Page 138 of At Her Will

“You’re not,” Maureen had said during their latest session. “Events like this change us. There’s no escaping that. But you have to decide what you want to reclaim and what you want to leave by the roadside. What matters isyoumake that choice, not those who did this to you.”

She closed her eyes. Inevitably, when she did that, some of the worst moments came back to her, her inability to move, the wheel taking her under, the water stealing her ability to breathe. At first, she’d fought to get away from those images, but with Maureen’s help, she was making herself relive them in limited doses. As she did, she told herself it was over. She’d survived. She was on the other side of it.

It didn’t stop her from starting off the bench when he touched her, her hands fisted in defense. “Oh, Goddess. Rev, I’m sorry.”

His expression held deep pain, shared with her, but he held out a hand. “You owe me no apologies, Mistress. Please, will you come with me?”

She put her trembling hand in his. He held it, just looking at her, then tipped his head back. He’d shed his suit jacket, the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up to his elbows, the shirt tucked into belted slacks. He’d removed the tie and opened the collar so she could see the smooth skin of his throat, and a hint of the scooped neck of the cotton T-shirt he wore under the shirt.

“Sure is a fine day. I might have done this outside, but it involves some things I’m not sure you’d want your teacher next door to see.” He gave her that stirring alpha look of his. “Or that I’d be okay with him seeing.”

She summoned a smile. “Maybe we come back afterward. Have a Sunday dinner out here. We’ll cook it together.”

“Sounds good.”

He guided her to the back door, her hand secure in his, and paused there to look at her, then out at the backyard. “You got a nice space here. Good place to sit, good sun. I expect some good and bad things have happened at this very spot, over the million years it been here. Do you think that change the good things about it?”

She looked up at him. “It can. But we shouldn’t let it.”

His firm lips brushed hers. “Exactly.”

Once in the house, he took her to her bedroom, though he paused in the doorway to explain what she was about to see.

“I been reading your books about the Tantra stuff,” he said. “I thought maybe this is something that you’d like.”

He put both hands on her shoulders, the calm strength that riveted members of his congregation in his touch, vast and immutable as the ocean itself. While it had a similar effect on her, she also knew what it cost him to find it, and offer it to her. She wasn’t the only one who’d been scarred by what had happened. Her hands overlapped his, holding onto him, as he was holding onto her.

“If it don’t,” he added, “you’ll tell me and I’ll stop. And that will be fine. Mind me?”

“I do.” She caressed him. “Have I mentioned I like how you use that phrase?”

Giving her a lopsided smile, he moved so she could see what he’d done.

He’d laid a mat on the floor and placed four bowls of water around it, marking the quarters. White and red flowers floated in them, the colors of Shiva and Shakti. A bouquet of mixed flowers was at the head of the mat.

“May I undress you?”

At her nod, he slid the orange coat from her shoulders. “This a butterfly’s colors. When you came into the church, that’s what I thought you looked like. A monarch butterfly.”

He hung it up in her closet, then returned to slip the buttons of her blouse and unzip her skirt, leaving her in garters and stockings. He knelt to remove those. As he did, his hands slid over her skin with the soothing pleasure of a hot shower after a long, hard winter day. Coupled with the erotic stimulation that his touch could bring to her.

His decision to pause a moment, to look at her in the garters and underwear, his gaze covering every inch of skin, added to both feelings. Though the erotic part took a decisive lead.

He showed his pleasure for handling her body, touching it, appreciating it, and he made sure each article of clothing was hung up or folded the way she liked. Over the short time he’d known her, he’d internalized so much about her preferences, including her care of her clothes.

Each movement, each act, built the power within the space he’d created.

He’d started the gas logs in the bedroom fireplace, so she wasn’t cold. When he came back to her, he took her hand and dropped to one knee, looking up at her. Fully clothed, while she was naked, and yet, just like the other night, the gesture, his expression, told her he saw her as in charge, in control. His Mistress.

“I was reading aboutnyasa,” he said, pronouncing the word with care. “Honoring the divine and inviting it inside you, so you know what I say is true. I know you a human woman, Veracity. But I also know you a piece of God, what you call the Lord and Lady. I think…I think what happened damaged that connection a bit. Same as it did for me, with the face of God I know. I thought this might help heal that some, for both of us.”

He invited her to lie down, in a knee-weakening way. He rose to lift her in his arms, then squatted down, an impressive show of strength, and placed her on the mat in a supine position. Hetouched her face, then her throat, her chest, her abdomen, her mound.

She trembled. It was a unique feeling, to give her submissive the lead like this, and yet feel how strongly he wasservingher. Taking care of her.

He drew the bouquet closer and knelt beside her. “I gonna place a flower at each of the chakra points, and each flower honors a Goddess.”

“You’ve been reading my Encyclopedia of Goddesses.”

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