Fantasy

by Christine Feehan

  Burnishing the tiny organ with his thumb, he drew his fingers in and out. The sound of her wetness made him swell even fuller with excitement. Her hand gentled on his shaft, but it did not help. His skin was as sensitive as if its nerves had been multiplied by ten. He was not sure he could bear this painful pleasure a second more.

  “Your kama-salila is very generous,” he said through gritted teeth, struggling to distract himself with words.

  She laughed, a beguiling, throaty sound, and pushed her sheath up his hand. “I hope that is a good thing.”

  “It is recommended that the woman be wet in order for the man’s organ to slide easily in the narrow—”

  She cut him off with a kiss. He could not think at all then, except to wish most heartily that his penis and not his fingers were clasped inside her fragrant depths. As if she knew, her hand tightened on the sensitive ring beneath his crest.

  “Move with me,” she said. “Pretend that we are joined.”

  He did as she directed, tightening his hindquarters to push himself through her hold. Without even trying they began to breathe together, gasping in tandem, tensing in tandem, as the end he craved and wished would last forever rumbled like an avalanche into view.

  It was a panic in him, to make it last, to engrave the moment in his mind. He showered her face with kisses, a gesture he could not withhold.

  “Sweet Luisa,” he said, her name a cry for things he’d lost so long ago their only trace was a tangled hurt. He nuzzled her swollen nipple, drawing it with her robe between his teeth.

  “Take it,” she said, tearing the wool away with her other hand. “Take what you want.” She arched up to him and gave him what he longed for. The tip of her breast was softer than silk against his tongue. She moaned as he sucked and the sound was flames licking through his skin.

  The final rise was more intense than he had dreamed a man could feel. He hung on a cutting wire, its promise of imminent fall sublime. To plummet, to give in…But wrong as the physical pleasure was, it was not enough. His body demanded more. Union. Penetration. He had no mind then; he only had desire.

  With a curse of resignation, he wrenched his mouth away.

  “I cannot pretend,” he said harshly, drawing his fingers from her sweetly clinging sex. “I belong inside you.”

  “No. Don’t relinquish your vow for me.” Her hand pressed his fingers back to her softness and her mouth opened on his neck. He was dizzy, confused. Her tongue trembled briefly on his skin. “Now. Come with me now.”

  She did not even have to bite him. Energy rushed up through his feet, a flood of unstoppable golden-white. He felt the barrier around her aura give, swirling and blending into his. She caught her breath, but not in pain. He had a second to wonder at her reaction and then his climax burst like a never-ending fountain. One instant his shaft was pure, burning steel, the next a convulsing instrument of bliss. His groan echoed through the little chamber, as strange to his ears as this ecstasy was to his body. Again the tight, squeezing shock lanced through him, again, again, a release so deep it seemed to rake his soul.

  He did not realize she had joined him until the last flickering pull of her sheath tugged at his hand.

  She wriggled as it faded and relaxed against him, her mouth curled, her cheeks rosy, her eyes glowing like emeralds fringed with gold. He could not contain a flush of pride at her satisfaction. His head was light but strangely clear. Already his weakness was fading. Then he looked down at the much diminished organ she still held in her hand. She was petting it as if she relished its sticky softness. So much for pride, he thought.

  It seemed important to acknowledge what she had done.

  “I must thank you,” he said. “I would have taken you if you had not stopped me.”

  She batted her lashes and dragged one sticky finger across her tongue. The gesture nearly put him in a trance.

  “Maybe I did save you,” she said playfully. “And maybe you would have found your strength.”

  He shook his head to clear it. “You should not give me more credit than I deserve.”

  Her eyes hooded as if she were embarrassed to have been caught doing him a kindness. “I know you are not used to facing urges of that strength. It seemed unfair to let you do something you would regret. Especially when I still need your help.”

