All Acts Of Pleasure: A Rowan Gant Investigation (34 page)

Even though I was fighting to deny anything
to the evil that had invaded our home, the look on my wife’s face
told me I was losing the battle before I had even started fighting
back. No longer was she wearing the wide, mischievous grin. She had
gone far beyond that. Now, her face was molded into an expression
of near ecstasy. Her eyes were closed; and her lips were slightly
parted as she slowly tilted her face upward. She began to pant, and
suddenly a bizarre moan filled the room. It was something I could
only describe as a poorly synchronized disharmony of sound, both
human and inhuman. The worst part was that I knew they were both
coming from deep within Felicity. One of them the product of her
own hijacked voice, the other from somewhere on the other side of
the veil, dwelling in an inky darkness that was blacker than I ever
wanted to imagine.

She arched her back as the sigh of pleasure
grew louder, and its jarring duality grew even stronger. Her
posture served only to make her look like a player in an adult
movie acting out the generally accepted portrait of an earth
shattering orgasm for an unseen camera.

Unfortunately, I knew all too well that this
wasn’t acting.

This was for real.

My wife began to sink as she literally
allowed herself to slump backward. Her breathing grew shallow,
coming in rapid pants as the unearthly sound continued trilling
through the room, joined by a rapturous whimper of corporeal
origin.

The initial shock of the lit cigarette
against my chest had now faded to a dull burn that took up
residence in the background, hiding behind my many other ignored
pains. Lifting my head, I watched as Felicity tensed and twisted,
all but writhing in unfathomable ecstasy. She was still straddling
me but was pitched backward at an angle, bracing herself with one
hand on the edge of the bed while the other roamed her body of its
own accord. Had I not been fully aware of the why and how this was
happening to her, it would have been an immensely humbling sight,
being that I wasn’t responsible for it. However, my prowess in
regard to pleasing my wife was the furthest thing from my thoughts
at the moment. What lived in the forefront was the horror of
knowing that by succumbing to the ethereally dispensed pleasure,
Felicity was only cementing her bond with the
Lwa
.

Of course, her ability to resist had
been negated the moment the spirit had assumed control, and even in
my present state, I recognized the power of what I was witnessing.
Though I had no doubt that my wife had not initially given herself
over to the
Lwa
willingly, I
almost wouldn’t have been able to blame her if she had. The
apparent reward she had just received in return for what was, in
the grand scheme of things, a fairly mild act of cruelty, was one
that could not be easily refused.

I dropped my head back down and twisted it to
the right, looking toward my hand. Without my glasses I couldn’t
see much detail, but the leather-looking cuff appeared to have a
metal buckle and D-ring type of hardware securing it both to my
wrist and then to the bedpost by a short strap. I twisted my arm
slowly and found that the restraint was loose enough to allow
movement within it. I glanced back quickly and saw that Felicity
was still in the throes of her experience and paying little or no
attention to me for the moment.

Rolling my head back to the side, I rotated
my arm once again, this time pulling as well. The heel of my palm
slipped down into the cuff and stopped cold, the hard edge of the
restraint bit sharply into the back of my hand, and I could feel it
abrading the skin as I kept applying the downward pressure.

Casting my glance to the left, I tried the
same tactic on the other arm, gaining the same fruitless results.
Still, I didn’t give up until I heard my wife’s breathing begin to
come under control and then felt her weight shifting back fully
onto my stomach as she pushed herself up and forward.

She was wearing an expression of pure
contentment, with her eyelids drooping heavily and a pouting smile
caressing her lips. But, simply the way she was breathing told me
she wasn’t going to roll over and go to sleep—nor did she have
plans for cuddling.

No,
Miranda
was just getting started.

“Hmmmmmm,” she purred. “That was good.”

“Glad you enjoyed it,” I quipped, unable to
contain my disdain for the spirit inhabiting my wife.

She giggled, almost musically, looking down
at me with a wicked smile.

