by Jean Johnson
She tapped her little peak, then stroked it, smiling almost smugly. Clearly aware that her tattooed muscles and curves aroused him, she teased him by playing with herself with her left hand, and playing with him with her right. In retaliation, he leaned over, teased the closed end of the clothespin in his hand around the dimple of her navel, then squeaked it open and clamped it over the rim of the lower edge.
Pelai opened her mouth as if to say something. She breathed deeply for a moment, then let her eyelids drift shut. Licking her lips she finally said, “It takes a while for the pain to build on that spot . . . but I can feel it right into my womb, and down to my clitoris. . . . Pin my untouched breast. Anywhere you want . . .”
He groped for a fresh pin, found it by her outer thigh, and detoured it to her inner thighs to scrape and tease her soft skin. His own thighs had more tattoos than hers; they shared the ox-kick one on their knees but his thighs had the tattoo-runes for landing from a high jump with all the force of a meteor strike, yet none of the normal, accompanying personal damage. Then again, it made sense she had fewer markings inked on her skin; Pelai had spent her days as a Disciplinarian mostly sticking around the capital, with penitents brought to her, rather than her going out to find them.
Once upon a time, he would’ve seen fewer tattoos as a sign of weakness, vulnerability, an inability to withstand the rigors of fighting. That, however, was no longer an interest of his. He no longer wanted to have to fight for his father’s approval, literally. Dragging the clip up to her netherlips, he nudged her hand out of the way, rubbed the closed pin along her folds until the wood darkened with the dampness gathering there, then brought it up to her lips.
“Kiss it, and I’ll clip it to your nipple.”
She licked it, and smirked.
He playfully nipped at her lips with the squeaking bits of wood and spring, careful not to actually close the pin on her flesh. Even he knew that had not been negotiated. Of course, her putting my pen in her mouth wasn’t negotiated, either, but if I’d thought she’d have gone for it, I would’ve said yes . . . There, she’s kissed it.
Lowering the twice-dampened wood to her right breast, he gently settled the pincers around the bead of her nipple. She cried out, squeezing his shaft almost painfully tight. He started to ease the grip, but her hand suddenly shifted into rapid motion, stroking the loose cowl of skin rapidly up and down in time with the thrumming of her fingers against her peak.
Her left knee drew up and out, giving her fingers more room. Inspired, Krais groped for one more pin, held it up in front of her dazed eyes, her panting lips, and asked, “Do you want me to thrust into you with this?”
Her fingers clenched around his cock once again, if only for a moment. “Yes!”
Aroused by her frantic on-the-edge state, Krais licked the shut clothespin to dampen the wood, then brought it down to her folds and pushed up inside. His fingers bumped into the knuckles pumping up and down along her slit, but they did not stop him from slowly pumping the wood in and out, in and out, in and—Pelai clutched at him with her right hand, hips lifting rhythmically into his efforts, and cried out a strangled version of his name, along with a garbled order.
It took him a few seconds, but as soon as he realized what she asked, he snatched away the two pins on the underside of her left breast. She cried and bucked up into his touch. He grabbed the third clip, the nipple clothespin, and pulled slowly and steadily upward. At least with his left hand; his right plunged the finger-sized pin in and out, over and over, increasing his speed. Only her own jerking made the nipple clothespin tug harshly on her flesh, yanking until it popped free.
That did it. Crying out again, she came, coating his fingers with musky warmth. Easing his movements, Krais pulled the makeshift clothespin phallus out of her depths. He tossed it onto his thigh—the feel of her warm wetness cooling quickly against his skin aroused him—and cupped his right hand between her thighs, pushing it firmly against her mound. That pressure seemed to help. With his left hand, he pressed against her reddened right nipple, very slowly and gently massaging her breast as a whole while she panted.
After a few seconds, her hand came up, dragged his fingers from her chest to her belly. Obliging her silent command, he eased the final clothespin off the rim of her navel, and then slowly, firmly rubbed her abdomen, soothing and grounding.
