Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
T he weather for Jasmine and Joss’s handfasting was sunny and not too hot, so they could set up their circle under the park’s live oaks, rather than in the gazebo they’d reserved for rain. Poles draped with garlands of fresh flowers marked the circle, connected by floating ribbons of gauze in their chosen colors of purple and white. The altar and platform on which it rested had been built by Joss and his father.
After the ceremony, the platform would become a deck around the front steps to Joss and Jasmine’s little house, a reminder of this day, every day they came home to one another.
About sixty friends and family would be present. As they arrived, the ones from different faiths showed their curiosity about their surroundings, the trappings of a ceremony different from what they knew.
Most of the curiosity was open-minded, though Jasmine’s grandmother had been thin-lipped when she arrived and was escorted by Joss to the front row. Vera wasn’t at all surprised that Rev, helping to set out the chairs, found his way to her.
She didn’t hear their conversation, but she didn’t need to do so. He’d leaned toward the grandmother as they talked together, and in time he coaxed forth a smile. At one point, he’d nodded toward Vera. She expected he’d told Jasmine’s grandmother that he and Vera were together.
The grandmother had fingered the silver cross he wore. When she turned it over, she would see that inscription. By faith alone…
When more of Jasmine’s immediate family arrived, Rev exited the chair, making room for them. He checked with Joss’s best man to confirm the needed preparations were done, then he moved to a live oak and leaned against it. More than one female stole a look in his direction. On a normal day, he attracted attention. In his gray suit, he looked even more irresistible.
All mine, ladies. But enjoy the view.
He was as oblivious to it as always, his focus on making sure no one needed anything he could provide. When Vera told the friends who’d been chosen to cast the circle and call quarters to take their places, a signal that it was time for the ceremony to begin, his attention went where it had returned countless times since they’d arrived together. Back to her.
The ritual dress she wore when officiating as a Wiccan priestess had a scoop-neck, black beaded bodice, angel wing sleeves and an ankle-length flowing skirt. She’d worn slip-ons easy to discard when the ceremony began, to be in direct contact with the earth. Her pentacle and Isis pendants gleamed against her chest. Precious stones threaded onto her silver hoop earrings represented love, commitment, protection, insight, wisdom and patience. Important for every relationship, but especially a marriage.
She stepped onto the platform, in front of the altar, and faced the assembled. “Welcome,” she said, as people quieted. “Will you lift your hand if you are familiar with a Wiccan or pagan handfasting ceremony?”
About half of the audience members responded, and Vera gestured to them. “Joss and Jasmine have told me to explain things as we go along, but if anything remains confusing, feel free to talk to these attendees afterward. And offer your own experiences. Faith is a beautiful thing to share.”
She swept her gaze over the four quarter callers. “I will ask Jasmine and Joss to join me at the altar now, before we start the circle casting. The circle creates a sacred space for Jasmine and Joss’s commitment to one another.”
Joss and Jasmine had been mingling with the guests, and a ripple of laughter went through the group as she skipped ebulliently over to her groom and seized his hand, twirling under his arm. As the two came up the middle aisle between the chairs, Joss’s eyes were on Jasmine, full of love and wonder. He’d looked at her that way from the first time they’d met. In his presence, Jasmine’s sunlight personality was even more vibrant as well.
Joss’s dark suit and tie suited his unruly brown hair and gleaming beard, framing his blue eyes and strong features. Jasmine was in an ivory-colored dress, a crocheted overlay over a silk sheath, with fringe at the bottom and on the short sleeves. Her blonde hair was coiled on her head and decorated with flowers. She wore a pewter pentacle where each point of the star was formed by two women with elongated bodies and lifted arms, their clasped hands creating the apex.
Vera smiled at the couple. She noted a handful of park visitors watching at a respectful distance. Many people were drawn to a celebration of love. It gave her hope for humanity.
“The ceremony isn’t long,” Vera told the assembled, “but should you need to leave the circle, we ask that you imagine opening and closing a door as you do so, to contain the energy we will build here.”
