Page 47 of At Her Will

“I like knowing that, Rev.” She touched the lids of his eyes, one at a time, making his lips curve. “Sleep,” she said, and shut her eyes to give the impression that she was doing the same. Yet when she opened them, his were still open.

“I can sleep anytime,” he said. “What you said, about memorizing your face? I’d like to keep doing that instead. I keep seeing new things in it.”

She didn’t mind the idea of doing that with him as well. “There’s an exercise in Tantra. Studying one another’s faces, gazing into one another’s eyes. Saying nothing. Just looking your fill. It connects to that thing I said, about possessing one another through your gazes.”

She touched the area between his brows, “Sometimes, as you do it, you find your gaze moving here, because that’s the spiritual center of the soul. You can feel it, if you put your fingers there.”

With that thoughtful look, he did so, but then he put his hand back down and gripped hers, between them, his knuckles resting on the upper rise of her breast. “I like the idea of looking at you without having to say anything.”

“Me too.”

So they did that. And in time, their breathing aligned, their lids grew heavy, and they both slept.

She woke a while later. Because she was in the mood to indulge herself, she slipped down to her kitchen for a glass of wine and a bite of cake. This room was for cheerful moods and brighter colors. Ceramic voodoo dolls sat on the sink windowsill with glass bottles holding cut greens from her yard. Her mixer was blue, as was her toaster, while her fridge was covered with magnets collected from her travels.

On the wall behind her eight-setting oak table was a painting of a woman stirring a cauldron at a fireplace, watched by a half dozen cats and two children, one boy and one girl. The boy sat on the hearth petting one of the cats while the girl pressed against her side, the woman’s hand on her hair. A man stood by the hearth, drinking coffee, his hand on the woman’s shoulder in a way that suggested he was caressing her neck with his thumb under her hair.

The title of it was “The Kitchen Witch and Her Family.”

When she moved in, she’d bought the picture from a Royal Street gallery. Knowing it represented a wish that hadn’t come true, she’d lately been thinking about replacing it. It made her melancholy, and she didn’t hold onto things that encouraged wallowing in self-pity.

Tonight, the picture didn’t make her feel melancholy.

Vera closed her eyes as she ate the cake, not only to savor the sugar and almond flavors, but the picture of Rev’s face. Of his long and powerful body beneath her, between her thighs. Of how he had responded to her.

She didn’t stay in the kitchen long. When she returned to the bedroom, he was still sleeping, his fingers curled in the sheet that held her warmth and scent.

Teena Joy had believed he was called by God to serve a purpose. She’d held him out of school, taking childhood epilepsy, laryngitis and reading difficulties as proof.

Through her work at Laurel Grove, Vera had seen abuse spawned by ignorance, instead of deliberate cruelty. But while Vera questioned Tisha or Witford’s motives, Tisha wasn’t entirely wrong. A worldly interpretation of Rev’s circumstances could cause its own problems.

Rev had told her what his aunt believed, but not necessarily his thoughts on it. Yet he’d made it clear that when he sang and channeled that energy, he was content, feeling he was doing what he was supposed to be doing.

He wasn't victimized. He’d served his aunt as he was serving Vera, with no sense of subjugation. He didn’t perceive his relationship and service to God as at odds with what Rev needed and wanted to do. In his devotion toward the Virgin Mary and other representations of divine female energy, he'd recognized his yearning for the Goddess in his life, and how that connected to his desire for an earthly Mistress.

Yes, maybe some opportunities had been taken from him, but as he matured, rather than getting hung up on what ifs, he’d focused on his blessings and the will of forces bigger than himself, to take him where he needed to go.

Tisha and his cousin’s recent behavior weighed heavily on him, though. The relief he’d shown when Vera told him to kneel on her carpet, willing to give him a port in that storm, told her that. She had no doubts now that she’d made the right choice, coming to find him.

She’d seen glimpses of the alpha will that had made the decisions that led him to her bed tonight. He minded none of the obligations in his life—his family, his congregation, his job at the school—but he wanted something for himself. And it looked like that something was her.

Unlike Witford and Tisha, she had no intention of standing in the way of that.

CHAPTER NINE

When Rev thought about what he’d wear to Club Progeny, he’d thought about the clothes Veracity wore. So when she pulled up to their agreed rendezvous, the coffee shop on the corner near his place, he watched her face to see how he’d done.

He wore an ivory-colored suit with a slim black tie. The jacket nipped in at the waist, and his pants were hemmed to brush the tops of his polished shoes. The cuffs of his blue dress shirt were visible under the sleeves of the jacket, and had silver button cuff links. He’d shaved twice to make his jaw smooth, and his hair gleamed from the light touch of a scented oil he thought she’d like.

Every stitch of clothing was smooth, pressed, and fit him the way it should. He could have worn one of his church suits, but instead had decided to spend some of his money on a suit from a consignment shop.

Mrs. Levitt, who taught the home economics class, had altered it for him. She wouldn’t take payment, saying she was thanking him for her tires. She’d been driving on bald ones, and he’d gotten her a good discount on a new set at a local tire company. The owner was a man Rev had helped, through latenight companionship and prayer, to stick with his twelve-step program at AA. When he got his one-year chip, his wife had let him come back home and given him a second chance with her and their two kids.

After finishing the last adjustment, Mrs. Levitt had given Rev an approving nod. “You’ll please your lady, Rev, never fear.”

She must know what she was talking about, because Veracity’s thorough look woke up every part of him.

Though he didn’t respond just to that. As he approached the car, he saw her skirt was snug and black and came up high on her thighs, the way she was sitting behind the wheel. A flirty transparent hem added a few inches to it. He expected she was wearing her preferred seamed stockings, those straight lines up the back of her legs teasing a man’s imagination as they disappeared beneath the skirt.

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