Gradually, she relaxed her body. The only parts that kept moving were her fingers, gently ripple-squeezing his excited, leaking lover’s pen. A deep, slow breath ended in a smile she angled up at him. “I see I’ve got you rearoused. Shame on me. I’ll just have to beat it out of you. As for tomorrow night, mmm . . . I think I’ll introduce you to some of my other floggers, and to the spike-wheel. Maybe a little hot wax play . . . or save that for Family Day? Maybe I should welt you right before you go home for Family Day, too. What do you think?”
Heat flushed his face, an unsettling mix of mortification and desire. Last night and tonight proved he did like mixing pain and pleasure, in carefully controlled, safely applied, freely consented amounts. Clearing his throat, Krais stated, “I think you’d better make sure I’m thoroughly sated before you send me out, if you do either . . . or I’ll arrive at my parent’s house with my kilt tented up.”
He wanted to ask if she was going to do anything about his current condition, but wasn’t sure if it was . . . Don’t hesitate, just ask, he ordered himself. She gave permission for you to speak your mind, Krais. “So. Are you going to leave me this hard and aroused all night, allow me handle it, or handle it yourself?”
“Mmm . . . I’m enjoying handling it, alright,” Pelai murmured, and rolled onto her side, pressing her cheek and breasts up against his thigh. The position change meant swapping arms so that she could fondle him better. “Is there anything in particular you like when a woman does this? A particular grip, speed . . . body part?”
“Well, I’m not Gayn; I don’t find being rubbed by feet all that exciting. Breasts are nice, but mouth and fingers are just fine,” he offered. A little breathlessly. Her fingers feathered over his sac, making him shiver and all but squeak, “Just like that . . .”
Pelai laughed, but it wasn’t out of cruelty. Teasing, perhaps, but more from what seemed to be a giddy sense of pleasure at figuring out how to make her former quasi-nemesis squeak. She did it again, teasing his sac to make him hiss and squirm, until he flopped onto his back, laughing and aroused and—She swallowed him up in her mouth, bathing his shaft in unexpected warmth. Krais slid from laughter straight into pleasure, like a gondola launching into a lake.
Eyes rolling up in his head, climaxing in pulses that clenched his stomach but didn’t wrack his body in hard shudders, a stray thought crossed through his head. When did I get on a gondola, inside my head? How rude of me; I didn’t greet the prow or the oarlock, yet . . .
Drifting back down out of bliss, he found his left side rather warm, thanks to the smug female snuggling up against him. She chuckled a little, clearly pleased with herself, and purred, “You pinched and pulled your nipples mid-climax, did you notice?”
He shook his head slightly, and managed a semi-coherent, “Nuh-uh . . .”
Another chuckle accompanied a soft pat of his tattooed chest, and a muttered cleaning spell. “Sleep well, Krais. You’ve ear—“
“Maau! Mrrauww! Mau!”
“ . . . And there goes my cat, demanding to be let in,” she observed dryly. Purrsus cried out again, clearly offended by the bedroom door being shut. Pelai muttered a cantrip spell that opened the door just enough to let the cat trot in and leap up onto the bed. He sniffed at Krais’ toes, headbutted them, and mauwed at the two humans, before vigorously grooming his silvery gray shoulder. She watched him for a few moments, then settled back against Krais’ side. “You’ve earned a good night’s rest. I’ll save the hot wax and the welting for Family Day. Tomorrow, you go looking for that sight-and-sound sharing tattoo.”
“Mmh, yes,” he agreed. “Pelai . . . I wish I hadn’t been an idiot all these years. We could’ve gotten to know each other a full decade ago, and more.”
“Oh, please, we were both idiots back then,” she scoffed.
“I was more of an idiot,” he reminded her. “You didn’t have the urge to please my father dictating your every idiotic move.”
“True,” Pelai agreed. She shifted a little, stretching up an arm to wave her hand over the runes controlling the mage crystals lighting her bedroom. Darkness engulfed them.
Her readiness with that reply made him laugh softly. “Not even a token protest . . . ?”
“Nope. But I was an idiot. Everyone is until they finish maturing at around twenty-five, and ten years ago, you and I were still, what, twenty-one?”
“Twenty-one. I’m thirty-one,” he reminded her. “Half a year younger, or so. But still, I regret being an idiot for so long.”
