Easing down, I felt him slide into me, so hard. His hands held my ass, fingers spread, and I could feel waere strength and need trembling all through him. He could have pulled me onto him savagely, but he didn't. He just kept his hands on me, firmly.
"Don't want to hurt you," he whispered. "You do it. Take me. Ride me."
He feared his own waere strength.
My knees spread farther apart and slowly I slid completely onto Johnny's cock. I jerked my hips up, then thrust down.
"More," I said, breathless. Johnny rose to meet my thrust. "Yes."
Grinding hard against him, over and over, felt so good. I threw my head back, captivated by how complete each stroke felt, how if I rolled my pelvis a little right then, right there, that sweet heat flickered through me. The muscles of his thighs bunched then flexed with each thrust. His eagerness fed mine.
Wanting to gauge his reaction to this moment, I studied his face. Last night, the candlelight warmed the color of his skin, made his eyes like shadows. Now, with only stray light pressing at the windows, the dimness was cold, the darkness more complete. But it was perfect for him. Although he seemed to watch from the depths of a cave like a predator hiding, his beast was ready to roar in triumph.
His lips parted. "I know what you want," he said. Suddenly employing his waere strength, placing his arms around me, he leaned into me and I felt his thighs flex as he pushed up to stand on his feet. My arms encircled his shoulders, my legs wrapping around his waist. Hands cupping my ass, he lifted me on and off of him, slowly, so I was aware of every inch. It left me shaking with desperate need. My senses flooded with hyperawareness, as in a moment of danger when time slows. I heard each gasp of breath like a slow breeze. I felt each touch, each pulsing sensation, a hundred times over. My need rose up like a fierce creature of desire. I began working my body vigorously, swiveling my hips, feeling strong and impatient as I rode him until I couldn't breathe.
Clenching him with every muscle, I would have screamed if my lungs had air. My body throbbed, reverberating with pleasure so intense I went utterly still, while Johnny continued to pound into me.
My orgasm was so ruthlessly concentrated, each time he lifted me, it seemed another started, though the previous had not fully receded before the next began. I gasped quick, shallow breaths, only to moan them away.
Suddenly, Johnny thrust into me and held me, his face buried against my neck, teeth clamping onto me, pressing but not biting. A growl burst from his throat, a deep guttural, rumbling growl of release matching the new heat erupting inside of me.
He lifted me again, thrusting hard, once. Twice. My orgasm started anew. My legs squeezed around him and I cried out. He panted into my neck and started again, pounding himself relentlessly into my deepest self.
Johnny sat on the couch again, but this time my legs around his waist kept him from sinking into the cushions. We caught our breaths, still embracing, still intimately entwined, enervated, and wrapped in afterglow that could have lit up the night.
Johnny rubbed my back, hands so warm. "Wow," he whispered.
I didn't move. I couldn't. It wasn't just the physical exertion, the sublime sex. It was fear.
I felt lost and scared and as if I were teetering on the edge of a razor. If I moved, the next moment would start… and I didn't know what kind of moment it was going to be.
Was the magnificent sex due to the stain? A vampire's stain never made anything better unless you paid dearly for it. Sex like this could be addictive. Was the stain sinking its barbs further into me, controlling, changing, devouring me?
Or was this real? Was the man holding me, cuddling me—shit! Cuddling me! — was he everything he seemed to be?
Either way, nothing in my life would ever be the same. I'd just gone and completely altered my world again in a whole new way.
Johnny started playing with my hair. He craned his neck, trying to see my face; I didn't want him to. I needed another moment to build my resolve to master myself and be ready for whatever came next.
Johnny's hands firmly maneuvered me until I was sitting up on his lap and his fingers strayed over my breasts again. He sighed with tired satisfaction. "So beautiful in the dark."
I smiled, ambiguously. A compliment.
Wearing a lopsided grin, he tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear. "I could hold you on this couch all night."
"But Nana and Beverley will be down early!"
