Storywitch's "Book of Shadows"

Well, they tricked me – Thomas and Lyssa have one more segment in store for us, so this is the “next to last” installment. They have one more to go. I was typing madly night before last and realized I’d gotten to 3000 words and had about 3000 more to go, and really needed to break it. Hope that won’t disappoint any of those eagerly awaiting the next vignette involving Jess and Mason (grin), but think you’ll like the direction this one goes.

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“I know you’ve thought of touching me with your mouth, these hands.” She closed her fingers over his right hand, lifted it so they were palm to palm. She widened her slim fingers, watched as he slowly slid his in between the spaces, down those narrow valleys, his gaze wondering at the feel of her skin sliding along his in just that small way.

It made something in her go still and quiet. Lyssa teased him often, and she wouldn’t deny a certain amount of feminine satisfaction in having this night with him. But he was right in his thoughts. She did respect him. She’d never met a man of such singular conviction, who so trusted his intellect to teach him God’s will, rather than faith alone. As such, she didn’t think she’d ever met a man so close to God, and she’d walked with cardinals, shared at least one dinner with a pope. Back in the…fourteenth century, she remembered. He’d chewed with his mouth open, and explained to her, in great detail, the edict he’d issued against the practice of witchcraft.

Thomas was also right about his purpose in her life, but he couldn’t know how accurate his word choice had been. Confessor. There’d been times, in her darkest hours, she’d wanted to go on her knees to someone, have him lay a comforting hand over her hair, give her absolution, tell her that her sins were forgiven as long as she regretted them in her heart. That was not her life, not who she could be. But Thomas felt the truth of it, and those nights when she’d sit by a window, studying the moonlight or the rain, the way the wind moved through the trees and spoke her thoughts to him in a random, quiet way, and he’d listened…that was as close to it as she’d ever come, to any man or God.

He was still studying their hands, the way they fit together, and it both amused and moved her to see how he was lingering over it. Not delaying, but simply marveling at what he’d never experienced. She spread the fingers of her other hand out on his shoulder, then slid her knuckles along his throat, moving up to his face. He often wore the wire-rimmed glasses. The second mark hadn’t improved his eyesight, oddly, or perhaps he did so much reading he just found the glasses a comfort and support. She liked watching him read in them, the way they accentuated his serious gray eyes, the set of his mouth. At first, his hair had been shaved short, but in his travels with her, she’d required him to grow it out, so he blended more with the styles of other servants. It was best not to attract too much attention, and a monk who traveled in close attendance on a single woman of her looks and bearing would attract attention. A servant, however, would not attract as much.

She unhooked the wire fitting over one ear, and then freed her other hand to do the same with the other side, removing the glasses and setting them to the side. He had beautiful gray eyes, long-lashed and intent, the kind of eyes that any woman with a heart could see had strength to them, and courage.

She ran a finger over his lips, enjoying the feel of them. He had such a pleasurable mouth. How would he pleasure her with it? “You know, you’ve never thought about it, not when I was listening,” she murmured. “I assume I am not, in fact, deflowering a virgin.”

He shook his head. And though he obeyed her directive not to speak, she saw the image in his mind. When he’d worked as a stable lad, an orphan taken in by the monastery, those gray eyes and lean young body had caught the attention of a village maid. One with an ample…very ample—bosom.

A smile curved her lips at his rueful look. But she saw in his mind, after that, there’d been nothing. Once he’d taken his vow, he’d not given himself any form of release, even by his hand.

“Then perhaps we should deal with that.” She cocked her head at his startled expression. “I can order you to spill your seed first, then I’ll spend the night building you back so you can then spill it inside of me.”

He held her gaze. I beg of you, my lady. Let me be inside you when that happens. Make me hold out until then. Make my torment your pleasure.

He surprised her, the ferocity of that desire, welling up inside of him. He’d watched her tease and torment others, making them wait, and wait, and wait. He’d seen how it heightened her pleasure. That knowledge was in his gaze now, and she felt that tightening around her heart again. Her monk who saw so much, understood so much, and even this, which in so many essential ways revolved around him, he’d turned back to her…as a gift.