“Well, you did come to your senses,” she pointed out fairly. Pelai started to say something more, then squawked and shifted, doing something with Purrsus who squawked in turn. The cat thumped onto the bed somewhere past her far side. “Oy! No walking on my belly, bad kitty!”
“I dread the day he steps on my groin,” Krais muttered. “That’s not the kind of pain I want to experience.”
“Duly noted,” Pelai agreed promptly. “No using my cat to step on your delicate bits.”
“No crushing my pen by other means, either,” he warned her, using the euphemism since the darkness of her bedroom already made things feel that much more intimate between them. He did add honestly, “I do want to be able to write a family some day.”
“Some day,” she agreed. “But not by making love in my Fountain.”
“ . . . What?”
“Never mind. Long story. Guardian stuff. It’s a bad idea, anyway,” she dismissed sleepily. “Snuggle-time now.”
“Do I even want to . . . ?” he asked hesitantly.
“No. Goodnight, Krais. Sleep well.”
Shifting a little to be more comfortable, he cuddled with her, and agreed. “Sleep well, Pelai.”
Chapter Fifteen
The new tattoo on his middle two fingers still stung a little. Inked in skin-matched colors, only the redness of the half-healed flesh showed where it sat. Healing spells could only work so fast on Mendhite tattoos, and this tattoo had been applied only just this morning But, so long as he kept his family’s attention elsewhere, it should pass unnoticed.
Showing up late to luncheon should do the trick, Krais thought wryly. The Temple’s bells had clanged noon before leaving Pelai’s quarters, and the great hour-hand on the highest tower over the Temple Sanctuary now stood slightly but visibly off of straight. He didn’t bother with the bellpull; this was technically his home when he wasn’t being a penitent or out on assignment. Krais just opened the front door and walked through the foyer hall into the atrium.
Rain drizzled lightly through the square holding the enclosed garden open to the elements, but since he was already damp, Krais simply crossed to the two spirit trees sitting in splendor on the spirit rock—not just a table, but an ancient, weathered, moss-edged rock—at the heart of the ornamental garden. Each miniature tree had been carefully clipped and tended and carried from home to home. Younger sons and daughters had the right to carry a cutting from the parental tree; Dagan’thio and Karei were both younger siblings, so they did not have the ancestral trees of their family line. Those sat in the original homes, Karei’s far to the east along the coastline where her fishing village family lived, and Dagan’s to the northwest among the rice terraces, still in the possession of his magesmithing family.
Krais touched the leaves of the Puhon spirit tree to remember his paternal kin, living and dead, then the Aldis tree for his mother’s kin. One day, his father’s tree would be his; their mother’s tree would be Foren’s, and Gayn would have the right to claim a cutting from either one, or perhaps from both if he wished. What an irony that I would rather be the one with a mere cutting from each, and let Gayn have father’s spirit tree for his inheritance.
Giving the little bush-sized trees a final pat of fondness, he followed the winding path through the rest of the garden to the porch on the far side. Two steps up, and he passed into the inner receiving hall, the one reserved for actual friends of the Elder Disciplinarian. Common visitors who were strangers but who did not have formal business used the parlor on the right side of the atrium. Those with formal business used the library to the left. Krais was family.
A youth of about fifteen or sixteen, his hair braided and beaded, his worn blue kilt pinned with a black-enameled pin at the knee, hurried into the inner hall. “This is Family Day for the Elder Disciplinarian. You are not allowed inside. Only family may ent . . . oh.”
The youth blinked and stared at the flecks of wax still clinging to the older male’s skin. Pelai had used beeswax mixed with a bit of red ink for colorant. It blended well with the deep red kilt and lighter vest Krais wore—that was, if by well, one included the fact it looked like he’d suffered from rolling around on burning embers for a while. With his arms bared by the usual sleeveless nature of Mendhite vests, the wax did not quite cover up the linear welts of the quirt she had used on his torso, shoulders, and the backs of his arms. Krais watched the youth size him up and come to the correct conclusion.
