by Joey W. Hill
He wondered if she realized how strange it was, her isolation here when human civilization moved forward so close by. Knowing the human propensity to multiply and spread out, he had an uneasy thought about what would happen when they finally had great enough numbers she could be overwhelmed. The only reason some enterprising governing authority hadn’t claimed the island from her yet was that so far they had sufficient resources for their needs. When that was no longer true, she would be even less safe here than she was already.
A problem for another day. He was here, and he could help her with those decisions if she’d accept his help. While Maddock hadn’t advised transporting her through the portals to JP’s time, it was one option, if it came to it. Especially if she was immortal and he wasn’t. He pushed that thought away. He wasn’t going to envision a world where he was eighty years old and she remained young and strong as she was now.
Despite that strength, she was starting to show signs of strain. She’d warned him of it, that when they drew closer to their destination, the flight pattern would become steeper.
“Okay?” he called out. She didn’t answer, likely saving her breath. He was an idiot. He’d known this was a bad idea. He shouldn’t have asked her to do it.
She came in for a bumpy landing, tumbling them into spongy turf. When she released the clips holding them together, he turned over and scrambled to her side. She was lying on her back, gasping for breath while smiling. The snakes looked a little like he did, just on this side of oh shit mode, but they were regaining their composure, taking advantage of her position to slither through the thick green grass.
“That was fun,” she said. “I knew we could make it.”
He sat back and shot her a reproachful glance. She laughed. “You underestimate a woman’s strength and determination, John Pierce,” she said reprovingly. “I’m quite aware of my capabilities.”
“I was afraid I was asking too much.”
“No.” Her tone softened and she touched his jaw. “You have asked much, but not too much. Not yet.”
Before he could respond to that, she rose, offering him a hand up. He took it, and stood at her side. “Look,” she said. “All the wonder of the world is here.”
He had to agree with her. There was no cover from rain, but the patches of thick grass were large enough he wondered if she slept up here some nights. Why limit herself to just one bedroom?
The pinnacle offered a full diameter view that covered her island, the surrounding shorelines, the expanse of ocean, and the lands in the distance. He estimated she was about five miles from the nearest one, which didn’t ease his worries. From here he could see other beach accesses on the island than where he’d arrived. Many had matching fleets of abandoned boats, small weathered heaps that darkened the pale sands.
Christ. She’d said she’d regularly repelled invaders, but he’d reacted to that based on the boats on his beach alone. While he still wouldn’t mourn those who’d come with murder or capture as their intent, he knew that those deaths and disappearances would weigh heavily enough on the minds of relatives or governing authorities that the attempts would continue, even if at more infrequent intervals. It was a miracle she’d let him come off the beach. He owed that grandmother and grandson a debt.
“You did well, jumping with me,” she said, pulling him out of his thoughts. She helped him out of the harness and he did the same for her, though he once again noticed how still she got as he was handling those ropes against her skin.
Easy, JP. Just enjoy her.
After he set the harnesses aside, she took a seat on the grass. Drawing her knees up, she linked her fingers under them, catching the short skirt against her lower body. Greek women were modest in public, but nudity wasn’t considered the taboo it was in his world. He expected her attempt to not blatantly reveal that underwear wasn’t part of the Greek wardrobe was because of how intimate they’d become in the past day or so. His snake-girl was being a little shy. He found it appealing and perversely arousing. He set that aside in favor of conversation, so she wouldn’t think he was insatiable.
Though he was.
“When I took off, the way you pushed off with me, spread your arms and managed your balance with mine, it was as if you knew what it is to have wings,” she said.
“I’ve done jumps before.” He briefly explained planes and parachuting. “Sometimes I was flown into territory where planes couldn’t land. Lot did HALO jumps, but I never got that opportunity. HALO means high-altitude, low-opening jumping.” His lips curved. “He says it’s like being so close to the heavens when you jump, you’re flying with the angels. You can see the curve of our earth. It looks like a beautiful white and reddish glow against a curved dark shadow. Eerie but totally kickass at the same time.”
At her blank look, he offered a full smile. “It’s so astounding, there are no words to describe it.”
“The world is so much bigger than I imagined,” she said, looking back at the view, her gaze pensive. “I thought about that when I first came here, to this highest spot. This was the first place I found ease since…I changed. I looked around me and realized that the world was so much bigger than what had happened to me, than my life at the temple. Your words tell me no matter what I imagine, the world will always be bigger than that. It is bigger than my mind or existence, and there is comfort in that. As well as some despair, if that makes sense.”
He sat down next to her, bracing his arm behind her so she could lean against his shoulder and chest. She did, gratifying him. He nuzzled her hair, closing his eyes as Ratqueen bumped his brow and slithered onto his shoulder, coiling under his arm and resting her head on his biceps. She held him tethered to Medusa, and he wondered if the snake was responding to her mistress’s needs, or if it was that they were getting so used to him that he was another convenient perching place. Some of both, he suspected.
