Sacred Serenity (Lotus House Book 2) (14 page)

I loved having her emerald gaze on me, urging me silently to show her how affected I was by our lovemaking. Feeling like I’d been transformed into Durga, the Indian goddess with eight arms, I continued manipulating her in the hope we would both orgasm at the same time. To experience shared orgasm was the most intense form of meditation and unity with your mate. In Tantra, this was usually done while having intercourse, but this was as close as I could get right now.

Eyes on her, fingers moving, hand tugging, I felt my orgasm coil tightly at the base of my spine, my own serpent working free. My balls tightened, and I held onto my cock, using her essence to coat my cock from root to tip. Her body jolted at the same time nirvana hit, cum firing up my length to land on her creamy pale belly. While I came, spurting hotly over her body, a gush of liquid sprayed out past my fingers still inside her, soaking me and her pussy.

She flopped flat as I removed my hand and fell on top of her, our breathing jagged and uneven, yet I could sense our hearts beating in synchronized rhythm with one another.

“Oh, no, what was that!” She hiccupped and clung to my back.

I pushed up to my forearms and grinned. “That was you…ejaculating.”

It took about five full seconds for me to comprehend what Dash had said before it resonated with a wall of acid churning inside my stomach and a sour taste hitting my tongue. I breathed through the disgusting thought. He had to be joking. I’d read about it in my medical texts of course, but it’s a rather uncommon occurrence and not experienced by women generally, though studies do suggest every woman is capable of it.

I blinked a few times, letting what he said roll around in my head. My vagina did feel ridiculously wet, but he’d spent the last hour or so with his hands and mouth stimulating me. Maybe it just builds up? On a long groan, I sat up and pulled the sheet to my bare chest. The sheets below my bum felt wet, more so than I thought they probably should have. I knew female ejaculate wasn’t urine, but I felt uncertain and uncomfortable about everything. Why did I have to fall for the Tantric guru instead of the bumbling fool who sticks his fingers in and maybe gets me off? Isn’t that what the girls at school used to say about fooling around with their boyfriends? They rarely got off? And I’d gotten off so many times, I wet the bed.

A rush of embarrassment so hot it scalded my chest and burned against my cheeks rushed through me. I looked away and frowned. Was he grossed out? Of course he was.
I
was grossed out. I needed to shower and leave. And wash his sheets. No, buy him
new
sheets. Yeah, that’s what I’d do. Forget ever doing that again. Even though he took me to places I’d never even thought possible, I’d forego it in the future to avoid the humiliation roaring through me.

Jeez, I’d connected with him so completely, there had been several moments where I’d forgotten we were two different people. When his hands were on me, it was just us. Dash and Amber. Love incarnate.

Dash placed his hand on my chin and tugged it toward him. “Hey, what’s wrong?” His eyebrows were drawn together with concern, and I wanted to lift my hand and rub it away and make him smile again.

“Has that happened to you before? The female thing?” I gestured with a hand beyond my lap where the sheet was very obviously soaked through.

He smiled and shook his head. “Not like that, no. God, Amber, it was so—” He looked off into the distance.

With every scant millisecond that went by without him consoling me, I lost myself to despair.

“Gross. You can say it. It was gross!” Tears filled my eyes, and I jumped out of bed, pulling the sheet with me as I hobbled to the bathroom, the linens following behind like a bridal train.

I felt raw and exposed. I’d had the most intense experience of my life, and it had come with the most embarrassment. Talk about a double whammy. The sound of the door slamming shut echoed off the walls. I started up the shower, dropped the sheet, and jumped in.

A knock pierced the silence outside of the shower stall. “Amber, you have to talk to me. I’m coming in.”

The door opened, and I faced the tiled wall. I left my hands on the shower wall in front of me, the cold squares chilling me straight to my toes even though the water was so hot it turned my skin a bright pink.

I chanced a glance through the glass door. Dash stood leaning against the vanity, his arms crossed over his chest, hair flopping into his eyes, which were blazing with fury. “Two questions, and I expect honest answers,” he practically growled. “One, why did you leave the bed? Two, how can you see anything we did as gross? Please explain it to me, Amber, because I had the exact opposite experience.”

His words were tight and restrained. He was angry, and I couldn’t, for the life of me, imagine why. I was the one who’d had the embarrassing thing happen to her. What did he have to be irate about?

