Legends of Lust

by Autumn Bardot

  “Your name is a song to my ears.” His eyes rove over my curves. “Where are you from?”

  “Indra’s heavenly court.” It’s the truth, just not the whole truth.

  Vishvamitra nods as though a visitation by a heavenly immortal is ordinary. “Why are you here, Menaka?”

  I cannot lie. Nor can I tell the entire truth. The truth changed. It changed the moment we looked into each other’s eyes and fell in love. “Your spiritual strength is the talk of the heavens. I had to see for myself.” I inhale his maleness and flush with pleasure. “But I must make a confession.”

  Vishvamitra runs his eyes over my form and his breath grows labored. “I cannot imagine what such a divine woman as yourself needs to confess.”

  I lay his warm hand over my breast. “Do you feel my heart beating?”

  “Yes.” His voice is thick and his eyes dilate with desire.

  I push his hand harder, feel his fingertips curve around the swell of my breast, hear his yearning exhalation.

  “Menaka . . .” He sighs in surrender.

  “It’s as though the gods have conspired against both of us.” I drop his hand and look away. “You are a great sage. This is wrong.” I should be seducing him, not in love with him.

  Vishvamitra cups my cheek, turning me toward him. “Love between two people is never wrong.”

  I close my hands in namaste and drop my eyes. Vishvamitra lowers his head and flicks his tongue across my fingertips.

  “Oh!” I gasp, surprised and delighted.

  Vishvamitra sucks gently on each pair of my namaste fingers, and his teeth lightly scrape over the skin. I am aquiver with desire, the warmth and wetness of his mouth flooding my feminine gate with heat.

  When his mouth lifts from my littlest fingers, it is my turn. I take his hands, bring them together, and wrap my lips around each paired digit, sliding up and down their length. I suck each pair like I would his cock, imagine my tongue dancing over its girth. Vishvamitra imagines the same because his deep sighs sound like a prolonged om, the sacred sound of meditation.

  “Menaka.” He traces the curves of my lips, stares into my eyes.

  “Vishvamitra.” I cannot tear my gaze away from him.

  We trace our lips five times—each loop causes our lips to part wider, each loop moves our heads closer.

  Our lips touch but we do not kiss. Instead, we inhale the other’s breath. Ten breaths we take before Vishvamitra slides his tongue inside. I meet it and we hold this tongue-touching position for longer than I can bear. My gate is as humid as a summer’s day and swollen with desire. His cock presses into my stomach. His heat matches my own.

  Vishvamitra is an educated man. As king he learned the art of lovemaking from the best courtesans, studied the art of Kama Sutra, and practiced Tantric intercourse. He uses this experience now to destroy the celestial maiden within me. His sexual prowess reduces me to a woman quivering with lust, impatient to feel the thrust of his cock.

  His tongue circles around mine. I circle his. Our tongues entwined, Vishvamitra spreads his fingers over my neck and creeps downward until both hands rest on my breasts.

  I push them forward like a gift, and then trail my fingers over his jaw and beard and downward to his well-defined pectorals. We breathe in unison, both our nipples hardening into stiff buds.

  “Be patient awhile, Menaka,” he says, sensing my eagerness. “Let us prolong the pleasure of our passion.”

  Years of penance trained Vishvamitra in the art of self-control. I never had any such training. I want his cock now!

  Vishvamitra bends his head and blows through the wet fabric covering my breasts.

  “Suck them,” I plead and tug the sari’s length from my shoulder.

  “Not yet.” His hand curls around the back of my neck and guides me to his dark brown nipples.

  I purse my lips and blow cool air over one. Next, I set my mouth over it and exhale warm breath.

  “Oh, Menaka.” He moans and guides me to his other nipple.

  I move back and forth, feel his contracting abdominal muscles, hear his pleasure growl.

  I take a nip at his nipple. “You test my fortitude.” He backs away, his breath heavy, then sits down and pats the grass beside him. “Lie down.”

  When I do he bends over me, his mouth sliding down my silk-encased belly while I pant and arch my back with wanting.

  He pauses at the edge of my black curls, raises his grinning face, and lies beside me. I roll over, sprinkle kisses on copper skin, count the muscles of his concave stomach with my tongue, and lick his belly button. His dhoti is peaked like a tent and I want to tear it off and marvel at his cock.