“I did,” she replied. “Didn’t you?”

“Not particularly.”

“Hmmmmm…” she purred again, a thoughtful tone
underscoring the hum.

She rocked to the side, lifting up and
planting her stocking clad knee in the center of my chest, then
pitched forward and placed her weight on it. I grunted as the air
was forced out of my lungs, and I felt my ribcage flex inward. I
heard her quickly shuffle something off to the left of my head,
then she rocked back and slid her knee down as she dropped herself
hard onto my stomach, forcing me to huff out the breath I’d only
just managed to suck in.

Settling herself in, she slipped the wrapper
from a cigar and then nipped the end of it with my guillotine
cutter. I recognized the stogie as one of the real-deal Cuban
smokes a friend had recently brought back for me from a trip to the
Caribbean. How he had gotten them back into the country I hadn’t
asked—not that it mattered now.

She was watching me watch her, and she seemed
to find it amusing. After a moment of fiddling about with the dark
brown roll of tobacco, she waved it in front of my face.

“You don’t mind, do you?” she drawled in a
mocking tone. “I helped myself.”

“Go ahead,” I returned. “Tell him it’s with
my compliments.”

“Him?” she asked, cocking her head to the
side.

“Papa Legba
,” I
replied.

“What makes you think it’s for Papa?”

“Educated guess.”

“Hmmmmm,” she purred once again.

Without another word she double-clicked a
lighter then brought the long stream of flame against the foot of
the cigar, rolling it slowly. Then, she carefully placed the tight
roll of tobacco between her lips and proceeded to set the end
alight, twisting it slowly and puffing hard. A cloud of blue-white
smoke billowed around her, and she didn’t even flinch. Just one
more sign that my wife was no longer my wife, as she would have
gone into a sneezing fit immediately.

My hands were already starting to throb where
I had pulled them down into the restraints. I knew that the scrapes
were going to start getting inflamed, and swelling would be quick
to follow. I wasn’t even sure that I would be able to extract my
hands as they were now, but if they became swollen, there wouldn’t
even be a thread of a chance. Of course, I also knew it was going
to take more than a mere second or two and some obvious strain to
accomplish, if at all. Therefore trying to make it happen while her
attention was actually focused on me was out of the question. That
would only prompt her to tighten them more or do something even
worse. What, I didn’t even want to imagine.

“So,” she finally said, still regarding me as
she puffed gently on the Cuban stogie. “How do you know about
Papa?”

“I read a lot.”

She didn’t reply. Instead she hooked her
dainty finger around the cigar and pulled it from between her lips.
With a quick flick she knocked ash from the end, aiming it directly
at my face as she had done earlier with the cigarette. Then,
pursing her lips, she blew gently on the burning end of the roll,
making the ember glow bright reddish-orange. Turning it in her
hand, she then carefully placed the lit end into her mouth and
closed her lips tightly around it.

Once again a billow of smoke began to
encircle her head as she blew out through the cigar. Just as I knew
from my research, that the cigar was intended for
Papa Legba
, I also knew that what she
was now doing was, in effect, smoking it for him.

After a few moments, she extracted the cigar
from her mouth and grinned at me. Once again, without warning she
set about her regimen of torture. Reaching forward to my chest, she
took my left nipple between her thumb and forefinger, squeezed
hard, and then twisted.

This time my subconscious didn’t intervene. I
immediately yelped as the pain shot through the sensitive nerve
cluster then grimaced as she continued to pinch and twist.

“How…” she began.

Even through my pain, I could tell that she
had caught her breath before she could get the sentence out of her
mouth, and that could only mean one thing. She was getting aroused
all over again.

“How does that feel?” she finally said,
managing to get out the entire sentence before she began to pant as
she had done before.

The throb in my skull ramped up and seemed to
pulsate in unison with her oncoming orgasm. I fought to concentrate
through both it and the pain she was inflicting on my chest. I knew
an opportunity was soon going to present itself; I just had to be
able to take advantage of it. Unfortunately, whether or not that
would happen was going to be directly connected to how much pain I
was going to be able to endure and still remain conscious.

