The Temple

by Jean Johnson

  “Of course. So . . . have you got the list made?” Pelai asked.

  “I do, Doma.” Rising, he carried the page over to her, blowing on it as he walked to help dry the sheet.

  Purrsus, startled, tried to scoot his head out of her boot so he could retreat. He got it tangled on a bit of lacing, and ended up going in backward circles twice before finally shaking off the footwear and scampering to the far side of the room. There, he stopped and did the classic licking of his shoulder in an attempt to look utterly unruffled, and as if he had planned all of that, backward boot-scooting and everything.

  Krais eyed the cat’s antics, a bemused smile tugging at the corner of his mouth; after Purrsus was free and once again dignified, he handed over the sheet with a murmur. “Father prefers dogs. I’m beginning to see the appeal of cats in the face of his disdain.”

  “Because they’re silly creatures?” Pelai suggested, glancing over the list. Purrsus moved off, wandering elsewhere in search of something more interesting, no doubt.

  “That, too, but they’re just . . . more independent. If I were a pet, I’d be a cat, I think,” he mused. “One who has decided not to purr anymore at the hand trying to feed me false or overinflated opinions as if they were facts.”

  “And that right there is why I do not like subservients in my private life,” she told him, finishing her check of his list. He had neat handwriting. Catching his inquiring look when she glanced up again, she explained herself. “Far too many subservients think that they have to abase themselves with their domo or doma. Sometimes to the point of discarding their own thoughts and opinions.

  “Some Disciplinarians enjoy that, but that actually offends me,” Pelai confessed. “It puts too much control and too much power into the hands of the Disciplinarian, which means the domo or doma ends up getting seduced by the rush of that power, and abuses it. Work needs to stay work, and my partners—even my penitents—need to have at least some opinions of their own. If they change to align with mine, then it needs to be because it is their choice. Which is why I prefer to punish in ways that provoke thought as well as reaction.”

  “My opinions may be changing to be more like yours, but I assure you Pelai, they are changing because of my thoughts on those issues. Not yours,” Krais stated.

  “Good. Put that on the table where you will see it tomorrow, and strip naked,” she ordered, grateful the mundane concerns of shopping for food and such were finally out of the way.

  Krais blinked. The abrupt change in subject threw him, and for a moment he wasn’t certain he had heard her right. “ . . . What?”

  “Put the list down and strip naked. We’re going to start training you on how your body reacts to pain and pleasure,” Pelai elaborated.

  Or rather, he reminded himself, Pelai’thia. She is Pelai’thia now, Elder Mage of the Hierarchy. He had to remember that. She was also his doma, his Disciplinarian. The prospect of being naked and thus vulnerable in front of her unnerved him. “ . . . Could we start with my kilt still on?”

  She arched a brow. Wincing a little, Kraise reminded himself this was part of his official punishment . . . even if he might end up enjoying the session in some twisted, perverted way. Sighing, Krais bent over and started unlacing his sandals to delay removing his kilt for as long as possible.

  To his surprise, Pelai’thia relented. “Alright. You may keep your kilt on. For now. But only your kilt,” she told him. “Even your fundo has to be removed. Set your clothes on the table away from the food, kneel when you have finished, and you may have a little something to eat while we go over the rules.”

  “ . . . Thank you, Doma,” he murmured, grateful for the reprieve. After a second, the meaning behind her words caught up to his brain and he straightened, eyeing her. “Wait, rules? What rules? I know there are laws, but . . .”

  “If this were a normal penance, you and I would only need to concern ourselves about the laws binding the behavior of Disciplinarians toward their penitents,” Pelai pointed out. “But this is much more consensual than that. You, Puhon Krais, need to get in touch with what your body desires. You wish to remain dominant in your life, in control of your destiny . . . but if you wish to retain control of your body, you need to understand how it works.”

  “I suppose,” Krais murmured, nudging his sandals under the drinks table and working on removing his worn blue vest. The cotton material certainly looked like it had been through a lot, but then these were clothes he had taken on his journey overseas. The choice came down to appearances; if his father heard of him wandering around in worn, aging clothing, then Dagan’thio might consider his son to be humiliated as well as punished, and hopefully be satisfied with that.

  Once the vest came off, his colorfully painted torso drew her gaze. There were tattoos for shielding his bare flesh against blunt attacks and piercing ones, inked sigils for strength, others for swiftness. Typical for an upper-ranked Painted Warrior, really. And, of course, the hint of the black-inked runes wrapping around the divot of his navel, just barely visible at the waistband of his informal blue kilt. Not the kind that cut off his fertility in order to empower his tattoos—he was a mage and had plenty of excess power—but the kind that tied his magics into the markings across his body.

  An odd, awkward part of his mind hoped the way she followed his movements meant she found his body appealing. If they were about to begin exploring his newly twisted sexuality, well, he wasn’t going to be heartless enough to expect her to suffer. If she enjoyed the view . . . then that was fine. He was just handsome enough that he’d never lacked for company, even with only a minimum of effort. Not completely effortlessly, of course, but basic courtesies toward women, that sort of thing.

  Sitting there on her couch, watching the proud Painted Warrior strip . . . Pelai definitely enjoyed the view.

