In her haste her foot slipped, skidded, and flew off the edge. Her stomach plummeted, the gasping terror of the fall flooding her.
The hard jerk of her shoulder flashed sharp pain as her grip on the rail yanked her back, her butt slamming against the steps, knocking the breath from her lungs.
“Shit,” she gasped. Not so invincible, after all. “Pay better attention, Christy, would you?”
“Yes.” The golden voice rolled up from below. “Have a care. You’re counted as precious by others.”
She peered down through the stairwell grate but couldn’t make him out. “Master?”
“Who else?”
“Sometimes I’m not sure if all the voices I hear are yours.”
“Understandable.”
“Is it?” She pulled herself up, strained shoulder protesting, and descended the last few spirals. “Do you hear them, too?”
“Of course.”
“Who are they?”
“Come with me and see. They wait to meet you.” A shadow separated itself from the darkness. He removed his hat with a sweep, to bow to her. In the bare light filtering from above, his half mask concealed his face and his white-blond hair gleamed.
A small silence fell between them.
“Have you come to me?”
It felt like the moment the proposal should have been. The question asked as a formality because both hearts already knew the answer.
“Yes.”
“Then come.”
He opened his arms and she hurtled herself into his embrace. She pressed herself to him, drinking in his scent, man and more. The vibrant energy that infused him streamed through her and she wanted him, so deeply she thought she would weep from need. She raised her face to his and his mouth descended on her, feeding on her lips in turn, like a starving creature.
He murmured, deep in his throat, a sound of wordless longing. One strong arm held her tightly against him while a gloved hand splayed over her jaw and cheekbone, as if testing the reality of her presence.
“I want to be with you,” she told him between kisses, “in every way imaginable.”
“You know how it must be. There are rules.”
“Yes.” She remembered offering her throat to the bear—the fierce and extraordinary surrender and ecstasy of the moment. “I’m yours.”
In truth, she always had been. She saw that now.
He drew a length of silk from his pocket, presented it over his upturned palms. “Do you surrender yourself to me?”
Offering herself in sacrifice to the bear. Blood without death. Ecstasy and pain. Her blood surged with her pounding heart, nerves burning bright and arousal flooding her senses.
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
A wave rolled through her. She turned up her face, offering her throat to the beast.
“Yes, Master.”
He bound her wrists together and she watched from a curious remove, already feeling that meditative sense of giving herself over to the forces of the world. Of all the worlds, whatever and wherever they might be. The place she truly existed. Her breath rose and fell with aroused intensity, the full sides of her breasts swelling against her inner arms.
When he blindfolded her, it became another level of yielding.
He led her along by her tied wrists, never faltering, her unfailing guide. Trusting him was no longer a conscious exercise. He would make sure of her footing and her way. She smelled water, and the always cool air of the lower levels grew damp on her cheeks, with a more penetrating chill. She shivered and he paused, then wrapped his cloak around her, cozily warm from his body heat, his musky scent filling her nose.
“Step into the boat.” It was the first time he’d spoken since she’d called him Master.
Boat?
But she followed his lead still, finding her footing in the small boat that rocked on water so still it made no sound. He helped her to sit and she folded her bound hands in her lap, while he tucked the cloak around her. They moved, gliding, and the sound of oars dipping in and out of the water added to the surreal feeling.
“How is there a lake here?”
In answer, he sang a song she’d never heard, of deep waters that ran under the mountains of time. She floated, on the water, on the music, on the surging desire that made her thoughts melt away.
All she really wanted was for him to touch her again.
But she had cast herself into his power as surely as she’d stepped into this boat that carried her across an unknown underground lake. If she struggled against it now, she’d surely drown. No, the key was to ride along, not to fight it.
She felt strangely serene, giving up the need to fight everything.
Calm and free.
The hypnotic dipping of the oars ceased and the boat ground lightly against a dock. The air seemed warmer here, nearly balmy, as if they’d crossed into another world.
