ego. Kind of how you described it, in that man who tried to take Lynn. I tend to believe the literal translation of Satan,” she added. “Adversary. That adversary can take a variety of forms.”
“Witford call him that, too.” He pursed his lips. “Everything you talk about? Don’t change my view, but don’t disagree with it much, either. There’s room for both. You was talking about your momma earlier. Do you have pictures of your family?”
A wall closed around her heart, protecting it from what the question dredged up.
“I do,” she said. And left it at that.
“One day,” he said, “I’d like to see them. Helps me to have a picture in my mind when I’m praying, and I want to pray that God will heal that rift, take the hurt and confusion away so your love for one another can help you be a family again.”
“Okay.” She still felt rigid. Brittle.
“May I do something, Mistress?”
“Depends on what it is.”
“Saying it might take away from it. Best to show you. Can you trust me, even though I pushed against something that hurt? Maybe because I pushed against something that hurt.”
She nodded. Probably because her wariness was as solid as the table in front of them, he kept his next movements slow and easy.
He took her hand, pushed back from the table and tugged her up and onto his lap. Vera sank into his resilient strength, a bulwark against the turmoil of her feelings. As he cradled her, Rev put his mouth against her throat to kiss her. He held her secure, a hand over her hip, the other arm around her shoulder and back.
She drew in a deep breath, pulling it through her, hollowing out her stomach, then let it out, and descended deeper into that embrace, her arms around him, too. A hug, when done right, offered the right messages, that reassured and strengthened the one who needed it most. This was all that and more. It made her want him even more. She craved his submission to her will. Needed it.
“Thank you, Rev,” she whispered. “Thank you for coming into my life with such generosity and honesty.”
His arms held her even closer. Then he drew back. “You said something about a shower. You want company?”
“Go to my guest bathroom and get started.” Because that idea she had? She wanted to do it even more now, and she intended to set it up before she joined him. “I’ll be there shortly.”
When she arrived, she found him stripped and kneeling, waiting on her by the stall. He started the water and, after she slipped off her robe, he helped her inside. Then he submitted to whatever she desired. Which included soaping and exploring his flesh under the running water with mouth and fingertips, and pressing her body against his. Then she let him bathe her, giving him thorough instruction, though she denied them the pleasure of shower sex, or finding a climax. For what she had planned, she wanted that momentum to keep building.
After they got out, he picked up the towel. Though he was still dripping on the bathmat, he dried her with studious attention, sweeping strokes of the terry cloth over her face and neck, upper body, arms and legs. He knelt to do her feet, one then the other, as she held onto his shoulder.
“I dreamed of doing this, too.” His voice was a rumbling echo against the tile.
She maybe hadn’t thought of this specifically, but it was going into the growing treasure pile of things she was discovering she did want. Could want. That was the way a gift like this worked. The possibilities just kept expanding.
When he rose, she tapped him on his wide chest, rubbing her thigh teasingly against his wet one, grazing his stiff cock. “Dry yourself, Rev. I’m going to go get changed. I want you to go to the living room like this. Start the gas logs. You can take five minutes to look at what I’ve laid out there. After that, I expect you to kneel facing the chair to the right of the fire. Three feet between you and it. Your knees should be shoulder width apart, ass on your heels, fingers laced behind your head. And I want your eyes closed. Wait until I come and bid you do something else. Do you understand?”
At the club, she’d seen his gaze linger on submissives in that posture. That same interest kindled now, his cock twitching as he digested the potential in her commands.
“Yes ma’am.”
She went to her bedroom. Though anticipation had a good hold on her, she took care with her appearance. She wanted to take his breath away.
When she came down the stairs at last, she paused at the entrance to the living room. She’d left the curtains drawn last night, so the morning sunlight was blocked, but she savored what the gas log flame did for the pose she’d dictated. Fingers laced behind his head, the tapering from shoulders and wide back to waist, firm buttocks pressed against his heels. It was worth a long, thorough look.
The story she’d told Rev about skin colors came back to her now, the truth of it in all the gleaming hues of his muscled flesh. She also thought of the religious parts of their discussion, and Rev’s opinion, that her views didn’t change his, but there was room for both.
There was room for so much, if the heart only opened to it. She wanted to be open to everything this could give her.
She came to stand before him. His eyes were closed, as she’d commanded, but his nostrils flared, the ripple through his muscles telling her he was aware of her presence.
“Open your eyes and look at me, Rev.”
