The months of conflict had been long and dour, but to honour him as he’d honoured her, their reunion before the household had been as controlled and calm as their parting before his troops. But what troubled Keiko now, and hurt her so deeply it was hard to conceal, was that their private dealings were consistently as distant as their public ones.
Unlike many ladies of the Shogun’s court, Keiko had been fortunate enough to receive her husband back from the war in one piece. At least his physical wounds were slight. She sensed however, to her sorrow, that his psyche had suffered far more than his body – and that the horrors of conflict, no matter how noble and justified the cause, had damaged him profoundly as a man.
He no longer summoned her to his chamber at night, even though sometimes she still caught the black fire burning in his eyes.
Not a word was exchanged between them on the matter, but some sad, internal wisdom told Keiko that her husband had a great fear of impotence. And that his pride, and his horror at the thought of losing face, meant there was no way to put such fears to the test.
Would they ever be lovers again?
Stop it, Keiko! she told herself sternly, looking down at his dear sleeping countenance. You are as much a samurai as he is, and as such, defeat does not exist! Her pale features set in determined lines, she turned to the small lacquered chest she’d brought with her.
‘Kazuto,’ she mimed again, wanting to touch him but knowing the moment was not yet at hand. She knew that he’d been taking a sleeping potion prescribed by his physician, but by now its effects should be lessening.
She wondered for a moment if he were pretending to sleep. Was he assuming a mask of oblivion to save them both from embarrassment? Lord Kazuto the fearless, the Shogun’s right hand, he was the last one to admit to a failing.
At the thought of masks, she smiled and brushed her fingers across the black box, then returned her attention to the deeply sleeping man. It would be a shame to cover up such beauty.
It had been Kazuto-chan’s face that had first enslaved her. His features were so fine, so pure, and so exquisite that they could have been a woman’s. It was true that he had a perfectly barbered moustache and beard, and a striking scar from an earlier battle. But even so, his face was as symmetrical and harmonious as the most delicate of woodcuts. Without his hairy, masculine attributes, Lord Kazuto would have been as beautiful as the most sought-after courtesan. This beauty, combined with his wit and intelligence, his strong athletic body, and his many skills and achievements, were what made Keiko love and adore him. Chief amongst these talents, she’d loved his awesome performance at the pillow, and it was this gift she sought to restore …
But the man before her was the proudest of warriors and a master strategist; she’d have to use the wiliest of subterfuge to preserve his samurai honour.
In this heavy humid heat, Lord Kazuto slept with no quilt or coverlet, his long muscular body clad only in a thin cotton yukata. And his troubled thrashings, beset no doubt by dreams as bad as Keiko’s, had left even this only barely fastened. It was a simple matter to slide her slim fingers under its edge and render his sprawled body all but naked …
This picture was easy for a visualist like Deana. She’d not yet seen Jake naked, but she could more than imagine him so …
Other things were a little trickier though. Mr Sleek ’n Cool with a beard and moustache? She was intrigued. After a few seconds’ thought, she added it into the vision and agreed with Keiko. He still looked beautiful hirsute! Smiling, she read on …
Keiko sighed.
Even at rest he excited her. Silken juice was flowing between her thighs, soiling her fragile kimono where she knelt with her legs folded under her. Her small shapely breasts ached and hungered, famished for the gracious touch of her dear Lord husband’s fingers.
He was unroused, but even so his quiescent member was imposing. She remembered it bold like a sword inside her, and her resolve strengthened. She would have him again, and soon. Stiff as a wooden pole, yet sliding like a breeze through reeds in the silken dew of her channel. She would feel his seed gushing inside her before long, and she said a silent prayer that the gods might guide her efforts.
Tearing her eyes from the beauty of her noble husband’s nakedness, she turned to her lacquered box and opened it to reveal some strangely varied contents.
