Storywitch's "Book of Shadows"

Before I forget, I am supposed to announce the February newsletter winner on Sunday, February 28. Turns out, I am going to be traveling this weekend and may be without email access on Sunday. However, if that happens, I will announce the winner Monday night upon my return or, at the latest, Tuesday AM, March 2. My apologies for the delay, and many thanks for your understanding!

Now, without any ado, Lyssa and Thomas, Part 2. As soon as I can resolve a technical issue, I’ll replace “Tyler Tied Up – All of It” in the right sidebar with “One Night Only – All of It”. That way you’ll have one button to push if you want to read all of it to date, from the beginning. But right now, if you didn’t read Part I, just flip back to the previous post if you don’t mind (smile).

Okay, let me repeat – now, without any MORE ado, Lyssa and Thomas, Part 2. Enjoy!

* * * * *

“You are taking unseemly joy in this, my lady. Like a man given a virgin to defile.”

Her jade eyes gleamed. “My intent is not to defile you, only ensure myself of your loyalty.”

“Practically, I’m not sure how this proves that. Very few men could resist your charms.” In fact, if Jesus had met Lady Lyssa in the desert instead of Satan, Thomas was sure Christian history would have turned out far differently.

Because she was inside his mind, that surprised a chuckle out of her. But her voice softened. “You are an exceedingly devout man, Thomas. If you defined your faith only by brick and mortar and holy texts writ by men, you would have given in to temptation a hundred times by now. I have certainly tested it.” In her gaze he saw the sensual reflection of it, every time she’d bade him bathe her, dress her hair, lie in her bed so she could curl around him, absorb his warm and companionship while she slept. “Your order has shut the door against you. But you have not abandoned your oath to God.”

Until tonight. He couldn’t help the thought, but of course she heard it.

“You have the sense to know better. Don’t become mindlessly pious on me now.” No softness in her voice now, a cue he’d learned to read well. His spine automatically straightened, his senses sharpening. She arched a perfect brow. “Show me the scars I put upon you.”

Two nights ago, he’d taken the Ritual of Binding to a Vampire Queen. She’d used a whip, striped him with it fifty times. She’d soaked the single tail in her own blood so the lashes would leave these permanent scars, despite a secondmark’s advanced healing ability. As a thirdmark, he would never have another scar except this, an intentional branding.

I am sworn to your service. Compelled by absolute loyalty, I safeguard your well-being before my own or any other ties of family or friendship. I swear it by the giving of my blood to you and before all of Divinity, may my life be cursed and my soul be damned if I speak false or ever betray the vow.

The ancient vow he’d said to her echoed in his mind. Had the words required he put her above Divinity, he wasn’t sure he could have done it, because he’d gotten this far believing the vows were not in competition. Until tonight.

That phrase was going to be branded on his mind like those lashes, though Lyssa’s faint tone of scorn had told him she wouldn’t tolerate false guilt. The fact he was going ahead with it said so. Even if she wasn’t in his mind, he expected she’d never let a man hide from the truth of his soul, however base or noble its intent.

She made a noise, reminding him she’d given him a command. He was wearing a coarse linen shirt over workman’s trousers and boots. It was clean and modest, neat, something over which he could easily don a jacket and dress up if she had guests, but which worked well otherwise for his work around the plantation, tending the garden, helping the staff with repairs or reading in the orchard.

Now though, stripping off the shirt was like taking off his skin. It was another mystery, why he felt self conscious at this point. While she was entirely immodest with him in her bath and dressing areas, she had no compunction about invading his privacy the same way. Many times, when he’d been bathing, she’d come to watch him.

She hadn’t cloaked it in a pretense of conversation. She’d sat on a chair in silence and studied his naked male form in detail, making it clear it was her right to do so, to take whatever pleasure she wished in the sight of his hands cupping and lathering his genitals, the stretch of his body, the length of an arm as he rubbed soap over the firm expanse of skin over his rib cage and the indentation of arm pit, the curve of biceps. The first time she’d ever come upon him like that, he’d practically leapt out of the tub like a squealing girl and taken refuge behind a bush.

“You startled me, my lady,” he’d stammered. “What may I do for you?”