Then the Master was beside her, slipping strong arms under her knees and lifting her against his muscular chest. He stepped up onto the dock, his boots thunking on the wood, then set her on her feet.
“Warm enough now?” His breath feathered across her cheek. She nodded, and he pulled the now stultifying cloak from her. Then he removed the blindfold. “Look.”
She gasped at the beauty of it. The dock fed onto a boardwalk and all along it white pillar candles lit the way. They glimmered off the black mirrored lake water and ascended in tiers up stairs and winding walkways that ran through archways of black-leaved trees. The candlelit paths traced a route up a hillside to a series of towering stones set in a circle. Torches ringed them. The place glimmered with magic and clarity.
“Fairyland,” she said on a breath, then felt silly.
The Master wrapped his arms around her and laid a cheek against hers.
“Welcome home.”
ACT 5
A Haunting Duet
1
Christy didn’t question it.
When the Master said “welcome home,” she felt the truth of it. However impossible the reality might be. She belonged here, to him. That was all that mattered anymore.
It helped that she’d moved beyond thought into pure sensation. Now that she’d given herself over to him, she felt consumed by the need to be taken. With her hands bound, she couldn’t seize him and urge him into her aching core.
But she would have.
He untied her hands, as if answering the thought, but held her wrists in a tight grip, ice-blue eyes sparkling in the candlelight.
“I would have stripped you naked at this moment, except for my promise to you. But the rules remain the same—you must submit to me, understand?”
She nodded mutely. She did understand, in a way she hadn’t before. To free the bear was to make him the master. He inclined his head toward one of the dock pilings. They weren’t wood but seemingly carved from polished rock. Obsidian, perhaps. Draped over one was a sheer white gown.
“I shall turn my back while you undress and put that on. It will cover your scars, but little else.”
“Thank you, Master.”
“As you respect my scars, so I respect yours.” His lips feathered a kiss over her forehead, a kind of benediction. Of absolution.
True to his word, he turned his back, staring off over the mirrored black lake. She toed off her sneakers and wriggled out of her clothes. The ridged scars across her abdomen caught the light, silver lines that, strangely, were not that ugly. In a way, they were her own battle scars.
She pulled the gown over her head, the sheer silk falling over her in a cloud. A wide belt of gold fabric gathered it at her waist, holding tight against her midsection. Above it, the bodice parted, falling open in loose sweeps that ran over her shoulders but left her breasts bare. The skirt was really two slim triangles of cloth, gliding along the outsides of her thighs, completely revealing her front and back.
A concession only to her scars. Otherwise, she might as well have been naked. Nervous, she stared at the black-cloaked figur
e waiting for her to finish. It would have been easier, she realized with dawning perception, if he’d stripped her with her hands bound. She could have relinquished this uncertainty. It seemed unthinkable to tell him to turn, to see her. On impulse she knelt on the glassy black surface and waited, hands clasped in her lap.
His gloved hand drifted over her hair, smoothing it with tenderness. “I feel that I’ve waited forever for this,” he mused in a soft voice.
She looked up at his forbidding figure. “Have you?”
“Pain, I think, has no time. Its impact is infinite, but we also have no memory for it. Once it ceases, we forget the intensity. Over time, we lose it entirely.”
“That’s physical pain—not emotional.”
“True. Grief lessens, but never disappears entirely. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
He offered his hand and she rose to her feet. The ice-blue eyes glimmered in the light of the thousands of candles as they traveled over her, his gaze palpable as a touch. Her nipples peaked and her sex dampened. His lips curved in a smile.
Telling her to turn, he once again bound her wrists behind her back and then roped her ankles tightly together. As if the binding of the ropes on her body somehow set her inner self free, her mind drifted once more into that dream state. The world where no thoughts mattered, only feeling.
