by Joey W. Hill
over her skin. He turned over her hand, and did the same to her palm.
Sarah stared at him, afraid to look at the other couples and let them see the need in her face that the simple caress evoked.
“You see her response?” He nodded, squeezing her hand and giving her a reassuring smile, though Sarah felt far from reassured. “A woman is a fire you build, and the heat, once ignited in this fashion, can last as long as you both could possiblywant. Once you know this lesson, and know it well, you can keep her emberssmoldering so the tinder strikes up to a blaze, igniting her again and again.”
He looked around at his audience, and his attention stopped briefly on the doctor. “Most women need a great deal of preparation to relax fully and get the most out of sex. Most men as well. Just because a man can get it up and perform in zero to sixty secondsdoesn’t mean that he derives the maximum pleasure by doing it that way. Sex drugs have very little to do with physical handicap and everything to do with artificiallystimulating the body to get you to the starting gate faster, because we perceive we don't have time to ‘get ready’ anymore. We choke our food down, rush sex, pump ourselves up with drugs to stave off everything from depression to natural anxiety and wonder
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why we're fat, unhappy, not satisfied with the sex we're getting and fighting all the time with our spouses.”
At the uncomfortable glances exchanged, he nodded. “Yes, good sex requires us to take a hard look at our lives and how we're living them. That's why you make a sacred
space.
“Now, Sarah is a perfect example.” He motioned to her in her reclining pose. “As a police officer, Sarah needs even more relaxation time than most women, and most women need a lot.” Chuckles. “You saw how she responded to that hand kiss. Most men will now make a mistake. She's softening. She's got that fluttery look.” He spread his hands wide and bared his teeth. “Time to move in with both hands in grope position and your tongue out to devour her tonsils.”
Sarah snorted with laughter, surprising herself. Justin paused to let the amused response of the others settle down as well, then dropped his hands and continued in a more serious tone. “She’ll likely go along, but she'll be struggling to catch up, because you've rushed her. All you did with that hand kiss was touch a match to the wood. You’ve got to take the time to fan the flame, rather than shoving your skillet onto it and expecting to get something cooking right off.”
He was astounding. As he continued with his suggestions, Sarah listened with half an ear, the other half of her simply listening to the sound of his voice and absorbing all the nuances of his presence close to her. He had the mesmerizing quality of a priest. That ability to soothe the psyche with the pitch of his voice, and his body language. A low volume sexuality enhanced the quality, gave him the credibility to take them all along and not worry about how it would look to a cynical outside world.
He turned his gaze back to her and Sarah’s smile died at the potency of that expression. She was enjoying this. Enjoying being with him. Aching to be with him.
She was in trouble.
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Chapter 9
“I don't get it,” she said. “You could be a CEO. You could be another Tony Robbins.
Hell, you could be anything. Why run a little shop in the middle of nowhere?”
“You don't think what we did here tonight made a difference in their lives? An
important difference?”
She sat cross-legged in her robe, watching him move around the room to douse candles and incense. She was more relaxed than she had thought possible, and intensely aware of him. Sarah enjoyed watching the way he moved, using a silver douser to put out each candle, checking the incense to be sure it had burned out fully. He had loosed his hair after the last person left, so for the first time she saw how it framed his handsome face, softening the gauntness, enhancing the curved lips and the dark eyes. His forearms revealed by the short sleeves of the black shirt looked strong and pleasing with their light mat of fine brown hairs. She could never get enough of looking at his long, capable hands.
Definitely in trouble.
“So you run this place because you believe in helping people to connect, and sex is a great avenue to it.”
“You sound so incredulous.” He turned off the overhead and left three candles lit, so they were wrapped in exotic sandalwood scent and candlelight. He came to join her, dropping to the cushions and lying on his side, one hand propped under his head as if he had all night to spend with her, though she expected he was as tired as she was. More, because he wasn’t accustomed to starting his day with corpses. He closed his hand on her bare foot, warming her chilled toes with a gentle kneading.
“I’m just trying to understand.”
“Okay,” he inclined his head, “you’ve got part of it. The other part has even wider spiritual implications to me. Like what you saw last night in the forest. Sex done by a loving couple brings together the energies of the Lord and Lady for positive good, whether the couple is cognizant of the release of that energy or not.”
She pursed her lips, considering. “I guess I can see that.”
He arched a brow. “You don’t seem uncomfortable with alternative faith topics, despite your Southern Baptist upbringing.”
“Oh.” she gave him a quick grin. “That’s because I’ve got two influences. My parents were the Southern Baptists. My grandmother was Cherokee, very into the old ways. I spent my summers with her when I was growing up. Wicca's not much different at its core than shamanism.” She looked down at him, at his hand working on her foot. She took a deep breath. “Thank you for tonight.”
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“Which part?” He shot her an innocent look, and she pushed at his shoulder.
“Creep.” She fanned out her fingers on her knees, over ivory silk. “For inviting me to this class. My ex, he told me…well, the details don’t matter, but I thought something was wrong with me. I couldn't heat up fast enough with him, and I guess I always thought it was me. I just wanted you to know that you’re right, it does make a difference. It helps. You helped me tonight.”