“What you are doing. I will watch you, Thomas. Whenever I wish. Come out of there.”

Her jade eyes had stayed fixed up on him, as intently as they were now, until he stepped out from behind the foliage. Lord in Heaven, his stomach had been quaking. There’d been a tremor through his legs, but it wasn’t that reaction which caused him the most mortification. He’d continued bathing even as he became fully erect in front of her. Because of that and a wealth of other reasons, he hadn’t washed his cock and balls. He had absolutely no intention of doing so. Not in front of her. However, not for the first time, she reminded him how clever she was.

“You missed a spot, Thomas. A substantial one. If you will not clean it yourself, you’ll goad me to do it. I won’t suffer an unclean servant.”

“I think you’re the one goading, my lady.”

“Testing. Whether you pass or fail is entirely up to me.”

Now, returning to the present, he considered her. “You’ve watched me bathe before, my lady.” Her gaze touched his chest, the muscled lines of his arms and abdomen. He helped with the manual labor, tending horses, clearing brush and making repairs, not liking to be idle when she didn’t need him, or he wasn’t at prayer or study. Vanity was a sin, but he couldn’t help the way the obvious pleasure in her regard uncurled warmth inside of him, tightening his lower abdomen and hardening his cock even further. She noted that as well, the increased constriction of the pants now revealed to her.

“Yes, I have. In fact, I recall I’ve required you to strip quite a few times when you weren’t expecting it. In my library, to give me the pleasure of looking at you while we were both reading. In the gardens, while I tended the roses. I liked seeing your backside flex as you dug or planted. The way your knees pressed into the dirt, your testicles so heavy and touchable, swinging between your legs.”

He closed his eyes. The fit of the pants was getting decidedly uncomfortable. He was also certain fluid was leaking from his organ, likely staining the front of the thin cloth with a damp kiss. “Why would you do that? Tempt yourself with nakedness but not touch?”

“Because I like the look of you. Pure and perfect, a creation of God. So sexual. You got hard, every time I required it of you. Just as now.”

“And I’ve told you that men cannot help what their cocks do. Only what they do with them.”

“So you have.” A light smile touched her lips, but didn’t reach her eyes. “Thomas, turn.”

He did, and knew she was looking at those fifty raw stripes, the ones that had kept him moving stiffly this past day, though his healing ability had turned them into closed scars. In his world, the healing powers of a secondmark would be considered a miracle. In her world, it was simply part of being a vampire’s servant. When she drew closer, that first touch was like a lightning strike, the way her fingers trailed down his shoulder. He closed his eyes again, and his fists. Throughout the ages, men of God had flogged themselves. For penance. To show their devotion by giving up comfort and immersing themselves in agony. To resist temptation.

Father, forgive me…

Could a man ask for forgiveness before he sinned, knowing that he was going to do it, even if it was wrong? Of course not, not unless he was hypocrite. He was worse than that. A scholar, a thinking man. She was right. In his heart, he didn’t consider this a sin.

She let those fingers drift down his shoulder, rest on the line of scars. The pain during the lashing had been excruciating, such that he’d cried out during the last twenty. Afterwards, he’d lain down naked on the cold stone floor of her small chapel. She hadn’t required that. He’d done it to underscore what he was choosing to do, praying for guidance. He’d fallen asleep that way. When he woke, a blanket had been laid over him by her own hands, and his head was in her lap, her fingers stroking his temples. She’d let him into her mind in that intimate moment, and he saw her considering the dusting of silver in the hair, a reminder he was no boy. He was a man. He’d been taught they were all children of God, but his mind had often wondered why God would want a world full of creatures who never matured and grew up. Even infants could learn enough from their parents to be guided by their wisdom in making their own decisions. Why couldn’t adults do the same from God’s Wisdom?

“Do you really consider lying with a woman a defilement?” She could purr like a cat, stroke a man with her voice, but sometimes that would fall away. He’d hear a trace of vulnerability it seemed only his ears were allowed to detect. Such evidence of her trust was a gift he valued beyond comprehension.

“Not this. Not with you. God help me.”