She let go of the sensitive skin then slowly
raked her nails across my chest, digging hard at the earlier burn
as she continued watching my face.

The influx of pleasure that was overtaking
her seemed to be coming faster—and even more intensely than it had
the first time. If this was the normal pattern then it had to be
like a drug. Something akin to the neuro-psychology experiment
where a rat was wired to be able to self-stimulate the pleasure
centers of its own brain with the press of a bar in its cage; which
it did with relish, foregoing food, water, and sleep, until it
simply expired. Only, this wasn’t an electrode-wearing rat in a
lab. This was my wife’s body, and a malevolent spirit was using her
as a vehicle in order to experience the same repetitive rush.

Given what I was seeing now, it wasn’t
hard to extrapolate what had occurred at the various crime scenes.
If progressively intensifying sexual climaxes in return for
increasingly cruel tortures were how this
Lwa
worked, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what
level of rapture the actual kill would trigger. I looked back up at
her and watched as she carefully regarded the burning end of the
cigar, flicking her gaze between it and me. It didn’t take a genius
to see what was coming, and I wasn’t entirely sure I was prepared
for it, even with the advance knowledge.

Still, the last climax had kept her occupied
for a few minutes. If this was going to be even more intense, I
just might have enough time to get free. What I was going to do
after that was anyone’s guess, but at least I would actually be in
a position to do something other than die. I decided quickly that
as insane as it seemed, antagonizing her into the next phase of
cruelty was my best course of action. Judging from her present
state, it wasn’t going to take much to set her off.

She started to grin then pursed her lips and
blew on the end of the cigar again, brightening the ember and
creating a thin stream of smoke.

“Just what is your kink, little man?” she
finally asked. “You males all have one. What does it for you?”

“You haven’t found it yet,” I croaked, my
voice slightly strained from the earlier cry of pain.

“But, I will,” she replied breathily.

She was starting to undulate her hips against
me, and her chest would occasionally swell each time she would draw
in a deep breath between the ongoing shallow pants. The ethereal
moan was starting low within her, and her own voice was adding a
nasal whimper of pleasure to the mix.

“We’ll see,” I returned.

“You don’t think so?”

“You haven’t impressed me yet.”

She took hold of the tender nipple once again
and twisted hard. I held my breath as I grimaced and clenched my
teeth, struggling to keep from screaming. When she finally let go,
I let the heated contents of my lungs spill slowly out then calmly
as possible took a fresh breath.

After a moment I said, “Is that all you’ve
got?”

She smiled back down at me, seeming to take
great joy in my defiance.

“Tell me that you love me,” she ordered.

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Mmmm-hmmmm, that’s the idea,” she
whispered.

I closed my eyes the minute she started to
lean forward. I felt her touch the business end of the stogie to
the nipple she had just tortured moments ago and then begin to
twist it slowly. I could tell by the amount of pressure applied
that she was purposely maintaining enough air space between the
ember and my skin to keep it lit and hot, so I knew this wasn’t
going to be quick.

On top of that, this time she not only had
more fire, she had picked an even more sensitive spot on my body to
attack. Once again my subconscious kept out of the way, not just
because I wanted it to, but also because I could no longer contain
myself in the face of the agony. I screamed out, giving her
possessor auditory evidence that she was causing me excruciating
pain. I felt her thighs tighten against my sides as she tensed, the
first real wave of pleasure hitting her hard. She continued to
press the cigar into my blistering flesh, moaning and whimpering in
delight with each deliberately languid twist.

My own body tensed out of reflex, and my arms
pulled inward, tugging hard against my bonds as I squirmed beneath
her, wailing like a wounded animal. As I did so, I actually felt my
hand slip deeper into the cuff and at the same time, the cuff bite
deeper into its flesh.