by Gray Miller
“But… you all seemed so capable of taking care of what went wrong today. You found healers,” he gave a squeeze to Elyse’s hand on his thigh, “and Ada, you found me in the, the… torture tower?”
Ada sighed. “Brian… no, I didn’t find you. You led us to you. You and that rope. It was like a beacon, and I only noticed it because… well, because some forces I work with would not let me ignore it. And Elyse and Alan are wonderful, yes… but I didn’t call them with my mind.” Sullivan looked up suddenly with a grinning muttered“I knew it!” which she ignored. “They were called last week to come over for tea with me this afternoon. It just so happened that they were to arrive right after you showed up on my rug… so I simply let things take their course.” She looked a little embarrassed. “Normally I eschew such theatrics, but Sullivan, the Rascal, tends to bring it out in people.”
“So no, there really isn’t any support system. We’re just a bunch of different people who sometimes help each other, sometimes do stupid things like what Vashte did to you, and sometimes just get lucky. I’m sorry, Brian, but that’s the lot you’ve thrown in with.”
Brian looked at her for a moment, and said, very quietly, “What is the alternative? Nothing personal, I’m very grateful to you all for what you’ve done, but I have to ask this: what is so bad about just going and giving them what they want?”
Ada looked at him sadly. “Aside from the loss of the art and beauty you create, you mean? Aside from living your life in a hollow imitation of your true potential? Brian, I will describe a best circumstance for you, right now, something I have seen happen before.”
“You will try to contact them. They will become very solicitous and friendly to you. They will offer you what seems to be a great job, something in the adult entertainment industry, perhaps even doing rope work, maybe even going to Japan to study shibari rigging with self-styled ‘masters’, and use your talent to promote the vapid, cold and lifeless images they purvey.”
“Your friends and family will be taken from you by the means of some scandal, whether contrived or actual—they are quite gifted at tempting you into situations that you cannot extricate yourself from. Drugs are the easiest way; and you would find it is much harder to say no to a needle offered by a woman you are lusting after than it is by men such as the one who held you captive.”
“You’d find that, as the drug wormed its way deeper into your life, your talent, your feeling for the ropes would be blunted, fade away as you tried to fake it through repetition and excuses. Finally, even the tawdry magazines would have no use for you… and you’d still be hooked on whatever substance they put in you in the first place. And since you’d be willing, at that point, to do anything to get it… well, do I have to go on? I’d rather not; all of us here have seen friends go through this, and know what comes next, and I think we’d rather not be reminded.”
Brian sighed and rubbed his eyes. “No, no, I get the picture. But I still don’t understand… what do I do next? I have a wife who will be back from visiting her lover in New York in a few days. What do I tell her? ‘Hon, we can’t have sex, or the Missionaries will bust in and try to hook us on heroin.’” He leaned forward and looked intently at Ada. “And what about my daughters? They should be with their mother this weekend, but they would not be hard to track down. And they would be the easiest way for these, these Repressors or whoever, to get me to do what they want.”
Ada nodded. “Good questions, both, and like all real answers, they are nested inside of each other.” She looked at Alan and Elyse. “This is more your path than mine, so please let me know if I go astray in my answer.” She returned to Brian, and said again, “You need a Focus.”
Brian sat back again heavily. “Back to that. What is it? Or, what did you say, who is it is a better way to ask? And why can one help me and mine?”
“A Focus, Brian, is not traceable. Unlike you when you manifest your power, when you use a Focus, the power can be aimed, but cannot be traced back. You would be able to raise and release the energy—doing vast amounts of good, I might add—without fear of being traced.”
“With the help of the focus, you can first put Wards over your daughters. They aren’t exactly shields as much as distractions, but they will keep the ‘pressors—or at least, most of their servants—from being able to even see them, much less harm them.” She leaned forward, pushing her arms forward, and smiled as Brian’s eyes automatically flicked to the cleavage suddenly created. “Misdirection is always the easiest sort of sex magic to work.
Brian flushed, snapping his eyes back up to her face, and grinned when he saw her wry smile. “And there’s more?”