On top were two moulded paper masks, polished, white and painted, and crafted with holes for eyes, nose, and mouth. In design they were much like traditional masks of the Noh theatre, but being only paper, and not cedarwood, they were much lighter and more comfortable on the face. One depicted a powerful but anonymous lord; the other a peasant girl, of lowly rank but beautiful and intelligent. Keiko smiled fondly, remembering more tranquil times before the war, when the whole household had taken pleasure in performing simple but elegant dramas.
Beneath the masks were a number of stoppered ceramic flasks, and as she lifted them out, Keiko’s nostrils flickered at the delightful rush of odours.
The lovely smells must have filtered into her Lord’s consciousness too, because suddenly he began to stir and his lush black eyelashes fluttered.
Moving purely on instinct, and as deftly as she could, Keiko leaned across him and fastened the lordly paper mask across his face. For an instant, she thought his finely honed senses might be her undoing, and that he might attack her or summon his bodyguards. But then his night-black eyes flared and glittered through the twin slits in the paper and as he watched her don her own thin mask, she knew that he’d effortlessly divined her purpose. That he understood how she sought to revive their intimacy without compromising the integrity of his ‘face’.
‘Rest easy, noble stranger,’ she said, adopting a slightly singsong tone to reinforce the illusion of a play. ‘I regret the imposition on your valued time, but may I ask your Lordship a favour?’
He nodded slightly and Keiko’s heart sang. ‘Esteemed Lord,’ she went on, bowing low, ‘I am a humble student of the arts of medicine and it would honour me greatly if you would allow me to examine your fine and honourable body in the pursuit of my scientific studies.’
There was a long pause in which Keiko hardly dared draw breath.
‘Proceed, scholar,’ he said at last, his voice low and carefully controlled. ‘I too revere the sciences. I am pleased to assist you.’
‘I thank you. You are most gracious.’ More bows now, so low that her mask almost grazed the tatami. ‘Please do not trouble yourself to move, my Lord,’ she murmured, straightening up as she sensed him stirring again. ‘You are most conveniently placed for my studies.’
Removing the stopper from one of the flasks, she poured a little of its contents into a delicate porcelain bowl, sniffing appreciatively as an intoxicating aroma rose up. She repeated the process with a second flask, then a third, then another, almost swaying as the blended perfumes engulfed her. Using a small whisk she ensured the mixture was perfectly combined, and smiled at the power of its ingredients.
The apothecary had vouched for this combination, although the scarf that Keiko had worn across her face meant that the man had no knowledge of the person to whom he was recommending it.
Oil of ylang-ylang for sexual stimulation; vanilla with similar qualities; and geranium for harmony and for soothing. But it was the very final element that was the most potent – pure, refined oil of lotus of the highest quality, reputedly the most irresistible aphrodisiac ever discovered.
On the pretext of protecting her costly kimono, Keiko made herself naked, noting the increased brightness of her loved one’s dark eyes and praying it was a favourable omen. She hardly dare look at his genitals.
Coating her fingers in the oily elixir, she began a slow smooth massage of his chest and made a point of working carefully at each group of muscles as if she truly were examining his anatomy. Her wild, rash urge was to fondle his male member directly, but with great difficulty she governed her passion. She dare not hope too hard what the oil might do to Lord Kazuto, but s
he could feel its strong effects on her. The lotus oil was making her own flower pout and ache and swell, its petals almost painful in their craving for her dear love’s touch.
For several almost endless minutes, she worked dutifully on his upper body, grateful in a way that the slits of her mask did not permit her gaze to go astray. It was only when a small grunting cry issued urgently from behind the mask of her ‘subject’, and his body began to shift and sway beneath her flexing fingers, that she permitted herself a glance towards his groin.
Lord Buddha be praised! Her lover’s mighty staff was rising before her very eyes, its bold head swelling and weeping in a joyful resurrection. A true samurai weapon now, it reared up from its master’s slim, manly loins and invited the hand or body of a woman to embrace it. Keiko curbed her immediate instinct to engulf him, sensing that matters were as yet still critical. If this new vigour should fail him now, his loss of face would be even greater than before. With a control that defied all her previous limits, she continued her exploration of his torso.
