by Joey W. Hill
Down, down, under the unwavering supervision of his gaze. She found she was already on the way to complying with his directive.
“Show me how wet you are already.”
When she lifted her damp fingertips, he guided them to his mouth, holding her wrist. He captured the other one, and drew her forward, holding her arms out to either side, her body canted over his as he nuzzled her breasts, idly licked a nipple, let her feel the edge of his teeth.
“Oh…” Her breath shuddered out, making her breasts quiver, this time with no clothing to impede his view. Easing her back, he bounced his hips beneath her so she felt like she was on a trotting horse. Which increased the wobbling motion of her bosom considerably. The mischievous look in his eyes, his unapologetic fascination with the movement, made her laugh in the midst of her arousal.
He grinned, but then his lips firmed, his eyes firing with a different light. “Stay still except for how I move you,” he ordered.
Drawing her forward, he put his mouth to work on her breasts and nipples once more. He kept teasing her as she remained motionless, obeying his command until her need became too much to contain. She was making whimpering pleas in her throat, her eyes closed and body shuddering. Her sex was dampening his jeans and abdomen beneath her, her nipples aching points.
“I want inside you. Right now. Right here.” Sliding his hand around to cup her buttock, he turned them in one lithe, strong movement, putting her beneath him. He opened his jeans and gripped himself, fitting the head of his cock in between the slick lips of her cunt. He stopped just inside that gateway, gaze fastened on her face, which she knew was taut with need.
“Do you want me inside you, Medusa?”
She nodded vehemently, fingers curling into his shirt. She couldn’t explain why, but it increased her arousal all the more, him almost clothed and her completely naked, out here in the open, at his command.
As he eased in, inch by inch, her lips parted, tongue touching her dry mouth. His gaze fastened on it, a moment before he descended to cover it with his and thrust fully into her in the same move.
She whimpered, holding on as he pumped slow and sweet into her, every stroke like a lightning flash in her mind. Her muscles quivered, perspiration dewed on her skin, and she wanted more. She moved with him, giving as much pleasure as she was being given. She knew, because he whispered it to her.
“You’re so generous, sweetheart. You’re a gift. You’ve always been a gift.”
Every time he spoke like that about her, he poured more healing balm on those deep wounds she’d never thought could be healed, until he’d come to her island. His hips slid in a sweet friction against her tender inner thighs, his cock so full inside her, his size stretching her in a way that felt good and intimidating at once. It made her tremble harder, being at his mercy, so vulnerable, yet cradled in his arms as if he’d protect her from the world.
“Ah…” The orgasm was rising, and he saw it in her face.
“Want to come for me?”
“Please…if you will.”
“I want to see you go first.” He punctuated that with several more well-timed thrusts, and she came apart, crying out, nails digging in and likely raking over those first talon marks she’d left on him.
He followed her over, pressing his face into her throat as he finished, his grunts of completion adding to her own aftershocks. They lay quietly for a few moments, breathing in rhythm with one another. She had her face against his hair, was lining small kisses along his temple as the arms she had crossed over his back allowed her to play in his hair with unsteady fingers.
“I’m happy,” she said quietly. “You’ve given me that. Thank you.”
“That’s the gift you gave me,” he corrected her.
They gave themselves a lovely quarter hour doze under a sunny sky with the breeze riffling over their perspiration-dampened skin. Then he drew her to her feet and helped her don her clothing with a tenderness that took away words. She hadn’t felt any self-consciousness, doing what they were doing where the dragons could see or someone could stumble across them, but this natural area of the Circus seemed to be designed for those needing private time together. Wrapping his arms around her, John Pierce kissed the crown of her head and spoke against it.
“I’m glad you’re here with me. What you said earlier to me in front of the others…you didn’t have to say that for me to be whatever you need me to be, but it put an arrow right through my heart, in the right way.”
“I meant it. I am new to love, John Pierce, but I cannot imagine that it is not what I am feeling.”
“Then I’ll consider it a blessing, no matter how long it lasts,” he said.
She bit her lip. They’d said what they needed to say on that. But she did wonder again, when she was sure, how she would convince him of it. Did love have to have a prescribed amount of time to become real?
And was he that accepting of her making a different choice? For all his openness, she’d seen glimpses of a maelstrom of emotions in John Pierce, a storm he seemed to keep firmly locked down when he thought she needed that. She wanted to access those emotions. She wanted his passion, his lack of control, as much as she wanted the steady male that she did believe would be at her back whenever he needed her. That would honor her decision no matter what it was…while fighting to have it go his way.
She pursed her lips. Perhaps she was being contradictory and contrary, but wasn’t part of making choices testing the ground for those choices and seeing what consequences or responses came of it?
He’d packed up their picnic and they were rising to continue their journey to Lianthe’s meadow. She laid a hand on his arm. “Do you think it would be a good idea for me to engage with other males here?”
He was about to shoulder the tote holding the remains of their lunch, but at that, he stopped, straightened, and leveled a cool stare on her. “Say again?”
