Page 3 of At Her Will

She needed to get going, but she wanted one last look. Shifting onto her hip, she reached down and traced the letters. When she rose, the feeling lingered in her skin.

She didn’t mind attaching those words to a fantasy of a male of legal age. Maybe she’d stop in at Club Progeny tonight and see if any of her favorite regulars were there, and in the mood to play.

Following the current of erotic energy between her and a male submissive, she’d let his needs and desires draw the river’s path. She’d put in the curves, rocks and white water, to create a more complex and intense experience for them both.

It required her absolute attention, and she loved that full absorption. It quieted the crazy that tried to rise up too often of late and take bites out of her soul.

She scanned the contributions on the adjacent wall, looking for more evidence of theI dreem of kneelingauthor.

Nothing.

But she might as well check all sides, right? Bags of topsoil and play sand were stacked against the back wall, along with ladders, more buckets and a roll of chain link for fence repairs. This area obviously wasn’t part of the “expression board.”

It had been an overcast morning, but the sun peeked through the clouds, throwing sunlight against the aluminum ladder. As her gaze was drawn downward because of that flash, she saw an “er” in that same careful lettering.

“Gotcha,” she said softly.

She dropped to her heels, smoothing her skirt under her hips. She couldn’t see what the rest of it said, because it disappeared into the gloom behind the bags of play sand. But a couple inches of space were between it and the wall.

Fishing out her phone, she scooched closer, wincing at the scrape of the gravel against her expensive shoes. When she turned on the flashlight app, she managed not to fall on her ass when gleaming eyes reflected the light. A dark brown toad stared at her.

“My apologies, good sir,” she said with dignity. “This will only take a moment. Thank you for not being a giant spider.”

What the light showed her caught her breath in her throat, her heart tilting in a not-unpleasant way. Though it made the toad adjust backwards, she put her hand in that narrow opening to touch the words, the way she had the ones on the front of the building.

I dreem of kneeling.

For her.

She took a picture of the words. Then she followed Mavis’s path through the back entrance of the building and navigated the maze of halls that would bring her to the front door and parking lot where she’d left her car. The click of her heels punctuated the sounds of learning happening behind closed wooden doors. The divided light windows on the upper half showed grease paint graphics, some of them hinting at what class it was. Algebraic symbols for math class, sketches of tall ships for history.

Blending with the teacher’s voices was occasional laughter and overlapping responses, as more than one student came up with an answer. One class was watching a film. Throughthe window, she glimpsed single-celled organisms swimming around on the screen and heard the drone of a deep male voice. The narrator sounded like the one from her own middle school biology class. The man must be a hundred years old. Or it was the same film.

The wall clock in that class reminded her that she was behind schedule, so she quickened her steps. She had another meeting this afternoon, and needed to get some lunch before returning to the office.

Unfortunately, she accelerated at the wrong moment. As she turned a corner, her high heel hit a puddle of water.

Her leg shot forward, the rest of her body in a pre-fall flail, but she didn’t try to stop the descent. Her cushioned ass was far better equipped for the fall than her wrist or fingers.

“Whoa, hold on now.”

She didn’t land on her backside. Big hands caught her, her own flying up to grab the rough fabric of blue coveralls. She inhaled disinfectant and bleach, blooming pittosporum, the sharp tang of pine sap, and earthy oak. Plus heated candle wax.

Her gaze lifted to meet eyes the color of baked gingerbread. Eyebrows were straight slashes below a furrowed brow, and his cheekbones drew her attention right to plum-brown lips with a seam of pink between them. His hair was a crop with corners at the temples and a straight line over the creased forehead. Bronze skin made his eyes more vivid.

He drew her upright, hands at her waist for the proper yet-too-brief amount of time before he stepped back. Chagrin was on his handsome face. “So sorry, ma’am. Didn’t get around the corner fast enough to warn you about the mopping. I heard you coming, but you was moving faster than I thought possible in heels.”

His voice… As he spoke, it pulled forth memories and hopes. It brought together the missed and the wished for, and createda bridge she could trust to hold her as she followed them toward the unknown, toward something fantastic that she couldn’t resist.

Holy Goddess.Or as Cyn would say,What the holy fuck?

The timbre wasn’t exactly like a DJ, or a movie star, or a news commentator, but it had those compelling elements. A person would turn toward that voice, curious about the owner, and interested in what it could offer.

Vera was a student of Tantra, tapping into sacred levels of sexual connection and expression. His voice lit up the chakra at the base of her spine, a signal fire that ignited the others from genitals to her throat, holding her in that pleasurable energy channel that only strengthened as she took in everything about him.

His Southern accent suggested Louisiana native. Not Cajun, which wasn’t a surprise. Only a small percentage of the city’s current population had that accent, no matter what movies and TV suggested.

When he’d talked about her shoes, his gaze had moved that way. He took a good look at her legs, and when he pulled his eyes up, he took in the terrain between them and her face, but he wasn’t disrespectful about it. She felt the weight of that look, enough that she maybe wanted him to linger a bit more. Until she told him hecouldn’tlook, that she wanted his gaze on the ground.

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