  Martin did not believe her explanation, though he chose to pretend he did. “I do not know what else I can try. Unless…” He pushed up from her, recalling the way her aura had momentarily seemed to welcome his. He knew orgasm called up a special energy from the earth, an energy transmuted by the nature of the connection between the partners.

  All of which had been academic up till now. But if Luisa could utilize that special force, without ill effect, it could prove an alternate source of sustenance. Lost in thought, he rubbed the sides of his mouth, remembering too late that her scent clung to his fingers. To his embarrassment, his organ twitched and began to lengthen.

  “Unless what?” she prompted.

  He shook his head and rose, shaking his robe down as he did. The chuba’s fall was not as straight as it should have been. Frowning, he shoved his arms back in the sleeves. Apparently one encounter would not sate this new appetite. “It is only a thought,” he said. “I do not wish to raise false hopes.”

  “Or anything else,” she said, with a pointed glance toward the tenting wool.

  Responding with dignity was a challenge but he managed as best he could. “The sun will rise soon,” he said. “I am sure you want to rest.”

  He left her lolling on the cushions, more beautiful than a goddess, more nettlesome than a fly. He did not tell her he went to consult his guide; indeed, he hardly wished to admit to himself what he planned to do. Fairness, however, demanded he speak to the abbot immediately.

  If Martin’s theory had the slightest chance of being true, Geshe Rinpoche would know.

  He found his teacher in the storeroom with the steward. They had pulled two dusty cushions together and sat, hunched and cross-legged, before a fat horizontal book. The single window cast a dawn gray light over their heads. Accounting, said their serious faces, is not a business for the faint of heart. Certainly it was not a small business. The consumption of barley, tea, butter, and other staples by nearly two hundred souls had to be closely tracked. Moreover, Shisharovar did not live by pilgrims’ gifts alone. The lamasery was famed for its expertly fashioned religious objects—prayer wheels, butter lamps, malas—both in silver and in brass. Like most of the brothers, Martin had taken part in the various stages of production, though his gift was not that of a craftsman.

  No, he thought sourly, his gift was the one he had so recently put at risk. His mind was strong; it could focus like a sunbeam through a lens of glass. Such a mind was meant to serve his country and his faith. If he let his carnal urges steal the upper hand, he would waste the very talent that gave him worth.

  Or so he might have said before. Chewing his lip, he stared at his felt-topped boots. Luisa also had a right to expect his aid. If he failed to put his gift at her service, when he might be her only chance, would not the omission taint any good he might do later on? She had given much to come here, to learn to live a better life, and she had done so with no one to set her a good example. From what he had seen, the one who made her barely deserved the name of teacher. Certainly he was no beloved guide like Geshe Rinpoche. Martin admired her for forging her own morals, strange as he might find them, in a less than moral world. She deserved a chance to achieve her dream.

  Just as he was about to clear his throat, the abbot looked up from the accounts.

  “Ah, Martin,” he said, with the smile that never failed to warm his pupil’s heart, “we are finished here. Please come in.”

  “You are not finished,” Martin said, reading the steward’s startled look.

  The abbot laughed. “Well, we are surely in need of tea. Do have a break, Myingmar. I will send the chela for you when Martin and I are done.”

  The steward bo
wed and left, his obvious eagerness at the prospect of nourishment drawing another smile from Martin’s guide. The boy who had been sleeping in the corner scurried off to get them a pot and then Martin and his teacher were alone.

  The abbot cocked one wispy brow in his direction. “I must say, you look none the worse for wear. I trust your sacrifice was not too onerous.”

  “I am well,” Martin admitted. He took the cushion the steward had just left. As Luisa promised, his body hummed with vigor. He felt both relaxed and refreshed, his spine loose, his concentration crystal clear. Which did not mean what he had done deserved reward.

  “You have a confession,” guessed the abbot.

  Only a day ago, Martin would have hung his head in shame. An impulse he did not understand kept it upright now. “Of a sort,” he said. “Mostly I am here because I require advice.”

