Page 83 of At Her Will

“Spending a day with you might kill me, Mistress,” he noted in a rasping whisper.

“Would it be worth it?”

“My aunt didn’t raise no fool. You got me tied up, so only one answer to that question.” Then he sobered and pressed his forehead against hers. “Yes. God in Heaven, yes. You so beautiful, Veracity. So strong and beautiful. I grateful for you, too.”

So strong and raw, the words came straight from the heart. From his soul, directly to hers. Time for part two.

She moved away to unhook the rope end. “You can lower your arms,” she told him, but even as she spoke, she was already back at his side. When his arms came down, they fell around her. Then his knees gave out. He tried to do his part, so they didn’t end up in a tumble of limbs, but she glanced significantly at the band of his bound arms as they arrived on the mat on their knees. “I think you did that on purpose.”

“Long as you don’t ask me direct, I don’t have to lie,” he told her, that light in his eyes again.

She laid her head on his chest and listened to his heart for a few beats before she eased back and had him lift his arms so she could remove the rope from his wrists. “Stretch out on the mat on your back. Put your arms out to either side of you.”

“May I look at you, Mistress, or you going to have me close my eyes again?”

“You can look at me, for now. But I’m pleased you asked.”

When she knelt next to him, his gaze coursed over the high hem of the skirt. He extended a fingertip and touched one knee just below the lace, glancing at her before it landed on that spot, to see if it was okay. “I can smell you,” he said. “Your desire. Mixed with that perfume you wear. I’ll dream of that, too, now.”

“Do you know what henna is, Rev?”

“Some of the girls have henna tattoos. They want the real thing, but that’s what their parents will allow.”

“I’d like to do a henna design on you. It’ll last about three weeks, though if you need to remove it sooner, it can be scrubbed off.”

“Where you going to mark me?”

She liked that he used those words and let her fingers map her response, aware of how he trembled beneath her touch. “Around your cock, up to the base of your throat. Your forearms,around your wrists. If it feels right, after I do that, I’ll do your back, base of spine to your nape.”

“That seems real specific.”

“It is. There’s a spiritual association with the designs, and the process itself. In Tantra, erotic energy is known askundalini. It moves through the body, stimulating thesushumna, which are the central energy channels. The chakras form that column.”

She traced a path from the left testicle up the right side of his spine, following its track from the front of his torso, and came to the matching side of his nose. “This is the solar energy channel, representing masculine power, the Lord, or God.” She did a mirror process. When she stopped beside his nose on the left side, her smallest finger was on his lips. “That’s the lunar channel, for the Lady, or the Goddess.”

Using the concave space provided by his lower back, she slipped her hand beneath him, pressing against the base of his spine, the upper rise of his buttocks. “Thesushumnastarts here, with this chakra. Sometimes the energy paths are depicted as a serpent, because with its sensual movements, it can bring to mind the awakening of erotic energy, its sacred power. What I’m about to do is map those chakras, and call the unique power and focus each can bring.”

His gaze had flickered at the mention of the snake. “Does the serpent symbolism make you uncomfortable?” she asked.

“No. Moses healed the Israelites with a carved serpent on a stick. It a symbol, just like what you described. A voodoo priestess lady near the St. Louis cemetery say snakes are sacred in lots of paths.”

“That sounds like Faustine.”

“You know her.” He didn’t seem surprised, but neither was she. Coincidences, common friends and crossed paths had always shown up in her relationships with someone destined to be an important part of her life.

“I do. Are you friends?”

“Yeah. I like to walk that neighborhood near the cemetery, and she has a bench out front next to a Catholic cross. She got it from a church that burned down. It seven feet tall.”

“No HOA to impose restrictions on giant lawn ornamentation.”

“If there was, she just turn them into toads and make them hop away. That what she tell the neighbor kids, to play with them.” His lips gave an appealing little quirk, his eyes darkening as she smoothed her palm over his chest and abdomen, the upper length of his thigh, as she listened to him.

“Go on,” she urged, her voice throaty.

He cleared his and obeyed. “People leave shells and pebbles on it. When I stopped to do that myself, she come out. We sat and talked. Since then, I go by there now and again. I helped her with her plumbing one weekend. She has a couple snakes that hang about her place, and one holed up in her gutter drain. I helped her get him out.”

“An appropriate dilemma for a voodoo priestess.” She wondered if there’d ever been a time she’d been coming to visit Faustine when Rev might have just left her company. The good vibes Vera took in at Faustine’s place would have had an extra boost that day. His energy might have lingered, as if to say to the matching unconscious part of her:“Soon.”

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