“They accept you,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. “It is an additional reassurance to me, John Pierce. And you show no aggression toward them, which is how men usually react to snakes. That pleases me. I was not kind to them in the beginning, but they have become a part of me, my family, if you will not laugh at me for saying so.”
“And if I did?”
Her eyes sparked with humor. “Then I will tell Ratqueen to bite you.”
“She can try.” Studying the snake, he rested his fingers on her tubular body and stroked. The snake shifted, but didn’t seem to mind the contact. The way Medusa’s eyes half closed, he wondered if she felt the caress in some secondary way. He settled in, enjoying the feel of her leaning against him. “What you said, about the size of the world making you feel good and bad at the same time? That makes sense to me. There’s this thought, ‘if the world is this big, why the hell do I matter? I’m just another ant scurrying along.’”
He paused, considering the view. “But Maddock would look at it this way. Say there is some big Cosmic God or Goddess who tossed us out here like seeds on the ground, waiting to see what would happen, how we grow. Maybe the way we do that, embrace who we are, is by reaching out to one another, forming connections. That net gives us shape and weight, and makes us part of something bigger, an energy we draw upon from each other.”
“I am not connected to anyone, John Pierce,” she said. Her gaze was on the boat moving in the distance, and he expected she was gauging its course. She had to stay on guard about things like that, for exactly the reason she’d stated. He touched her face, drawing her gaze to him.
“You’re connected to me.”
She studied him, wisps of her black hair drifting across her golden cheekbone. “You think I belong to you.”
“And me to you.”
She lifted a shoulder and looked back at the ocean, her red eyes catching the sunlight like glowing rubies. “Yes and no. The first has a particular significance to you. I think the other is more what you hope I will feel for you. Do you remember when I asked you how other women acted with you? You said the ‘few’ you�
�ve been with, you read their consent from their responses, how they touched you.”
“Yeah.” He warily wondered where she was going with this, and found his wariness confirmed with her next unsettling observation, which reminded him just how clever she was, even when she didn’t have context for what she was sensing.
“You have an odd way about you with a woman, John Pierce. Some of the things you say, how you tie me in that rope”—she glanced at it, moistening her lips—“the spanking…it excites me, in ways that I find confusing, for I have not seen these desires among my own people. I had too little exposure to them. My reaction says these two parts of us mesh, but it is still beyond my comprehension. In the beginning, I asked you if you were reluctant to speak to me of your nature because it might be misunderstood. Is this what you meant?”
“Yeah, for the most part. You already have the rest.”
“Will you speak of what might be misunderstood, now that you trust my responses more?”
“If I don’t, will you refuse to carry me back down?”
A slight smile touched her lips. “Of course not. But I might find a faster way to get you to the ground if you prove stubborn.”
“Lady, I’m all over stubborn. Just ask anyone who knows me.”
She shifted away from him to lean back on her elbows, stretching her legs out in the grass, her wings folded along her back. Ratqueen uncoiled from him as she moved. That happened often, as if the snakes were connected to her brain waves so they coordinated effortlessly, not tangling her up when she was moving. Maddock would be keenly interested in their mental connection. And JP was procrastinating.
“I’m still concerned you won’t understand,” he admitted. “That you’ll misinterpret it and become afraid.”
“It’s possible. But we have nothing but time on this island to resolve those things. Right?”
Good point. He was beginning to appreciate her practical side more and more. He stretched out on his side and decided to go with a tactile approach. Closing his hand on her wrist, he lifted it between them.
“Do you like it when I touch you here?”
She nodded. He leaned forward, drawing her arm behind her, holding her wrist against the small of her back and the rise of her buttock, which arched her body into his as he paused. “How about now?”
Her lips had parted. “Yes,” she breathed.
“It feels different, doesn’t it? A little scary, edgy, but exciting, too. You know about men who prefer other men? Or women who prefer women? Not just for sex. They prefer relationships with the same gender.”
“Yes.”
“In my world, we call that homosexual. Those who prefer the opposite sex are heterosexual, and those who prefer either are bi-sexual. Those are sexual orientations, but they’re not the only type. There are Dominant and submissive orientations. People who prefer clear lines of power in sex. Sometimes in other parts of their lives as well…”
He continued, giving her examples and anecdotes. He had to separate it from historical context, because in her world, men held control of pretty much everything, and this wasn’t about political or societal inequity. Since that was something people in his own time and world had trouble understanding about BDSM practices and Dominant/submissive personalities, he expected she’d have even more difficulty grasping the concepts. But he was wrong.
Many women from societies where women were subjugated couldn’t fathom why a woman would willingly embrace submission, but she was not one of them. He figured the reason was two-fold. In the temple, she’d seen a different side of service and submission, and she had a naturally submissive nature and soul. Two, she had been forced to change every paradigm of her life in a short time. Ever since then, she’d had to adapt fast to survive, which meant continually re-examining preconceived notions.
As he worked his way through his answer to her question, her eyes would widen at certain parts, her lips pressing against one another nervously. Yet the strum of tension he felt when he released her to stroke her body from arm to upper thigh and back again, slowly, repetitively, wasn’t fear. Which made it an effort to stay on topic.