‘Gentle student,’ gasped the man behind the mask, his authoritative voice suddenly gruff and broken, ‘pray extend the scope of your examination a little … I fear you are neglecting certain areas.’
‘Why thank you for your consideration, my Lord,’ Keiko answered humbly, masking her delirious joy. ‘It is not every day that a lowly scholar meets someone so concerned with the advancement of science.’
Still hesitant, she let her hand travel downwards then skirt the base of his stiff swaying wand. She marvelled at the soft silkiness of his intimate male hair, then admired the increased gloss of each strand as she combed him with her warmly oiled fingers. Almost with fear, she touched his noble upthrust flesh, then sighed with relief and happiness when, instead of collapsing, it grew harder and prouder and stronger in her hand. She fondled him gently, her lightness of touch for his pleasure now rather than from caution. This was a veritable battle-lance she had in her grasp, and she knew with a happy woman’s certainty that it would not now lose its rigidity – except under the most blissful of circumstances.
She let her fingers play coquettishly over him, savouring the deep pulse of blood in his veins and the fat, moist stretching of his sovereign helmet as it throbbed out its demand for her body and for the haven of her thickly dewed channel. In her other hand, she fondled his twin ripe fruits, so heavy in their warm, crinkled sac.
‘My Keiko-chan,’ he crooned, his hips lifting her prize towards her. ‘My gentle wife … Relieve me from this torment … Let me in at your heavenly gate!’ With one impatient hand he tore off his mask as the other reached hungrily for her body.
‘But, my Lord,’ she said coyly, simpering behind her paper face, ‘I am but a simple medical student, bent on the furtherance of science …’
‘You’re a minx and a goddess, my Keiko-chan!’ he cried, his voice rich with lust and contentment. ‘Now straddle my weapon or I will rise up and throw you flat on your smooth white back!’ ‘As you wish, my Lord,’ she whispered, moving with all the grace she possessed onto the futon … and then onto the body of her husband.
Her portal seemed to laugh with pleasure as he breached it, and as he filled her, she ripped aside her mask so that her long cry of fulfilment might not be in the slightest way stifled.
‘My love! Oh, my love!’ she screamed, as the kami bore her soul up to heaven … and she looked down with the happiest of eyes at the face of her Lord Kazuto.
Deana let the book drop, her fingers tingling, her imagination whirling, and her sex more hungry than ever. It was hard to detach herself from Keiko, but fiction and truth were quite different. Mistry’s samurai lady was satisfied now, and content. And she, Deana, was neither.
Was the story based on reality? she wondered. Had Jake doubted his virility, and Vida reassured him? It was an unlikely but intriguing idea.
But how could Jake not be strong? There seemed to be no chink whatsoever in his power or confidence. His sense of total control. And yet unlikely as it seemed, the concept of a less than omnipotent Jake was bizarrely appealing. Deana was used to being the boss in her relationships, particularly where sex was concerned; but with Jake, she’d never even been given the chance to take charge.
What would it be like? she mused. To make him bow. Bring him to heel? Should she go in hard, as Vida probably did? Or wield a gentle dominance, like clever old Keiko with her samurai? Either way, she could barely sit still at the thought.
She’d touched herself only briefly so far, yet she felt unbearably excited and randy. Desire nagged her, heavy and pitiless, and her sex-folds were swollen and puffy.
It was as if Vida Mistry had reached inside her head and used the subversive power of words to stir her. It was mental masturbation, a sweet, sly, sinuous magic that had worked on the principal human sex organ – the mind. Deana’s visual and spatial imagination had made her uniquely susceptible, and now she was hot and wet, her labia unfurled and engorged like the petals of a succulent flower. She hardly dared touch her clitoris. Making a fork of two of her fingers, she slid them down either side of it, making the tension itself a caress. The tiny bead leapt and pulsed, then seemed to swell to twice its size.
