by Joey W. Hill
At the rustle of cloth, Medusa realized the woman was also undressing. She turned her head, pressing her cheek to the cushion as she gazed up at the woman. When Charlie swept the dress over her head, she showed she wore nothing under it. The dark blue embroidery over the bodice had disguised the points of her nipples.
Her unnatural thinness was evident in her nudity, but it wasn’t starvation. She had small, well-shaped breasts, and her ribs were layered with a healthy cushion of toned skin and muscle.
The flare of her hip under the tiny waist was embellished with an intricate tattoo that started above the right hip bone and coiled around her leg to her knee. It was a spiraling, twisting tapestry of images. Roses, a dragon, an elephant. Yvette, her body arched and arms raised as if she were embracing or the center piece of the puzzle for all the images. Her fangs were bared and head dropped back, her body in a dramatic arch like a crescent moon. Property of the Circus was worked along the right edge of the full design.
Charlie’s smooth mound revealed the lips of her sex. She had a ring in the ruffled petals of those intimate folds. Medusa had never seen anything like that. She also had rings in her nipples, connected by a short, glittering gold chain strung with a tiny ruby. The ruby looked like a rose. Medusa recalled that Yvette had worn a necklace with beads exactly like that one. Gundar had one sewn into the belt he’d been wearing with the snug, sleek pants whose material reminded her of her snakes’ skin. Was the bead something Yvette gave to permanent residents of her domain? Or those whom she considered uniquely hers?
“Lady Yvette was wearing a necklace of those. They’re beautiful,” she said, hoping Charlie would be forthcoming. She needed her to tell her a story. John’s intent gaze was giving her thoughts that were surely inappropriate with Charlie here.
“Yes. She gives one to all of her second mark servants. That’s those among us she has marked twice, so that we may speak inside her mind and she in ours, no matter where we are. We also regularly provide her blood for her nourishment. She has no full servant yet. That’s a person she’ll give all three marks and bind to her soul for all eternity. Yet it is an honor to serve her with two marks. I would ask for nothing more.”
Charlie slid onto the sheet next to Medusa. She set out three bottles of oil, with silver, gold and bronze tones. “I need to put up your hair. Your snakes may be in the oil without harm to them, but if you communicate with them, you might alert them to what is about to be done so the choice will be theirs.”
While Charlie started to gather up her hair, braid and twist it into a loose tuck on her head, Medusa relayed that to her five companions. The variety of intrigued impressions told her they might inadvertently decide to help spread the oil. She hoped Charlie wouldn’t find them a nuisance, because there was really no way to dissuade them, short of putting them in that somnolent state that heavy arousal seemed to incur.
As she looked toward John, that seemed far more likely than she would have anticipated only a few minutes before. The salve and dressing Charlie had put upon him seemed to have brought him ease and the ability to focus on other physical needs. They should be exhausted, the both of them, and they were, yet the need that came from a near death experience and rapid change, a need to reassure themselves of the stability of their bond, was what she was sure was driving this sudden desire that was becoming more overwhelming by the moment.
Charlie poured out some of the silver oil and rubbed it between her hands, positioning them over Medusa’s back, so the first drips fell against her skin and slithered down.
“Oh.” It was warm, like John’s tongue sliding down her spine.
“I usually tell those I am treating to close your eyes, to feel all the nuances of what I am doing to you. But I leave that to your preference. You have had to keep your eyes closed for far too long.”
“At least I have had a choice. I am sorry…you cannot see.”
“It is not a choice when your gaze takes life. You’ve been very brave to handle such a burden without it stealing your soul. And I’m not blind. Well, perhaps in the traditional way people think of sight. But I can see you, Medusa. I see everything through the veils of aura, of star, moon and sunlight. I see areas of health and sickness. I see spiritual ecstasy, and the hurt of lost souls. If it is blindness, I would never wish to see as other people see. Instead, I would wish they could see as I do.”