He swept her up, one arm under her shoulders and the other under her knees, carrying her like a bouquet of roses up the walkway. She let her head fall back, pliant and relaxed, her breasts upthrust, the transparent silk scarves trailing around them. The candlelight felt warm on her eyelids, the air cool on her naked skin. Supported only by the Master’s strong grip, she floated through the air to her fate, yielding to it—and to him—without reservation.
She opened her eyes when he laid her on a polished slab, warm, as if heated from within. They were inside the stone circle she’d seen from below. Around her, obelisks carved of the same rock towered. The Master untied her hands, then bound them again above her head. He also anchored her roped feet to the bottom of the slab, so she was stretched between the two poles, like a sacrifice.
And yet she felt no fear. She felt more centered in herself, more truly certain than perhaps ever before in her life.
The Master ran his gloved hand up her thighs, letting the translucent fabric frame her body. Cupping her breasts, he kissed her taut nipples until she moaned, scissoring her thighs, needing so much more.
Shadows appeared behind him and surprise rippled through her. “Who—?”
“They are the voices. Those who cannot be silenced. Like me, they live on, half in one world and half in another. You know them also. They are here to witness and to celebrate. Yes?”
She nodded, her heart swelling, unnamable emotion dampening her eyes. He drew back and people surrounded her. Her people. She couldn’t see them well, despite the blazing candles all around. They were silhouettes, glimpses of flowing dark hair and soft black eyes. Hands traveled over her skin, touching and caressing with reverence. They fondled her breasts and dipped between her slick thighs, increasing her pleasure. Lips kissed her and tongues lapped, stimulating and teasing her so she squirmed against the ropes that bound her so tightly, that made of her an offering to them.
Unable to resist, she forfeited trying to. She gave herself over to it. It was like being worshipped—overwhelming, humbling, and relentlessly exciting.
With stone blades and loving caresses, the shadowy figures cut away the draping scarves of silk, leaving only the belt of tight cloth at her midriff. The many hands then rubbed oil into her, coating her skin so it gleamed golden. They turned her over, spinning her inside the bonds, and oiled her back, delving even into the cleft of her bottom. She writhed on the glassy surface, wishing the Master would return soon. The thought dissolved in the endlessness of the moment, and it seemed she would be this always, forever anointed and aroused.
She became aware of a drumbeat in the background, a low thrumming that echoed the pulse in her groin, the pounding of her heart in the cage of her ribs.
At last, the hands shifted, freeing her of the slab and carrying her to a pair of standing stones on a raised area capped by a horizontal piece. Lifting her, they hung her by her bound hands to a hook in the top, so she dangled like a decoration beneath.
Or like a priestess presiding over a ritual.
From her vantage, it became clear that many more eyes watched. The hillside thronged thick with dark-haired people, holding candles and observing with hushed reverence. The thick scent of flowers twined with that of hot wax, and more shadowy people brought red roses, in full bloom, piling them at her feet and around the slab before her.
The Master emerged from the crowd below, making his way up the slope, his pained limp showing as they parted for him. Unlike them, he was fully fleshed, crisply real. In his black formal wear, cloak, and mask, hair and shirt like slashes of white burning through the surreal gloom, he seemed ever more some creature out of place and time. She imagined the icy glitter of his eyes showed even from that distance, always locked upon her nearly naked form. Her blood churned in her ears and she swung on her hook with an involuntary convulsion of longing for him.
He seemed more pained than usual, moving more slowly. When he came close enough, she saw why: a silver knife protruded from his midsection, blood seeping out to soak his white shirt with the dark, rusty red of an old injury.
With difficulty, he climbed onto the slab and stretched himself out where she had been. The shadow people swarmed around him, binding him spread-eagled to it. With the stone blades cupped in their hands, they cut away his clothing. He rolled his head to the side, watching her, waiting for her reaction, she knew.
It had been this way for her, before, back when she carelessly let someone see her scars. The instinctive revulsion on their faces, the horrified curiosity and the sympathy that nearly broke you. Sympathy worked like an acid, corroding the locks you kept over the festering, secret wounds.