And in her mind, Deana saw a wealth of curious visions. Illusions from a dark, deep pit. She saw herself, in leather, tying straps around a taut, cringing Jake. She was holding his cock, squeezing it and making him cry, while Vida Mistry did unspeakable things to his hind parts. She heard him whimper and sob, saw him spurt, and felt her hot sex ripple in the grip of a fiendish harness …
In the real world, it was she who sobbed. Writhing on the couch with her hands between her thighs, she moaned as her vagina convulsed and her clitoris quivered and leapt.
‘Oh Jake, oh Jake,’ she whispered, wishing him with her, ‘why in God’s name aren’t there two of you too?’
Delia didn’t come home that night, and Deana was more scared now than jealous.
Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have worried. For her own part, she stayed out often enough, and Delia herself spent the odd night with Russell. Personally, Deana wouldn’t have spent an hour with him, but there was no accounting for taste …
But that was beside the point. This stop-out was different. Jake wasn’t Russell. Their worlds and preferences were light-years apart, and Jake in himself was infinitely dangerous.
As she decided she couldn’t eat her breakfast, Deana felt a hard squeeze of hatred. Not at her sister, because what had happened was chance. Or fate. Or luck. It had been that initial flip of a coin that had set up the sequence, and she could so easily have been the one herself.
Her anger was directed at Jake, and she felt protective of her sister. Delia had been the one to spend a whole licentious night with him, and she was the twin least fit to deal with him, if his demands became excessive. He’d been inventive enough in brief encounters, what on earth would he get up to with a whole night to play in? Deana’s skin started to goose pimple at the thought, and her sex became hotter. She felt more scared than ever for Delia.
And she was powerless to help her. There was nothing she could do. She didn’t know where he lived, and even if she did, making contact was risky. Delia might still be with him now. In his bed.
Tense and uneasy, Deana made ready to go into her agency. It was completely unlike her, but she found herself constantly listening for the door, for the phone, for anything. She went to and fro to the window a score of times. Later, and ridiculously irrationally, she even caught herself scanning the crowds on the Tube in search of a face like her own.
As a freelance, Deana’s hours were fairly relaxed and she could come and go as she pleased. She took advantage of this, and often worked from home; but every so often, Robin – who ran the collective – insisted she come in, show her face to clients, and prioritise her work. Today was a day he’d insisted.
It was also an unbearably slow, dragging day. Her fund of inspiration was arid and what she did produce was wooden and characte
rless. Everything about work and the hot city was drab and oppressive. She tried to call Delia several times at de Guile International, but each time she was either ‘in conference’, ‘at lunch’ or just plain ‘unavailable’.
‘Unavailable.’ What did that mean exactly? Was she with Jake? Being wooed or tormented. Or both, perhaps? Deana threw her pencil down, her head full of Jake, resplendent in some kind of executive’s chair and with Delia sitting astride him as she herself had done in the car. She shook her head to clear it and the image changed. There was no relief though … This time she saw herself – or was it Delia? – spread across the surface of a long oak desk, with Jake thrusting hard between her legs.
When she arrived home, grubby and weary, Deana could hear the TV in the flat. Delia was back, it seemed. But was she safe and sound? That was the question. Deana hardly dare call out and ask.
The first thing she saw when she walked into the living room was a large, rectangular, white card box. It was the sort of packaging an exclusive dress store might use, the sort that Delia often turned up with but which Deana never did. Her clothes came wrapped in plastic carriers … if that.
The store logo was unfamiliar. She’d half expected it to be ‘Janet Reger’, ‘La Perla’ or some sort of designer ready-to-wear, but instead there was just the word ‘Circe’. Deana recognised the Palatino Italic script, 36 point. Very plain, very classy … but why a witch who’d turned men into swine? Jake was a chauvinist, but no pig. Far from it. He was dissolute, decadent and a pervert extraordinaire; but he was the most refined man she’d ever met. No woman – not even herself in her wildest moments – could ever rob Jake of his elegance.
She was assuming the box came from him, but it could always just be Delia treating herself. She might’ve been high on fabulous lovemaking and dying to spend some money. Deana often had that urge herself but she usually bought a painting or some books. Or those huge, hand-made Belgian chocolates which were the foodie equivalent of orgasms.
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