  Muscles rippled under all that ink, brown-tanned flesh bunching and clenching. His skin wrinkled a little at the belly, as all bodies wrinkled when they bent over, allowing him to put the folded garment on the table. Pelai indulged in admiring his arm and back muscles while he did so. Straightening, he flushed a little under the weight of her gaze, but discreetly reached up under the back folds of his kilt and started working loose the wrapped ends of his fundo.

  Men and women both wore kilts, unless some task or situation absolutely required trousers. Even then, the leggings tended to be only knee-length; Mendhi was a warm, humid country. Letting a breeze caress the skin, evaporating sweat to cool the body, tended to be necessary most days. Especially in summer, like now. At least the cooling runes for her house worked; the air felt bearable against her skin, and Krais showed no signs of sweating.

  After piling the loincloth on the far end of the table, away from the food, he knelt, started to reach for the nearest plate, then hesitated. Glancing her way, Krais asked, “Would you like some of this food, Doma?”

  He didn’t ask in a subservient way; his tone implied he was offering to pass her a plate as if she were the guest in his home, not the other way around. But Pelai nodded, glad his instinct was to be courteous in his own way. She doubted his father would have bothered.

  “Yes. Pass me one of the plates.”

  He did so. Not subserviently, no little bow, no offering it with both hands, no supplication. The eldest Puhon brother just picked up the plate by its edge and extended his arm, a perfectly normal, ordinary, between-two-equals action. His father might have expected subservient behavior from a penitent, but she rather liked its absence.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, accepting the plate. Picking up a cracker, she dipped it in the chickpea paste, munched, and spoke when her mouth was clear again. “The very first thing we need to discuss are your safety words. Do you remember what that is?”

  He nodded, and worked to clear his own mouth of food. “ . . . It’s the word or words I could say as a subservient—not as a penitent, normally, but always as a subservient�
�that would get you to pause and discuss with me what is happening, listening to me speaking about uncertainty, or discomfort. Or even a safety word to get you to stop entirely. Except I am a penitent, not a subservient, and do not get such things.”

  “The law says I do not have to give you safety words as a penitent, provided I can defend my actions before the Goddess and the truth as being justified,” Pelai corrected him. “But it also does not say I cannot give you safety words. It is my choice. Since the Goddess has judged that your penance is not truly necessary, and I have judged it is simply for appearances . . . I choose that you get to have them.”

  “Then . . . I am grateful, and . . . what should I say that would get your attention?” Krais asked.

  “Personally, I prefer the three colors system,” Pelai admitted. “Green is associated with Healing magics, with healthy gardens and forests, so if you say you are feeling green, then that means everything is fine. Yellow is the color associated with fear, so if you are feeling uncertain or uncomfortable, you may call out, ‘yellow,’ and I will pause whatever is happening so that we can discuss it. . . . You know this system?” she asked when he nodded along with her words.

  “Father used it on us to train us to behave, as young boys,” Krais confessed. “The third color, red, means danger, the spilling of blood. Whatever it is we were doing, when he called out red, we had to stop it right away. I am familiar with it. But . . . using the colors might remind me of him, and . . . if I am to enjoy what is happening,” he continued, picking his words carefully, “ . . . then I don’t want to think of my father midway through.”

  “Oh, well, that’s easy,” Pelai drawled. “Your absolute dead-stop safety word is your father’s name, ‘Dagan’thio.’ I know that’d strike me like someone conjuring ice water over my head, and instantly cool my interest. I’ve found that, more often than not, an aversion to a word that is an euphemism for something else—or an association, like in this case—can be cured by deliberately using the word that directly references what the listener finds repulsive.”

  Krais tipped his head, frowning in confusion. “How so?”

  “If you know you can say your father’s name, ‘Dagan’thio,’ and that saying it will cause everything to stop, then that anchors the instinctive revulsion in your mind on his actual name. This allows you to free up the words for the colors green, yellow, and red to mean other things. They aren’t his name, they aren’t your father, and they aren’t being said by him. Instead, they return to being just colors, allowing you to associate them simply with the concepts of ‘continue’ and ‘pause’ and ‘stop what we’re doing for now,’” she said, gesturing between the two of them. “Does that make sense?”

  He thought about it a few moments, then nodded slowly. “It does, actually. It makes a lot of sense that way. But I have a question. If I said ‘red’ in the middle of something . . . do I have to give a reason for it?”

  “No,” Pelai asserted, shaking her head. “Red is red, and red is full stop for that particular session. I might ask you, and you may choose to reply, but you do not have to.”

  His brows lifted at that. “My father would not allow a ‘red’ to pass unchallenged . . .”

  Leaning forward, Pelai braced her elbows on her knees and gave him a hard, pointed stare. “I am not your father.”

  “Yes, and I thank Menda for it,” he agreed. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around the differences, after decades of knowing Disciplinarians more through watching him than anyone else.”