He told her about dungeons, play parties, scenes, and the basic give and take between Dom and sub. But he’d left something important out, and she caught it.
“You speak of all these things as an observer, John Pierce. But you are telling me of yourself, are you not? You think I will not want you if I know how you express this side of yourself? Or you wish to convince me it is something you can set aside if it is not something I desire.”
“I can.”
She lay back on the grass, gazing up at him. “Perhaps that would be true, if you did not sense something in me that responds to that side of you. But when you sense that, you are unable to ignore that part of yourself.” Her gaze drifted down. “The way I am reacting…has made you react. The way I respond to you feeds it, which makes you believe I am…a submissive?”
He didn’t believe it. He knew it, but that was irrelevant. There were plenty of people with a submissive craving who never acted on it, or who channeled it other ways.
“I thought of the Goddess as mother, sister, friend,” she said unexpectedly. “I was brought to the temple at an early age, for my mother had died and my father knew not how to handle a girl child. My sisters were already grown, and they were not like me. So the priestesses encouraged me to think of Athena as my mother, as well as to serve her. I'd bring flowers and pretty stones to lay at her feet when I was younger. As I grew up, I would sing, or dance for her, even read to her. Serving her, making her happy, became my passion. It filled me, made me content far more quickly than other acolytes who took a far longer time to adjust to leaving the outside world behind.”
She sat up as he continued to lay on his hip, and trailed her fingers over his side, curling her talons in the hem of his T-shirt.
“When I was transformed into this, for a long, long time, and perhaps in my heart, I still thought myself to blame for incurring Ukrit’s attention. It is what we are taught to believe, is it not? That a man’s lust makes him strong as a brute but weak in the mind, and women must bear the burden of being chaste and not indulge passions. Else we will incur that lust and deserve their brutishness. Yet I was in those walls, where I was innocent, and I always thought myself safe. I didn't even think he meant any harm, not at first. He spoke to me, and I'd never spoken with a man before. Not to that length. He paid me attention, and I was flattered, warmed in strange ways.”
JP expected she'd been like many girl children, first learning their flirting skills on their fathers, an innocent, growing up thing. None of the priestesses had seemed to imply her unconscious charm and joy had made Ukrit’s behavior her fault. Was that guilt therefore something buried in women’s subconscious? Because fuck it all, it always seemed to rise when they were sexually assaulted, yet another crime against their soul.
“Medusa…”
She shook her head. “He was…authoritative. On the previous times when he’d visit, he would command me to bring him a drink, or say things to me in such a way that I felt fluttery in my stomach. It wasn’t him, for I felt no desire toward him, but how he said those things…I liked it. I would serve him, I would serve the Goddess…it was about the service, wasn’t it? Is this more evidence of what you are saying about me?”
“Some of it, yeah. But that didn’t give him the right to do the things he did. Submission is a gift beyond measure, Medusa. It’s your gift to give to a Master or Mistress, never to be taken. I’m big and strong. I could take whatever I wanted from a woman weaker than myself, but the idea of doing that against her will sickens me, horrifies me. However, a woman kneeling at my feet, with the need for submission shining in her eyes, looking to me to make it okay for her to be swept away by those cravings? Fuck, there’s nothing better.
“When I top her, I feel like I’m worshipping her as much as I’m Mastering her, if that makes any sense. I came here to serve you, my lady, as I said from the beginn
ing. And that too is a form of service, if it’s what you desire.”
Her gaze had stayed fastened on his face throughout his explanation, her claws curved into his hip, but now she let out a relieved breath. “So it is different. What I felt…didn’t encourage him. No matter what he said…while it was happening.”
He was more than willing to help her there. “Fuck, no. I’d rip out his spleen for even implying it, for causing you to doubt what’s inside yourself.” He’d gripped her wrist again where her hand rested on him. “Some assholes will use any rationalization to justify their acts. She ‘acted’ willing, she ‘wanted’ it…” He stopped, knowing he was letting the anger creep up on him too hard and fast, but she’d already seen it.
“You said you helped those…like me.”
“Yeah. I have. Submissives who had things like that happen to them, I was good at helping them find their way back again by doing sessions with them, opening up the pain inside and cleaning it out. It’s a pay it forward kind of thing, because Lot and some other people helped me find my way back as well.”
“Were there…other ways you helped these women?”
He thought she might be fishing to see just how intimate he’d gotten with them, but she added to the question. “With your other skills, John Pierce.”
The edge to her voice, the brief hard flash in her eyes as she met his gaze, told him what she meant. It surprised him, but as he thought of her warrior-like mentality, it made sense she’d think of it.
“For most of the women, justice was served on their attackers in one way or another. For others, even it if wasn’t, that wasn’t their biggest issue. But there was one...yeah. I helped her with my particular skillset.”
“Tell me. Please.”
He glanced at her. She’d added the please, an interesting amendment, as if she’d thought she sounded too demanding. She couldn’t turn it off any more than he could. Though he couldn’t get hot and bothered by that at the moment, not with the question hanging in the air between them.
