Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
S he preferred to sit in the back of his church, not like a student trying to avoid the teacher’s notice, but because it offered the best view of him when his singing propelled him into the nave, toward someone who needed extra attention.
She considered whether forgiveness needed to be asked for strategically positioning herself so she claimed the best view of him, but the Lord and Lady would understand.
You created him, after all. Every fine inch.
Today, he was drawn toward a couple struggling over their relationship with an estranged relative. If it had been anyone but Rev, she would say he did it deliberately, to point a finger toward their conversation the day before. But the Powers-That-Be were multi-taskers; they put information out there that addressed more than one person’s problems.
“The people we love are the hardest to understand,” Rev told the couple. “They can hurt us the deepest. But God love us. That’s all of it. Beginning and end. You don’t have to figure out more than that. Don’t have to control or direct anything.
“When you look at your grandma, you look at her with your heart, not your worries or your head. She a good and loving person. She don’t think the way you do. She don’t think the way I do. She don’t need to. We all get to be petals on a sunflower, all of us grouped around the same sun. No matter what we call it, we connected to that light and to each other, you understand? He know her heart, which means you do, too, deep down.
“What’s that song? ‘Here comes the sun.’” His gaze shifted to Vera before coming back to them. They were holding his hands, three sets overlapping. Clutching.
“It going to be all right. We let that warmth in, there it is, just waiting for us to let it in. Open that door, all right. It just starts with this. You go find her, you go where she is, sit down and hold her hand. Just be quiet and still, let God see that and let the sun come out in all of you…”
He rose, singing a line or two of the song before coming back to the point. “We all got someone like that. Your neighbor, a friend who’s not so close to us anymore, a coworker. Someone is upsetting you, and you haven’t told them or talked it out. You go to them and you say, you can help me, brother, sister. I don't know how to feel better about this, but I don't want to have anything in my heart but love for you. It makes me heart sick to know this poison is between us. So help me. Help me understand. Help me get rid of it. Help me let the sun in again. Let Him in.”
He spread out his arms, gesturing toward the cross. “Here comes the Son.”
Calls of praise came from the parishioners. Rev had been singing pieces of the song in between his spoken words, but now he started singing the whole tune. Vera saw lips moving, the congregation singing with him, but it was soft, the murmur of the ocean on a peaceful day. They wanted to hear him. Though it had no problem reaching every person in the congregation, he sang it in a softer tone, as it was meant to be sung, filled with hope and a tender optimism.
Only when the choir joined into the chorus with joyous enthusiasm did the audience volume increase.
It's alright… Here comes the sun…
Witford had said Teena Joy had given Rev a "simple" faith. Vera recognized the word for what it meant. Maybe Witford had once known it as well, instead of how he’d meant it in her office, a hundred indirect cuts disguised as well-meaning concern.
Everything she’d learned about Rev, felt from him, especially since the shooting, said that he searched his own soul with the perseverance that God’s adherents had needed to wander the desert. When he saw pain or need, he used his faith to help and protect, and asked nothing but the opportunity to be in the right place to be God’s instrument. He didn’t let his despair or pain over humanity’s failings stop him.
That kind of faith wasn’t simple at all.
Though she’d told herself she wasn’t going to engage, she also refused to cower. Tisha sat in the front pew, her back to Vera, so the dagger glances were coming from Witford alone. He sat next to the pulpit, waiting for Rev’s singing program to finish. He smiled and nodded, adding amens and lifting one hand. All the right responses.
But when their gazes met, she saw a mess of bad feelings. She gave him a cordial nod. His gaze moved on like he hadn’t seen her.
She could keep the cold war going, or respond a different way. The lesson God was teaching through Rev today was for all of them. This was hurting her man, and Vera knew how much worse it could get. She wasn’t having that.
She’d invite Tisha and Witford to dinner at her place, with her and Rev. A home cooked meal, where they’d have the chance to get to know her, and let her do the same. The offer of a clean slate, wiping away preconceived notions that weren’t earned or deserved. She needed to give them the same chance she wanted them to give her.
She and Rev dropped her car at her house and picked up a trolley to Jackson Square to grab lunch at the French Market. As they strolled the square, petting the carriage horses and checking out local art vendors, she ran her idea past Rev.