“Can we talk when I’m out of the shower? I’m having trouble hearing over the water,” I fibbed.

He unfolded his arms, opened the sliding door, and entered the stall. With me. Naked.

It took a moment for my brain to come back into play when the hottest man in the universe stood in front of me in all his naked glory. I looked my fill until I got to his face and noticed his scowl and fire in his gaze.

“Now you can hear me. Shall I repeat the questions?” He tilted his head to the side and waited.

Giving myself a couple more seconds, I squirted shampoo on my hand and rubbed it into my hair. He watched, leaning lazily against the back of the shower, his muscled body getting just enough of the spray to glisten sensually. If we made it through this, and he still wanted to be with me, I knew I’d need to thank the Lord above for sending me this beautiful angel. His body was insane, cut in all the right places, toned all over, basically built for sin.

“I’m waiting, little bird. Speak. Do you regret what we shared?” He winced when he asked the question.

The word regret hit my heart like a jackhammer. “My goodness, no! Dash.” I held out my arms, and he stepped into them, circled his around me, and buried his head against my neck the way an apologetic child might, though he didn’t have anything to be sorry for.

“If I hurt you in some way, let me fix it. I know what we did was intense,” he started.

“Dash, baby, no. I thought you’d think what happened…you know, the ejaculation thing…was nasty.”

His eyes opened wide, and he sighed before pulling me hard against his chest, locking his arms around me. My wet breasts rubbed against his skin. The hot water pounded on our intertwined bodies and fogged the room with a steam.

“Amber, I was trying to make that happen. Honey, what we experienced, including the part at the end, when we ejaculated at the same time, was our bodies experiencing enlightenment together. I’ve never been blessed enough to share that with someone before. Probably because I wasn’t in love with the person I attempted it with.”

I closed my eyes and kissed his moist neck, rubbing my nose against the corded muscle there. “Really?”

He chuckled and cupped my cheeks. “That was the most beautiful Tantric experience of my life. The way you rolled into one orgasm after another was a testament to our love. I can’t even express how much today meant to me. How your love and trust have shaped me as a man, Amber. It’s unparalleled.”

I reacted by locking my arms around his neck and kissing him with everything I had in me.

Dash responded instantly. Our tongues waltzed as our slick bodies rubbed against each other, starting a new fire of desire.

I was drunk on Dash. Every caress was a precursor to another drink, each kiss another shot to the system, dizzying and gratifying with each new swallow. I scaled his body, rubbing my softer, needier spots along his harder, more male ones.

“You want to come again, little bird? You haven’t had enough for the day?”

Now that he mentioned it, I did want to come again. Flickering tingles and fluttering arousal rippled up and down my body where my skin made contact with his. Under duress, I’d have to admit that this was the first time I remember being, for lack of a better word, horny. It was as if he’d opened up something inside me and unlocked the door to where I’d stashed my inner sex kitten.

“Um, is that a problem?” I smiled and placed my hand over the satin-covered pole standing at attention between us.

He grinned, put his hand over mine where I held him, and together we manually stimulated his erection.

“Not at all. How do you want it, little bird? My fingers, my cock, or my mouth?”

A rush of adrenaline so intense shot down my spine and settled between my legs. All of them sounded magnificent but so far, nothing felt as good as his tongue.

“What do you want?” I quirked an eyebrow, trying to play along, even though I knew absolutely nothing about the game we were playing.

He shook his head and gripped my bum with both hands, grinding against my body while I jacked his shaft.

“You’re going to have to ask me for what you want, my love.” He rubbed his nose along my cheek and then whispered in my ear. “You saying the words turns me on.” He groaned. “Makes me
so
hard.”

That I believed. His erection was huge beneath my fingers. I turned my head and kissed him, dragging my tongue along his while we ran our hands along one another. The water was getting cold, and I knew I needed to tell him what I wanted or he wouldn’t give it to me. Knowing Dash, this was another way to open me up. Not that he hadn’t already had me splayed wide open for his viewing, touching, and tasting pleasure.

My clit throbbed as I thought about what I wanted him to do. I shuffled my feet, firmed up my spine, and looked him straight in the eyes. Green to amber.

“Dash, I would like you to put your mouth on my vagina,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster.

Instead of him melting down to his knees and doing what I asked in a fit of passion, which is what he implied he’d do, he stepped back two feet, threw his head back, and laughed like a hyena. Big, bursting cackles of laugher.

