Lustfully Ever After (7 page)

Julie acknowledged his comment with an emphatic nod. “You’re right, Heath. It isn’t fair to take our pain out on others.”

Her gaze stayed on him as he looked at her, the internal struggle smoldering in his expression. His eyes were dark again, and Julie could see he had not understood. The defensiveness was rising up in him again, threatening to take over and burst through at an even stronger degree than before. Julie knew it was not unusual for defenses to arise in the face of revelation, for the mental processing of words alone to not be enough. She saw the opportunity, and she knew she would need to take a different tack.

The pain, like a spell, needed to be broken.

Anger continued to rise visibly in Heath, and Julie took a deep breath, allowing fierce love, love in its warrior form, to rise inside her as it was called forth. When she felt it fill her being, she stepped forward and met the stony gaze of her client head-on, her own reflecting the hardness of twin diamonds.

“Sit down.” Her voice had changed. She heard it, and she could tell by the look on Heath’s face that he did too. Wariness among the fury and bitterness now, he hesitated only a second before lowering himself back into his chair.

Julie reached forward and started to untie his tie. Her closeness made Heath’s breath hitch even as he began to demand to know what she thought she was doing.

The sharp connection of her hand with his face resounded in the office before his sentence was even finished. Heath’s jaw dropped, though the countenance of Julie, who happened to know how to deliver such a slap without damaging anything, didn’t change.

“I’m doing whatever I want, and you will do so as well until I release you from that order.” She pulled his tie the rest of the way off and stepped back. “Stand up.”

Julie minced no words as the orders came through her, the alignment of fierce love displaying its unique beauty.

Still stunned, Heath did so without a word. Julie turned him around and secured his wrists behind his back with his tie. She felt his muscles tense beneath her hands, and she left one hand on his arm after she was finished, sending warmth from her body into his via the physical contact. She kept it there until she felt a degree of relaxation beneath her fingers. Then she put a hand on his shoulder, bending him at the waist and pushing his cheek down to the surface of his desk.

Though Heath would never have wanted to admit it, Julie’s sudden treatment of him seemed to make the arousal he had clamped down so tightly rocket into his consciousness like an erupting volcano, his cock providing immediate and granitelike evidence as such. He stayed still in the position in which she had put him, desperately hoping she wouldn’t notice this incriminating evidence. He made a move to speak, but the pressure of her grip on his body relegated the sound to only a whimper.

Then Julie was behind him, her body pressing against his as she leaned forward and grabbed his hair. Reaching below the desk, she grabbed his crotch without preamble. Heath jerked with humiliation, his face burning from being caught in such a state of arousal. Julie, on the other hand, almost breathed a sigh of relief. Though she had fully expected it, she was more than a little relieved to feel the hardness between his legs. Her instincts had been correct.

The revelation also made the wetness grow between her legs. The arousal she had felt earlier was in full force now, but she still relegated it to a secondary position, inviting her slick pussy to be patient while she attended to the struggle taking place within Heath.

Julie held his hair unflinchingly and squeezed the base of his erection just hard enough to keep his attention.

“Do you like that?” she hissed in his ear, tightening the grip of both her hands. She let go of his cock and undid his belt as he whimpered incoherently. She yanked his trousers open unceremoniously, and his pants and underwear fell to the floor.

The smack resounded in the cavernous office as Julie brought her hand down against his behind. Heath jumped and cried out as Julie’s hand, already poised for the second blow, found its target again before she paused and ran her hand over the red blossoming over his skin. She kept her grip on his hair, the warmth of her hand exuding a strength she knew was founded on compassion and alignment, whether or not Heath felt it consciously yet. Over and over she hit him, then caressed him, checking the surging of his cock periodically and barking orders as he squirmed beneath her hands. The energy swelled and retreated like an orchestra, the harmony and dissonance of hers and his and that which was unique to their connection administering just enough pain to touch that which was repressed within him.

