The Temple

by Jean Johnson

  “I did! I just forgot about it in the last few weeks,” she retorted.

  To her surprise, he moved around behind her, cupped her shoulders, and guided her back over to the couch in the family room. “Sit down, finish your tanga-designed chickpea paste, eat your crackers, and relax while you still can.”

  “Are you ordering me about?” she asked, bemused and amused. As they passed from the public half of the residence to the private half, she spotted Purrsus up and about, sniffing at the corner where the wall met the floor, doing whatever it was cats thought they should do.

  “You said yourself that even the Goddess Menda thinks I’m not punishable anymore and thus am not your penitent, save as a ruse to placate my father. So yes, I am ordering you around. Sit, eat, and take care of yourself, Pelai,” Krais directed her, nudging her down onto the cushions. Picking up her plate of food, he held it out, offering it until she took it. “ . . . There, see? The world hasn’t come to an end. Eat.”

  She obediently dipped a slice of carrot into the paste, nibbled, swallowed, and said, “Careful; don’t get seduced by any rush of power from my current compliance. I could still decide to punish you for daring to order me around in my own home.”

  Her voice slid over his skin like sun-warmed foreigner velvet, letting him know she liked the idea. Krais shivered a little. “I thought that you’d only punish me to show me what pleasure I might find in it.”

  “Anticipation sweetens the experience,” Pelai countered. “It heightens the rush of emotions, the tension that builds, awaiting the release found only when the lashes of the flogger strike, when the fingernails scrape . . . when the drops of hot wax strike and splatter and congeal. Eat your own snack, Krais, and we’ll resume your punishment training.”

  He hesitated, eyeing the floor versus the couch. With Purrsus gone, Pelai felt free to pat the cushions next to her. There was room for him. Settling onto it, he picked up his own plate and idly ate a bit of paste on a cracker. After a few mouthfuls, he asked, “So . . . you really think this will work?”

  “Define ‘this,’” she replied, licking a bit of chickpea paste off the edge of a finger. “This, the penitent thing? This, the faking having been punished thing? This, the pleasure one can find in pain thing?”

  “All of it. Some of it. Um . . . teaching me to equate pleasure and pain,” he clarified, narrowing down his definitions.

  “You already do,” Pelai said, pausing to reply before taking her next bite. “Your body knows how enjoyable it is. All I need to do is help you to accept it.”

  “That, then,” he conceded. He ate a bit more. Gesturing with his free hand at himself, he asked, “Are we going to do more than just the pain bits? I mean . . . you know. Sex. Lovemaking. Actual straightforward pleasure.”

  “If we feel we can trust each other, yes,” she said. “Just the exchanging of sensations will be quite intimate as it is.”

  “Exchanging? Do you . . . want me to do things to you, too?” he asked.

  That hadn’t been what she had meant. At least, not originally. Pelai mulled it over. “Well . . . I do like certain sensations applied to myself . . .”

  “I think I’d be able to trust all of this a lot more, if I saw your reactions to it, too,” Krais murmured.

  She arched her brow at him. “You think you can retain dominance by seeing me in a bottom position, subservient under your hand?”

  “What? No!” He frowned at her in return. “I meant, I think I could trust it all the more if I saw someone as dominant as you receiving these actions willingly. That you do enjoy them without turning submissive.”

  “Ah. My apologies for misunderstanding,” Pelai offered. He nodded, accepting them. She nibbled a bit more on her food, then drew in a breath. “I am willing to show you what to do—what I like, that is—but only after first showing it on you. You need to know what it feels like to receive these things, so that you will take better care with how you apply them to others.”

  When he merely ate more of his food for several moments, Pelai nudged him.

  “Is that acceptable?”

  “Mm—of course,” Krais replied, clearing his mouth quickly. He, too, had to lick chickpea paste from his fingers. “That makes sense. Part of me wants to be the dom . . . the top,” he stressed, getting the vocabulary right. “Because I am so used to tops being dominants, and of thinking of myself as a dominant, which means I should be a top as well. But . . . I know you’re right. So . . . do we do this tonight?”