It was obvious he had been punished, which meant his unannounced, boldly entered presence in the Elder Disciplinarian’s home logically meant he was Puhon Krais, the eldest of the sons. The youth bowed and gestured toward the corridor leading out of the mid-hall at the back, not the one to the right leading to the formal dining hall nor the one to the left leading to the pantry, kitchen, and servants’ quarters. Family Day meals took place in the family room, one of the few times in a high-ranking household where it was correct to be informal at a meal.
Nodding, Krais continued forward. The sound of utensils clacking against pottery met his ears; someone had decided to go ahead and serve the food, despite him not being there. A typical fatherly reaction to punish a wayward son, I think, he decided, trying to soothe the underlying sting of it. I’m not that late, but I am in disgrace . . . although Mother just might be behind it. Part of me quails at the thought of Mother’s displeasure . . .
“Krais!” His mother called out his name, blinking and looking up from ladling vegetables and meat in a thick nutty sauce over the mix of rice and wheat that in turn had been boiled in flavor-rich broth. Steamed greens already sat on the plate next to the mound of rice, dark and pungent, drizzled in bean sauce and dusted with tiny seeds.
The nutty-sauced vegetables were a common dish cooked by his parents; Family Day was for family, and she and Dagan’thio always cooked one meal together. The parents always cooked, until they were too old to cook, and the children set the table, cleared and cleaned it, washed the dishes, swept the floor. . . . Grandparents tended truly young children, and once in a while, aunts and uncles brought their families to such gatherings, if they lived close. Both the Puhon and the Aldis extended families lived too far away to visit each other more than once or twice a year, however.
Krais bowed to her as the first one to have seen him. “Ava, Mother. Ava, Father,” he greeted formally, bowing to his sire next. After him were . . . Gayn in Krais’ seat at the low table, seated on the solitary cushion placed on that long side. Foren sat in his usual seat on the other side, closer to their mother’s place on the left. Gayn usually shared that side of the table, closest to their father, but not today. “Ava, Foren. Ava, Gayn . . .”
He debated saying something about reclaiming his seat as the eldest and the heir . . . but decided against it. Maybe this is part of the punishment I’m not to protest? Krais wondered, moving around behind his father as the quartet greeted him in a ragged chorus of formal greetings as well. He would not have dared take my place without Father’s position, so I think
it is. Out of the corner of his eye, he felt his father’s attention on him, the focus of that dark brown gaze, though his father’s head did not move.
Dropping gracefully into a cross-legged seat on the low, green-dyed cushion, he spoke . . . and caught himself before he mentioned Doma Pelai’thia by her full name and title. “D . . . Despite my freedom to visit on Family Day, my doma insisted I finish today’s punishment before I could leave. I apologize for being late. It is solely my fault.”
Form the subtle way his father relaxed, Krais knew he accepted his eldest son’s apology. Karei sighed and continued to dish up the meal at her end of the table. Dagan’thio, in turn, poured the tea into their cups and passed them the other way. When he finished, a subtle sway of the eldest Puhon’s upper body, a little lift to his chin, let the Elder Disciplinarian peer at Krais’ back when his eldest son accepted the plate Foren passed to him.
“Quirting?” he asked. “Under the beeswax?”
“Yes, Father.” Krais said nothing more.
“How many strokes?”
“I . . . lost count after a hundred. I’m sorry, Father,” Krais added in apology. In truth, he’d lost count around eighty, the blows coming harder and harder as he’d stroked himself to . . . things he was not supposed to think about at the dining table. She had kept going for a ways after that, however, so he was fairly certain it had been more than a hundred strokes.
“A hundred?” Foren protested, jaw dropping a little. “What in the Goddess’ name does she think you did? Robbed the Temple altar?”
“Foren, don’t be vulgar!” Karei ordered.
“He failed his father,” Dagan’thio retorted sharply at the same time. When his wife fell quiet, he added sternly. “What punishments have you endured, Foren?”
“I . . . I was judged to my soul, as is proper,” Foren stammered, apparently falling back on his training as a Disciplinarian apprentice. “Whatever the Goddess saw in me, Domo Anso has seen fit to make me help outlanders navigate the Great Library.”