Julie watched as the immediate and past hurt melded together, rising into Heath’s consciousness as his body shuddered. She held on tighter, holding steady and guiding him with her hands and her heart to release, the place where what had been trapped for so long was experienced, processed in a moment of agony that for an instant seemed everlasting before it exploded and vanished, just another form of light in the infinite array of all that is. Finally Heath’s cock erupted at the same time he did, his body collapsing in a roaring sob as come spurted to cover her fingers.

Julie yanked the tie off his wrists and moved immediately to cover his body with hers, holding him tightly as he released beneath her. The energy affected her deeply, and she found herself feeling awash in the beauty that broke forth from beneath
the beastliness that had covered it for who knew how long. The transformation took her breath away, transferring effortlessly through her body to the arousal spilling between her legs.

Seamlessly Julie slid her mouth to his ear. Careful to only complement and not interrupt the long-overdue expressing as it came from him, the words were barely a whisper, almost simply a movement against his skin:

“You’re beautiful.”

Heath’s body convulsed, his sobs continuing long after his orgasm had culminated. Eventually he fell silent. His eyes closed, Julie watched him take a deep breath as he rose to his feet. She stood as well. He turned to her and opened his eyes.

Julie blinked at the transformation. She was startled to discover how blue Heath’s eyes were, as though the tears had literally cleaned them out, polished the tarnish away to restore them to their original luster.

They were also, she noted, filled with desire, a potency of a purity she had not yet seen from him. Before she could respond, Heath stepped toward her and lifted her from the floor, almost crushing her in his embrace as he backed her up against the wall, his mouth on hers with a sizzling urgency that made all professional considerations drop from her consciousness. Nothing but her sex commanded attention now, the wetness between her legs covering Heath’s fingers as he slipped his hand beneath her skirt.

Gently Heath lowered Julie to the wooden floor, unbuttoning her suit jacket and sliding her bra out of the way as he took one nipple then the other into his mouth, eliciting in Julie a burning desire over which she felt she had no influence. Rising to his knees, Heath yanked open the bottom drawer of his desk and scrabbled through it frantically until he found the tiny foil packet he had remembered only days before.

Then he sank into Julie, who was waiting beneath him with flushed face and rapid breath. The two of them cried out in unison as he entered her, and her arms came around his strong shoulders as he pumped into her, somehow knowing exactly how to move his hips so that her breath grew even faster as Heath felt her start to tremble beneath him.

When her release came, she wailed with abandon, releasing all the earnestness Julie had collected while caring for Heath and succumbing to her own state of sublime luminescence.

They lay on the floor together, neither speaking nor moving, for some time. When Julie rose eventually and began to straighten her outfit, Heath stood up as well.

“I’ll walk you downstairs,” he said. For the first time, Julie saw him smile.

Moments later the two stood just inside the glass door in the entryway of Castle Jewelers headquarters as their lips came together in a kiss softer than the rose petals adorning the stems in Julie’s hand. Behind them, Vivian’s eyes practically popped out of her head as she stared from her desk.

As they eased apart, Julie extracted, with exquisite delicacy, one of the scarlet blooms from the vase. With reverence, she extended it gently to the man in front of her.

Heath swallowed and looked down at the flower before lifting his big hand to accept it.

“Please don’t tell me I must wait until tomorrow to see you again,” he whispered back as he looked up at her.

Julie smiled. “I’ll text you my address right now.” Palming her phone from her purse, she gave Heath a last kiss on the cheek and strode through the glass door into the sunlight beyond.

And so it was that the beast within was released in the face of unconditional love. Because Julie had loved and accepted even what was ugly in Heath, it had transformed and returned to the
beauty inherent in all things. And from that day forth Heath became beautiful again to all who knew him, and especially to Julie, who continued to visit his tower office long after their two-week contract was up, whenever he wasn’t already taking the day off to spend at her small cottage by the lake.

 

 

 

 

 

M
aster says, “Strip.”