His attention climbed her in that intent way that made her feel as if his touch was following the same path. Her lingerie was a peach-colored replica of a 1930s Cadolle. The one-piece garment had a thin lace bra, her nipples pressing against the semi-transparent cloth. The fabric below her breasts to the swell of the hips looked like a boned corset, though the stretch material had no back lacings. A short lace skirt fell from its edge to mid-thigh and barely covered her ass. Under it, she wore nothing.
The outfit was comfortable and meant to tempt, with what her movements would reveal or hide. What it covered would be offered at her pace, while he could only gaze hungrily at it. If she allowed that.
She’d unrolled a mat in front of the fire, and put out a picnic basket containing a coil of rope, a long curling feather, and a set of chimes. She was certain the time she’d given Rev to look at those items and consider their uses had kept his erection flushed and stiff.
Vera sat down in the chair next to the fireplace, a fussy thing with button held cushions. She perched on the edge, her back straight.
As she’d told Rev, in Tantric practice, riding the wave of arousal, experiencing it indefinitely, expanded the body’s ability to experience sexual pleasure. Satisfaction was a never-ending current, not a destination.
Rev had said he could give her the whole day.
An eye bolt was embedded in the ceiling, several feet back from the front of the fireplace. She kept a rope of braided black nylon threaded through it. The two tasseled ends looped over hooks on either side of the fireplace, so the rope framed the carved mantel in a three-dimensional way.
“Rev, unhook the rope ends, and bring them to me.”
Watching the flow of his muscles, the flexing of his ass, thighs and shoulders, the movement of his erect cock, added to the strength of that current. She wanted to stroke and cup his testicles, taste his cock, bite that strong body.
As she tapped her nails against the chair arms, she counseled patience to her bucking libido.
She’d put in the rope setup for a planned session with Whistler, when he cleaned her house. It had been a memorable scene, so she’d kept it in place, though she’d only made use of it that once. She hung ornaments from the silken ropes at Christmas. A true home “pervertible” had more than one use.
At one of their monthly dinners Vera had hosted, she remembered Skye letting her fingers trail along the ropes before giving Vera a playful look and hopping onto the couch, her feet tucked up under her as they settled in to enjoy dessert and after dinner conversation. Her friend had probably been imagining doing something similar at Tiger’s place. He had a fireplace, too.
When Rev brought her the rope ends, she glanced at her feet and he dropped to one knee. “Cross your wrists and present them to me.”
Using one end, she bound his wrists with three wraps around both then two loops in between to hold them secure. It wouldn’t tighten and cut off circulation, but she’d keep an eye on it. “Can you back up on your knees, Rev?”
“Never tried that, but I’ll do it for you, Mistress.”
“Move until you’re under the ceiling bolt, then stand up and lift your hands over your head.”
As he did, she drew in the slack, until it pulled taut, his arms lifted above him. She kept him flat on his feet, though, and tied off the rope on the hook by the fireplace before turning to look at him.
Cock thick and hard, chest expanding with the rise and fall of his quickened breath. He was responding the way a submissive did who wanted the restraint and all it could mean. The pulse point between her legs was hammering.
Vera returned to her chair, moving the footstool so she could brace one foot upon it, which tilted her hips upward. He could confirm it was just her under the skirt. As she dropped the straps off her shoulders, she pushed the bodice down enough to reveal the dark circle of the areolae, though the lace still hung temptingly on the aroused peaks.
“What you doing, Mistress?” Rev asked hoarsely.
“I’m going to touch myself until I climax. You’re going to listen. Close your eyes.”
When he stared at her in disbelief, she showed him a wicked smile. “Mistresses love that look, Rev. Like you’ve had something taken away that you wanted more than you could ever have imagined.”
“That a good description. I want to watch you.”
“Prove to me that obeying me is more important to you than anything else, and you may get that privilege. Do I need to blindfold you?”
“No ma’am.” With obvious reluctance, he closed his eyes. His muscles twitched, making the rope sway, the black braid shimmering in the flame’s light.
Humming her approval, she began to stroke herself. With the shifts of her body, the little moans, tiny pleas caught in her throat, she made sure he could vividly imagine what he couldn’t see. His body was a column, hands clenched, mouth thin, and he kept licking his lips. Precum glistened at the slit of his cock, and his thighs flexed. Toes curled into the rug.