She smiled wider. “Well, from what Sullivan tells me, you and your wife are polyamorous?”
“Yes. We allow for outside romantic relationships, besides our marriage, as well as the occasional play partner. They’re always grounded in some sort of emotional context, whether friendship or even love, which I guess sets us apart, somewhat, from swingers, but the difference could be only in our own minds… “ He shrugged. “And that’s really the only place it matters, I suppose.”
“And you don’t consider that cheating, Man?” Ada held up a hand at Brian’s look of anger. “I’m merely playing devil’s advocate, Brian. I think there may be some great potential here, for some great good… but I need to know more about the bond between your wife and yourself before I can be sure.”
Brian took a calming breath before continuing. “We very carefully crafted our vows to each other so that there would never be a need to cheat. For the most part, in terms of play, we trust each others judgment, and if things begin to get deeper in an emotional context, we take extra time to make sure the communication is crystal clear between all involved parties.” He grimaced. “Sometimes that can be agonizing. When she met Jake, her lover in New York, where she is now, I think we must have spent hours and hours on the phone, in chat, whenever possible in person, trying to hash out exactly how we all felt.”
“Good for you,” Elyse commented. “Most of the poly folk we know are of the ‘what I don’t know won’t hurt me’ philosophy, and it goes wrong so often.”
Brian nodded. “Yeah, we tried that early on in our relationship, it didn’t work at all. We even had an engineer friend of ours, the person who introduced her to Jake, in fact, get so upset that she wrote a twelve page essay, with charts, no less, about why it would never work.” He echoed Sullivan’s chuckle at that. “That helped, actually, quite a lot; we sort of circled the wagons, and spent so much time explaining to her why it would work that we never really had to convince each other. And now they’ve been together, oh, about two years, and our friends have pretty much accepted that yes, it is working.” He paused, thinking of Bec, suddenly missing her with a familiar pain that was all the sweeter with the knowledge that she would come back to him. Unless the ‘pressors do something to stop it. He suddenly looked up again at Ada. “Is that what you needed to know? Because the more I think about this, and talk about her, the more worried I’m getting.”
“Just one more question, Brian. What about you? Are you also a lover of Jake? Or…”
“I don’t have a lover, currently, just play partners on occasion. And since neither of them is bi, no, we don’t share lovers.” He blushed a little. “I’ve met a man or two who I’ve been attracted to, so I suppose I’m bisexual to some degree—“
“Who isn’t?” Alan said, with a smile.”
Brian nodded. “True, thank Kinsey. But while Jake’s a great guy, he doesn’t do anything for me. We’re more of a V-shaped relationship, rather than a triangle.” He paused again, a bit embarrassed, but then realized that these people, of any, would be accepting of him. “The closest we’ve come to that is for her birthday, we have sort of started a tradition of doing a play scene where both of us Dom her. We’ve got different styles, but they seem to complement each other, and… well, Bec’s never complained about her birthday present, anyway.”
Sullivan, Ely
se, and Alan all gave him supportive leers, and even the serene smile on Ada’s face held a prurient twist to it. She let out a sigh that seemed relieved. “Good. That’s the best news of all. Brian, as soon as we get the Wards set, you and your focus—whether it be the woman Sullivan has in mind or not—will need to perform a ritual that will bind your power,and its path through you both, to your wife—Bec, was it?—and her lover, Jake.”
Elyse was nodding. “A binding like that, like the one Alan and I share, will extend the strength of your art and your mark to them. It’s an added measure of protection, if it’s done with the help of a Focus. And more than that, the power flows both ways—their energy can help yours, increasing your power exponentially.”
Brian frowned. “Won’t that just make me a bigger target?” His frown deepened. “Won’t that make all of us into bigger targets?”
Sullivan chuckled. “Bucko, you act as if you aren’t already more conspicuous than a condom in a cathedral. The key word is ‘bigger’,” Sullivan paused, visibly restraining himself from further comment under Ada’s stern glare. “You may notice that I’m only a target because I’m helping you. Elyse, Alan, we’re all basically too big fish for them to fry, without being blatant. Plus, we’ve all got wards up, just like the ones we’re going to put on your daughters.”