Because they were here to support Joss and Jasmine, the audience projected a current of happiness and love Vera could use for the ceremony. As she began, she was also aware of Rev’s attention. She’d never done this ceremony with a man present who was hers. It would give it an extra blessing of power and intent.
When the circle was cast and quarters called, she called on the power of the Lord and Lady inside the bride and groom to bless the space and strengthen it.
“Life tests us all,” she told the young couple. “But your love for one another, your faith, your belief in powers greater than yourself, in the truth inside each of us, creates an energy. You can let it help you move together through those tests, as individuals willingly joined as a couple.”
Picking up the scarf on the altar, she wrapped it around their wrists and clasped hands. The blue cloth had been embroidered with the bride and groom’s initials by Jasmine’s mother, and blessed on Jasmine’s altar. For nine days she’d kept it in a glass bowl with crystals nested in the folds. Each day, she’d waved incense over it, a specific fragrance infused with the properties that supported a successful handfasting between lovers.
“You met, and that was a beginning,” Vera said. “This is another beginning, an agreement to an even deeper level of commitment. Many of the mysteries you’ll explore as you share a life together will be known only to the two of you, beyond words to explain to any other. You will share souls in ways no one else will, and so what you have faithfully committed to one another, that journey and commitment, will not be under the influence of anything else other than your own hearts. Do you agree?”
“We agree.” Their hands tightened on one another.
“Joss, do you promise to love Jasmine with an open heart, generosity, and put nothing else above her, because your Love for one another is part of the Divine. They are one and the same, and should be honored and cherished as such.”
“Yes. I do.” His shyness dropped away, his back straightening and grip tightening. He showed her the man he wanted to be for her. Jasmine’s eyes glistened.
When Vera asked Jasmine the same, the girl nodded and spoke in a choked voice. “I do. I love you so much, Joss. Thank you.”
As the emotional response echoed through the audience, smiles were exchanged and the tissues came out. Vera felt the touch of tears herself.
Though many things had happened in the past few weeks to reinforce it, Vera was still gathering every scrap of evidence to reinforce her confidence and joy in what the world could be and often was. Today she’d get an extra helping of that proof.
“Good. Then here before the Lord and Lady, the spirits of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, Joss and Jasmine have committed to one another’s well-being and happiness for the rest of their lives. Blessings upon them. Will you, as their friends and family, also commit to helping them on this journey together as husband and wife? To support that love? Say ‘we will’ if you agree.”
“We will,” the group replied. The grandmother was holding the cross she wore around her own neck in one thin hand. When she nodded, Vera bowed in acknowledgement. The Crone was the most powerful face of the Goddess.
“Good. Let us honor the Quarters and the Lord and Lady, and open this circle.”
The attendees’ heads and bodies turned in each direction as the respective quarter caller bid that element a thanks and the farewell blessing, “Go if you must, stay if you will.” When they were done and Vera declared the circle open, she unwrapped the scarf and handed it to Joss. “Your wife’s mother created this. I give it to you to conclude this ceremony. In the eyes of the Divine, of your family and friends, you are married.”
Joss and Jasmine came together for a lingering kiss, their hands tight upon one another. Cheers and applause erupted. When they drew apart, Vera hugged the couple to her, then stepped aside to let friends and family congratulate them.
Rev was no longer alone at the tree. She saw Ros, Skye, Abby and Cyn, as well as Lawrence, Mick, and Tiger. Neil had been called down range the day before; otherwise he would have been here as well. They had come at her request. Not for the wedding, but for something different.
While the semi-circle they formed around Rev might have been unplanned, the positioning held meaning for her.
She crossed the ground between them, nodding to Ros and the other women before meeting Rev’s bemused gaze. It told her they hadn’t explained to him why they’d arrived near the end of the ceremony, evidence they weren’t here for the wedding.
“Do you remember when I told you that each man—Lawrence, Neil, Tiger and Mick—went through a ritual of acceptance, where these Mistresses formally made them part of our family?” Her gaze passed over the men present, noting from their body language, the flickers in their gazes, how the words called the powerful memories to them.