“Oh…” The climax rolled over her, a lovely thing. Not the intense, rip-out-the-soul experience she planned to give them both, but a wonderful appetizer to steady her.
When she could catch her breath, she spoke. “You can open your eyes, Rev.”
She reclined in an erotic sprawl, her fingertips still resting on her wet pussy, back arched against the chair, thighs spread. As he gazed at her, he whispered something that she didn’t catch, but the tone held reverence liberally tested by sexual frustration. The male fire in his eyes said he was poised to leap as soon as she allowed it. He was already fighting the urge to do that without permission, the animal wanting to take over.
She adjusted the straps, putting the bodice back in place as she rose, smoothing her hands over her breasts and hips. Retrieving the chimes from the basket, she came to him with those and the stool. “I’m going to lean against you to do this, Rev. Don’t do anything I haven’t said you can. You simply stand there.”
“I feel like I got to put my mouth on you.”
“I expect you to find a way to control that, Rev.” She gave him a cool stare. “Whose will do you obey? Yours or mine?”
“It a battle, between this beast inside me that want to take you down under me, and what’ll please you.”
“I don’t want you to hide your desires. I like seeing the struggle. But I’m teaching you to obey my will over your own desires. Show me how well you can learn.”
As she stepped onto the footstool, she pushed her breasts right up against his face, her hips against his abdomen. The devout Rev muttered a creative curse against her flesh, his breath hot through the cloth, but he held fast. Above where his hands were bound, she hooked the chimes to the rope, then stepped down.
“I’m going to put my mouth on you now, Rev. And when I tap you three times, you’ll come. I want to taste you, swallow you into me.”
As he shifted, the chimes spoke. Her gaze lifted to them, then dropped to his face. “You must remain still. If I hear the chimes, I stop, and I’ll resume when I feel you’re under better control.”
“Even when…you ask me to spill?”
“You must do your very best to come without making them ring. I don’t expect you to succeed, but I expect to see the effort to do so. That will determine whether I stop and let you spurt into the air, instead of holding you in my mouth and sucking you to completion.”
His eyes held a feverish look, so she laid her hand on his chest and met his gaze. “Testing you, watching you do your best to please me, gives me so much pleasure, Rev. I savor every moment of this. The more you suffer for me, the more I want to give you.”
Her indirect reminder of what he said he wanted to do more than anything else—serve her—seemed to settle the maelstrom in his head, even if he remained caught in his struggle to deny his body what it demanded he take.
“Thank you, Mistress. That all I need to hear to keep doing it.”
“Good.”
She put her mouth on his chest and began to work her way down, enjoying the journey. Tasting and biting, nipples, abdomen, hip bones, upper thighs, then around his cock. He shuddered, but except for a couple tiny tings , the chimes were staying remarkably still.
The strained muscles, the chaos in his eyes and vibrating energy around him, told her he was putting everything into serving her as she’d demanded.
She drew that hot wave tighter around them, letting him have the benefit of it, in the way she slid her fingertips over him, and in how her mouth tasted, her teeth nipped, her lips sucked. She dedicated her full attention to his cock, exploring it, sucking on the head and laving the shaft with her tongue. Taking the whole thing in and working it in her mouth, she went as far to the root as she could get. As she slid back up to the head, she relished his taste.
The next time she went down on him, she cupped his testicles, rolled them in her palm, pressed in between them and reached between his spread legs to stroke his perineum.
His breath was harsh but shallow, making it sound like a growl caught in his throat. His body was sculpted iron as he fought to stay still, to keep the chimes from singing. The effort built the response, making sure it didn’t rise too fast, drawing it out.
She’d love a bronze statue of him, just like this, to put in her backyard. She had artist contacts. She might commission one.
So even when he’s out of your life, you’ll have the memory…
She shut that voice up, not wanting to taint this moment with insecurities.
She tapped his thigh those three times, and gripped his buttocks, taking him in as his release jetted into her mouth, bathing her tongue and throat with his seed. She dug her nails into his ass and sucked harder as the strangled groan became a cry. She scored him with her teeth, earning a jerk and a ring of those chimes, like a call to worship. She heard him give himself a chastising oath, even in the throes of his orgasm. Her lips would have smiled if they weren’t stretched by his still spurting cock.
Oh, Rev, you are a Mistress’s treasure.
She kept on him even after he was done, until he was jerking a little, his cock hypersensitive. He was still trying not to move. This was also a teaching moment, him learning that her playing her mouth over him, squeezing and stroking, was something she would do as long as she wished, because what she held was hers, to do with as she desired.