  He explained his theory that the power lovers drew from sex might be changed enough for Luisa to imbibe. Direct sunlight would burn but, as the ripening of a grape transformed its rays to healthful wine, so might lovemaking transform the forces of the earth—if Luisa had a partner who knew how to channel them.

  “I felt her aura give,” he said, “just as it did during her vision. I admit, the amount of energy that entered was small, but it did not seem to harm her. If what I suspect is true, this could serve as an alternate form of sustenance, perhaps even a replacement for drinking blood. Once she experiences the process in its entirety, she should be able to repeat it.”

  “An intriguing notion.” The abbot tapped his ink-stained quill against the low, scratched surface of the desk. “But I do not think we can ask another man to try this. Even assuming she would accept a substitute, she might enspell him. Do you know, we had to barricade Brother Dhondrup in his cell? He kept begging us to let him serve her. Said he lived to be her slave.” Brother Dhondrup was the monk Luisa had bitten on her arrival. Martin thought he had saved him from the brunt of her influence, but apparently her pull was stronger than he had known.

  “He has not yet recovered?” he asked as he tried to tamp down his unease.

  “He is beginning to, though I suspect her beauty dazzled him as much as her upyr power. She is not a woman a man could easily forget.”

  “No,” Martin conceded, aware of the abbot’s watchful gaze. Geshe Rinpoche was searching him, though for what he did not know. With an emotion akin to dismay, he realized Luisa’s beauty was not what called to him most strongly now. She had become a person to him, her outer appearance not nearly as alluring as her inner fire. He thought of jewels again, of all those facets shining in the night.

  When he looked outward, the abbot’s attention was still on him. “If your theory is to be tested,” he said, “you are the only one who can try.”

  Martin felt as if his guide had kicked him in the belly. Did Geshe Rinpoche place so low a value on his student’s continued progress on the Path? Never mind his gelong vow, didn’t he care that Luisa had the potential to tempt Martin far away? If her only attraction were carnal pleasure, Martin thought he might have fought. But she also offered adventure and mystery and, most persuasive of all, the chance to share an affection whose appeal he had just begun to savor.

  Amazing as it seemed, Luisa liked him.

  Didn’t his guide understand how powerful that was to one who had rarely felt accepted? Or did some other motivation lay behind his actions, some agenda Martin was too slow to comprehend?

  “Come,” the abbot chided gently, “you cannot mean to say you expected, or even wanted, me to assign another lama to this task.”

  Martin knew his teacher spoke the truth. The thought of anyone else touching Luisa, knowing Luisa’s innermost essence, was intensely repellent. “Of course not,” he said, then huffed out a harried breath. “But I thought you might at least try to discourage me.”

  “When have I stood between you and an important choice?”

  Martin had to admit he never had and yet his guide seemed oddly eager for him to risk his calling. That was what he could not understand, what seemed a betrayal of their bond.

  Before he could find the words to explain, the abbot clasped Martin’s upper arms. The growing light picked out the wind-worn lines around his eyes, eyes that shone as black as water in a cave. Martin knew his teacher’s face better than he knew his own, but in that moment he might as well have been a stranger.

  “Are you so certain,” said the abbot, “that this course will lead you from the road you were meant to take? Maybe if you taste what you are proposing to give up, your sacrifice will have more meaning. Or maybe you will decide you don’t want to be celibate after all. You know our sect does not require it, just as you know many yogins have taken lovers. Your spiritual progress need not be hampered unless you let it.”

  But I fear I will let it, Martin wanted to cry. I fear I will trade everything for her.

  This, however, was not the abbot’s problem.

  “You must meditate,” he said. “The answer will come.”

  The suggestion was clearly a dismissal. Martin rose, and bowed, and withdrew toward the door on less than steady legs. He would do as his guide advised. He would meditate. He only wished an answer existed that would be wholly good.

  His teacher halted him at the threshold. “Your heart,” he said, “is not your weakest organ. You should trust it, old friend. Through many lives it has not misled you.”

