The Pleasure Rites Series

by Ines Johnson

  When Adom touched her skin Alyss felt a smooth wave of heat flow through her wrists and climb up her arms. She expected his fingers to be coarse and callus. They were that way -at his fingertips. But his palms were pillow soft. She didn’t fret over the paint stains and lead on his fingers and palms. He kept his hands from her dress. He’d made the exquisite garment. Surely, he didn’t want it sullied. He only touched her skin.

  Alyss couldn’t keep her eyes off the line of his gaze. The way he looked at her body was hypnotic. His pupils darted right and left as though sketching her by sight. His hazel eyes the lead, his lids the eraser. He hardly blinked.

  With her hand in his, he walked her backwards until they stood under what he’d called the rig. It looked like an upside down U to her, with a flat top instead of a curve. She saw items hanging from there. Metal shapes, circled chains, and links.

  Adom waited until her eyes were back on his. “I promise you…” He wrapped a rope around one of her wrists. “…It will not hurt. You’ll need to trust me.”

  Like his hands, the texture of the rope was another unexpected feel. The rope was soft against her skin, not rough.

  “I promise you,” he repeated. His eyes continued to read and record her every movement, perhaps her every thought. “But you must tell me if you become uncomfortable, or numb. Can I trust you to tell me that, Lady Alyss?”

  Alyss looked again at him. No man had ever asked that of her: trust. No one had ever asked for her trust. She nodded, wanting to give him her trust. She was surprised to realize that she did trust him. How could she not? He’d seen her in a way that no one ever had. He’d captured her essence on the canvas. With each stroke he communicated things she had never dared tell another soul. It felt cathartic just to see it there. And now to know that it would be on display for everyone to see? She felt her soul filling her body once more.

  Alyss watched the knots he tied at her wrist. His fingers worked deftly as though he’d done this many times before. But of course he had, with the dress. The knots he tied now were the same as the bodice of the garment. Even something so simple looked like a work of art.

  He bound her wrists together, facing each other. A moment of panic hit her when she felt the tension. Her hands went clammy. Her eyes darted to the exit.

  Adom twined her fingers with his own. His heat replaced the coldness. Her eyes shot to his calm hazel one’s. His eyes asked her a question.

  Alyss licked her lips.

  Adom’s eyes followed the movement.

  She was at his mercy, but she felt no loss of power.

  “Can I trust you, Lady Alyss?”

  She nodded.

  Adom raised her arms above her head. He never lost eye contact with her. His eyes didn’t let go of his question even though she’d given her answer.

  The feel of the ropes against her skin, the slight burn, awakened something inside Alyss, like kindling. Her mind had been so weighed down by the events of the day. The weight began with her Mother and Grand Mother hounding her about her preparation for the Insemination Bill. Then the actual presentation before the Chambers hadn’t gone over as smoothly as she’d expected. Then the words of that brute male who spoke for the Male Voice. His words still swirled in her mind. She’d never had a man talk to her like that, as though she were beneath his contempt. Every man she’d ever encountered had been instantly charmed and at her feet. But not that one.

  It should not bother her. He was a man, and she had no interest in men. She only had interest in securing her place in the Sisterhood and getting out from under the thumb of her Mother and Grand Mother.

  She felt a tug at her wrist as though the rope asked her what was it she wanted to do.

  Alyss’ eyes snapped open and back to Adom. She hadn’t realized that she’d gone so far off in her thoughts. She focused on his machinations once more.

  He rose her arms above her head. His eyes letting her know that she still had time to escape. But at the same time they appeared to beg her to stay, to trust him. She sensed how much he wanted this. She wanted him to get back to the easel. To hear the pencil scratch the paper. She saw the brushes and colors from here.

  With her hands over her head, Adom tied another knot. She watched his muscles work beneath his linen shirt. His shirt was open a bit and she saw tanned muscles beneath. Alyss had no appreciation of the male form, not even in art. But now her eyes catalogued his movements as he catalogued hers. She thought of using a gel pen to capture the contours of his form. Her fingers flexed from the desire.