When he understood the lesson, she was rocked by a powerful wave of gratitude from him, for her demands, for giving him the opportunity to strive to please her. To honor her demands and desires over his own. His Mistress wanted him enough to take and take. And take some more. And that was what he’d said he wanted, most of all.
At long last, she rose. Her knees were shaking, butterflies in her stomach and chest. She leaned against him to grip his neck and kiss his mouth, letting him taste himself on her lips.
“Spending a day with you might kill me, Mistress,” he noted in a rasping whisper.
“Would it be worth it?”
“My aunt didn’t raise no fool. You got me tied up, so only one answer to that question.” Then he sobered and pressed his forehead against hers. “Yes. God in Heaven, yes. You so beautiful, Veracity. So strong and beautiful. I grateful for you, too.”
So strong and raw, the words came straight from the heart. From his soul, directly to hers. Time for part two.
She moved away to unhook the rope end. “You can lower your arms,” she told him, but even as she spoke, she was already back at his side. When his arms came down, they fell around her. Then his knees gave out. He tried to do his part, so they didn’t end up in a tumble of limbs, but she glanced significantly at the band of his bound arms as they arrived on the mat on their knees. “I think you did that on purpose.”
“Long as you don’t ask me direct, I don’t have to lie,” he told her, that light in his eyes again.
She laid her head on his chest and listened to his heart for a few beats before she eased back and had him lift his arms so she could remove the rope from his wrists. “Stretch out on the mat on your back. Put your arms out to either side of you.”
“May I look at you, Mistress, or you going to have me close my eyes again?”
“You can look at me, for now. But I’m pleased you asked.”
When she knelt next to him, his gaze coursed over the high hem of the skirt. He extended a fingertip and touched one knee just below the lace, glancing at her before it landed on that spot, to see if it was okay. “I can smell you,” he said. “Your desire. Mixed with that perfume you wear. I’ll dream of that, too, now.”
“Do you know what henna is, Rev?”
“Some of the girls have henna tattoos. They want the real thing, but that’s what their parents will allow.”
“I’d like to do a henna design on you. It’ll last about three weeks, though if you need to remove it sooner, it can be scrubbed off.”
“Where you going to mark me?”
She liked that he used those words and let her fingers map her response, aware of how he trembled beneath her touch. “Around your cock, up to the base of your throat. Your forearms, around your wrists. If it feels right, after I do that, I’ll do your back, base of spine to your nape.”
“That seems real specific.”
“It is. There’s a spiritual association with the designs, and the process itself. In Tantra, erotic energy is known as kundalini . It moves through the body, stimulating the sushumna , which are the central energy channels. The chakras form that column.”
She traced a path from the left testicle up the right side of his spine, following its track from the front of his torso, and came to the matching side of his nose. “This is the solar energy channel, representing masculine power, the Lord, or God.” She did a mirror process. When she stopped beside his nose on the left side, her smallest finger was on his lips. “That’s the lunar channel, for the Lady, or the Goddess.”
Using the concave space provided by his lower back, she slipped her hand beneath him, pressing against the base of his spine, the upper rise of his buttocks. “The sushumna starts here, with this chakra. Sometimes the energy paths are depicted as a serpent, because with its sensual movements, it can bring to mind the awakening of erotic energy, its sacred power. What I’m about to do is map those chakras, and call the unique power and focus each can bring.”
His gaze had flickered at the mention of the snake. “Does the serpent symbolism make you uncomfortable?” she asked.
“No. Moses healed the Israelites with a carved serpent on a stick. It a symbol, just like what you described. A voodoo priestess lady near the St. Louis cemetery say snakes are sacred in lots of paths.”
“That sounds like Faustine.”
“You know her.” He didn’t seem surprised, but neither was she. Coincidences, common friends and crossed paths had always shown up in her relationships with someone destined to be an important part of her life.
“I do. Are you friends?”
“Yeah. I like to walk that neighborhood near the cemetery, and she has a bench out front next to a Catholic cross. She got it from a church that burned down. It seven feet tall.”
“No HOA to impose restrictions on giant lawn ornamentation.”
“If there was, she just turn them into toads and make them hop away. That what she tell the neighbor kids, to play with them.” His lips gave an appealing little quirk, his eyes darkening as she smoothed her palm over his chest and abdomen, the upper length of his thigh, as she listened to him.
