by M. Raiya
He nodded, seeing that I understood.
“Hal calls himself my brother, and that’s not a bad description of our relationship, but he is here to support me. I am the one on whom the burden lies. And I don’t mind. For the most part, what I do brings me great pleasure. This part of the world speaks to me in ways I feel very comfortable with. I don’t regret my decision to come here, as some of my kind do. Yes, there are others like me, spread all across the world.”
My brain felt like it was getting full, but I knew there was more to come.
Jon seemed to follow my thoughts with no trouble. One of his hands drifted down my back. The other stayed in my hair, making me remember how he had stroked his head through it as a loon. The hand on my back urged me even more firmly against him. As an undercurrent to all he was saying, his jeans were pressing hard against the thinner fabric of my trunks, through which I was straining.
“You’ve read Greek mythology, haven’t you?” Both his hands were now working down my back, one to ease under my shirt to find my skin, the other slipping inside my trunks.
I spread my legs a little to give the fullness of his jeans room to press closer into me. He had to clear his throat a little before he went on, the fingers of his right hand moving ever closer to the place that was aching to be filled by him again. “You know how in Greek mythology, the gods often had their way with humans?”
I raised my chin so I could look up at his face. He shook his head quickly. “No, no, I wasn’t one of them. I’ve always been here in New England. What they did over there got so out of hand that they were recalled, every one of them. I hope you know me well enough to know that I’d never play with humans like that.”
I nodded, pressing as close as I could. The irony wasn’t lost on me that he could play with this human all he wished.
“But it is—how shall I say this?—within our rights to become partners with life on this planet. To better understand and relate to it. We can also bestow a bit of our own power on those whom we wish to reward. We do this by letting them take part in our rituals. Or even observe our rituals.” He paused a second. “You see where I’m going?”
Yeah, I thought. I was getting it in a big way. Now I understood what the lightning and thunder that hadn’t been lightning and thunder had meant. I’d had certain—things—bestowed upon me. Instantly I began to search my mind for how I was different. Other than being passionately in love, I felt pretty normal.
It hit me that it was going to be really hard to go back to my apartment or to the bank after this, though. The pull of this place, this lake, had been growing steadily all day, though I hadn’t recognized it until now. It was all bound up in the pull of him.
“Yes, I can see you’re feeling it, Kyle. You’ve always had the right natural instincts. You just understand them better now.”
I nodded.
“But I still feel really bad that this happened to you with no warning, without your consent. That’s why I thought I should just leave before the bond was fully formed. While you still might have gone back. Because now—you’re mine, Kyle, as wholly as the maidens Zeus took for his own. Unless you really, really want me to let you go? I could, if I had to.”
I answered that by pressing my mouth to his. Did he think I was crazy? For the first time in my life, I felt like something really good was happening. What downtrodden waif hadn’t dreamed of being chosen by a god? Even if accidentally.
Or had it been an accident?
Our kiss was making things start happening inside his jeans that I didn’t think he was going to be able to control much longer. I knew because the same things were happening inside my trunks. I really wanted our clothing to disappear.
“Are you sure? Because you walking away isn’t really going to be an option much longer.” His breathing was coming hard. “You’re shifting all kinds of balances inside me right now that are going to mean I won’t be able to work without you soon.”
I felt a burst of joy. I would be able to help him!
In answer I pulled him in the direction of the tent behind us. For a long, final moment, Jon held out, searching my eyes. Then we broke apart just long enough to get inside and out of our clothes. I lay on my back on the top sleeping bag, and he was over me and moving between my legs in a hot, smooth rush. I thrilled to the sensation.
He groaned. “Now I know what all the fuss in Greece was about. I had no idea how incredible this feels.”
I felt myself flushing, still not sure why someone like him could see anything in me. But I didn’t care as he took hold of my wrists again, this time spreading my arms out to the sides and pinning them there. Until he saw a length of thin rope meant for tying down the fly in a high wind, which I’d just tossed inside to get out of the way.
“Oh, Kyle,” he said, looking from it to me. The burn in his eyes grew brighter.
For just an instant, I was afraid again. But I was afraid of being afraid, I realized, and that was a whole lot different from being afraid of him. I held out my wrists.
Soon I was trussed so tightly I couldn’t even breathe, and I didn’t care. Ankles, knees, my arms bound behind me, a loop around my neck, another around my forehead. He didn’t blindfold me this time, so I could watch him going through my duffle bag until he found what he was looking for.
My jackknife.
He opened the blade and returned to straddle me, so huge and hot that I couldn’t believe he’d actually fit inside me, and I couldn’t believe how badly I wanted him there again. I couldn’t stand not to touch him, and struggling against my bonds felt exquisite.
“We need to do this to make the link complete,” he said. “Normally we would each make the offering, but I think, under the circumstances, it would mean more if I did it.”
I nodded, which made the rope around my neck pull even tighter.
He brought the knife to the center of my chest in one of the few spots left bare by the rope. Then he glanced at my face. “You won’t cry out, will you? Do I need to gag you?”
That struck me as very funny. For the first time in almost as long as I could remember, I laughed aloud. I shook my head. Words to communicate with him would never be necessary. It was part of what I loved so much about him—he had not once given me any indication that it was important to him that I speak. He accepted me as who I was, just as it had never occurred to me to wish he wasn’t what he was.
