San Francisco Covens: Crucible

by Manuel Tiger

  “I have two women that come in during the start, middle and last day of the week to clean. A gardener on weekends unless it has rained,” he said from the kitchen.

  “Unless it has rained?” I said setting out the napkins.

  “Around here in the spring and summer? Any rain will turn your front lawn into a jungle virtually overnight,” he said. “You wish to tackle it right away least it get away from you.”

  I nodded my head and went to the large floor to ceiling window to look out onto the night beyond. I could hear the cicadas, an owl and what sounded like thunder in the far off distance. “Sounds like it may rain tonight.”

  “Then it looks like I will be calling the gardener this week.”

  I turned around to see him balancing the larger platter with two massive lobsters in one hand and that of the large ceramic bowl of mashed potatoes with the other. There was no way he could make it to the table without dropping either.

  “Here, let me help you before you drop that,” I said hurrying over and taking the bowl from his other hand.

  “Oh, yes, well, thank you.” He looked surprised and placed his now free hand under the platter as we set both down by the plates. “I’m impressed Henry. You even picked the right silverware to use.”

  “My mother hosted enough dinner parties at our house that it was a requirement for me to learn proper placing and arrangement.”

  “Then, shall we begin?” he said gesturing to the table. “Oh, wait, let me get the wine.”

  I waited till he returned and when he did we both sat down to the dinner.

  “And you have always wanted to be a journalist, Henry?”

  “A writer actually, but I learned being a journalist will guarantee an income quicker than being a writer,” I laughed as did he while he refilled my wine glass.

  We had finished with the meal, the remains of the lobsters resembling the losers in some alien battle that had taken place on our plates.

  “Have you written anything?” he asked refilling his glass.

  “As in articles? There was one about the Fourth of July celebrations that was in the Gazette this Wednesday,” I said taking a sip of the wine. “This is very good.”

  “One of the last few bottles from when my family started a vineyard,” he said setting back in his chair. “And I meant stories of your own. Not what you’re required to write for a paper.”

  “I haven’t in a while,” I said. “I do have a few notebooks where I have written down most stories, but I haven’t picked up the pen lately to continue with them.”

  “I would love to read what you have written sometime.”

  “Y-You would?” I said with the wineglass posed at my lips.

  “Yes, of course,” he replied with a sincere smile. “Perhaps some time this weekend.”

  I set the wineglass down and smiled politely. “Daman, you seem to be under the impression that I will be here again.”

  “I am strongly under that impression.”

  I looked down at my plate and poked at my plate. Was he sincere? Or was this whole dinner and politeness toward me due to guilt on his part for what had happened to my messenger bag?

  “Would you like to see the rest of the house?”

  I looked up. “Of course,” I replied nodding my head.

  “Then bring your wineglass,” he said picking up the bottle of wine. “I’ll give you the grand tour.”

  We left the dining room and made our way back down the hallway, noticing what I had missed earlier. There was several oval framed portraits hanging on the wall of a woman in antebellum attire that closely resembled Daman and that of a teenage girl.

  “Ancestors?” I asked. “You bear a striking resemblance to the woman and the girl even.”

  “Ah yes,” he said coming to stand beside me. “My great-great grandmother and her daughter.”

  “Do you have any portraits of your mother and family?”

  “I’m afraid they are stored in the attic at the moment, but if you wish to see them? I can bring them down and have them cleaned up for viewing.”

  “Maybe during another visit,” I said and realized what I said for he smiled. “Maybe,” I quickly added.

  “Here is the music room,” he said opening the door and flipping on an overhead light that brought down a soft golden glow. “My mother would host her dinners in the dining room and afterwards she would invite her guests here to listen to music played by my sister on the pianoforte.” He led the way into the room and I was quickly taken with it.

  It had dark hardwood flooring polished to a shine that caught the overhead lighting from the modern chandelier overhead, making the room appear brighter. There was a large rug that covered the middle of the floor with chairs on one side of the room lined in a row and the other that of a chaise lounge settee done in a matching shade of green which the walls were painted in.

  “The pianoforte is in storage,” he said approaching a piano that resided before French doors that were designed to match the windows of the house. He ran his fingers along the keys of the piano on his way to opening the doors to allow the evening breeze in. “Some evenings I set here and play the piano to only the night.” He turned around fixing me with a gaze. “Do you play?”

  “I took lessons since I was four,” I said.

  “Would you honor me with some of your playing?”

  “I don’t see why not,” I said walking over toward the piano and sitting down as he took my wineglass and placed it, along with his, on a nearby stand. “Let’s see,” I said running my fingers along the keys, finding the right one. “Okay, I think I know which one.”

  “Which is?”

  I looked up with a smile. “Let’s see how good your ears are.” I flexed my fingers and began to move them over the keys, closing my eyes as the first notes drifted upward from the piano. My fingers began to dance along the keys, my hand lifting when necessary as I played for him, for myself and for the night beyond the doors.

  The piano had been my one solace after everything that had occurred for me and I was thankful that Aunt Jemma had one. It was the only thing that she was allowed to inherit from my grandfather. Some evenings I would sit down at that piano after homework and chores and just play, losing myself in the music.