“Go on,” she urged, her voice throaty.
He cleared his and obeyed. “People leave shells and pebbles on it. When I stopped to do that myself, she come out. We sat and talked. Since then, I go by there now and again. I helped her with her plumbing one weekend. She has a couple snakes that hang about her place, and one holed up in her gutter drain. I helped her get him out.”
“An appropriate dilemma for a voodoo priestess.” She wondered if there’d ever been a time she’d been coming to visit Faustine when Rev might have just left her company. The good vibes Vera took in at Faustine’s place would have had an extra boost that day. His energy might have lingered, as if to say to the matching unconscious part of her: “Soon.”
She retrieved a razor and aloe-infused shaving cream from her basket. “I’m going to shave the areas where I’ll be putting the design, if that’s all right with you.”
When he nodded, she shot him a feline smile and bent over his cock. “Don’t move.”
“Yes’m. Don’t need to tell me twice.”
She began to remove the hair around the base of his cock. She also planned to clear a path from abdomen to chest. After she was done with the design, she would rub coconut oil over the affected areas and tell him to keep doing so, to hold the design and soothe the skin.
“What do you wear when you go to bed, Rev?”
“Usually shorts and a T-shirt.”
“While this design lasts, you won’t sleep in anything. You’ll touch each symbol on your front every night before you go to sleep, and remember what I tell you about them now. You’ll think about what I want from you, and how you want to serve me. As you do those things, you’ll do the breathing exercise I showed you, pulling sexual energy in and arousing yourself, but not to climax.
“I’m not tormenting you,” she added with a smile. “In Tantra, these exercises teach us how to hold ourselves on a plateau where we take our arousal to a deeper, more spiritual level. When we do at last release, it’s a sacred, intense act that increases our connection to one another and to the Universe, God, Lord and Lady; however we feel the Divine within us.”
She blew a shaved hair out of her path, and he shuddered. “If you could touch me now, Rev, how would you do so?”
“I’d start with your hair.” His gaze latched onto it. “I’m watching it fall forward, so soft around your face, and I want to curl it over my fingers, stroke it. Then your mouth.”
His voice deepened. “When I was away from you, I held your face in my mind, like you told me about. I could feel it against me, your lips, the way they wet, just the right amount, and how they press and give against my skin. Then your throat.”
His attention dropped there. “I never looked at a woman above the shoulders so much in my life, and wanted to stay there. It not because the rest isn’t worth looking at, but everything you are and want from me shows itself plain there. In your eyes, the shape of your mouth, the looks you give me…”
She’d paused as he spoke, her hand on his abdomen, her thumb just above his cock. Her touch straddled two energy centers. The base spine position under her thumb offered grounding, while creative energy rested beneath her fingers.
Skye did graphic design work for their clients, and she’d talked about how she felt it “in her gut,” when a design direction was right. It made sense that creative energy was there, and sexual energy could connect both points. Vera closed her eyes, letting his words sink into her, pull the two of them closer together, increasing her focus.
“Good,” she murmured. “That’s good.”
She didn’t have to tell him to be quiet after that. The moment wrapped them up, what she was doing, why she was doing it, and how they wanted to experience it. As a result, when she finished shaving him and set aside the cream and razor, she was in the right headspace to start on the design.
The blue-tinged henna came from a shop in New Orleans that specialized in different mixtures. This one had a fragrance, and the powder contained sparkling crystal grindings that lent additional properties to the application.
Henna designs could be complex, but she was competent enough with simple ones. She liked doing the lines and dots, the teardrops. Rev’s gaze held her like clasped hands as she worked on the underside of his outstretched forearms. Lines were drawn by holding the paste tube just above the skin and letting them lay themselves down, rather than by direct contact with the skin. Flooding filled in the space between those lines the same way. The teardrops were dots applied with a slight drag.
“This stays on four hours before I wipe it off. If I kept it on six hours, it would darken even more, but it will still get dark enough over the next few days.”
She was ready for a break before she did the rest. Setting the henna supplies aside, she stood, gazing down at the work she’d done so far, the man lying at her feet, arms straight out to either side, legs straight and together, his cock rising from his pelvis.
“Don’t move,” she reminded him. Then she stepped over him, straddling his hips, and lowered herself so her still damp cunt pressed his cock against his belly.
His lips pressed together, his eyes locking upon her in a way that told her how much he wanted to lock himself around her. Inside her.
