Page 143 of At Her Will

“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 onein 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 byVeracity. 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.”

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