  Martin’s throat was too thick to speak but he nodded in acknowledgment.

  The abbot, it seemed, already knew what he wanted his choice to be.

  6

  Luisa rose from her bed shortly after sunset. Though the butter lamps had burned out, the light of the stars was enough for her upyr eyes. Catlike, she stretched her arms and spine. She had enjoyed her first sound sleep since arriving in Tibet. Her first meal, as well, not to mention her first good—

  But her mind stopped short of calling what she had shared with Martin her first good tupping. Their encounter had been more rewarding than she expected, if also less than she desired.

  Frowning, she straightened her robe and ran her fingers through her waist-length hair. No more than this was required to keep her tidy. What Martin called her aura kept her person and her clothes in immaculate condition—though she had never lost her fondness for a lengthy soak. She would treat herself to one, she vowed, the minute she got home.

  But thoughts of Firenze made her restless. Swinging her cloak around her shoulders, she headed for the door. Apparently the nervous monk who stood outside was there for her protection: he let her pass without a word.

  Not wishing to disturb anyone else, she turned her steps down the abandoned corridor. The stiff yakhide soles of her boots made shushing sweeps through the eddies of frosted snow. Beneath its powdering the stones were cracked. Had this wing been new when Martin first lived in Shisharovar? Had he wandered down this hall as she did? Had his mind been filled with different dreams?

  She smiled at the ease with which she had accepted his beliefs. But how could she not? Since turning upyr she had seen more marvels than she could count.

  A narrow stairway led her upward, so dark even she had to feel her way by touch. The sound of air whistling drew her higher. Finally, after shouldering a heavy door aside, she reached the roof. Her breath caught at the vista that stretched before her: range upon range of rugged snowcapped mountains, their peaks milky and effulgent, their shadows streaks of sapphire ink. In every direction the towering crags marched over the horizon, as if their bulk filled all the world. The sky above them was the purest black she’d ever seen. Against its backdrop the stars seemed not like diamonds but pinprick holes through which the light of some higher sphere was breaking through.

  God is here, they seemed to say, a greater god than humans can conceive.

  Luisa felt simultaneously dwarfed and exhilarated. How can I exist? she thought. How can any creature? Why would God need more than the beauty of this night?

  She stepped through the shallow drifted
snow, past gilded, onion-peaked structures that rose from blocks of stone. From pedestal to peak the things were twice her height and strung one to another with lines of wind-torn prayer flags. They exuded an eerie vibration as she passed. Were these the reliquaries her native guide had called chortens: containers for the possessions, and occasionally the remains, of holy abbots? Dorje had claimed the bodies were boiled in yak butter and salted to preserve them. The practice seemed bizarre, but who was she to judge? Whatever lay inside them, the structures must be some sort of shrine. They reminded her of churches she had known. The lamas’ beliefs had not quite let their contents die.

  Reaching the wall at the perimeter of the roof, she crossed her arms atop the ledge. As she did, images of her sire came to her mind. What, she wondered, would Auriclus make of her present quest? For that matter, who would she be if he had not left her? If he had taught her more of his secrets, would her powers now be so great these lamas would be in awe of her? Would she even care about a thing like not living off stolen blood?

  Martin would care, she thought, then shook her head at how easily the monk filled her awareness. Her own father she barely recalled, so completely had her master’s shadow subsumed his. But even Auriclus could not obscure the shadow Martin threw.

  Ever since he had withdrawn from her cell the night before, she had sensed him teetering on the cusp of a decision, one that would affect not just her mission but whatever chance they had of being more than a petitioner and her guide.

  Troubled, she joined her hands in an attitude of prayer. I want that too much, she thought. I want everything from him too much. She closed her eyes, then opened them to the sky. The truth was as undeniable as the stars. She loved him. For the second time in her long upyr life, and perhaps for the first time that was real, Luisa del Fiore was in love.