Authors: Gray Miller

Tags: #thriller, #action, #bdsm, #sex magic, #rope bondage, #kink, #graydancer

Nawashi (3 page)

Her hands were placed on
his chest, palms on either side of his sternum, and his decorated
arms encircled her like a ballet dancer
en
face
, his palms flat and fingers spread
over each shoulder blade. Neither of them were looking at him; in
fact, they were the exact opposite of his nightmare, their eyes
locked into each other as they moved.

Sullivan didn’t blink, but his mouth opened
in a wry grin. “Shut up and breathe in your healing, you careless
bitch. You know he deserves this more than you do.” His fingers
flexed on her shoulder blades, and Brian blinked as the tribal
tattoos flowing down them seemed to glow, somehow, pulsing with the
rhythm of their fucking.
Her breath deepened then, and after a few
more beats on an inhalation her eyes widened slightly as suddenly
on a downstroke she froze, her thighs trembling, the breath slowly
coming out of her as she relaxed her body into him.
He continued to hold her for a moment, his
hands softening from the formal posture on her shoulder blades to a
more conventional hug, and he joined her in a deep, resigned sigh.
Brian saw her murmur something into his ear before she began to
disentangle her legs from his waist, and saw him shake his head,
smiling at her for a moment, before he turned a more serious
thoughtful gaze to meet Brian’s eyes.
“He’s the one you should be asking that of,
Vash, and you know it.”
The woman sighed, and swivelled on her
cross-legged seat to look at Brian on the floor. Her face looked
slightly annoyed, and he had the distinct impression that he was
something of an embarrassment for her. She wore her nudity with no
self-consciousness at all, though her nipples were still crinkled
from her orgasm. “Yes. I suppose I should. Though in my
defense—“
“You have no defense, Vash. Rule number
one.”
She looked pained and embarrassed again,
glancing up at Sullivan and this time unable to hold his gaze for
more than a moment. She sighed again, and lifted her eyes to
Brian’s. He still felt unable to move, seemingly disconnected from
his body. His head seemed only partially attached to it, like it
was a balloon that would disengage and flatulently zigzag around
before collapsing in a corner, nothing but a scrap of skin.

“I am responsible for my
selfish actions last night, and would make amends. How can I help
you,
Man
?” There
was a soft remonstrative noise from Sullivan at that, and she
sighed again, repeating her question with a slight difference. “How
can I help you, Brian?”

Brian realized that he was being offered:
the same kind of treatment he’d woken to. He also realized that in
spite of the completely overt sexuality she was exuding, skin still
stippled around her neck from the rush of her orgasm, labia puffy
and open at the same level as his head, in spite of that, he had no
desire at all to come anywhere near this woman. In spite of her
apparent penitent attitude, he could still sense an undercurrent of
dislike in her for him, a measure of contempt that she could not
quite hide in spite of her genuine apology.
“No… nothing… ” he whispered, throat harsh,
then swallowed once. “Th-thank you anyway.”

Sullivan chuckled. “Spoken
like a true
Man
,
eh, Vash?” She didn’t have to sniff, the look she flashed him at
that point was anything but penitent. “Still, boy, we can’t have
you in this condition. I understand your reluctance to accept her
aid, though I have to tell you, when she’s of a mind to, she’s a
far better healer than I. Maybe I can do somewhat to bring you back
up to speed, though; she charged me with enough to jumpstart a
horse.” He gracefully rolled up over his kneecaps, going from a
cross-legged position to kneeling next to Brian’s chest.

Brian still couldn’t move
anything but his head, and was mildly bemused by the fuzzy lack of
control anywhere on his body. He had a moment of mild alarm,
wondering if the larger man was going to heal him the same way he’d
taken care of Vash (
wouldn’t THAT be an
interesting way to explore bisexuality, eh?)
but instead Sullivan’s hands came down briefly one after
another on his forehead, throat, sternum, lower stomach, and
finally his left hand cupped Brian’s flaccid cock and testes
briefly, the warmth of his palm feeling strangely
comforting.