“All right,” he said. His eyes half closed as he marked me with a single line in the center of my chest. I writhed with the ecstasy of it. Watching him turn the blade on his own chest almost made me faint. I’d read that slipping into a strange, altered reality was sometimes gifted to people in the depths of submission. I’d only dreamed I would ever find myself there. He put me into that place and held me there as he pressed his chest to mine.
The blood of a god transfixed me.
For a long moment, I stopped breathing, stopped thinking. Then, his weight over me, I felt my heart pick up the rhythm of his as my breathing took on the tempo of his. I felt tears streaming down my face as he freed my legs with a single, quick tug on the rope. Then he was slipping inside me again, deeper and deeper, over and over. My arms were still bound, so I couldn’t clench myself to him, but his weight pressed against me, and his mouth found mine. His arms slipped around to hold me, trussed, against him. I was crying when he came inside me, and then, light as a feather falling to the water, I spiraled into ecstasy.
HAL’S STEW had long gone cold before we got back to it, but we didn’t mind. We took more food and the champagne to the rock at the water’s edge and ate there. Actually, I sat nestled between Jon’s legs, leaning against him inside his arms. He fed me from his own bowl since my wrists were still tied, though more loosely now for circulation’s sake. He’d said that maybe he’d untie me in the morning so I could shower—or maybe not, and he’d shower with me. That sounded fine to me. He was talking about building us a cabin on the far side of the pond so we’d have more privacy, which was also fi
ne with me. I’d already sent my boss a text telling him that I was resigning. He hadn’t been happy about it, but since I’d made him many millions, he’d wished me well. I’d sent another text to my landlord, asking him to box up my few belongings and put them in storage for me. That was it, as far as my practically nonexistent life until now required.
I belonged to Jon. I understood what the phrase “beloved of the gods” meant. I wasn’t the first to succumb to a force of nature. But I didn’t think anyone had ever been happier to.
“No,” Jon said after a while in the stillness. It was so late that the only sound was the gentle gurgle of water against the rocks. “It wasn’t a mistake that brought you in the wrong entrance. You’ve taught me a lot about life in the last few hours.”
I stared at him.
“I was as afraid of love as you were,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know that it would make me more, not less.”
I smiled.
He brought our shared glass to my lips. I sipped the sweetness. The fingertips of his other hand lightly touched my neck as I swallowed, as though he was giving his permission for my body to do so. When he lowered the glass, I leaned my head against him and gazed at the faint white band the rope made across my wrists, which rested gently on his left knee. I would never get tired of seeing his bonds on me. To me, they meant safe at last.
Jon set the glass down and straightened, drawing in a deep breath. I felt myself do the same. Then he raised his arms to the sky, to the bright stars, and went motionless. I felt power moving inside him, wild and natural, rising up from the stone below us and from the water before us and from the trees behind us and from the air around us. He offered it up freely.
Then I felt my awareness open even wider as the power began to flow into him, offer accepted and returned a thousandfold. We left the rock and slipped into the water’s coolness, bathed and free, our body supple and weightless. Then we were on the surface, strong wings beating faster and faster. In a magnificent rush that was like sex but different, we were in the air. I was inside him, bound by him, part of him, and I could feel every sensation of the rushing air and see the jeweled reflections of the stars in the dark lake below. Somewhere, in between the earth and the sky, the last shreds of fear fell away.
And when he gave voice to the loud, mysterious call to the night, my voice joined his, and then alone, it answered him.
About the Author
M. RAIYA knew she was a writer since second grade when her teacher kept her in for recess because “Somebody had better teach you about semicolons!” She started her first fantasy trilogy in fifth grade. She majored in writing in college, got her master’s degree in English, published some literary fiction, and fortunately emerged from all that with her imagination unscathed.
She is a native Vermonter and often needs four-wheel drive to reach her home on a dirt road in the mountains. Her other passions are bird-watching, nature photography, and swimming. When she’s not writing, she takes long walks with a big lens and a pair of binoculars, often standing motionless for hours waiting for the right lighting for the perfect shot, or climbing into places not meant to be climbed into for the right angle. Or she might be found in the nearby lake in the summer or a handy swimming pool in the winter, since she will turn into a mermaid if she doesn’t submerge at least once a day.
She is married and has two almost grown daughters, two cats who demand that they lie between her and her computer whenever she dares to sit down, and a day job working with high school kids with special needs who frequently tell her that she is completely crazy, which she’s always known and definitely would not want to change.
Blog: http://mraiya.blogspot.com/
E-mail: [email protected]
Another Healing
By M. Raiya
When James first discovers he can heal, he thinks he has a rare and miraculous gift. But when he learns the price, it feels more like a curse. He falls passionately and completely in love with every person, male or female, he heals. But only until he heals again, when he becomes hotly infatuated with the next person. He doesn’t dare express feelings he knows are only transitory or hold out hope anyone will love him back under those conditions.
One night, he meets Ambient, the victim of a car accident, dying, his neck broken. James heals him despite knowing what is in store. He can’t resist Ambient, and to his amazement, Ambient returns his feelings. Thinking Ambient has broken the curse, James heals the next injured person he comes across. To his joy, and confusion, he does not fall in love anew. If anything, his feelings toward Ambient intensify. Awash with the certainty that somehow he and Ambient are meant for each other, they set out to learn the truth about James’s strange power.
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Copyright
Published by
DREAMSPINNER PRESS
5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Natural Instincts
© 2015 M. Raiya.
Cover Art
© 2015 Brooke Albrecht.
http://brookealbrechtstudio.com
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/.
Digital ISBN: 978-1-63216-374-5
First Edition January 2015
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
About the Author
Copyright