“I do,” Rev said. Anticipation vibrated through him, touching her with its electric current. “Are you telling me that’s what you want, Mistress?”
After he’d placed those Goddess symbols upon her and offered to serve her, something had shifted. She didn’t need to be fully healed, or have everything figured out about what had happened that terrible day, to be certain of what she wanted and needed from him. It wouldn’t dictate what mattered to her.
“It is. But you have to tell me that’s what you want.”
He clasped her hands. “It’s an honor I want with all my heart.”
When she looked at the others, she was glad for their presence. She couldn’t help but feel a wave of sadness, though, thinking of how parents, siblings and grandparents being here to witness it had added to the joy of Joss and Jasmine’s commitment to one another.
Rev caressed her wrist with his thumb. “The spirit of your born family, of what they should be, is here.”
From the beginning of their relationship, she hadn’t had to explain much to him about the most important things to her. It was especially true now. The wedding energy that saturated the air had their hearts open to one another.
“Before you do what you plan, I need to say this, in front of the family you found and that found you.” His serious gaze held hers. “I would like to love you, Mistress. With everything that I am now, and everything that I may become. May I have your permission to do that?"
Despite the emotional power the words brought, she managed a steady reply. "You’re already doing that. Without my permission, I might add.”
"Couldn't help that. You made it impossible to do otherwise."
She sighed. "Blaming your Mistress. There will be penance for that."
"With you, penance is the first whiff of cotton candy and popcorn at the fair, when you walking toward the gate." He exchanged a look with the other three men, all of them knowing just what he meant. And in that look, she saw confirmation that he’d been accepted as one of them.
Then Rev wrapped both his hands around one of hers. “You know what I’ve thought about, almost every day since I met you? That if ever you would do me the honor of being my wife as well as my Mistress, I want that. I want to have children together, however God wants to give us that.
“I not asking you to offer me anything you don’t want to give, Veracity,” he said. “Whatever you can give, I’ll take. Though I’ll probably always ask for a little more than that, because when it comes to how I feel about you, the wanting and needing never stop.”
Her heart thudded in her ears. She saw smiles from Abby and Skye, approval from Cyn. And Ros, the most cautious member of their group on these decisions, because she was the head of their family, and because she’d seen at least one member choose disastrously, had wet eyes, a blessing all its own.
She took a breath. “Do you remember what I told you about the Great Rite, Rev?”
“It a sexual rite, bringing down energy through a coupling between a priest and priestess.”
“Yes. I would like to do that, direct it toward our commitment to one another, to strengthen and guide it.”
He looked at the women. “With them present.”
“Yes. As the four quarters of the Circle, holding it in place. And to give their blessing to the union.”
“In our family, it’s a way of saying you belong to her, but you also belong to us.” Ros drew his attention. “You’re ours to care for, as Mistresses. And as family.”
The wedding guests had departed for the planned reception, so Rev’s gaze stole to the empty chairs, the pillars threaded with gauze ribbon and flowers. “Pretty as this is…you not thinking of doing it here. Out in the open.”
“This is New Orleans. Why not?” Cyn deadpanned, then grinned. “Rev, you just went pale as a vampire.”
“Do I have to belong to her, too?” Rev asked Vera.
A chuckle rippled through the group. Vera laid a reassuring hand on his arm. “I wanted to ask you here, because if you aren’t comfortable with the idea, but wish to commit to me in the spirit of that ceremony, we can do a symbolic Great Rite, in this lovely setting. If you wish to do the other, we’ll move to a more private location. It’s your choice, and I whole-heartedly accept either direction. Or you can tell me you want to wait and think about it. You’ve said you want to be with me. That’s enough for today. Truly.”
Rev looked at each of the men, then the Mistresses. Then his attention came back to her. Her heart ached with a surfeit of emotion, because she saw the answer in his gaze, even before he spoke.