“I think that’d be good. Witford like fried chicken, maybe better than he love Jesus.”
“I don’t know if I can live up to that, but I do make an excellent fried chicken. Cyn has me buying from a humane supplier through a farmer’s market, where the chickens are given a natural outdoor life, until they’re killed.” She grimaced. “That’s as close to vegetarian as I get.”
“Still better than not thinking about the animals at all. Everything we put in our mouth goes into us, and if the animal was afraid or mistreated, that goes into us too.”
She raised a brow. “You have highly developed empathy. It’s something seen more often in people who’ve…left the environments in which they were raised.”
“Like a bunch of traveling. Or going to college. Reading lots of books.”
“Yes.” She squeezed his arm and he covered it.
“You didn’t offend me, Mistress. Wouldn’t mind doing some traveling, but everyone I meet is like visiting a new place. Couldn’t learn everything about them, even if I had a million years.”
They had reached a vendor with hand-drawn cards. Rev pointed out one with an axolotl, a lizard creature with the cute face of a stuffed animal. Probably a disarming way to lure in prey. She should tell Cyn it was her spirit animal, just to hear her scoff at the idea that anyone would call her cute. Only Mick was that brave. Or foolish.
The artist had a blank card with a watercolor sunrise on the front. The script below was Here comes the sun…
She bought the card and slipped it into her bag. “I want to take you home, now,” she said.
“If we had your car, you could let me drive.”
He was teasing her, but she linked her arm through his and gave him a look. “It’s time that I drive. Wouldn’t you agree?”
His biceps flexed under her touch. “Yes, Mistress.”
When they were on her porch, she handed him her key so he could open the door for her. One of her favorite things about a power exchange relationship was how many layers of meaning such seemingly ordinary acts could have.
Her desire to take control had grown on the way home. She’d had him be quiet, put her hand on his leg, told him to hold his knees open. Since they were on the trolley, she hadn’t touched him intimately, but having him do that had him fully attentive and deeply aroused by the time they arrived.
It was the state she wanted him in. Nothing to think about, not their families, not the shooting; just what was between them. A haven and resting spot.
Putting her keys on the kitchen counter, she moved into her living room and sat in her straight-backed chair. “Come stand behind me.”
When he did, his hands settled on the chair on either side of her shoulders. His thumbs brushed them, an incidental thing. He was waiting for her permission.
“Stroke my hair and shoulders, Rev. My neck. Let me feel your desire through your touch.”
His hands moved over her curls, fingers sliding under and over them to find her scalp to stroke her skull, then he moved out and down to her shoulders, kneading, caressing.
In anticipation of their lunch plans, she’d brought a change of clothes to the church, and so had he. She wore a purple knit shirt over a pair of snug jeans. More than once, she’d felt the heat of his gaze on her ass when she strolled ahead of him among the street vendors. When she sent him a reproving look, his lifted shoulder said, “How can I help myself?” his expression guilelessly charming.
His thumbs moved beneath the neckline of her shirt and bra straps. When he traced her collarbone, sensation radiated toward her breasts. He moved to the round part of her shoulders, down her upper arms, then back up. When he found his way back under her hair, he massaged her neck, clasping her there with a brief tantalizing pressure, giving her the strength of his grip.
She tilted her head back against his abdomen as his fingers slid down the front of her throat, stopping at a spot at her sternum that obeyed her dictate, but also sent more of those sensations outward and lower. Then back up, following ground he’d already covered, but changing pace and pressure so she knew he wasn’t just doing it to kill time until she’d let him get to more interesting places. He was treasuring each touch, treating it as new, something wondrous.
Just as he’d described how he viewed every person he met. A new place to discover.
Hell, he was good at this.
When she felt like she could melt against him, if the chair wasn’t in between their bodies, she had him come stand before her.
“What’s going on in your mind, Rev?” She crossed her legs, folding her hands over one knee. “And why are you standing over your Mistress?”
The flare of heat in his gaze showed the energy shift between them to full-on Domme and sub. He dropped to one knee, denim stretching over ass and thighs. His linen shirt had wooden buttons, two open at his throat. The fabric was thin enough the hue of his bronze skin was hinted at beneath it.
“I thinking about a Sunday school lesson. The structure of a prayer.”