“Ok, that’s bracketed the targets, now to
fire for effect… ” the man said matter-of-factly, and his hands
came down again, fast and hard this time, with an exhalation of
breath at each touch.
Brian’s body arched spastically and jerked
at the first touch to his forehead, as his brain’s fuzzy semi-awake
state was blasted away with a sudden force. Before he could
recover, Sullivan’s right hand came down on his throat, and another
exhaled blast of power—there was no other word for it—made Brian’s
teeth feel loose and for a moment he was keenly aware of every
cervical vertebrae stretching from his shoulders up into his
skull.
As Sullivan continued placing his hands
down the body, the power ripped through Brian’s fatigued muscles
like a wind, searing them and leaving him shaking. The final
cupping of his genitals left him hard again, which would have made
him self conscious but for the clinical way Sullivan simply grunted
in approval, like a Doctor completing a medical exam.
The big man sat back, looking at Brian.
“So. How about some coffee? You should be good to go now. And you
have some explanations coming your way.”
II

“
You, my friend, are up
shit creek right now. I would feel sorry for you, but it’s really
not worth it. You’ll either measure up or get killed really fast,
so I’ll just save my pity and see what happens.” Sullivan delivered
this matter-of-fact statement as he dumped sugar into his coffee,
as if commenting on the aroma. They were heading towards the back
room of Mimazu’s, a local coffee hangout frequented by students and
leftover hippie types. Brian was familiar with the place from his
time as a freelance writer… back when times were good. He forced
his mind away from that, and tried to figure out what the big man
meant.

He decided that the guy was trying to scare
him, and mirrored his cavalier attitude with a shrug. “Eh, I’ve had
worse dates.”
Sullivan looked up sharply, his eyes bright
under raised eyebrows. “You aren’t taking this seriously, are you?”
He shook his head, answering his own question. “No. I can see
you’re not. You’ve already put it down to ‘psycho bitch from hell’
and are just remembering the physical bits.” He smiled for just a
moment, but only in his eyes. “Admittedly, her physical bits are
worth remembering. But it’s typical that you would just block out
that firestorm of power she called up and you took over.” He shook
his head again. “Jesus. Lit up the street for blocks in every
direction. If I hadn’t’ve been on the way home… ”

Brian thought for a
moment, past the images of her naked body and the flames and tried
to remember what had actually
happened.
Her hands flicking over
his body with the knife, blood glittering down his body black in
the candlelight, her eyes meeting his across the blade as she
lifted it… and the strange way something in him had moved when her
focus had slipped, stepping into that thick sense of power… Focused
inward on his memory, he suddenly felt the pattern of cuts on his
torso grow hot. He tried to relax, and the heat grew from a flush
to a painful searing. He opened his mouth involuntarily, about to
yell, his coffee cup spilling to the floor, when Sullivans hand
wrapped firmly around his wrist and he again felt the draining
sensation as the power flowed out of him. “Whoa, there, Tiger. You
have even less control than I thought. Better that you stick to
thinking about the physical bits for now, after all. Doesn’t she
have great nipples? She used to name them, Perky and Crinkles.
Before she got all ‘momma kali’ this and ‘evil Man’ that.” He made
faces and said the words in a harsh falsetto like the witch in the
Wizard of oz.

Brian laughed in spite of himself, bending
over to pick up the coffee cup. Sullivan had produced several
napkins from the small table between them, and mopped up the
coffee.. “Probably for the best. I don’t think caffeine would do
this… whatever… much good.” He looked up at Sullivan suddenly, as a
thought occurred to him. “Shit. We never actually had sex, but this
is some kind of disease, isn’t it? I knew that knife wasn’t
sterile… ”
Sullivan grimaced, not in amusement, but
more like a sour acknowledgement. “STDs are the least of your
worries now, me bucko. Not that you can’t catch them—hell, ain’t no
way around that—but you’ve got much bigger problems to deal with.
You notice how you suddenly went all glow-worm like just thinking
about the connection between you and Vashte?” At Brian’s thoughtful
nod, Sullivan held up his hand “Don’t go thinking about it too much
again! Just listen.”