She laid her cheek between his shoulder blades, her lips grazing the nearest one. He thought her eyes might have closed now, because her hands slipped around his waist, her knuckles curling to trace the muscles in his abdomen, then down, around the hip bone, along the line of hip and upper thigh. At last, she plucked at a crease in the strained fabric of his trousers, like a string in a violin tightened to near snapping. His testicles contracted at the thrum of incidental contact all along his groin.

“I told you I would want to hear it tonight, Thomas. Why you want to be my full servant.”

“You asked me that the very first day, my lady.”

“Yes. You said you felt it would serve the Lord’s purpose. I laughed at you.”

“You did more than that, my lady. You said, ‘That’s a convenient male excuse.’”

“And you hid behind your wit and impertinence. You said, ‘No man would willingly choose to serve such a demanding taskmaster. Only a monk, used to serving God, would be up to the task of serving you as you demand, my lady.”

She straightened, one arm remaining loosely molded to his side, her skin sliding against his as she pushed up on his left arm so she could pass beneath it and turn into his body in front, settling herself so her breasts rested on his chest, her thigh brushing the inside of his. Their mouths were so close. It wasn’t often that he was so directly reminded of how much shorter she was, a petite doll of a woman. One who, standing so close, had to tilt her head to look up into his face. As he had to bow his own to see hers.

Her hair teased his fingers where it fell in curls over her hips. “You amused me, because it was a challenge. You were an enigma. You still are.”

“I doubt that. You are inside my mind, my lady. If you honor me with your final mark, you believe you will have ingress into my very soul.”

“I have seen a squirrel dance across a branch that should snap beneath his weight, fling himself in the air and land without fear on a tree limb fifteen feet away. I know squirrels can do that. It doesn’t make the mystery of how they came to be what they are any less. Your greatest sin is speaking the truth, embracing your own wisdom, believing that it can be inspired by God’s. And that sin has endured, despite a lifetime of self-deprecation, of being nurtured on the idea that man is hopelessly weak, ignorant and misguided. You try to flagellate yourself with it, and yet your skin bears no scars. Not until mine.” Her fingers passed over them again. “Do you want to touch my hair, Thomas?”

“Yes.” He swallowed, but kept his hand hovering in the air where she’d pushed it, the other in a clenched knot at his hip.

She nodded, but didn’t give him permission to do so. Instead, she outlined his collar bone with one long-nailed finger, scraping enough to leave a mark. “That first day, I thought you a man of God led astray by your lust. But your gentleness intrigued me. And when I looked in your eyes, I saw something far more than lust in your gaze. So now, you must tell me the truth, whatever it is. Why would you turn from God to give yourself to me?”

Now her expression sharpened in that way she had of taking a man off guard, all play gone, no games or tricks. Her gaze was as direct and piercing as a monarch’s, but her voice was clear, demanding truth. And though he hadn’t been quite sure how he would say it, it came from him as if summoned. The way she had trained him to react to her commands, over one short year.

“Because I feel I am turning toward Him, not away.” He swallowed, made himself keep holding her gaze. There were times she didn’t allow it, but this was not one of them. She waited, wanting more, because she knew as he did there was more truth to be told. She wouldn’t break the lock between their eyes until she had all of it. All of him.

“The history of my church, of men in my church… Monks, cardinals, priests, popes…we’ve often engaged in earthly matters. Politics, wars, scheming. Acts of deceit, to secure power or privilege for the Church. Such men have stood next to kings, influenced the direction of countries.” He swallowed again. “They believed power was an acceptable weapon to secure faith. And sometimes it was. Though sometimes, to our shame, it wasn’t.”

He only had to look into her slanted jade eyes, over the abundance of black hair, to know they would have burned her alive during those shameful times. Being a vampire would have been the least of it.

She nodded. “I have been alive for nearly nine hundred years, Thomas. Such a time span gives one far less respect for religion, and far more for the Divine.”

Despite the tension of the moment, the conflicting reactions of his body and his heart, he couldn’t help but smile. As beautiful as she was, he sometimes thought it was her clever, irreverent mind that truly bewitched him.