Mad as the dickens, I pursed my lips and held my hands in two tight fists. I barely stopped at tapping my foot. “What’s so funny?”

He kept laughing, big heaping breaths of air leaving his chest one after the other. “Put my tongue on your va-va-vagina!” he said between bouts.

“I’m not seeing the humor in this. You asked me to say what I wanted!”

“Oh my love, we are so going to have to work on your sexy talk. My, my, you are just the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Come here.” He held out his arms.

I shook my head. “Nuh-uh. No way. You can go hug yourself! Laughing at my dirty request! You should be ashamed of yourself!” I harrumphed, pulled back the shower door, and stepped out soaking wet. At least my hair had been rinsed and the sticky mess from our earlier escapades washed away along with the shampoo.

Dash followed me as I pulled a towel off the rack, wrapped it around myself, and stormed into his room to find my clothes.

He grabbed me from behind. “Now where are you going, little bird, hmm?” His arms locked around me.

“Does it matter?”

Dash nuzzled into my neck. “I’m sorry I laughed, but you have to admit, asking a man to put his mouth on your ‘vagina’ using the most clinical word possible is kind of funny.” I went to open my mouth, and he covered it with his hand. “I know, I know. And I’m sorry. Let’s do this again. Only this time…how about I talk dirty to you?”

Now you’re talking is what I wanted to say to Dash, coupled with a punch to his smug face. What I actually said was, “Bring it.”

“
G
lad to hear
you worked things out with Amber, man.” Atlas clapped me on the back as we entered Mila’s heated Vinyasa Flow room.

Both Atlas and I decided that we needed a bit of cardio, and there was no better way than to take one of Mila’s hard-core Vin Flow classes. Vinyasa Flow was a mixture of cardio-driven yoga poses that synchronized breath with movement. Typically, the transitions from one pose to another were faster than what you’d experience in an average gentle or hatha class and were oftentimes geared toward intermediate level yogis. The students got the benefit of awakening their strength and energy sources while working on flexibility and balance.

In this particular class, Mila, the pint-sized Mexican American hottie who taught it, turned the heater up to around eighty-five degrees so participants could sweat out any toxins and negative crap we were holding onto. I loved the class personally, but I was looking forward to finding out what Atlas thought of it. And by
it
, I meant Mila. She was just his type. Petite, firm body, and skin the color of toasted almonds. I’d had my eye on Mila for years now, but I’d tried not to date the women I worked with. Made that decision after a few rounds with the wrong women in previous positions. It wasn’t easy to get away from an ex when you worked in the same place. Not that it mattered with Mila. Once we became friends, that was that. Didn’t mean I was blind. The woman had that ethnic exotic beauty thing going on, and if I knew my best friend, and I sure as heck did, he’d notice her attributes right away. Now, if he could keep his mouth from spewing stupid shit, we’d have a match made in heaven.

“Yeah, thanks for setting me straight last week. Amber and I worked through it, and everything’s good. Really good actually.” I grinned.

He smirked. “Should I take that to mean that your girl’s problem is nonexistent?” He rubbed his hands together before gripping his mat hanging over his shoulder, unhooking the buckles, and rolling it out on the wood floor.

I cringed. “No. I mean yes, but no.” I shook my head. “It’s not like that with Amber. She’s not a piece of tail. I’m in love with her. She’s it for me. Hands down, no regrets. This woman is the one I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to prove my worth to.”

Atlas ran his hands through his dark, curly chin-length hair. The curls went all over the place in the way that made women drool. The look screamed
lazy, I don’t want to take the time to cut it
, but on him, it worked. Women loved it, so I didn’t judge…much.

“That’s a damn strong statement. You gonna follow that up with a ring on her finger sometime soon?” he asked.

Marriage. Even the thought sent a blade to my gut. “Marriage isn’t a sure thing. It doesn’t last and my family has proven that, repeatedly. My mom is on her fourth marriage, and my dad on his second. I don’t want that for us. Besides, I think I could talk her into foregoing traditional vows of commitment for something a little bit more private. I was thinking maybe down the road we could do a light ceremony at a Buddhist monastery or say our vows to one another at the top of a mountain at Lake Tahoe. I’d love to have her consider a Pagan wedding, but she’s Catholic.”

Atlas sat down on his mat while I flopped mine out. “Wait, she’s Catholic? As in, raised in the faith?”

