Vision of Love

by Xssa Annella

  I raised my foot on the bed and smoothed my thighs with my fingers, aware he was staring at the tuft of my sex. He licked his lips and crept forward with the stealth of a panther, his eyes half closed in lascivious contemplation of that place. He’d come and do it now if I wanted him to, and the thought of it gave me a strange feeling of power. He would kneel there in front of me, and holding my buttocks, bring me to melting orgasm with his demon tongue. I shivered, rolling my stockings up my legs then clipping them in place—his smouldering gaze following my every movement.

  “I thought you’d dispensed with all that gaudy finery, the stockings and the garters, the things that imprison your womanhood. You could at least have let me dress you. I would have felt better knowing my hands had been there before his. Then tonight when he touches you, you’d feel me consuming you, evaporating that mortal contact. You will let him caress you, won’t you, you’re bound to? How can you not let him? I curse him and I’ll keep cursing him until he melts away.” Bem was pacing, his handsome head bowed, his long raven black hair flopping forward. “You’ll let him put that morbid mortal taint on you again, won’t you? So, when you get back, I’ll have to carry you to the bath and bathe you all over, inside and out just to rid us both of it.” He made a face. “Ugh, it’s rank, that taste of mortal man, worse than curdled milk. It makes me sick to think of it.”

  I could have dignified this with a response. Instead, I stared a reprimand at him in the mirror. He was making me shiver, his strong psychic powers trying to connect with me as they danced through the air like ripples across a celestial pond. The light scintillating off his thick hair, he sprawled sexily in the chair by the fireplace, staring at me with his chin on his fist and his legs apart. “We’ll sort it out later though, darling. I won’t upset you before you go. I don’t want to spoil your birthday, and of course, if you feel you want to prove something to yourself you must do it. You must come to me without a shadow of a doubt, without fearing mental bondage or any such ridiculous thing.”

  “It’s not a case of having to prove anything.” Walking over to the bed, I shook out my gown, the glorious ivory silk catching the light and spinning rainbows. “I’m simply clinging to human since I’m still alive, still flesh and blood. But, you can see, can’t you, that it’s becoming harder to cling to the familiar things? Even simple things like eating and brushing my hair have become difficult. The purpose of tonight is”—I paused—“to see if I can still participate in life, because if I can’t you know what will happen, don’t you? Some fool like Mrs Fassbender or even Marylyn—since now even Marylyn shuns me—will send for a doctor at that insane institute and they’ll have me locked up. They’re like vultures, Bem. I’m sure they want to take Langhousa off me.” I nervously rolled the pearls between my fingers.

  His mouth twisted in a cruel smile. “I don’t see how they can do anything. That’s why you go to see Mr Panjari in Delhi, isn’t it? He’s tied up your will and fastened any loopholes with his considerable legal skill.”

  “Tonight’s about principles. Don’t you see?” My face folded into what I imagined was a sorrowful mask and I could feel tears pushing at the backs of my eyes. “I’m confused and I never thought I’d say it, but I think I want your dirty dark world. The trouble is though, Bem, I’m tethered to this life and there are some things I still like about mortality. Books, for instance, and the feel of life and yes, those silly banal female things like shopping and coffee and, well…” I tugged a comb through my thick hair before twisting it up and digging the pins in with sharp angry jabs. “Just being human, being in flesh. You said so yourself that you adored flesh. That even in the guise of a demon you thrilled at the feel of a corporeal overcoat in which to flaunt your alien beauty, an overcoat, I may add, I so kindly furnished you with.”

  He steepled his fingers under his chin, and his gaze was as deep and fathomless as a pool. “God, you’re so fast in an argument, so cutting in a riposte. I’d never let those vultures take Langhousa off you, you know that, don’t you?”

  “You’d have no choice if the doctor said I was crazy and talking to demons and they bundled me in that van. So, you see why I must do these things?”

  Bem jumped to his feet, placing his hands on my shoulders. “Yes, Emma, regrettably I do. Let me attend to this, let me zip it up.” He took the dress off me, his hand sliding onto my butt and separating the crack so he could place his finger there while I stepped inside the sumptuous fabric. He inched the dress up and fastened the tiny buttons his fingers burning like liquid fire on my spine, before kissing my neck with definite, firm kisses like punctuation marks, he gazed over my shoulder at me in the glass.

  I gave him a look of mute appeal.

  “Do you remember how we used to do this? I washed and dressed you and sprayed your eau de cologne and dusted talc between your legs. I could have done it tonight. I could have knelt at your feet and been your slave.” Bem moaned.

  “Whose slave is whose? I don’t wish to feel your ownership tonight.” I shimmied, and the tiny glass beads attached to sleeve and hem like trapped teardrops, shone in the light.

  “Ownership—that sour point.” He was stroking his chin.