“I do not seek to compare myself to such men,” he continued, “though I pray I am not misguided as some of them have been. But I see what you are trying to do with the Vampire Council. And if I may be so bold, my lady, I will say that perhaps I have seen what others have not about your intentions. You may not consider humans equal, but you do not think that gives you the right to take advantage of the power God has given you. You think like a predator, not a human. You take what you need, and you demand respect, but that is all. You do not kill or subjugate merely for the power.”

Her other hand still rested on his back. But now her fingers dug into one of the scars, enough to have him draw in a breath. “You may be wrong about a part of that,” she murmured. “Sometimes I do subjugate…for the pleasure in the power. But you haven’t finished your explanation, have you?”

This was the more difficult part. He almost had to close his eyes again as her hand came back to his neck, slid down over the pectoral to tease the nipple. Her clothing was thin, and he could feel the press of hers. He wasn’t a virgin. He’d come into the monastery after sowing a few wild oats as a stable boy, so he knew what it was to feel a woman’s arousal through her breasts, the hardening tips a reflection of his own body. It was a heady feeling, one that made him dizzy, but she was holding him, steadying him.

“I think what you are doing will save lives. It will make it possible for two species to live in relative peace. From what I can see, you are alone at the head of a small army, standing against a far more savage one. One that wants no law but blood. I…feel what you are, my lady. I know there is a savagery inside you as well. You have the strength of will to use it for good…but you are also alone. If you will forgive me for the presumption, I can give you what others cannot – a quiet place, a confessional, a place to rest. A place of understanding. A reminder of why you are doing what you are doing.”

Despite the urges of his body, the conflict in his mind, something else took hold of him now. He spoke without flinching, his voice gaining in strength, resonating with the attentive look on her face. “I think I can be a way to hold onto your compassion and mercy. I can help you retain your belief in balance, that it is more important than power for its own sake. It is ambitious for a humble monk, and I have prayed upon it. Scorn my humility if you will, and though it could be my ego, pride or truth that guides my feeling in this, I know I feel it. As surely as I feel my love for God.” He took a breath. “And my love for you.”

At the flicker in her gaze, the press of her lips, he allowed himself to twine a finger in one ebony curl. Not to touch, but to affirm. “In the end, we answer to God. But I know by serving you, I serve him. I’ve made that peace, and this moment is as much about that for me as it is for anything else.”

He stared directly into those jewel-green irises, the darkness inside of them. As her fingers came to rest on his face, near his lips, he spoke again. “Whether I burn for it or find my way to the Heavenly Gates, it is what I have decided. May God have mercy on us both if I’ve chosen wrongly.”

“I think you are burning now,” she said after a long moment. “Your skin is so warm. Just a light gleam of sweat.”

“It’s from the fire. You like it far warmer than most would find comfortable.” She would be comfortable in the bowels of Hell itself. Lucifer would offer her a comfortable chair and a glass of wine, if she ever graced his gates. A creature of all worlds and none.

After another long pause, she spoke. “I accept you as my servant, gentle monk. Tonight I will mark you as I take your body. Give yourself to me generously, this one night. Every ounce of your heart, soul and body. If you do that, you will have done my bidding.”

She smiled then, and the soft pleasure to it dropped the bottom out of his world. It was several moments then before he could speak. When he did, he knew he’d stepped out of the world of books and theology, and left his eloquence there. Now he could only say what he was feeling. This primal place was her world.

“I’m nervous,” he admitted. “Nervous that I will not please you.”

“Now that is shameful pride.” Her eyes glinted and she teased his mouth with her fingers again, such that he couldn’t help himself. His lips parted and he tasted her. In the reflection of her eyes he saw the look of concentrated wonder on his face, amazement at himself. Lifting up on her toes, she brought her lips within a breath of his and spoke in that sensuous whisper she did so well.

“Thomas, I promise you, you are incapable of not pleasing me. Before this night is over, you will kiss my throat, my breasts, between my legs. You will taste every inch of my skin, and I will taste yours. As well as your blood. No more waiting. As much as I have enjoyed our dialogues, until I bid you otherwise, I bid you silent.” Her green eyes grew vibrant and close, taking over everything as the whisper became a breath, taking the air in his lungs.

“Kiss me. Use your body to talk to me.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 9:00 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.