  “If there aren’t any more interruptions, yes. Eat your food,” she told him. “When we’re done, we’ll take this upstairs. We’ll also turn off the lights downstairs, which will discourage casual visitors, and hopefully no one will interrupt us.”

  “What about that scrying thing I saw, in the air in front of your eyes?” he asked her.

  “It comes with a ‘not available right now’ option that diverts incoming communications, allowing the Guardian to sleep undisturbed,” she reassured him. “That was the first thing I asked about the first time Tipa’thia showed it to me. I wanted to be sure she was able to get uninterrupted sleep at night.”

  “A good choice,” he murmured. “Have you activated it?”

  “Not yet, but I will. While we eat,” Pelai decided, “let’s talk about what sorts of sexual activities you engaged in before discovering your body enjoys sensation play.”

  Krais wrinkled his nose. “You want me to talk about that?”

  “Yes. It’ll be good to incorporate what you’ve tried and what you like into what we’re about to do.”

  “To help teach me that pleasure and pain are okay together.”

  She smirked and nudged his elbow with her own. “To help teach you that pleasure and pain are great together . . . if you’re that sort of person. Like you and I are.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Three gentle swings of the flogger. Slap. Slap. Slap. Three gentle blows landing in succession on his back, his ribs, his outer thigh. Krais let the strands slither over his skin, soft suede dyed a reddish purple with the help of the sea snails that populated the local coastlines. The color complemented the tanned skin of his inner thighs.

  She had a whole rainbow of the things, each one made of a different length, heft, weight, material, and color. The one with the stretchy sap strands came in a yellowish-white, and stung hard but landed with very little thud behind its lightweight mass. The one dyed red had angular metal beads clamped around its stiff leather strands, designed to raise welts, even perhaps a little blood. The blue one was nothing but fluffy strips of dyed rabbit fur. Green meant it was made out of chain-joined lengths of round, thin bamboo, like a fanciful threshing flail in miniature. Black, of course, was ceremonial, and rarely used for actual punishments.

  Swinging the flogger again with his other hand, he whipped it up over his shoulder, smacking the strands onto the other half of his back on the left side, the opposite ribs, the left side again for his thigh. Whack, whack, whack. Unfortunately, the strands were too long. They struck spots too far from where he wanted to aim.

  Krais stopped the tool, swept the finger-wide lengths of suede into a bundle, and folded them back on the handle. Reversing his grip so that it included the bundle as well as the leather-wrapped handle, he tried striking himself again. Much better. Much more control. He liked being in control, even of his own flogging.

  The proof of how much he liked it lay in his lap. Kneeling on her bed with his kilt hem rucked up against his hips meant his erection was hidden in the folds. Well, somewhat hidden; it stood up visibly, pressing against the fabric in a distinct, pointed lump. One that twitched against the blue cotton of his kilt more than enough to stimulate the tip with each jostle of the flogger striking elsewhere on his body.

  “You hesitate again, but you’re not adjusting your grip. What are you thinking right now?” Pelai asked softly. Coaxingly, unlike his fathe
r’s more brutal-sounding commands, his mother’s strident demands. Her tone invoked intimacy in his ears. Confidence.

  She didn’t demand that he flog himself more, didn’t demand an explanation for the pause in his actions. She just asked what he thought in that moment.

  Krais decided to tell her. “I am wondering what this thing will feel like if I remove my kilt.”

  “Then do so, and find out,” she urged. Not with a heavy hand, but gently. An encouragement, not a command.

  He slanted her a look. Pelai sat at the head of her bed, pillows mounded up behind her back. Still clad in her black and gilded Disciplinarian leathers, knees drawn up, but with the skirt tucked down between her thighs. Her hands, clasped on her stomach, drew his attention. They looked tense. Her dark brown eyes gleamed in the suncrystals lighting the room

  “Are you . . . enjoying this? Watching me do this?”

  “Do you want me to say yes?” she asked him.