She quelled a flutter of nervousness and shifted her gaze to his throat. “According to my discussions with Clara, there are many men of your quality here… Dominant? And she says sometimes, in their leisure time, they like to engage in…sessions. Play parties? Here, at the Circus. Perhaps that is a good way to test my feelings, their uniqueness. You have said that you will be at my back always, John Pierce, but I have no wish to take advantage of your care and loyalty.”
He closed the distance between them in one step. It was unsettling, how he didn’t touch her, though there was barely a breath between them. After several charged moments, he spoke. “I’ve told you before,” he said, low. “When you talk to me about things like this, I expect you to look me in the eye.”
She lifted her lashes and swallowed an incoherent sound in her throat, evidence of a spike of reaction between arousal and hard need. She couldn’t explain what she saw in his expression, but she knew everything in her responded to it.
“You want to experiment, snake-girl? Call someone else Master at the same time you’re calling me that? You think that’s what I was giving you permission to do?”
“No,” she confessed, pulse beating hard in her throat. “But I needed to know…or I wanted you to know, this decision lies…between you and me. And…in my world, men were not often…exclusive, even after marriage.”
“In my world, they are. Or damn well should be. And not just after marriage. The second they commit.”
“Clara… She told me about your tattoo, about having it done here. I asked her if you were with any women…here. She would not answer; I think because she was worried about how I might feel.”
“She also maybe didn’t answer for the same reason I’m trying to give you breathing room. No one, Medusa. That was the point of having the tattoo redone. Soon as I knew you were real, not in my fucking head, and that Maddock had a way, a possibility, a slim chance of bringing me to you, there wasn’t going to be anyone else. Not in session or out.”
His gaze narrowed. “What is this, anyway?”
She lifted her chin, her fingers curli
ng. “In your world, people are together until they are not. But when they are together, they are trying to be together, not continually suggesting they have…a way out. You have made me amply aware of my choices, John Pierce. If you honor my strength, my ability to make them, I need you to…”
She couldn’t finish it, didn’t know how, but at an easing of his jaw, the words, still stuck in her throat, fortunately found a voice from his.
“To stop being so damn courteous about it.”
“Yes.” She attempted a smile, though her knees were still quivering. And he saw it, his attention like a honed blade.
“Scared you a little bit there? In the right kind of way?” Now he touched her, framing her jaw with one large hand and drawing her up to her toes with that grip. “All right then. Here’s the final word. You make your own choices, but be damn sure of them if they’re not me. Because I’m not going to let you go unless I’m a hundred and twenty percent convinced.”
“Fair enough,” she said, echoing a phrase she’d heard Gundar say.
“Christ,” John muttered, and crushed his mouth to hers. He drew her against him, so she felt the full heat and weight of his body, the demand of it. It was as if he hadn’t just taken her.
She’d wanted to access the emotions behind the wall, and she had, in a way that she wouldn’t soon forget. The day was suddenly all the brighter for it.
He eased back, giving her a look of grudging amusement as if he’d figured that out. “Pretty pleased with yourself, aren’t you?”
“And a little shaky.”
“Good. Evens the score.” He brushed back her hair, and gave Earthson a little playful flick. “Okay, enough of this shit. Want to go see Rainbow Pony?”
At her curious look, he chuckled, and took her hand. “I’ll explain on the way. Probably best you not tell Lianthe I called her that.”
They continued onward. As they walked, they transitioned to other, less intense topics. Thanks to what they had resolved, her concerns about her and John didn’t interfere with her building anticipation as they reached the meadow.
She’d worried she’d feel an involuntary fear when seeing Lianthe, remembering what had happened the last time their eyes had met. But as the unicorn trotted out of the forest toward them, she felt nothing of the kind.
Instead, she stepped back into the dream she’d had as a girl, and those youthful impulses took over. She ran across the field, and the unicorn whinnied and trotted toward her, head bobbing with equine pleasure. When she reached her, Medusa felt a sudden shyness that kept her from touching the unicorn, but she curtsied to her, dropping to one knee. The shadow of the unicorn moved over her and Medusa closed her eyes as the velvety nose nuzzled her. Inhaling the unicorn’s scent, it was as she’d remembered it from her dreams. Tears came, laced with regret and happiness, creating a moment she knew was all the more potent for containing both emotions.
As she looked up into Lianthe’s beautiful eyes, she rose and received the honor of that velvet nose being pushed into her palm. Far more curious than overwhelmed, the snakes all slithered forward for a closer look.
She was about to call them back, but was surprised the unicorn tolerated them with no anxiety. Despite what Rand had said about wolves, Lianthe didn’t seem to have the equine species’ natural fear of snakes. She did snap at Tunneltrap when he became too enthusiastic about trying to twine in her mane and forelock, but it was the admonishment of an older matron, not a true attempt to bisect him, though he retreated hastily at the warning.
“I am sorry to have caused you distress,” Medusa said to the unicorn. “I do not blame you for what happened. It ended up being a very nice dream in the end. I’m glad you came to me. I’m glad I had the kind of life then that you could use to nourish yourself.”
Lianthe bowed her leg, a formal courtesy, and Medusa curtsied again in return. Then, because something about Lianthe seemed to encourage it, Medusa finally did what she’d done so often in her dreams. She put her arms around the unicorn’s neck and hugged her tight, pressing her face into the muscled flesh. “Thank you,” she whispered.