  Just as I grasp the corner of the dhoti, Vishvamitra changes position and sets a soft kiss on my ankle. The touch of his lips on my bare skin is unbearable, its exquisiteness curling my toes.

  “Breathe with me,” says Vishvamitra.

  I match my breaths to his slow ones and wiggle as his tongue travels past my clothed shin, over my knee, and up my thigh.

  “Take off my sari,” I whisper.

  “Soon.” Vishvamitra places his warm mouth on my curly pillow.

  I grab his topknot, push his head down. His breath seeps into every fold and crevice and I moan, my hips rocking under him.

  “I cannot wait anymore!” I say.

  “You must.” He unwraps me, removes the silk from my body and allows me to remove his dhoti.

  His cock is divine, thick and long and ready. I reach out for it. My hand wraps around his rigid smoothness and very slowly slides toward the base. Vishvamitra sighs even as his body tenses. With my other hand I cup his hard tight balls, brush my thumb over the tender skin. His buttocks tighten and he looks at me through glazed adoring eyes.

  “I will honor the greatest sage of all.” I cover the head of his cock with my mouth and he draws me forward, my hair laced through his fingers. I slow my movement despite his tensing legs and swallow his full length.

  A low rumble emits from his throat, and his fingers pull my hair. He tastes of sacred energy and earthly procreation. I draw my lips back and taste the salty drops loosened from too many years of abstinence.

  “The best meditation is mutual.” He rolls me onto his stomach.

  His cock is in my mouth, the gate of my heaven on his face. It is the congress of crow position, in its prone form.

  Vishvamitra’s lips surround my clit.

  I stop at the ridge, only the head of his cock in my mouth.

  I want to slide his cock down my throat, lick his shaft, and pump my fist until the sacred saltiness of life fills my mouth.

  I don’t.

  We are still and let our arousal build like gathering storm clouds. Tantric sex takes control and concentration. It promises divine orgasms for those allowing arousal to take a long, meandering path. Apsaras are creatures of dance and movement. This stillness is not natural for me. It’s almost unbearable. I tilt my pelvis to urge him on, but he lowers my hips with a firm hand. Every inch of skin is alive with anticipation, and yet the surge of pleasure flows to only one place.

  My pleasure garden is swollen, and my pelvic muscles contract to the rhythm of our breathing. I want Vishvamitra to lick my clit, to lap at my glossy petals, to hurl me to heaven with his mouth. But then it will be over too quickly. And I don’t want this sparkling feeling to end!

  Tantric sex is like giving a thirsty man a drop of water at a time. Each drop tastes like honey, extra sweet and satisfying as it glides down your throat. Water guzzled never tastes as good.

  The head of his cock grows bigger and harder in my mouth. I feel his arousal mount in his tensing thighs and thumping heart.

  Just when I begin climbing pleasure’s apex, Vishvamitra swirls his tongue around my clit. Once. Only once!

  “Noooo!” I cry pulling away from his cock.

  “Yes.” He holds me around the waist and in one fluid movement of strength and agility sits up and sets me in his lap, my legs around his hips, his cock rest
ing against my black ringlets.

  We gaze into each other’s eyes, the light of connectedness—body, spirit, and energy—glimmering with the primeval divinity found in all of us.

  Vishvamitra spreads his hands under my ass and lifts, positioning me over his cock, our eyes locked and focused.

  “We choose. We worship. We transcend.” One inch of his cock slides into my wetness. “We love.”

  My moan is his, a prolonged testimony of our devotion to nature’s highest joy. Vishvamitra pushes in another inch, my sacred gate tight around him. We breathe twenty long breaths together. He pushes in another inch. My velvet garden is throbbing, our unified chant now a moaning mantra. Another inch, twenty more breaths, maithuna, the ritual of our union awakening every sense. Inch by inch, until ten glorious inches pack my sex.

  He is still, as am I, the waves we ride on this ocean of bliss swelling inside us. My sweet walls contract to the tempo of his breaths, and Vishvamitra growls his response. All sensation, all desire is crystalized into a single place. We are both teacher and student, we are both earth and sky, both primitive and divine. We are raw energy awaiting release.