His grin faded and his expression went blank. "You're right. Why don't you go on up to your room and sleep." He caressed my cheek. "I'll go to mine."
Separation. Breathing room. Good. Time to gather my thoughts. I hoped my mind blossomed with so many thoughts I could bouquet a varied selection of wildflower ideas. Right now, my mind felt like barren desert sands.
Grateful, and fearful, I made myself meet his eyes.
He caressed my cheek. "The beach is always there, Red. High tide. Low tide."
So we were both thinking about sand. Mine was arid and lifeless; his was the transition from one fertile world to another.
I didn't need Freud to point out what that revealed.
I leaned in to give him a quick kiss, but his hand slipped behind my neck and held me there for a long one. His lips were so soft, yet firm. Even his kisses were earnest. When it ended, I eased off him and gathered my clothes and torn undies. Legs shaking and unsteady, I fled, without so much as a good night to him.
Chapter 10
Distracted by my vacillating mind, I forgot to set my clock to alarm. I overslept.
I rushed down the steps. My feet stopped short at the bottom. Johnny was cleaning something off on the couch. "Morning, Red. I spilled coffee" — he coughed—"on your couch here." He gave me a wink. "Sorry."
We'd spotted the couch. I hadn't even thought of that.
"If this laundry soap mix doesn't get it out, I'll try something else, okay?" He peeked into the kitchen, then came at me as if he would steal a hug or a kiss.
I backpedaled.
He stopped.
"That's okay," I stammered. "It's a slipcover anyway. It can be washed."
"You all right?" he whispered, obviously puzzled.
"I–I don't want Nana to know," I whispered back. "She'll be merciless in her teasing."
"Are you up now, Seph?" Nana's voice croaked from the kitchen.
"Yeah," I said.
Despite his clear disappointment, Johnny gave me a "go on" nod. I hurried down the hall. Beverley was pushing her unicorn lunchbox into her bookbag. Remembering how she'd cradled that lunchbox in her arms when we got her things from the apartment, my heart went out to her. She'd told me that Lorrie always made her lunch, and always clipped a cartoon from the newspaper to put in with it. I wondered if her lunchbox seemed emptier without it.
"Sleepyhead," she said.
"Yeah. Sorry."
"I made her lunch." Nana's cigarette smoldered on the edge of a round ashtray on the far side of the counter. "Brush your teeth," she added to Beverley.
"Right." She bolted down the hall and up the stairs.
I resolved to get a kids' joke book, to copy out a joke each day to put in Beverley's lunchbox. Not her mom's thing, but something else, similar. I promised myself I'd get that book today. "Thanks, Nana. I forgot to set my alarm."
Johnny entered and tossed the rag into the laundry room.
"Are you going to live here all winter, Johnny?"
We both straightened at Nana's question.
"Truthfully, Demeter, I hadn't thought that far ahead." He approached her. "With the wards reinstated, though, I guess there's no worry of that vamp or his flunkie coming back."
"That vamp" again. And by «flunkie» he meant Goliath, Menessos's emissary.
"I suppose I could move back to my apartment." He shot a glance my way to see how I reacted to the idea.
How did I feel about it? Goddess help me, I felt incapacitated by my indecision. I needed to talk to Amenemhab and sort my feelings out.
"Are you ti
red of my cooking already?" Johnny asked Nana.
"Oh, hell no! I just thought the broken wards were the only reason you were staying. They've been fixed for a week now, so it must be something else."
She knew, or she caught the glance, or something!
"Yeah," he said naturally. "You're right. I probably should get out of the way."
"You're not in the way. Not mine, anyway." Nana tapped her cigarette into the ashtray, then took another drag, watching me. "I was just wondering if your reason had changed."
The sound of Beverley's feet on the stairs came again, this time in conjunction with Ares's paws as they clamored down together, rumbling like a herd of elephants. It was, for once, a welcome noise. "Gotta get her to school," I said, grabbing my purse and keys as I hurried out.
I sat in my Avalon staring at the garage. The motorcycle was gone again.