I remove my red hooded cloak; finger the straps of my brassiere and pull, slide my hands down along the sides of my body, ease my underpants away with my thumbs, and allow the lingerie to fall in a tangle to the ground. I meet his eyes and smile, sharp-toothed careless girl. I stain my lips blood-red; Little Red I am, bloodthirsty, half-woman, half-wolf.

The hunter grabs my hair and crushes my mouth with his mouth, lips, tongue, teeth; he is as hungry as I am. He ran to me, through the woods, past evening primrose, trembling ash and pine. He ran through the garden of thorny wild roses, barely touching the path of crumbling stone leading to the cottage door leading to me, open, waiting.

His eyes burn into mine; I feel the depth of the full moon in his desire, this time he will own me. He exposes his cock and forces me to kneel before him. I take his balls into my mouth greedily, graze and nip hungrily between his legs. A low growl escapes me; he pulls me up and slaps my cheek. I am sorry.

He slaps me again.

He knows I could tear him apart; I am flesh and blood, hunger.

Once upon a time, and again, the hunter held my life in his hands. I had grown reckless, believing the woods free of men, and his cottage was camouflaged deep in the forest. His shotgun was loaded with silver bullets, cocked and aimed at the red-flecked creature in the shadows. Though he could hardly believe his eyes, he saw at once who I was. He overcame me, strapped my mouth and tied my arms and feet; he carried me home to Grandmother’s cottage, across his back, dead weight.

He knew I was wild; I had never known a master. He knew I was afflicted, cursed by the moon, by the wolf-beast who left me part changeling as a child, leaving only a scream and strewn flowers on the forest floor.

The hunter had heard my frightened echo as he was cutting wood, preparing for winter. He raced through the woods, still holding the axe, following the sound and the path of my footsteps to the cottage. From the window, he saw the wolf-beast sleeping, bloated and sick with satiation, and he broke through the door. The hunter slashed the wolf-beast’s stomach to release Grandmother and me. With a strong stroke of his axe, the hunter then liberated the beast’s head from his body, killing the wolf-beast instantly.

Blood, and more blood. Grandmother and I covered in gore substantial as afterbirth. In shock, numb, we could neither move nor speak. The hunter wrapped the head and body of the wolf-beast in a bed sheet and placed it outside the cottage. When he returned, he cleaned us off with a damp towel, soothed us with gentle words. I held onto Grandmother as the hunter wrapped me tight in my red hooded cloak and placed a shawl around her shoulders. He set about cleaning up the cottage and put the door back on its hinges. He told us that he would take the body
of the wolf-beast deep inside the forest to burn; he would never bury something so evil in the nourishing earth.

Not long afterward, Grandmother died; she had been sick, and her old frail body was unable to sustain the internal changes caused by being inside the wolf-beast. But I was still young and lived, returned to Mother and Father with the promise to never stray from the path in the woods again. I never strayed, but I remained lost.

Time passed, and when it became clear that I had changed, I changed again. The cycles of the moon brought blood and breasts, fur and teeth. Mother wept and Father held his head. They could not keep me. I was no longer Little Red, they said.

“But I am Little Red,” I cried. “Still Little Red,” I pleaded.

They turned their faces away, disgusted at the sight of me. They didn’t know what I was; the girl they loved as Little Red had become a beast, half-woman, half-wolf. Each month, I was stained with blood; each month, they found the carcasses of creatures I hated to kill. I needed to feed. I was hungry. I was sorry. I was no longer their daughter. I wanted to die.

I made my home in Grandmother’s dilapidated cottage, my bed from thickets of leaves, dirt, and thorns. I could no longer live as the others lived. I saw no one. I wanted no one. Eventually, I forgot the ways of the village. I lost language; I lived in the shadows of night and crawled on all fours. Thus, Master found me. Still, he recognized me. He wanted me; and when he took me, there was nothing to leave behind.

I am his pet, his companion, his beautiful and wild treasure. The hunter brings me flowers and skinned rabbits, red cloth and needles and thread. He smells like man; he leaves in the day and comes back at night; he has known many women, but none like me.