Why she was disturbing the garbage at the bottom of her psyche she did not know. She kept hoping it would decay and fade away into dust if she just left the shit alone. But less than thirty-six hours with Justin and she found herself rehashing the times she had spent with her ex-husband. She remembered the instances in the latter part of their marriage, when she had felt maybe interested in sex, interested enough to make it happen. He would start by massaging her breasts or rubbing her clit, and it made her feel mildly annoyed and itchy. If she concentrated hard enough she could get into it and make it happen for both of them, but he had been intuitive enough to know that sex wasn't her favorite thing anymore. Truth be told, most times she'd gotten more turned on by the prospect of a hot bath and a book.
This morning she had decided the night with Justin was a fluke, adrenaline and spontaneity combining. Hell, combusting. She’d convinced herself the ritual had somehow done a number on her subconscious. Those few minutes below, before the
class had arrived, had destroyed the theory.
Lord, but he was a beautiful man to watch. His movements were elegant and yet entirely male, the way he had squatted by her just now, with that slight adjustment of his slacks, the drape of his hand over his knee, the long fingers artlessly drawing the eye. You could photograph any part of him.
Was it him? How could she be so unresponsive to her husband and so responsive to this man who was nearly a stranger?
“You're not what I wanted you to be, Herne.”
“Most women don't know what they want, Sarah.” His lips tugged up in a wry smile. “Most men, either, but women are far more complex creatures. The faces of creation move through you, and they are equal parts chaos and rhythm.”
“No new age bullshit.”
“It'
s actually old age bullshit. Lie back on the cushions.”
His voice was soft, but the sudden intent focus in his eyes shot straight to her loins and clamored at her to obey without a second's thought. Her brain wanted to backhand her wimpy libido, but she settled for lashing out at Herne.
“How about you say 'please' for once?”
“Please, Sarah. Lie down upon the cushions for me.”
She nodded, unfolded her legs. His hand went to her shoulder, easing her back. Hisfirm grip reassured her, and the luxurious pile of cushions he arranged beneath her
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supported her back, shoulders, neck and legs so she felt she could lie forever in that position without discomfort.
“Good?” he asked, kneeling beside her, his face just above hers, the planes etched by light and shadow like the still perfection of a Greek Adonis. Or perhaps Osiris. Hades. Adonis seemed too innocent for what she saw in those dark eyes. She reached up and slid her fingers over his jaw, startling herself. He sat still for a moment, letting her touch him, then he turned his head. He pressed his cheek into her palm so her fingers covered his eye and touched his brow, as if he was drawing absolution from her touch. When he moved back, he took her hand, closing his fingers on her wrist. He took hold of her other wrist and slowly pulled both arms over her head and left them to drape decadently over the pillows. The position raised her upper body, tilted the angle of her breasts and pressed her hips more deeply into the pillows.
“He said I was a dead fish,” she said abruptly. “In…in bed.”
Justin paused, his body hovered over hers like the shelter of a dangerous guardian angel. When their eyes met, Sarah set her jaw. “I know he was mad when he said it. He wasn't cruel, normally.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
He had been mad, but his words had scarred. She had learned that it took less than two seconds to spit out something that could never be taken back, like bullets ejecting from a gun. A life forever altered by the discharge.
“I guess,” she said, thinking she was insane, bringing up something she had never talked about with anyone, “I wondered if it was true. No.” She grimaced. “That’s a lie. I believed it. Believe it. I guess I’m just thinking…maybe this was all just the spontaneity,the newness. But your class, it got me to thinking.”
He folded his legs and sat next to her hip, bracketing her body with his own bybracing one arm across her. With his other hand he took the edge of her robe hem andbegan to draw it up.
“Justin—”
“Just to mid-thigh, Sarah.”
He slid back and folded the soft cloth to where he said he would, though a high
mid-thigh, so she felt certain he was looking at her dampening pussy. Something in her stomach trembled, a knot of emotions and physical reaction that ached. Though she knew it was a warning she should heed, she lay still beneath his attentions.
“You have beautiful legs.” He traced a path from inside the back of her knee up the inner slope of her right thigh. She swallowed hard as he went up, and up, to just beneath the hem, perhaps five inches from the area between her leg and the soft outer lips of her cunt. His fingers trailed down her leg to her knee again, an erratic path.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her question a bit breathless.
“Touching your leg.” He tilted his head to fix one glittering eye upon her flushed face. “Just touching your leg.”
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“But it feels…” She caught her lip on a moan as he took the same path back up, the light pressure of his touch awakening nerves in places he was not even close to touching, like an erotic form of acupuncture.
“Surprisingly intense?” His lips curved, not in a smile, but something more potent, something that made her think of those lips on her flesh. “You’re a very sensual woman, Sarah. But you don’t believe that.”