  “Don’t struggle,” he said.

  Alyss blinked. It dawned on her that he no longer held her. With the simple knots he’d tied, the ropes supported her entire body.

  “By the Goddess, you’re breath taking.”

  He’d hooked her bound hands on one of the metal links leaving Alyss weightless. She felt as though she were floating. With slow steps, Adom retreated from her, taking a seat at the easel.

  She watched him lean back in his chair, his eyes never leaving her form. Alyss no longer saw his pupils. His hands took his eyes place in capturing her form on the parchment. Alyss was used to men and women staring at her, admiring her form. But the way Adom looked at her, he saw more.

  The sound of the scritch scritch of his pencil assaulted her ears. She ached to see how he formed her. After a moment, the scritch scratch of his pencil lulled her eyes closed.

  And then there was the feel of the ropes against her skin. Alyss didn’t struggle, she floated. She leaned into the ropes, giving over her every burden to the twine. She felt her features soften. Her breath slowed, deepened. Her eyes refused to open. The fingers of each hand dropped onto the other’s wrist. The pads of her fingers lightly caressed the ropes that bound her.

  Alyss felt a warming sensation begin at her core. She pressed her thighs together, but the sensation spread up to her belly. It ensnared her spine. Her head lolled to the side as the warmth spread across her cheeks and she floated.

  Her senses hyper aware. Her eyes blinked open when she thought she heard a noise that wasn’t the pencil on parchment. A noise from overhead.

  But it was just Adom standing before her, untying the ropes. Alyss almost protested as the tension released from the ropes and slowly settled back into her hands, her shoulders, her legs. Too soon, she stood on her own two feet once more.

  With the ropes off, Adom massaged her wrists.

  Her eyes darted behind him, to his easel. “Can I see?”

  He nodded, leading her over to the canvas.

  There she was. Her body outlined in pencil. She saw the elegance of her hands above her head, but without the rope. Her eyes were closed. Her face blissful, turned up to the sun. But it looked as though the sun greeted her. He’d filled in the background with purple and accents of yellow rays rising from her person, which created the sun.

  “But you’re not finished?”

  “I couldn’t leave you up there for much longer. You would go numb.”

  “So you’ll need me to come back?”

  He swallowed. His hand went to the back of his neck as he looked at the door.

  Alyss’ heart sank. She had to come back. She had to see how this painting turned out.

  She looked down at her wrists. She ran her fingertips over the marks left by the ropes and sighed. Even the pattern puckering at her skin was beautiful.

  When she looked up, Adom’s eyes were on her. She was close enough to see his pupils reading her. Finally, he nodded.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. “It has to be in the morning or afternoon. Can you get away?”

  Something niggled the back of her mind. Something important that she must do. But she couldn’t fathom what could be more important than seeing this picture come to fruition. She would get away. Nothing would keep her from this experience.

  Chapter Ten

  Emet paused in the doorway.

  Both of them were so absorbed that they didn’t notice him.

  He couldn
’t believe his eyes. Lady Alyss dangled from the rig in Adom’s studio. Adom sat before an easel capturing every one of her lines. Lady Alyss closed her eyes in rope bliss, a condition Emet frequently indulged in. Rope bliss was that space in time when the suspension, combined with the tension of the ropes, relieved all pressures and the bound one went inward to a place were all things were calm.

  Adom was a master at the craft of rope binding and suspension, making the ropes both artfully tied for his renditions and a pleasurable experience for the one bound.

  But it hadn’t always been that way. Years ago when they were both still Pleasure Hounds, Adom tied up a young lady under his tutelage. The young woman had not given into the ropes. She’d become frightened and panicked. The situation escalated and her Mother had been called in. The older woman was more afraid of a scandal involving her daughter than she was irate, and luckily Emet had been on hand when Adom called. He came in and, using his gift of logic and persuasion, quashed the situation. Adom never touched another woman after that experience. He kept his hands and his ropes solely on Emet’s body.