“Indeed,” Medusa whispered. She’d thought herself the most remarkable of oddities she’d encountered in her life, yet here, she was one of many. She was…normal. It was an amazing concept, one that made her understand why Charlie had never left.
She lifted her eyes back to John. He’d shifted so he had his legs stretched out across the short aisle where Charlie was working. She was stepping over his feet as if she did indeed see them and found them welcome in her field. When Medusa let her hand drop, she could rest her fingertips on his foot. He was still wearing what he’d been wearing on their island, except for the shirt, so all he had on was the one garment, his shorts. Nothing under that but his body, and his tempting sex, which was almost as evident as Gundar’s in his much tighter garment.
He had his arms crossed over his broad chest, his head resting on the cushion behind him as he watched her through half-closed eyes. He might be tired, but his erection seemed unaffected by any of that. She knew how he felt, as she could feel the heat pumping through her in the same manner.
“The first oil is to help you relax the physical body. Ease sore muscles. The second oil goes deeper, soothing sore thoughts and fears, worries. The final oil will bring you nothing but pleasure, since the first two remove any cares. We will see what your Sir desires when we reach the third stage.”
“Will you do this for John? He probably needs it more than I do.” She didn’t move, but she knew she should, because it was only the truth.
“What I do to you will benefit you both.” Charlie pressed her palm into her back, holding her still with the light touch.
“Just relax, sweetheart,” John spoke. “You aren’t responsible for anything but enjoying.”
Charlie was right, that the portal experience had been frightening and draining. Taking all of this in, absorbing the weight of Yvette’s spell, had challenged her physical and emotional reserves.
John had bid her lie still and let Charlie care for her. Medusa wanted to listen, wanted to do as he said, to please him. To please herself with that acquiescence. She wondered if she’d stumbled on what Charlie meant about this benefitting them both. More of that curious thing she and John had talked about. Dominance and submission.
“Why do you call him that? Sir?”
“It is what I call all the Masters and Mistresses,” Charlie said.
“You have met John Pierce before?”
“Yes, but it is there, in the light around him.”
“Oh. Is it…in my light?”
“A Mistress? No. You are the submissive warrior, the servant who will submit to him as long as he is strong and good enough to match your own formidable strength. He has had to take a journey out of darkness, a darkness that almost claimed him, which is why you respond to him in the way you do. You are not fully in tune with it yet…” Charlie paused. “You still have things to face, things you have buried that still live. You have been removing weights upon them, facing truth after truth, so they are getting closer to the surface. But when you face that, your choices with him will expand, if you decide to embrace them.”
An uncomfortableness gripped her, those shadows stirring. She wasn’t sure what Charlie was talking about, but a part of her was. A part she didn’t want to think about. Ever. “And if I don’t? Will I…will he…”
“Love is love, my lady. It cares not what one is or isn’t. He will stand for you even if it costs him his life. He will find happiness merely in your pleasure. He is a Master, but he is a service-oriented one, so strong that he can protect and care for you as your Master without you ever committing your full submission to him. He does not question
what is in his heart. It is rare.”
“Or idiotic. That’s what Lot says,” John murmured. His beautiful gray eyes were sharp under his half-closed lids.
Charlie made a noncommittal noise. “I have told Lady Yvette that the greater wisdom is usually bestowed upon the submissive, in order to keep a Mistress or Master out of the trouble that can come from overconfidence in one’s own opinion.”
John chuckled. “I don’t expect she’d ever agree with that where you could hear her, even if she thinks it in her head.”
“Another trait of your kind,” Charlie said fondly. “Now, Sir, if you don’t mind, I will focus entirely on your lady. You may interject your will at any time, but I want to help her reach a point of satisfaction for you both. My silence best allows me to do that.”
John grunted assent, and Charlie began to apply the oil even more thoroughly, palms sliding over Medusa’s neck and shoulders, around her wings and along her arms, which Charlie positioned to either side of her head, elbows bent. After Charlie was done with the arms, Treebark coiled around one forearm, Earthson around the other, the snakes flattening as if they were absorbing the soothing, healing properties of the oils.