“Very well,” she said, keeping her voice steady with an effort. “But I may make you do the other later. Afterward. This one night, you will give yourself to all the pleasures I demand as your Mistress. Do you understand? You will not question or refuse me. So I will know that forever forward, you can do what I need of you, as my thirdmark.

When he nodded, she gave him an arch look, changing the tone. “And now, I think I told you to kiss me. To use your body, not your voice or your mind, to speak to me.”

But my lady…you’ve told me often that a man has to use both his mind and body to please you. That rueful look became his quiet smile, but before she could seek a suitable reprimand for impertinence, he lifted both hands to her face, that intent expression on his face again as he cupped her jaw and then settled his fingers along her jaw, her cheeks and temple, framing her face. He passed both thumbs over her lips, and when they parted, he traced the fangs, holding a finger under one until she pressed down gently, drew several drops of blood that fell on her tongue. His eyes registered those bright red drops, and then he dipped his head. She kept her lips parted, still, as he touched his to her mouth, and his tongue slid over hers, over that blood, sharing it between them, sending heat through her. She held back her reactive desire, though, too titillated by what her monk was doing, how he would try to please her.

His lips settled fully over hers then, sealing in the heat, and his tongue was stroking along hers, slow, thoughtful and teasing caresses as his arms slid around her body. Thomas was lean and tall, but not overly so. Though she’d curled around him in bed she’d never had the experience of him holding her like this. She knew he was strong, but it was different to feel it, to feel that lean, long-limbed frame pressing in against the length of hers, his arms closing over her body, bringing her flush to him, his palms flattening on her back, one traveling upward, under her hair to find her nape and investigate the fragile neck there, the other following the valley of her spine to the upper curve of her backside. He paused there, a finger stroking along the tailbone to the indentation at the top of her buttocks.

His touch was so deliberate, and yet so meticulous, exploring every detail of each inch of skin he covered, such that her reaction accelerated beyond the scope of his hands. The skin tingled all along her buttocks, down the backs of her thighs, and sent a hard pulse through the tender skin in between, anticipating. She wanted his hands cupping her buttocks, wanted him to take a firm grip, kiss her harder, but at the same time, she wanted him to continue doing what he was doing because it was raising her core desire, a flame that would build into a fire hot enough to melt the center of the earth.

His fingers at her neck tangled in her hair, and slowly he tugged, tilting her head back. She gripped his arms, nails digging in as he left her mouth to trace her jaw line, then reached her throat to trace the pounding artery there with his tongue, a deceptively leisure descent, tasting and suckling her even as he painted her with that heated, moist and far too clever muscle.

She pressed her lower body closer, felt his cock had thickened under the workman’s pants. Letting her hand glide up his bare back, she dragged her nails along that flesh. His cock leaped at the stimulus of pain. He had that in him, too. Most of the men who’d served her had possessed that secret craving. There was a release in pain, she knew, a sense of sacrifice that appealed to that deep thing in men. They didn’t often know how to show a woman…or their God…their love. Not with words, but they could bleed for them.

He dropped to one knee now, so her hands glided up to his neck, rested on his shoulders as he parted the robe in the front. The silk gave way easily, though he didn’t yet touch the sash that tied it. She watched his face as he drew the two sides back to reveal the nipples drawn up to tight points inside the mauve circles of areola. His lips were already wet from kissing her. Now they pressed together, and she could feel the saliva gathering in his mouth, his desire to taste her. She wanted that, too.

Suckle me, Thomas. I need that clever mouth of yours there. It will make my cunt wetter for you. Can you smell my arousal now?

He nodded, his eyes on those two weighted curves displayed before him.

“What does it smell like?” she murmured.

“Heaven’s gate,” he said. A response straight from his heart, one that he spoke without forethought. Nor did he castigate himself or reflect. Instead he closed that distance, his lashes lowering as he put his mouth over the right one and drew her in deep.

Lyssa pulled in a breath, a small moan escaping her throat. That got his attention his gaze flickering up to her briefly in amazement. She tugged at his hair, goading him onward, and he returned his attention to his task, driving up her arousal as he made small succulent sounds at his feast, savoring the taste of her flesh, the way the nipple could be squeezed between his lips, lashed by his tongue, then teased and tickled by the tip of it until she was moving restlessly against his abdomen, pressing her pubic mound insistently against him, a nascent rhythm intimating what was to come.