  Until now.

  Emet couldn’t fathom why this was happening? How this was happening?

  Lady Alyss had shown up in that dress today. She’d gotten it from Adom. Emet hadn’t thought she’d lower herself to come to a shop owned and operated by males, but perhaps she had. And if she had, she had to know that Adom was Emet’s bond mate.

  But Adom knew who she was too. Emet told him her name last night.

  Emet wanted answers immediately as he looked between the two. But he couldn’t get his mouth to work. His heart was having trouble beating in his chest. He’d nearly lost his friend to a similar situation as the one on display before him. He’d walked beside his lover when they both left the Pleasure Temples. He’d supported his husband as he pursued his dream of becoming a respected artist. Emet had thought Adom supported him too, but…

  Emet’s feet carried him away, down the hall and into their shared bedroom.

  Emet sat on the bed. His mind awhirl, not holding on to anyone thought.

  “Em?”

  Emet looked up to see Adom standing in the doorway. Adom’s face turned from the artist high he always had after leaving his studio and into concern and finally guilt.

  “You saw?”

  Emet couldn’t respond. He didn’t need to. He and Adom had had wordless conversations since they were young boys. He just couldn’t comprehend why they hadn’t had a conversation about what he just saw before it got this far.

  “She’s gone.” Adom came into the room. He had a rag in his hands. The rag had gotten much of the paint off his hands, but now Adom worried the rag between his fingers, scrubbing away the evidence trapped under his nails.

  “Its not what you think,” Adom said.

  “Tell me what I’m thinking?” Emet’s voice was breathless more than angry. “Because I can’t seem to form a single thought.”

  “She agreed to it. She begged me to. She wanted it.”

  So Adom thought Emet worried about the lady’s consent. He wasn’t. “She’s my adversary.”

  Adom blinked. “Right. I know.”

  “You bound and suspended my adversary. One of the most powerful ladies in the city who is intent on taking me down along with the rights of men. A lady that can easily have you thrown in prison, and likely will because she’s playing some kind of game-“

  “She’s not,” Adom insisted. “I can’t explain to you how I know, but she’s not playing a game, Emet.”

  Emet blinked rapidly. He struggled to bring the man he loved into focus.

  “When she saw the dress she…” Adom paused, searching for words. “If you could’ve just seen the look on her face you’d-”

  “Oh, I saw the look on her face when she flounced into the Chambers. I only wish you had seen the look on her face when she couldn’t puzzle out why I didn’t succumb to her girlish charms or that I knew how to use big words. She thinks men are mindless creatures whose only desires are to be led about by women.”

  Adom sighed. “I don’t think that’s what’s truly in her heart.”

  “But you know for certain what’s in my heart,” Emet said to the man whom he’d stood by through thick and thin. “You know what’s important to me, why I fight. And you kept this from me. How long has this been going on?”

  “She’s the girl in the red painting.”

  The red painting? The painting of the Goddess laying on the earth. He’d painted that months ago. Emet’s fingers tightened on the quilt spread across their bed. Adom had made it from their monk robes as a bonding gift. They’d taken vows as monks together in their youth, and then they took vows to each other as men. “You’ve been lying to me for three months.”

  “No.” Adom knelt before him, eyes pleading. “I saw her three months ago when I went to Jian’s to give Lady Chanyn her present. I didn’t know who she was, but I couldn’t get her out of my mind. So I painted her. The gallery patroness loved the pieces. She wanted more. And then like magic, Alyss turned up to buy the dress. It all happened so fast.”

  “Like magic? The women of her family are treacherous. They’ll do anything to get this bill passed.”

  “Not Alyss-"

  “She’s blinded you. Just like she does all men to get her way.”

  Adom hung his head. Emet almost reached out to him. He couldn’t stand to see Adom upset. But Adom wasn’t looking at the upset he’d caused Emet. In pursuit of his own agenda, he’d likely dashed Emet’s dreams. What had Lady Alyss gleaned from Adom about how Emet planned to defeat the Insemination Bill?