“
What you got a taste of
there was power. That’s my word for it, and it’ll do for now. Call
it prana, orgone, or happy tingles if you want, it’s the same
stuff. It’s basically the force that causes us to want to mate—not
the chemical reactions, in the brain, all the stuff that goes along
with that. The actual
will
to do it, as opposed to simply the
need
.” Sullivan sighed,
and sipped his coffee. “I’m getting too esoteric on you, too soon.
Fact is, you’ll figure out your own idea as to the what of it
sometime after you figure out the how of it. Or else, as I said,
you’ll be dead. Or so far gone as to not care anyway.”

Brian couldn’t help himself, and quipped,
“Great, so if I live long enough, will I ever get to the why of
it?”
Sullivan again gave him that sharp look,
touched with a bit more anger. “Listen, do me a favor. Stop making
jokes about it. I can make jokes, because I know what the fuck I’m
talking about. I’ve held my friends as they screamed in their
death, I’ve fed their catatonic bodies until they died, and I’ve
watched women and men both who I loved destroyed by far less than
what happened to you tonight. So when you have that much water
under your particular bridge, you can joke, but until then, shut
the fuck up and listen so that maybe I won’t have to go through it
again with you.” He paused to see if Brian would try another joke,
but was met with a calm and slightly petulant silence. “Good. I
know you’re probably making all kinds of jokes inside right now,
but at least you have the sense to actually keep them there.”

“
Alright. So there’s this
power, that everybody’s got a touch of. And just like sex, some
people are better at it than others. Genetics, upbringing, health,
whatever, they simply
are.
These are the people who, when they walk into a
room, cause folks of either gender to sit up a little straighter,
breathe a little quicker. People like Marilyn Monroe, poor girl.
And me, in fact.” He motioned across the room to where a man seated
at a table with a laptop was staring, not at the screen, but at
Sullivan, whose sudden returning glance startled him. Blushing, he
looked back down at his laptop and resumed furious typing. Sullivan
gave a tired but wicked grin.

“
Stupid git. Probably got
no porn worth anything on that laptop. Talk about two wasted tools…
anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah… and also just like sex, these people
sometimes take the time to learn how to use that energy better. As
it happens, the best way to manipulate it, store it, do things with
it is through directed sexual action.” He squinted for a moment at
Brian, still seated and silent. “You getting any of
this?”

“
Power. Manipulated by the
beautiful people. Controlled through good sex. I played a lot of
D&D when I was a kid, I can figure out how a magical system
works.” Brian paused. “I’m not joking, I understand what you’re
telling me. It’s just really hard to believe. Even with… what
happened.”

“
Of course it is,”
Sullivan agreed. “Because you and I, m’lad, we are a couple of
North American good ol’ boys, raised on John Wayne and Clint
Eastwood and Natassja Kinski and Kelly LeBrock.” He shook his head.
“Hell, kids nowadays have it even worse, with the Cruise, Kid Rock,
Pamela Anderson and such. Talk about unrealistic.” He sipped his
coffee. “Tell me if I’m wrong. Your parents didn’t want to talk
about sex with you. Your friends only occasionally would do it in
giggles, or whispered conversations at night around a stroke book
passed around at a sleepover. Your teachers wouldn’t talk to you
about it for fear of being labeled pedophiles, and the only other
authority figure left—the church you went to, what,
Catholic?”

“
Mormon.”

Sullivan made a face. “Gah. Even worse. The
church managed to both convey the magic and mystery of sex while at
the same time keeping you completely ignorant of it, with the
presumption that when you finally met your own Holy Sperm Vessel
and began to fruitpully multifly, you’d figure it all out. How’m I
doing so far?”

“
Pretty much spot on. But
that’s the way it is for most people I know. Or meet. Sexually
healthy or not.”

“
Right, right, but here’s
where I get good.” He held up one finger, laced with the same ink
that swirled down the back of his hand and up his arms. “Somewhere
early on, you had two things happen: one, you developed a tendency,
a proclivity, an interest in some sort of sexual aberration. Whips,
chains, goats, latex, beans, whatever… something outside the norm.”
He held up a second finger. “And two, somehow, some way, you lucked
into a sexual relationship that did not put the burden of shame on
you.”

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