Mistress of Night and Dawn (25 page)

Thomas stood and thrust his hips forward to test the weight of the device. The woman who was still kneeling in front of him leaned forward and kissed the head of the bull-shaped phallus and then opened her mouth and began to suck eagerly on the end of it.

His breath caught in his throat.

It couldn’t be. But it was.

He could feel the undeniable sensation of a soft tongue sweeping over the head of his cock. A pair of hands took hold of his shaft and began to stimulate his whole length in staccato rhythmic strokes until a glorious pressure began to rise within Thomas right from his base to his scalp and he felt as though at any moment his entire body was going to tear apart.

As if sensing that he was losing control, the woman pulled her mouth away.

‘You must save your orgasm for the Mistress. The ceremony will be at dawn.’ The sudden absence of her lips on his shaft was like the sensation of being plunged from light into darkness. The energy within him gradually reduced from a roaring fire to a painful but bearable throb.

The hands seized him again and he was lifted and carried on a human litter along a corridor and through a set of double doors that opened onto a hall that was easily three times as vast as the first room that he had entered. Again his skin met with that same uncanny heat, but this time it felt like an energy that warmed him from the inside, wakening every molecule in his body until even the hairs on his head wanted to dance.

A hush swept through the crowd like a wave as the people who were gathered inside the hall caught sight of him being carried along on the litter and parted to allow him through. Almost all of the guests were bereft of clothes and, instead of cloths and fabrics, their bodies were painted with the same glittering reddish-orange tint that had been applied to him.

Thomas tried to take it all in, to make sense of his surroundings. The walls in this room appeared to be on fire too. He was not in a position to properly investigate what strange theatre magic or feat of engineering had made this possible but, to the unschooled eye, it appeared that a raging fire had been lit behind a wall of thick glass that ran around the whole perimeter of the room. The servants who moved around the room carrying silver trays aloft were clothed in wisps of strange black and orange that caught and reflected the glow cast from the flames and the light from chandeliers that hung from the ceiling in such a way that they resembled human torches.

A gong sounded as his human carriage reached the middle of the great hall and he was placed down in the centre of a stage-like platform. Thomas looked down upon the people that had gathered around him. Their faces were suffused with excitement, expectation and the sort of reverence that he remembered on the faces of his parents when they were full of religious fervour. He examined their bodies. The glittering paint hid nothing but rather accentuated whatever features each guest had chosen to highlight. Some had painted flames upon their curved waists and breasts. Others had shaven their pubic hair and drawn tongues of fire in its place. Most of the guests wore their hair in elaborate styles wound around lengths of orange silk that sprayed out from their heads like bonfires.

What struck Thomas hardest though was that, without the benefit of trousers and skirts, he could not be certain which of the guests were men and which women and which lay somewhere in between. Did those tiny bud-like breasts belong to a young woman or a man? Was that a large clitoris peeking out from beneath a thick covering of pubic hair or a penis? Thomas began to wonder whether or not it mattered. The similarities between all those gathered here were far greater than their differences.

The crowd parted again and another litter was carried towards the centre stage. A woman. She was clad in a deep-crimson robe that clung to her body as if even the fabric itself desired to be near her skin. Her hair was a rich caramel brown, the colour of the Mississippi river in a shaft of sunlight, and it was cut close to her head in a style that emphasised her pointed jaw and sharp cheekbones. Her large, almond-shaped eyes dominated her face and made her small cupid bow of a mouth seem even smaller. She had the exaggerated features of a doll, but despite the smooth perfection of her skin, as she came closer it became obvious that she was not a young woman, though she was not an ancient one either. She was probably in her mid-thirties, perhaps even in her forties. Her breasts were large and heavy and her hips were wide and full. She looked like a cropped-haired Venus; radiant, beautiful and so powerful it would not have surprised Thomas if she had floated through the room towards him like an angel rather than been carried on the shoulders of servants.