  “Oh please.” I turned around. “Don’t be like this. You know I have to prove to myself that my world exists. You’ve found your paradise.” Sitting down I picked up my slippers and slid one on. He was there immediately, taking them off me and stroking my stockings.

  “No, let me do that. Do you recollect how I did this once before, on that day I saved you, Emma? You’d gone to the market to buy saffron and that man chased you up the alley. You broke your heel and I had to come and save you.” His smile broadened. “You were confused, because even then I was painting you with my world. Yes, even then I had your lover in my hand and he was turning to me and it was Bem Hazari—demon lord—and not Shankar—feeble mortal—who held the strings of your destiny. How could it be otherwise when I’d mesmerised his human soul? And you knew it the moment you laid eyes on him, you felt that fatal attraction and you wanted it. You always did. Is it any wonder he was charmed by a creature like you, something uniquely appetising to mortal and demon, a creature that since her mortal birth had been morphing into something glorious?” He peered up at me, his eyes full of silent entreaty. “On that day you were a butterfly coming out of its cocoon, flexing its womanly and otherworld power and glowing with promise. If it’s possible for a woman to become more beautiful day by day you were she.”

  I turned away from his piercing gaze, gripping the arms of the chair. I could recall that day so well. A man had followed me up a side street. He’d appeared from nowhere, a fleet panther. He’d pushed up against me, a white man, someone I took to be a businessman. Pinning me between the wall and his body and brutally pushing aside my underwear, he’d stuck his finger so roughly up inside my sex that it had brought tears to my eyes. I’d raised my knee and kicked him in the groin the way Granny had taught me, before I’d fled sobbing up a dirty side street where the gutters had been overflowed with filth and stray dogs had sniffed at my feet. I’d tucked myself into the dark shadows of a doorway, heart hammering. At first I’d thought he’d followed me because, when I had looked up, I had seen a man in a rather crumpled white linen suit staring down at me with molten eyes of such inexpressible emotion my head had swum and I had had to steady myself. It was Shankar—the man I’d come to love with all my heart.

  Men followed me everywhere. It was part of the curse of being a Spence woman that I couldn’t shake off. I wasn’t a whore and I was sure I did nothing to invite it, but as Granny Rowena used to say, ‘A Spence woman is a Spence woman and she has a sex magic about her that attracts men like bees around a honeypot’.

  “Men can be such beasts and I’m a man, of course. You trust me don’t you?” He’d grinned at me. “I’m a doctor so let me see that foot. You went down hard and I think you twisted it.”

  Yes, I’d thought with a moan of consternation, glancing down, and seeing I’d broke
n the heel on my shoe. My foot really did hurt.

  Crouching down, he’d unfastened the strap inspecting the broken heel of the shoe carefully, then, holding my foot and putting it on his knee, he had spent a great deal of time manipulating it. For the first time in my life I’d yielded to one orgasm after another, precipitated solely by the touch of his fingers.

  “It’s only bruised. Lean on me and I’ll take you back to the hotel.”

  We’d crossed the market square. No one had seemed to notice I was walking in my stockinged feet, the doctor holding my shoes in one hand and my arm in the other, his hand on my flesh burning every place he’d touched. In the hotel foyer he’d done something unthinkable for an Indian gentleman. Before I had time to complain, he’d scooped me up and carried me to my room. Once there, he’d unlocked the door, ferried me to the bed and, unclipping my suspender belt and rolling my stockings down my leg, he had begun bending my ankle this way and that to test for an injury. I’d wanted him to kiss it and yes, then he had been kissing it all over as strange shivers pulsed through me and his eyes teased me.

  “After today, you shouldn’t walk through the market alone. I don’t know how to say this without offending you, but you’re one of those women, the type of woman who’ll always attract attention. It’s not just that hair, although that’s enough to catch any man’s eye…and it’s not your unusual beauty. It’s the sex, my dear, you exude it. You’re blatantly sex. If you were my wife I’d have you in a veil, I’d cover every inch of you.”

  Shankar’s finger had trickled down my face, circling my lips and stroking back my hair that had fallen free from its pins. Then, standing up he’d fetched a bowl and had begun carefully washing my feet. He’d been so tender, so beguiling. But he’d been human then.

  “Now,” I said sourly. “In case you were wondering, I didn’t encourage that horrible man’s attention.”

  “No, my sweet, you didn’t. You can’t help having something like an extra finger or toe, something that makes people stare. You were born with it.”

  “Yes, born with it,” I muttered quietly. “You’re right, I invite sex.”

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  About the Author

  Xssa is currently employed at one of those jobs, the ones that pay the rent and bills. She’s really a writer, volunteer firefighter and ravenous bookworm. Xssa Annella is currently published with Whispers Publishing and now with Total-E-Bound. She is looking forward to someday being in print and publishing a lot more books.

  Email: liomaskb@aol.com

  Xssa loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.total-e-bound.com.

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