  “We’re all a little different from each other, with different areas of expertise and training, and what sort of rogue mages we’d prefer to handle,” she told him. “Understand, however, that if you give me a ‘yellow,’ I expect you to explain why. It may take you a few minutes of calming down so you can think coherently, but a good Disciplinarian is patient. Good subservients, in turn, take pains to express themselves. After all, the Gods have forbidden living mortals from being able to read each other’s thoughts. Only the dead can do so with impunity.”

  That earned her another quizzical look. “Only the dead . . . ?”

  “The priesthood of Darkhana has the ability to carry around a deceased priest or priestess—they call themselves Witches—inside their body, sharing their accumulated knowledge and wisdom as a form of superior guidance in exchange for occasionally borrowing the living host’s body,” Pelai explained. “I met one of the most famous Darkhanan Witches when I visited Mekhana half a year ago. She was kind enough to explain a few things to me before I came back home.

  “Her Guide, as the deceased is called, was able to communicate directly with the thoughts of others upon a simple touch, as well as with the thoughts of his Host. It was quite interesting . . . but not a path for my life I’d have picked,” she finished, sitting back again. She started to say more, but her cat meowed from somewhere down the hall toward the front entrance. “I’m in here, Purrsus!”

  Claws ticking on the floor tiles, the Temple cat came trotting back into the family room, prrrrp-ing with each rapid step for several paces. Within moments, he gained enough momentum to jump up onto the couch and head-bump her in the back of her neck and skull with his furry face, purring loudly. Lifting her hand up and back, she scratched awkwardly, soothing the feline.

  Under Krais’ bemused look, Pelai blushed a little and explained, “ . . . He gets lost and lonely, sometimes. All I have to do is let him know where I am in the residence, and he rejoins me happily.”

  Krais blinked twice, opened his mouth, and finally said, “I do believe I am envious of a cat . . .”

  “Come again?” Pelai asked.

  “I’ve never had anyone who would go out of their way to reassure me that I’m loved, and wanted, and . . . My brothers might qualify, but they’re as apt to cuff me as pet me whenever I reconnect with them after an absence,” he muttered.

  “That is not unexpected,” she murmured. Purrsus jumped down to the couch pallet from the long, broad cushion to her lap, where he sniffed around a bit, then settled down across her leather-draped thighs. “Your father doesn’t exactly encourage moments of gentle intimacy in public places.”

  “I am very glad you said gentle intimacy, which is platonic,” Krais muttered, swiping a hand over his long hair. “Because the other kind is not something I care to contemplate about my father.”

  “Neither would I,” she agreed mildly, petting her lap cat. “But we shall set aside thoughts of Dagan’thio at this time, and focus instead upon your first set of lessons.”

  Chapter Nine

  He looked around, then eyed her. “Do you need to fetch anything? I know you’re still carrying your symbolic flogger at your hip, but do you need to get a work version? A paddle? Wax candles?”

  Pelai shook her head. “I’m not going to touch you tonight.”

  That raised his brows. “You’re not . . . ?”

  “No. First, you need to learn how your body responds to various stimuli, in a controlled manner guided by my expertise, in order to educate yourself on what you like and dislike. You need to learn these things, which means you need to be the one in complete control. You may discover things you don’t like, but you won’t fear what you discover, because you are in control.”

  “That does appeal to my dominant nature,” Krais murmured.

  “I did take that into consideration. During this first session,” she pointed out, “a wrong move on my part, however large or small, could throw off your trust and acceptance of this side of your nature. A single mistake made right now while spinning the thread can snarl the whole skein, or even weaken the weaving later on, causing it to tear and tatter when it most needs to be strong. And by that, I mean strong enough to withstand someone else trying to exploit your reactions.

  “If you know in advance how you’d react to a particular stimulus, you’ll be braced for it. Right now, you don’t know anything . . . so how can
you trust anything?” she pointed out. “Putting you in charge of what you do to yourself helps you deal with that.”

  “That makes sense,” he agreed. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. I’m in control of exactly how hard or how gentle I’ll be.”

  “Well, I do expect you to push your limits a little each session,” Pelai told him. “Your father might think to ask you if you’re making any progress on your penance, and this technically is your penance. Learning how to expand your boundaries as you explore your sexuality will be that progress.”

  “And if I don’t like something we end up doing?” he asked pointedly, only to receive an arched brow in return. “ . . . Right, it’s a penance, I’m not supposed to like it.” Breathing deeply, he held it in for a moment, then released his breath in a slow stream. “Okay. I am ready, Doma Pelai’thia.”

  “That still strikes me as odd,” Pelai muttered. “‘Pelai’thia.’ I still keep expecting Tipa’thia to be there . . .” She shook it off and settled herself comfortably upright on the couch, legs crossed and hands clasped lightly on her leather-clad lap. That meant shifting Purrsus onto the cushion next to her. He grumbled a little bit, but then yawned and curled up, twisting his upper half upside down so that he could dangle one paw, leaving the other stretched out.

  “Right. First lesson. Arousal comes from many sources. We want to make sure you associate what is about to happen with sensual pleasure . . . so I want you to arouse yourself slowly. Caress your hands and forearms in light strokes, whatever just plainly feels good. Remind yourself how good being touched feels, long strokes, circular rubs . . . Stimulate your skin for me, Penitent Puhon Krais.”