As she drew closer, their eyes met and the fire that the servant woman had earlier sparked with the touch of her lips on his ivory phallus was ignited once more. But this time it was not an ember that had burst into flame, it was an uncontrollable inferno that scorched through his veins and left him with nothing but his awareness of the woman approaching him.

There was no riverboat, no Ball, no stage, no Thomas, there was only her body and her presence drawing ever nearer and being lowered onto the ivory phallus. His hips began to move of their own accord and he thrust the bull inside her harder than he had ever fucked any woman in his life and she wrapped her arms around him and clung onto his body and his cock as if the force that threatened to tear her apart was the same force that held her together.

When he came it was like a thunderbolt, as if every molecule of life force in his body had joined into one point that travelled from his scalp and into his chest and down through his body and into his groin and out through the head of the ivory bull and into this woman, the Mistress, who cried out as his energy visibly filled her and for one brief moment they were joined as if they were one being. Not man and woman, not lovers, but two bodies melded together through the sheer power of his release and her acceptance of it.

Then it was over. Thomas collapsed, spent, into the arms of the Bull’s attendants and his eyes closed as he was lifted and carried away.

When he woke he was back again beneath the shady trees of Jackson Square and still wearing the travel-worn clothes that he had discarded on the riverboat.

His chest itched. He unbuttoned his shirt and peered down to check if he had been burned or injured. And there it was. An image of a bull tattooed in red ink over his heart.

He leaped to his feet and ran to the river, but the boat was gone, and he would never find it again.

The next time Aurelia awoke, the heady scents of the forest and the Ball had faded and a weak light was struggling to breach the thin barrier of a set of net curtains. Shielding a window. Behind which a confused cocktail of muted sounds jingle-jangled as her hearing struggled to focus again and gain a foothold.

She opened her bleary eyes.

She was in a room.

In a bed.

A man’s arm was stretched across her back. Warm. Firm.

Aurelia turned her head.

And recognised the tousled dark-brown curls of Andrei’s head, his face buried inside lush pillows, his shallow breath a lullaby, regular, distant and reassuring.

Her initial realisation was not the fact that she had somehow been transported back from the island and the Ball where the last time she remembered she had melted away in thrall to the measured hunger of Andrei’s fiery thrusts and lovemaking, but that for the very first time she was waking up in a bed in the arms of a man. And not just any man, but one she desired so strongly her heart could burst right here and now, as a surging wave of emotion raced like a torrent across her mind and body. This new feeling was just too overwhelming to process.

She held her breath, had a mad urge to pinch herself, to check whether this was still a fever dream and a byproduct of the night or actual reality.

But the rational part of her heart was screaming out that this was indeed no illusion. She was in a bed with Andrei. In Seattle probably, not that it mattered anyway. She was greeting a new morning with a man in her bed, something she had vaguely imagined for years but never thought would happen in this manner. A man she barely knew, but she was also aware this was no accident, no sexual whim, no meaningless fling. It felt as if it had to be, the inevitable destination for all the meandering roads she had been travelling along.

Aurelia watched Andrei sleep, taking care not to move and lessen the gentle pressure of his outstretched arms across her back, the connection of skin against skin, the subtle currents of warmth navigating between their bodies. It also dawned on her that she was naked and, for a fleeting instant, she wondered whether the initial flaming heart was now visible again, even though there were no sensations rising from that direction, unlike in the throes of yesterday night’s embraces when its fire had roared with terrible strength. But had it been yesterday? Had only a single night gone by? She then remembered the image that Tristan had somehow conjured up on the underside of her wrist and turned her arms slightly to see if it was still present, while wary of disturbing Andrei’s sleep. Yes, it was still there. Pale, like a shadow across the tightness of her skin. Curiosity then got the better of her and she shifted ever so slightly and delicately took hold of Andrei’s extended arm and peered under his own left wrist, only to witness an identical image.

Andrei groaned.

Against all logic, Aurelia shuddered. She didn’t want him to wake. Yet. She wished so badly right now to make the moment last, to record every single impression, every fleeting feeling and store it away in a memory cage of her fabrication.