  “I want you to be honest with me, as you asked me to be honest with you.”

  “Then I am enjoying it very much,” Pelai confessed. “Are my reactions that obvious? I could tone them down if they’re disturbing you.”

  Krais shook his head on instinct before rational thought caught up. “No. Don’t suppress yourself. I . . . like knowing when my partner enjoys something. I really like it.”

  “Then I would enjoy watching you experiment with the flogger on your naked pen,” she murmured, using the euphemism instead of the more blunt yet, ironically, longer version of the name for it.

  Nodding, he set the tool down, then reached for the buttons of the waistband holding the pre-stitched pleats of his kilt in place. One set of buttons for the outer wrap, on the left side of his waist. A second set for the inner, over on the right. Fabric slid against flesh, sucking some of the air out of his lungs. He unwrapped the material gently, almost gingerly, and hissed again when it scraped along the sensitive head of his shaft.

  “Goddess . . . !” The exclamation escaped in a hiss, since the side hem caught at the last moment, adding extra sensation. His shaft bobbed free, swaying and twitching a little while he splayed the kilt material out to either side, like rectangular blue wings.

  “Excited?” she purred.

  “You know I am,” Krais growled, blushing.

  “Own it,” she ordered, her eyes dark yet bright, her soft lips curved in an eager little smile.

  For a moment, he wasn’t certain how to do that. Blood throbbing, he cupped the underside of the shaft, stroked upward with his palm just a little, and fumbled his other hand along the bedding, until he shifted the kilt folds away from the flogger hilt, and picked it up. He had to let go of himself long enough to catch the strands and double them over against the handle, but that was fine; they would have been too long once again, otherwise.

  With the memory of sueded leather dragged against his fingertips, Krais cupped himself once again, getting ready to strike. His skin felt soft as sueded fabric, hot like sun-warmed wood, hard as his thoughts. Adjusting his grip on the flogger, he swung it a little, hesitating, bracing himself. He remembered how much it had hurt when the lust philtre potion had driven him to chafed madness . . . and yet how much it still aroused him to be hurt like that.

  Swirling his wrist, he swung the suede strands around, and smacked them into his shaft, his palm, his fingers; a few whipped around and stung his left thigh. An explosion of sensations raced through him as he jumped at the blow, icy heat, electricity, stinging, and yes, lust. “Oh!”

  The strands trickled over the stinging lines they had laid across his flesh, lines that while not even all that hard-laid were still now more sensitive than other, unstruck swaths of skin. Deliberately dragging the flogger away, he groaned under the sensations, tickling, scraping, throbbing, arousing . . .

  He struck again, just a swirl of his wrist, nothing halfway to hard, but even as he flinched and hissed, it scratched an itch inside that he hadn’t known he had. Not until just over six months ago, at least. His left hand slowly stroked the underside of his flesh. His right hand swung again, another jumping twitch, an explosion of feelings, the closest of which had been the fingernails of past lovers scraping down his back, digging into his skin.

  Sensations beyond the ordinary enthralled him. A touch of pain, like hot spice on meat, enriching and changing the flavors of the meal beyond recognition. As he angled the strands of the flogger along his skin, he tested his thigh, his chest and shoulder, and his shaft again. The tickling trail felt good over the unflogged parts of his skin, but wherever he had struck recently, the touches seemed magnified several times in their intensity.

  An odd sound reached his ears. A sort of furtive sound, rustling with a very faint yet rhythmic squeak. Opening eyes that had drifted shut while he explored his sense of touch, Krais found himself looking at Pelai. She had lifted her left hand in a fist, and it looked like her teeth clamped onto her foreknuckle. Her other hand . . . that originated the sound. Her fingers had rucked up her soft, pleated leather kilt, had wormed beneath the white cotton of her fundo, and . . .

  He shuddered, watching her stroke. His gaze fastened on her actions, her dark curls just barely visible next to her undulating hand, the white edge of her undergarment, the faint rubbing of that leather against itself, source of the squeak. Krais fancied he heard a soft, wet sound as those fingers worked her flesh over and over. Believed he caught a whiff of her musky scent as she fingered herself. All taking place while she watched him arousing himself with her violet suede flogger.