Charlie massaged her throat, working her fingers along the column, under her ears and chin, down to her collar bone in front, and point of her spine in back. A wave of sensation, both tranquil and arousing, slid through Medusa. Out to her shoulders, down her back, as Ratqueen coiled around her neck in Charlie’s wake. Charlie paid particular attention to the tight muscles around the base of the wings, making Medusa want to moan as knots of tension released.
When Charlie was done with that area, Tunneltrap and Waterlight rested there.
Now along her sides, over the curves of her breasts, to her rib cage, flare of waist and hip, then over her buttocks to her upper thighs. Charlie adjusted Medusa’s legs to allow her to thoroughly massage both inner and outer thigh muscles, moving onward to calves and feet. When she did her feet, Medusa entered bliss. She hadn’t been aware of the ache of her arches from the violence of their fight or the subsequent travel, when she’d been traversing all of that terrain barefoot. Her muscles were so relaxed her body felt as if it were sinking into the cushion and sheet, melting.
Charlie worked her way back up, just as thoroughly. She matter-of-factly slid the snakes—in an equally blissful state—from her path. As she finished an area, she replaced them courteously in their preferred spots.
“Now, let’s turn you over on your back,” she said at last. “The second oil is administered to the front of the body.”
Easing into that position, the snakes adjusting with her, Medusa stretched out her wings to either side of her. This time Charlie started with her face, her thumbs coated with the gold oil pressed into her forehead, working outward. She didn’t tell Medusa to close her eyes. The oil, when it seeped into her eyes, didn’t burn. It felt the way tears did. She massaged her face, her ears, her throat, and Medusa raised her chin, letting out another little sigh that made Charlie’s lips curve as if she was nursing a lovely secret.
She worked down to breasts, shoulders, arms. As she passed over Medusa’s heart, Medusa became aware of a different sensation. Emotions were drawn to the surface by this oil, just as Charlie had promised. The fear from the fight, her panic in Times Square, tension about John’s feelings for her, hers for him, what their future would be, whether she’d ever see her island home again. If the island was her home, or the place she’d had to make her home; an important difference.
But those feelings didn’t cling to her and disturb her repose. She let them go. Her fears and worries slipped away. The guilt and regrets were still there, part of the fabric of her being, but quiet, at rest. It all drifted away, not lost, but stepping out of her subconscious for a time, giving her an oasis of peaceful, sensual feeling. She had a light smile on her face, and she was feeling…delicious. She stretched her arms out, arching into Charlie’s touch, a purr on her lips.
Her gaze lighted on John Pierce as he shifted and rose, his fine form flexing in the ways that pleased her to watch. Bending over her, he slid a fingertip along the oil at her throat, over the top of a breast and then back again. When she lifted her chin at his intimate touch on her throat, his eyes darkened. Slowly, he put his hand over her neck above Ratqueen’s loose hold, tightening his grip like a collar. A noise of pleasure and need broke from her lips as she stayed locked in his gaze.
“I’m giving her permission to pleasure you, Medusa,” he said. “I’m going to watch.”
There were so many wonderful feelings spiraling through her, and that part of her that Charlie said she was still trying to figure out came forth. She didn’t know if it suited her all the time, but in this moment, it did. She liked what Charlie had called him.
“Yes, Sir,” she whispered. At the look that swept his features, a contraction happened between her legs, damp arousal slipping from between the lips of her sex. Charlie was right. This was what he was at his core. When he reacted to it, she knew something in her longed to fulfill that need. To be his wisdom when he needed it, his sanctuary of mind and body. To be his in every way that meant anything in the universe, and let the rest go, everything that meant nothing.
His fingers tightened briefly and he returned to the couch, only this time his eyes remained wide open.
“Back over on your stomach now,” Charlie encouraged. “It’s the best position for this last part. You will feel his regard, never fear.”
The oil made her so slick. Her skin was tingling in a million places and she was fully aroused, so her snakes were in their languorous state, staying loosely twined around her arms and neck.