So she didn’t wince when they cut away the gloves and the ruin of his hands became apparent. The one leg, muscular to the knee, then withered, as if it had been gnawed to the bone by wild dogs. They stripped him naked and vulnerable, carefully cutting around the blade buried in his lean abdomen, revealing the shining white hair and quiescent cock at his groin. They took everything from him. All except for the knife and the mask, leaving that as a stark black reminder, his blue eyes shards of glacier, burning through the holes.
A shadowy figure approached her, covered more in hair than skin. Armbands, thigh bands, and a chest plate of worked gold shone brightly, the glow obscuring its features. It stood before her and held up a length of leather, just under her chin. She frowned, uncertain, and the creature lashed her on the thigh with it, a sting that turned her suspended body in a slight circle. It held up the strap again. The Master watched, his body tense with the strain of his position.
A question then.
Eyes on his, she bent her head and kissed the strap. Agreeing to what he asked of her. The creature smiled, a glitter of fang in the hairy countenance, unfolding the leather strap to a long length. With a whistle through the air, it landed again on her thigh. The drumbeats quickened at her cry of pain, and an echo of it ran through the assembly. She found the Master’s burning gaze, full of love and desire.
The lash fell again on her tender skin, sending her spinning. Again and again, the leather found her sensitive flesh, landing now on her bottom, there on her calf, then across her breasts. The last made her scream and fight the bonds, the crowd yelling with her—in encouragement or anger, she couldn’t tell. But it became a symphony, a concert of agony. The whoosh and slap of the whipping, her cries and the reverberations of her pain from those watching. Sweat ran down her body and melded with the tears pouring from her eyes.
Whenever she could, she locked her gaze with the Master’s, like a ballerina finding her steady point as she pirouettes. Gradually, it seemed his body transformed. Sometimes she saw
the great white bear, pinned to the altar of the black slab. Other times he seemed radiantly masculine, his limbs perfect and untwisted. His cock grew, unfurling with lust until it thrust high and hard against his belly.
Transported by the pain and egged on by the crowd, her own desire exploded, each sting of the lash a spur to drive her up higher and harder. The strap of leather crashed against the closed triangle of her mound and she nearly came from it, panting and pleading with inarticulate noises.
The Master, too, longed for her with his body, straining against the ropes. He pumped his hips with the throbbing of the drums, going faster and faster now, along with the speed of the lash and the ululating wail of her cries for relief.
With a final, sonic boom of a beat, the drums and the crowd and the lash all ceased.
Only her panting sobs broke the silence. Her tenders rushed forward, supporting her and cutting the ropes on her ankles and wrists. They carried her to the slab and set her on it, so she knelt between the Master’s spread legs. His scrotum hung heavy and she, at last free to touch him, cupped it, rolling his heavy balls in her hand. He groaned, almost more of an ursine growl, his glittering gaze fixed on her.
Tears drying on her face, her flesh alive and singing with the extreme stimulation, she leaned over and licked the length of his cock, careful not to bump the knife still piercing his abdomen. The blood welling from the wound ran bright red now, fresh and full of vitality. She took him into her mouth, sucking the broad head, the long length too much for her to take fully. Her vulva cramped with the thought of being stretched by it and she could wait no longer.
Powerful, confident in her sensual hunger, she straddled him, holding his cock and guiding it into her. His gaze remained fixed on hers, filled with a fierce need that took her breath away. She sank down on his shaft, letting it stretch her, enjoying the sensation of opening wide while he filled her. The wild, feral pleasure of their sweat-slicked skin meeting nearly sent her over the edge. She held on, though, knowing there was more.
With him inside her, it seemed they merged. Skin to skin, the physical blended with the metaphysical. The sense of the bear’s fur on her naked breasts as his jaws sank into her throat became the fine white hairs tickling her pussy when his cock thrust into her with a bolt of pleasure so keen she shuddered with it, crying out as she had under the lash.
Master of the Opera Page 20