I nodded and placed my yoga towel over my mat to catch the sweat that would inevitably drip down. Vinyasa Flow was great at cleansing, but the amount of sweat that poured off the body was abundant.

“Does she go to church regularly? Pray at dinner? Wear a cross around her neck?”

What the hell was he getting at? “What is this, twenty questions? Yes, yes, and yes. My girlfriend is religious.” I chuckled. “Actually, she gets really mad when I say Jesus Christ or goddammit. And she tells people all the time that she’ll pray for them. Even says ‘God bless you’ to strangers when they sneeze. They can be half an aisle up in the grocery store, and she’ll go out of her way to bless them.” I shrugged. “It’s cute and quirky.”

Atlas pursed his lips, leaned into the space between us. “And you and your girl haven’t sealed the deal yet, right?” He made a sliding into base type baseball gesture with his hand.

I rolled my eyes. “Not exactly, no. Like I said before. She’s a virgin. Not that it’s any of your business, but we’re taking it slow.”

“Have you talked about the future and marriage?” Atlas asked rather directly.

I focused my gaze on his one blue and one brown eye. Something in those eyes didn’t sit right with me. “Man, what are you getting at? Why do you care?”

He sighed. “Okay, look. One time, I was dating this girl. We were around twenty or so. I’d been dating her for six months and we’d fooled around, pretty much everything but you know…” He lowered his voice and leaned closer. “Intercourse. And come to find out, she was a hard-core, devout Catholic.”

Atlas made his statement as though it held an answer to some giant secret.

“So?”

He huffed. “Man, from what I understand, women who are deeply religious may not give it up. Well, they will…”

I cut him off. “Of course she will. We’re taking it slow.”

“Did she say that or did you assume that?” he asked.

That time I groaned and pressed back into child’s pose. My ass rested on my ankles, my knees were wide so I could lay my chest between my thighs, and my arms were stretched out in front of me flat on the mat. God, that felt good.

“What are you getting at, Atlas? You’re talking yourself in circles.”

“I’m saying, maybe she’s saving herself for marriage like a good little Catholic girl would.”

At that, I lifted up and glanced at him. “Shut the fuck up.”

He rubbed a hand over his mouth to stanch the flow of his laughter. “The fact that it hadn’t dawned on you why your hot, twenty-something-year-old girlfriend was untouched due to the possibility that her religion played a part in it is mind-boggling. You used to pick up on shit like this, man.”

I rested my head in my hands and sucked in several slow breaths as the intensity of what he suggested slammed over my entire body. I focused on my
Ujjayi
, oceanic breathing, and let my mind go.

Was Amber saving herself for marriage?

What would I do if she said yes?

Would she take that next step in our physical relationship without it?

Is there a time limit on waiting?

How religious was the woman I loved?

Could she leave me over this?

I pressed on my scalp and tugged at my hair until the pain reached the surface, releasing me of the fears that were running rampant inside. I needed to talk to Amber. “Fuck me!” I groaned.

“Not in this lifetime, studly,” came a rich, sultry voice from behind us.

I sat up and turned around. Mila Mercado, the feisty little teacher that every man wanted but nobody got, stood a few feet from where we’d set up. She stood all of five foot two and maybe a hundred pounds, all muscle, tits, and a toned bubble butt.

“Hello, hotness,” Atlas drawled while getting to his feet. He held out a hand. “Atlas Powers. I’m one of the other Vin Flow teachers.”

Mila studied Atlas with her chocolate gaze. “Hotness?” She frowned and ignored Atlas’s hand and looked at me. “Hey, you okay? You don’t normally start with the profanities until at least midway through the class.” She grinned.

I stood up, wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and kissed the side of her mouth. She returned the gesture, kissing me back. Ever since I’d gotten in trouble for kissing Genevieve on the mouth, I’d changed up the way I connected with the single women in my world. That day when Trent punched me, I thought about how I approached women, and though I’d not had complaints before that day, I could see his side of things. Kissing was a no-go zone for most men. Just the thought of my Amber putting her perfect lips on another man made the green-eyed monster within me shudder in agitation.

“Sorry, Mila.” I glanced around to make sure there weren’t too many people that had overheard me. It wasn’t professional to blast out an F-bomb, especially within the walls of the Lotus House Center. People came there to find solace and serenity, not profanity and vulgarities.

She pinched her glossy lips together before tipping her head to Atlas. “Who’s curly?”