“I’d like to become yours and your family’s, Veracity. I’ll do it the way you wish, because I want to serve you with no reservations. I trust your care, as much as I want you to trust mine. Let me become yours, Mistress, in every way you want to claim me.”
They took him to Ros’s home in the Garden District. The cream-colored historic house had salmon shutters and multiple levels. He wasn’t in the right head space to absorb too many of those details, but inside, the formal dining room grabbed his attention right off.
A mat, cut to the large table’s oblong shape, had been laid upon it to protect the wood, and it was scattered with flower petals. A sheer blue cloth covered the side bar, a silver chalice and knife with a gold handle resting upon it. There was also a flogger, its ribbonlike tails arranged in a flourish.
A decanter of wine, a plate of crescent-shaped cookies and a bowl of the sugared pecans he liked were grouped with several bottles of essential oils. Incense gave the air a fire and sea water scent.
“Lawrence, Mick and Tiger prepared the space,” Cyn noted. “Neil sent the pecans.”
The men were absent now, but like Neil, they’d all made their presence known with the preparations, proof of their support for Vera’s choice. The look in his Mistress’s eyes as she surveyed the extra effort they’d made for her said how much it moved her. He was glad for it.
Before the men had departed, he’d had a chance to speak to Lawrence. “I should have asked you more about this ritual,” Rev had said.
The former SEAL’s attention had touched on his own Mistress before a smile wreathed his handsome features. “Wouldn’t have done you any good. This wasn’t what they did for me. It’s been different for each of us. It depends on what your Mistress wants, and knows you need.”
At some point, he and Vera might stand in front of a preacher or a priestess like her, or both. They’d make their vows and become married in the eyes of the law and all the faces of Divinity, but this was that first step. Like an engagement, it was significant. So he let go of any lingering worries over it, because they didn’t matter.
“Go to the upstairs guest bathroom,” Vera told him. “Take a thorough shower. As you clean yourself, do that breathing exercise we did together. Think about all parts of yourself, inside and out, that join with me when we come together. When you’re done, there’s a robe on the back of the door. Wear that and nothing else. You come out with a clear head and soul, waiting to be bound to your Mistress.”
She took his hand and put her own on his face, her beautiful breasts against his chest, her hip and thigh brushing his. The eyes that looked upon him were his Mistress’s, but something else, too, as if what she planned to call down into them was already there, waiting. He felt it in himself, a simmering energy.
“Don’t rush,” she told him. “You’ll feel when it’s time to come back here. Skye is going to go upstairs with you and tell you more about the ritual. While you shower, she’ll be in Ros’s home office across the hall, if you need anything.”
“I don’t want a Mistress to wait on me.”
“It’s not like that. Tonight, you are cared for and watched over by all of them. A reminder of what this is about. Understand?”
“Not fully, but I think it will come clear to me as we go along. I can feel that, here.” He put his hand on his chest, and she covered it.
He could also feel from the watching women what she described. Their care was a protective circle around him already. When he followed Skye, he looked over his shoulder and saw Abby, Ros and Cyn draw closer to Vera and take her hands. He wondered what preparations she’d be making.
He asked Skye, and she used one of her recorded voices, a Southern accented female, to respond. “She’ll bathe and be anointed with oils, so she can get her mind aligned with the Goddess she’ll be calling down within her. Much the same as you’re doing now, calling upon God to be with you in this bonding and commitment, this energy raising toward that intent.”
So it was similar to the wedding. But when they reached the bathroom door and Skye took a few minutes to explain the steps of the ritual, the mechanics that would help it go more smoothly, there were some significant and distracting differences. However, Rev only asked a few questions, sensing that letting the mystery unfold was important.
They were interrupted briefly by a rasping meow. He glanced down the hall in time to meet a three-legged black cat’s interested stare, before the creature hopped nimbly into what he assumed was Ros’s master bedroom.
“Freak,” Skye said. “He rules the house and had to check you out. Any more questions?”
He shook his head. Nodding, Skye put a hand on his arm and signed the next part. She did it slow, so he could follow it. If he needed anything, she’d be right across the hall.