  Now was no different.

  I finished playing and opened my eyes to find Daman simply watching me as he leaned against the piano.

  “That…that was beautiful,” he said. “And I know the tune.”

  “And it is?”

  “Schubert, Andante con moto,” he replied.

  “Seems I haven’t lost my touch at all then,” I said rising from the bench.

  “Could you play another?”

  I paused. “You want to hear another song?”

  “If you don’t mind,” he said.

  “I don’t,” I said as his smile widened. “I heard this one when I attended a wedding so forgive me if it is rather cheesy.”

  “I don’t think anything you could play could be describe as such, Henry. Please, honor me with another playing.”

  I sat down once more and moved my fingers across the keys, again closing my eyes as I brought forth music to fill the room and that of the house and the night outside once more. By the time I was done Daman leaned off the piano and clapped his hands.

  “That was wonderfully done, Henry,” he said. “Now, if you say you can dance? I may have to die on the spot from joy.”

  “Oh?” I said with a grin as I rose from the piano bench and spotted an old Victrola nearby. “You have a Victrola?”

  “Yes, it was my mother’s,” he said walking over to it and opening the lid on it. “As are most things in this room.”

  “She must have loved music quite a lot.”

  “For the same reason that you apparently do.”

  “Same reason?”

  “The look on your face when you were playing? You were not here, but with the music, in a happy place where the world does not intrude. She had the same loo
k when she would play the piano.”

  “How many years has she been gone?”

  “Too long,” he said as he removed a record from the cabinet attached to the Victrola. He pulled the sleeve off slowly and placed the record on the roundtable and that of the needle as he cranked the side. “This is a rather old record, but it contains a song I like.”

  I simply listened for a moment as that of piano music drifted forth slowly and inviting.

  “What dance would you recommend?” he asked after a moment.

  “The Charleston Hustle?” I said then laughed, shaking my head as he grinned. “No, it’s haunting and slow and would be perfect for a waltz.”

  “Are you going to tell me you can waltz?”

  “Lessons since the age of five,” I said walking over to where our wine glasses resided. I took mine up and took a sip before setting it back down. “My mother wanted to insure that at least one of her boys was schooled in all manner of performance.”

  I walked by him and stood in the middle of the room taking stock of it for a moment before moving a few chairs further back against the wall. “This space is large enough, well, this entire room is actually to waltz in,” I said wiping the back of my hand across my mouth. “First, I need to remove my shoes. With as much wine as I had tonight? I don’t know how I’m going to make it home and rather not crash into the furniture here.”

  I removed my shoes and placed them to the side returning back to my position in the middle of the room. “As my dance instructor always drilled into me, a dance, no matter what kind, is telling the story between the two dancers. One is the paper, the other the pen.”

  Daman stepped forward, toeing off his shoes and approached me on bared feet.

  “Then will you allow me to be the pen?” he asked placing his hand to my back lightly while taking my right into his left, drawing us close together.

  “Can you last a long while?” I asked staring into his eyes.

  “For hours,” he replied with a little growl in his tone that sent a shiver down my spine. “Shall we?”

  I couldn’t do anything but nod. I let him lead, moving with him slowly with the space I had created. Never once did he look away from me, nor I from him.

  We flowed like a river together, smoothly, uninterrupted across the floor and I felt myself begin to tremble slightly.

  “Are you scared?” he whispered.

  “I’m always scared,” I replied. “I’ve just learned to hide it.”

  “There’s nothing to be scared of here Henry,” he said. “I’ll never let anything happen to you.”

  “You barely know me, a stranger,” I said as he turned and the room spun around us. “And yet you gave me gifts and invited me here to dinner. Why?”

  “Because I wish to know you better, for you to no longer be a stranger to me,” he said.

  “To know me?”

  “Yes,” he whispered suddenly spinning me away from him, his hand firmly locked around mine as he drew me back to him so that we were chest to chest, my breath coming suddenly out of me from between parted lips. “You caught my attention that night at Rowdy’s if you must know.”

  I laughed softly. “You seemed pretty busy to have noticed anything.”

  “Amusements, nothing more, nothing substantial, nothing worth knowing in the long run.”

  “Am I to be an amusement then?”

  “I desire for you not to be,” he said spinning us again as I was pressed closer. “Will you let me know you?”

  “How do you wish to know me? What do you wish to know about me?”

  “For one?” he said moving us slower, our steps in sync, in rhythm. “How your lips taste.”

  “My lips?”

  “Yes,” he replied in that low rumble of a tone that sent once again shivers and that of a heat flashing throughout my body. “May I?” he asked slowing us further.

  “They taste of wine at the moment,” I said feeling my face heating up. “Nothing more, nothing special, nothing substantial.”

  “May I be the judge of that?”

  “If you wish, then you may,” I said as he slowed us fully.

  His hand came up and rested against my cheek and I found it smooth and unmarred by callouses or roughness of any sort. It was like silk had been placed against my cheek and he drew me closer – not that there was much of a space between us to begin with – and tilted my head up. He lowered his head down and I felt the warmth of his breath against my lips from between his lips, then, inside my mouth as his lips joined to mine.