  I feel it in him before I am aware of my own final ascent, the point when flesh supersedes the mind, and flesh has one single purpose.

  Nirvana erupts, engulfs us like a tidal wave, and we convulse with paroxysms of ecstasy. Together we sing our bliss to the heavens, the orgasm the sacred song of life and love.

  Vishvamitra shifts me about, my cunt dripping with his cum, and repositions me so I face his feet. I rock into him as he rolls my nipples between his fingers, pinching and tugging them until I come again. And again.

  He spreads his thighs and I lean forward, my ass near his face, and I cup his balls, still tight and full with cum. His hands slide over my body and draw circles around my anus.

  “Yes. Yes.” I say as he soaks his finger with my nectar and slides into my anus, while his other hand rubs my aching clit. I explode in his hand, squirt nectar into his palm, and scream to the heavens.

  I am still climaxing when Vishvamitra lifts my hips, guides me to the side, and slowly shifts my leg over his head. Face to face once again, he spreads my thighs and sinks into me. This time his thrusts are rough and fast.

  He shouts his orgasm—thrusts until my legs are slick with the liquor of our lusts.

  When our breathing finally slows, Vishvamitra takes me in his arms as though I am a child and sprinkles my face with kisses.

  “I found true joy, with you, Menaka,” he says. “I beg you to be my wife.”

  “What about your penance? Your desire to be a great rishi?”

  “I was a fool. Heaven is fucking the one you love. No meditation ever brought this kind of nirvana. No mediation ever made me realize that bringing my lover

  to nirvana was infinitely more important than my own pleasure.”

  Under the shade of the arjuna tree, I clutch his beard in my fist and tug him forward. “Take me to heaven again.”

  The story of Vishvamitra and Menaka is found in the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata. Except for his ten-year marriage to Menaka—a lapse in his quest to attain the highest level of sage—Vishvamitra lived a long and spiritual life, the stories of his miracles and wisdom told in many Hindu legends.

  THE WALK

  I heard Mother’s voice rise over the clinking of the Dongba Aspiration wind-bell outside.

  “Snow Blossom!”

  I rushed outside to find Mother sitting in a red lacquer chair contemplating the small pebble mosaic I designed in the middle of the courtyard.

  “Yes, Mother.” I wiped my hands on my apron, the crisp air of autumn morning cool on my cheek. “Would you like tea to warm your bones?”

  “I do not want tea.” Mother’s lovely face turned ugly with deep scowl lines. “Your coming of age ceremony was months ago. When are you going? I cannot wait forever.” My finger rubbed against the edge of the apron’s fabric, nervous but relieved she brought up this longoverdue question. “I do not want a man. I am happy with Bright Jade.”

  “Ai.” Mother rolled her eyes. “Making fireworks with Bright Jade makes no grandchildren.”

  I looked at the ground, trying to find the words to express feelings I did not understand. Doubt, apprehension, resentment, and frustration mushed together like a sticky rice cake.

  “Well?” Mother adjusted the wide, colorful striped sash around her red jacket. “When will you go on zou hun?”

  A walking marriage: it was the way of our people on this island of women. It’s how we ensured our continued survival. The other method, sleeping outside until a south wind blew a seed into our womb never worked, although all the old aunties claimed it was how they became pregnant.

  “I’ve never crossed the lake before.” It was a feeble excuse. The water surrounding our island was heavier than normal water. It caused ordinary boats to sink and it was the reason men had never reached our shores, except for a shipwreck so long ago even the 130-year-old auntie could not remember.

  “Wood from the trees on the island floats on the whole lake.” Mother’s eyes narrowed to slits and she pursed her lips. “Are you afraid, daughter?”

  I flinched at the suggestion. “No.”

  “You are afraid of something. A man? A man’s thing under his tunic?” Mother tilted her head like an owl, two eyes fixed on her prey.

  “Why would I be afraid of something all women do?” I curled the end of my braid around my finger.

  Mother’s forefinger sprung toward me quick as a snake. “So it is not fear but rejecting ancient customs that prevents your zou hun!”

  I blew my exasperation through my nose and gazed at the cloudless blue sky before answering. “I am not rejecting our customs. I am waiting for...spring. Yes, spring.”