Facing Nana alone, not knowing what she and Johnny might have discussed, made me uneasy. I fully expected her to start in on me again about the Eximium, the stain, the vampires, Johnny, and anything else she might have thought of. She'd probably bombard me with all of it in order to wear me down. Worst part was she could claim Johnny said this or that and I wouldn't know if he actually had or if she was playing me.
Stay blank. Unreadable. Don't be goaded.
I planned to busy myself getting a start on the next column and running errands today. Then I could get to meditation and discuss things with my totem animal and spirit guide, Amenemhab.
I got out of the car and slammed the door.
"I've decided something," Nana called as I came through the garage door into the kitchen.
"What's that?" Doubtless she had a great plan that I somehow figured into. I walked through the kitchen into the dining room.
There was a pause. I took off my coat, hung it on the back of my desk chair, and then I heard the sound of her slippers shuffling on the linoleum. "I'm going to call my auto insurance man," she appeared in the doorway, "and have him add Johnny to my policy."
I refrained from reacting visibly, sat down, and flipped my laptop open. "That's very sweet of you, Nana." I wondered how Johnny had reacted to the notion of driving Nana's old Buick Le Sabre with the AARP sticker in the back window.
"I told him that I thought having him around was nice and that he should stay."
Her sneaky thinking during sewing must have paid off in a devious and complex trap she was laying for us.
"I said he could take my car to work this winter. If I need to go somewhere, you can take me in your car."
Aha. That was how I figured into it. Probably safer for other drivers on the road if my hands were on the wheel anyway. "Okay. That's a great idea." I started to check my email.
The phone rang. Nana reached for it. "Hello? Oh hi." Pause. "Yes." Long pause. "Okay. I'll tell her." Pause. "Bye." She hung up and said, "That was Johnny. He said he's going to stay at Erik and Celia's tonight."
"Oh," I said.
She headed back into the kitchen.
Shit. Was he mad? Or what?
"Did he say why?" I asked casually.
"No," she said.
I squinted at her back and wondered if that was the whole truth. She had paused on the phone long enough to get some details.
"Guess we're cooking for ourselves," she grumbled.
Nothing important in email. After sorting through sticky-notes with ideas for my next column, I selected one and stared at my little desk statue of Seshat, the Egyptian scribe-goddess, while I mentally considered the points I wanted to make in this week's column.
I made a good start—so good that the morning got away from me. And, miraculously, Nana never interrupted. No hounding. No browbeating. Nothing.
I got my grocery list, grabbed cash from the duffel under my bed, put my coat on, and left. At the superstore, I gathered my groceries and impulsively added a digital camera to the list. I'd have to get photos of Beverley's Hallowe'en costume and school events and such, right?
I managed a stop at the bookstore to pick up the national papers so I could see my column in print, and to buy that children's joke book, before it was time to pick up Beverley at school.
I hid the joke book and put the groceries away while Beverley did her homework. Then she and I made dinner with the radio on, dancing around the kitchen singing into wooden spoons. We snapped a few pictures of each other and laughed at ourselves. During dinner she told Nana and me about recess with her friend Lily and a science project involving weather.
After cleaning up the kitchen, we went out to finish up the pumpkins.
"Aren't we waiting for Johnny?" she asked.
"Something came up and he won't be here this evening. I'm sure he won't mind if we finish without him."
I probably would have given more thought to why he wasn't coming back tonight, but Beverley was eager to handle a knife. That kept me well grounded in the moment. Remembering my youth and my first experience handling an athame in ritual, we had a serious knife safety discussion, then started stabbing into the dotted-lines designs we'd poked into the orange hulls.
When we placed the finished pumpkins on the porch, with tea-lights glowing inside, we oohed and ahhed for a while, congratulating ourselves on the fantastic carving we'd done. When we went inside, Nana joined us for warm cider and cinnamon-pumpkin muffins I'd bought at the store.
"These taste wonderful," Nana said after a bite. "I bet Johnny could make muffins even better, though."