There was only one thing he could think of needing right now. One woman. His Mistress had asked him to prepare to serve her, to commit to her. Before God. That was what he would do.
In the bathroom, he found male toiletries laid out for him to shower and shave. Probably also handled by the men. As he used them, Rev felt their presence like an outer circle around the inner one. He thought they’d like that comparison.
Before he put on the robe, his skin warm and damp, he knelt on the bathroom rug and bowed his head to pray. Opening himself up to all of it meant letting in the trials they’d recently gone through with his family. He and Veracity had already endured a real-life example of how extreme the challenges to their love could be.
She still wanted him. And he surely wanted her, as she was. Time could take the luster off of the new and shiny parts of a relationship, but those parts didn’t matter to him. It was her core, the look in her eyes, what he felt in his soul at her touch. What he felt in her soul, which he believed would always have depths that mystified him, and held and expanded his own.
He put all of himself into what he’d learned about prayer and devotion to God, what she’d taught him about breathing and drawing energy into him, connecting to her spiritually and sexually. As he did that, desire and need intertwined and anticipation surged. It was time to be with her.
He rose and looked in the mirror. A soul was connected to all other souls, but when he desired to be connected to one in particular, to call that soul his mate, it was an important moment.
He put on the robe and opened the door. Skye was on Ros’s computer, but when the door opened, she closed it down and came to him. She was so different from Vera, wearing chunky jewelry and a split-sleeved top of melted colors over faded jeans, her blond hair spiky on one side and shaved on the other so he could see an ear cuff shaped like a dragon.
She smelled of lemon cake, and her moon-shaped face was what he imagined a fairy’s might look like. However, her dark eyes had a pure Mistress’s look, coursing from his face down to his toes and back up again. He waited, knowing he should. She assessed him, physically and mentally, and the warmth and approval in her expression when she was done told him he was good.
As they descended the stairs, he heard music. Women were chanting, their voices rising and falling. The song was coming from the speakers in Ros’s living room. When he reached the dining room, the wall of energy coming from the space made him pause. As did what he saw there.
Ros and Cyn were on either side of Vera, who stood at the foot of the table. She’d been veiled with the transparent blue cloth that had draped the side bar. He could see her lips against the sheer fabric, and the curves of her body beneath it. The cloth was all that she was wearing.
Abby stood at the head of the table. At her nod, Skye pantomimed opening a door.
“The circle is opened for the Lord, to join his Lady within it,” Abby said, her voice rising above the recorded musical chant. As Rev stepped in, coming to stand before Vera, Skye closed the “door,” sealing the energy into the circle.
“Quarters have been called and the circle is set,” Abby continued. She was reading from the paper given to her by Veracity. But the sensual purr of her voice contained joy and love, plus those Mistress elements he recognized, reinforced by her look toward him. The women were channeling the things of the Goddess that a Mistress would know and feel.
“The elements, the spirits, have come to witness this Rite, the meaning it will embed in the man and woman who have opened themselves to be vessels for the Lord and Lady.”
Cyn and Ros came to him, and Cyn slipped the tie of his robe. Ros took it from him, her nails grazing his shoulders. “You will now give your Mistress the Five-Fold kiss,” she said. “Remove her veil.”
Rev stepped closer to Veracity, and gingerly pinched a fold of the cloth to draw it off of her. Cyn took it from him.
Veracity stood before him, naked and beautiful, open to him. Her eyes rested in the embrace of his, her mouth soft. While Skye had told him how each part of the ritual was done, she’d also told him he could follow what his heart suggested to him. The words and actions that happened would be what was meant to be said and done.
So when he knelt, his first words were natural as breathing. They’d brought her to him in the beginning. “I dream of kneeling to you, Mistress,” he said. “Today and every day of my life.”
Though he knew the Lord cared nothing for a silver tongue, Rev concentrated on saying the words proper, to show an additional effort for his Mistress, to prove what she meant to him.
“Blessed be your feet and knees, which I plan to kiss every morning when you give me the honor of being the one to wake you, to the sunrise of a new day together.”