She wanted that, too, and she showed him, circling his cock with one hand to guide the ridged head into her cunt. As she slid down onto him, biting her lip, his attention latched onto her mouth. She saw the truth of what he’d said, how much he liked looking at her face and all it told him. Gave him. The strength of his regard made her shiver.
“Oh…yes,” she purred, rising and falling upon him in slow, easy glides. She squeezed down, sucking in an erratic breath at the resulting ripple through her sex and lower belly, her own chakra areas.
“Those energy channels I was talking about? Solar and lunar? As I rise, I draw through the solar, and release through the lunar, but I imagine them going into you and doing the same. Can you do that, too? A circle of fire, of energy, of fuel…
She could tell when he figured it out, because the small movements of his body, to accommodate her pleasure and yet respect the need to keep the paste undisturbed, gained a noticeable synchronicity, and that energy strengthened. The ripple became a wave, for both of them, strong and carrying them higher.
“Goddess…” she breathed. His eyes moved to her breasts, the quivering of the curves above the lace, nipples hard against it. Flames from that Kundalini fire shot from the base of her spine, spiraling around her, spearing through each chakra, flooding them, taking her over.
The lace of the skirt let him see tempting hints of her cunt, stretched by his cock. She caressed the sensitive skin where she’d removed the hair, and came down on him, a full, hilt deep contact. Determined to let that power fuel what she was doing, she found that plateau at the edge of release and stopped herself there, channeling it, cycling it through. He was still breathing the way she’d shown him, so she knew they were holding onto one another there. The sensual need evened out, spreading over that surface, surrounding and securing both of them. No climax. Just blissfully balanced on its threshold.
She stopped. They were both shuddering. Leaning down, she put her lips against his, sharing that irregular breath with him. She stroked his hair, ear and throat as she tasted, licked, bit, and drank in a long, deep kiss.
She laid her hand on his chest and lifted her head only enough to put a small amount of distance between their mouths. His presence, power and life, all up against hers. His musky male scent, his flesh and muscle, heat and need.
“Keep breathing with me, Rev. Imagine your breath, your life energy, coming up through those centers, to your crown chakra and above it, to the energy of the Universe, and let that energy fill you as you exhale.”
When she straightened, he was with her. Gazing at her with a double helix of calm focus and sexual furor which reflected her own state.
She drew herself off of him, holding him with her muscles until the very last scintillating friction of his head against her slick tissues. When she went back to her knees next to him, his lips were parted, still damp from her mouth, his gaze clinging to her.
It took a few more breaths before she was steady enough to resume the design, especially since her next canvas was around his tempting cock, bathed in her own aroused scent.
She did a teardrop and arch design over the base, against the newly shaved skin. She put a mandala around his navel. Then she laid her hand over his heart and sternum.
“Every one of these has multiple meanings. This one, the heart chakra, is associated with the desire to serve, and compassion. It’s your center, Rev. I’m doing a mandala here, too.”
“What the mandala mean?”
She loved the sound of his voice when he was in a deep sea of arousal. It was a song meant just for her.
“The short response is the Universe.” She put several rings around it, adding flowers on either side, with the close humps around the central petals. At the base of his throat, she did another arch, with the tear drops raining above it.
She sat back.
“You gonna keep going, Mistress?” Rev’s light brown eyes were filled with her. He was still on that plateau with her, a mix of heavy arousal and stillness. “It feel like you want to.”
“I do, but no, I’m done with the front. I’m resisting the urge to do too much.” She knew her look held some of the ferocity she was feeling. “Dommes tend to have a strong urge to mark their territory.”
She set aside her tools, rose, and returned to her chair. While he watched her, held down by the restraint of the wet fragrant paste, she propped her foot once again on the stool. His cock became stiffer at the view. Its involuntary movements might affect the design, but that didn’t bother her. Each time she looked upon it before it faded, she’d know how and why it had been altered.
“What are you thinking, Rev?”
“I’ve never felt owned by no one except God.”
“Does this conflict with that?”
“No. It feels…balanced. A line between Heaven and Earth, kind of like how you done drawn it on me.” He glanced down, his chest muscles shifting slightly.
“Do you have any difficulties standing for long periods, Rev?” He bore some of the scars she’d expect for an active man. Nothing that suggested severe injury, but because his job was physically demanding, there could be repetitive motion damage.
“No, Mistress. I’m on my feet most the time.”