She arched a brow, waiting.
“First you honor God. You seek His will. Ask for what you need, and trust He’ll respond. Not the way you want or you think He should, but how He know you need . You forgive, to help open your heart. And then you finish by honoring Him again.”
“Why are you thinking of that?”
“God say no false idols. But God is Love, and so if you honor Love in your life the same way, it doesn’t feel blasphemous. There God's Will, and yours, Mistress. I'm good serving both, especially since I'm pretty sure He sent you to me. Or me to you. So…”
He bent forward and put his lips on the top of her foot. “I honor you, Mistress. I want to serve your will, and I trust you to hear my heart, understand my words, my reactions to you, and know what I need. And I hope to show my honor for you, with whatever you command of me, here and now.”
Enlightened. That was what the man was. Pure and enlightened, while also a hundred percent primal, erotic pleasure, in a six-foot frame.
“I like the way your mind works, Rev. Sit up and move back for me. I want to sit in front of you.”
When he complied, they sat cross-legged, their knees touching. She put a hand over his heart. “Lay one hand on your knee, palm up.”
When he did, she put hers in it, and had him place his free hand over her heart. “A closed circle, our two bodies,” she said. “What I’m imagining is you, sitting in the center of my heart, breathing with me. Even when we’re apart, this connection,” her fingers tightened on his, “is there. We can reach out to one another through it. No matter how far apart, we’ll feel that energy. It will only become deeper as we serve it. Trust in it.” A smile touched her lips. “Honor it.”
She stayed that way, and he held her gaze, no self-consciousness, that power growing as if it had merely waited for the two of them to reach for it. If she closed her eyes, it was a flickering, multi-colored flame against her lids, reflecting what was surging through her body, through those energy channels and points of contact between them. Confirming that bond and connection was real, strong, and only going to get stronger, as long as they were open to fueling it. It made her tremble.
At length, she drew back and stood. When she swayed, he stood up on his knees, his arms sliding around her hips to hold her securely. She caressed his jaw with quivering fingertips. “Take me to bed, Rev, and serve me there.”
“May I ask a favor, Mistress?”
“You may. I won’t promise to grant it. What you need, I will always give you. What you want is a gift for me to grant, at my own pace.”
His smile didn’t dilute the intensity in his gaze. “I want to carry you there.”
“Why?” She shoved aside that idiot and typical female reaction, gauging her weight and if he was overestimating his own strength, which might have been sufficient if only she hadn’t had that extra cookie from the metal lunch box full of them Cyn had brought to the office. A vintage Wonder Woman lunch box. Mick had bought it for her.
“You know that poem, about the Footprints?” Rev said. “You a strong, strong woman, Veracity. I want to carry you so that you know I can. You care for me, but a submissive takes care of his Mistress when she need it, because that’s part of how he serves her. How this one wants to serve her. Serve you.”
Her trembling increased. She’d held the reins on so many submissives, enjoyed the give and take of those sessions, some more intense than others. But none of them had claimed her whole heart, and she hadn’t been that for them, either.
This was…different. So different. Rev had involved her heart from their first meet. From the first time she saw that quote on the wall of the maintenance shed. And with the exercise she’d just had them do, she’d linked their hearts even more.
She was the Mistress, she was in charge, and he was submitting to her. And yet somehow the two of them were caught up in something so powerful, those roles had nuances to them she’d never thought they could have.
She’d been foolish to think it would be otherwise. Didn’t she have four in-her-face-every-day examples that proved how limitless and undefined those connections could be?
“Carry me to my room, Rev,” she said.
When he rose, she slid an arm around his neck, molding her hand over his broad shoulder. He bent and put his hand beneath her knees, the other behind her back, and lifted her. The gratitude in his expression, tinged with an intriguing possessive satisfaction, made joy skate through her, doing a few twirls and flips along the way.
He took her to her bedroom. As he moved toward her bed, the narrowness of the room, its length, gave her the sense of a journey that ended in just the right place.
“Put me on the edge, Rev.”
As he did, she had him remain standing so she could press her lips to his abdomen, stroke her hands along his sides, over his hips and upper thighs. She stood, putting the rest of her against him as she unfastened his jeans, and indicated with the pressure of her hands that she wanted them off. All of it, except his cross.