  Mother lifted one thin eyebrow. “What? And have the women gossip behind my back that the chieftess’s daughter waits on her own time before honoring her mother and our ancient ways?”

  “I promise I will go in the spring.” I gave her my most imploring look.

  “You will go tomorrow before winter winds freeze the lake.”

  “Tomorrow?” I reeled backward.

  “Tomorrow.” Mother folded her arms and closed her eyes. The discussion was over.

  “Yes, Mother.” I was dragging my feet back inside the house, tears trickling down my cheeks, when I saw Bright Jade sitting cross-legged at the kitchen table, a half-crushed bowl of dried chili peppers in the center.

  “Bright Jade.” I plopped down next to her and buried my nose in her neck. “Mother demands I start a walking marriage tomorrow.”

  I loved Bright Jade. She was my heaven and earth. We were best friends and had been lovers for six months.

  Bright Jade swept her long raven-colored hair over her shoulder. It was not braided, our secret signal. “That’s why I’m here. I knew she was going to tell you. I heard her talking to several women the other day. Just tell her no.”

  I ran my fingers through Bright Jade’s hair. “You want to make fireworks now? So early in the morning?”

  She kissed my lips, her tongue darting inside. “I want you to have the taste of my honey in your mouth when you refuse your mother’s demands.” She stood up and pulled me up with her.

  We kissed again, our tongues flickering back and forth, the first spark of arousal moistening my cherry. One kiss was all it took and my mind could think of nothing but her pleasures.

  Bright Jade pressed her hand against my bosom. “I’m going to suck on your nipples until they’re as long as my finger.” She wiggled her little finger.

  Heat exploded in my garden. I had unusually long nipples. Getting them sucked brought me to orgasm. Bright Jade claimed I was lucky because I had more pleasure spots than her previous lovers.

  “I know where we can go.” I tugged on her hand.

  We went to the stone hut next to the sheepfold. Early this morning I had cleaned and spread fresh hay.

  “You must disobey your mother.” Brigh
t Jade dipped under the low doorway. “Chieftess or not you must stand up to her. Have I made a walking marriage? No. I am devoted to you.” She untied her sash, tugged off her jacket, and removed her skirt, which she spread out on the hay.

  “You cannot compare our mothers.” I took off my clothes as well, spreading them out next to hers. “I cannot bring her shame. Her position as chieftess may be challenged.” I sat down and loosened my braid.

  “Your mother does not understand our love.” Bright Jade set her lips on mine.

  We tasted and nibbled, my throbbing clit anticipating her skillful tongue.

  “Men give no pleasure.” Bright Jade swept her tongue from my chin to the flat space between my small breasts. “They possess no artistry.” Her mouth latched on to my breast and she swirled her tongue around my already stiff nipple.

  “Suck them.” I twirled her hair around my hand.

  Bright Jade pulled on a nipple until I moaned, then released it with a slurp. “Men are rough and dirty and smell like pigs in mud.” Bright Jade brought my head to her own breasts.

  I flicked my tongue across her rigid pink tips while stroking her smooth inner thigh.

  “Ooooh,” Bright Jade cooed and pushed down on my head. “I woke this morning already wet for you and I had to finger myself but nothing compares to your tongue.”

  “You want fireworks every day,” I giggled and zigzagged across her belly with my mouth.

  “Stop teasing me, Snow Blossom.” Bright Jade spread her pink petals.

  I lowered my head and inhaled her fragrance. “Not yet.” I dipped my finger into the wetness and licked it off.

  Bright Jade trembled and rocked her hips forward. “Here, have more. All you want.”

  “I wish I could save your honey and add it to my tea.” My finger dipped in again.

  Bright Jade moaned and spread her petals even wider. “Stop talking and start swallowing.”

  I stretched out my arms and took hold of each tight pink bud, and lapped the length of her garden of delight. I lifted my head. “Like that?”

  Bright Jade threw her head back and moaned.

  I lapped at her again, long, slow strokes that made her pant. When her panting became louder I flicked her swollen, slick bud until she writhed and squealed. I slipped two fingers into her wetness, then drew them out and moistened the puckered hole of her backdoor.