Was I being baited? I didn't know, so I simply replied, "I bet you're right."
Nana and Beverley soon headed upstairs to begin their routine. I had a pumpkin-carving table to clean, and a totem animal to consult.
I went out to the garage and cleaned up the pumpkin mess, folded up the table, and stored it. I pulled a clean rag rug from the storage shelves and laid it in the middle of the garage floor. Squirting water from a plastic bottle, I made a wet-line circle around me and sat down on the rug inside.
"Mother, seal my circle and give me a sacred space.
I need to think clearly to solve the troubles I face."
Meditation being second nature to me, I slipped into an alpha state almost as easily as I flipped a light switch. Visualizing the grove of old ash trees beside a swift flowing river, I imagined myself walking to it, taking my shoes off, and sticking my toes into the cool water. Cleansing my chakras, I thought about the last time I'd spoken with my totem animal, the jackal Amenemhab, here.
He'd told me I was a big part of the Goddess's plan. I hadn't known a Lustrata from an Electrolux at the time and since we were discussing my dilemma with Vivian, I thought he meant the Great Mother wanted me to be an assassin. He even had me wondering if perhaps my absentee father was a killer for hire.
In retrospect, however, it seemed the jackal must have been smoothing a path into the whole Lustrata thing. If I were willing to justify being an assassin in the name of justice, then I couldn't shy away from being the Lustrata, right?
"Hello, Persephone."
The gray and tan jackal sat on the rocks beside me.
"Amenemhab." I wanted to call him M&M or Ah-min, or something shorter and easier to say, but it irritated me when people read my name and called me Percy-phone, so I always made the effort.
He panted, then closed his mouth. One side twitched up in a dog smile. "Never a dull moment with you, is there?"
"Not anymore." Pulling my toes from the water, I allowed the warm sunshine to dry them.
"Tell me."
"Johnny and I… well. We…" It was difficult to even imagine myself saying it aloud. "We had sex," I blurted.
"Oh. And?"
That question could have meant any of a dozen things. Totem animals are wily, and Amenemhab was very effective at getting things out of me. If I hadn't been feeling so shy and embarrassed about the issue I might have just answered with the first thing that came to mind. As it was, I decided to ask a question in return. "And what?"
"Was it good, how do you feel
about it, and is that genuinely why you are here?"
Of course he'd cut to the heart of the issue. Exasperated, I said, "Fabulous, don't know, and yes."
"All right then." He stood and leapt from the rocks to the softer grass. He rolled around as if scratching his back, then twisted onto his stomach and seemed completely comfortable. "Go ahead. I am ready."
"For what?"
"For either the long story you tell about how fabulous it was and why that makes it wrong or bad or difficult in some way, or the torturous version of the same story where I have to ask questions and drag the details out of you." He crossed his front paws and held his ears pricked curiously. "Go ahead."
I groaned. How to sterilize the tale and break it down into the most necessary pieces? "It was not like it ever was before."
"Oh, you are getting very good at this! How so?"
"Multiorgasmic good."
"Congratulations."
Being congratulated about a sexual accomplishment felt weird. "Thank you."
"And how exactly are you trying to analyze this into being a wrong, bad, or difficult thing for you?"
"It was that good because of the stain."
"Are you certain?"
"When I've had sex before, it wasn't that amazing and I wasn't stained then, so yes, I'm certain."
"Mmmm. A very effective position to take, if you insist on turning the good thing into a bad thing." He paused to consider it. "This could be the root of all your problems, you know."
"What could be the root of all my problems? 'Cause if there is one single thing at the root of all my problems, I'll get a shovel right now and dig until all the roots are exposed, then hose them down with weed killer."
Nonplussed, Amenemhab said, "You can see others in black and white, you know right from wrong. You're willing to make a judgment call and are capable of acting on it, but when your notice is not on others; when it is only yourself you must judge; when it is your life, your intimacy, and your comfort zone being scrutinized by those judgmental eyes of yours, the black and white smear until all becomes gray."
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