Alan interrupted. “Well, not so much wards, as shields… well, whatever metaphor works. What Sullivan’s saying is that with the binding in place, connecting you and your wife with her lover and your Focus, you gain a more solid base, and the amount of effort needed to draw you down becomes less cost-effective.” He said the last with a sarcastic tone edging into his voice. “From what you’ve told us, Brian, you and your wife have already got a strong bond between you, and that strength is quite possibly what’s enabled you to last this long, and get this far.”
“But more than that, my boy, you can help in the fight.” Sullivan had sat forward and turned on the couch so that he was facing Brian. “How does the Spider-Ethic go, ‘With Great Breast Come Great Responsibility’? Oh, wait, it was power, that’s right…same thing.” His grin turned serious. “We have ways that we are trying to get organized, to influence a senator here, a businessman there, and get things turned around.” The grin came back, with a smirking twist that was infectious. “Not to mention that Focuses are a lot of fun to work with. Sure, the first thing you should do is put a ward on your daughters—not so much shielding them as giving them and you early warning of any ‘pressor activity. And then seal the binding with your wife and Jake—when does she get back?”
“Next week.”
Elyse shook her head. “Not soon enough. You’ll have to call her, let temporal and active synchronicity overcome spatial displacement… “ she paused as she saw Brian’s puzzled expression. “…but first things first. Let’s get you a Focus. Then set the Wards.”
“Wards? What good is that against people like that man, like those missionaries?”
Sullivan’s grin got even wider. “Tell you what. Let me introduce you to a new friend of mine, and we can talk about that later… “
VI
“Hi, my name’s Sally. How are you?” The woman’s voice had a strength and directness that contrasted sharply with her slight frame. Taking her hand, which seemed to sink into his wide palms with a cool smoothness, he tried to feel if there would be some sort of instant connection, if he could feel her presence as vividly as he’d felt Vashte’s or Sullivan’s.
There was something there, something hidden, but it was behind a smooth and solid façade, not so much a barricade as simply a part of who she was. As she murmured the standard pleasantries, her slender hand disappearing into Brian’s wide palm, he felt a twinge of disappointment. She shook his hand with a confident strength that belied her slight frame, and then let out a delighted squeal and threw herself into a hug for Sullivan.
“Ah, lass, how are you? No kilt today, I’m afraid—it’s been a bit of a rough time for my boy here and I. Let me tell you… ” She took his arm and walked between them as Sullivan began describing, in graphic and often grotesque terms, the events of the past two days. Brian tried not to be too obvious as he looked for what it was that would make her so instrumental. The three of them walked through the park near Ada’s house, a suburban monument to prefab child’s play structures and cement companies.
Certainly there was beauty. She had shoulder-length auburn hair and was wearing what Brian would have called “upscale club” clothes—skin-tight pants with a dark shiny purple texture somewhere between scales and fishnet covering the curves, a low-cut tight cotton blouse printed with diagonal stripes that led the eyes inexorably to the center of her chest, where her breasts were tightly pushed up and out by the maroon bra that peeked around the edges of her decolletage. He managed to avoid the “eye trap” as he thought of it, and focused on her face as she giggled and listened to Sullivan’s wry commentary. Her sharp features at first seemed startling in their precise beauty, with her lips slightly darkened in a way that drew the gaze and emphasized every word and smile.
Sullivan finally finished his tale, and the three of them stopped near a blocky monument topped with a bronze general. She turned to look at Brian, “Sounds like you’ve had quite a time of it. And you think I can help?”
Brian smiled and was about to make a witty reply when he finally was able to look directly into her eyes. They were a silvery gray, and the sunset coming through the park brought them into bright contrast with the warm glow of her skin. He looked into them, and there was a snap of sensation, of his self falling, sinking into them. After a moment, he realized that he ought to feel awkward about the silence as it stretched between them. He would have, except that she, too, seemed silent and lost in the overwhelming suddenness of the connection.