He bent and pressed his mouth to both places. Energy coursed through her, nerves and pleasure both. He glanced up and laid his hands on her legs, behind her knees, letting her feel his support. “I here with you, Mistress. I’m nervous, too. And caught up in wonder.”
She wet her lips, her gaze clinging to him. “Go on,” she murmured.
He pressed his lips just above her sex, inhaling that musk. He was aroused, and finding her in a state of desire just made him harder. “Blessed be your womb, which represents the life that all women give, that God gave to my mother and yours, so that I could have you in my life and have the chance to serve you. And if life stirs there that we have created and God has blessed, I will serve you both.”
Her hand fell on his shoulder and gripped, hard. Then he straightened up from his knees, putting his mouth on the sweet valley between her breasts. Her hand moved with him, staying upon him. “Blessed be your breasts, where I can rest my head when I serve you well, and beneath which beats the strong, beautiful and fragile heart I’ll do anything to protect. You gave it to me freely, and I’ll cherish it, in all I do.”
He stood at his full height and looked down into her uptilted face, the light-filled silver eyes, their fringe of dark lashes, the smooth skin of her cheeks, the fullness of her mouth. Her lips parted, evidence of the emotions he saw and felt in all of her.
“I…” He stared at her, losing his place. As she waited for him to find it, he felt certain the universe was turning around them right now. “I kiss your mouth, but the gift and privilege of it, of all of it, has me overcome. I ask that you tell me I’m worthy of it, that I’ve earned the right.”
Her gaze filled with tears. She understood. He was asking her once more, perhaps for the final time, to make it a clean slate between them, to show she’d forgiven him fully, in every corner of herself.
She framed his face with her hands, fingers slipping against his skin. “Parts of me are battered, Rev. But I trust you to protect them as they heal and grow strong again, leaving behind fear or anxiety. I trust you. I love you. You are worthy and have earned my love and my forgiveness. I want you to belong to and serve me, and have no other earthly Mistress but me.”
“I want that, too,” he told her, and put his mouth on hers. Her lips were flavored with the salt of those few tears, and he wiped them away before he returned his arms to his sides and stood before her, waiting for the next part.
“So there are no doubts,” Ros said, “we will echo what our sister has said. You are forgiven, and we have faith in your love for your Mistress.”
“Yes,” Abby murmured and Skye nodded.
Cyn met his gaze. “No doubts, Rev. Yes.”
He swallowed, that overcome feeling doubling.
Then tripling, as Vera knelt. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it, but it was part of the ritual, so he stood still.
Vera’s lips were soft on the top of his foot. “I honor your feet, which stand firm on this earth while you walk in the Lord’s ways. I honor your knees, which kneel to us both, in the service of Love. I also rejoice in the pleasure that gives me, to have you serve me as your Mistress.”
Then she moved to his cock, thick and jutting before him. “A celebration of the virility of the Lord, brought to the service of the Lady,” she murmured. Veracity kissed the shaft, her hand circling it, and licked away the hint of semen at the tip. “Blessed be your cock, which responds to the pleasure I command from it, serving me in the ways I desire.”
She rose and put her lips on his chest. Since her hand was there, too, he was sure she felt the pounding beneath it. “I say the same for your heart, one of the purest and best I know. I have no doubt of the man who carries it.”
She lifted up on her toes, his hands going to her waist to help as she touched her mouth with lingering care to his and gazed into his eyes. “Blessed be your mouth, which always speaks love and truth to me. I am letting go of the fear that it won’t be there tomorrow. I feel all you are to me here, and know, whatever can come at us, we will find our way as man and woman, Mistress and sub, guided by Love in all its names.”
Her gaze shifted to the women and came back to him.
“Each Mistress will leave her mark on you, reinforcing that you belong to me, and to this wider circle, your care as important to them as any in our family. Will you accept this?”
“I will.” He looked at each in turn. “And I thank you. I will be the same for each of you. You my family now, too.”