  “I’ll put a stop to it,” Adom said. “I’m sorry that I hurt you. For what it's worth, even if she harbored some secret plan, I think she’s a closet artist. She knows more about color than I do. And she’s aroused by the ropes. I thought she might orgasm from the sound of the pencil on the canvas.”

  Adom smiled. But wiped it away when he saw Emet’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” Adom said again. “I was going to tell you. I wasn’t going to let her in this afternoon, but I got carried away. The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you.”

  Adom reached for him, but Emet pulled away. They rarely fought, and when they did they made up almost instantly. But this? This Emet couldn’t let go of immediately.

  “I think you’re only sorry you got caught.”

  “Em-“

  “When you get in that painting mode, you don’t think about anyone but the canvas. So don’t let me interrupt your thoughts. Why don’t you spend the night in your studio near your paintings.”

  Adom opened his mouth to protest, but then turned and went out of the room.

  Emet slumped back onto the mattress. Even flat on his back the world still spun around him. He could barely grasp onto any thought save one. Lady Alyss bound in Adom’s knotted dress, suspended from a bondage rig with her eyes closed in rope bliss.

  He didn’t know what kind of game was she playing at, but she’d just raised the stakes.

  Chapter Eleven

  Alyss didn’t need to open her eyes to see the sun had risen. She felt the rays press into her face, her shoulders, her legs. The weight of the light cracked open the surface of her being. The bright tendrils reached into the chrysalis of her self. It wrapped around her soul and pulled.

  Alyss opened her eyes. Her hands went to her shoulders, her thighs, her heart. There was an itch on her skin though she’d bathed and oiled herself before going to bed last night. She’d had to wash to scrub away the evidence of the paint.

  She sat up now. She scratched at the itch at her elbow, then on down to her wrist. She stopped there, feeling the indentations in her skin from the previous night; the marks left by Adom’s ropes.

  When she came home last night, she couldn’t sleep for all the energy running through her body. After Adom freed her from the ropes and massaged the kinks from her wrists, Alyss had expected all her worries and weights to resettle. They hadn’t. The sense
of weightlessness, of freedom, remained. On her way home she’d gotten a burst of creative energy as though the ropes had freed her. She’d picked up a box of colored pencils and paints from a store. She snuck them into the house as though she were sneaking in a lover. She closed and locked her bedroom door and then lay on the floor all night wrapped up in her artwork. Before dawn, she shoved all the drawings into a dress bag in her closet. The servants weren’t allowed to touch her garments without her express permission. Her Mother and Grand Mother had no care for clothes outside of their basic functionality of covering their modesty. Her drawings were safe. No one would go in there.

  Alyss went into her closet now and grabbed a dress of orange solid lines outlined in black. The dress fluttered over her head and came to rest on top of her curves. She went to her dresser to accent the dress with hair clips that resembled a butterflies wings.

  Outside her window, a field of green stared back at her. Her Grand Mother’s gardens were once filled with an array of colorful blooms that people came far and wide to see. Alyss had loved waking to the sight when she was a girl. The best view had been from the nursery she’d shared with her sister. One of her male nannies had said that the garden had been designed by one of the girls’ fathers as a tribute to the Goddess. Neither Merlyn nor Alyss had ever met either of their fathers. Her Mother had sent both males away shortly after Alyss’ conception. Angyla had had two girl offsprings, a feat most women did not achieve in their society. Having no plans to conceive more, Angyla no longer had use for her husbands and sent them away. When both girls made it safely into their teen years without illness or incident, their Grand Mother had the flower garden tribute mowed down, replacing it with practical produce.

  This morning, a spot of color in the fields caught Alyss’ eyes. At the edge of the greenery a purple flower, perhaps a violet, struggled to reach the surface and the sun’s rays. But no sooner than Alyss spied the fledging bloom did a shadow overtake it and the ground’s keeper yanked it up by its roots.