  A few moments after he stopped moving, her glazed eyes refocused with a blink. Blushing hard enough to be seen through the deep tan of her cheeks, Pelai rolled her eyes. “ . . . What?” she hissed with a somewhat defensive edge to her words. Her fingers stilled for a moment, or rather, slowed to a soft, almost lazy circling movement he couldn’t completely see. “You told me I shouldn’t suppress reactions. This is me, unsuppressed. I really like watching you do that to yourself.”

  Krais blinked, but couldn’t fault the logic in her actions. “Alright,” he agreed huskily. “I . . . do you want to do this to me?”

  He offered her the flogger, but to his surprise, she shook her head quickly, her knees closing her thighs around the wrist tucked between them. “Nope!”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because I promised you I wouldn’t touch you tonight,” she explained promptly. “I keep my word. I will not touch you. Tonight is about you exploring your new sense of sexuality.”

  “I appreciate your honor,” he murmured, eyeing her askance, “but that makes me feel more like you’re denying me to torment me, to add to my experiences.”

  “That wasn’t my original plan, but if you wish, I can twist it that way,” she offered. Her fingers moved.

  “I’m not used to having my desires thwarted when a lady expresses interest in me,” Krais returned, holding her gaze. He flicked the flogger handle idly, swaying the strands so they lightly slapped his chest, more of a pattering than a thwack. Her gaze dipped from his eyes to his pectoral muscle, and she licked her lips. Inspiration struck. “Why don’t we torment each other, by seeing how much we can arouse each other without . . . touching?”

  “Like, a competition?” Pelai asked. “The last one to climax . . . ?”

  Shaking his head, Krais looked at her upraised thighs. At the hand still tucked under the folds of her half-askew loincloth. “If I can get you to climax without touching you, excite you enough from what you’re seeing that you stroke yourself to the peak of pleasure, I get to lick you clean.”

  “That’s not fair,” Pelai murmured, pouting a little. “I promised I wouldn’t touch you, tonight. What will be my prize for you climaxing first, if I cannot touch you in any way?”

  “If I can get myself to climax from a flogging, then you get to have me lick you to your climax?” he offered. Krais lifted his chin
at her groin. “It’s my favorite thing to do with women. I told you it’s my favorite thing, downstairs. Not in so many words,” he amended, reflecting on their rather dry discussion of his preferences while finishing their plates of artistically arranged food, “but I implied it.”

  “But that would involve touching,” Pelai pointed out. “As would you licking me clean . . . however enticing that is.”

  “We’re going to touch each other anyway, since you haven’t arranged for a separate bed for me to sleep in,” he pointed out. “At least, I presume I’ll be sleeping next to you again . . . being used as your hugging pillow, as I was last night? Plus, you said you wouldn’t touch me. This would be me touching you. Your promise would remain intact.”

  Pelai blushed again, but she smiled and lolled her head back against the pillows. “ . . . Alright. Sartorlagen.”

  Instantly, almost all of her clothing vanished, save only for the anklet resting near her left foot, and of course her forearm bracers. Those stayed, hiding the tattoos of her calling. Everything else vanished, even down to the tie holding back her hair.

  Nothing on Krais’s body vanished, but then technically—aside from his own contraceptive anklet—he was naked already. His kilt still rested against his buttocks, but with it unwrapped to either side, it left his body bared to her view. As for his view, when she spread her bent legs open like the wings of a brown, tattoo-traced butterfly, he had a very full view of her, too. Krais didn’t bother to look around for her garments; that spell was a common one, widely known across the whole world, and they would no doubt be found later in a neatly folded pile, resting on some flat, horizontal surface.

  Right now, the folds and valleys of her loins held his full attention. He leaned forward, getting ready to crawl up between those splayed knees. Watched as the fingers of one hand parted them, with the first two fingers of the other poised over that delicious dark rose peak. Heard her clear her throat.