When he complied, she trailed her fingertips over his neck, gripping the cross briefly to feel the engraved words about faith against her skin. Then she moved down his abdomen, tracing a circle around his cock, suitably stiff and straight. The henna designs had faded away, but she would plan to do them again. “Undress me, Rev.”
He gripped the hem of her shirt, easing it over her head, careful not to snag her hair. The bra unfastened in the back, so he leaned up against her, his breath at her temple as he did that, her hands on his bent arms. His hand slid over her cat and pentacle tattoo, the most sensitive place on her back.
He removed the jeans next, his thumbs pushed into the sides to ease them off her hips. They were snug enough the panties had to come with them. She sat down to let him finish it, him going to his knees to slip them off her legs with her shoes. He straightened, leaning in between her spread knees to remove her earrings, her pentacle, and her Maat and Isis pendant, cradling them in his large palm. As he twisted around and rested them on the nearby dresser, he corralled the earrings in loops of the chain.
“Give me your belt,” she ordered.
He bent to pull them out of his jeans while she let her hand wander down his side, along his bare hip, the flexing muscle of his ass.
She looped the belt around his wrists and backed up onto the bed on her knees, tugging him up onto it with her.
She liked the effect, him looking like a prowling cat, shoulders and head lowered, his gaze intent upon her. She laid down, parting her legs so his knees were braced between them. As she brought him down over her, she had him put his bound wrists above her head, forearms framing her face.
The heat of his skin was welcome against her. She lifted her legs and clasped them over his bare backside. With the pressure of those legs, she eased him into her slick tissues, tightening her core to lift and pull him in, take him deeper, hold him there.
The light filtering through the tall window turned his face into a sculpture, the striking cheekbones and firmly held jaw. She traced the tender pink seam between his brown lips. “In Tantra, the goddess Kali is the passionate teacher, the female showing the male what she desires, letting him be a witness of what female sexuality is, how it intertwines with his. ‘A naked goddess, with disheveled hair; symbolizing freedom…’ That’s from the Chakrasamvara Tantra .”
His eyes moved to her hair fluffed around her face. When his attention came back to her eyes, she parted her lips, drawing his eyes there as well.
“Start moving inside me, Rev. Move slow, just as slowly in as out, and keep doing it that way, no matter how much your body says to do more. No matter what I do to you. When you’re close to climax, stop. Remember your breathing. Impress me with how long you can keep that energy channeled, cycling, building, but not releasing.”
He obeyed, muscles corded in his biceps and under her heels. She trailed her fingertips over his shoulders, scraped him with her nails. Reached up and put her mouth against his throat, bit him, licked him. Rocked her hips up and took him deeper.
His growl, his erratic breath, was music she used to choreograph the way she touched him, stroked, gripped him with her inner muscles to increase the friction from his thick cock. Goddess, he felt so good. That energy was there between them, that link, and she focused on it. This too was a closed circle of energy, their bodies joined.
She reached above her, so his gaze was on her lifted breasts, so close to the heat of his puffing breath, the stretch of his lips that showed his teeth. She gripped the belt, his bound hands, and wrapped her own hands in the free part of the strap, her knuckles brushing the smooth wood of her headboard. The hold gave her more leverage, but it was also an intriguing message. Choosing to be bound to him.
“Mistress…” he said, after a gratifyingly long time. He was learning how to internalize that arousal, drive it deeper into his core, into the root, and hold it there. His gaze was glazed, his mouth tight. She licked his lips, his teeth, nipped his jaw, and a muttered oath escaped him.
“Be still, Rev.”
He did, body shuddering. “Stay still inside me and worship my breasts with your eyes, then your mouth.”
When he stared at them, covering every inch, the swollen curves, the tight nipples, the damp crevice between them, the bliss was indescribable. After the right amount of time, he dipped his head and began to breathe on her, then brush his lips there, a touch of tongue. When he finally dipped his head and latched onto a nipple, he drew it in deep. The hard swell of response through her cunt seized her whole body.
Keeping herself in check, cycling those same orgasmic currents, she began to work herself up and down his shaft. He fought to hold his lower body still and obey her.
“Submit to my will,” she reminded him in a breathless voice. “And tell me what you need. What do you need, Rev?”