The approval in his Mistress’s face was weighted with strong emotions. As he spoke, he saw those feelings echoed in the expressions of the others.
Abby moved to the side table and picked up one of the bottles. “Cypress oil,” she said. “A blessing and consecration oil. An Earth oil, also a reminder of death, in that an ending is a beginning. Tonight you become something different. Stronger and more powerful together. Able to handle the impossible. Believing nothing is impossible. Just a challenge to be met together, and that Love will heal all wounds inflicted by those challenges.”
She laid a line of the oil along one strip of the flogger, then stepped back to the Northern quarter as Skye took her place and picked up another bottle. “Lotus, sacred oil to ancient peoples, used for blessing and healing. It offers happiness and good fortune.”
When Cyn came to raise the next bottle, she tossed them a look of erotic mischief. “Tuberose, also known as Mistress of the Night. An aphrodisiac, because healing and communication come through a passionate and healthy sex life.”
Ros took her place for the last one. “Rose oil,” she said. “Which strengthens, protects and honors love of all kinds. Which is what every one of us here, and the men who serve us, will do for the love you offer one another.”
Her gaze fixed upon Rev. “Once we have each marked you, the flogger will be our gift, to keep and use in the household you and Vera share.”
Now Skye and Cyn flanked Veracity. As she stepped back, they helped her take a seat on the table. They’d brought cushions, so she could lie back upon them. As she kept her gaze upon him, she spread her long brown legs. The sensual beauty of the pose tightened his heart and increased the throbbing ache in his cock. When they laid the veil upon her upper body and face again, her eyes were as vivid and piercing to him through its mesh as if there was no barrier between them at all.
Abby made a subtle gesture, reminding him of the next step. He moved between Veracity’s thighs, Cyn’s palm on his chest and back telling him where to stop. His cock was mere inches from his Mistress’s sweet wet folds. As Abby took the flogger from the table and stood behind him, Ros replaced her at the head of the table.
“Stand fast,” she said.
“Yes, Mistress.” When the flogger fell against his back, the significance of it, of why it was happening, why he was here, came home with the first strike. The tips were knotted, so there was pain. The right kind.
The scents that had anointed the strands reached his nose. He’d ask his Mistress to do this ritual upon him on the anniversary of this commitment, as a reminder of it, to renew it, to make evident his willingness year to year to respect everything it required of him. Everything she required of him.
He didn’t count the strokes. That didn’t matter. He would stand here for hours if that was what she wanted. By the time Abby relinquished the flogger to Skye and Skye finished, his skin was burning. Then Cyn took over.
Their group sadist took that manageable pain and ramped it up three levels with a different stroke and force. Rev kept his gaze on his Mistress, lying on the table, watching him from behind the veil, the inside of her spread thighs brushing the outside of his. Everything under his skin was coiled and ready for her. The mounting pain only made his cock stiffer, straining for what was so close, the ability to plunge inside, join with her.
He wanted to touch her, hold her. He’d suffer any pain for that.
It was Ros’s turn. While she wasn’t as forceful as Cyn, his skin was sensitive enough now it shuddered at the slap of every individual strip and knot, his buttocks and thigh muscles tightening to keep him in place.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. She hit all those places, including his shoulders.
A pause. Veracity’s eyes glittered with silver light as Ros moved to the side table and picked up the one unused bottle there. When she returned to stand behind him, he discovered it wasn’t an oil, but a lotion. She smoothed it over his back, his buttocks and upper thighs with a firm, caressing hand that appreciated him without taking anything away from his Mistress or his commitment to her.
He wasn’t surprised he could read that from her. With Veracity, he’d learned touch had its own language, like the gestures Skye preferred to use.
He smelled cocoa in the blend, witch hazel. It cooled the sting of the flogger without taking it away, which he liked. He wanted to keep feeling it.
He was being cared for and directed by five Mistresses. There was no earthly—or maybe even heavenly—way he could hide his carnal reaction, but what kept him in such a state of need was Vera’s gaze upon him. Watching him stand for her. Waiting upon her command to finally serve her the way every cell within him wanted to do.