I snickered. “Curly? Oh Mila, I’d kiss you again just for that if my girlfriend would approve.”

“Curly? Curly? You’ve got to be kidding?” Atlas ran a hand through his mop of hair.

“If the shoe fits,” Mila said.

“I’d have you put it on and then wrap those legs around my waist,” Atlas shot back.

Her eyes blazed white-hot fire and her perfectly shaped brows pointed down, much like devil forks. “How about I take it off and spike you with it?”

Atlas took two steps closer, and I backed up, ready to watch the fireworks.

“So it
will
be a stiletto.” He grinned and licked his lips. “
Nice
. Your legs will look a mile long in a pair of sky-high heels.” He leaned closer, his face only a few inches from Mila’s.

I’m certain my eyes were the size of milk jugs, and I was afraid to take a breath for fear I’d screw up the animal sniffing or sparring these two were doing.

Mila put her hands on her small hips and started walking around Atlas. “You think so, eh?”

His eyes shifted, practically walking all over her tiny form. From her bare feet with red-painted toes, up her yoga pants to her bare midriff to her chest, where she wore only a sports bra to cover two healthy handfuls of fine womanly curves.

Her eyes turned into steely points of irritation. “Did you just check me out?”

“Hell yes, I did, wildcat. Your body is insane. You must work hard to look this good.”

Mila’s lips curled up into the smallest smile. I noticed the brief slip in her bravado, but more importantly, so did Atlas. “I do. Work hard. Speaking of…get ready to be worked over.” Mila turned around swiftly, leaving Atlas off balance.

“You could work me over any day, wildcat.”

“Simmer down, man. Damn. I thought the two of you were going to catch fire circling around one another like that. Like oil and vinegar.”

Atlas didn’t take his eyes off Mila when he spoke hoarsely. “Yeah, put us together and we taste fantastic on a salad. Shit man. That girl just got my number but good. I think I’m in love.”

I shook my head and clapped him on the back. “Easy, boy. Mila’s a tough one.”

“Challenge accepted. I’m all over that.”

The halls were rather quiet as I made my way through the medical building toward the auditorium we used for my course in the Joint Medical Program at the UCSF campus. My boot heels clicked and clacked against the off-white linoleum surface. Usually, I wore my Nikes, comfort being priority when I had the potential of having to do class followed by grand rounds. Tonight, however, Dash was picking me up from school to take my family and me to dinner. Dinner wasn’t supposed to be a big deal, but it was to me. I didn’t need to look dolled up, but I wanted to for him.

It had been two whole days since we’d had what I was calling our night of enlightenment. Still, the thought of what had occurred made my skin burn and gave me the giggles like a silly schoolgirl. Technically, I was still in school, even if it was to secure my MD.

I’d spent the better part of two days aching inside for him. Every piece of my existence seemed hyperfocused and on edge. Needless to say, my clitoral vibrator was getting more use than previously. Dash and I both agreed that we needed to connect with the other people in our lives. It was easy to lose ourselves in a new relationship and forget about all the coming and goings of the rest of the world, especially when we were chest deep in love with each other. I wanted to be with Dash all the time, and when I wasn’t with him, I was thinking about him, wondering what he was doing, who he had in his classes, and how his day had gone.

He admitted he had the same clingy need I did. Which was why we’d agreed to take two days to connect with our friends and family. He’d mentioned that he wanted to go out with his buddy Atlas, take a couple classes at the center in his off time, and chat up his yoga buddies. I’d spent yesterday with Genevieve preparing the baby’s room. Baseball-themed, of course. Trent wouldn’t have it any other way. Then again, neither would her brother, Rowan, who was quickly following in his almost-brother-in-law’s footsteps.

Genevieve was about ready to pop. We were now at the end of July, closing in on her August due date—if she made it a couple more weeks. The woman would not stop. She’d been teaching prenatal and gentle yoga classes all the way up until now. On top of that, she’d finished the rest of her coursework for cosmetology. What she didn’t know was that Trent had already bought her a salon around the corner from the yoga studio. She was going to be happy and pissed at the same time. Vivvie did not like things handed to her, preferring to earn everything she had in life. Something about the law of karmic debt. When she started in on the spiritual stuff and started quoting Deepak Chopra, I usually lost interest. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe…well, I didn’t really. What I did believe in was God. And I knew that God would make sure that Genevieve, Trent, and all the kids would live a happy and healthy life together.