“Moving on your feet and standing still for a long period can be different. Tell me if anything starts to hurt. If you injure yourself, you can’t serve me, can you? Not as well.”
“No, Mistress.”
“Good. Stand carefully, and move back under the hook.”
When he did, she brought the rope ends back. She had him lift his arms straight out to his sides and then wrapped the rope over each hand to help him hold the arms up. “Don’t straighten your knees too much. It can cut off your blood flow and make you pass out.”
She had to resist the urge to brush her thighs against his cock. She might decide to close the gap between their bodies and really ruin the set of the henna.
Fortunately, she had a new canvas to distract her. His back. She retrieved her paste and moved behind him, gaze sweeping the drum tight buttocks and broad shoulders, and what was in between. The next mandala went on the base of his spine. From there she created a serpent trail of dots and circles, winding her way up that path. At the center of his back, where the heart chakra was, the mandala she created radiated outward like a sun.
The work drew her in, everything quiet again except the rush of the gas logs, and the clicks and shifts of her house. Rev kept his head up, his body straight. Even without his eyes upon her, his attention circled her as if they were dancing with clasped hands.
Applying henna was a very intimate process. If he’d been holding and kissing her, she would have felt as connected to him as she did right now. She considered the last design, for the base of his neck. The chakra for intuition, communication and expression was there.
She did two vertical lines, flooding them with the henna, then did the same horizontally. A cross. She wrote John 13:34 in cursive beside it on one side, a flower chain on the other that went around to touch his collar bone. As she did it, the quote went through her mind.
A new command I give to you, that you love one another.
She put her hand over the unmarked part of his shoulder, and thought about the command to love. Jesus was the ultimate Dom, knowing all, protecting those under his care.
Imagining Cyn’s reaction to that thought, she suppressed a snort. Rev’s fingers twitched. “All right, Mistress?”
“Yes. I was thinking about Cyn. She’s not the biggest fan of Christianity.”
His shoulder tightened. “She don’t want me with you?”
Vera stroked that muscle. “She’s concerned about you being with me. But it has to do with her, not you. As I mentioned, she had a very hard start in life, and saw a lot of bad things. She’s a fighter, so in her mind, if there’s Someone there, It’s guilty of unforgivable neglect. If there isn’t, then we’re all just foolish for believing.”
She paused. “But being with Mick, I think she’s learning how unfathomable and limitless love can be. Which means she’s starting to open the door to faith, more than she has in the past.”
“Sometimes a person needs more than themselves to find it, to start that conversation inside.” Rev’s head dipped, as if thinking. “Some people, that door don’t open because of everything they piled up against it. They have to dig it out. She got the mad in her, but she got the good, too. You can feel it. With a will like hers, after all she been through, and now with a man who love her, the good will win out.”
“I agree. It takes most people a while to figure that out about her.” She wiped her hands on a cloth. “I’m done. Stay in that position for now, but you don’t have to worry about small shifts to keep comfortable.”
Vera put away the supplies and cleaned up. When she returned to her chair, this time, she stood before it, her back to him. She slid one strap off her shoulder, then the other, then sinuously pushed the garment down until it fell to the ground around her bare feet.
When she glanced over her shoulder, she saw a strong man drinking in what she was offering, his hands held by her ropes, his body decorated by her henna. It was a view she would capture and call back again and again.
He was doing the breathing exercise to help him control his reactions. When she let him release this time, it should feel like nothing he’d ever experienced. A Tantric-driven orgasm was impossible to describe. It could go on and on, the ultimate Dom and sub space. Their bodies twined around one another, the aftermath forming a vessel of connection that would carry them on a river of bliss until it bumped against the shore of reality.
They came back to it in a better state, because the Universe had confirmed it was there, and far bigger than anything anyone knew, a comfort.
He took an unsteady breath. “I feel…incredible.”
“You look incredible.” She let him see how much she meant it. “When I wipe off the paste, I plan on enjoying you in every way I’m imagining, Rev. And in every way you’re imagining.” She showed him a dangerous smile. “So for the next four hours, I’m going to keep your mind on that.”
She withdrew a thick book from the magazine holder next to her chair. It had gold edged pages and a blue cover, the title of the book stamped on it in the same gold. “I picked up this Bible this week. Tell me your favorite passages, and I’ll read them to you.”
After a long, stunned moment, a chuckle rumbled from his chest. “Mistress, I may be rethinking what evil truly is.”