Sullivan watched the two of them sharing the moment, and then broke it, not unkindly. “That would be a ‘yes’, I do believe.” He chuckled as the two of them looked at him with the embarrassed glances of people who had forgotten that he—or anyone else—was there. “I would call that an auspicious beginning. So here’s the thing: I would love to give you both the time for a courtship, for a gentle getting-to-know you, but things are moving more quickly than that.” He looked seriously for a moment at Brian. “Sally knows everything that you know, now, but while we know she’s a Focus, she’s not yet actually channeled the kind of energy that you have to deal with.” He sighed. “And by the nature of her fetish—and yours—I can’t exactly tell you to be gentle.” Sally blushed and looked down for a moment, a slight smile curving her lips. “But be careful, both of you. You’re going to have to play near the edge to get where you need to go. I’ll be… listening, you might say, but really, either this will work or it won’t—I don’t think I can haul your ass out of the fire too many more times, bucko.” He gave Sally a friendly leer. “Your ass, however, I will gratefully haul anywhere you’d like, at another time. Ah, if only you were more into ink and less into cumsluttery...”
She returned the leer in a mischievous crinkling of her eyes and Brian suddenly saw, for a moment, a glimpse of what was behind the smooth professionalism. His stomach felt suddenly hollow. “Is that the word for it now? Ah, Sullivan flattery will get you this—“ she suddenly pressed her body full length against him, twining her arms up around his neck and kissing him ferociously. His hands came around and naturally gripped the curves of her ass, the shiny pleather dimpling under his fingers. They disengaged, and Sullivan gave Brian a final wink before turning and jauntily strolling back along the path.
“Not to be nosy, but… cumsluttery?” Brian said as they watched him go, trying to make his voice nonchalant.
Sally laughed. “Well, that’s one word for it. Really, it’s just that I really, really like cock. And cum.” Her voice went into a throaty parody of a cartoon. “Mmm… sticky!” She watched Brian intently as she spoke, and he realized that she was testing him, trying to gauge his level of shock. An aggressive competitiveness rose in him, and
he suddenly resolved not to give an inch.
“Ah, that makes sense. Attached or detached?” He watched her eyes widen with glee, and was right with her as they both chanted “Dee-tachable Pee-nis!” The shared laughter seemed to set the mood, and she took his arm. Brian was sure she deliberately pressed the swell of her breast into his arm, and just as deliberately he ignored it as they walked. He lapsed into a Freudian accent. “ZSO!. Vhen did this particular affinity for zee male organ first manifest, liebchen?”
She giggled again, then looked thoughtful. “Well, you know, it actually wasn’t always like this. In fact, I think it started back when my boyfriend pointed out that I really didn’t like going down on him. I’d do it for him, sure, but it was not something that I enjoyed. As a result, I… wasn’t very good at it.” Her look of demure embarrassment was so at odds with the subject matter that Brian couldn’t help but laugh, and he realized that he was becoming captivated by the layers of this woman.
They strolled down the paths of the park, chatting like old friends as she told him the story of how she’d learned to stop worrying about fellatio and learned to love the cock. He entertained her with what he could remember of a Hoot Island website column about reasons the man loved his cock. (“Use it as a catapult for M&M’s and see how many you can flip into your mouth!” was a particular favorite). They discussed their particular kinks, his voice intense and excited as he spoke of the ropes he used, the ties, the imposing of sensation on the mind of his partner. She blushed pink as she confessed that spanking was the one act that turned her on more than any other, and told him of her desire to submit combined with a need to rebel. It was an easy, friendly conversation, and the open and frank nature of their exchange was refreshing to both of them. The attraction they’d felt for each other was a constant undercurrent, but there seemed to be none of the awkward embarrassed silences or even blushing admissions. The conversation might go from current political races to species of flowers to unusually shaped anal plugs, and it all seemed perfectly rational. I think this is what sexual maturity feels like, Brian found himself thinking at one point, and he said as much aloud.