Charlie picked up the last bottle. Medusa couldn’t imagine how that bronze bottle could take her anywhere more pleasurable than where she was flying now, but she was soon to find out. Charlie started at her shoulders, and worked down. Medusa’s arms were once again above her head, and this time when Charlie’s palms slid along her sides, they tucked under and cupped Medusa’s breasts, fingering the nipples and massaging them with the bronze oil. Medusa moaned, her hips lifting and pushing into Charlie’s body, for the woman was straddling her thighs. She adjusted so she was between Medusa’s spread legs, working the oil down over back and buttocks, and upper thighs.
She was catching on fire, her nipples and skin aching for touch. Charlie stretched out along her back, rubbing her naked body along the full length of Medusa’s, her mound against the seam of Medusa’s buttocks. When she coiled her fingers in Medusa’s hair and lifted her head to meet her lips, Medusa was hungry for her mouth. Charlie only lightly brushed her lips, though, a tiny delicate tongue playing along the seam before she pushed her back down.
“Your Master prefers to keep your kisses for himself,” she purred. “But he does not mind watching a woman pleasure you in other ways.”
Medusa realized she hadn’t been self-conscious about her forked tongue during that brief contact. Hearing Charlie’s observation of John Pierce’s desires and demands further swept away such concerns.
With that surprising strength, Charlie turned Medusa to her back and lay fully upon her again. She rubbed her slick clit against Medusa’s, making a hard shudder run through Medusa’s body from neck to knees. Charlie’s hands were still massaging and stroking, so Medusa writhed and bucked beneath her, lips parted and moist, gasping for air.
Turning her head, her arousal was further spurred by John. His eyes were fiery with desire, and he had opened his shorts to stretch out his cock, fist and rub it, pleasuring himself with the sight of her. It sent another jolt of arousal rocketing through her.
Charlie put her hand between them, dipping down to Medusa’s sex to knead. “Say when, Sir,” she said in a throaty voice. “I will not allow her to go over until then.”
“She can go when I go,” John said in a growl Medusa loved, even as she latched onto him with a pleading gaze. She was dying, Charlie’s fingers and magical oil taking her over wave after wave, but never
allowing that wave to crest, until she thought she was about to go mad. Her sex was throbbing under Charlie’s deft touch, her nipples hard, strands of arousal pulled so tight through her upper torso and thighs she thought she might snap at any second.
John seemed to be stroking himself in an almost leisurely way, though she noticed a tremor through his thighs and he was pushing into his grip, his fine backside leaving the couch cushion to add to the thrust. He wasn’t as detached as he might appear. But she still wanted that release. She wanted to do it with his eyes upon her like this, devouring her as he’d said.
I want to eat you alive.
She had a brief flash of memory, Klotho holding another priestess’s head between her legs, but her face had been turned, her eyes distant as if focusing on someone else. Had she been fantasizing about a lover she couldn’t have, one she’d given up to be a priestess? One who’d never known her desire?
Medusa didn’t have to stare into the empty ether of a fantasy that couldn’t stare back. Hers was staring at her now, flesh and blood, and she knew even if she released, she wouldn’t feel fulfilled until he had his cock inside her. She didn’t want him to come outside her body, but she understood what was required of her here. She need only obey his desires to have her own answered. And it happened sooner than she expected.
“Move,” he said, and it took a second for her brain to process he wasn’t talking to her. Charlie slid away from her instantly and he rose, removing the shorts and coming to the bed to loom over her, overwhelmingly virile, his cock jutting up thick between his thighs. Putting his hands on her hips, he turned her back over onto her stomach and lifted her hips from the mattress. He sheathed himself inside her like an animal taking his mate, no preamble, no hesitation.
A feral sound tore from her throat, her fingernails cutting into the sheets. He hadn’t taken her this way yet, and she wondered and reveled at the primal pleasure of it. He’d done it so deliberately, with her in such an aroused state, there was no time for fears or images of the past to intrude upon her. He clutched her hips, thrust, pounded, as she moaned at every impact.