Ros put the bottle back on the side table and lifted the chalice. Cyn picked up the athame. She came to Rev, offering it to him, while Ros placed the chalice in Veracity’s hand. As Veracity lifted her hand to take it, the veil shimmered over her. She spoke the next words.
“By putting the athame into the chalice, the Lord and Lady’s Love is symbolically confirmed, fulfilled and honored.”
Rev put the knife blade in the chalice, touching the tip to the bottom. He and Veracity held it that way for several long seconds, his hand so close to hers, holding the cup. Then Cyn and Ros reclaimed the ritual items and put them back on the side table.
Had he preferred the symbolic version of the Great Rite, he knew that would have been the pinnacle of the ceremony. But now all four women moved to their places at the quarters. Ros at Earth, the North. Skye at Water, the West. Cyn at Fire, the South. And Abby at East, the Air. His thundering heart, the energy pulsing through the room, told him the time had come.
Veracity removed the cloth veiling her, once again revealing her chestnut brown skin, her dark hair in a cloud around her face. The light in her eyes was no longer shadowed, and he saw the Goddess there.
“Removing this veil symbolizes the opening of my heart, mind and soul for our Joining, and for our life together.” Her tone had been firm and clear at the wedding. The sureness was still there, but he heard the woman, too, in trembling emotional notes. “Give me your wrists,” his Mistress said.
When he did, she tied the veil around them, tucking in the ends. Her lashes lifted. “I have waited a long time for you, Karman Leone,” she said.
“I sorry I couldn’t be here sooner.”
“I think you came just when you should.” Her lips curved. “Now you will come into me, and the Lord and Lady, if They bless and wish to do so, will come down in us and be part of this union.”
As he’d suspected, feeling it, living it, helped him understand this part even better. They would be vessels for divine purpose, as well as for their own hearts.
As above, so below. Like the picture in her bedroom said.
The Lord made Himself known in the works of his creations, and had seen fit to give them a direct line back to Him, if they just quieted everything else to see it, hear it. Yes, she was right. It had happened all just as it should, when it should.
“You’re beautiful, Veracity. I see all that you is, and I glad to be yours. Grateful, and full of love. I also want to be inside you. Right now, if I’m not being too demanding about it.”
“Your demand is you and the Lord being what male energy is supposed to be in a moment like this.” Her smile was female and mysterious. And sexy as he’d ever seen. “It’s all part of it. Just as me wanting you inside me, here and now, no matter if the world was collapsing around us, is what the Lady and I want.”
As he put his knee up on the mat and rose above her, she lifted her legs and clasped them around him. He had no self-consciousness about the other women. They were supposed to witness him honoring and pleasuring his Mistress.
He’d waited for her, too. Known she was there.
When he entered her, a groan of utter bliss tore from his lips. She tightened her legs around him, encouraging him. This moment wasn’t about special breathing or that kind of deliberate thought. The energy driving them would dictate the pace, the urgency.
Rev slid his arm beneath her, needing her even closer, needing her hips to tilt and take him deeper. She cried out her pleasure, her hands moving to his shoulders, nails digging in, her cheek brushing his as he put his face down to hers.
The energy wrapped around them, taking them higher, farther inside one another. Divine energy. Whether he called it God or she called it the Lord and Lady, it was there to bless and carry them, to give them this memory throughout their path together. They had the blessings not only of her family, present here and in spirit, but of the Divine.
Gifts that couldn’t be measured. Just like the woman he held in his arms, who gave him all of herself, even as she demanded the same from him.
Neither of them was aware when Skye opened that “door” and the women slipped away, leaving the circle to them as their commitment, their love for one another, took them to a release that put them near Heaven.
So close to it that, when they finally floated down to earth, Rev thought angels were guiding them. They held onto one another as long as they wished, a quiet moment in the universe they could also hold onto, for whatever lay ahead for them.
God didn’t make promises of an easy path. But when He saw fit to give a soul somebody to share it with, a woman like this, a man couldn’t be anything but grateful.