  A warm, honeyed sweetness and a hint of wine.

  That is how he tasted upon my tongue that greeted his when he slipped it between my parted lips that opened further to him, to let him explore. I groaned into the kiss, feeling a heat rise and spread throughout my body, flaring hotter in the pit of my stomach as my hand upon his chest clutched the fabric of his shirt till a button was freed and my hand slipped within to caress hard muscled flesh that was hot to the touch, like feeling fire made flesh.

  His lips parted from mine and I drew in breath with a gasp, the taste of him filling my mouth.

  “How do I taste?” I whispered looking into his eyes which had darkened to a shade of midnight blue, which burned with the same fire that was now coursing through me from the kiss.

  “Sweeter than heaven, lovelier than wine, a taste I know now I could not have one sampling of, but wish to drink of again and again,” he whispered in a husky tone. “Another? Please?” he asked desperately.

  I offered no protest and surrendered again my mouth to his and that of his exploring tongue. My hand moved up from his chest to wrap my arm loosely around his neck as he secured his arms around my body. Chest to chest we were pressed and I could feel his hardening cock in his slacks as it pressed against my own.

  He moved me backwards and pressed me up against the wall groaning as he did so, only louder than I and I answered with a similar low moan of my own.

  My body arched against his, molding, shaping itself to his as he deepened the kiss till I felt it in a pulsing wave throughout my body.

  “D-Daman,” I whispered breaking the kiss, my lips swollen and wet. I felt dizzy suddenly, for in all my life I never knew a kiss could do such to a person. One reads about it, sees it played out on the movie screen, but to feel it in reality? Who had I been kissing before him to have never made me experience this?

  “I want you,” he said in a breathy sigh. “In every way possible, to taste more of your lips, to taste every inch of your body, to explore it with my hands, my fingers and tongue.”

  I blushed hotly. Such sweet words and not the roughened words of eagerness which I was used to. Words that were often, if not always, born of hormones and lust, and the heat that came with need. Words that barely had such poetic quality to them as his did.

  I looked into his eyes. I would not see him again after this night for surely it was the wine at work on us both. It would be okay, I thought, for I want this to. I wanted to simply feel alive, not dead within as I often did in these engagements of bodies, flesh to flesh. I wanted, just for tonight, to become lost in those arms, to feel his body moving against mine even if it was for but one night. Just let me taste a hint of real pleasure – for I suspected that is what it would be by looking into his eyes – of it not being hurried and over in seconds and parting words that were as hollow, empty, as the passion given into.

  “Then why aren’t you doing such?” I whispered leaning forward and nipping at his bottom lip.

  His face blushed hotter, crimson dots appearing on his cheeks and bringing out the blue of his eyes further. “Not here,” he replied.

  “I’m used to walls, to floors and at times alleyways,” I said pressing closer. “I don’t mind.”

  “But I do and it will not be walls, floors or alleyways for you Henry, but that of my bed and among silk.”

  With those husky spoken words he swept me up into his arm as I cried out in surprise. He moved toward the music room entrance and t
hrough it we walked. He brought his lips once more to mine, my hand cupping his cheek as I was dimly aware of passing through what looked like a reading room and that of a setting room and finally arriving at a bedroom resplendent in blurred hues of blue and dark oak.

  Upon the bed we fell together, hands gripping and tearing open shirts as hands explored the other and his lips eventually left mine to caress the underside of my jaw then down to the column of my neck. His breath painted my flesh in warmth as I felt his slick wet tongue travel over my beating pulse, licking it before he drew it lower, dipping into the hollow of my throat before his lips departed as he leaned up and gazed down at me in the glow of the light from the bedside nightstand that washed my body in its soft golden light.

  I was breathing hard, my body aching and crying out for more of his touches as he took hold of one foot and removed my sock followed by the other. His hands moved down my legs, along the inside of my thighs, squeezing, gripping before he journeyed his hands upward to undo my belt, the button on my slacks and tug the zipper down.

  My slacks were cast to the floor, and save for my shirt I still wore, I was naked before his hungry, heated gaze. He roamed his eyes over my body, drinking in every detail of me, till our eyes met once more. Only then did I realize that I was still wearing my glasses which he then reached out and plucked from my face to place them on the nightstand.

  “Such a beauty you are Henry,” he whispered reaching out, gliding the back of his hand across my chest and stomach then slowly downward to my erected cock which he traced with a single finger from base to head. He moved his finger along the engorged head, gathering up the warm, slick wetness that coated it and brought that finger up to his mouth where it disappeared between his lips for a moment. “Sweet as your lips,” he said upon releasing his finger. “Yes, I desire to taste every inch of you.”

  He reached up and pulled off his shirt, revealing a sculptured chest and hard stomach like flesh made from flawless marble. His threw his shirt aside and brought his hands down to his slacks which were tented, his cock boldly outlined. He undid the button and pulled the zipper down, his cock springing forth now freed from its prison of fabric.