A living miracle. She’d been given a living miracle. How many times had she recalled Lianthe, something beautiful and unspoiled, while trying to endure the aftermath of Ukrit? Though she’d no longer visited Medusa’s dreams, Lianthe had helped her more than she knew.
She thought Lianthe might have received those thoughts through the emotions Medusa was projecting, because the creature snorted and rubbed her face against Medusa’s. When she looked in the unicorn’s eyes again, she thought she’d also successfully removed any worries she’d had about causing Medusa unnecessary pain.
John approached, apple in hand. Lianthe took the gift with dignity but enjoyed the treat with a crunching eagerness that had Medusa and John exchanging a secret grin.
They stayed for a while, the two of them sitting on the bank of the lake while the unicorn drank and then grazed. When she laid down on her side, the look in her eyes beckoned Medusa, and she propped herself in a seated position against Lianthe’s broad back, just as she’d done so often in her dreams, reading a book, or telling her about her girlhood dreams for a family, no matter that they’d had to be set aside when her father gave her to the temple. She’d been willing to serve Athena and transfer that love to her, maybe because she hadn’t been old enough yet to feel bittersweet regret for what might have been.
John remained by the lakeside, respecting their private time together, but as she looked toward him, she realized she had reached the age she did want to reach for her own dreams. And she had.
It was only when they were walking back toward the Circus camp that Medusa thought about what awaited her there. And when she did, she was glad she’d had that moment with Lianthe, the resolution with John, and his body joined with hers at lunch. She’d told Maddock she would submit to his idea of how to recall the details of the ritual her sisters had performed for her, but the closer the time was coming to do it, the more dread she felt.
She wanted to help, but as John had said, it had occurred within hours of her rape. She’d felt so filthy and beaten, so defeated in every way. It was impossible not to recall that when recalling the ritual details.
And…there was something…she flashed on Doris, an older priestess who’d told her—in a broken voice—to take what she needed from their stores before Medusa fled the temple. She heard the weeping of the other priestesses, and her throat got tight. It was too painful. She couldn’t go back to that memory.
But she was stronger now, and it was in the past. That was what she told herself. By the time they reached the camp, though, she was gripping John’s fingers more tightly. She tried to focus on the way the connection point swung between their bodies, but her calm demeanor drained away, becoming a thin veneer on her other feelings. She should have known John, intuitive as ever, wouldn’t overlook her mood change.
Abruptly, he stopped and faced her. “You’re not doing it,” he said. “I’m going to tell Maddock to forget it.”
“But he said it would help him understand how the spell works, how to remove it.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’s just curious.”
“I want to be helpful,” she protested.
“Yeah, you are helpful. But I can say how helpful you’ll be.”
“Oh?” She mulled that over. “I see. In Athenian society, only a male family member could dictate what a woman did or did not do. A husband, or a blood relative.”
He scowled. “That’s not what I’m doing. I’m not trying to be one of those bastards who treated you like property or a second class citizen.”
Her brow creased. “I am not sure what that means. Women were not citizens in my world. That was reserved to men, including male slaves who earned their freedom.”
He sighed, taking both her hands. “I want to have the right to tell you no, because I don’t want you to suffer through any more of that shit, but the truth is I don’t have that right. No one does.”
“Unless my service and submission is freely given,” she said, recalling their earlier discussion. She tilted her head, giving him a speculative look. “Are you seeking my submission to your will in this, John Pierce?”
“And if I was?” An indefinable note entered his voice. She realized there was a line here. On this side of it was the way he used his Dominance to arouse her and drive their pleasure. If they stepped across, they were going to a deeper level with it. A level that had his gaze sharpening and sent a little quiver through her nerves.
“I have met no one in my life whom I trust as much with my wellbeing,” she said. “If you tell me you forbid me to do this, I will honor you with my obedience.”
“You have a way with words that can get me stirred up in a heartbeat,” he said after a pregnant silence. She saw the truth of it in the kindled heat in his eyes. But then he sighed, a rueful expression crossing his face.
“Those words tempt me in all sorts of ways, but I know this is one decision I can’t make, no matter what I want. You’re right. This has to do with your future and determining your own path. I just wanted you to know—in a sort of overbearing way—if you decide you don’t want to do it, I won’t let him pressure you into it.”
She gave him a tiny smile. “’Sort of’ overbearing? It sounded completely so to me.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a direct person.” He made a grumbling noise and took her hand. “C’mon. Let’s get this over with.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Just focus on this.” Maddock laid a crystal on the table before her. They were at one of the picnic tables they’d pulled under a tree some distance away from the noises of the camp. John thought being outside might help her, and it did. She’d turned to face Maddock, straddling the bench, and John had done the same behind her, his thighs on the outside of her hips, his hands resting on them. That helped, too.
“I need you to recall specifics of how you felt,” Maddock instructed. “Keep looking at the crystal. Pick one or two things. What did the air in the ritual chamber smell like? Don’t say it aloud. Just think about it.”