But when he might have moved, she held him there, made him lave her nipple until it was achingly hard in his mouth, until her hand was flexing with bruising strength on his shoulder. She moved him to attend the other as he got harder and harder in response to her arousal. The smell of it was fascinating his mind as well as his senses, such that the hand not occupied dropped to her knee. He found his way through the overlap of her silk robe, already loosened from what he was doing above. Though he stayed at her knee, his fingertips whispered up, a bare inch, and met the tiny trickle of fluid marking her flesh, its sensual track down her flesh. He pressed his finger upon it, marking it there as the slippery liquid pooled in that tiny indentation. Then he was moving upward, following it further even as his other hand continued to hold her breast firmly for the reverent attention of his mouth.

Lyssa had been attended by vampires and humans alike who had great skill and experience as lovers. Humans who’d known quite well the pleasures of submitting to her Dominance, who knew how to goad her desire for interweaving unbearable pleasure with edgy levels of pain. Dominant vampires who warred with her in the bedroom, a delicate dance of power and control that was a pleasure all its own. But this…this monk, who’d not touched a woman since a village maid with ample bosom, was making them pale in comparison. He did everything with such intensity and focus, it superseded even the wonder of her taking a virgin, whether a virgin to sex or a virgin to the type of sex she liked. Because though his sexual experience was limited, his experience of her was vast. He watched, listened, heard…he knew what her body felt, what her mind craved. In his celibate attentiveness he’d learned far more of her than men who’d shared her bed for whole seasons until she tired of them or their paths diverged. And it was so obvious, it could not help but drive her lust even higher.

Now, since she would not let him rise, he descended, the heat of his mouth moving down her upper abdomen. He slipped the tie of the robe, and she took the sash in both hands, sliding it free as he spread the garment fully open. Sitting back on his heels, he took a weighted moment to let his attention move from her milk white throat, all the way down the perfect cream and firmness of her body, the pale, naked petals of her sex, then back to her breasts, aching and swollen from his attention, marked with the damp impression of his mouth.

She didn’t expect it, but when she felt it, she couldn’t deny it. She was shaking, a tiny tremor in her belly that quivered through her legs. She didn’t know if he noticed or not, because he was shaking as well, nerves and pleasure warring in him. But as he lifted his gray eyes to her face, pausing over the sash wrapped over her hands, he lifted his own to her, crossing his wrists and giving her what she wanted. An offer of surrender.

She wasn’t sure if God had created him, or the Devil, because she’d never seen such temptation in one gesture. In a flash, she wondered what would happen if she refused to honor his vow after the sun rose. If she forever made him serve her this way, a monk devoted to her body, soul and mind in truth, not just the soul and mind. Thomas, laid out in her bed, night after night, marked by her fangs, her whip, spread out for her pleasure in whatever way she’d restrain him…

And he’d then be fair game for any other vampire whose company she shared. It was a code among them. Their gatherings always required it. The only thing that had spared him was her position among them…and the celibacy she openly honored. Losing that would destroy him. Whatever lay between them, whatever made this night possible…it was only meant for her, and only for tonight. A gift that could be destroyed by her greed.

Firming her lips, and her resolve, narrowing the intensity of her pleasure down to these few hours, she held his gaze, let him know she wanted him to keep holding it as she wound the sash over his wrists. She made the wrap snug, then pulled his arms out before him, watching the fold of his shoulders, the flex of the muscles.

Leaving her robe on but open, she closed her hand on the joining point between his wrists, the satiny fabric soft beneath her grip. Stepping to the side, now she took his arms up, up, until the elbows were alongside his skull and his arms formed a temple over his head. Then she moved around him and tugged, giving him time to shift back to his heels before taking him down flat on the floor, stretching him out so his knuckles rested on the floor above him. She tied the sash’s slack to the heavy foot of the bed behind him, keeping him fast. Then she knelt beside him, studying the body of the man laid out before her. All hers.

All yours. Just as you commanded, my lady.

She lifted her gaze to his. Forever.

Forever. He nodded.

Baring her fangs, she bent forward to give him that final mark.

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