The pleasant, musky odour rising from between the crisp white sheets of what appeared to be a hotel room with its geometrical and orderly lines and decor, the way the heat emanating from both their bare bodies coupled, the sound of two sets of heartbeats ticking the morning away.

She inched her way closer to him, hungry for his heat, the thrill of further contact. Their hips touched and a swell of emotions swept over Aurelia, and a million memories exploded of the way he had touched her in the forest, the feel of the grass under her arse, the taste of his tongue and the lilting ballad of his voice whispering in her ear as he entered her and more and more and more until it became too much to even evoke without her mind pitching into the bliss of madness.

And the images and emotions of their coming together at the Ball and their initial encounters, so briefly at the funfair and later the chapel in Bristol, all collided in the deepest pit of her heart and the fire within began to rise, like a river bursting its levees, flooding her veins with renewed desire and now she mentally prayed for him to awaken and make love to her again.

She rolled over and pressed her buttocks against him. In his sleep Andrei reacted, adjusted his position and spooned her, the soft velvet length of his cock lodging itself between the crack of her arse, fitting with comfortable precision. Aurelia squirmed with pleasure.

And as she did so, she felt him gradually harden, responding to her movement, slowly widening the welcoming valley of her buttocks.

She could feel her wetness already spilling from her.

Andrei moaned, his arm moved and a hand settled against her breast, cupping her, fingers lazily circling her nipple.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Oh, Aurelia,’ his voice emerging from clouds of sleep, unsteady, hoarse.

He shuffled, his now-hard cock rubbing provocatively against her skin and he adjusted its downward stance, his knee nudging her thighs open and squeezed himself inside her. Aurelia’s heart seized; although she had been ready for him, the sheer bulk of him and the way he stretched her anew was a shock. Had he ever been so large before? He fitted inside her with the forced precision of a jigsaw piece entwining itself with another.

Noises outside the window faded alongside the rest of the whole wide world. Andrei was in her. He was fucking her. She was being fucked. And all was well. There would be another time for questions. She pulled her mental anchor up and drifted with the rhythm of his movements as he embedded himself deeper and deeper within her, spread, open, split, impaled but joyful.

Effortlessly riding the waves of lust as if it had been something she had been practising all her life, Aurelia aligned her rhythm with Andrei’s. She began to float in space and time, her mind blanking anything that didn’t contribute to the uninterrupted flow of sensations flooding her body, every single nerve ending on her surface and inside her processing the fiery current surging in all directions with explosive, impossible speed, savouring it as synapses opened and closed in rapid succession, stretching each moment to eternity. She greeted each stab of untold pleasure with her whole soul.

Her flesh was alive like never before, dissected from within and nothing else mattered. Would ever matter.

The calm authority of Andrei’s hands moving to her shoulders and taking a firm grip shook her from her reverie. He pulled her up until she was on all fours, her back arched under the metronomic impact of his thrusts, every assault causing her to exhale as if she was out of breath.

His right hand reached her long hair and gripped it fiercely, a tangled knot forming in the hollow of his palm, pulling at her firmly but gently, like a conductor taking charge and adjusting the soar of a melody, every infinitesimal movement orchestrating a further wave of pleasure.

How could it be so good? Aurelia wondered. Did everyone feel the same? She pictured herself suspended between life and death, in a cloud of stasis, immortal, impervious, reduced to mere atoms of undiluted pleasure.

She felt like screaming, moaning, unable to contain the silence battering the tightness of her lungs, in an attempt to express herself however unintelligibly. But the sounds just wouldn’t rise to the surface.

She closed her eyes, allowing the fire raging inside her and the scolding heat spreading outward from Andrei’s body to consume her, blindly inviting oblivion.

‘Welcome home, Aurelia.’ As if cushioned by a wall of air, Andrei’s voice reached her, a reassuring breeze rolling against the shores of her consciousness.