She managed to shake her head, and then her fingers gripped the pillows as his caress, now at the back of her other knee, shot a shudder through her body. Her leg lifted to give him better access, and her opposite knee shifted, widening the spread of her thighs. His eyes grew darker, but still he did not move to touch her in a manner she considered intimate.
“As a cop, I’m sure you paid attention to the details tonight. And one thing you
wouldn’t have missed is how often I emphasized a woman’s most important erogenous
zone. Her mind.”
He bent, pressed his lips to her thigh, the soft skin inside, but a full foot from the part of her that screamed for that moist touch. Sarah arched, gasping as he kept hismouth in that one spot, his tongue creating tiny spirals on the small area.
He straightened, his hand sliding down her calf, then reversing his track, his knuckles trailing back up the other leg.
“That's the part you had to close down to do your job, Sarah. He couldn’t figure outhow to make it open back up and you didn’t know how to help him. So you both triedto make do by just stimulating your body.”
Herne’s voice was a murmur, so quiet amid the cacophony of sensations pounding her she could not rouse a defense against the analytical intrusion.
“I can do just this,” he continued, “and it will bring you to climax. A woman's cunt responds to forces the woman herself does not understand, not consciously. That's why a man has to explore below the surface—” his finger dipped below the hem of her robe again, “—to pleasure her properly.”
Sarah pressed her cheek into the pillows, bit down.
He spread out his fingers, used his palm and all his fingers to increase the strength behind his touch sliding up her leg, his thumb leading the way, a probing guide that stopped in the crease between pussy and hip. His other fingers curled, tightening on the flesh of her thigh, his smallest finger resting at the shallow valley between buttock and leg, a possessive grip.
He stopped there and Sarah lifted her cheek from the pillow. Justin took his time studying her, starting at her throat and working his way down, sliding his attention over her breasts, her stomach, still covered by the robe.
“What are you doing?”
“Sshhh,” he said gently. “I don't need you to talk or worry about anything.” He lifted his palm from her body, brought his hands to her face. He pressed fingers against
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her lips, teased them open, let her suck on his thumb, stroking her nose, cheek and jaw with his other digits. He slid his thumb from her mouth down her throat, down the neckline of the robe, and kept going when he reached the vee of it so the satin slid open in front of his path. When he reached the tie at the waist, he freed it and spread the garment open, so she lay naked under his gaze.
“All I could think about during the class was that you were naked under this, and how much I wanted to touch you. No.” He pressed his fingers on her lips again. “Don't say anything. Let me just make love to you with words.”
Phone sex in person, she thought, and wanted to say it, to ward herself with humor, but she didn’t. She endured the cadre of butterflies moving about madly in her chest and stomach.
She nearly screamed in frustrated desire as he went back down to her legs again, and even further down, to the portion of the limb below the knee. His touch slid up hercalf, starting at her ankle, just a slow, slow glide up her skin to the back of her knee, caressing the base of her thigh. He crossed over to her other knee, started down toward her other ankle, a triangle of sensation that seemed to focus the reaction of her entire body.
“My lightest touch here, this caress, makes your cunt get even wetter. Your breasts are aching. I can see the nipples getting longer, stiffer. Your thighs are open to me, without conscious thought, showing me your tender pink pussy, offering it to me. Yet itwill be my simple touch here, no higher than your knee, that will make you come.”
“Sure of yourself, are you,” she said, but her voice could have been just the whisper of curtains at an open win
dow, barely moving in a humid summer breeze.
“Sure of you, Sarah. Sure that despite your practical, trained mind, you can imaginewhat it would be like if I took off my clothes and lay down full upon you, my fleshagainst yours, my body between your thighs. You can imagine me holding you, you wrapped tightly in my arms, close to my thundering heart, as I slowly, slowly, push the head of my cock into your cunt. You’re a tight fit, Sarah.” He leaned in as his hand continued its idle glide from ankle to knee and back down again, another caress to theback of her knee, the arch of her foot. “Your pussy is so wet now, I can see the candlelight glisten off your moisture. I want to kiss you there, lick that arousal, take you into my mouth.”
She sank further into the pillows, her body heavy with the weight of desire. Her breath was ragged, her hips and legs moving in a sinuous rhythm that matched thetidal flow of his fingertips against her skin.
“I like how your pussy pulls me in, Sarah. There’s a moment of resistance when I think you’re going to be too tight for me, then all of a sudden I am sliding in, like asword into a tight scabbard, oiled only for my blade. You haven't had anyone since youleft your husband, that’s why you’re so snug. I like it. It's torture to pull almost all the way out, but the agony is worth it, something that feels so damn good I just have to do
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it over and over, feel those pussy lips suck on the head of my cock, like a long kiss. Before I know it, I’m slamming into you, seeing how much of me you can take.”
She was gasping now, her hips rising to his words, no touch upon them but the heated air. The fingers stroking her legs felt like they were on her clit. The same movements he was making on the skin of her leg expertly manipulated that small inch of flesh that no man on earth seemed to know how to do exactly right. Or at least she hadn't thought so until this man did it without even touching the part in question. Justin Herne would make Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck stop to hear his air guitar.