“Whatever you know I need, Mistress…God, great Lord in Heaven…I love your breasts…”
Fervent admiration. He lavished praise upon them with his mouth and teeth, his lips, the brush of his rough jaw.
She wanted this to go on forever, the two of them here, nothing in the outside world to take them away from it. A spike of fear came with the thought, a reaction she wasn’t expecting.
She let go of the belt to clasp his head as it moved over her breasts, her thumb against the pulse crashing in his throat. “Rev,” she whispered. “Karman Leone. Inside me, in every way. Mine.”
His bound hands shifted, moving under her head. He held her, his elbows pressed outside her shoulders, his body suddenly having more weight, as if reminding her of what he’d said about carrying her. About being there for her.
He had felt the anxiety, and he was answering it.
There was no absolute protection from everything in the world. But the desire to protect, the measure of it, strengthened the bond two people could have, especially when that desire was accepted and reciprocated, welcomed not as an obligation, but an honor and privilege they would work to earn. She wanted to take care of and protect him as well, with everything she had.
“Now, Rev,” she said softly, and the two of them moved together, bringing their bodies to that pinnacle, where they rocked and shuddered together, his jaw to her cheek, his body driving strong into her. She cried out against him, flesh and bone, the rush of blood and life between them.
When it ebbed away, he was damp with perspiration, his expression locked upon her. One of his bound hands had a noticeable grip on the back of her neck. “You’re not intending to let your Mistress go.”
“It crossed my mind.”
Another little shiver went through her at the look in his eyes. “You don’t look like that bother you much,” he said.
“No. It doesn’t. Not when I feel it from you. It matches what I feel, too.”
She slid her hand down his back. “But I admit I’m having some trouble breathing.”
With a grin, he lifted off of her. She turned inside the circle of his arms, adjusting them so she had his bound hands cradled against her breasts, the end of the belt clasped in her hands. His body spooned behind hers, so their chakras aligned, just as she’d described that to him. Contentment gripped her.
“I’m going to sleep for a little while. You should do the same. If you need to get up, let me know and I’ll unbind you. But don’t do it yourself. I like knowing you’ll wait for me.”
“Yes, Mistress.” His mouth was against her hair, his heat behind her, his strength around her.
She liked that, too.
“When I sleep, I invite you into my dreams, Rev. I want you there, and I want that unconscious part of us we access in sleep to tell us what our path together should be.”
So nothing in the waking world will screw with it. She didn’t say that aloud, but she held onto him tighter.
“See you there, Mistress.”
She woke just past two in the morning. She slipped the belt free of his wrists and rubbed the reddened skin. She hadn’t had it tight enough to affect his circulation, so she’d slept easy on that, but when he’d pulled against the hold, stroking inside her, she’d known the skin would be affected. Another mark to replace her henna designs. For now.
She slipped from the bed, murmuring a reassurance to him before she went into the bathroom. After she emerged, she leaned in the doorway, watching him sleep. Thinking of a lot of things. Things he’d said, things she felt with him.
Following the currents of those feelings down to the kitchen, she saw the card she’d bought on the counter. Here comes the sun. Here comes light, illumination. Warmth.
She made herself a cup of tea. When she turned, he was there, standing tall and dark in the entry way. He’d put on his jeans. She’d have to talk to him about getting dressed before his Mistress told him it was okay, but she didn’t mind this look, the top button open, his hip bones and sculpted upper torso visible.
He came to her, and she slid her hand over his side, into the back of the jeans to caress his buttocks. He hadn’t put on any underwear, which mollified her some.
She brushed a kiss against his lips. “Rev, bring me that pen over there.”
When he did, she opened the card. Her kitchen nightlight offered enough illumination to see the blank white interior. Her feelings were a tumultuous sea, but she put the pen to the page and wrote in flowing cursive.
I love you and pray for all of you, for our family, every day. Reach out to me anytime, or come visit me in NOLA. Veracity.
She put the pen down carefully, slid the card into its envelope and wrote her parents’ names and address on it.
Rev had his hand on her lower back. When she was done, she looked up at him, her heart in her eyes. Aching, broken, but functioning, fully capable of love. Without a word needed, he picked her up and carried her back to bed.